Back to the old stomping grounds

The economy and the pay cuts I’ve taken in 2008 have finally forced me to do something that I was hoping to not have to do.  In order to make up some of the salary I’ve lost and to try and pay down some of our bills, I went and put in an application today for the Mayfield location of the company that sadly, still remains my longest single employer.  That’s right, Denny’s.

I have stayed in contact with the GM there because my old store in North Olmstead trained him and one of his other managers for their positions.  Every time I would go into the restaurant and see him, he would offer me a part time job.  I was always careful to never turn him down outright, saying that if the need ever arose for a 2nd job, I would let him know.  Well, I finally took him up on his offer and put in an application with him.  He called me back the same day and scheduled an orientation for the following night.  I figure once we are moved back to the east side it will be convenient that our home, Progressive, and Denny’s will all be within a few blocks.  Also, I am still able to every job in the place except cooking, which I am more than willing to learn if he wants to teach me.  Basically, I’m going to tell him that he can train me in several different job codes and use me where he needs me week by week or day by day.  He is familiar with my work ethic and that I was able to fill several roles at my old store so I don’t see him having any problem with it.  As lame as it will be to serve again, it has always come easy to me, I’m good at it, and its not a skill that ever leaves you.  Besides, I can honestly say that the most fun jobs I have ever had were serving jobs.

With this, hopefully we can start 09 on better footing and keep stable for a while, something that hasn’t really happened in a couple years for us.  2008 effectively kicked our asses, with setbacks coming pretty regularly throughout the year running the gamut from job losses and unexpected bills to failed housing arrangements and even the passing of close friend.  Part of our situation is undeniably our own fault, and I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge that, but much of it is simply due to bad luck and the economy.

That being said though, we are not the only ones going through hard times so we are far from being as bad off as some other people in the country.  Indeed, there were some really good things that happened this year.  A lot of which has to do with the great people in my life, friends and family alike.  Devon’s parents have been extremely understanding and helpful throughout the year with things like helping us with groceries and such.  I’m not sure how they feel about having to help their married daughter and 28-year old son-in-law, but they deserve a lot of credit for helping us out.  They have been able to weather the economic storm way better than us and I am very grateful for them and all of the other friends and family in our lives for their support, be it emotional or physical.

Also, I was able to help plan my high school reunion and reconnect with some people that I hadn’t talked to in years.  Devon and I had a really good first year of marriage and I was able to have a LOT of fun on my first motorcycle.  And I am thankful that while I don’t talk to them near as much as I used to, I am still able to keep in touch with all of my Chase homies from time to time.  And to top it off, we had a great election and I got a job at a great company that has some real long term potential.  Now we just need to get Devon a job and things will be back on the road to cool beans!

Disappointed by not being spoiled?

So I beat BioShock over the weekend.  And while the game, story, and the immersiveness of Rapture were all amazing, I was slightly disappointed to find out that I was greatly overthinking the supposed spoiler I read a while back.  I saw the trophy for “Become a Big Daddy” and my mind was racing with possibilities about the implications of this.  Unfortunately, the only reason you put on the Big Daddy suit is to get through a few doors in the last stage of the game.  I was both happy that the plot wasn’t spoiled, and disappointed by the simplicity of it.  Imagine how awesome it would be if your character met some horrible fate at the end of the game and you were destined to spend the rest of your life trapped in a Big Daddy suit, protecting little sisters and living with the degredation of the city and its tortured former citizens?!

Still, it was a great game, even if the ending wasn’t quite as tragic as my mind was conjuring up.  I went back and harvested a couple of little sisters at the end to see the bad ending.  I am trying to go back through the game on Hard to get a few more trophies but am having a hard time with it.  I foresee either giving up or it taking a really long time.  We’ll see if I’m able to stick with it.  Especially considering the fact that I started playing Resistance 2 the very next day.

