yeah im still alive and i moved out into my own apartment,
pics;
here
and an experiment in chops
here

Woosh, there goes this last week.

Time to tell you all about my jizzob.

well i must back track a bit because i didn't update last week, but after calling the hookup at the lab i went back on friday and basically pushed the process through. had best buy call in to get the results and finally got that shit pushed through. thankfully jeahana (gina) the hr lady i was working with turned to me and said i passed and asked if i could start tomorrow (sat). i elatedly responded yes and asked what time. she told me that orientation from 1pm-5pm and come in a white polo and khakis. it was time to roll

well after a nervous nights sleep i start getting ready for day one. well it's been a while since i've done any work, and so i took it upon myself and meditated. now i haven't meditated in about a year, but it just felt good. im not devoutly religious being raised catholic never made much sense to me. in my later boarding school years i began ready a lot of buddhist texts and a lot of the ideas started sticking on me. most of which was meditation and the search for enlightment (being a different path for everyone). i have a shrine set up in my room with my buddha, and my car has a shrine leading me off wherever i go. so while i can't say that im buddhist (i don't believe in any sort of ceremony) i sometimes refer to myself as a practicing buddhist, i read some of the literature and use what i feel works. so i meditated, i did lotus position for a while then i switched to a more comfortable open position and it helped clear the mind and get ready for a new chapter.

so disregarding that side track, after meditating did a last check and got my shit together and went out the door. arrive at the front door, talk with loss prevention (the guys that stand at the front and check reciepts) they pointed me at where to go and i arrived, sadly 10 minutes late because of crazy construction on my route. but all was well they hadn't really done anything. the first part of orientation was held in big breakroom. so i walk in and theres about 12 other people of various sorts all sitting around a table with gina just running through some basic paperwork. well as it turns out because my drug test took so damn long i timed out of the system and i wasn't able to fill out any paperwork (tax forms n shit). so i got to spend the first hour doing nothing while 11 other people got their shit taken care of.

that hour creeps by and then the big guy comes in. general manager for store 217, paul. big jolly lookin fellow with a huge gut and slightly shaded glasses. doesn't look to friendly but he's very talkative. we move from the breakroom, turns out employees like to break in there, then we all crammed in to a 8x30 meeting room with a long table in the middle, im down at one end, everyone else fills in the side and paul is at the far end. this part of training is pretty much straight lecture, he tells us about general rules and the employee discount. he then pops in a dvd, and we get to watch random videos about best buy for the next hour and a half. whole bunch of crazy shit, like they have their own internal tv show with a whole bunch of crazy hosts like the benevolent beagle (a triumph ripoff and just as raunchy).

that over paul starts some more lecture and before i know it the day is done. i find gina afterwards and get my schedule for the next week. im doing midday on monday, closing on tuesday, opening on wednesday.

now as another sidetrack, my computer still sucks, but after that first day of work. the guild i lead on world of warcraft, HoZ on mannoroth horde, finally decide to turn down the suck and turn up the awesome. we killed ragnaros the final boss of the molten core making us the 6th guild to do it on our server horde side. it was the fruitition of 6 MONTHS of work and a huge guild milestone and really the biggest guild accomplishment i could have ever dreamed. i really thank everyone who spent hours and money putting in to this encounter and im glad to say that we came out on top. link to our page


so after a great weekend monday rolls around and after taking papi to pick up the landrover from the mechanic i get to work like 45 minutes early. now i know the geeksquad area isn't that big so i don't really want to stand around in the closet while im not on the clock, so i spend about a half hour just chilling listening to a trance set in the car waiting for time to pass. 1:45 rolls around and i step out the car, get presentable and march in for my first real day of work. i get in and find a spot out of the way behind the customer service desk about 5 feet from the geeksquad area and start scopin it out. watching interaction and the like, coming from customer service at mci i know what its like to talk to people, but working with someone face to face is slightly different. after a couple minutes a guy i will come to know as tarek comes up and introduces himself and the odyssey begins. i meet a whole bunch of people that work in the geek squad area and i start up a conversation with mike. mike is one of the managers who general takes care of closing and he seems like a pretty cool guy. about a half hour of me being there he calls everyone over to a computer in the back, and shows us all a clip from robot chicken of voltron getting served. good times. apparently all these guys are game players hardcore, love family guy, play wow, go to lan parties, get drunk, play games, have fun. so needless to say it seems i've found my niche. well mike says im going to get some register training today because everyone has to do it, but it never pans out. i wasn't really assigned any work, so basically i found a couple computers in the back and started fixing shit.

