Me? I was sitting at my desk working for my dad in Kentucky, when I got a call from the Louisville branch of the company (there was a merger in place at the time), telling us that aplane had hit the World Trade Center. Back then, the office there didn’t have peristent Internet, and didn’t even have a TV with anything better then rabbit ears, so we were connected, but just barely. We turned on the TV (Walton, Kentucky is out in the boonies BTW) and took breaks often to watch the coverage as every terrifying moment unfolded, realizing just how spooky it was at lunch time to know that not a single plane was in the air. Walton was in the path of the airport, about 15 miles south, so you always saw about 3-4 planes in the sky.

Everyone out there worked the entire day, but I’d be lying if I said that any of us really got a whole lot done, our minds were in a thousand other places, and then driving home quick and watching the coverage for the rest of the evening on my TV. It was one of the very few nights where I can ever remember going to bed scared, because while you were pretty sure apocalypse wasn’t going to happen that night, there were so many unknowns that no one really knew what was going to happen next (as it turned out, nothing, but no one knew).

I have not had the time to really sit down and watch too much of the documentary stuff that has come out in the wake of this fifth anniversary, but just what I have heard about it all is amazing, to think that so many people did what they did so selflessly is an astounding thing … one that most are afraid may happen again, but hope never will.

Now, before the “Slacker” crap comes in, it’s not like this is new, it’s just the first time back at it for a little while. The Cincinnati days were typically 15-hour total endeavours, 11 of which were work and 4 of which were driving (From my house, one hour to work, work 8 hours with a lunch, drive another hour, work three hours at Game Junkie, drive home). And, when I work the Halo 2 Tournament at the game store this weekend, I’m expecting it to be another 13-hour to 14-hour day.

But, when it’s the main job, it’s a different thing altogether. So, let’s hope I get a lot done today, tie up all the loose ends, and get out of dodge for five days of some idle time, and a lot of vacation bliss!

More on a couple of those things I’m doing in a later post.

Most sports fans will tell you this, or at least I will. The more you know about the game, the less it helps you when you do these NCAA brackets on a yearly basis. You think about games, you analyze, you know there’s going to be upsets so you make stupid selections. All of these things rang true this year, and the unpredictability of a 11-seed like George Mason making the Final Four didn’t help.

All in all, I finished in the bottom third of the AST Sales bracket (I didn’t get to Columbus in time to do the Karlsberger one). Brian in the office won as he successfully picked UCLA to go to the finals, which they have done. I don’t even remember where I finished in the Game Junkie pool, but it was ugly! (I just checked, 21st out of 28)
Heck, my picks were almost gone after the first weekend. (OSU, North Carolina, Duke, Kansas)
There is always next year, and I’ll have to figure out if I’m gonna do any Fantasy Baseball. I didn’t last year, didn’t have time. I might bow out and just do the video games.

Today was an example of that. I overslept (and wasn’t feeling 100% anyways), so I called in … I know in my heart that I coulda got it done, and probably shoulda got it done, but gave in … and getting up on Wednesday and Thursday has been a bit brutally hard to wake up too. I have my reasons why I think this is.

1) People that know me well know this: I’m messy! And even though this is a trait that I haven’t had success changing, I do know that when my room is a horrible mess, it does seem to make me more down. So, I’m working on making my room and my stuff more organized.

2) I may reorganize my room too to hopefully allot more space to it, maybe move my “ghetto bed” to a different wall, just to mix things up. I’ve noticed silly stuff like sleeping on the opposite end of a bed seems to be a good change up sometimes too.

3) I’m all for people’s suggestions on easing waking up … other then get 8 hours of sleep, cause my news flash is, that just isn’t gonna happen!

Well, that’s all for this entry, I might post one more soon.

That’s the other bad thing about getting pulled. I get pulled about three different ways at my main job: computer guru, Louisville computer bitch, and inside sales. This job needs about 2 and a half people, and I’m only one.

This is gonna be a long day.

Not working, hanging out with Danielle, and getting crap from Adam for not being at the store for handheld night, and hateful crap at that, questioning my dedication. That galls me, bad. If I would not have seen Danielle, she would have been disappointed, and let’s not forget needing to leave my main job right at 5 which I know irks my co-worker, even though that is closing time.

