AUC housing

The AUC housing contract finally came in the mail the other day. My mom got it at about 7pm and I found out about it the next morning. So, she sent it for me overnight as soon as she found out. It was a day later than it could have been, but hopefully it will be fine. I talked to my advisor and she said she had already gotten a bunch, but while she couldn't guarantee I'd get a single, she seemed fairly confident that I would.

I really really really hope I get a single. I've lived with a roommate for quite long enough. I wouldn't say I'm OCD or anything, but I do like things to be clean. Dishes in the sink are a huge pet peeve of mine and I just don't want to deal with that on top of everything else in med school. I understand that this probably sounds ridiculous, but it just bothers me. Also, It'll be nice not to have to worry about my music if I want to listen to it or someone else's if I don't.

I'm not happy about leaving Heather, but I am excited to get to SXM and get started!

Also, sorry about the use of some generic internet photos lately, but I just haven't had time to upload my own. I promise, they're coming soon!

It's been a while

Sorry for the long delay in blogging (if anyone's actually reading), but I've been ridiculous busy. Basically, Victoria's Secret is somewhat inept at scheduling. Creating a schedule a week or two in advance is just not something they do. If the schedule starts on Sunday, they release it on Friday or Saturday. How can you plan your life around that? On top of that, I have to be out of my apartment by tomorrow! So, I'm moving later tonight (Saturday) with my dad, Gerald, and Heather. It should be exciting.

Because of the amount of suck at Victoria's Secret (standing at the register for 8 hrs/day is just not fun), I decided to quit. My last day was technically today. However, I decided to make Friday my last day. They may not have known it then, but I'm pretty sure they know it now. Now, I'll actually be able to have some free time during my last summer with nothing to worry about. Next summer, I'll be in 3rd semester engrossed in crazy studying. At least, that's what I'll be doing if what I read on the forums is true.

On Monday and Tuesday of this past week, I was in Ohio picking up the new ambulance for Arbutus. I am chairman of the committee, so I was very excited to finally see it completed. It was lettered on Wednesday, the radio was put in Thursday, and I'm gonna take it back to Fesco Emergency Sales (the dealer) on Monday to have a few last things completed. It's looking very good though, I'm excited to finally get it in service! I'll post some pictures of it as soon as I get a chance to take some this week.

I also went to Great Falls with Heather (girlfriend) and Taco (most adorable dog in the history of the world) this past weekend. It was a beautiful day and a good time. My aunt and uncle took Heather and I out for dinner after the park, which was also lots of fun. I think I got some pretty great pictures of the day, so I'll post them also once I get time this week.

Long time since an internet video made me laugh...

Microsoft Surface Technology Parody - Watch more free videos


The power of Microsoft Surface....

Conditioning

I really hate stupid people. Today at Victoria's Secret served to confirm this. It is the semi-annual sale for the next two weeks and that means we are PACKED!! It is very busy and the registers usually have lines. The store made the very stupid decision to close down 1/3 of the store for renovation starting the first day of the semi-annual sale. So, not only are we busier than normal, but we have 1/3 less space and only 3 of 7 registers are now available.

Due to the lack of registers, lines get long sometimes! As a whole, I would say I'm not a huge fan of people that I don't know, as a general rule. I particularly hate some of the people waiting in line though. One would think that when you put things in your shopping tote to take to the register, you at least have some idea that you might want to buy those items. This is not the case in Victoria's Secret...not with our customers.

Our customers wait in line for 10 minutes or so and feel the need to wait until they get to the register to decide what they want. They empty out their tote and want me to sit around and twiddle my thumbs while they decide what they do and do not want. This is the semi-annual sale...stuff is cheap! Don't make me ring up 30 items and then decide (after I hit total) that you want to remove an item that is $2.50 because it's putting you over $100. I don't have time for you and your indecisiveness!

Then they decide they want to pay with their Victoria's Secret account (which I probably convinced them to take another strike against their credit and sign up for a few days before), but they don't have their card. So, they wanna know if I mind looking it up. YES, I mind looking it up, and so do the people behind you while I get your social security number and call it in manually. Just use another card!! The interest on that card, because you're probably not gonna pay it off on time, is exorbitant! Why would you use it?

These people need conditioning...Pavlov's dogs style. When they hear frantic register button pushing, and people grumbling at the long lines, they need to pick up the pace. Develop a damn sense of urgency!! I don't care how they're conditioned to do so. Beat them if they're too slow, shock them, I don't care...just get the point across.

Yesterday at one point, the line was particularly long. A lady had just finished paying, but was taking a minute to read her receipt and put stuff away. I'm ok with this as she did it to the side of the register. But while she was doing it, I looked at the man behind her and told him I could help him. He looked at me and stood there. So I said it again, "Sir, I can help you, just step up to the register." He said he would wait for her to leave and was in no rush! Really? You're not, ass hole? Maybe the people behind you are. I was pretty pissed off at this, and the air conditioning was broken, adding to my lack of patience. So, I called the person over from the line next to him to get in front of him so they wouldn't have to wait for him (since he apparently didn't care). All of the sudden, he was not happy and in a rush. Oh well, I made him wait while I helped the next person. That made me smile just a little :)

I need to take more pictures

I recently bought myself a Canon Digital Rebel XTi SLR. I also bought 70-300 and 17-85 image stabilizing lenses. So far, I love the camera and the lenses. Still figuring everything out and debating stuff like whether or not to shoot in raw and what I want to use for post-processing (I'm leaning towards Adobe Lightroom). But mostly, I need to start taking more pictures!! So far, the only thing I've really taken many pictures of was a training house burn. Some of the pictures did come out very well though, if I do say so myself!

