Retract... Refocus... Recover... Reemerge... Represent!

Okay... It's been longer than I anticipated since an update, so I figure anyone who is "listening" (all 34 of you) might actually want to know what is happening in Gopherland...

A few months back we had another game store open up in town. It is a franchise of a small chain from a nearby city, owned by two guys, who honestly, are pretty good people. This store makes three game stores in town. In the 35+ year history of gaming in this community, I have never known the community to be able to support that many retail game establishments for terribly long. When this store opened, I knew we would take a hit. What I didn't know was how big of one... The hit has far exceeded my expectations...

I had an inkling of the trend a month ago, but didn't want to believe it could get much worse than what it was. I was wrong. Sadly, because of this, I had to do something I desperately didn't want to do. We laid off three employees, and cut hours to the other two (besides me) in an effort to stop the bleeding. Truthfully, I should have done this a month ago when I first witnessed the trend. I, however, don't like to let people I call my family down. It makes me ache inside...

That said, if our business is to survive, I did what I had to do, and on some level, I hate myself for it. Now that it's done, it is time to get back to the task at hand, and that is righting the ship...

• Retract - With the layoffs, we've just done this to some degree. There is a little more room to go if necessary, though I am truly loathe to do to it.
• Refocus - Left with a crew of myself, Loquacious, Skribl, and Snowlady, the workload just increased for all of us, and yet there's still a store to put back on track. Lo, Skribl, and myself have already begun tossing ideas about. We've also taken some input from some of the regulars and former employees. An attack plan is forming, and we hope to have enough things in place to enact it, at least in part, by the beginning of December.
• Recover - This is the long stage where we take back what we consider ours. I'm not one to begrudge anyone their success, and we're willing to share nicely, but not to the point of endangering our business. Sorry. Not happening.
• Reemerge - This stage is where we begin to reacquire some (if not all) of the family members that have been left by the wayside due to the recent happenings. This WILL happen... sooner, rather than later if I have anything to say about it.
• Represent! - Gopher Mafia REPRESENT!!! Weather the storm, come out not only none the worse for wear, but stronger than ever, our family by our side...

We've taken the first few steps, and more will be taken in short order. Do not, however, wish us luck.

Where we're going, we don't need luck...

-- GopherDave

The Weight of the World...

Things in Gopherville are okay as they stand. My psyche is having issues, but that is nothing new at this stage. I'm not going to over it too much here. I'm just trying to vent a bit...

I've semi-fixed a missing item issue that cropped up yesterday, when said item was to ship. Turns out our order for the item got lost in the system and we were kind of s**t out of luck. That made me into Stab-Man for a bit, but as usual, I persevered and found an answer. The solution will be here in about four business days, but it beats waiting 2-4 weeks for a "potential" restock of said item.

The other issues going on are minor, but there are a lot of them. It's the collective weight that's making it difficult.

On happier news... I should be able to do some work on Tai'eres in the next day or so in anticipation of tomorrow night's run. We ended the very beginning "plot arc" of completing a caravan run through three villages. Next up, well... I have some ideas that need to be fleshed out.

One final note, I have been listening to a *LOT* of Ghost/Ghost BC lately, an odd band from Sweden whose Satanic tongue is planted VERY firmly in their collective cheeks. Ostensibly a metal band, this group sounds NOTHING like its image and/or origin point indicates it should. Take a 1970's rock groove, add King Diamond-esque high-range vocals (minus the screams), and make all the songs about the devil himself. Personally, I walk with God, but I am no longer a member of any church as I refuse to subscribe to any form of "groupspeak". The good Lord gave me free will and the ability to think for myself, and I aim to exercise those gifts to their fullest. Hence, I can enjoy "Satanic" rock'n'roll to my heart's content, for I know where my heart truly lies...

To Blog Or Not To Blog...

...That is the question I have been asking myself lately.

I first started this blog a couple of years back as sort of a "self-accountability" journal for a wardrobe upgrade. For over a year and a half, I pretty much stayed true to the idea. Over the past six months, with the move of the store and everything else, I have slid back into the t-shirt/jeans/shorts/sweats that I wore in the beginning. I really don't know what has been happening to cause this, though I have some ideas.

This past summer was hot... very hot. Hot enough that wearing the whole shirt/tie/sweater vest combo would pretty much cause me to melt in the seven to ten minutes it takes me to get to the store.

