Saturday, November 22, 2008

Happy Belated Birthday

I just wanted to take a moment to wish me a belated Happy Birthday. It's alright though... I forgive me for being a week behind.

I don't tend to make a big deal out of my birthday. Last year, Cherry insisted on taking me out to dinner. This year she did a whole birthday day. It was nice, and it's nice that I have friends who care that it's my birthday, but the actual events of the day aren't really what I choose to focus on.

It's more that birthdays aren't a big deal to me. I'm not quite sure when this happened. I remember counting down the days to my birthday and then being all excited about the presents and such. But now I count down the days to the next Rock Band related release and am all excited about the new drumkit that I'm going to get sometime. Whenever they start shipping the damn things. But that's another topic.

I took off of work this year because... Well... I don't know really. I guess just in case all of a sudden I started to care that it was my birthday and I wanted to do something? But then when it was actually the day it was just like every other day. Nothing felt different.

Birthdays used to feel magical. It used to feel like it was really my day and everything for the day was about me. It doesn't really feel that way anymore. It's just a day. Oh sure... The day's events were up to me and we could have done anything I wanted, but really that's sort of like any other day. I could probably get a few friends together to play racquetball or go out to eat or play Rock Band with me. These things are fun and nice and all that, but they just don't feel necessarily special.

I don't know... I had planned to write this thing up all week, but have just been tired because of the new work schedule so this is really the first opportunity I've had to sit down and write it. And now I'm not really sure of exactly what I meant to say.

The main point is just that birthdays used to seem special and magical and that they don't anymore. I kind of miss it. I appreciate that Cherry and Emily cared enough to do what they could to make my birthday special for me, but it didn't really work. And it's entirely not their faults.

I think if I had a girlfriend who decided to give me an extra special day it would be more meaningful to me. I don't know how I feel about thinking that. I don't know that I like thinking that a girlfriend planning a special day around me is more meaningful than good friends doing it. I think all throughout the day I felt like it was just another day and that there was really no need for my friends to regard it as anything else, and so a lot of the reason that I didn't feel like the day was successfully special was because I resisted it becoming so.

Ah well, this is an uncharacteristically short entry, but I just don't have as much to say on the subject as I thought I did... Or maybe as I did a week ago when I decided to write this whenever I got a chance.

Basically, I miss caring about special days... Birthdays and holidays. Well, I guess this is growing up.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Because Emily Bitched...

Women. Am I right?

It occurs to me that, inasmuch as anyone reads this at all, my readership is probably mostly women. So let's, you and me, just pretend that I wasn't just being purposefully offensive there. Good. There's a good girl.

While you're at it, why not pretend that I wasn't just being condescending in that last paragraph. There. Now if we just ignore all of my obvious and varied faults, I'm not such a bad guy after all, eh?

Seriously though... This, like the candidates not telling us the whole truth most of the time, is Emily's fault.

I've somewhat been meaning to write up a little bloggy thing. But I really have nothing of consequence to talk about. And then Emily made some sort of snide comment or other when I was ranting to her about how Kurt Cobain was a douchebag that I should be blogging it instead.

So, fine. Now I'm blogging. And I have nothing of consequence to say. So this is going to be probably primarily about Rock Band. And you have Emily to thank for it.

So, Rock Band's good. I approve. There are lots of things about it that frustrate me, sure. But those things can sort of be ignored... Or vast amounts of money can be spent to fix them. I do a combination of both.

The thing that annoys me the most is that there are drumkits out there that people are using RIGHT NOW with the proper amount of cymbals and drums and stuff. And I don't have one. Well, that will hopefully change. I'm not positive how it's gonna work, but eventually I will have a drum kit that works, more or less, the way I want it to. I might eventually end up going all out and putting together an electronic kit. I believe Rock Band is set p to accept midi, so I would have a real kit that also plays my video game. Neat.

The other thing that bothers me a little bit is that my drums keep turning themselves off currently. I put in an RMA order for a new set, but they're backordered at the moment. No matter... It works more or less. And if Aelsis ever releases the Ion for PS3 like they're supposed to I'll be getting that anyway.

The main thing, though, is that I'm not very good. Oh sure, I play on expert and can make my way through most of the songs. But I can't drum my way through the Dream Theater song on the new game. As well as one or two other songs. Painkiller's a bitch, but I can get through it from time to time. This annoyance can be avoided by avoiding the songs that are too hard for me, and sticking to the ones that are just hard enough to be fun and make me feel like I'm better than I am. But damn if John Myung, Mike Portnoy, and John Petrucci aren't all better at their instruments than I am at even their fake counterparts.

Oh well... I'm sure I would be able to play the Wii Music version of Panick Attack just fine. Haha! Man, that was a geeky joke.

Also, I ordered a little dongle thing that would allow me to se a second pedal as a double bass pedal. It doesn't work though. It's more or less cheating, since the note chart is mapped out with only the primary foot because Harmonix knows you're only supposed to have one pedal. But I'm not good enough for one pedal, and painkiller hurts. So hopefully customer service will send me a new one or something.

So, that's more or less that. In other news, I'm working at Kohl's. It's going alright, I suppose. It's not fun or anything, but it's a job. And I seem to be advancing. I 'm working in the shoe department currently, but pretty much any of the supervisors I've worked with have said nice things about me, and it's gotten back to the Asst. Manage, so she wants to move me to customer service. But I think she wanted to do that anyway, because I'm pretty sure she would have had nice things to say about me even if the various supervisors hadn't said anything to her. So, I think that's sort of a promotion. I don't know if it comes with a pay raise or anything, but it's more responsibility and that's always good.

But the praise seems to also have gotten to my General Manager, and I had an interview with him the other day about an administrative assistant position that was opening up that I applied for. He liked me in the interview, even though he hadn't really noticed me much up until then... Or probably more accurately hadn't thought about me because he didn't know I cared at all about moving up in the company. So he said that I shouldn't take that new position, even though it would be a pay raise on what I am currently making, because it's more or less a dead end job. Instead, he enrolled me in a sort of fast track managerial program inside the company. There should be some new stores opening up in the area in the next few years, and he says he wants to try to get me and a few other people in the store that he likes into managerial positions in those stores. So, that's somewhat promising. Except it means that I'll be working at Kohl's. But, I suppose one job's basically as good as another. I don't HATE being there. So, we'll see how this thing pans out. He's got me scheduled for a conference call on Thursday with someone who is in Central Standard time to go over the program details.

So, that's that for the time being. This was a pretty worthless blog update. Maybe I should have expounded on why Kurt Cobain was such a douchebag. But I didn't.

Oh. And I need to find a girlfriend. I'm getting really tired of this being single for years at a time thing. Just thought I'd throw that out there..

Toodles.