so the geek squad is pretty damn chaotic, there are a couple things in place to try and keep it moving forward, but you pretty much take it as you come. there are a couple backed up computers, a lot of computers that are fixed but they haven't picked them up yet and a lot of random crap back there that i haven't completely figured out. but its all in good fun and while i don't really get anything done my first day, i learned alot about how it works and how it should work.

the biggest thing we do at geeksquad is fix all the goddamn spyware. good god, some of the crap thats out there on the internet blows my mind. pretty much 70% of the shit we have to deal with is somebody chosing the wrong porn site and their computer gets laden with so much crap it should be illegal. windows loves collecting this crap, i used to think that cleaning my uncles computers was enough, but looking at some of the computers that come through the geeks squads hands would put lili's and arlene's work to shame.

so geek squad is fun, learning a lot and getting my shit together getting ready to move out. today i got my next week schedule and im going to be at the store's opening for 4 days next week and it looks fun. best buy looks like its going to be a good place to spend some time and im happy for now. can't wait for the first paycheck, gotta bank most of it, but i also gotta get my computer working again for as cheap as possible. thankfully i came up with a fix that lets me not install windows every time it crashes, but my computer is still crashing a fuckton.

and in closing i spent some time perusing other peoples blog and i decided to take this godforsaken color quiz, was fun, the results i guess are pretty spot on considering whats going on, im going to busy myself with the lightsaber game while you read this,

saint0z took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Wants to prove to himself and others that nothing ..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

until next time, carry on, i'll post an update whenever i feel inclined.

I am a Jedi knight... BZZT

(description from digg.com)
Heres a fun little lightsaber game. Rotate your lightsaber to deflect the lasers back at the droids and, oh yeah, reach out with the force and stuff.

digg is a cool little site, its kind of like fark, but people control what makes it to the front page. plus you can blog links right off their page, im really just trying this out, be do enjoy the game

read more | digg story

boo hiss, my computer sucks, the past week or so i've had a problem starting it up and wanting to do anything, whenever i load it up and say, load up world of warcraft immeadiately, the harddrive makes a series of loud clicks, then my whole computer locks up.

now if i start up my computer, load up counterstrike, no problem, if i play counterstrike for like 10-20 minutes then try to load up wow? no problem, wtf.

well monday night i had my computer basically on all day, was getting kinda late and julie logs on, i help her out some then my comp just flat out locks and i get a blue screen of death, joy.

well trying to start windows after that proves fruitless, every time windows loaded i would get a brief bluescreen and then a restart, angered i went to bed.

woke up the next morning to the same problem, resigned i tried to repair my windows installation. after taking forever and a day (hour+) i load up back into windows and breathe a sigh of relief, knowing what i had to do i started playing counterstrike and BOOM, blue screen and hardlock. restarting windows again i was stuck at bsod after bsod. really pissed i took a nap.

after my hard earned nap i woke again and got back to work on it. sadly the only option seemed to completly wipe my harddrive with a full format and start anew again. le sigh, sadly i wasn't able to save any of documents so im starting from scratch again. after reinstalling windows fully i decided to not deal with my shitty connecton at home and took my computer to gabe's house. i jacked his internet for like 3 hours and redownloaded all the patches and redownloaded everything from steam still waiting for the drug test back, im going to go buy on wed again and see if there is anywhere else i could go because this is being slow as ass

until next time, hopefully with some better news.

bah,
sorry for the lack of updates, nothing really has happened

went back to best buy today after taking gobble to his drug test and wanted to see what was up (they hadn't called me back since then). turns out the lab where i went is backed up. joy, get to wait on someone else to start working.

other than that life continues just as it had for the past several months. hope to be working this weekend once the gdamn results get in.

