Last night on the job was a real struggle

as I elected to do CWF instead of the CPA thing. By 7pm I had 1 sale and a few near misses and some interest and I lost a sale. By 7pm I had $20 bucks. Surprisingly though Super kept me where I was and in the 2nd half I did a lot better and even a CC sale on CWF no less. I got a lot of empties as well and ended up with $120 by break. I was glad to get out of there, despite having a better time of things then the last time I did CWF.

Anne made us some taco's for Monday night Raw. On a scale from 1-10 I'd give Monday night Raw an 8. It wasn't the greatest.

On "Coast to Coast" currently underway, they have Planet X special. Good stuff. I like shows like this. It's with Gilbert Eriksen, instead of the other guest talking about Planet X and space aliens.

My attention lately has been on the NHL UFA season. There's lots of talk on places like Connect 2 Edmonton about various players and who's going to go where etc. it's a very exciting time right now for NHL hockey fans.

Over there at "Pat's Fantasy Hotlist", Pat's got the proofs of Steven Erikson's latest "Dust of Dreams." Book 9 of the Malazan series. I hope Erikson keeps going with this series. I have to ask, how come he gets the actual proofs of the story and not the book itself? I don't think the book is out yet. Ooops, I think I just answerd my own queston.

Anyway gang, that's about all for now.....

Before Anne came in I had a good solid

2 hours of reading "In Conquest Born." Tight writing good space opera.

I'm off to bed in a few minutes as I'm up around 11:am to have a coffee and to wake up. My BSL has been relatively high yesterday. Despite getting up around noon Saturday I had a nice relaxing day even though I didn't go out at all.

Today I'm out getting a book from Audrey's from my special order. I'm trying to dwindle my stack of books waiting there for me as I'll be out of here shortly before 1pm. After I get my book, I'll be heading off to work its only 4 hours and it should go fast. I'm thinking about getting another "Crown of Stars" book.

Over the past several weeks I've been trying to find anything on the subject of Blockquotes and I found some good examples for Blogger. I'll probably tinker around with those later today and read a bit more out of ICB.

Oh I also added a "Jim's shared items" widget to the sidebar underneath Followers. I like this widget.

I'll most likely post again later.

Anyway gang, that's about all for now.....

I left out of here about 3:45pm yesterday in very

windy conditions and like everyone else waiting for the autopsy news report on Michael Jackson. I picked up my 6/49 ticket at the pharmacy, as it was still very windy out there. I didn’t get anything new until I went into the office. I got a lot of empties and DC handed me my cheque. Everything right except the missing 1 hour but that’s alright. I sat at station #15 hoping Super wouldn’t move me. “James, in the back.” Disappointment. I got an end dialer and sat with one of the newer people. I had nothing for almost half an hour then I got a $100 and a $50 and I was at line hour by 6pm. Then almost nothing after that until about 6pm I had $265. I collected more empties during the break and within the finale 20 minutes Super moves me to station #15, Finally it was all over and I ended up with $320 and no cards but I got 10 on the week.

I was glad to get out of there even though the wind was still gusting. I waited for the bus just beside Tim’s feeling bad I didn’t have cash to get my Friday book. Joan one of our staff that’s in crutches met up with me saying she was in at 4pm. Once when I begin steady hours I’m going to ask bm if I can come in during the afternoon say around 1-2pm and get my cheque. This way I’ll be able to do my banking early and I can still go to Audrey’s for my Friday night.

I had kind of a scary incident at the bank. Thank God I have over draft protection. I deposit my cheque and in the envelope and the ATM spit out my balance. It’s the same banking ritual I do every Friday. The cheque didn’t show on the news balance slip and the money didn’t come out. I began to panic. I thought I lost my cheque! These are new ATM’s and this is the first time this has ever happened to me. So I put my card in again and punched a button in the amount and I heard the machine cycle through and it spit the cash out for me and generated a new balance slip. Every ATM is different but in most cases works the same. When I do a deposit a box pops up on the screen with a field to enter specific amounts for deposits and withdraws. I have to enter the amounts manually using the touch pad and decimal key. There are also buttons on the side with graphics showing option amounts that can be drawn when a withdraw request is made. I picked the last button and I got my cash out. The balance was the same. I don’t like that machine. The last thing I want to do is lose a 6/49 jackpot that way. Something went wrong when I entered the amount. The bank room where the ATM’s are held gets a steady flow of customers. I suggested this fellow not use the same ATM. He did his banking and I showed him my 3 slips. He thanked me for the heads up on that machine.

