Jump to content

Hello, Hi, Hey: I'm $$$ richh

N7隊長ジョン

By N7隊長ジョン
in Far from the Forest...

 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 493.9k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Starman

    60032

  • Kinumi

    38629

  • Lance Masayoshi

    26279

  • Soledai

    25884

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Elieson Enthusiast

Elieson

Posted
Posted

OK MY DAY

A Precursor:

I'm a single dad two kids blahblah you all know the shpeal. What you may not know is that in March, i lucked out and got a job doing programming and design for a company that makes software for printing and mailing companies, which is essentially Quickbooks Accounting + Inventory Management software. We have a few other little things like custom built ordering systems and stuff, but that's the gyst of it. Basically, we make the software that optimizes the junk-mail company's processes to produce and disperse junk-mail. Our products include an Access/SQL program (not requiring online support really since it's all stored on our client's networks) and our online version (which we host for 95% of our clients, bar some in Australia and two in Florida). We have clients like Honda and Canon, and other smaller print shops that use our thing just for inventory management, but knowing the above sums it up.

As you may already know, halloween was yesterday and today I was due to take tyler to an Anime Con today to meet Junko Takeuchi (the VA for Naruto, which happens to be ty's favorite anime for a long time standing now). Yesterday wasn't too bad; Our office is relocating closer to where I live, turning my 35 mile per way drive into a about a 30 mile both ways drive. It'd been a stressful week at work because our file servers, (hosted in Seattle WA) literally exploded, because our server guy doesn't actually know what he's doing, and pretty much left poorly monitored equipment in an environment without surge protection. Conveniently, there was a virus that corrupted about a week's worth of data on our backup server, and he had been lying about having a "third off-network" backup (I guess like a backed up external HD with just the data for clients, idk). When people call, my line is the first that rings, since i'm in the general Dev office, and we don't really have a dedicated support group...it's just kinda whoever answers the phone first takes the call. The network rings to me first, so I get a lot of traffic, but I handle it well enough. Anyway

Everything's finally back to operational status, and our president has had to offer refunds and payments for loss of income and stuff. He fired our server guy and now I dunno where we are at. He's handling the stress pretty well though; he's a good leader.

Our office here in Houston is relocating, so I spent Friday packing up. Friday=Halloween, and i have a 45minute drive min to get home, get Alexis, get her into her costume, then turn around and head back 35 minutes in the direction-to-work to the neighborhood where we trick or treat at (since our town and the neighboring one south is kinda small and has unsafe areas that we've had some things happen to us in that I won't bore you with details over, long story short nothing aside from a bit of key'd cardoors and stuff like that). Traffic is balls because it's friday/halloween and I get out of work at 5 due to packing and disassembling furniture, when I had requested back in May to get off at 3. I understand, it's a big deal. There's 3 of us in the office, and one of the guys is paraplegic, so he does his best but can't disassemble desks and lift things too easily for obvious reasons, so I don't really mind staying to help. It's the traffic i'm worried about.

Ex-Waifu (who i'm now legally divorced from btw) is coming up with Tyler (since tyler lives with her full time now. Yea that's another story). She gets off of work at 2 and drives 1 hour to get to her place to pick up Ty, and then drives 1 more hour to reach the neighborhood where we are trick-or-treating at. Bear in mind, this was actually her suggestion, and I more or less supported it. WELL traffic sucked for her and she arrived late

Well, I get Lexi to the neighborhood at 7, when it's getting dark of course. Only, I haven't been to this place in a while (Not for 2 years now due to other things like family related issues) so I got a bit lost. Was hoping to get there at like 6-ish latest, but ok, 7 works. She's hyped and has energy to go until 9 pretty well, and this is her first major trick-or-treating night, so i just wanted to maximize the fun. She did have a good time, so it was worth it. Ex-Waifu arrived at 8:15 with Tyler (and Mark, her new man), mad at me for giving her bad directions to the place she suggested? ok, so I dunno. I texted her a picture of someone's front door address, and when she got there, she told me "Oh why didn't you tell me this was [REDACTED] street? Adam lives down here". Adam is another story from which several of you might remember but i won't get into that either.

Night ended at 8:45, we all hit up a few houses with both kids in their respective costumes, and lexi had a blast doing it with her big brother, so that worked out. She takes the kids back to her place and I say I'll be down there at like 8a to pick up Tyler to head to the Con, since it's on the way, and I wanted him to pack a few things since we had mixed plans which potentially included spending the night (and the majority of his clothing is at their place). Say g'night to Lexi and Ty, and find out that they both fell asleep on the way back. D'awww. Also found out that she didn't have a seat for tyler in her van, and ty rode about an hour while laying on the floor. I'd normally be ok with this, but he's 12 and has no business riding without a seat+Seatbelt. Frustration ensues, but they got home safe so that's overwith.

