Merry Christmas To All

Merry Christmas everyone. Please be safe. While Pat and I spend 3 whole wonderful days together, I'm sure I'll update a bit, but for now, I'm just enjoying the company of the most wonderful man on earth.

Again, be safe. If you're driving, be aware. If you're drinking, drop the car keys now. If you're not doing either, then you're sad, but I hope you enjoy! :)

Be Nice Or Leave

I've kinda been in a rambling mood today, and about to leave for lunch, and then work on laundry, so here's a vent for Christmas!

The tree is decorated with lots of sparklie lights. The presents are wrapped, some well, some thrown together in a mad dash of "I ran out of time". I haven't gone shopping for our Christmas dinner yet. We've promised each other we wouldn't spend more then $50 on each other. I went over the first day. He deserves nice things!!!

The parking lot at work is filled with stressed out shoppers who zoom through at 45 miles an hour and start laying on the horn when someone tries to pull out of a parking spot. (If you were going the speed limit, you wouldn't have almost killed someone, moron.)

The store is filled with emotionally and physically drained associates who've gone through one of the best years our store has had accident, sales, and morale wise. It's also filled with rude and unkind customers who'll cuss at you simply because you can't cuss back (wanna bet? Try me. I'll kick your butt out of that store faster then you can say "I know your manager, Sal"....Try it! Our truck crew would LOVE to escort you out of the store! They need the break from 2-3 trucks a night!).

On the other hand, it's filled with people who are calm, and kind, and understand that I make mistakes. To that person, I say thank you. I realize that our associates screw up. We're human. We go through a lot of freight, boxes, customers, money, left behind items, cashed checks, money orders, pallets, lost merchandise, and chocolate (gotta keep that morale up!) every day. But we also try very hard to do our jobs. Our job is to provide our customers with low prices and good attitudes. Yelling at me doesn't give you a good attitude btw, it gives you a really ticked off time bomb who makes less money now then I did when I was 16!

I will do whatever you request to show you that I KNOW we don't have the game that you want. Making me spend 45 minutes looking for in front of you, while 8 customers waited, 'cause I'm the only person in the department, that's not cool. I'm not gonna tell you "No I don't have it" to make you go away. I want your money. I want that sale. That's my job. That's my bonus, my eval, and my job. I may work at Wal-Mart, that doesn't mean I have the IQ of a snail.

Why would you make people jump through hoops for you? Can you not trust that someone is doing their job? Trust me, I wish more of our associates would just say, "If it's not on the shelf, we don't have it", instead of spending an hour looking for something, when they could be stocking stuff we DO have onto the shelf. But that's our job. If you want it, and we have it, isn't it our responsibility to provide it for you? It's also in our best interest. We want your money people. If there's any way I can get you to part with that extra 5-10 bucks before you walk out the door, I will!

If I tell you I don't have anything, it's cause I don't. If I tell you I'll look for it, then I'm not sure, but man, if it's there, you'd better bet I'm gonna find it. Again, with the wanting sales thing. If I look and I don't find it, it's not cause I did it half assed. It's cause I'm human and missed it. I wouldn't turn down someone who WANTED to give my store money. So give it a rest people. My associates are not out to get you. It's not a conspiracy to hide merchandise. We wouldn't be in business if we did that!

My associates work hard to stock our shelves, merchandise our products and help our customers. If you walk into the Ridgecrest Wal-Mart - pay attention to what we're telling you. We want you to shop here and give us money. Yelling, throwing a fit, and cussing....well that's just rude, and we don't deserve it. Besides, it makes you look stupid, not us. And we're the ones who work at Wal-Mart!

Shop Early, Or Get the Hell Out Of My Store!

Let's be honest. Who shops 4 days before Christmas and complains that stores are out of stuff? We're a seasonal store, and the goal is to be out of the merchandise the day of the event, or in this case, the day before. Why? We lose possible income by markdowns. It's basic retail. Don't like it? SHOP BEFORE THERE'S 4 DAYS LEFT!!!

I really don't see how this is rocket science. Obviously the goal is to have enough for each of our customers, but you know, if you wait til 4 days before one of the biggest celebrated holidays in the U.S. and blame me for all of Wal-Mart's issues, you're the idiot, not me! :)

Onto other news, today's music includes:

• Benny Benassi - Satisfaction. This music is on the Wendy's commercial where the burgers turn into an equalizer! It's what I'd call industrial techno. The Benny vs Depeche Mode is also an excellent choice.
• Debussy - Clair de lune. Beautiful song! What more can I say?
• Barenaked Ladies - Elf's Lament off of their Barenaked for the Holidays album. GREAT music!!!
• Tony! Toni! Tone! - If I Had No Loot. So 1991 R&B, before it got crappy. Love these guys. Yes, I'm old school, deal with it!
• Anna Nalick is still high on my list with her "Breathe" song. It's just got such a flow, and it makes me want to cry and be righteously angry at the same time. That's kinda my Fionna Apple fan cheering inside when I hear music like this.

