Oh, to get out of the serving game.

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My mom's always telling me I should become a CNA. Every time I complain about my job, she suggests it. And I may hate serving, but I know that medical professions are not right for me either! I just don't have it in me. Plus the schooling takes forever, and I've spent enough time in school -- ten years! And I can't even get financial aid anymore, but that's a whole separate story.

It's too bad that I'm not cut out for it, though, because I know there's a high demand for all medical professions, and there are no shortages of programs for them! And there are intense, quicker courses sometimes -- people wanting to be Chicago CCNA or San Diego CCNA have condensed course options, for example. I also am not really good with computers, unfortunately. I mean, I can obviously find my way around a blog; I can do some basic photo editing; but when it comes to the stuff that people pay for, I'm screwed. Which is why I could never enroll in a Virginia Cisco Course. I also couldn't administrate a server if my life depended on it, so the Virginia MCITP course is out too.

Then again, the fact that I'm not in Virginia would probably have something to do with that too.

How quickly things change.

I've had the last few posts written and hadn't posted them yet; they needed to be posted or my deadlines would be up, but I really wish I'd posted them before.

Because it's been a bad couple of days at work. The new manager I mentioned? The one who took Bitter Divorced Man's place? Well, I'm glad I didn't come up with a snide nickname for him, because when I walked in to work Wednesday I found out that he's dead. He died in a car accident Tuesday night.

A hard thing to think about

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I'm in no way a health professional; I don't know jack about Multiple Sclerosis. Well, I do know a bit, because my mother does home health care and when I was little she had a patient with severe MS. She explained to me what it was, vaguely, and oh my god did it freak me out. Later on I learned about some of the biological stuff, the degeneration of the myelin sheath of the nerves etc., but I've never really studied it. One of the things my mom told me long ago was that MS treatment doesn't really treat it so much as deal with individual symptoms. There are a couple of MS diet therapies that are well-known, that some patients say improve their symptoms, but no hard studies; and some of the symptoms of MS (like sensory loss) don't have treatments. It's amazing to me that we can replace somebody's heart and yet not come up with an effective treatment for a disease that has such a wide span of symptoms.

Daytime shifts aren't so horrible.

I'm working at a haunted house this month, so I've switched to working daytime shifts for a while. I was really, really dreading it -- the last time I regularly worked day shifts, they were always hellish. And not only hellish, not worth my time.

Well, most shifts still aren't worth my time -- $20-$40 per shift -- but at least I don't feel like I'm walking across hot coals. I'm not sure what the difference in; it surely can't be that I've mellowed out. I think it's that three people who used to work almost exclusively days have quit or been fired, and I just never really clicked with any of them personality-wise. The atmosphere now is actually pretty pleasant, and surprisingly relaxed.

If only I actually made any money, I'd probably stick with them. Maybe if I can get some closing lunch shifts once the month is out .... of course the chances of that are slim, considering Mr. Vomit-Worthy has everyone feeling sorry for him because Mrs. Vomit-Worthy is knocked up and hasn't worked in months because she "can't".

Adventures in home improvement.

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When I lived with my aunt, she went on this crazy home-improvement kick and decided to tear up the linoleum in her kitchen. She went out and bought stacks and stacks of tiles -- when then sat around the house for months before she got around to doing anything with them. I hit my toes on those damn things stumbling home in the middle of the night more times than I can count! And then when she finally got around to installing the tile, well .... it didn't go as she hoped. Probably largely because she entrusted the grouting and sealing to my dear, sweet, teenaged cousins.

At least when the time came to re-do the bathroom tiles, she'd learned from her mistake. So instead of buying heavy ceramic proper tiles, she went for ... um, black and white peel-and-stick linoleum patches that sort of looking like subway tiles. Of course, she didn't properly prepare the floors before doing that either, so those were peeling up within a couple of months!

And the moral of the story is ..... uhhh ... don't do home improvement projects yourself if you're too lazy to do it right. Yeah, let's go with that.

Oh, I almost forgot ....

Remember how CL threw her boss to the wolves a couple of months ago to make herself look better? Well, I'm pretty sure she's trying to do the same thing to Lapdog now!

She's been bitching aloud about him, to employees -- oh yeah, and in earshot of customers! Bitter Divorced Man quit, and the guy who replaced him (don't have a spiffy name for him yet) was probing one of my coworkers for dirt on Lapdog. Also, one of her little spies told the same coworker, "Don't worry, CL told me Lapdog won't be here much longer."

