Another Long Weekend

Today, I'm tired. Tired because I'm still trapped at the world's largest retailer for just a few more weeks. Six, to be exact. Well, six plus one. I know that seems like a weird way to say it, but I'm working for six out of the next seven weeks because I'm taking the weekend following our anniversary off to spend some quiet nights with The Queen. So I've got two weeks before then, and then four weeks after to make my last night May 18-19. It won't come soon enough.

This whole thing makes us crazy in so many ways. First, there's the time factor in that we lose spending time together because I am working all three weekend nights and sleeping during the day. This means we don't get as much time together, we don't talk as much, and communication breaks down causing a bit of strife here and there.

Come Saturday, the Queen was quite upset over not getting much of any time at all with me, much less quality time. Not that it's completely my fault, mind you, but I could have made it a little better. The problem is that there are just not enough hours in a day. On Saturday morning, I came home, took care of the princesses for a moment and then passed out. At 3 or so, I was awakened so I could help The Engineer further trim the trees in my yard to get over the whole ice storm fiasco. After that, we went to dinner, and upon coming home, The Engineer and I talked about the older car in my driveway in getting it going.

Now, after this, he and I played Guitar Hero where we should have played something to involve the Queen too. Is it any wonder she felt ignored? I finally talked to her on a break from work on my cell phone and vowed to try and get a little more talk time in.

When it comes to this car, this is a bit of a drama in and of itself since this car can take a bit of the blame for what happened at my last job. You see, I was on the chopping block to be written up for being late too often (apparently, they had issues with late time frames such as 1.03 minutes -- that's 1 minute and 1.8 seconds late, and yes, it was on the form), and I was warned that one more day late that month, and I'd be written up.

I left in plenty of time that morning of the 29th of December, but the car wouldn't shift out of first gear (it's an automatic), and as a result, I couldn't go faster than 20 mph. I hoped that the car would "wake up" as it had before and shift, but it didn't. After a mile of this, I turned around and went home to get the other car. I was eight minutes late. At the world's largest retailer, they allow a leeway of ten. At that job, it was one. You got one minute, and only because the report didn't show anything until that first minute elapsed.

That action caused a downward spiral which lead to my eventual termination, because I felt the disciplinary action was unjust and I wasn't afraid to let them know. Their answer? A write up for failure to accept accountability. Heh.

Anyway, this car won't shift, so the Engineer and I discussed it at length last night. The Queen had offered her suggestion for previous problems the car had, and we tossed around that and a dozen other things while paging through the repair manual (which, incidentally, doesn't list the exact problem it has). We have some ideas, but before we can do anything, we need to get it started. Well, guess what...it hasn't run since December 29, 2006, so the battery is dead. We tried to charge it, but it won't go. He suggested I take battery to my weekend workplace to charge it, but I remembered later that that department isn't open overnight to actually do the charging, and I can't stay late on Mondays for them to do it. Oh well.

I'm sure the drama of fixing the vehicle is just beginning.

Last night came the other issue with my working overnights. The Queen heard some weird noises coming from inside the house. It made only the second time since I started working over the weekends that she called me, but she values my presence to protect her, you know, from the weird noises. I came home over my lunch break to provide what comfort I could, and she said she rested well for that period of time, but went back into panic mode once I left again. So, again, the sooner it's over the better.

It also sucks that through the entire weekend, I've got nothing on stories of the Queen and Princesses -- mainly because I hardly saw them. I'm also not too thrilled about my hands being mostly numb all day on Monday.

What else is out there? Well, the last bit I have is concerning that Guitar Hero game. You see, one thing I considered before getting it is the fact that on the PS2, there are several games and even custom versions out there, where with the Wii, there is one. Well, I've been doing some reading and learned that the way the Guitar Hero game is designed is to read "chart" files, and interpret them as the song you play. They are also manufactured so that all of games on all the platforms use the same basic chart files, even though the game's programming is different. Reading this between the lines, it may be possible to create a custom version of GH3 using the PS2 files from GH, GH2, and GH 80's along with the custom versions I've also come by.

Here's the hiccup, though. the Wii is designed to read only its own optical game discs, not DVD-R backups of them, which is what a custom GH3 game would amount to. I've read some things on "modding" the Wii console, but I don't want to change the console, when the culprit is the game itself. I figure there must be a way to make the code on the disc work so that the console will read it.

It amounts to a very geeky project, which is exactly what I would enjoy doing...very much. Step one is getting the Wii to recognize and play the DVDR version of the straight, unmodded game. I own the game, so my backup copy is completely legal, and having a backup of your media is also completely reasonable. But getting it to play will be an adventure, I'm sure. Can't wait.

What does the Queen think? As long as I don't screw anything up, she's kind of excited to see if I can get the 80's version to work. The big thing everyone complains about with the Wii is that there is no downloadable content. Well, if I can get these older game loaded in, who needs it. Custom versions mean that there is no limit to what you can do; all I need to do is get past the built in restrictions.

For a final bit, I'll throw out a short conversation I had with Optimus Prime. Around here, a masseuse comes in every Thursday for a dollar a minute. Last week, they came on Friday, which sparked a short little dialogue between us. He openly wondered if this masseuse was a Japanese lady with too much lipstick; he said would be disturbing.

I just commented that if it were, you could probably get off cheap.