Speaking of Fionna Apple, I saw her album Tidal at the store last night, and I was truly shocked. I love Fiona Apple! Back when I worked at Sea World she came to San Diego, and I cried when my stupid boss wouldn't give me the day off so I could go see her. I've never been to a concert that wasn't at 4th & B, and it would have been spectacular, but some people have no idea of the joy that a simple evening off can hold.

My current head assistant, Terry, does though. He gives me a weekend off a month, except for December, there's just no time!! But he knows how hard it is for Pat and I to do anything together. I work either 2-11 or 1-10 Wed-Sun, leaving Monday and Tuesday for Pat. And let's face it, Monday is football! LOL! Isn't that horrible? Anyway. I don't get to watch Nascar, or football, or basketball games. I'm going to miss the Rose Bowl. On that note....WHO PLAYS A BOWL GAME DURING THE WEEK!!!!!! Idiots. Anyway, I'm a little bitter about that!!

I can't tell you how I'm looking forward to Laughlin. Thinking about seeing Steven after years of talking but never being able to get together melts my heart and makes me cry just thinking about it. Steven is closer to me then anyone in my family. He is the most important part of my family, other then Pat, of course. The ups and downs we've shared as friends have plummeted us to despair as well as giving an elation that can't even be described. I'm closer only to Pat, and possibly Weezy, though I don't talk to him as often as I do suckafish!

Today lunch will be Ridgecrest Chinese Buffet with Pat's group, DPSS. Digital Precision Strike Suite. They do something with satellite imagery, and go directly through the fleet for training and all that jazz. Still looking for a job on base, but I'm thinking that Wal-Mart might just be the place to stay for a while. Maybe after I get my car I can go down to 32 hours, and spend more time playing Camel...I mean, picking up the house! YEAH!

Have a good day everyone. Remember, I love my color blind friends!!!

My Friends, the non bloggers who are color blind

Oki, I'm gonna be sarcastically mean. Mostly because these people know that I adore them, and they can't do anything to stop me!! WOO!

It is my pleasure to introduce to you the magnificent horribleness that is MySpace. MySpace was originally set up as a combination of blogging site and Face the Jury. By the way, don't visit that site if you're over 25, you might die of stupidity!

So first off, a quick definition!
Q: What is a blog?
A: Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site.
As you will notice, none of the following sites are actual blogs, more about that later!

Before clicking any of these links, turn down your music. Seriously. Otherwise, you'll regret it. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Trevor is a band playing, freak. He's a nice freak! But a freak none the less! I mean that nicely. He's a good kid, who puts up with the frustrations of Wal-Mart rather well. But his music is what's called Death. Seriously. He's a Code 10, and has one of the 2 worse jobs in the store. He almost always has a good attitude, and is a pleasure to work with.

Ivy is a sweetheart who worries so often I'm really shocked she hasn't put herself into a catatonic state thus far. It could still happen!! Her son is adorable, she takes wonderful pictures, and truly, is one of the sweetest souls I'v ever met in my life. She has the music from the Broadway play Rent playing. So she has good taste too! She works in apparel, and I love her to death.

Sara is the hero of the day, with no music whatsoever. I LOVE YOU SARA! She does however, have a weird cursor and a horrible pink blinking background. Her wedding picture is there though, she's been married only a short while, and my entire closing crew (EXCEPT ME) got invited. I'm still bitter. She works in HBA, and other then having no web design sense, she's an excellent person to work with.

Tawnia is really my only friend in Ridgecrest. Please don't judge me by her page, cause if I had seen it before I got to know her, I would never speak to her again! Seriously. At least her music isn't quite as horrible as the rest. But the colors are in need of a color seeing person to set up. Obviously, Tawnia is color blind. Or simply doesn't care. Considering all the time she spent setting it up, my vote is for color blind. She actually has something on the blog area of the page. Jokes. But hey, something is better then nothing. Tawnia works in Electronics, though apparently we irritated our department manager and so we no longer work together. Good way to irritate your people btw, not letting those who work well together and get along well, work together. But oh well.

