Random Ramblings

I was searching Technorati and found this article on the recent media polls about public opinion. I found some of them interesting.

KGW’s asking if people think they Tram project’s good for Portland. Anyone who’s up to date on the Tram from OHSU to the new South Waterfront district knows it’s been a bit of a controversy; Once it was started and there was no turning back, they found out it’s going to be considerably more spendy than previously thought, with the price of 15.5 million covering barely a third of the actual cost. Then begins the controversy; Should OHSU have to shell out, or should the city? I can’t say honestly that I know which way I am on this, probably since I’ll never use it. I think it came down to Vera Katz trying to save her reputation towards the end of her term because she as considered at-fault for Columbia Sportswear’s moving to Washington County and she needed to save face before OHSU did the same. But it’s also entirely possible that the renovations in the south waterfront district might actually outweigh the cost of the tram both in terms of urban renewal and tax income. And to allow a bit of perspective, the project (including tram) was over 1.9 billion dollars; 45 million isn’t exactly huge in comparison.

Ted Kulongoski or Ron Saxton is the debate brought up by Oregonlive.com. Presently Kulongoski is up 73% to 27%. Does this suprise me? No, not really. What I will say about Kulongoski is at least he’s not COMPLETELY following the Democratic trend this year of mudsling first, prove yourself in office later. Compared to Darlene Hooley’s attacks on Mike Erikson, Kulongoski’s campaign has been downright tame. And, lest I forget, I do live in a blue state. However, it amused me that Kulongoski’s been trying to present himself as the education governor, yet aside from these smiling teacher’s endorsements of Kulongoski, what has he got to show for it? Not a whole lot. in fact, I find it curious that Kulongoski’s “education enterprise” starts getting talked up barely more than a week ago. Putting the state’s money where his mouth is, indeed… “Hey, look, I’m telling you that I’ll spend more money on education if you keep me in office!” I don’t know that more money’s the right answer to it. Oregon’s Public pension program’s already out of control, and from what teachers I had in my public school years, I didn’t see a whole lot of superb teachers, and it seems to get worse every day. I think we have all the money we need in education, we need teacher accountability now.

KATU asks, “Should Oregonians have to provide proof of residence to get a driver’s license?”. A resounding 94% said yes. Of course, my guess is none of the illegal immigrants voted on that poll, so maybe it’s a little biased? The other big topic this year has been latino voting, and how it’s a sleeping giant. Sleeping giant or not, I think the illegal immigration bit has gotten out of hand. Congress has passed 7 amnesties for illegal aliens in the past 20 years. I want to be clear – I am NOT against people being able to immigrate to America. That’s how this country was founded. But I think there needs to be some order to it; There are extremes where I’d be more lenient (Escaping a dictator in power, such as the Cubans escaping Castro, for instance, and I’m not saying that simply because the man controlling my webspace is cuban), but in general, I find it disheartening that I have to be able to speak spanish to order a friggin’ whopper nowadays. The odd thing about living here illegally is, somehow, an illegal can legally drive with a driver’s license. I’m all for having to prove you live here to get a license. It’s kind of logical to me, but then again, so’s being able to speak the language of the country you call home. I’m not moving to france and expecting them to start changing their language to accomodate me (although with a swiss army knife I could hold the entire country under my power and force them to if I were really that deviant…=)

And for KOIN, the question is, does Mike Riley’s win over 3rd-ranked USC reaffirm your confidence in him? They will have results this evening, but I’m going to say it: Riley is my hero. The fact that the beavers beat the Trojans makes me happy. If only the beavers were given the chance to do the same to the buckeyes… Oh well, I’m riding on Michigan for that joy. (I hope that John doesn’t see this post…)