I've got a flickr gallery now that i've started adding pictures to. One I get more up, I'll start separating them out a little more and making galleries of the good ones. The address is http://flickr.com/photos/slevit1

For most of the pictures, you can just click on them for a larger size. Here are three that I've taken recently.

New Facebook Group

I decided to start a new facebook group today, called "American University of the Caribbean, Class of 2011." That sure does sound like a long time away! In any case, hope that new students will join. It would be nice to get to know some people before classes start. All the cool people are doing it! I think there are 9 members so far, hopefully the list will grow to at least 100 or so. Networking should start to kick in soon.

After 2 days off, it's back to Victoria's secret to work today. For the next 3 days straight, i'm working 1:00-9:30, which is a pretty miserable schedule. Then I get Friday off, and work 1:00-9:30 again on Saturday. YUCK! I told them what I thought of their scheduling, but it's semi-annual sale. So basically, they told me since i'm a manager, i've gotta work that schedule. However, I believe I made it pretty clear that after this week, I only want to work 4 days a week and want to be off by 6:00 at least 2 of those days. This is my last summer before med school, so I think I should get some kind of a break!

Speaking of a job...my BGE and Comcast bill are way overdue. I think i'm going to have to get on that sometime soon. On a totally unrelated note...housing paperwork from AUC should be coming in the mail soon. I really hope I get it back fast enough to get a single. I DO NOT want a roommate because I have had way too many bad experiences. I am clean, most other people seem not to be. I also do not like to hear other people when I don't want to hear other people (I guess this is obvious). Basically, i like being social, but I need my space! We'll see how it goes.

Locked out!

I locked myself out of my apartment last night! I knew as soon as I shut the door behind me that I had done it, but I was staying the night somewhere else, so I wasn't worried at the time. However, I remembered when I got home this morning and couldn't get inside that I had done something wrong.

Up until this point, I have been happy with the community where I'm living (Granite Run). However, I called their emergency line today just to hear the message that says if you're locked out, call a locksmith. Basically, not their problem, they don't care. So, $129 later, I'm in my apartment.

All that money, you'd think I would get a locksmith that could pick a lock. But no, he tried that, unsuccessfully. So, instead, he basically forced the door open with a screwdriver. Needless to say, it left a mark. If this was somewhere I'd be living for more than the next month, I'd be pretty pissed off. I could have forced it open if I wanted to!

News from AUC

Finally got an e-mail from AUC today giving official dates for orientation and the start of classes. Registration will be Monday, August 27th, orientation is the 29th, and classes start on the 30th. However, this is in contrast to what I was told earlier, that classes would start on the 28th. I was also told that we'd probably move into the dorms on Saturday, the 25th. I confirmed today, however, that we would not be moving in until Monday.

This is a problem for me because I already got plane tickets to go down on Wednesday, and my grandparents are coming with me. I wanted to have a couple days on the island for a little vacation before school starts, but I don't know if I want to be in a hotel for 5 days...that's a little much. I think I'm going to call the airline sometime soon and see if I can change days without incurring too much of a fee.

On another note, I've been getting in touch with quite a few people lately who are starting in August with me. Actually, I got in touch with one, and through her, found (or decided to find) a bunch of others. If you're going, get in touch with me, say hi! Comment or something. You can also find me on Facebook.

Today, I think I'm going to go see Pirates of the Caribbean before it leaves theatres. I've gotta be at the gym at 5, so I guess if I should get lunch and get going...

Safari updated...yay!

If you were not aware (and by what I've posted so far, you probably wouldn't be), I'm a huge mac fanboy. I love just about everything Apple and will never buy PC again. If I see you using a PC, I will probably tell you why you should junk it and buy a mac. That being said, I was happy that Safari released a new version of it's browser the other day. I downloaded it immediately and while there were not many cosmetic changes, there were quite a few changes under the hood apparently which has made everything much nicer for me!

1) This was a big one...everytime I hit the "back" button in a ValueMD forum, it would crash safari. I use ValueMD quite a bit and this was annoying at best. When I had multiple tabs open and accidentally hit the back button, it was infuriating. This has been fixed in Safari 3.0

2) In Digg, another site I go to at least daily, if you clicked on one of the top 10 links, it would freeze for about 15 seconds while it loaded the comments page. It never crashed Safari, but it sure was annoying! Again, this has been fixed.

3) When you scroll down a page, click a link, and then click the back button, browsers typically jump back down to the point you were at on the previous page. Safari did this as well, but very very slowly. It was annoying because right when you scrolled down yourself, Safari would decide to scroll as well and jump to far. Guess what? Fixed!

In general, Safari also just seems to be running faster than it did before. MySpace (a site which I hate) is working much faster than in the past. I liked safari before for lots of reasons, but basically it's simplicity. Thank you, Apple, for finally fixing these few things that made me consider switching browsers.

Oh yeah...it also works on Windows now!! If you haven't yet, buy a mac! But if you don't want to do that for some unknown reason, download Safari! Apparently it's twice as fast as IE7 and about 1.5 times faster than Firefox.

Now, off to another long day at Victoria's Secret. I hate when I'm schedule for more than 5 hours there! It gets long standing at a register all day. Then novelty of being head cashier and having manager privileges on the register loses its novelty quickly!

summer job

I was getting very bored already this summer with no school and no job. So, back to Victoria's Secret!! I worked there about 2 years ago, but decided to leave to do ski patrol that winter. They asked me a couple of times to come back, but I was not interested. However, seemed like the perfect job for the summer. They're willing to pay me what I wanted and made me a manager. Not a lot of places that I can get hired same day, get the salary I ask for, and be made a manger for two months. So, until I go to medical school, I'm a victoria's secret manager!

And no...i'm not a pervert, just appreciate women ;)