The sickness continues

3 posts in one day. Boy, I bet you are all feeling lucky.. or maybe you haven't checked in a few days and are feeling overwhelmed.

So the video game saga continues. I am officially down 1 PS2 but instead of hunting for one on the cheap I decided to exchange Guitar Hero 2 for an undamaged disk. What a trip that was. Tom was itching to go to Fry's Electronics because he was in a bad mood. I was in a similar mood and decided to join him. Luckily he had the Best Buy receipt for GH2. He picked me up and we stopped by Best Buy on the way to Fry's.
I stand in the returns line for about 15 minutes while Tom goes and plays with the latest smart phones. I finally get to the service rep, the look at the disk, look at the receipt, then tell me to go get a new copy of the game and bring it back up to them. They also tell me I don't have to wait in line.
I walk to the back of the store, find the game, and head back to the counter. When I get there they have gone from 4 Customer Service reps to 2. I walk to the front of the line and wait patiently. After 5 minutes the guy I am waiting on takes my receipt and hands it to the lackey too his right. I assume this was to speed up my transaction as he is now dealing with a difficult return. So I go stand by the obviously younger and less knowledgeable worker and continue waiting patiently. After 10 more minutes and a few conversations with some other guys in line about cars and manly stuff the young kid finally finds what was wrong with the lady's order in front of me. Apparently she had ordered something, taken too long to pick it up, and they had canceled the order. It took him15 minutes to figure that out. I was still better off though since the smart guy was still trying to figure out how a cordless mouse was on some guy's receipt but wouldn't scan into the system (as in they don't actually carry that mouse).
The guy helping me takes the 5 seconds required to print the exchange receipt and I am done. Total wait time 30 min, total "help" time, about 1.5 minutes.
Amazing.

As I turn around I see a man in the now very long returns line holding a Wii. I immediately approach him and ask if the machine is broken. He says no, he just doesn't want it. I talk with him a little more as I try to grasp the cusp of the situation. It still doesn't quite compute to me and I sort of wander away pondering the mere possibility of the situation he claimed. I find Tom, confer with him and we decide this is an opportunity that can not be passed up. I approach the man again and ask him if he would rather just sell me the machine instead of waiting in line to return it. He politely declines, mumbling something about a credit card. He says I could probably just wait and buy the system as soon as he returns it. I consider this good advice and take my post at the end of the costumer service counter. About 5 more minutes of waiting go buy when the General Manager comes over, I assume because he has noticed how long and aggravated the line has become due to the counter being staffed at half strength.
After inquiring to the where abouts of all his workers he decides to pitch in and help. Instead of helping the next person in line he singles me.. the guy standing randomly at the edge and ask if I need help. I ask him how long the turn around is for a returned item to hit the floor. He looks at me like I just asked how many cucumbers he could shove up his ass in 45 seconds and asks for clarification and specifically what kind of item. I point out the man with the Wii and tell him the man will not sell it to me, but wants to make the full return instead. The manager states he is obligated to make an announcement, then grabs the mic attached to his shirt and makes a call on the radio to all his employees that goes something like this.
"attention, we have a customer returning a Nintendo Wii, however we already have another customer lined up to buy it. Repeat, We have a Wii to sell and somone inline to buy it." He then promised me the Wii and went about bossing people around. Tom and I waited another 10 minutes or so for the guy with the nintendo to get helped. As soon as the transaction was done the CS rep brought the machine to me at the end of the counter and rang it up.
I was in a pretty foul mood today when it came to video games and video game systems. All that has changed. I am a very very very happy boy.
My wife, Tom, and I have spent the last 2 hours taking turns on Wii sports. All the rumors are true. The system is just plain fun. I just wish I could find another controller. Tom and I tried 3 stores and no one has any extra controllers.

I hope you all come over to play soon, it really is a whole new social experience.

Fuck Gameplus

So, I took the PS2 in for repairs.. it was $50 with a 30 day warranty. I picked it up last thursday and went of vacation on friday. We go home on tuesday so on wednesday I finally go around to trying the console out. It still isn't working. It won't read any of my disks. I took it back in and they told me it wasn't covered by my warranty. They claim that it was working perfectly fine when the gave it too me and that they warned me about using damaged disks in the machine. This isn't true. When I picked up the machine they told me to check my disks for damage. They never mentioned a damaged disk could damage the machine.
They say that there is something wrong with the laser now because it won't read any disks and this doesn't relate to the repair they made. Since it is a different problem it is not covered by the warranty and would be another $50 to look at.
What a fucking rip off. They expect me to believe that a scratched disk damaged the lens on my laser? You have got to be kidding me.
SO, I am out $50, have 2 damaged disks and still no play station. I am not a very happy person right now.