This morning comes. I wake up at 5:45, shower, put on some clothes including my favorite T-shirt (A Mt. Dew green shirt with the logo smack dab in the middle), pack up a few things and get ready to leave. "They" have been working on the highway system in our area for a few months now, and reports all told of the main highway, I-45, being shut down until 7am. Concerned, and leaving at 6:00 to get tyler by 7ish, and then get to the con by 9:30ish was the plan. I didn't get there to pick up tyler until about 8:30 because of traffic on the alternate routes because well i guess things were just busy. I find out when I get there while listenng to the traffic reports that they pulled all construction at 6 instead, and that I could've gone the highway route and saved a bunch of stress, but eh, ok, I'll let it slide. He's awake and ready to go, so we shove off. Says he had some breakfast and we picked up a few snacks, and he runs into the store with a 20. I told him to keep the changeso he could have a few bucks on his own for the con for vending machines and whatever.

Not a bad drive, and we get there at about 10:45ish which was pretty for the time I had expected to get there considering the delays in the morning. Get to the door, and I remember, "Oh yea, the person who bought my tickets is inside. I'll text her and let her know we're here". I realize that the cash I had in my wallet was enough to cover snacks for the ride + the ticket money for the tickets from the girl, but not after finding her inside after 20 minutes of searching, due to BOOST getting shit service in the convention hall and at Galveston beach entirely for some reason. I don't have enough money to give her for the tickets she got me, so we end up finding an ATM. the ATM had run out of cash, which I didn't find out until three attempts to withdraw without alert (resulting in three 4$ dings for withdrawl attempts and processes, even though they never actually occured). I also find out that the three cash withdrawls i had actually performed hit my account, and now i'm down 360$ which I had to call the bank and cancel (which was an ordeal). I got lucky and was able to get a cashback transaction from an ihop across the street, but it still took a lot longer than anticipated to take care of this. Process resolved, and I just checked my account and see that the transactions (+ the overdraft on the third) was lifted. Still out 12$, but whatever.

Oh, did I mention that the "tickets" was only 1 ticket? Yea, that was a fun fact. Didn't argue (and still thanked her profusely), i got it for a discounted rate anyway, so I just walked over to the main line back from iHop and asked if they had kids passes. Got lucky here, because the ticket I got from the girl was a Vendor pass, which comes with a free weekend pass for kids 12 and under. WHO'S TWELVE AND/OR UNDER FOR ANOTHER 27 DAYS? YOU GUESSED IT! Crisis averted. Kinda cool, that my Vendor Pass (which had my name as Starmine, pronounce Star-me-n) got my an extra, so it turned out to be worth the value of two tickets anyway. This process also took all of like 3 minutes, because the ticket staff at the front was pretty on ball, despite having a line as long as the East Coast. He even got to write his name on his weekend pass, which made him feel cool because he didn't really want to be Starmine. I kinda dig the name too.

At this point, it's 11:15, and Ty and I walk back in, and I find out that the Takeuchi autographs were bumped back from 4-5 to 3-4. Cool! We hit the vendors room for a bit and tyler picks up some Wall scrolls (FMA:Brotherhood, SAO:1 and Naruto Shippuden). Pretty neat, and fair priced. No objections here. Later events feature signings with Clarine Harp (China, from Hetalia), Junko Takeuchi (Mokuba, from YuGiOh, and Naruto, from Naruto obvs) among others. Even ProJared has been there, and he and I have had a few conversations that I certainly don't regret. I even found out that a friend from our town is down there doing cosplay for a contest. I heard he was going to be out of this one, but he went anyway. Neat surprise. He was staying at the hotel next door, and planned to come down by around noon to say hey because he was there the previous night and obviously partied way to hardie in the LARP room.

I notice that since we had walked in and handled the ticket fiasco, that Tyler's just kinda seeming off. Turns out that he did not eat breakfast, and just said that so I wouldn't worry. His snack included barbecue chips which I wouldn't condone as satisfying for a meal, but food was surprisingly scarce at this con (Nothing like the one back in '07, which had six flipping sushi vendors). I get him a bit of fruit and he noms on that while we go into an event. He sits and noms, and the show starts.