The move to a bigger store has me doing more behind-the-scenes work and less actual in-front-of-customer counter work. In fact, my work load has grown and shifted enough that I rarely have time to put on the entire outfit anymore. I barely have time to get out of bed and get to the store to start my day. The larger store also has me feeling a bit like a fish out of water. We've grown the new store to its current size, and we're proud of it, but sometimes I feel very ill-equipped to handle it. I'm not one to give up control easily, but I almost have to if I am to focus more on the business, and less on the storefront. None of this sits well with me.

I am feeling like I have taken on more than I can handle. Yes, we have more help than usual, but with more people in the mix comes more drama. Plus, it's bad enough that there is (and always will be) internal drama, but with a new competitor opening recently, it has created more EXTERNAL drama. I won't lie. I'm not a big fan of real-life drama. Make-believe drama is just fine. Hell, I *LOVE* make-believe drama. I'm a die-hard role-player...

F**K, that's it... I have stumbled over why I have been absolutely losing it for the last few months. I haven't been getting much role-playing in from the player's side of the screen. Shady's Terracide game has been sporadic over the last six months as work and health issues have beset him a bit, plus he's been busy converting the whole setting over to another game system for publishing again. The next time we are scheduled to play will be on the 28th of this month. The last time we played was on the 3rd of August. That will be *EIGHT* weeks between sessions, and given how sporadic things had been prior to that, it is no wonder I am losing my God-Damned mind. Have I mentioned that it is the only game I play in currently? I run two others, but Terracide is the only game I participate in as a player...

GAHHHHH... Writing as catharsis...

-- GopherDave

Coming Out Of Hibernation...

Okay... I've been away for a while. My apologies for that, but all the drama bombs I had spoken about previously pretty much paled in comparison to what has been happening lately... A great deal has happened as of late, much of which has had my guts tied up in knots.

I wish I could put things in nutshells to explain, but most of them are not short stories... Here are some highlights, though...

• Mostly due to the two of us being very much alike, I almost completely destroyed my relationship with my son. It is on the mend now, but it is not out of the woods, yet...
• We have another game store joining us in the confines of C-U. It is a franchise of a chain not known to be amiable to their competition. In this case I know one of the franchisees on a cursory basis, and we welcome healthy, friendly competition, as it makes the scene better as a whole. This does give us three game stores in the area, and I've never known the local scene to support that many for too terribly long. We shall see...
• In addition to trying to fix my Champions game, I am gearing up to run yet another set of games in my home-brew fantasy setting, Tai'eres. Yeah, because I have TONS of spare time lying around for that...
• One of my ex-roommates passed away in his sleep at the age of 52. We haven't been close for a while, but his passing was a blunt reminder of my own mortality. Stupid mortality...

In the middle of everything, I have become a big ball of stress, which makes me very prone to a heart attack. I have had heart issues all my life, and I can pretty much recognize when my heart is prime to start giving me problems. I am not where I was roughly fifteen years ago, but I am at a close enough stage where I could will myself into a heart attack should I desired to.

I did that a couple of times as an adolescent, with one time requiring defibrillation. I can say this with the certainty that comes from personal experience... Avoid being defibrillated at all costs. It sucks the high, hard one. Basically, every muscle in your body is electrically forced to contract simultaneously at the moment of shock, and let me tell you... That. Shit. Hurts.

So, as I have typed this, and writing has become catharsis, I have come to the resolution to care about only what I can control, which is the direction I take socially with my family and friends, how I react to adverse situations that require my attention, and the direction our business takes. Beyond that, well...

...it just isn't worth the stress and the energy...

peace... GopherDave

Woof...

One... I know it's been a bit since I posted a picture, but it's been a nasty combination of hot and humid here the last couple of weeks, so I've been slumming it. Two, looking at this picture, I am beginning to realize that this is one of my favorite shirt/tie/sweater combinations. I wear it a lot compared to others. I'll have to watch that...

It's been a bit since I posted, so I thought I'd update some folks...

The Champions game is supposed to start tomorrow/later tonight (it is late as I'm writing this), but I have one player who still needs to build/finish his character. The player has a solid concept of what he wants to do, but he's new to the game system, and Champions Complete, for all it purports to be, is really kind of lacking in several areas (most notably examples). I will watch the store for the early part of the day, then try and sit down with him and get the mechanics for what he's trying to do knocked out.

I also am down yet another player. This brings the game to four. I originally wanted six players for the game, but given the experiment I was undertaking, having one guy drop out to bring the group to five was kind of a blessing. Now we are down to four. I have players waiting in the wings, but there is at least one of them that is not getting anywhere near my table again.