I left out of there feeling alright but I missed my train just leaving as I was halfway down the stairs. If I had left when I did I would have been home earlier. But I didn’t mind waiting at Central and read. I had a can of diet pop and a good book to read. I was feeling a bit more relaxed. I had a quiet ride to Clairview with my bag of empties and my book and I got home about 9:50pm. My usual time.

I wasn’t in the mood to watch Smackdown. I did some computer work instead and had my supper, which Anne made for me earlier. I enjoyed that and watched the news and then went to Smackdown’s main Event. After that I did some more computer work. Anne came home saying she got a tote bag and a hot cold thermos thing plus $5 off her next pizza order for putting through the most pizza “Mega meal” orders. She’s always winning things like that. I get bonus money on my cheques occasionally and she gets little performance gifts and things. She got me that Best Buy coupon which I Haven’t cashed in yet but I will next weekend. The nearest Best Buy to us is the one on the other side of 137th Ave. it’s several bus rides away and takes a whole afternoon to get out there. I’ll most likely go next Saturday and get a game and I can if I leave early enough get a few books on the way home. A video game, books a bite to eat. That’s a nice outing for me. Yawn

Speaking of video games, I Haven’t been playing Oblivion for some time. Mainly because the controller needs new batteries. Most likely I’ll get to playing it again possibly next weekend. I’m not a big video game player but I don’t mind spending a few hours a week on my little Xbox 360.

It’s a beautiful summer day out there and I’m glad I was able to sleep in and I’m not on the phones getting TD’d and F3 out the ying yang. I got up around noon as Anne went out the door with her shopping cart and I’m by myself doing my thing. She’s got a 4 hour shift today and a bank appointment for Monday or Tuesday so we can get part of our rent and she’s got her vacation pay coming in and her cheque. We’ll be a few days late but we can always give the office a post dated cheque for July 3rd. I also have enough here for July’s bus pass as well.

So far year to date, I’ve gotten $630 in bonus money over the last 28 weeks or so. Some of the guys during the afternoon shift are pulling in $100+/ week in bonus money over and above their pay cheques. Going in from 1-9 is worth it. I may as well get on that shift while I can before this DNC list wipes out the afternoon shift. I think this is going to go next. Pretty soon we’ll just have the evening shift. But they still have the business room and that seems to be going strong. They’ve got close to 32 stations running from 9-4pm but nobody likes the business room manager as she takes all the better taps for herself. Also, “team India” works business on the other side of the morning tap crew. I think if HO is going to do any more cutbacks, it’s going to be the morning shift. People from the morning crew are gradually moving to afternoons/evenings. The other option for them is business. When they cut the morning tap shooters then the room will be full coast to coast.

That’s enough business talk for right now. My friend Keith Graham is doing a John Brunner novel reading project lately. You can check out how he’s doing on his Blog. Cant say I’ve ever read Brunner but after some looking around he had quite a body of work. He published over 60 novels in his career. Sadly, most of these editions are long out of print but they can be picked up at Ebay as vintage books. The condition of these books aren’t pretty but they are readable. I wonder if any publisher has scanned these books and is going to republish them? I’d like to try a John Brunner book. One fatal flaw about science fiction is its ideas can become dated but the stories are timeless.

And finally in i09 today they have an interesting post on Science Fiction books that launched their own careers. For example, Military Science Fiction. The post talks about the origins of the sub genre and its believed that HG Wells first brought military SF to the light of day but Robert E. Heinlein with his book “Starship troopers” kind of brought this sub genre towards popularity. When I think of military Science Fiction I think David Webber.

Anne’s running a bit late here as she has to be at work by 4pm if she wants to make us a bite to eat she should be pulling up pretty soon. Speak of the devil.

This weekend is the NHL draft and sure enough NYI took their expected pick and same with Tampa bay. The Oiler’s took 10th overall and the kid has another year to go where he’s currently playing. The draft was a real let down for the Oiler’s. Lets hope something good will come out of the UFA offerings next week. There’s some big names out there. I’d like to see the Oiler’s get Jay Bouwmeester but at almost $5M/year is he worth it? The Oiler’s however haven’t the cap room to sign these big name players. They let Kyle Brodziak got to the Wild for a 99th round draft pick so that will clear some cap space. Brodziak was only getting half a mil but obviously the Oiler’s are trying to create cap space. They could get rid of Nilson for $2M> I wouldn’t miss him. The thing is a lot of teams don’t have cap space for these big names and even though cap space this year is at $56M, next year it could drop to $50M


Anyway gang, that’s about it for now…..

having a pretty good afternoon so far although there isn't much going on

at the moment. It's been pretty quiet around here and dry.

Anne left out of here for the Pet Smart store just down the street for cat food. Most likely I'm going to try going into work for Thursday and Friday. Bm might just put me in the cold area for now but maybe next week move me over to taps.