im badass,
proof:
starting pay for a tech was quoted to me from the manager as 10.50 to 11.00. well apparently i impressed that manager and his manager so much so that they see fit to start me at 12.00.
WTFPWNED
the start of a new day i guess, i accepted the position. gotta go pass a drug test (atm easy) and then pass a background check. everything works out and i can be working on saturday woot woot.

and apparently im not cool enough for a uniform right off the bat though, i gotta start with a white polo and khaki's cause im just a noob trainee. once i don't suck in the stores eyes i get the

God im such a dork, oh well at least im excited about going back to work. plan is to move out early december, i should have enough saved to furnish my first apartment fairly decently. also david is on board to come whenever, he's got a good amount saved and is ready for a change. julie has run into a bump so far due to a housing situation she's going through now, but we can only hope for the best.

tomorrow i finally get my car's emissions done (we swapped out the low profile tires to the original stock ones) and i can finally get license plates, woot.

also in line with moving down the line i started looking at apartment prices and it looks so feasible it hurts, we can get a 3 bedroom for like 800 easy and in aurora.

stay classy

day two,

long day today, didn't get as much accomplished as i would have wanted. papi wanted me to go early to get emission done on my car but i was up till like 6am working on my blog so that fell through. was woken up at like noon with him arriving from work and i set into motion.

went to the emissions place but after waiting in line for like 20 minutes turns out my car is too low to the ground to actually take the test. good game. so i turned and got the hair cut taken care of, great timing going early afternoon tuesday's, walk in and im the only one there, in and out.

got my shit together and was out the door for the job interview at like 5:30, had a good ride (love my car to death) and got there about 5 minutes early. walk in and the only thing of note was a big sign saying that we're hiring a lot, and listing like 7 different positions they were looking for, /shrug right place right time i guess. so i walk up to the geek squad counter and ask for mike as instructed. couple seconds later this 23ish scrawny white guy comes walking out clutching a paper pamphlet and motions me to an employee only room.

inside is farily non descript, its just a room with a long table, a couple pictures of 'employees of the month' i assume and a big whiteboard with scheduling shit on it. i sit down accross from him and he bascially asks me to introduce myself, i start teh schmooze and by the end of the interview im giving the manager of the geek squad department tips on taking the a+ test which he hadn't even taken yet (3 weeks out).

2nd interview tomorrow, i get to meet the store manager, lets see how this one turns out

random picture,
after a lan party i threw for me nat and mike, i had a picture of us we took in the hallway,
late one night nat asked me to make the devil tell him to do evil things and have mr clean shove a fork into mikes ear,
what follows in teh result

It came from the Depths

It came from the Depths

born out of upcoming changes in my life, i decided that it was time to blog. the next couple months bring a couple huge changes into the system. but first i guess i should bring you all up to date;

alright, november '04 fed up with life and the way things were going, i decide to rob a liqour store (/shady off), but yeah after being called back to mci to help set up a new segment, i decide i had enough when they started going back on a couple promises they made at the start. mostly i just wanted to move into a leadership position off the phone. but sadly due to people leaving it wasn't a possibility. so i went my separate way and cut my ties to mci. oh well. since then though my life went through quite the long chapter. unemployed since nov 04, i haven't worked a day.

the biggest blow to me was losing my car mid jan. no source of income=no insurance=no right to drive. so at my father's insistence we dumped the car at my godmothers house, hoping to pick it up a couple weeks later after finding a new job (lol). quick note about me, there were 5 things i cared about in life: my family, my computer, my car, the motorcycle, and the future. losing my car was losing a part of me, and i hope that i never have to feel that kind of loss again. well days went by, World of Warcraft came out at the end of november, and guess what, i found something to do.

made my avatar, Akar (Orc Hunter, Mannoroth) and basically lived day to day busying myself in another world. to date i've logged 60 days played on that one character. think about that if you could for a moment, (btw i took a moment and added up the time between all my characters of note and i have spent 89 days total, so 3 months) for the past 9 months i've spent 3 of them sitting at my computer desk toiling away. you spend a third of your life sleeping, i've spent a third of my life playing wow. addicted? no. but its an enjoyable experience that's easy to come back to. the reason its so enjoyable, is that it provides an easy to see metric of your sucess. time played=advancement so when your unemployed, you have a lot of time, so you can advance. the general philosphy of a game like this is that your always working towards something. you have to get level 10, level 11, lvl 20, lvl 40, lvl 60. you would think that once you finish getting to 60 that its over. but no, there's always a better bow, a better set of gloves, a cooler horse to ride. its a great time waster for the player, and a great money maker for the company. gotta keep those subcriptions payments rolling in.

