Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in The Wizard of Aus' LiveJournal:

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Monday, March 12th, 2007
2:04 am	Found out today that a fellow associate died - one I sort of liked/was familiar with, too. Wrote about it here. Findings: 55 cents 2 pencils (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 10th, 2007
9:36 pm	Quiet day. But much to do tonight. Objectives: Get Ozma myspace back up to 2,000 + pending friends DL Simstuff DL SimPE new version Play Drakengard 2 Findings: Bubble wand baton Green Giant cotton gloves 56 cents (Comment on this)
Friday, March 9th, 2007
9:26 pm	Haven't really been writing in this as much as I should - I've been writing on my Gather page lately, though. If you're reading this, go look at that. Been trying out the Sims Seasons on L's computer, might do something interesting with that eventually. I really wish I wasn't always tired... Findings (today/yesterday): Battered old blue wallet (empty) Light blue ultra fine point Sharpie Golden Sharpie Green mini Sharpie Mechanical pencil 33 cents (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 1st, 2007
9:24 pm	I'm really tired, but hopefully I'll get done what I decided I wanted to work on tonight - playing some old games and maybe getting some reviews done for them. And the usual stuff. Maybe later after I get more energy. Findings: Metal toy truck Flower earring Sharpie marker 30 cents (Comment on this)
Monday, February 26th, 2007
9:43 pm	So tired. So very, very tired. So many things to work on. So little awake time. So much to do. Blargh. Findings: 37 cents (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 25th, 2007
9:47 pm	I'm still not fired yet. That's good, right? Today went by mostly uneventfully, aside from an incident with a co-worker that was rather annoying. I also ran into the store manager a few times, and he didn't have anything to say (except 'hey, can you take these boxes, please?' in regards to some cardboard cases for the trash), so I'm assuming that Wal-Mart has decided on a strategic retreat for the time being. I may be on the knife's edge of termination, but at least it doesn't seem to be about to happen for any non-random reason. Which is good - it gives me time to prepare for the still-very-likely termination. I figure that there's a good chance that if they ARE trying to force me out, this'll have given them a reason to pause for a month or so - and if not, then hopefully I can at least last until my tax refund arrives and replenishes my savings. Considering that, in theory, Wal-Mart could try to prevent me from receiving unemployment for up to five weeks or so, it'd be nice to not starve to death in the interim should that come up. I've decided that it wouldn't really hurt to start organizing my various meanderings about Wal-Mart into some form of literature; if nothing else,Lulu.com does publication, and I'm sure I could find at least a fewpeople willing to purchase it if it were well edited, so why not?  Findings: Bracelet Hairclip 73 cents (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 24th, 2007
9:29 pm	Mm. Well, I'm not fired... yet. Apparently, though, the store manager left the building sometime less than an hour and 45 minutes after I passed him the letter, so no sign as to whether tomorrow will be catastrophic or not. I'm thinking not, but you never know. Still, this is as good a motivation as any to start JobQuest: The Quest for a Job That Doesn't Suck. Or, at least, isn't in retail. So on my days off, I think I'm going to be working on job searching. If I can maintain my current job until I get my fully-vested status (whoopee) and the MyShare bonus for the year and whathaveyou, so much the better... but it's definitely time to have an exit strategy. Setting aside enough money for expenses if I suddenly am jobless and with absolutely no income, figuring out what jobs I can get and what I'd need to train for, and so on is definitely something I need to be working on... Findings: Orange sharpie highlighter Bic Velocity pen 49 cents (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
7:18 pm	Prolific day. Okay, I didn't find anything today, because I spent the day at home. But hey, check this out... Games: Word Association (#002) GamerArc: Konami Live! Konami Arcade Collection Meanwhile, at the Drunken Ogre... Games: The Chain Game (#006) Commercialist: Verizon Wireless Five articles so far today. Which is good, because I've posted nothing in the previous two days. Maybe with some inspiration, I'll get one more done before midnight. The more the merrier, right? Current Mood: creative (Comment on this)
1:53 am	Bah. Haven't been keeping up with journaling lately... been tired, though. Very, very tired, and none too thrilled about the working world. Things I should get done with by Wednesday / work on over the next two days / tonight: Get Salvation Road second episode transcribed/posted on website Work on RP plots Work on Granite City character sheets/site Work on Arcydea site Write GamerArc: Konami Live! review Write Wal-Martians: An Associate's Guide to Co-Workers Write down notes about Fluid Core concept so it gets out of my head Work on Myspaces Sort through game notes/copy things down Copy random ideas into Gather, call 'em articles, and hope for the best Clear out Gather group spam Findings: 62 cents A big bouncy ball A Kenneth Cole men's watch A Motorola power? adapter thingy (Comment on this)
