So I got my motorcycle, and I’ve been cruising around for 2 days totally loving it. Yesterday, somewhere between visiting Clay at Denewiths, and going over to Kim and Mikes, I picked up a nail in my rear tire. You believe that shit? Two fucking days, and I have to replace a brand new tire already. This wasn’t a little nail either, this was like a giant bolt. WTF?

I am loving it though, it’s an absolute blast to ride. Gotta call around for prices today so I can get back on the road.

Night before last, I went to bed around 12:30-1:00am. That’s about right for me. I can get through the day, with 5ish hours of sleep with no problem. So I’m lying there, sleeping, minding my own business, and all of a sudden I get hit in the face with this horrible smell. So bad, that it wakes me up at 4:15am. I immediately recongnized the smell from last year, when Jaz got sprayed in the face by a skunk. There is a distinct difference between smelling a skunk driving down the road, and a direct hit. The direct hit is much, much worse, and this is exactly what this smell was.

But how? Where? I was a little out of it, but…did I get sprayed by the skunk? Why’s the smell so friggin bad? Wait, wake up and shake the cobwebs off. I got out of bed and looked around at the windows. None of them were open. WTF? The house stunk so bad, I could barely take it. I sprayed FaBreeze all over the house, to try to at least mask the smell, but it didn’t do anything to help. I lay back down, and 5 minutes later, Kel gets up. She opens the window to the backyard, and doesn’t smell it outside. So she turns the fan towards the window to try and force the stench out of the house. Then she lays back down.

The wind must have changed because 5 minutes later the smell got worse, so I got back up and shut the windows. It was kind of comical when you think about it. So here we lay, neither one of us can sleep because the smell is so bad, and we have no idea where the hell it’s coming from. I layed in bed, wide awake straight past 6:45am when the alarm was set, and wouldn’t you know it, I finally dozed off about 7:05am. Right when I should be getting up.

So I finally get up, get ready, and leave the house. As I backed out of the driveway, I noticed where the smell was coming from. Turns out, when skunks die, they release they’re smelly…juice…or whatever the fuck it is. Anyway, good news/bad news is that the skunk got ran over in the street in front of our neighbors house, but when that happened it stunk so fucking bad, that I wanted to move. In case you were wondering, animal control will pick up a random skunk carcass from the city property in front of your house. Although the guy did say, and I quote, “well, I don’t WANT to come get it, but I will”.

Sweet, January 13th, and only two updates. Doing great with that resolution.

So, it’s Saturday, and here I sit at work. Our firewall is having SERIOUS issues, so I have my tech support people coming in to swap it out so I can gaurantee that we have a connection come Monday morning. It’s 12:42, and here I sit. I could do some work right now, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to be here. I got in at 2am last night from poker, and woke up at 6:30 to come to work. Turns out, I’m just getting too old for that shit. I have one Redbull down so far, and I’m thinking about pounding the last one to get me to 3:00 which is when we’re supposedly be back up and running, and I can go home.

12:44…and bored

I guess I’ll just do some work.

(sigh)

You don’t have to stop for busses if they don’t put out the “STOP” sign. On 14 mile, they don’t turn that sign on, so as not to fuck up traffic on a main road like that. They drivers will even waive you around them.

So, guy in silver F150 this morning, THERE IS NO REASON TO SLAM ON YOUR BRAKES WHEN THE BUS STOPS. You retard.

Sony shorted the initial release of the PS3. Sony does this for all of it’s releases. It creates a high demand and buzz right before the holidays. I’m sure there is a warehouse somewhere full of PS3’s that Sony doesn’t want to release untill they beleive it’s time to create another frenzy. Marketing brilliance? Maybe, but at what cost?

Read here to find out:
What would you do for a PS3?

The show ran over this week again. The DVR WOW supplied decided it didn’t want to record the extra 10 minutes after the show like I programmed it to.

Worst TV network on the planet, along with the worst cable company known to man. It’s my personal mission to go to every forum on the entire fucking internet and bad mouth both of these piece of shit companies. I hope they both go out of business, and all of thier employees get new jobs, then all get fired for being late.

Oh yeah, I have no idea how the fuck that show ended….again.

So here’s a good question for ya.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. I ordered some custom poker chips from a vendor online. This company had a good reputation with all the other chip-geeks on chiptalk, which is a site I frequent.

Here’s the story. PCOL is a company that offers custom chips to the public. These are compression molded clay chips, just like the casinos use. Real clay, not that 11.5 gram injection molded plastic crap that people on ebay try to sell as clay.

PCOL offers a bunch of different colors for the body of the chips, and they offer one type of edge spot pattern. The pattern is 312, meaning 3 spots, half inch wide each. You get the body color, then the spot color choice, and that’s all.

They decided to do a special sale. They were going to offer a bunch of different edge spot combinations and colors that they never offered the public before. So I decided to place an order to get in, so I could have these edges in the future. I placed my order in April, and approved the artwork on May 2nd. I was quoted 10-12 weeks delivery time from that date.

Well here we are, 21 weeks later, and I still don’t have any chips. Here is the timeline:

May 2nd, artwork approval and 10-12 week delivery time
July 15th, emailed for progress and was told last week in July for shipping. Was also told to be patient.
August 1st, my credit card was charged and the bill was paid in full. Contacted them on August third for status and was told that my order was just put into production and it would be 4-6 weeks from then. I was told that other order were completed ahead of mine due to material shortages on the colors I chose, but that I should get it by the end of September.
Sept 25 again I had to contact them for an update. I was told that some of my chips had to be redone so they didn’t make their truck on Friday. They were redoing them now, and that she didn’t think they would get shipped that week, but probably next week.