I'm also looking at other part time work doing market research to see if the company I'm looking at can fit me in from 12-4pm Tuesday-Friday. if this works out and my current evening job goes bust on me somehow or they get rid of me, then I'll have something to fall back on. If I can get hired on the research job I wouldn't mind just afternoons Monday-Friday. I'm going to look them up next week.

What's this Wayne Gretzky is willing to take a pay cut in order to keep the Phoenix Coyotes in Phoenix? I heard he makes $8M/year and the Coyote's want to cut his salary down to something like $1.5M. I don't know if that's his idea or somebody else's since the team's owner has filed for bankruptcy protection recently. He also said that there should be an NHL team in Hamilton, this Blogger agrees. Apparently there is another offer about to or is on the offering table to make a bid to buy the struggling Phoenix NHL team.

Anyway gang, that's about all for today

Jim

All kinds of crazy crap going on for today

I left out of here yesterday afternoon at 4pm feeling pretty good almost thinking that bm is going to jump me over Friday but bm wasn’t even there. I collected my cans and bottles etc and got a pretty good haul. Super went and put me over to CPA taps. “Can I do $180 a l/h?” I’ll try. There were 5 of us and nobody did very well the first half but I had about $145 and that was enough to keep me. Plus I got all the cans and bottles during the 2nd half and went back to work. I did pretty good during the 2nd half and I got a CC sale. I learned a few tricks from other people saying that if they really feel uncomfortable I can call my supervisor over and the customer can give the number to my Super. That’s interesting.

After work I rode home with a Portuguese brother and sister team that‘s been working with us. We talked shop that kind of thing. I got home to find my wife not home and just in time for Monday night Raw. She came in saying she was sitting at the bus bench facing me watching me from the furthest intersection. She said she tried calling after me but I was oblivious. Anne made us a nice Angus beef burger supper and fries and we settled into watch a pretty good show of Monday night Raw, commercial free. And it was. What a great show. Especially the last man standing match. Near the end Vince and Trump were haggling for control of Raw. Vince bought back Raw “for double” what Trump paid for the show. Whatever the amount was, is undisclosed. I would have done the story line with a real jaw dropper. “I can’t sell Vince because I sold my share to somebody else.” Out comes Shane McMahon doing his little money dance thing. Now that would have been a better ending to the story line. At 63 Vince is still going strong and most likely will be doing this well into his 70’s.

One of these days, I’m going to get off at Belvedere station and poke around and ask what’s being built there. There are 3 construction sites where land is being cleared on my way into work, adjacent to Belvedere station, south of Belvedere station, and just before Rexall place. I know that Station Pointe is going in where all the digging is. I don’t know what’s being built in the other 2 locations.

The good folks at SF Signal have another Giveaway, season 5 of Stargate Atalantis DVD package. I’ve always liked Stargate Atlantis. I put my entry in.

I’m not a fan but apparently according to the Rexall Place website we’re having Fleetwood Mac here on Wednesday. My wife will like the Jonas brothers here July 2nd.………….12:50pm> my wife’s off today but most likely she’s going in on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. At least we get enough to pay the rent.

I couldn’t help but gently admonish one of the posters at Pat’s Fantasy hotlist writing a comment. I wasn‘t trying to create controversy or a thread or anything like that. In the body of his text he writes about Fantasy saying that “Fantasy can get away without historical background.” Well I’m no expert but it seems to me that without historical background in any story makes a story kind of thin and lifeless. Real life just doesn’t happen in a vacuum. My response was not a put down or an insult but mealy a statement of fact in fiction. The thing about SFF is that it needs world building of some kind to give the story depth and credibility relevant to the story. Any story of fiction needs world building: A sense of time and place otherwise it doesn’t seem believable. It’s all about suspending disbelief by making the impossible seem possible. I’m not talking about reams of historical background but enough historical background to give the characters in a story depth and meaning.

I’m back in the office this afternoon. Nobody won the $9M over the weekend but it goes up to $15M. I’m buying a ticket but not the extra. Hopefully I’ll have a quiet night like last night but a good one.

Anyway gang, that’s all for now

Jim

My evening started out good.

I headed out of here at 4pm and I felt good heading on into work. I'm heading towards the pharmacy and I noticed these 2 Edmonton Police squad cars parking in an unusual manner and for some reason I head into the lobby of the The Baker Center and the sliding side door to the mall area is losed. So much for getting my 6/49 ticket tonight. The security guard didn't even know or notice anything going on. Some security guard. Upstairs the guys are there greeting me with some more empties. Wanda wasn't there today. I mentioned to Gary as he was leaving about the new Iphone S coming out. he says he's on his way to go get it but the thing is, it's not availible until June 21st. I got Greg to give me my cheque and lo and behold everything on it was correct, even my $50 in bonuses.