Monday, February 12th, 2007
9:34 pm	Nothing to say here. It's my Friday. Need to rest. Findings: Utility knife Bouncy ball 2 candies 56 cents (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 11th, 2007
9:24 pm	Another day, another step closer to getting fired from Wal-Mart. And another round of listening to my brain remind me of how most everything unfortunate in my life stems from my many personal character flaws. Fortunately, the depression has burned out, and now I'm just tired. The power went out for about ten minutes at our store today. That's about as close to having a good day as I got. Store was extremely busy thanks in part to fears of an upcoming snowstorm. (Supposedly, according to people at work, we might get as much as a couple of inches of accumulation. ooh. scary.) Findings: $6.11 (including a $5 bill) 6 candies Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 10th, 2007
10:55 pm	Akir and the Lady Jeanne... I attempted to write a story today, just to see if I could. I wasn't fond of the results. I got about half a story - more like a quarter of one - and then some random rambling about items for games or whathaveyou. My brain doesn't seem to like to focus on any one project for long unless it requires little actual thought. Irritating brain. Akir and the Lady Jeanne, part 1 Findings: 72 cents A pen A little rubber gecko (Comment on this)
Friday, February 9th, 2007
9:31 pm	Still tired. Today wasn't quite as bad as yesterday, but I did get 'a discussion' which 'was written down' because I didn't clean something up quite as well as a manager wanted. Fuck them. Too tired to fucking care, just marginally not too tired to manage to be civil and avoid saying something catastrophic to my employment. Still, this is my journal, so I'll say it here. Fuck them, fuck their random side projects, fuck their desire for scrubbing year-old grime off a floor that won't come up with a mop, and fuck their alarm over a moist floor (no, not wet, not 'soaking', but fucking moist!) without a 'hey, this floor might make you slip if you're wearing frictionless soles and running and ...' no, it wasn't even wet enough for that. Fuck them. Findings: 30 cents Mechanical pencil (Comment on this)
1:35 am	Long, bad first day back. very tired. fucking hate dip and the dips who break dip jars. Findings: 3 pens 22 cents (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
4:38 pm	The Wizard don't know nothin'. The Wizard don't know nothin' 'bout Super Mario 3. Seriously. Watch that movie. Then tell me you're good at playing video games. I dare you. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 5th, 2007
6:46 pm	So full of anger. I have spent the past four hours with a persistent migraine to add to my usual complaints of neck pain, back pain, etc. Why? The girls. First, for about an hour, they decided to be very loud and shrill and 'playful'. Then, for a half hour, they yelled and screamed and cajoled in an attempt to convince L to take them to Wal-Mart after the visit to the doctor's. All the way to the doctor's, they yelled and babbled and fought. There, there is blessed silence for awhile, followed by a trip to Wal-Mart, since they've almost sort of kind of not-really-but-at-least-maybe-they'll-be-quiet been good enough. We tell them they've got a half hour, though we might let them stay longer if they bring us out a drink first. A half hour later, we call them up (they have a cell phone) and they claim 'they'll be right out.' A half hour after THAT, I have to go in looking for them - perhaps luckily, they got outside shortly after I went in. One decides, on the way out, that she wants to stop and get stickers from a vending machine, then gets pissed when I won't let her. The ride home features snarky bitching about how rude and horrible we are, interspersed with claims that they're spitting on the interior of the new car to spite us for not letting them roll down the windows. (Incidentally, it's about fifteen degrees outside.) I really, really am not very fond of teenagers right now. Blood pressure: 140 over 88, 89 beats per minute. I'm a little stressed. Right now, unsurprisingly, the kids are busy trying to convince my mother-in-law (and L) that it's mostly our fault for being so irrational, and that they should have the right to scream at us and treat us like garbage without any form of recompense. I really dislike this. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
