Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

Overheard in the halls:

Student 1: What do you think about the reading assignment?

Student 2: Reading?!? I don’t read!!

So today is Labor Day, “a day off for the working citizens” or the unofficial end of summer. Karen, the girls, and I went to the Crossroads Market on our day off.

I was reading an interesting post on the Get Rich Slowly blog where the author was recounting Every Job I’ve Ever Had and I thought that could be fun. So here I go (I am going to include volunteer work too, since that is work even if there is no pay - I’ll indicate volunteer work with a (V)):

• Assistant Stage Manager, Hello Dolly (Community Theatre, is it really bad that I can’t remember the name of the community or the theatre just that it was in New Jersey?) (V): This was a lot of work, and my first non-school related gig. It made me really want to pursue technical theatre as a possible career.
• Assistant, Staten Island Children’s Museum (V): I worked in various areas, but my favorite was the broadcasting section where the kids could produce a news cast with the weather report and everything.
• Assistant, Children’s Science Program (V): One of my science teachers in high school did a workshop on Saturdays for kids where we did all kinds of fun science projects.
• Environmental Research (V): That same science teacher helped me become interested in the environment. We would go out regularly to take measurements to track the population of the Blue Herons on Staten Island.
• Night Desk Attendant: My first paid job in college. Signing people into the dorm since the doors are all locked over night. I had the 3-7 AM shift, so I didn’t sign too many people in or out. However, I did have to disarm the alarm and unlock all of the external doors. Disarming the alarm wasn’t a simple on/off you had to turn a key in just the right fashion, which is probably easy when you aren’t about to fall asleep. There was many a time I accidentally set the alarm off. Luckily I was usually able to shut it off pretty quickly.
• Dish Washer/Sandwich Preparer, FSA: I had a couple of shifts where I worked the dish room. Loading a giant dishwasher and emptying garbage cans. Hey it’s work. My other shifts were spent making sandwiches. Nothing too intricate although I got in trouble often for putting too much meat on the sandwiches.
• Mathematics/Computer Science Tutor, The Learning Center: My first “knowledge-worker” job. In addition to group tutoring I also did individual tutoring.
• House Painter, College Pro: Believe it or not this was a very enjoyable job. It was a nice feeling to have a physical completed result at the end of the job. I guess I was pretty good at it too, since more often than not I wound up on the clean up crew, where we would fix the mistakes of the previous crew.
• Computer Technician, Performance PC: My first “career” job. I spent five years at this job, learning a lot about computers and customer service. It was a great experience leading up to:
• Instructional Support Technician, Academic Information Technology, Help Desk: My current position. I love it here. My worst day at work is still better than most other days at my previous jobs. I maintain seven labs, five servers, and several campus-wide programs/services among other things. It’s a very interesting job, never a dull moment.

What a busy day! But the first day back is always crazy busy, so there’s nothing new there. I managed to keep on top of all of my calls today plus teach my class.

I saw this today and thought it was very fitting, it’s from PHD comics.

So today after Farm Fest I played handyman. Our drain has been clogged preventing us from doing wash. Since the weekend is when we do most of our laundry this is a problem. The hand snake I have is just not up to the job, so today we rented an electric one. That did the trick. This is an example of needing the right tool. By renting the electric snake I was able to clear the drain for less than it would have cost me to hire a plumber. There are certainly some jobs that require an expert, but this particular one isn’t one of them. It’s just that the plumber already has the right tool and knows when to use it. So I can add one more thing to my seemingly ever growing list of household repairs I have successfully accomplished.

So today after work I needed to pick up milk and cheese. I ran to the supermarket that is closest to work figuring it would be the quickest in and out. However I did not plan for the sheer deception and apathy that awaited me. I walked to the back where the cheese was, and decided on the pre-shredded mozzarella since Karen was making pizza and I didn’t feel like shredding the cheese. I noticed at least 6 signs proclaiming the store brand cheese was 2 for $4.00. I figured that was a pretty good deal so I grabbed two packages, got my milk and went to checkout.

Now this particular store is notorious for having checkout lines lit (the lit sign usually indicates the line is open) but no one actually staffing the line. This time though someone actually came to the line when they saw me approach. Perhaps this trip would be different? Maybe I could get out without any hassles or getting pissed off.

