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Working on stuff...making this thing a bit more presentable. Should be finished...hell, I don't know. But until then, check this out: click
Went to my grandfather's graveside service today. An active duty honor guard and some other officer came from Georgia just for that, and I found out that he got the Silver Star and a bunch of other medals that I didn't know he had, and was in The Big Red 1. He was a war hero and he never told me. I had to go to his funeral to realize that I really didn't know much about the man.
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We were able to raise $428 for the server fund. Unfortunately with my primary source of income gone, a web server is least of my worries. So I've given everyone their money back. I do appreciate the support, though.
Craig was nice enough to give me a Christmas bonus, along with another check, for my troubles I suppose. It was a pretty good amount - enough to pay off my car, get a new exhaust and help my grandma with the bills for a while.
Those fuckers at ThinkGeek still haven't shipped my drinks. They won't even tell me what the hell's up with it, or give me an estimate on when I'll get it. Of course I don't blame the customer service guy; being a customer service guy myself I have a newfound understanding of their toils and having to be the shot messenger. So I'll keep my less-than charming wit to myself when sending him emails. I just wish they'd ship that shit out already. I've already received the headset that I ordered from them on Thursday.
This woman called yesterday (to the expediameds phone) and said her name was Davey something. If I was a chick and my parents named me Davey, I'd either shoot them, shoot myself or at least get my name changed. Fucking people.
Just trying to keep my mind off of what's bothering me.
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Some things in life we have no control over, but we know they're going to happen. Of course I'm talking about death, as it's the only thing that's certain in life. But even when you know it's coming - and when you know it's coming soon, and you've known for a while - it can still catch you off-guard. Waking up to the sound of my grandmother frantically sobbing started such an occasion. She woke me up this morning crying, and all I could make out was "cardiac arrest" and that we needed to get to the hospital.
My grandfather went in for surgery on either Wednesday or Thursday, and my family was pretty worried about him making it out of it. He was fine. He came out Friday and stayed at the hospital that night, and again the next night because he was still in a little pain and they wanted to keep watch over him. Since the surgery was over, everyone exhaled a sigh of relief. So naturally the call from the doctor this morning was not expected in the least.
On the way up there I didn't really know what was going on. I had gotten about two hours of sleep and I was kind of out of it. I knew something had happened to him, but I didn't know what. The grim expressions and teary eyes of my aunts and uncles in the hospital lobby clued me in. He was gone. I knew it would be coming soon, and knew it for about six months as I watched him age even further and his health plummet. But everything still seemed kind of surreal, and I thought I was just confused from my lack of sleep. I didn't really know what was going on, and even though I knew exactly what happened I was still reassuring myself that I was confused, and that my presumptions were wrong.
Nothing wakes you up quite as hard as walking into a room with the lifeless body of your family's patriarch -- your main father figure.
It was still hard to believe, and I was rattled by watching my uncle break down when he saw my grandmother trying to wake my grandfather up. All I could think about was how eerie it was going to be around the house without him. Then I thought about the decrease in income, and wondering if we're still going to put up Christmas decorations. I couldn't keep one subject in my head at a time. Everything was racing as I blocked out the sounds of my crying family members. I guess you could call it mild shock.
For a good part of the rest of the day I was in a daze. From the looks of it, so was Josh. Later on I started feeling fine, but my grandmother is still taking it pretty hard. I can imagine it'll be hard for her to sleep without my grandfather keeping the TV on.
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I'm going to be a little incoherent tonight and do some retarded topic-jumping, so hang on to the oh-shit handle and try not to hurl.
$400 has been added to the server fund, thanks to Ben, Josh and I. So we're now up to $428. :) I'll add that to the status page later. I don't feel like messing with anything right now.
I'm currently working on a face lift for this site. Nothing major. The text will be easier to read, it will have some color and..I guess that's about it. It'll still be insipid and lame, so don't worry about that.
Either ThinkGeek or UPS fucked me out of a pretty expensive order. I paid for second-day shipping and only received three of my six packages on Thursday. I thought the cases of drinks would come today, but instead they might be coming Monday, possibly Tuesday according to TG. I'm not real sure what good second-day shipping does when cases of drinks take so goddamn long to ship. And that much caffeine doesn't do me a bit of good during the week. Oh well. I'll just have to find another supplier that would at least give me free shipping on fuckups like that.