8:02 pm	Random access memories Definitely staying home to take care of L for another week - even the doctor recommends it. L's kinda worried, mostly because -I'm- kinda worried on the money thing, but... eh, can't help worrying. It's in my blood. If everyone here were content to live on 77c pizza and 33c ramen cups, that'd be one thing, but people who aren't me generally seem to object to such a diet. I'm working on helping L get Gather friends - I'd like to try my hand at it myself someday, maybe after we see how it goes for L. I like sharing my opinions, and getting paid for them eventually would be nice. And if nobody really reads it, at least I can tell nobody's reading by the lack of points. Heh. I recieved an odd mail this morning - apparently, I, L, Nikki, and Jim 'play funny'. We tend to build scenes that are open but already include a second person, or scenes where two people are carrying on a conversation through tags... however, I don't really see how this is something the rest of the comm isn't already doing. Mm. I don't think I'm handling things very well lately - conversations, sudden sources of stress, and the like. I really wish it wasn't that way, but lately it's getting to the point where I'm not really sure whether I'm hurting people's feelings, upsetting them, or whatnot. I explained some of my past to the girls today, since they were asking. Never really a fun thing. My mother is a pathetic spendthrift witch with occasional Christian tendencies and the desire for kinky sex; my father is a fairly reasonable guy who has a profound chivalry complex. And like it or not, I have to wonder how much of their traits I've inherited. I know about the berserker behavior, and the bad temper... meh. I've never received a bad psych eval that I know of, but I do worry sometimes. Findings: 2 cents (Comment on this)
Monday, January 29th, 2007
7:19 pm	Ups and Downs Today was full of ups and downs. All in all, I can't complain too heavily - the ups do outweigh the downs - but the emotional rollercoaster effect is pretty hard on the system... Down: Last night, I asked where the adapter for the DS was. Turns out L unplugged it because it was poking her before bed, and put it 'somewhere'. After much worry about it that night and the next morning, Up: I found it while attempting to remove some tangled yarn from the floor in an attempt to clean up the room a little. Then we prepared to head out Down: with the kid who stayed home because she hadn't gotten around to finishing her report and needed twenty-five facts from books because 'her teacher was going to check the library for them', so we had to drop her off at the library Up: but before we left, we received a surprise package from the UPS, which contained, of all things, a new LCD monitor (fucking awesome)!, Down: and then went to drop off the kid at the library, after dealing with her nagging request to play the DS and her many complaints about how the Dell package hadn't been her DS, Up: then went to Applebee's for lunch (I received a $25 gift card as a present from a coworker for Christmas shortly before all of this), and exchanged my coins for $19.20 in less changely change and cashed L's Rilo Kiley check, Down: then went to pick up the library girl , and the other kid from home (who both decided to fight and scream over who got to play the DS / whose turn it is, nevermind that it's my/L's DS and half the time we don't get to play with it), Up: and went to the corner store to fax L's W9 form and for the kids to purchase some candy/etc (which they shared, which was good), Down: and then to the chiropractors, where the kids and L got crunched and cracked, and where L found out that her CAT scan had indeed turned up some irregular results that hopefully aren't cancer, but resulted in a referral to go see a medical doctor (nice of the hospital not to mention that), Up: and then to my workplace, where I dropped off the 'please don't fire me, I'm on a leave of absence' form and got some two-liters so we'd have something to drink, Down: and then towards home, where the kids were loud all the way there (and Brenda decided to announce that 'all religions are Christian' because they all believe in a higher power - which resulted in debate on the subject until L broke down into nervous crying), Up: but then we got home and everyone went to their own parts, and I settled in to install the monitor and recover two of our speakers that had fallen behind the desk, Down: and got it installed only after a lot of painful contortions and twists, and some help from the kids in getting the ponderous old monitor out of the way and eventually out of the room, Up: but the new one is so fucking sleek it's awesome, Down: but I'm so tired and ragged out and emotionally and physically shaky and L kinda thinks I'm mad at her because I've been stressed most of the day and I should really really really take some medication, but all I've got prescribed is Zantac and naproxen anyhow. So I'm kinda dazed... I can't really say it's a bad day, though, because I'm finally looking at a screen that isn't blue, and goddamn if that isn't worth SOMETHING. My eyes are actually unused to it at this point. To whoever got that for us... thank you. THANK YOU. Now to relax... Current Mood: stressed (1 Comment |Comment on this)
1:17 am	http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/26/school.conspiracy.ap/ My kids talk about killing people every day when they're pissed off. Can we have -them- taken to a juvenile facility? Eesh. (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 27th, 2007
