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The 10 O'Clock Alcoholics
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1758
Saturday Morning, 9:45, after all the garage sales fit to peruse I head home up 14th Street. Already, outside the liquor store at the bottom of the hill there's a line up of the usual suspects...
The 14 Street Panhandlers, grown now to practically a community that lives off the medians and by wandering desperately sober into traffic, they're at every intersection, 17th Ave, 12th Ave, 11th Ave, Kensington Road, the roadworks have backed up traffic and increased their captive audience by twofold, triple even...
...and there's a few I recognize from outside the Ship, the locals, there's a few of the early morning bottle pickers who've already filled their bags and redeemed them for cash, they're all outside the liquor store at the bottom of the hill in an orderly line, of sorts, chatting about the night before, waiting for it to open...
The 10 O'Clock Alcoholics.
Up the hill, past my apartment to the liquor store by my place, it's 10:00 AM now, surely, no line but the parking lot is full. I've a bit of a taste, time for a nap before work, inside, the liquor store filled with the more marginally acceptable alcoholics, the ones with cars and a place to live and party, those still carrying on from the night before, whores and tarts still up looking to take the edge off of too many lines, bleary eyed and checking you out, no shit, who's in a liquor store at 10 AM on a Saturday morning?, but we're all in this together...
The Reprieve
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1588
Now it's supposed to be my day off, but it was busy last night and the waiter who was supposed to get Monday off had to work, and we're all on guard, it could happen to us, business has been strange...
...we thought it was Graduation, but only for a couple of the tables, the rest, well, the 7th Wave, the peculiar synchronized arrival of old and new customers, walk-ins, the restaurant filled, some loathsome political figures, some pleasant-enough regulars, an odd night, busy, busier by far than the weekend...
...and tonight, looking busy as well, my evening off is not assured. As if to make certain I'd show the owner tells me he's booked an appointment with me to meet a rep from Open Table, they've been harassing us for our business, he isn't sure. He knew it was my day off, pretends he didn't, I say nothing, I'm counting the days...My job is to get all the information and translate it for him. A couple of things, most of our customers (existing) are way outside of technologies age bracket, and most certainly the owner is. However "Simple" and easy it is to use it's probably not of any use here...
...the Nephew, he invites himself to sit in. Of anyone here, he should be the most technologically savvy, he spends days gaming on end at home, days on end at the restaurant on his cell-phone, and however we implement this he'll be in charge, I have plans, I'm comfortable with this, especially when he hijacks the conversation to ask questions...
I don't have a lot. Costs? $.35 cents per online reservation made through our website, $2.50 per person per online reservation made through their website. No hardware required, other information, unfortunately they can't tell us how many new customers this will bring us (the most important question in my books, otherwise we're paying them to do what we already do well enough ourselves...). I gather everything we need, tell them to get back to us in a couple of days. The nephew continues, talks, asks questions for about 10 more minutes.
When we're done, we're not so busy, I'm going home. I review the information with the owner, the nephew, he has some questions for me. It turns out he didn't listen to, didn't understand a single thing she said. He only understood the $200.00 set up fee (which, like any cable/internet company they said they'd waive, this is the BS "loss leader", the free incentive, like when your cable company says they'll install that cable/internet/satellite dish for free, a regular $1,000,000.00 value, it's all BS), didn't understand they'd waive it, didn't understand how he'd be getting the reservations, didn't understand anything, and he will be the one in charge...He think's it's a good idea. I'm happy and agree...
"We'll implement it in September" I tell him, and he's excited...
Me, I'm leaving, my regular scheduled day off now once again my own, yet I'm feeling somehow that it's a bit of a reprieve...
A new phone
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Other
- Hits: 1496
Time for a new phone and an MP3 player. I've resigned myself that the USB stick function of my car stereo will never work, am determined to find a battery powered MP3 player for the car, something cheap and disposable so next time the car gets broken into I'm not really losing anything of value...
But phone first. I've broken the screen on my old one, it's a couple of years old already and Virgin's been calling me every day to rewrite my contract, I know I'm due for a new free phone...
And I am. Lucky me, new Samsung Neo, oversized, 2 year contract same as the old contract. And it's a lot better, this new phone, amazing, in 2 years, the old phone, it's a bloody dinosaur comparatively, this one with 16 GB memory, external up to 128 GB, better camera (!!!), I buy it an Otter and screen protector, order a Micro SD card from Amazon, I'm liking it already and it's just out of the box...
As a bonus they throw in a tablet, with another SIM card, free, or an extra $10 per month over a 2 year contract, but now I have 2 phones, and 2 very large MP3 players, 3, if you count the old phone, all for less than I was planning on spending on a cheapo .mp3 player for the car ...
I'm feeling pretty good...
You Are Awake - Pedro Martin-Medrano
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1438
{embed:vimeo:170638114}
A curiously surreal little short film.
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