Cheri is one of the tiniest people I've ever worked with, but boy can that girl kick some butt moving TV's! We both work in electronics, though I rarely see her, since she's day crew, and I'm night crew. She's the only person who's actually put something worth while in her blog area, and though she's got lots of sparklies on the page, updating her blog more then makes up for anything else.

Heather has some weird color blindness going on too. She's our vendor for Anderson. She stocks music, movies, books, etc, etc, and does a really good job, except when she leaves 4 boxes of music for me to put out! *whistles innocently* She's recently got her tongue pierced, and seems to be doing ok. I don't get to talk to her much, but she seems like a really nice person. Again, just color blind. And apparently unaware that seeing a scroll bar is helpful for page manipulation.

Malia (or Nicky) is addicted to sparklies. A cashier at our store, she's put 2 updates on her blog, which is encouraging, but the background gives me epileptic seizures, so I won't be going back anytime soon. Not that she cares. Just saying...

Candace works in our photo department, and has the best, most simple, and easy to navigate area. See, not everyone I work with is colorblind! Plus, no music. This is a two thumbs up wanna be blog site.

And finally, George also works in electronics, and is, of course, color blind! He played football for the local high school here, and is filled with school spirit, which is both encouraging and tiresome at the same time. While his "destined to kill" celebrity is Ashlee Simpson, which should be applauded, he's also got a huge picture of her on his page, which should be stripped down, and the pixels and binary themselves, burned to hell.

Now, can anyone tell me what's wrong with all of these people?? That's right, only 3 of them have EVER actually put in a blog, and of those 3, only 2 are personal. Sorry Tawnia, jokes don't count! All 3 haven't been updated in some time, and so now I get to go to work and laugh about them not having a blog. WHEEEEEEEEEEE

In other news! Google buys shares of AOL. Lord help us, the cool people are going nerd!

Saddam says he's been tortured.

"When I hear that any Iraqi has been hurt it hurts me too," the 68-year-old said. "The wrongs that were done to those people were wrong and, according to law, those who did it should get what they deserve."

Since we know he tortured, brutally killed, and was responsible for the lives of thousands of people, it's oki, as long as you're not Iraqi. I know that's not true....but geez man. Grow up. If this trial turns into an O.J. Simpson thing, I'm moving to England.

Have a good day everyone! Get your Christmas shopping done! It's not fun to throw people out of the store Christmas Eve at 8pm!

Happy Fiesta of Our Lady of Guadalupe!

Well, it's time for a personal update!

Pat and I have made reservations for the Ramada Express for our January trip. Pat's birthday is January 19th, and he'll be the big ol' 25! WHEW! He's gettin' OLD! hee hee

In all seriousness, we're leaving January 19th, and will return Sunday the 22nd. It will be our first trip out of town (other then for my Bankruptcy hearing) in many a day, and I am so looking forward to it. A chance to hang out with Pat, and Steven, a chance to get out of town, celebrate the end of the Christmas season, and just relax. WOO!

The wedding date is set as April 29th, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Our families will be invited, as well as extended families, Adrian, Steven, John, Lisa, and all the Little Weezies. We're giving out invitations to a few others here in town as keepsakes, but we're trying to keep it as small as possible. I haven't decided on colors for my dress (probably going David's Bridal bridesmaid dress), flowers, etc etc.

Wedding is at 2:30pm, we'll run out on the town and take pictures of the families together, and then head to The Cheesecake Factory for yummies! MMMMMMM YUMMIES! Anyway, that's all the plans for now. Invitations should go out before Pat's birthday. If I missed you, and you wanted one for keepsakes (if you're not listed, you're not coming, sorry), just email me and I'll make sure you get one.

In other life news, Sylvene has left The Stratics Network for good. I can't explain to you guys how this saddens me. Sylvene took me onto the EQ2 team and empowered me to be involved in an MMO community in a way that I've never been before, and those that know me know I've always been involved. She's a sweet woman, with a great sense of humor, and a wonderful work ethic. She looks out for the companies she's working with, she's trustworthy and looks out for those under her. Miss Syl, whatever you move on to do, I am honored to call you a friend. Thank you for the wonderful training in Newspro, game developer etiquette, and "The biz" of covering games for the good of them, and fan sites. Thank you for the great time I had at the SOE Fan Faire, for allowing me to cover it with you, and for being such a nice, nice person!!!! While I know we'll keep in touch, be ready for lots of advice needing! I'm still new at all this "copy" stuff! *grins*