I am having a lot of fun with Resistance 2.  However, I agree with some of the comments out there that it seems as if Insomniac made the multiplayer modes the main focus and the single player campaign suffered a little bit as a result.  It is still really fun, but I am having a hard time getting into the story in the single player campaign.  Its super fun to play through the levels, but it seems to me that the bosses are easier than the stages themselves a lot of the time.  Also, the 1Up Yours Podcast was right, they give you a specific weapon right before you need to use it.  The only thing is, I sometimes don’t find it until after I’ve already defeated the enemies that the weapon was put there to dispose of.  Lastly, it definately seems shorter than the first Resistance.  I’m already on the last stage and should be able to beat it soon.  Oh well, I am still enjoying it quite a bit and can’t wait to start playing multiplayer.  Everything I’m hearing about multiplayer sounds really cool.  This is a game where I might be able to get a platinum trophy!  We’ll see how it goes.  Once this game is beaten I can finally start playing Dead Space.

I could not have said it better myself

BRAVO SIR, BRAVO!!!

You know who you are

Ok so let me get this straight…

You interview a girl, hire her, and everything is cool beans.  You are nice and polite during the whole interview process and have nothing but positive things to say throughout the first few days.  Then we find out that you don’t even give your employees lunch breaks in a 7-8 hour shift.  What the hell.  Now, I understand (after researching this country’s labor laws) that an employer is not legally required to give someone a break unless they are a minor, but I’m sorry, that is just insane.  The reason people offer their employees breaks is because its generally good for the company to see that your staff remain healthy, happy, and sane.  Anybody who has worked a long shift without a break knows how hard this can be on a person and any business owner with some common fucking sense should realize this.  It is even more important when the job requires standing up for the entire shift, as this job does.  I don’t know, maybe its me.  I am not a business owner, so perhaps there is some special knowledge you possess that I am not privy to that gives you the ability to seek out and employ superhumans.

Then you don’t even bother to have your new employee fill out any tax forms.  Now, some companies do this automatically for their new hires with the standard deductions, but in my experience the only companies that do this are huge corporations because they simply hire so many people.  Every smaller company I’ve ever worked for has you fill these out day one.  In fact, that’s all the first day of work should consist of, paperwork and orientation stuff.  Not filing this paperwork with the government is not only illegal to the best of my knowledge, but in my opinion irresponsible.  All I can say is that she had better damn well get her paycheck you owe her.  Its also illegal to not pay somebody for hours they rightfully worked.

But the real pisser is that you then call her before she even leaves the house before work one day and feed her all kinds of crap about not appearing thrilled and happy enough on the job.  You then tell her that its not going to work out without even giving her a chance to do anything about it.  I have several problems with this: 1. Why the hell is this the first time she’s hearing any kind of negative feedback???  If this has been a problem, it should’ve been addressed when it first became an issue.  2. How can a person be expected to be completely comfortable in a new job and be 100% thrilled after only 1 week?  Any good boss knows that all-star employees are not made overnight, they are groomed over time.  3. How can you throw all kinds of feedback on an employee and just let them go without even giving them a chance to apply said feedback and improve?  Apparently you and everybody who works for you is absolutely perfect in every way because if they were not, you would have fired them within a week.  I guess that’s why you don’t provide lunch breaks; everybody there is such a perfect, flawless person that they don’t need to eat or rest.  Stupid me.

And to put the snot-flavored special sauce on the nice big shit-burger you have served up, when your newly and unjustly fired employee rants about this experience on her blog and a reviews website, which BTW, are PUBLIC, OPEN FORUMS, you threaten to sue her!!!  That is the straw that broke the camel’s back and only proves how insane and how much of a bitch you really are.  You go on and on about not having the funds to allow for any time for improvement, but you have the funds to pay for a lawyer???  Unless deliberately false accusations are made or private company information is released, there is no case.  Maybe you’ve heard of a little thing called the 1st Amendment???  Its become quite a popular topic of discussion since its inception over 200 years ago.

Don’t worry though, the posts have been removed and retractions been put up in their place.  Your precious reputation has been saved and the general public will not know how you treat your employees.  The girl you hired is better off not working for you anyway.  My only regret is that future applicants will not be warned of your ways.  Never again will I utter your business’ name in a positive light.  Quite the opposite.  I would wish you luck in your future business plans, but a) I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I knew that I helped contribute to any success you might have, and b) I don’t think it would help.  With business practices such as these, you will never be as successful as you could be.

I’m finally rockin!

So I just realized that I could use my Guitar Hero 3 guitar to play Rock Band now! Whoooo! I bought the disc-only version of Rock Band 2 and rented a copy of Rock Band 1 so I could import the songs to my hard drive. I am finally able to experience what everybody else has been playing for almost a year now. I love it! All I need to do now is buy a drum set. And get Guitar Hero: World Tour.