The Ninjalympics

Clearly a parody of the Laugholympics, this was like Cards Against Humanity's gameshow hosts pulling random audience members up for strettttttched Ninja-related physical challenges. Balancing a cup of water on your head while others try to make you laugh, tossing rings shaped like ladies' parts (actually just oval rings) onto the long hard rods of their chosen male partner, you get the idea. Tyler's chuckling, which is a good sign, and I end up getting pulled up to do a challenge involving keeping a balloon airborne without the use of my hands. I can knock down others balloons with my hands though. I was part of a team of 4, against another team of 4. Neat enough. Nobody else went for someone's balloon for the entire thing, and people were dropping like flies on both teams. 2:2 became a thing, and I tell my partner that i'm going to try to spike down the other team's balloon since they weren't really even looking. He gets ready to help back me up, and I knock mine into the air really high and make a mad dash for one of theirs. Turns out, an event that occured prior to me arriving resulted in water being on the floor, and I stepped in it while charging. I didn't slip, managed to spike the guy's balloon to the ground, and returned to mine only to barely touch it with my foot like a soccer player would kick...only, my body kept going. My wet shoe slid on the solid concrete floor and I took a dive in a way that Wile E Coyote would've fallen on an ice skating rink, smacking my head and my back on the ground pretty damn hard. Well, we ended up winning (Some lollipops, go figure, sugar for a bunch of ADD people at an Anime Con. Clearly the food of champions). Proud, and surprisingly not hurting anywhere aside from my ankle surprisingly, I walk back to tyler and sit down while they do the last part of the event. Our team wins and we do a group picture, simple enough. It'll be on FB later if I can dig it up.

Things weren't right though. Tyler the entire time despite nomming, wasn't seeming any better. Turns out he was also awake at 5am because [he still won't tell me why, maybe hype maybe CoD I'm not sure], so we go leave to get some food, thinkign he just needs a meal and to rest a bit. Snapped a few pictures while walking back to the door of the only known fire emblem cos that was actually at the con via registration at the time (according to the sign-in sheet that I saw, which was organizing registrants by their identifiable cos (A Chrom, two Lucinas and a Henry), and they happened to have the "F" page up for anime/game/others) RainForest Cafe was his desired place of lunch but...65 minute wait. Ihop next, 35 minute wait. We end up just getting back in the car and looking for a place up the road. We get to a Sonic, order some popcorn chicken (his favorite) and stuff, he eats, then promptly passes out in the car. I'm not going to go back to the con with tyler obviously exhausted/not feeling well, so we head back. It's 12 noon. We get back to his (mom's) apartment at 5:15. This was supposed to have been a drive totaling about about a 75-90 minute drive (as per earlier), but the highways were evidently clogged to their seams with traffic. Why? Someone ran out of gas and was deep in the left shoulder and everyone had to see. 45 miles of literally 0-5mph backup because of this. Tyler wakes up right when we get back to the apartment and seems to be feeling some better. We head up and open the wall scrolls, and he's pretty happy with them. He thanked me for taking him down and was happy with them, but didn't seem to clear out of his funk, so I stayed there for a bit (since ExWaifu and Lexi were out). They got back and I spent some time with the gang there. Tyler started feeling better, and I got to assemble a new toy for Alexis. Always happy with this. Got some snarky comments from Cindy regarding things like how I'm pretty much not a man because I attend anime cons once every decade, and because I use the words "disputable" and "ascertain" and "gentleman" in normal everyday conversation. I can't begin to explain how much I question her constant hypocrisy and choice of context and stuff, but, that's for another day.

Left there at a few minutes after 6, and took the highway to get home, after hearing that highway construction would resume at 7. Well, radio reports were wrong, and after getting stuck for about 20 minutes, I took an alternate route, which ended up having a power crew cutting trees along power lines which had the road blocked entirely for quite a while...worst power crew seriously Villager could've done it better. My 60 minute return trip home ended up taking an extra hour which was fun, and I get home to check my mail and find two tickets for running a tollbooth, which I didn't actually do. Turns out, during the divorce, assets were seized, meaining I couldn't transfer ownership of the van that Ex-Waifu drives/owns over to her. She got those tickets a few weeks ago while we were still legally together, and the van was still legally mine, so looks like I gotta go through a third appeals and see if I can't get this straightened out. She still hasn't taken care of the first offense from May that came under my name, but I think I got that one resolved. I'll find that one out in a few days hopefully.

SO, This has been the chronicles of Elie's Crazy Weekend. All in all, it was worth it, because the kids are safe and had good times doing what they did. I'm just exhausted and possibly concussed or something from the fall I think (Might explain occasional visual fuzziness and headaches that I've literally started having after I finished driving and got home). I know like nothing about concussions but someone said it to me earlier so I just dunno.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
euklyd Newbie

euklyd

Posted
Posted

also, people who have read my LP: Do I post too many screenshots? I feel like I shouldn't be running in to the image post limit....

I literally run into the image limit several times per update on average

even without all the small images (which sf really ought to optimize j/s) it probably approaches 60 screenshots per update at least

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...