Pockets of Doom

Well.. I should be blogging about my trip to Colorado for Christmas but I really don't feel like it right now. I am feeling very lazy and long winded. I warn you not to read this post unless you are looking to be bored.
Instead of the vacation I will talk about pockets. I love pockets. Pockets are great. They hold things that I need so I don't have to carry them. This frees my hands to do important things like open doors, drive cars, stop the ground from hitting my face when I fall, etc. etc.
Like most men I have a system when it comes to my pockets. Keys go in the right, phone in the left, wallet in the back right. When I have my PDA on me, as I often do, the PDA goes in the left, phone and keys in the right, and wallet in the back right.
This system works very well for me as my keys and wallet are always in my right pockets. Whenever I leave a place like my house, or my friends house, or I arrive at a destination I do the man pat. You know what I'm talking about. The quick tap of my thighs and ass to ensure my pockets have the appropriate bulge. I personally do 5-6 taps, checking my front pockets twice. This usually takes less than 3 seconds and I often don't even realize I do it. When all the pockets check O.K. a lower level of consciousness sits quietly by waiting to perform the next trivial task so my higher levels of consciousness are free to continue the conversation I am having, contemplating the Universe, or doing calculus.
When my pocket check reveals a deficiency a whole different process takes place. That little background task manager of my mind elevates its priority level to a higher consciousness. If the deficiency is a critical one, like my keys or my wallet the thought gets the highest priority and my mind sees if fit to elevate my bodies readiness levels. My heart rate quickens, my breathing deepens and I could swear a very minuscule amount of adrenaline is released.
Once my awareness is sufficiently heightened my mind begins the process of trying to locate the missing item. This usually takes only a second or two of tracing my last steps from memory and is often accompanied by a more frenzied pat down of all my pockets, including those not usually in the line up.
At this point I am sure you are wondering how the hell I could have gone on so long about pockets and still had nothing of interest to say. Well, its a gift, but now we get to the whole point of the matter and you get to use your mind's eye to laugh at me.
Imagine me standing outside a store randomly slapping my body while I gaze absently at the sky. When I say slapping my body I mean all over my body. When I am in panicked pocket check mode I check everywhere I have had pockets, and that is alot of places. I slap both breasts, my upper thighs, both butt cheeks, grab my pant legs (looking for cargo pockets) and will lastly slap the center of my chest. Thats right the center of my chest. When I was in the Marine Corps I didn't put my pen in my pocket, I clipped it between the first and second button on my blouse, and I find I still do that occasionally when I am wearing a polo or buttoned shirt. I got used to checking my breastbone for the item I am looking for.

I came to be completely aware of my odd behavior yesterday while standing in front of Target randomly slapping myself and receiving odd looks from passing shoppers. The whole process usually doesn't last long enough for other people to notice, but my keys where missing and I was panicked thinking I had locked them in the car.. but I couldn't have because i locked the car using the remote.. but I don't have the keys so they must be locked in the car.. maybe the fell out of your pocket.. but I never took anything out of my pocket while I was in the store, I only returned a gift and that was in a bag so they must be locked in the car... As you can see my mind was stuck in a loop.. then my autopilot pocket search realized I was wearing a jacket.
The keys where in my jacket pocket. For some reason I find it completely natural to stick stuff in my jacket pocket. I do it without thinking and without realizing something is in there. I don't usually wear a jacket, it hasn't been part of my daily wardrobe since high school so why am I so eager to use my jacket pockets?
Its a frustrating place to be in because every time I get out of the car I put my keys in my jacket pocket and when I go to find them later I panic because I can't find my keys. This is not something I am used to. I am not a panic prone guy so having these daily alarms is getting really annoying plus I look like an idiot every time it happens.
I think I will stop wearing a jacket and just catch a cold.

My brain is hung like a horse

Grades where posted this weekend.
I got all Bs. This surprised me because I was expecting a C in my circuits class. I must have kicked ass on that final.
The class was pretty rough. It was the first year they had it and it is a combination of 2 separate classes in attempt to reduce the required credits for a EE degree. There are definitely some bugs that still need to be ironed out of the curriculum.

I am so proud of myself :D

*p.s. I think I finally broke the play station for good. I will be taking it in tomorrow to a repair shop to see about getting a new dvd drive. Man is that frustrating. I am only about 8 songs in to Guitar Hero 2.

Radio Gaga

I was on the radio this morning. My clip was about 20 seconds long.
The Edge morning show asked their listeners to call in and tell them the weirdest place they had gone to the bathroom.
They where worried things would get too graphic and the stories where taking too long so by the time they got to me they where in rapid fire mode and all they wanted to hear was where it happened. My story got turned into something like this:
"My roommate; in his closet. 2 months later, walks through the bathroom and goes into our neighbors closet." They laughed and talked about it for about 10 more seconds and then went onto the next caller. If you where listening to The Edge 103.9 this morning at about 7:32ish I was the first caller after they took a commercial break, and the first of the "rapid fire" callers. I didn't hear it, but my wife says it didn't sound like me on the radio.

I had a great story that would have taken about 15 more seconds to tell and would have made the hilarity of the situation even greater but I was following the rules so that my story would get on the air. BTW for things like this they didn't go live. They talked to me while a song was playing and recorded the entire conversation, when the song was done they just played the clip. I thought that was an interesting workaround for saving that emergency "dump button" for errant swear words, or maybe it was just so they could cue up as many stories as possible and remove any dead air time.

Anyway.. I feel the story needs to be told in a more robust and less "embellished" nature.
I was not actually present to witness the acts but I heard about them first hand in the fashion that all great stories in the military are retold.. the very next day. When I was in the Marine Corps my friend Scott Kruse told me a tale of his roommate Ian Cole. Ian came home drunk one night and passed out on his bed. A while later he gets up, stumbles over to the wall locker and proceeds to relieve himself in it. It left a rather lingering odor, and as my fuzzy memory serves me, it wasn't his wall locker, it was Scott's and a large amount of clothing was stored at the bottom of the locker. A number of weeks later Ian once again gets up and stumbles toward the wall locker but Scott is keenly aware of the past transgressions and re-routes Ian towards the head. Ian walks through the head and into the neighboring room (keep in mind that in the barracks 2 rooms share a bathroom). Ian can not open the neighbor's wall locker because it is locked (as it is supposed to be) so Ian just pees on the wall locker, the wall, and the very cheap carpeting.

Oddly enough this is not how Cole got the nickname of "Head."