Tags: Politics by Andrew Laine
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My next planned post was going to be a really heavy one, slightly emotional and philosophical. While I’m still planning to make that post at a later date, however, I must give something lighthearted and fun.
Many of you know, I started out my days in college as a naive Journalism major, star struck with the idea that I singlehandedly could turn the journalistic institution on its ear and bring more balance to journalism instead of the usual left-biased partisan politics. When I saw the next generation of journalists in my classes, however, I realized how truly hopeless that situation is and abandoned all hope (this was ultimately before the advent of blogging, which, coincidentally, gives everyone a voice, which has the potential to be a good or bad thing). After dropping journalism as a whole, however, I was given enough time to become a cynical former journalism major. Now I can notice bias in any manner of newscast, from the way a journalist so much as says a word, to a single word written in an article. Truly, for all their “unbiased” reporting, you can tell a lot about a journalist by how they report.
Well, among the list of stuffy journalistic institutions on my cynic’s list, the Oregonian.The fact that they actually endorsed Ron Saxton for the gubernatorial race I have to say shocks me (They supported Kulongoski when he came in, supported Kerry, and has supported literally almost any puff piece regarding anything pushing a leftist agenda that seems to have crossed the editor’s desk). So you can imagine my suprise when, strangely, the Oregonian started showing up on my doorstep a little over a week ago.
Now it seemed like a long shot, but I thought, “Maybe one of my roommates ordered it.” They, after all, aren’t cynical former journalism majors, so they might not have any qualms about it. And honestly, the only time I pay for it is if I see a good Fry’s ad in there, or on Sundays the Best Buy ads.But hey, they’re young, they’re naive, maybe they’re only reading it for the funny pages. So about three days in, I asked them if one of them had subscribed to the Oregonian.

“No, we figured you did.”

Hmm.

Well, I thought to myself, some n00btard in subscriptions screwed up someone else’s subscription, and now we’re getting it instead. Maybe the paperboy’s dislexic and was supposed to deliver them to apartment 55 and not 22. I’m not sure, but we’re still getting it. They’ll figure it out and fix it in a day or two.

Shows what I know.

I’m now 9 days into a subscription with the Oregonian that I, oddly enough, didn’t order, and haven’t received a bill for. So, what do I do?
Milk it for all its worth. I had to pay for a subscription to that bloody paper while I was taking journalism classes, and didn’t feel I nearly got my money’s worth out of it, even at a discounted student rate off of the normal (at the time) 35 cents an issue. It’s now up to 50 cents an issue, so I’m going to find out how long they’ll keep delivering it before they either notice they’re delivering it to the wrong apartment, or try sending me a bill. I’ll also occasionally make blog posts entitled “Radio Free Oregonian”, in which I’ll comment about stories I might come across or just muse about the lunacy of the fact that I’m getting a paper I didn’t really want. It’s my little way of sticking it to the left-biased journalistic institution. Where better to hit them than the pocketbooks?

Just a right-biased-but-better-at-being-journalistically-unbiased-cynical-former-journalism-major doing my part…

Tags: Humor, Radio Free Oregonian, Writing by Andrew Laine
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I think I just made Deepest Sender work… HEre’s to hoping…

Tags: Uncategorized by Andrew Laine
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Well, today was interesting to say the least. This week is our store’s first without Rachel, and I’m presently in the process of interviewing to try and fill the gap she left (which isn’t easy, as I’ve only had four applicants). Until I get someone hired, though, I’ve got a couple rather large gaps: Tuesday and Thursday mornings. And today was the first day I really became aware of that. I feel like today the devil personally decided to stick his pitchfork in my hiney as many times as he could to see how I’d respond.

It all started at 7:30 this morning. I decided to come in early (knowing I was going to be alone until noon) to do the music wall, which is going to be a Monday evening thing for Annie but as of last night there was no planagram. I was told it’d be done but later that night so it’d be there in the morning. I showed up, checked the file, no planagram. Okay. Not a huge deal. I can get caught up with receiving, get the tills counted, go to the bank, it’ll all be fine. So I started up with recap, finished inputting it, counted tills, checked change levels, called in a change order 30 minutes before the bank opens, went to the bank, stopped at McDonalds on a 10 to get breakfast (noon was a long ways away and I sure didn’t want to pass out on the floor alone). Came back, rechecked the planagram, no planagram, shot off a quick e-mail to the buyer (she’s swamped, so I don’t really fault her for not having it ready at my beck and call, but I still had hope to reset it before the store opened. That was quickly dashed when I realized how immense the number of new releases were this week. I got about two segments of the wall done before I realized a) Not all of the titles were received, and b) I didn’t have all of the shelves to reset everything from a 3 base 4 to a 4 base 6 (And if you know what I’m talking about, you spend too much time around me :-D). Then I had a few guests in, nothing major until about 10:30-11:00, when everyone started coming.