as much as people would say that games won't take you anywhere. i will say this, the experiences and the friends that i have made these past 9 months, i wouldn't trade them for the world. i've met people from around the world, and all we wanna do is log on, kill a dragon, get a shiny sword and call it a night.
as with everything on the internet, you have to look at things with a certain amount of detachment. your talking to people you haven't met face to face and thusly you don't have the sort of inhibitions necessary in a real social situation. with that in mind, the past couple months have been a ride to say the least. i have a great circle of friends online and of course, there are cliques just like any highschool cafeteria, jocks here, goth kids there, etc. its greatly magnified by the fact that you don't need to interact with anyone you don't feel like, you just shut them off. well thats all fine and dandy, but when people want to destroy everything that others have built up because their gloves aren't as shiny as the guy next to them? well it causes a bit of strife, luckily that bit is all over and life goes on.
now i have a couple friends which i went to highschool with up in CT, much love to mike, david, ted, & stahl. they definitely keep my grounded into reality. and more than that, these are friends that i will hope to keep for a lifetime. with that in mind im bringing my game obsession back to a more sociable level. mid decemberish i will be moving out of my parents house. 21 years is good for me and its time to start moving to my own beat. i will be moving in with the root of all my evil, david carter roach. (one can congratulate david on being the man who sparked my lust for all things logical and entertaining, starcraft ftw). now david and me go way back, first day of westminster, skinny white boy living the next room over, doesn't have a computer, but has starcraft, wants to try it out, next thing i know im pulling a 12 hour bender in the computer lab playing startcraft until my eyes dry out. but alas, my decent into madness is best covered in a different post. but he brings with him the last vestige of my former life at westy (which were undeniably the 4 biggest years of my life (another time)) and a will to game.
and thankfully not all will be lost on mr carter's next foray onto american soil, julie comes this way as well. ahh julie, if there was ever a woman i would ask to marry based on principle it'd be you. gotta find a girl that will join me in what i love most /shrug. julie comes from 'bumfuck nowhere minnesota' but thankfully we share many common threads. general outlook on life being the biggest one. college degree is super, but i'll pass (for now) thanks for asking.

so after my huge sidetrack into the future, the weeks dragged on. being trapped in the house was quite the experience. you never realize something until you've lost it. and losing my car was huge. i don't need a lot of money to be happy, but freedom is something that you can't really buy and that was the hardest part about getting through the past couple months. but thankfully that time is over.

there was no bigger surprise than last friday morning being woken up by my mom and the news that follows. papi is going to reinstate your car insurance because gas is way to expensive on his trucks. well as it turns out my dad figured it out, and it would be cheaper for him to just pay insurance and gas on my car that to pay gas on his 2 trucks. so that same day i started a policy and got the car registered again. and you better believe that that sunday afternoon driving my old friend back from middle of nowhere was the best drive i could have ever asked for. i spent 4 hours handwashing my car and cleaning it the fuck out and with that i bring you these

so fresh and so clean, clean

man i wish i studied some more poety, but words cannot describe how it feels to look outside my window and see my car out there again, as i told mami, thank you for giving my part of my life back.

tomorrow starts another chapter in my life, this one is finally ending. job interview tomorrow for the geek squad and if all goes well (i'm good at making it go well) then the apartment search begins!

know this, the games will never stop, its as much who i am as carol's music collection is a part of who she is (im still so sorry i deleted your songs off my computer many moons ago). but alas all thing in moderation, so we'll see how chapter plays out.

i'll leave you with a poem, i read a lot of robert frost when i was a little more crazy back in freshman year, and one poem really stuck out to me, take from it what you will

Robert Frost, Devotion.

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean--
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.

i hope you enjoyed my blog, look forward to many more, i'll keep going for that next shiny sword...