I work 2 jobs and have a girlfriend that all want time, and I want to give them this time. the 2 jobs are full of people for whom the day’s work is not enough. At the main job, I just have no passion for that and no desire, and a co-worker whom by 5 I need to get distance from for my own sanity.

At the game store, I’ve realized a few things. First, that a lot of my work is in little things no one sees. Wednesday, I did do store work, a trade in run of overstock. No one noticed. And, when I am at the store, I work. I don’t play, I don’t really take many breaks, I just do work. This isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s just how I am wired I guess. So, if I need down time, while I love the game store, and I am passionate about its success, I am not going to get that downtime at the store, at least not during regular hours.

So I don’t know the answer except to think that I’m going to start to have to deal with a life where some aspect of my friends is always pissed off cause I can’t give everyone every bit of time I have and never recharge. Danielle is going through a similar thing, people adjusting to her not having the time she used to, and sometimes in hateful ways.

There is no magic wand to fix it, just a hope of understanding, and the hope in a work sense that all you do selflessly does count for something in the end.

* Hardware errors suck. More specifically, hardware errors that lead to software errors that lead to four hour bootups where services don’t load REALLY suck! It happened again on Tuesday leading into Wednesday, when the power went out in Boone County for about an hour. The computers shut down … and didn’t come back up. Thankfully, with the help of my buds at Augustine Consulting (Patrick’s the man!), it was back up and running by lunch time the next day. Yay for that!

* It’s “everyone gets sick” season at the office … by the end of the week, everyone was hacking something horrible except my dad, who thankfully averted it all, and me, and that’s cause I was pretty much back on the upswing, and had been feeling all icky all week. Two of these in 2 months is too much.

* The good news? It’s 11 PM right now,and in three hours, I get to see Danielle! ::huge grin appears on face! ::

And the quick stream of consciousness thought for tonight’s FNL:

So there I was, at FNL, chilling out at my normal front desk situation, when Russo “shit, almost did it again”. What did he do? He picked up my phone, thinking he was just picking up a phone, but it was attached to the “Scooter Phone Holder System” … so the tickets went everywhere! This was a funny thing .. the first time, not the 20th!

Then, some last minute shopping (no, I haven’t been a total dope, my gift for Danielle is almost done, but I do need to package it), then FNL, then wake up for a Smash Tournament, then get the heck out of town ’til Monday morning.

(Stopped writing here)

Well, I have to admit that nothing is perfect. Sadly, in an hour, I can get a flat tire!

That was directly after finishing that blog post. I was coming out from Louisville’s office to my car to find that the rear tire’s gauge was red, and the pressure was low …. and the tire was starting to go flat. I thought it was a slow leak, so I drove it a half mile to get to the 2 gas stations before getting on I-65 North. The first had 2 people asking me for money, and me lying that I had none (and then putting 50 cents into a broken air dispenser).

The second gas station’s air pump was broken, and at this point, it was closing in on a full flat. So I called Triple-A (cause if you didn’t know, I’m an idiot with cars), they changed it to the spare, I drove 100 miles home, and then got it fixed. All this and I think my car is now officially over 100,000 miles.

And oh yes, my XBox broke! I went downstairs to play Halo 2 on Sunday only to find my switch for the chip inside of it for my emulators and media player was detected. Needless to say, Microsoft isn’t a big fan of that and especially when you go online. So, there’s now a new XBox in my car, and I’m going to need to be a few games lighter in the pockets soon, so I’ll trade in some of the games I *gasp* don’t play, to cover some of my future costs.

Thankfully, the JunkieCheck is in my hands now. Every bit helps, cause gas to Columbus is of the utomost priority!

And this tells you how sky high my happiness is. All this happens two months ago, and my whole being begins to break down and crumble. Today, it’s a minor annoyance that I knew would get better and not affect me beyond today. Makes me believe that love and caring IS the ultimate high!

* Got the computer working that I had to drive to Louisville and make work finally after 2 hours of fighting with it. Any more and I might have been LITERALLY fighting with it!

* Found out that Matt and the Professor moved inventory to Tuesday so that I could make the road trip to see Danielle! :: extreme happiness ensues! ::

* And, found out enough that I can work on getting this printer working further here soon too, may just have to redirect how it prints.

Not a bad 15 minutes for a day that wasn’t all that bad to begin with, and after a weekend that was just unbelievable. I’m sure there will be a blog post about that sometime soon.