4:40 pm	Help us out and make an offer? We offer shipping within the U.S. by Media Mail, Parcel Post, First Class Mail, and Priority Mail; internationally, we offer shipping via International Economy, Airmail, and Global Priority. Shipping prices will depend on weight of total objects purchased, and will be figured out after you decide what you want. Item condition and other relevant details available on request; most of these are objects we've owned and are in usable, but not great condition. Books: Ghost Ship by Diane Carey (a Star Trek: The Next Generation paperback) Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells (paperback) The Secret of the Old Mill by Franklin W. Dixon (a Hardy Boys Mystery Story, hardcover) The Book of Fours by Nancy Holder (a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel, hardcover) A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink (paperback) The Paper Doorway by Dean Koontz (hardcover) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (Barnes and Noble Classics edition, paperback) Don't Stand Too Close To A Naked Man by Tim Allen (paperback) Nothing Human by Ronald Munson (hardcover) Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart (hardcover) Under Contract by Liza Cody (an Anna Lee Mystery, hardcover) E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet by William Kotzwinkle (hardcover) Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian (paperback) A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales, by Dean King (paperback) The Fighting Agents, by W.E.B. Griffin (a Men at War novel, hardcover) From a Buick 8, by Stephen King (hardcover) Economics Principles and Policy, by William J. Baumol and Alan S. Blinder (Sixth Edition, hardcover) The Sum of All Fears, by Tom Clancy (hardcover) My Teacher is an Alien, by Bruce Coville (paperback) The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, by Dav Pilkin (Scholastic, paperback) Just Wacky!, by Andy Griffiths (Scholastic, paperback) Just Disgusting!, by Andy Griffiths (Scholastic, paperback) Just Stupid!, by Andy Griffiths (Scholastic, paperback) Just Joking!, by Andy Griffiths (Scholastic, paperback) Henry and Ribsy, by Beverly Cleary (Scholastic, paperback) Sorceress of Darshiva, by David Eddings (Book 4 of The Malloreon, paperback) Storm Breaking, by Mercedes Lackey (Book 3 of The Mage Storms, paperback) Orc's Opal, by Piers Anthony and Robert E. Margroff (fourth book of the Adventures of Kelvin the Rud, paperback) Starless Night, by R. A. Salvatore (Forgotten Realms, paperback) The Warlock of Rhada, by Robert Cham Gilman (paperback) E. T. the Extraterrestrial in his adventure on earth, by William Kotzwinkle (paperback) Famous Spaceships of Fact and Fantasy ... And how to model them (paperback) The Ruby Knight, by David Eddings (hardcover) Blue Deep, by Layne Heath (hardcover) Acceptable Losses, by Irwin Shaw (hardcover) Merchants of Debt: KKR and the Mortgaging of American Business, by George Anders (hardcover) Re-inventing the Corporation, by John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene (hardcover) Competing for the Future, by Cary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad (hardcover) Nella, by John Godey (hardcover) All The Dead Were Strangers, by Ethan Black (hardcover) Life Strategies, by Phillip C. McGraw, Ph.D. (hardcover) Boiled in Concrete, by Jesse Sublett (a Martin Fender mystery, hardcover) Ya-Yas in Bloom, by Rebecca Wells (hardcover) Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, by Rick Sternback and Michael Okuda (paperback) RPG Supplies: Dragon Magazine #184 ("Nonplayer characters have fun, too.") AD&D 2nd Edition Dragonlance Tales of the Lance Box Set (contains World Book, maps, intact miniatures/character cards book) Encyclopedia Magica c.1993, Volume Four (Theories on Converging Transitions to Zweiback of Zymurgy, paperback) Star Trek: The Role Playing Game Basic Game Box Set (c 1983) The White Flame Starship Combat Scenario Pack (supplement for Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator) An Imbalance of Power (adventure for Star Trek: The Role Playing Game) Graduation Exercise (adventure for Star Trek: The Role Playing Game) The Mines of Selka (adventure for Star Trek: The Role Playing Game) Romulan Ship Recognition Manual (supplement for Star Trek: The Role Playing Game) The Magic Encyclopedia, Volume One (AD&D 2nd Edition, by Connie and Dale "Slade" Henson) The Complete Book of Humanoids (AD&D 2nd Edition, missing cover) Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (AD&D 2nd Edition, contains Cyclopedia of the Realms, DM's Sourcebook of the Realms, maps, transparent overlays) AD&D 2nd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide (hardcover) AD&D 2nd Edition Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide (DMG Rules Supplement) Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: World Builder's Guidebook (DMG Rules Supplement) Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Sages and Specialists (DMG Rules Supplement) AD&D 2nd Edition Arms and Equipment Guide (DMG Rules Supplement) Games: Scene It?, the DVD Game (in metal box) War of the Ring (based on J.R.R. Tolkein's 'The Lord of the Rings, c1977) VHS Tapes: The Truman Show Squanto: A Warrior's Tale A Nightmare Before Christmas O Brother, Where Art Thou? Apollo 13 Death Takes a Holiday The Big Lebowski Mouse Hunt Mother Night Other: Network Everywhere Cable/DSL 4-Port Router (model NR041) with AC adaptor We have plenty more books, RPG supplements, tapes, etc, but I've run out of space to put things so that I can get to them to ship them to people for now. (No, seriously, there's now a large stack in the corner of the room of this stuff, and if we add any more, it's probably going to fall over.) (Comment on this)