How wrong I was. She scans my items and tells me my total is around $12. No way. 2 for $4 + $2.99 for the milk is $6.99 and there’s no way I’m paying $12. So she checks and wouldn’t you know it the cheese I grabbed, the cheese that was right next to all of those sale signs, isn’t the cheese that is on sale. So I have to go back to the back of the store to get the right cheese and then checkout again. Of course by this time there is now a line, so I have to wait. While I am waiting the cashier asks if I’d like to speak to the manager since I had mentioned I’d like to lodge a complaint. I can tell the cashier is disgusted and figures I am an idiot. The manager comes over and seems unable to understand why I am upset by his stores deceptive placement of non-sale items right next to the sale signs. I am sure that they do this on purpose since if people are buying a lot of things they might not notice if there bill was a few dollars more. But alas I only had the 3 items so they couldn’t trick me. However, Mr. Manager, here’s a customer service tip, from me to you. Even if you have no intention of following up with it, the correct response to my complaint would have been along the lines of “I’ll look into that. Perhaps the signs were placed in a confusing manner.” The correct response is not to act like it should have been obvious which items were on sale. Obviously it was confusing, so to act otherwise is just insulting. So next time I’ll happily drive down the road to that other store, your competitor, the one you should be trying to keep me from going to instead of making me hate your store even more.

Jennifer Stuczynski is a source of local pride, making the Olympic pole vaulting team. Congratulations to her and her family! That must be an amazing feeling being able to compete in the Olympics.

Some links for reference: on Wikipedia, from the New York Times, and the Buffalo News.

Also check out NBC’s Olympic site, with streaming video.

I was listening to Alice Cooper’s radio program tonight and he was complaining that Led Zeppelin wouldn’t be touring because Robert Plant would rather do his folk tour with Allison Krauss. He felt that Plant owed it to his fans to tour with Led Zeppelin. That is an interesting concept. Do musicians owe anything to their fans? If I go see Tom Petty in concert but all he does are Tupac covers certainly I would be pissed since there would be the expectation that he would be playing mainly his songs, specifically his hits. Similarly if an artist plays only B-sides and unknown songs, even if they are originals, the expectation of the concert would be broken. Generally concert goers are not only going to see the band, but to hear the band play specific songs. And that is unfortunate for the musician.

I can imagine that after 30 years you might want to do something different. I’ve been at my current place of employment for just under seven years and already my job is vastly different from what it was when I started. I could only imagine the frustration that goes along with doing the same thing, playing the same songs, over and over again. Don’t you want to hear the new stuff I’ve been writing? No way! Now play Stairway to Heaven again! The closest thing I could relate musically is when Cheese Log had a ‘hit’ song and we left it on the set list long after we would have liked to take it off. Why, because that was an expectation our fans had. They wanted to hear that song, so we played it. So yes an artist has a certain responsibility to live up to their fans expectations.

However, an artist should also have the right to move on and grow. By refusing to tour with Led Zeppelin and instead do something different Robert Plant is making a conscious choice to tell his fans he wants to do something different. At least he’s up front about it. It’s not like he’s selling tickets to a Zeppelin concert and then doing nothing but folk and bluegrass. That would be breaking expectations and people would rightly be angry. But he’s not doing that and I salute his decision as well as his right to do it. He does not have a responsibility to tour again with Led Zeppelin if that is not what he wants to do. So sorry Alice, I think you are way off base on that one.

As I run out of working days before the start of the semester I start to get nervous. Will I get everything done? Will everything work? I am sure I and it will respectively. However it is a stressful time of year. So if I don’t blog much it might because I am too stressed. Or maybe I’ll blog more, since it is an outlet. The days are counting down and fortunately so far things are running smoothly and on schedule. Let’s hope they stay that way.

This past Saturday Karen and I attended the wedding and reception of my friend Ryan and his new wife Dawn. I’ve known Ryan for 11 years now, it’s hard to believe he’s two years older than I was when Karen and I got married. It’s funny how you can not realize how time goes by.
I personally was honored to have been invited since as with many friends we don’t see each other very often anymore. I wish them the very best as they start their new life together!
I didn’t get many good pictures, but I’ll put them up when I find the camera….

Update: Found the camera, pics below:

So the problem with being offline for the entire weekend is all the little things I thought about that I thought would make for amusing or anecdotal blog posts have completely slipped my very tired mind. I suppose I could have done mobile updates to Twitter, but even though I did sign up for an account to see what it was all about I refuse to pay the extortion data rates that text messages cost. So I will only update from the web, which I couldn’t do. We had a nice weekend, went to an old friend’s wedding which I will blog about as soon as I get the pictures uploaded even though I didn’t get any really good shots. But right now I am too tired to think of anything coherent to write….