One thing I’ve noticed is that Rock Band has a much more gradual learning curve than Guitar Hero. That’s awesome. I am finding that I can actually play pretty well on Hard difficulty, something that I never was able to do in GH. I am getting better and better with using all five notes and think that once I get good maybe I can actually go back to GH and play on Hard. We’ll see. Now I’m probably just going to buy a bunch of music. I want to play some of the Smashing Pumpkins and Motley Crue stuff.

I am also making my way through BioShock and am really enjoying it. The Big Daddies are really hard though. I am kind of pissed that one of the big surprises has kind of been spoiled for me. It was my own damn fault, but I was looking at the list of trophies and saw the one marked “Become a Big Daddy.” Wha wha whattt!!!??? Holy shit!!! After all the trouble I went to to avoid all spoilers too…it makes sense since an outcome like that would fit the tragic outcome of the rest of Rapture. I am trying to forget I saw it, but I guess writing about it doesn’t really help does it? The game is still pretty fascinating.

I also need to get to Dead Space, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, and Valkyria Chronicles. I feel kind of bad that I never finished Condemned 2, it really was a cool game. I plan on going back to it eventually, but so many good games came out at one time that I just kind of put it on the back burner.

BTW, Burnout is putting in a DeLorean time machine!!! Fucking A!!! That’s so awesome, is there no end to Criterion’s greatness? I would so pay for cool additional cars. Don’t know how exited I am for Burnout Paradise Party though. I don’t have any friends…at least none that play games. I guess I could play it by myself and pretend to pass the controller around just to get the trophies. We’ll see, it depends on how much they charge for it.

History has been made!

Wow…I mean, wow!

Regardless of your polictical beliefs, the historical significance of what has just happened cannot be denied. America has elected an african-american president. And not by a small margin either, it was a frickin landslide!

I am extremely happy and optimistic about the next four years. The idiocy of George W. will soon come to an end. Honestly though, I am just as relieved to know that Sarah Palin will NOT have a chance at becoming president. After 8 years with the village idiot, Sarah Palin being a hearbeat away from becoming president scared me more than anything else.

Still, there are very interesting questions that make this election not quite as clear cut as it would seem. How many people voted against Obama simply because he was black? How many african-american people voted FOR Obama simply because he was black? These are not comforting thoughts to me.

Regardless of the underlying reasons for people’s voting decisions, this sets a precedent, both in the results and in the huge turnout. It makes me proud that so many people voted this time around. And so many young people as well! I hope this will promote more open-mindedness in people. I will be the first one to admit that when I heard that a black man named Barack Obama would be running for president, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think he had a chance in hell! However, he convinced me that he could present himself very well and run with the best of them. And he gives me confidence that race will not be a factor in the decisions he makes. Not to mention the fact that Sarah Palin is such a frickin dingbat and with McCain being 73 years old, the Republican candidates scared the shit out of me! Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of Mrs. Palin though. Devon thinks she’ll get a talk show, and it depresses me to admit that I would not be surprised.

I think our country now has to show weather or not it will truly accept a black president. I’m sure Obama and his family are thinking about it as well. This will be a true test for the first family, the staff of the White House, our nation’s Secret Service, and our country itself. Add to that the fact that he has the challenge of pulling this country out of the massive cesspool it has fallen into. I do not envy the position Barack is in right now, but hey, he can’t be any worse than George W!

Anyway, here’s to a turnaround in the American economy! Who’s up for a No More Bush-party in january?!

Yes, I’ll take some change please!

I don’t really need to say anything else do I?

It’s done…

It only took a week. Someone came to see the bike yesterday and bought it that same day : (

Oh well, now I can pay some bills. I will get another bike eventually, hopefully next year. We’ll see.

Now please excuse me while I weep.