That brings us to now. At first, I was thinking that I’m at the point of no return with these chips. I’ve waited so long, that it wouldn’t make sense to cancel now. The more I think about what has gone down, the more pissed I get at the shitty service and missed delivery times. Everytime I got an update from them, I had to initiate the contact. They were never proactive in giving me any information as to what was going on with my order.

There is a reason for all of this. Well, it could be an excuse. The company got a lot of orders from this special offer. It appears that they got a lot more then they thought they would get. So much so, that it backed them up. They also had a large casino order come in, while all this was going on. Casino orders take precedence over home orders, so our orders were pushed back even more. So this is the standard response to shitty delivery times. The problem is, people on chiptalk have posted how they got their orders rushed through, while others got fucked over. (like me) These stories just piss me off even more about the whole thing.

So, it’s October 2nd. I still don’t have any chips yet. No idea if they are shipping this week or not. I paid for these, in full, on August 1st, over tow months ago. I have no clue if they are even made, since I can barely trust what I’ve been told to this point.

I kind of came up with this thought: If my chips don’t ship by Friday, I’m cancelling the order and disputing the charge on my credit card as fraudulent since I never recieved the items I paid for. I’ve just had it with this whole thing.

What would you do?

Had a tough time getting up this morning. I had a rough weekend. Friday night we played poker until around 5:00am. Got home around 5:30, and was up and out the door by 10:00am on Saturday to go set up for Rons birthday party.

We set up the FOP hall with a bunch of Hawiian decorations for a luau. We had an hour to go home and change, then get back to the party before the guests started to arrive. It was a good time though.

Then, we started to tear it down around 8ish, and I left at 9ish to take Joey home. Then back to my house around 10:20pm just in time to rewind and watch the UFC pay per view. Matt Hughes vs. B.J. Penn. GREAT fight, but then I didn’t get to bed untill after 1:00am. Then it was up and at em’ at 10:00am again to go tear the rest of the Hawiian stuff down, and unload it at my Dads shop. Then home to watch football, and work on a friends computer for her. Grief with the comptuer lasted untill I just stopped working on it around 11pm, and I went to bed within an hour later.

Up at 6:30am, and here I am.

I need a weekend, to recover from the weekend.

Going back to Louisville this evening. I’ll be home tomorrow night. Bascially we’re going down to see how screwed up things have gotten since we’ve been gone, and try to fix all the issues. Without one of us there, we need to trust that they are doing everything they’re supposed to do. Well, in a conference call last week, we found out they weren’t. So We’re heading down to try and straighten everything out.

I’m so excited to go….woo-friggin-hoo.

Okay, so I’m home, minding my own business I might add, and all of a sudden, I hear Kel screaming bloody murder in the backyard.

Wait a second, what the hell does that mean “screaming bloody murder”? I mean, why not screaming “terrible car crash” or “screaming giant shark attack”?

Anyway, so Kels outside screaming “giant shark attack”. I run outside, expecting who knows what. I get out on the patio, and Kel runs up to me white as a ghost. I ask her what’s wrong and she says:
“THERE IS A GIANT RAT IN THE POOL FILTER!!”
I say: “WHAT?!?”
She repeats: “A GIANT RAT IN THE FILTER!”

At this point, I’m less concerned with something in the filter, and more concerned with the possibility of a big ass rat at our house. To me, that’s a bigger problem, and it would equal, time to get the fuck out of Warren.

I say: “Are you sure it’s a rat?”
She says: “I don’t know what the hell it is, it’s big and fuzzy and in the filter!”

She was a little frazzled. So I go over to pool at which point I decided that I was going to look down on it from the the deck. One, in case it’s alive, I don’t want it jumping on my face like in Alien, and two, to get a good look at what it is. (the catch for the filter, which is where this thing is stuck, is right next to the deck)

Well, I’m happy to say, it wasn’t a rat. It was, however, a big ass squirrel. We have this huge tree in our yard, kind of next to the pool. It’s about 15 feet away, but the branches hang over the pool. Apparently, this squirrel wasn’t as sure-footed as it thought, and it fell from the tree and landed in the pool. Now, it would appear that squirrels can’t swim.

I now, after all these years, completely understand that old video of the water skiing squirrel. The little bastard was too afraid to get off the skis, because it knew it would die.

Best guess is, it drowned in the pool, and then got sucked in the filter catch. So Kel says that she isn’t going to touch it. Now me, being the man of the house, born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit, I stated that there was no friggin way I was going to touch it. I’m not out-doorsy. It’s not my thing. I camp at the Holiday Inn. If, by some weird nuero-knee jerk reaction that happens to squirrels when they drown, I grabbed this thing, and it fucking moved, I’d lose it. Let’s just say that is a future therapy bill I just don’t need.

However, getting it out, and touching it are two different things. I may not be back-woodsy, but I’m smart. So I went in the garage, got a hook (I need it for my heater in there) and hooked the trap in the filter catch, and pulled the whole thing out. We then dumped the trap in a bag, then bagged that bag in a freezer bag, then bagged that bag in another bag. Our garbage pickup isn’t till next week, and we don’t want dead squirrel smell attracting any other animals, or just lingering outside since I would imagine, it’s not pleasant.

It would appear that my backyard is a death trap for small fuzzy animals. If you know any, tell them to stay away. If the lawn mower doesn’t get them, the pool will.