This player had played in one of my previous games and it was all I could do not to strangle him. On a personal level, this individual is not a bad person. Far from it, in fact. In game, though, this individual is the worst metagamer I have EVER encountered in 36+ years of role-playing. Frequently, there would be scenes that his character would have ZERO clue to know about and literally ZERO reason to be even be involved in, but this player would try to storm the scene with some bullshit reason and literally force the character FOR WHOM THE SCENE WAS WRITTEN/PLOTTED FOR out of the picture. I tried talking to him nicely... then firmly... then... I just gave up the game because he sucked the fun out for everybody else at the table, me included.

This is where being the store owner puts me in a precarious position. I do not want to alienate *ANYONE* from my store for any reason if I can help it. Blowing up at a person over a game tends to do that if one is in the position I am in. Thus, instead of tearing into the person like I would normally do (because subtlety and tact are not things I'm good at), I just sort of quietly put games on hiatus. It kind of sucks, but what can I do?

Like I said earlier, the player in question is not a bad person, just a frustrating player to have at a table. I have had many a great conversations with him outside of games, and honestly would love to keep doing so. In fact, he is trying to start up his own game, and if I were not participating in another game already, I'd probably play. Why, you might ask? Well, simply put, some of the things that make him frustrating to deal with as a player are actually pretty good qualities for a GM. I honestly think he would pretty damn good at the head of the table.

Anyway, I need to get going and finish some things for later. Part of me wishes I weren't running the store in the morning, but someone has to... C'est la vie... =P

-- GopherDave

Sigh... More Of The Same...

Okay... got the new base in for the fixture in yesterday. Put the fixture together, but do nothing else with it for the evening. Get here today and put brackets, shelves, and product on the fixture. Things are okay. Three hours later, the fixture is doing the "Leaning Tower of Pisa". It seems that two of the casters gave out under the strain and decided to pull away from the particle board base upon which they mounted.

Took product off of the shelf, removed the two good casters, put the fixture back together sans wheels, put product back on the shelf, and called Store Supply Warehouse. Talked to them and they will ship out another base tomorrow. It will get here Tuesday due to the holiday.

When we put the fixture together, HiSign noted that the second based seemed different than the first. We just sort of shrugged and soldiered on. Wish we had listened to that hunch.

From a life standpoint, things continue apace. I really wish I wasn't as busy at the store as I have been as there are a number of things that sort of require my attention. I'll get through it, though. Always have... always do... always will...

-- GopherDave

Angry Gopher Is Angry...

Wow... To say I've had a bad twenty hours or so would be a huge understatement. I'm not going much into it other than that.

I will say that Store Supply Warehouse is both maddening and a champion with their customer service. Earlier today, due to some shenanigans with them, I was seriously considering arson, but they came through in the end. Basically, we had ordered some fixtures for the store just prior to the weekend. They showed up on Monday, a day earlier than expected. On Tuesday, HiSign broke the cases open to find the both of the bases for said fixtures were damaged enough that they could not be used. Called up SSW, they said "no problem", and shipped two more bases to arrive today. This morning, only one base showed up. In a rather hostile mood, I called them back to see what the deal was. The sales rep spoke to me, then to her manager, then came back to me and said "No worries. We'll ship out another base and it will be there later today around 5 or 5:30PM."

I was not surprised by the today part, because I was irate and rather insistent that be the case. I put the phone down, satisfied that things would be taken care of. Less than thirty minutes later, I get a call from SSW saying they found the missing base (U.P.S. damaged it before it even got on their delivery truck, so *THEY* had sent it back) and that my new one would be here tomorrow.

My face scrunched up a bit as I questioned this whole "tomorrow" thing after a representative of their company said a new fixture base would be here later today. The voice at the other end tried to tell me that would be impossible. Really? SSW is in St. Louis. We are in East Central Illinois. It is a four-hour drive. We are open until 11PM. It was Noon. From my perspective, they had an eleven hour window. That didn't seem impossible to me. Said representative insisted it couldn't be done. I disagreed. Vehemently. Asked to be kicked further up the chain. That person said it couldn't happen. I asked for the next level of employee. Got to the shipping manager. He also said that no one they deal with in terms of courier could make this happen. Once again, asked for the next level of management up. A few moments later, the shipping manager comes back on the line saying his boss is busy. My response... "I don't care if you have to send two guys with a U-Haul to bring me what we ordered. Your company said it would be here today. I'm holding you to that statement. (brief pause) Tell you what, put the owner of the company on the phone. I'll explain what has happened thus far and then you can explain to him why he is dealing with an upset customer."

(pause)

"Let me speak to my traffic manager about this. Maybe we can get someone we don't normally use. I will call you back within the hour."