Last night Jason and Heath were here and Clay came over. He wanted me to buy him a motherboard, so I told him that if he drank about 5 ounces of SkyRocket vanilla syrup, I'd buy him an MSI K7N2 Delta-L. That pussy filled up the cap of the bottle, drank it and started shuddering. Then he filled it up again and almost couldn't get it down. Then he ran to the bathroom and puked, and then again after a few minutes. What a pussy. Heath told him to flush, and instead of complying he decided to take a shit first. I heard him turn the sink on without hearing the toilet flush, so I leaned up against the door and wouldn't let him out until he flushed it. He did, but I didn't feel like moving. I think he stayed in there for about half an hour, even though I left after five. While he was in the bathroom Heath stuck mints up his nose and then screamed "OH MY GOD AHHHHHH!!!" everytime he inhaled through his nose. He'd then heave and cough and whimper for a few minutes, then he'd forget about the burning icy sensation in his nostrils and would inhale or sniff again. Clay eventually came out of the bathroom. I took a shower and while I was in there they put a bunch of shit up against the door - a dresser, chairs, and some other stuff packed up against my 8x4 table with all my computer stuff on it. I just opened the door and everything slid across the floor. "HOLY SHIT!! How'd he get it open?!?" Maybe my arms being bigger than their legs had something to do with it. n00bs.
When someone I don't know too well and don't really give a damn about says something negative about me, I really couldn't care less, whether it be made directly to me, behind my back or public on a forum. I'll take a shot back, but it never bothers me. But when someone with whom I have what I once thought to be mutual respect for does that kind of shit, it kind of gets to me, both on and off the internet. In person, I'd just smack some sense into the guy or just flat out kick his ass. Bitchslaps speak louder than words, and nothing gets your point across better than a fist to the jaw. But I'm not really sure how to handle this particular matter. In a discussion to determine who had the best looking signature graphic, this said person mentioned that his could not be out-done. I know for a fact this guy is into the graphics community and would probably be able to spot any popular image, like any of those found on spoono, at first glance as long as it's not too heavily modified. So I grabbed one that would be easily pointed-out, put a red overlay on it, added some text to mimic his and posted it. He asked if he could use it. I thought he was being sarcastic. Later that night I see a two-page topic called "Sandman a Leecher?" started by him, saying that I rip off other peoples' work. What the fuck? I post an image that's obviously ripped as a joke and he makes an attempt at defiling my character, and gets all the other idiots joining in on the bullshitfest. If that wasn't enough, he got one of his fuckwitted friends to register on the board just to call me a liar, forgetting to note that I never once claimed the image as being my own work. And once I point out that I never claimed it as mine, the backstabbing, spineless asshole closes the thread saying "Sandman was just being lazy. Get off his back." Being lazy. Yeah. And telling others to get off my back when he's the asshole who started it. Needless to say, this sort of thing does bother me, as it was someone whose last post before this thread stated something in terms of "Sandman and I respect each other." I hate not being able to kick someone's shit in. I suppose I should just file him under 'assholes' and treat him like I do every other worthless waste of sperm.
Just got a few items from Thermaltake: black keyboard & mouse combo, and the Giant II vga heatpipe. The keyboard is cool, but I'm having a hard time getting used to the layout and it feels really cheap. The mouse blows. The only thing good about it is that it came with Teflon tape on it, so it glides smoothly across my desk. The vga cooler would be alright if I didn't bend the heatpipe to shit when I picked it up. I tried to slide it into its slots and that wasn't going to happen. So I've just got the plates and heatsinks on, and the original ATI heatsink wedged between the back plate and the card. I also took off their pussy fan and put on a vga cooler orb, which fit perfectly. It's still getting hot though. I guess I'll have to put the PCI slot cooler back in.
Clay's getting me a carb rebuild kit, some new breaks, new filters, plugs, dist cap, intake and other shit for my 'maro. All I have to do in return is get him a mobo+cpu combo. :)
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I hosted a small LAN this weekend, consistent of only five people. It was fun, though. We had a LOT of caffeine - one case of bawls (24 bottles), four packs of caffeine kickers, four boxes of penguin mints, two boxes of jo mints, a bottle of sky rocket and a pack of pepsi. Bawls alone is enough to keep you up all night. Heath decided to put about four ounces of skyrocket (that's 400mg of caffeine) with bawls and pepsi, and threw in a few jo and penguin mints. He did this twice and we all thought his heart would explode, but instead he just screamed like a schoolgirl for a few hours while playing counterstrike. His screaming was being drowned out at times by Ben's exceptionally loud flatulence. Fortunately we had the windows open this time. The only game we played was CS, but it was most enjoyable with everyone hyped up on caffeine and sugar. I think I'm going to start consuming a box of jo mints before each match.