Just tryin to keep up

I have decided to abandon my Now Playing list somewhat for the time being simply because between now and the end of the year there are so many good games coming out and I am going to be trying to play as many of them as possible.  Therefore, it is unreasonable to think that I will be able to keep up the list when I won’t even be able to keep up with the games themselves.  Basically, here’s how things are looking.  Through the end of the year I will be playing Penny Arcade Adventures, Flock, Sam & Max Season 1 on Wii, BioShock, WipEout HD, LittleBigPlanet, Dead Space, Resistance 2, Valkyria Chronicles, possibly  Fallout 3 (not sure if I want it yet), and lastly, I have to play GTA4 again for trophies.  AND Burnout Paradise is getting more updates, not to mention that I am paying pretty close attention to Mirror’s Edge and MK vs. DC Universe.  They look really cool but I’m not sure if I want them yet.  There’s too many damn games!  I haven’t played my DS or PSP in a while now just trying to keep up with the PS3 stuff.  I eventually plan to play Lego Batman too.  I’m sure I’m forgetting a few but that’s just off the top of my head.

As to what I’ve played recently, I finally beat Bionic Commando Rearmed.  Very nice payoff at the end there : )  I never beat the original but I had heard about it.  Nice to actually see it.  I am continuing to play WipEout HD here and there and I’m enjoying Penny Arcade Adventures more than I thought I would.  I downloaded Everyday Shooter, LocoRoco Cocoreccho, and flOw as well.  Everyday Shooter is pretty cool.  Very trippy and psychadelic.  And really difficult.  I like that the mechanics of defeating enemies change with every stage and that as you play you constantly build up points that you can use to unlock additional stuff.

LocoRoco is possibly the most bizarre, insane game I’ve ever played, even slightly more so than the original game for the PSP.  I think I like the PSP one better.  flOw is pretty cool, very serene and calming.  I can see myself playing it after a rough day just to unwind or chill out for a while when I’m bored.  It seems like it is a game that just doesn’t end.  I’m very curious to see how Flower turns out, since its by the same people.  Ooh, and I almost forgot about Fat Princess!  I can’t wait to see how that turns out, it looks hilarious!

So bottom line, too many awesome games, too little time.  Just like last year.  Lame, but also awesome!

Just a quick update before bed

Ok, real quick.

Finally got the platinum trophy in Burnout Paradise. I was able to find an Eye Toy at Best Buy (apparently the only one left in the whole damn city) for only $10 so I was able to get the trophy for sending a mugshot. So I am happily playing my original save file again. Whooo!

I am very pleased to announce that I beat Mega Man 9. I understand the initial reaction that it is insanely difficult, but after going back to play a little Mega Man Anniversary Collection for comparison I have come to the realization that it is really no harder than any of the original games. In fact, the argument could be made that its actually easier. The reason is because in the old days of Mega Man 1 & 2, there were no such things as Energy Tanks. The simple addition of this life saver makes the game incredibly easier. Other than that, the same basic strategy used in the original games is what is required to excel at MM9. I believe this is the reason people think that it is so much more difficult.

In these days of finger-contorting control schemes and almost unlimited options to take out your enemies, playing an original Mega Man game feels very crippling. You no longer have ten different ways to approach a given task, there is only a jump button and a fire button, the only relief being the weapons you earn from the bosses. In order to win at these games, you must focus on memorizing the levels and enemies that occupy them, what it takes to eliminate them most effectively, and honing your platforming skills to a needle-fine point. For those gamers that grew up post-SNES, they have never known limits and challenge like this. I feel sorry for them.

Let’s see, what else. I finally figured out that I could use my bionic arm to repel the final boss’s missles in Bionic Commando Rearmed. I should’ve figured. So now I will be able to finish it. Nice. Also, I am slowly getting the hang of Wipeout HD. It’s still pretty tricky, but I feel like I am getting better little by little. Picked up Linger in Shadows the other day. Pretty wierd but pretty cool at the same time. I can definately appreciate what they are trying to do. It was cool to watch and manipulate and find the hidden stuff in that “game.” And it was an easy batch of trophies too

Picked up Dead Space last week and am super excited to play it, but I just haven’t been able to find the time to even start it. I was at my in-laws house all weekend and I am back to working nights, so its been difficult to find the time. Not to mention that I am car-pooling to work with my wife who starts work an hour earlier than me, so that just subtracts free time from my schedule. I’m trying to move and get things situated at my new job so things are a bit crazy right now. I have a feeling Dead Space will consume a considerable amount of time once I start it and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to put aside big chunks of time. And LittleBigPlanet and BioShock are coming very very soon so I will be back to being extremely behind again. Oh well. I would rather have to many games to play than not enough!

I guess that wasn’t very quick at all was it? Eh, whatever. Who needs sleep right?