It was 12:20PM at this point. About fifteen minutes later, I get a call back saying that while my part may not make it by 5:30PM, it would indeed be here today.

The courier rolled up at 4:50PM with an undamaged part.

See? Not impossible.

So, in short, will we use Store Supply Warehouse in the future? Probably. They won't be my first choice, as it took them five bases to get two undamaged ones here in a reasonable time frame, but they ultimately pulled their reputation out of the fire today after having stuck it in the inferno themselves. The fixtures that we got? They look good. When they are all assembled and product is on them, we'll take pictures.

Onward, angrily...

-- GopherDave

Currently *NOT* Abiding...

This morning started out on a... ubiquitous... note....

The boy came home to do laundry just as I went to step into the shower. Normally, this isn't a problem. We wash most things in cold water, and our water pressure is sufficient enough to handle both washing machine and shower at once. Today, he washed a blanket in hot water. In about five minutes after he started this my testicles were hanging out somewhere in my chest cavity trying to stay warm.

However, it gets better...

The blanket he was trying to wash is actually too large for our washing machine, and it gets wrapped around the agitator in such a way that it stalls the washer. Once I got done with what I had to do at the store, I went home to attempt to rectify the situation. It took me twenty minutes, but I managed to get the water-logged comforter out of the washer that was still half full with warm water. I also managed to coax the machine into a half-cycle to get it drained of water. I'm not certain if it's fully operational. I had yet another crisis to cope with...

My daughter's brand new laptop then decided to "twonk out" on her and not have a functioning mouse/touch pad. Just as I am getting things settled with the washer, she begins to lose her mind and melt down. Now I'm at a point where I am trying to get the girl to calm down long enough to let loose her death grip on the laptop so I can look at it and perhaps fix it. I manage to get her calm enough to let me have it before something else goes "horribly wrong" with it. Once I gave it a cursory examination, I poke a few buttons and it's as good as new.

The day before, both kids decided they wanted to argue with me over stupid things and then bail, saying *I* was an asshat and that I was wrong, and was frequently so, even if I never admitted such ever. On top of that, I had a couple of days with Loquacious where it seemed that everything I did (or didn't do) was wrong, and did nothing but annoy her.

Prior to the weekend, I was a giant ball of stress, anxiety, and depression due to a number of store-related things. Sunday and Monday did nothing to help the situation. I was within a hair's breath of rage-quitting life in general.

I know that as the father I am supposed to be more mature than this, and suck it up and keep slogging on. However, when the people who are supposed to be my partners in life basically treat me like persona-non-grata *IN MY OWN HOUSE*, it makes it very difficult to carry on. I also know that I should probably not put things on the public interwebs like this, but if I have no one else around to talk to about things that are bothering me, what else am I supposed to do?

Comment on this if you want... I'll likely not respond... Consider this a "dump-and-run" post...

It's about the only outlet I have left...

--Dave--

Holding It Together (With Help) Until I Can Crash Land...

There seems to be very in the way of an end in sight. Last night I went to bed early only to have my mind conjure up a bevy of old-school alarm clock sounds each time I placed my one good ear to the pillow. This is the second time in about two weeks that my brain has done this to me. The first time, my mind serenaded me with a cacophony of car horns. Either way, it made sleeping problematic.

Said lack of sleep has done *NOTHING GOOD* for my current mental state. I was in dire enough straits that Skribl came with me to help open the store and ease things until HiSign showed up a couple of hours later. Right now, HiSign has the counter while I'm tucked away in the back typing this. It will begin to get busy here in a couple of hours for Friday Night Magic, and I will need to be out there for that.

Saturday morning I will be opening for Skribl as he wants to play in the 40K Tourney we're having tomorrow. I don't mind so much, though it will mean that I will have gotten very little sleep once again. Later, I shall be playing Xia Ling-Xian, my crazy, racist, Asian bastard in Shady's Terracide game. It'll be much like last session as I will have gotten very little sleep to make this happen.

Overall, I need to make the merry-go-round stop long enough for me to get back on track mentally and get a better handle on what needs to be accomplished to make the store run better and *NOT* be the headache and stress inducer it's been lately.

-- GopherDave

Settling In And Cracking Up...

Okay... we've been here more than a month, and things still aren't as settled as I like. In that time, HiSign got a job elsewhere for twice what we were paying him *AND* benefits. He still works for us, but we are now working his schedule around his other job. It's totally understandable. He got a really *GOOD* job. That said, it means we are losing manpower at a time where we should be adding it, and we need to add it.