See, her head is on the chopping block again because our numbers are all over the place. The effect of screwing her boss over has clearly worn off, so now she's looking for another scapegoat. Pot Smoking Manager doesn't have enough seniority or responsibility for it to be plausible that it's all his fault; the new guy is new. So that leaves Lapdog, who's sucked it up and dealt with this bitch for the last 10 years even though he's more qualified that her -- for god's sake, the man used to be an area chef manager for a very famous chef who owns a chain of restaurants. And he gave up that career to have more time with his family, and ended up working for a psycho and toughing it out all this time, and now if she has her way he's going to get fired so she can hang on to her own job for a few more months -- because after that, she'll be out of people to blame.

I want to warn him, but I haven't directly heard anything. If New Manager starts trying to get info out of me, though, you can bet I'll be having a private conversation with Lapdog. He might piss me off, but he doesn't deserve this shit.

My car's sound system blows.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Dual Electronics. All opinions are 100% mine.


I've bitched about my car plenty of times before, although probably mostly on my other blog. I call it my Crapmobile to people who don't know me, and Farfugkugel to people who do (that name reference is a long story involved "Robin Hood: Men In Tights" and me being a nerd). It does get excellent gas mileage -- usually -- but that's about it's only strong point. And one of the major downsides, for me, is how shitty the sound system is. It's a 1990 Ford Escort, so it has a radio and a tape player; it also has four speakers, only two of which work. Those two are in the front, at least, so I can hear; but I do lose a lot of the finer details of songs. Even more when the volume mysteriously plummets and then just as randomly comes back again days later. In short, it sucks.

Pretty much any stereo system would be an improvement over Farfugkugel's current setup, but one of the XPE Series by Dual Electronics would be particularly nice. I admit, I don't know a whole lot about stereos, but the features sure sound spiffy. The XPE2700 has a total dynamic power of 400 Watts. I don't know what the means, but it sounds like a lot. Extruded aluminum heatsinks I kind of understand -- I've melted plenty of candy bars by putting them in the console above the stereo, so I understand the need to dissipate that heat.

Overall, all Dual Electronics' systems sound pretty spiffy. Probably much too cool for my Crapmobile's decidedly negative cool factor, in fact.

I need this!

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Dual Electronics. All opinions are 100% mine.


One of the things that ticks me off about my car's crappyass sound system is the fact that it's a radio/tape deck combo. I hate, hate, hate listening to the radio -- DJ's prattling sets my teeth on edge. And tapes, well, can you even buy them anymore? So that leaves me with my iPod. Which I love! But to listen to it in my car, I either have to use the tape deck converter or one of the radio frequency broadcasters, both of which lose some sound quality. Plus they require fiddling and cords and general annoyance.

That makes the XDMA7650 from Dual Electronics verrrry interesting to me. It has a direct USB hookup! It supports the iPhone too, although I don't have one of those. But I would absolutely love to be able to just plug my iPod in and go on my merry way. Oh, and it has a remote control too, so I wouldn't have to fumble with that damn clicker wheel (one of my only complaints about the iPod, hate that wheel). The system has 3.5mm auxiliary inpunt and 3-RCA preamp outputs, too. Not that that means anything to me other than blahblahblah, but maybe some of you are tech types and know how awesome that is.

Now my problem is that my car would be worth less than the stereo!

I knew the douchebags would be back.

First table today left me $4 on $80. Perfect service, perfect food, etc. Fucking assholes. They're the reason stereotypes exist -- not everyone in certain racial groups is a shitty tipper, but unfortunately enough are.

But then later I got $20 on $80, and I walked with $70 on a first cut, so in the end it was okay.

Two weeks wasn't enough time.

I thought two weeks off would be enough to alleviate the littlest of my aggravations. You know, the stupid stuff that only irritates me because people are so generally retarded. But I was wrong. I still want to slap people for the following:

"I need an iced tea." Really? Because I don't think 'need' means what you think it means.

"I'll take a salad." No, you'd like one. You're not taking anything, unless I bring it to you in the first place.

"Do you have a bathroom?" No.

"Is (random item) good?" How the fuck should I know? Do you like shrimp? Do you like spicy things? Do you like vegetables? Are you allergic to anything? Why don't you read the fucking menu item and make up your own mind?

"Would like you (some add-on, salad or whatever)?"
"Is it free?" Yes, because restaurants don't exist to make money!

Oddly "just water" isn't bugging me!

Back to work!

Oh holy jesus, I have eight shifts this week. Three of them I picked up. What the fucking fuck was I thinking? The mere thought of it makes me sick to my stomach now.

Oh wait, I know exactly what I was thinking: that trips to the UK are expensive. No one to blame but myself.