So I'm collecting the empties and ready to settle in for a good evening. Super needs a looney for a pop and we find the vending machine company went and increased the prices to $1.25 but he also squared up with me for $5. It came out to roughly that with all the $1 here .50 cents there etc. At least I got $5 out of someone today. I didn't get such a good selection ofempties but I settled in and had a coffee and the calls came in steady enough but I just couldn't get a sale. About 6:30pm I finally managed to get a lousy $20. I can't figure out twhat the heck is wrong with me? At break, 7pm Brendin called a bunch of us over and had to send a lot of us home including yours truley.

I collected the rest of the empties and headed on out. I'll be back on monday if I havn't got anpther job by then. I'm considering trying out a couple of market reserch jobs. We'll see. I get paid a little more. One job I like is right across the street from where Anne works. If I get hired on I'm going to try for an afternoon shift until I can break into the job slowly. if it's good I'll consider working mornings only. I need a break from my present place of employment.

After work I met Brendin out in the back and nodded. No big deal tonight was just one of those nights. I worked my way through the parkade and over to Audrey's. I bought the Dragonlance book and the Jim Butcher book. Total package to me was $22.50. I felt good about that and headed across the street to wait a few minutes for my bus and headed up to the bank then a brief wait and I was home by 8pm. Anne doesn't need to know I got dissmissed early.


Anyway gang, that's afll for now

Jim

A day in the life, welcome to summer

Ebay has some interesting book collections up for sale. Since I missed out on the “Babylon 5” books when they came out (rats) and they were available at “Adventurer’s,” in the early 1990’s (my favorite game store) at the time. But I was too busy chasing after Mary. What a waste of time that was. Getting back to Ebay, I have never purchased anything online before but people in the office I work out of from 5-9 say Ebay is good. No problems. Same with Craig’s list and Amazon. So, the other day people were talking about these credit card gift cards they can be used anywhere, retail or online. No ID is needed. News to me (I don’t get out much) I think there is a small activation fee but I‘m not sure about this. When I get all these special order books at Audrey’s paid for I might buy a gift card and purchase something from Ebay. I’m looking at a “Buy it now” item of books. But this is going to be a summer experiment.

I had a slow night on the job last night but I got moved around twice. I had a good first hour doing CWF and a CC sale. I was at line hour then they moved me back over to taps and I slowed right down. I got a CC sale though. Then they pulled everyone off taps and shut taps down. Back over to CWF and I got another CC sale. I did $95 in CC sales. If they would have kept me at CWF then I would have had a lot more. But because during the week and they are pretty busy it’s hard to get a chance to hear what other people are saying: Greg listens to and records calls and I need to hear what others are saying so I can copy some of what they’re doing right and get rid of what I’m doing wrong. Super’s always encourages us to do this: “Nobody asks to listen to some calls.” I try but management is out or always busy. On Sunday, I’m going to ask Greg if I can listen to some of the past weeks calls not only on CWF but on taps. I need to get a selection of calls from different people to see how they’re doing it, what makes them successful at it. I’m I talking to fast (CWF) am I not saying the right things, are they saying the wrong things? Maybe they’re writing wood (fake sales) I don’t know. On CWF they want $65 line hour. Despite being moved around I did $210 but some of those sales were n taps but most of them were on semies or cold.

Anyways I got a nice bag full of empties and they’re getting harder and harder to get especially since the day staff from business are spilling over into family and taking the cans. But I’m there tomorrow and Friday and a few more days next week so when we’re on our break I‘ll be collecting. Previously while I was on taps last night Brandin and Super were talking about an Eskimo CFL game coming up. I thought I heard them say Saturday but the game is tonight. A year or so ago Nathan from our Lodge had a spare ticket and emailed the guys if anyone wanted to go with him. I think he still does have season tickets and had an extra one but I was working that night. So on the train ride home I was talking with him but he said he only has his and doesn’t have an extra. I’m not sure how much tickets cost. I haven’t been to an Eskimo game since 1988. So much for that idea. Having Saturdays off would have been great to go to a Saturday afternoon game.

I called Anne after I got off at Clairview and walking to my bus. I love this time of year when it’s still light outside at 9:45pm. I got inside and did some admin stuff and computer work and had supper and watched the news. After all that I ended up doing a lot of piano theory and that took me until about 3:30am and we were asleep by 4am but this staying up late is getting hard on us.

Anyway gang, that’s all for now

e. Jim