The new store is just too big for one person to cover well when it's busy. There is a lot of work that needs to be done, but we are slowly falling behind as business increases. I now have an office where I can do some of the behind-the-scenes work, but I frequently find myself on the floor helping customers due to the slow increase in business combined with the size of the store.

Am I regretting the move to a larger location? No, not really. The business was at a point where it *NEEDED* to grow as it had reached the maximum potential of the old spot. It's just taking me longer to adjust my mental paradigm to the new space and its requirements. I will not lie. The situation is causing me a great deal of stress, and my main mode of stress release (gaming) is something that I've hardly had the time to do as of late.

Perhaps the business has outgrown me and what I can do for it. That's definitely something to think about, but I'm almost afraid it will cause me more stress to do so.

Oyyy, vey... I think I'm going to do more work. It needs to be done and perhaps it will take my mind off of this...

-- GopherDave

P.S. -- In other news, we got more good press, and I don't sound like a raving lunatic... =P

Rule of Thumb...

If you buy an item to replace an item with a missing part, that part shall reveal itself in a relatively short order of time. I'm pretty certain this is to be case in point, today I bought a new (cheap) digital camera to use for blog pictures since I cannot find the charge cable for the one I had been using. Thus, when I go home tonight, the cable will miraculously reveal itself after being missing for the better part of two months.

That all said, I have a new camera. =P

We finally had the city inspectors out today, and it was far less of a hassle than I thought it would be. The two things we have to correct are moving a refrigerator to grant three feet of access space to our electrical breakers, and having the electrical work we had done inspected by an electrician that is licensed by the city to actually do the work. Never mind that the guy we had do the original work is union, a (very distant) relative, and been doing electrical work in the area for close to ten years. Nope, since he does not hold a license with A PARTICULAR CITY WHICH OUR BUSINESS IS SITUATED, his work is not good enough to pass without inspection by someone else. Oddly, this same municipality wonders why it has long-standing problems attracting businesses to set up shop within its confines. I'm not a politician, but this doesn't seem to be rocket science, folks...

Overall, though, those are minor nitpicks, and easy ones to fix.

Onward, into the hopefully-soon-to-be-regular-once-again breach...

-- GopherDave 

Revisiting A Theory...

Well... I was originally going to write this at the store on my laptop when I had a chunk of free time. Free time, however, turned into spend five hours trying to clean a variant of the "Sirefef.A" virus off of the laptop after a "drive-by" trojan dump...

*sigh*

I've done a couple of cleansings with Microsoft Security Essentials, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit Beta. I *believe* I have the machine pretty much clean, but I am not trusting it until our friend Ranger gives it a clean, bill of health.

Beyond that, life is peachy, with more bombs dropping faster than I can catch them in the buckets...

Anyway, the title of today's piece touches on an old adage of "if you look good, you feel good".

Now, since about November, I have been in a lingering malaise. Scratch that. I've been in a depression so deep the only entities keeping me from slitting my wrists while I'm high on LSD and listening to the Cure are my wife, kids, dog, and friends. Left to my own devices, there's a good chance this blog would have abruptly ended before the start of 2013. I was not left to my own devices, and Loquacious, Skribl, Pumpkin, and Dinero, among others, have helped to keep me going whether they know it or not. No lie. I was is a bad way...

During that time, I had begun to slide back in the direction of "Comic-Book Guy" from the Simpsons in regard to dress and demeanor. Normally, I'm pretty oblivious to my own shortcomings, but I did notice what was happening. I just didn't care. In that time, I could string two to four days of "uniform" together, but then it would be followed by two plus days of wearing/bathing whatever/whenever was convenient for me. My patience with customers was eroding, along with my sanity. Not good for business, and not good for the psyche...

This all said, I *AM* trying to get better. I am currently treating a severe Vitamin D deficiency, though I'm not certain it's doing any good. Plus, and if the bombs would stop dropping, I'd like to get back to the gym on a regular basis and drop the weight I've regained and then some. I believe the whole exercise thing alone would be a step back in the proper direction.

I just need for life to quit throwing curve balls at me for a couple of weeks...

Given what's going on currently, though, I think things are only just beginning.

Jeez, I hope there is a safety strap for this ride...

...And if I ever knowingly encounter the asshats that created the stupid computer virus infecting my laptop, I will set their scrotums on fire...

-- GopherDave

It Makes My Medulla And My Frontal Lobe Wrestle A Japanese Death Match...

I went out and bought the Avengers on Blu-Ray last night. Normally, I don't buy a lot of movies. The Avengers though, was a lot of fun, and it is something I will probably watch at least a dozen more times during my ownership of the disc. Last night was the first. Midnight release + 2.5 Hour movie + travel time to and from store = a very late night.