Now, honestly, I don’t mind being busy. I don’t mind having multiple guests. But when I’m alone, it typically winds up with me being pulled 18 different directions by different people, the phone starts to ring, and this morning was no different. I was running through a line of guests and one was looking for a particular item that one of our other stores had. I called the other store, asked for church resources because I was looking for a particular thing, and the lady tried to transfer me to direct sales. I quickly pointed out the system said she has it in stock and that’s why I called her and not direct sales. Apparently, I sounded aggravated, and the lady asked if I was from one of the sister stores. I said yes, I was from Lake Oswego, and she proceeded to read me the riot act for not identifying myself over the phone and not sounding cordial. I apologized, explained I was the only person on the floor (and in the store, for that matter), to which she was entirely unsympathetic, but she finally after beating me down over it said she’d go find the book for me (in a fitting stroke of irony, she never once identified herself on the phone to me).

After I get off the phone with her (without the book, which I called another store for but before I’d left, I hadn’t heard anything back on that one), I get a call from my noon shift, calling to let me know she was at school and apparently the pigeons wanted to use her for target practice, so she was going to be a little late because she had to go home and change. This, with 10 people staring at me anxiously wanting to get on with their day. Lord, I know you’re not going to give me more than I can handle, but why do you trust me so much?

Finally hone the line down to a few people (I was able to keep a sense of humor about it, I think that’s what prevented any Toys R Us-esque guest blow-ups at me for being too slow). Get a call from HR, forgot to send in payroll yesterday. I tell HR I’ll do it when second shift arrives. Line vanishes, gentleman comes in with an online gift certificate that’s only supposed to be redeemable online. Explains to me (frustrated) that it won’t work on the website and that our website’s poorly designed, and that apparently whoever he called told him to bring it into the store. well, this puzzled me (I remembered an e-mail from months back where they said the online certs are for the online store and the gift cards are for the brick-and-mortar stores, and that the two can’t be used in other places), but I called up our web guy, explained the problem, and wound up redeeming it at the store level while he sorted out why the website wouldn’t take it. Guest is happy, I’m happy because I was able to fix it, web guy’s confused as to what the hee-haw is going on with the website.

Second shift comes in, then warehouse manager comes in to “assess” our receiving situation (which, right now, is pretty bleak because my designated receiver’s gone, and every time I get back there I get stuck with something, or about 20 more boxes from UPS show up). We discuss the possibility of a work party, which is great to me because…well… we need it. I can’t climb that mountain of boxes by myself and I sometimes catch myself staring at them wondering, what the heck are we going to do with these?

Finally, after going over receiving area stuff, I send second shift on a break to eat her wilting food (since we haven’t got a working fridge), then I go on lunch. At 1:45 in the afternoon. Notice what time I started? Yeah… I went for six hours before I realized I needed lunch.

Go to lunch. Spill Mountain Dew on myself. At least I’m wearing a black shirt. Quizno’s Prime Rib isn’t too bad. Better than their pastrami, at least (terrible stuff, stick to Rose’s).

Get back from lunch. Go to do payroll. First attempt to print out the staff times to check them against the schedule, the printer starts going wonky and not scrolling. Find out the problem with the printer is that someone dropped a ball point pen into the paper feed and it jammed the printer. remove pen. Realign paper. I think I fixed it, try again, this time I accidentally try printing off timesheets for the entire company, the printer won’t stop printing, and it jams again. Second shift comes into back room to find me with my face buried in my arms, laughing like a slightly deranged hyena and when she asks if I’m okay, I just reply (while laughing) “I don’t know anymore!”. After an hour (or what felt like an hour, might’ve been 20 minutes), I get the stupid printer working, after calling HR to tell them I haven’t completely forgotten (again, anyway) and that my printer’s acting up. Nearly have a heart attack when I see that one of my employees is into 6 hours of overtime, then realize that’s because they forgot to clock out for 28 hours on one day.

Finish payroll. Fax in payroll. Realize a Beaverton employee worked my store one day and I didn’t account for that. Fix payroll. Resend payroll. Breathe a sigh of relief.

by this point, it’s almost 4:00. Time to leave. But I still had a few other things to do, so I wound up just going back into my office, finishing up, and leaving at 4:30(ish). Stop at Target, pick up X-Men 3 on DVD. Now blogging about the craziness of the day.

The good news, though; After all that, my lovely girlfriend’s taken pity upon me, and is presently on a bus, on her way to make me dinner and curl up for a movie. If you’ll excuse me, though, I have to go spend the next hour praying that the bus doesn’t wind up careening off a cliff en route…

For anyone who might be worried that I hate my job, though, please know, this is not an “I’m angry and hate my job” rant. Please denote my quote of the day a few days back in regards to my job. Today was a definite “Someone’s knocked over the statue of David” day… =)

Tags: Humor, Personal by Andrew Laine
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