Sunday morning I told Heath that if he knocked back a bottle of hot sauce I had, I would buy him the best video card we have in stock at the store. This hot sauce I speak of is actually four fluid ounces of thick habanero seed paste. It comes out slow and it makes your eyes water just by smelling it. We went outside because I didn't want him puking in my house and Shawn brought out three boxes of gogurt, which of course is mobile yogurt. Why do we have gogurt? They had "buy two, get one free" stickers on them, which is more than enough reason for my grandmother to buy something. They proved to be useful though, as Heath needed them to help ease the pain that would be similar to someone shooting down his throat with a flamethrower. He took a very small taste and instantly started sucking down yogurt. My dog Max did his normal habit of licking everything he sees and licked the inside of the cap. He licked his lips for a while, then he ran off to this fountain thing we have in the ground and dunked his head in. I took mental note to make sure NOT to buy habanero dog food.
Heath finally mustered up the courage to put the bottle to his lips and suck it down. As I mentioned before, it comes out slow so he was subjected to a slow and painful torture of burning at doing this. He just barely got past the neck of the bottle and stopped. He stood there for a while, not saying anything and not really having any kind of expression on his face. He sat down on the cold sidewalk, barefooted and in shorts and just stared at the ground, looking like a trauma victim. Shawn nearly fell over from laughing so hard. His cheeks were flushed, his lips turned red and his eyes began to water. He slowly got back up and just kind of looked around for a while. We were all holding opened tubes of yogurt. Then he turned around facing away from us (towards the road and my neighbor's house) and yelled "WHERE'S THE GODDAMNED GOGURT?!?!" He turned back around and just started sucking them down as fast as he could. After consuming a whole box of it, he got about 1/2 of the bottle down. This time he started drooling worse than any dog or mental patient I've ever seen. It was like water spewing out of his mouth. At first we thought he was throwing up, which would have voided the deal as he could not vomit until he had consumed all of the sauce.
During this time my grandfather came over to see what was going on. He was in one of his rare lucid states of mind, apparently because he hadn't taken any pain killers, and told us about a prank he and a few friends pulled on someone while he was stationed in Korea. They put a ton of hotsauce in someone's food, and the guy almost choked to death, so he felt bad afterwards and never did a prank like that again. Heath sat on the sidewalk drooling as Shawn, Josh and I listened to the story.
After my grandfather left, Heath started talking about something and it made absolutely no sense. It was like how my grandfather used to talk when he was doped up on painkillers. Then he finally realized he wasn't making any sense at all and stopped talking to down some more yogurt. After that he said, "I've never been this retarded in all my life. And, trust me, I've been goddamn retarded. This tops it all." He sucked the rest of the bottle back, spiked it like a football in the dirt and sucked down more yogurt, leaving about 1/4 of a box. He probably would have consumed that if he didn't feel like throwing up. The rest of his time outside was spent cursing loudly and saying "There better be a fucking nvidia fx ultra card on that shelf!"
Unfortunately for him the best thing we had was a Geforce 4 440 MX with 128mb ddr. While I was punching in the alarm codes and locking up, Heath was outside in the parking lot, bent over next to my car heaving and spewing while all the Mexicans stood around, pointing and snickering. Then on the way home he was complaining that it felt as though the hotsauce was stuck in his esophagus and was burning its way though his chest. We got back to my place and started up a game of CS. He jumped up in the middle of it and began a session of toilet-hugging, and then another about a half hour after that. During this time I think Ben shat himself, or came pretty close to it. But he can't do it anywhere, oh no. He won't fart unless his ass is in close proximity of someone's head, leading he and Josh to engage in flatulence wars throughout the weekend. Shawn was always caught in the crossfire and was almost made a casualty of war. He left right after that, unable to endure the gaseous hell any longer. Heath left to go to some party and Ben left soon after that. The only ones who slept all weekend were Josh and I, and I think we got in a combined four hours. And Heath had already been up the night before from eating the pack of caffeine kickers I gave him, so he was up for three days straight. He came back around six to pick up his computer. He had a hard time holding his head up and was speaking in a monotone voice, tired as hell from being up for so long. I offered him some more caffeine kickers. I think he said "Fuck you" but I'm not exactly sure.