Today, got to the store and took in shipments. Nothing of major note came in. Most folks are sort of waiting for the Magic: the Gathering: Return to Ravnica storm to pass. Not Games Workshop though... Nope. Wanna guess when the new Chaos Space marine stuff comes in? Oct 6th. The same weekend as the release of the new MtG set. Now... Wizards of the Coast announces the release dates of new MtG product almost six months in advance. GW sent me an e-mail with a confirmed date yesterday, less than two weeks prior to release. So, most games stores are stuck with TWO heaping gobs of cash flowing out of the door on that same weekend instead of one. Yes, in this particular instance, 95% of the stores will make that money back in spades, but it still seems... I don't know... inconsiderate, and more than a touch unintelligent.

WotC makes no secret when new releases are happening. GW does. So wouldn't it make sense for GW to adjust those dates (that none of us supposedly know about) as needed to account for less overlap? Never mind the easing of financial burdens for their retail partners. Basically, going up against a new MtG release just makes your product the SECOND most talked about game release for the week, at best.

Some would argue that miniature gamers don't care about M:tG (or any other collectible card game), so GW shouldn't either, and for the most part, they would be correct. There is overlap, though, and those folks are pretty much forced to make a choice that week of simultaneous release. New cards that one can play with immediately, or new (albeit deadSEXY) models that one has to at least assemble, if not paint, before they see any use. Why make those customers with overlapping interests make that choice when it isn't necessary?

I'm not really trying to bash on Games Workshop here. I am just baffled by how they seem to think. With GW not confirming release dates until thirteen days prior, it affords them a sort of "market flexibility" that other companies choose not to have. Until they actually say anything, GW has the ability to avoid anything they see as major marketing interference that would keep their new releases from being THE ITEMS to be talked up during that week. So why don't they? Movie studios do it all the time. Don't want to go up against the Avengers or the Dark Night Rises? Push the release date around by a week or two. G-Dub could do the same thing. The only thing they would really have to change is to stop printing exact release dates in White Dwarf (which goes to press about three months early), and change it to printing a release "area" (coming September or September-October), or even a "coming soon".

Just some thoughts...

-- GopherDave

(Not) Just Another Day Of Nothing...

When I first started this entry, it was early in the morning, and with the exception of about six orders coming in and Friday Night Magic later tonight, I figured it to be a pretty normal day.

Then the small lightning storm hit at around noon or so, and the store lost Internet and the ability to take credit cards. Comcast was called. The tech showed up around 3PM. Looked at things and pronounced out wireless router was screwbarred, and it needed to be replaced. I scratched my head a bit given that we still had a wireless network, but the router and the cable modem were not on speaking terms, so I went with it and picked up a new router.

It wasn't the router...

Turns out, three of the four ports of the cable modem were blown and it needed to be replaced. Comcast said they would send someone out right away. I called back at 7:35PM and was assured that a tech would show up between 7:30PM and 11PM Friday night. At 11:05, I called them back as no tech had shown up... then things get ugly...

It turns out that they had NOT sent the request down the line, and that we had an appointment set up between 7:30AM and 10AM Saturday morning. That was the first I had heard about that particular appointment, and things spiraled from there as I ran into the most unhelpful people I've ever encountered in my life.

Apparently it was my fault for thinking they would be out on Friday night when not one, but two of Comcast's own representatives told me they would be.

The only good thing out of it was we were able to wrangle credit card capability out of the one working port, so we were not up the creek there.

I used to sing Comcast's praises. They honestly had not really given me a bad experience in terms of service before tonight. Tonight, though... Well... Let's just say that it has washed all goodwill away on that front...

-- GopherDave

Checking In...

Okay, it's been a bit.

Basically, the heat wave that I had though had broken ramped up to hotter, but less humid over the past week. The outdoors felt like being in a blast furnace. That's no place for a sweater vest. Yesterday wasn't so bad, but I woke up so late I didn't have time for much else than a t-shirt and shorts. Sue me...

The weather forecast states that the heat has broken for about the five days or so, and I will take advantage of this to go back to the "uniform" I prefer to present to customers while at the store.