There's this new S.P.C.A. commercial talking about animal cruelty and how you can help with a monthly gift and save the animals, yada, yada, yada. Let me tell you, if you care about your pets, and animal cruelty: Spay and Neuter!!! I hate to sound like Bob Barker, especially since I'm 27, and he's...well, old! But come on. I've put to sleep too many animals in my short (but much missed) animal control. Nothing is more emotionally draining then taking a life simply because someone was lazy or cheap. Can't afford to fix your pet, get a stuffed animal. :) And the S.P.C.A. should stop inundating me with stupid commercials when my money could go to Katrina relief, St. Judes, and lots of other cool things. It's like commercials telling me that my welfare contributions are appreciated. Please!

Anyway, day off yesterday and I got to go have lunch with Pat on base with the rest of the DPSS crew and their families. Paper airplane fights and cookies ensued, and a good time was had by all 'til a paper airplane hit me just under my eye. Then Pat and I headed for his office to stare at Slashdot until Pat took me home an hour later. It was a blast! I learned I'm not as bad at darts as I thought I might be after years of not playing. It's always fun to hang out with Pat's cohorts, and their families. Everyone gets along well, which is so, so nice!

Day off today, I've done some EQ2 Stratics updating, and some Age of Empire playing. Tonight, DAoC with Steven, and hopefully level 50! WOO! Off to go do laundry and bathroom cleaning! Remember, if you need me and I'm not responding to my internet messaging systems, it's cause I left them on and went to work! I do that sometimes.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Sheep Killing Day, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, Hanukkah, Santa Lucia Day, Saint Nicholas Day, Fiesta of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Omisoka! May everyone feel peaceful and harmonious or so help me, I'll beat you down with a Staff of Mightyness! Gosh darn it! BE HAPPY!

Gamer Charities and Stuffs

Well guys, I had a huge blog written up, but you know, I don't feel like going through and re-editing everything. So today we'll have a short little fun update. Well, mostly fun!

BBC News posted this interesting article!

An abortion can cause five years of mental anguish, anxiety, guilt and even shame, a BMC Medicine study suggests.

Now, anyone that knows me knows I'm anti-abortion. But I have friends that have had them. Some regret it, some don't. Either way, it's their life, and they need to live with the consequences. I just find this type of study interesting!

John sent me this awesome link to Radio Rivendell. While I haven't listened to it yet, it certainly has a well put together website that's easy to nagivate, and draws you in! I'll report again once I've actually listened!

I've gotten my second guide up on DAoC Stratics! It's a tradeskill quest guide! WHEEEEEEEE! E3 is looking like it's not gonna happen. I really want to go so badly, but I really feel we need to spend our money on other things. Hopefully I can find someone to go and cover Mythic's stuff really well, since they haven't announced anything about their next expansion or anything coming up!

Last update I talked a bit about charities, and now I've found 2 good gamer ones, that I couldn't help but talk about! Child's Play is run by the talented and slightly insane people over at Penny Arcade. I really think it's a great thing to do, and the fact that it's for kids really helps.

Get Well Gamers takes old games and gaming systems and sticks them in hospitals so kids can have access to them. Everything from Sega Dreamcasts to Playstations that (amazingly enough) still work. Isn't that awesome??

Those of us heavy into computer use will know the words: Skype, Ventrilo, Roger Wilco, and TeamSpeak. If you know it, check this out!Intersting huh? Stupid Bill Gates! Go Skype! Didn't realize it was Ebay though. GO EBAY! LOL!

Just as an aside, the person who's looking for the UO info needs to email me, as I have the account info, including the password. There's no way for you to change the password without my email and password....which even Nath won't be able to figure out.

I ordered some stuff online today, and let me just tell ya, Old Navy has a great site! Easy to navigate, easy to order, easy to change info and search for new items, great checkout! WOO!

I know Jeremy doesn't read this page, so I'll show you his Christmas present. He's weird. I know.

I'm amazed that I meet people who don't know what Google is. If you're not using Google, how do you find what you need?!! I couldn't imagine using anything else, at least, not yet. Yahoo is the closest thing to it, and the page is too cluttered. I have enough chaos in my life, do my webpages need to really look like that? I think not.

Last piece of news for the day, I saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I saw the opening show here in town. Told work I'd be a few hours late, and I was. It was awesome. It was not the book, but then again, no screenplay is. I was truly impressed. Pat and I are going again the day after Christmas, since (hopefully) I'll be off Sun/Mon/Tues.