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As I believe I mentioned before (or might not've) I'm now doing customer service for our online pharmacies. I was just answering the phones, but now I get to do e-mails! Yes!
Here's a phone conversation with a woman addicted to hydrocodone who didn't get what she thought she ordered:
Our Hero: "Do you speak that way to your doctor when he prescribes you your medication and it wasn't what you wanted? The medications you received were more suited for the symptoms you described than those that you ordered were. You can't just demand a narcotic and get it without the right symptoms."
Stupid Bitch: "Well how the hell do you know what I need and what I don't need?!? Who the hell are you to tell me what I need??!"
Our Hero: "I'm the customer service guy. It's the doctor's job to decide what you need, and he did. I'd love to discuss with you why you received what you received because I can see your medical details here, but according to HIPAA laws I can't discuss that with you over the phone. And I'm not a doctor."
Stupid Bitch: "You're just a smart-ass!"
Our Hero: "Well, one of us has to be the stupid one. I usually jump at the opportunity, but it looks like you threw up the vacancy sign on that door before I could get the chance."
Stupid Bitch: "I will report you to the BBB, I will call my bank and I'll get the police involved! This is fraud!"
Our Hero: "Oh no, ma'am, please don't do that. I don't think I could endure your embarrassment."
Stupid Bitch: "And what was that crack about the vacancy sign?"
Our Hero: "Don't worry about it, ma'am. You go and call whoever you like. I'll be here, answering the phones. Good-bye."
Here's an e-mail I got from some dumbass:
very mis-understood reason why shipment has not been made. both fed-ex and UPS deliver to my address. i paid $19.95 for overnight shipping, i could have gotten excuses and delays for free. the total you have been paid is well in excess of $300 so how about please fulfilling your end of the agreement and send the product. i am sure you can find a FED-EX office or even a POST OFFICE in your area that will ship overnight. we are now into the second week of this transaction so your immediate attention would be appreciated. a response to this email is expected, as i have not taken delivery of the product please bear in mind that i maintain the option of canceling the credit card payment due to lack of fulfillment of the agreement. i would rather not do this as it is a pain but i do require a response from you as to when i can expect delivery. thank you, john m. mckay.
I apologize for the inconvenience, but you did not include a shipping address and our carrier did not approve of our notion of going door-to-door until they found Mr. McKay's place of residence to deliver the package, at least not for the amount we're paying them. They say it'd be insane to do so, but I call it a lack of work ethic. If you provide me with a shipping address I can have it shipped out. Or, you can cancel your order. I get paid either way. Thanks.
Who do I contact when the appropriate contact who is supposed to return calls within 24 hours doesn't return the calls after a week?
I'm the one who answers the phones. Unfortunately I get so many calls from people not knowing how to login and check the status of their order that when I begin to call people back the voice mail fills up quicker than I can answer them. I apologize for not getting back to you. You can report me to info@expediameds.com, and I've saved you the trouble of composing an e-mail. Here you go:
Dear Expediameds Guys:
That kid you've got answering the phones has a severe lack of work ethic and is tarnishing the integrity of your company. He ignored me and refused to answer my calls, even though I'm supposedly entitled to a call-back within 24 hours. And as if that weren't enough, I e-mailed him and he responded in a very rude manner, and may or may not have insulted my mother and personal hygiene, even though he has no physical evidence to base this off of. He also ended his sentences with prepositions. He is a seriously deluded, self-righteous freak with a poisoning, egocentric ideology of his short and pathetic life. Do you really want this cretin representing your company? I should hope not.
Sincerely,
[your name here]
You are what I call PERFECTION in CORPORATE AMERICA. Tell your boss, (or send me his/her e-mail and I will) that you are a SIGNIFICANT ASSETT to the company and deserve a RAISE and PROMOTION. I deal with hundreds of people a day and I KNOW a VALUABLE EMPLOYEE when I see one. I am the Vice President of a large dental insurance company and if they don't value you move to Maryland and work with me!!!! You would be PERFECT to Direct our Client Service Department. You not only understand customer service you are the definition of service. I will be using my interaction with you as an example of what client service should be during our next training session. Your AWESOME keep up the good work!!!!
Mary Jo Haire
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craigsucks at gmail dot com