Things at the store are progressing slowly. I am finding my way back to actually doing stuff again after taking a mental break. I think it is because I do see a break on the horizon and am sort of (guiltily) looking forward to it that I am getting back into the idea of doing work. Work-wise, I had kind of shut down, just needing a mental break from things. It's hard to do that when I have employees who want to work on projects they feel need to be done, but I am not ready for that stage of work to happen yet. They chomp at the bit, and in doing so unknowingly antagonize me, the person who is actually trying to feel like SOMETHING is getting cleared off of the plate before we add another helping on. Eventually, there's too much proverbial food on the table and I finally go "I'm full" and step away from "eating" altogether for a bit.

It's not the best defensive mechanism. It's moody, uncommunicative, and generally leaves people wondering "WTF, mate"? It is however, the only defensive mechanism I have that does not involve me either...

A) ...screaming incoherently at people who don't deserve it...

and/or

B) ...randomly wandering the countryside killing hookers with a spoon...

Jus' sayin'...

-- GopherDave

Still Checking...

Came into the store this morning to a clean virus scan. So far, so good. We are running a couple more with different programs, just to be certain.

Also, to place our credit/debit card-using customers at ease... The machine we use to process credit/debit transactions is, and has always been, separate and discrete from our point-of-sale system. There was talk of tying them together, but that never happened as I am lazy by nature and didn't follow through.

Now, I'm glad we didn't...

I have been talking with PC about locking down the browser to a few select web sites, and he stated that while it might help, the bulk of the malware he is seeing is being delivered via fake advertisements coming through services like Adclick and the like. If that's the case, then no one is truly safe from this crap, as web ads have become a part of daily Internet life. The malware propagators have found a truly ingenious and insidious way to dispense things to us, whether we want them or not.

We have now entered the era of Internet "pest control". We cannot stop them from getting in 100% of the time, so now we have to settle for killing them when they show up.

Ain't technological evolution grand?

-- GopherDave

Grumble...

I learned a lesson this morning... Nothing triggers a grumpy feeling faster than a missionary knocking on your door at 9:45AM when you are trying to get ready for work. Don't get me wrong. I'm a Christian. I love God. I *HATE* church, and I dislike anyone trying to sell church (or anything else for that matter) to me, regardless of the time of day. My basic take on solicitation and solicitors is this.. If I have not dealt with you in the past, please don't come asking me for my money/time now. It just interrupts my day.

I have found that owning a business, even one with a "No Solicitation" sign posted next to the door, just sort of attracts all sorts of folks who think that sign does not apply to them. People have walked into the store trying to sell me everything from perfume and cookies to long-distance service and direct advertising. There are times when I listen to their pitch, but for the most part, it falls under the heading of... "Did I call you? No. Have we ever done business before? No. Do you represent someone that I have done business with before? No. Then what the hell are you doing here?"

The best incident was a direct marketer for a local tire place who had two different representatives come into the store on the same day. Yes, these were college kids trying to make some money, but I'm not certain I care. I didn't appreciate it the first time they showed up, and it really upset me when another person selling the same thing walk through the door 40 minutes later. Why would anyone try to sell tires door-to-door?

Phone solicitors are sometimes just as bad. We once had ADT call us three times within a four-hour period to sell us alarm service. The first time, I politely asked them not to call us again. The second time I was less polite. The third time, I asked for a supervisor, and them promptly chewed them out for 15 minutes. They haven't called back since.

We've also had similar experiences with AT&T after we had dropped their service due to incompetence shown when we moved the store back in 2009 (Loquacious has 30+ pages documentation on that debacle). Representatives for AT&T kept calling trying to get us to switch back, even going to the point of offering us $600 in credit to do so. We kept refusing, and told them to stop calling. They didn't listen. Eventually, I had had enough and the poor girl on the other end of the next AT&T call really didn't know what had hit her when I began a profanity-laced tirade, demanded to speak to her supervisor, and told them in no uncertain terms that even if they gave us seven figures in cash, we wanted nothing more to do with them.

If I want something, I know what I need to do to make it happen. Folks that I call almost always get our business. Those that call us out of the blue, rarely do...

-- GopherDave

Routine *IS* Too Much To Ask For Sometimes...

Okay... just as things at the store is starting to settle back down at the store into some sort of routine, some other stuff is rearing its head that may force me to deal with it. I don't really mind, though. The matters in question are forcing me into the role of protector, which I am pretty good at in a lot of ways. Protection usually means that there is or is about to be conflict. I like conflict. I am *VERY* good at confrontation. Give me some reasons to be righteous in a conflict, such as having to protect someone I love, and I am in Heaven.

That all being said, I am actually going to look for a less confrontational way to resolve these matters first. Why? Well... when I get into a confrontational mindset, I tend to get a bit... brusque... and chaotic. The resulting chaos sometimes means that I inadvertently damage those I am trying to protect during the process of protecting them. I'm trying to avoid incidental damage if I can, and minimize it if I cannot.