The drudge of normal work starts again today. I wish you all a wonderful and pleasant week. I'm too stressed to do anything else! :p

What an update! whew!

  This whole update is a bit disjointed. I'm writing it at 1:30 in the morning, and in order to make sure I catch everything I want to cover I started a sentence on each topic, to remind me what my point was! It's 1:30am, give me a break here. Sleep has been a weird companion lately. I need to get so tired that I fall asleep instantly, otherwise I lay in bed for hours. I'm doing ok thus far, but as has been the case before, it's only a manner of time before I exhaust myself and sleep for almost 2 days straight. Hopefully that doesn't happen until after Christmas!

  In big news today: Pat is gonna think it's not funny, but it really is. Who says they have a bomb, run out of a plane with armed and well trained gunman telling you to yield and to follow directions and then reach into a bag? The man who was shot dead, that's who. What an idiot. And if he was mentally ill and hadn't taken his medication....well then I would say a video of the whole thing would be a perfect commercial for whatever medication that might be. Sorry. We pay these people to be well trained assassins and then get mad cause they killed a guy who was acting strangely, and actually said he had a bomb? How freaking stupid can you be?! Seriously!! Sad he died yes, sad he got shot at? Hell no. The marshall was doing his job. If the guy did have a bomb, that marshall would be a hero! If he hadn't shot him, the whole plane and much of the terminal could have been gone. Let's not be stupid, and let's not so quickly forget Sept 11th. Especially on Pearl Harbor day.

  And it's been a busy week. My bankruptcy hearing is over, and was amazingly short and sweet for the amount of stress and lack of sleep that came about because of it! It was a pain in the butt to drive so far for something that lasted exactly 30 seconds. I should receive my discharge in March, or beginning of April at the latest, barring any strange happenings. Friday is the opening of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. YAY!

  Very recently there was a Christmas craft fair here in town, and Pat made special arrangements to take me, for which I am very grateful. It made me miss Christmas on the Prado which was recently bought out by the stupid San Diego Chargers and turned into a disaster. The fair had no Christmas jewelry, but had a ton of geological stuff, pretty much the same people who go to the Ridgecrest Rock Fair which seems to be a big deal here. Let's be honest though, anything here is a big deal. We found a Christmas present for some of Pat's family. Pat is big into buying presents for a person who has to be reminded 10000 times to call his mom just to say hi, and then his mom ends up calling him before he gets it done. I talk to my mom and sister weekly and really have no intention of buying them Christmas presents. Sorry guys!! I do love you, and I do love the thought of sending you heart warming presents that make you think I picked out your gift especially with you in mind.
But let's be honest, that won't happen. I'm not that with it. Sorry! I do love you though!!

 
I'm having problems with Ridgecrest again, in case you didn't notice. I hate work, I hate the town, I hate the food, water, weather, people (well I don't hate ALL the people, just most!), etc etc etc. I can't wait for Laughlin, and I can't begin to tell you what a relief it was to my wearied heart to be out of town for my bankruptcy hearing this week. A small respite it might have been, but something is better then nothing.

  Christmas is Christmas is Happy Holidays?! I don't think so bub! I celebrate Christmas, so I say Merry Christmas. If someone wants to tell me to have a Happy Kwanzaa, or Happy Lamb Killing day, GO FOR IT, though if you're out killing lambs, stop it! And the next associate at my store who tells me we can't say Christmas because they saw it on the news, I will hurt! *rawrs* But if you're offended cause I say Merry Christmas, then I'm offended that you look at me! Let's both go to court and sue our happy butts off, and I'll be happy, and you'll, hopefully, end up having a nervous breakdown, cause you're offended so damn easily! Grow up people. I'm not telling you to go kill babies, I'm giving you a common greetings among Americans at this time of year. Deal with it.

  I would like to point you in the direction of The Christian Coalition. This idiotic organization has done nothing in their attempt to make Wal-Mart look bad, but to bring down our competitors. And why? Why do they care what I call it, if I don't celebrate their holiday the way they want me to celebrate? I point you in the direction of this article and this one. Idiots, all of them. Why right the stupid fights? When you actually have something important to fight, like prayer in school, or taking the word "God" out of the Pledge of the Allegiance, it's like you're calling wolf!! Idiots. Truly.

  Pat found this amazing show on The Game Show Network called What's My Line, and it's amazing! (First off,at first the only good link I could find was Wikipedia but I had to change it because I HATE it, so I found another one! Anyway!!) I'm impressed. Less then 50 years ago people could speak with such eloquence and with such a wonderful vocabulary, what happened??? It comes on late (1am or so) but if you ever get the chance to watch, I highly suggest you take it. They use truly spell binding word usage and incredible sentence structure. I wish I could speak like that. But who would understand me, and to whom would I speak? Oh well!

  I've put up my first Camelot guide! It's all about the Tradeskill Basics in the game. It looks ametureish and retarded, imo. But I am hoping that the structures of the guides and pages will flow better with time. In the mean time, I've asked Pat to help with the technical stuff, including keeping a zipped backup of the site, and making sure that each update to our FTP server is done in such a way that I don't crash the whole Stratics network. That would be oh so funny.....ha ha.

  I found out that some of the dumb people I used to be guilded with on my old server (Percival/Albion) are also on the classic server and realm we're all currently playing (Gareth/Hibernia). I've already run into some of the people in the guild they're in. I hate them. Stupid dumb backstabbing idiots. =) That is all! At least on that subject!!

  You know, I realize that I'm spoiled. So let me take a moment to remind people of our common spoilization!

• Chances that you will die of cold this winter, 0000.000001%.
• Chances that you own a TV and will enjoy either a Christmas (or freaking Kwanzaa or lamb killing, come ONNNNNN) special, football, or a parade this season - VERY high!
• Chances that you've actually gone hungry at some point in your life - Very good! But you're not starving, so all is good

The point? Well, as Pat can attest, I often try to give away his money to organizations that I feel are able to distribute it to the most people in the most efficient way possible, while he whimpers about me spending all his money. I'm highly distrustful of The Salvation Army and other huge organizations. I think that layers of unneeded cost is inherent in any large organization. That and people are greedy. So if you know of a good company, or know of a bad one, please use the comment feature under this post, and let me know, so I can do some research.

  Oki, that wasn't really my point, but it was something I remembered to bring up! GO ME! The real point is: Please be thankful for what you have. So many others, even here in the U.S. have less. I've gone to bed hungry, and cold. I've gone without basic "necessities" (electricity is NOT a necessity people! Even in Salt Lake! Trust me! I know!!) and I feel comfortable in saying that I'm a spoiled brat and I take what Pat and I have for granted entirely too easily, and it bothers me. I don't want to turn this space into an infomercial site about charities, but I will say it. If you have excess (and we ALL do), please think about finding a good way to share that with people who have nothing. On the other hand, the trick is to find a way to share that with people who will take advantage of it and use it to get themselves to a better place in life isntead of using it for sex, drugs, or booze. Or any combination therein. When I figure out how to do that, you'll be the first to know! Anyway, enough editorializing, or whatever you'd like to call it. Just don't call it begging please. I promised myself I wouldn't do that. I'm not Bono, or Angelina Jolie.

  As the time ticks on past 2:30am I realize I have a lot of strange thoughts in my head. Often, when I am thoughtful, it helps me to write down (or type) my thoughts. They come in a jumble, and must be re-arranged to make any sense, sometimes multiple times. Often though, I do not write them down, and I loose thoughts that I (at the time of thinking) feel would be a good idea to remember for later rumination.

  And while I'm thinking about things I should be thinking about for later thinking I am reminded of this important piece of information for you all! Avoid Music Match!!! While I'm usually a Yahoo fan, this is one piece of technology which is worse then ANYTHING that Microsoft could have come up with if asked to design the biggest piece of crap software they could. Yes, it's that bad. The program takes over your computer, even if during setup, you ask it not to! It made itself start during windows launch, again, against my direct instructions. Customer service took and no, I'm not kidding, 4 weeks to return an email telling me they would eventually get to my request. Are you kiding me? For a pay product, with a stupid little free thing available, you're better off going to Winamp, or even, *gasp* Windows Media Player. Trust me, for me to recommend WMP over anything is shocking, and should tell you the level of disgust I had with the product. Yahoo seriously missed the mark here. They should actually ship the programmer who's most responsible for the downloading system off to somewhere in Siberia and make him work on russian translations!! WOO!

I am off to bed, it's almost 3am, and I'm sure I will wake poor Pat with crawling in and getting comfy. I'm sure I'll fall right asleep! Everyone have a great weekend!

[edit: I realize upon re-reading that some of this sounds more disjointed then I had originally anticipated, but I'm too tired to fix it, and later, I won't want to change anything for fear of not remembering the exact thoughts I had, so please forgive the typos, horrible usage of commas and !'s, and I used a ton of the word "for". I promise I'll do better later!]