It's a fine balance, and its a balance I don't always keep...

-- GopherDave

Day 205 of 362

Hey... The temperatures have cooled. Now it's only in the low 80s... Ummm, wow... That's kind of disturbing when I find 80-degree temperatures cool.

There's 40K on the agenda for today, so that means I get to leave early and let Loquacious take over the store. I'll go home and hang with the kids, and generally have a (hopefully) relaxing time of it.

I've been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out what to do with my games. One game, I've done a reset meeting on already, and it's helped the story, but it hasn't helped the attendance issue I'm having. The other game, needs a reset meeting, but only after this current story arc is done. It's just about there, but we're having some other issues with it in terms of real life jumping in the way.

I've got a couple of other issues bouncing through my skull, and I'm not certain I want to blog about them yet. The original thoughts started out on a sociological tangent (my minor in college) and in short order morphed into something a touch more personal, and then headed off into another related social tangent.

Screw it, it's on my mind so I'll do it now...

I was looking at the local crime reports and read where a 63-year old cab driver was assaulted by a non-paying customer not too far from where we live. I was thinking about it and realized there were two types of people who would do something like that. One type doesn't WANT to pay, the other type CAN'T pay. Either way, they got into the cab KNOWING that they had no intention of paying, and used violence to get their way.

While I was pondering this, I looked out the window and saw two young, African-American men walking down the sidewalk, and my first thought was "Do either of those guys look like someone who would beat a cab driver"? Then I caught myself and realized how wrong of a thought that was. Those two guys were just walking down the street not bothering anyone, and here I was pigeonholing into the "cab driver assaulter" section of my mind.

I then realized that I had no basis on which to even form that thought. There were no suspects and the local crime report was just a couple of lines on a website with no details. The perpetrator could have been of ANY race, be it African-American, Caucasian, Latino, Asian, Polynesian, or some mix of any or all of those. I felt more than a bit ashamed of myself.

Then, for some reason, I recalled an incident I witnessed that happened about 13 years ago. I was managing at a fast food place in the area and we were closing up for the night. One of the employees came back to the office to tell me something bad was happening outside our doors. I went up and looked through the window to see one young man beating the holy hell out of another young man. I called 911 and reported it. Police were there damn quick (it was a higher crime area) and took control of the situation. One thing I noticed about it all was that both the victim and criminal were both Asian.

This lead me back to a thought that I have known for a while, but had momentarily forgotten. Violence is universal. It isn't just an American thing... it's a world thing. As humans, we're all capable of it. Hell, even Ghandi and Mother Theresa could swing a fist or shoot a gun if the notion struck them. They just had the self-restraint not to do it, and they are better people for it.

I wish I could end my thoughts there, because that ending looks rather profound, but my brain doesn't always work that way. There's more...

Once I hit upon the "violence is universal" thing, I began to think about the many people who say "violence is never an option". They're wrong... violence is ALWAYS an option... Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it should be the LAST option, but every now and then, someone needs to be smacked to bring them back into line with what should be the social norm...

Over the last fifty years or so, we as a society have neutered ourselves as we keep pulling back on what's acceptable punishment for those perpetrate injustice upon others. More and more, society wants something that seems more "humane" and less final... Therein lies a slippery slope. There should be consequences for actions. More and more, those consequences are far less than what some actions deserve, and that creates an atmosphere of negligible deterrence. Eventually, we WILL reach the point where our laws only disempower the lawful, and provide no deterrent for beating down a cab driver...

Just some thoughts...

-- GopherDave

Day 168 of 362

It's been a good day here at the Gopher thus far. So good that I almost forgot to post this today.

I'm already catching a bit of flak (in private e-mails) for the rant of my previous post. I apologize that my opinion about Free RPG Day has upset some folks, but something strikes me as wrong about how it's been set up thus far.

I absolutely LOVE the idea behind it. What I don't like is the driving force behind the event is the only one making any direct money (and a sizable chunk) off of it, but the rest of us are supposed to do it "for the love of the hobby". I have no problem loving the hobby. I've put many hours into RPG games. Whether it's writing, running sessions, selling books, or helping organize convention events, I have devoted the bulk of my life to it, at times placing my health and marriage in jeopardy.

Our store runs runs a sizable amount of games, and I do my level best to make certain those games have their space.

I can say, without an ounce of doubt in my body, that I *LOVE* RPG'S.

What I don't love is when an industry "force" tries to use guilt and peer pressure to give them money.

-- GopherDave