Another one bites the dust.

Time is limited for the Lone Star in Sugarhouse.  Not surprisingly, since it’s just a block away, we see a lot of their employees in the Chevron.  One of our more regulars from there told us today that next Friday (the 20th) will be their last night.  Seems the employees have known the building was being sold for a while, but they just found out the day they will become unemployed.  So, if you want to get in one more (or one) dinner there, you gotta do it this week.  And do tip well, even if they have something in the works, there’s going to be some transition time.

Now, if you haven’t figured out by the picture, you may want to know what is going to replace Lone Star.  Go ahead, guess.  Yup, a Chick-fil-A.  They’re going to level the whole building and build one from scratch.  I’ve never eaten at Chick-fil-A, but I have seen their billboards and “Eat mor chikin” ads, they’re kinda cute.  But does Sugarhouse need one more fast food place?  Places where going out to dinner is a real treat, a sit down, take your time event, rather than just something interrupting your evening, are becoming harder to find, especially around my neighborhood.  Off hand I can only think of a couple.  Blue Plate and the Dodo.  Ok, just remembered Olive Garden and Red Lobster, may even think of a few more if I take the time.  But still, I could name 20 or more grab your food, chow it down and get the hell out kind of places.

Now, I may end up liking having a Chick-fil-A right around the corner.  I’m not saying I won’t and I’m not saying I’ve been to Lone Star more than a couple of times.  It was just nice knowing that there always was a good steak house right around the corner.

The only thing that never changes is the fact that things are always changing.

Stats.

Just over a month ago, blogger added a new feature.  If you go to your Dashboard you’ll see at the end of the links for each of your blogs a new link: Stats.

A lot of cool, useless information on who is checking out your blog.  Once you click on Stats you’ll see 4 different choices:

1. OVERVIEW: Just what it says, an overview of the other 3 choices.
2. POSTS: Lists the most viewed posts for the time chosen time period (you can choose Now, Day, Week, Month and All time)
3. TRAFFIC SOURCES: Really boring stuff – the most common referring URL and sites.
4. AUDIENCE: My personal favorite. – gives you an idea of where people who get on your blog are from.

My biggest audience is, understandably and by far, from the United States (2,423 page views since they started keeping track a month and a half ago.)  I’m not nearly as popular in Canada (60), Netherlands (38), Luxembourg (30) and Germany (22) rounding off the top 5 for all time.  This week I’ve been pretty popular in the Czech Republic (15) but despite being the second highest it’s still way behind the U.S. with 353.

Now, my all time most favorite post is Of Kaffeeklatsches and JNCO jeans... with 223 views (these do not count when you read the post from the main page, only when someone clicks on the link for that specific post).  The most popular for this week was WAL-MARTIANS! Run for your life…. with 26 views and today’s favorite was Duped, the Saga continues… (15) with 5 people still checking out the all time favorite Of Kaffeeklatsches and JNCO jeans... today alone.

Interesting? I dunno, but for me it is.  Important? Nah.  But chances are good that I’ll keep you informed on any changes in the all time favorite post and foreign country and weekly favorites updates.  Just because I’m a statistics nut.

 

Mister Master Martin Bates.

My phone rang this morning at 9:15 this morning, a number that I didn’t recognize but was obviously from somewhere in the school district I work for.  I was in the middle of a CSI episode, and the thought “I have less than a week before I’m required to pay attention to you, I’ll be damned if I’m going to interrupt “Kiss, kiss, bye, bye” for any one of you!”  So I just let it go to voicemail.

I’m glad I did.  It was an automated message informing me of who was chosen to be our new Superintendant. It went something like this:

“Blah, blah, blah, nationwide search, blah, blah, blah, chose Assistant Superintendant Martin Bates, blah, blah, blah, exciting future, blah, blah, blah and one more blah.”

Nationwide search?  Yeah, I just walked out on my front porch, looked up the street and then down the street in a nationwide search for my virginity.  There is no doubt in my mind that this was already decided even before Ronnenkamp announced his retirement.  What a farce.  What a waste of time, especially to the employees they “reached out to” for their opinions. 

Now I’m a “half-full” kind of guy, so I’m going to hope that the new guy rises to the challenges and does better than our last Stupidintendant.  So, I’m going to leave my opinion on this choice to what I’ve already said, that it was a foregone conclusion, and for now just hope and pray that he returns our district’s focus back to where it belongs.  Me.  Just kidding.  I mean back to the students and what is best for ALL sections of our student body.

Duped, the Saga continues…

I got a call from one of my coworkers today, he said something about running into the same pre-paid Visa card that I got scammed with so I dropped by the store on my way home from a friend’s house.

I can’t tell for sure if it’s the same guy, but he came in tonight and tried to pull the same scam as they got away with on Saturday.  My coworker told me he came up to the front counter with a couple bags of trail mix, one of our phone cards and the Visa card and said he wanted to buy these.  My coworker picked up the Visa card and told the guy “We don’t sell these here, someone already pulled this scam on us and, just so you know, we called the police and reported it.”  The guy said “Oh, really?” and then turned around and walked out to talk to his girlfriend, or whatever she is.

My coworker said that the girlfriend came back in, kind of looked around and he thinks she was looking to see if the Visa card had been hung up back on the rack.  Apparently not the brightest bulbs in the pack, they had expected that we would take the fraudulent card and put it up on the rack where “he found it.”  It’s sitting safely on the desk in the (locked) office.

This made my day.  Not only does this mean that other staff members* have learned from my experience, but it also means that this group** knows that it didn’t take long to figure out that they were up to no good and what had happened, and that we weren’t going to let it happen again.  Hopefully they aren’t total idiots and that means they will give up on trying it on us again.
* (and eventually all the crews in all our stores, according to the manager)
** (I’m assuming if it’s not the same guy that they are in cahoots together, since it was the exact same M.O.)

My coworker did get a not-so-good picture of the culprits, which I used some digital enhancing programs ala CSI to clean up.

Non enhanced picture of the culprits: Enhanced picture of the culprits:

DISCLAIMER: Second picture is for satirical purposes only.  I in no way endorse the idea that the Senator is a criminal or has committed fraud against my place of employment, or any other convenience store for that matter.  In fact, the only fraud I would ever accuse him of is in his capacity as a duly elected representative of the Great State of Utah.

Alex & Marijke

neuro, Evo and the Gnatmobile.

neuro

We got a new drink this week.  It comes in a cute, colorful bottle and claims to have nutritional supplements that do all kinds of good things for your mind and body.  It’s called neuro (no capital) and comes in 5 different flavors.

• neuro SLEEP – ZZZzzz… in every bottle
  
• neuro BLISS – happiness in every bottle
  
• neuro SPORT – replenishment in every bottle
  
• neuro TRIM – A leaner you in every bottle

And my all time favorite

• neuro GASM
  
• passion in every bottle.

Evo

My co-worker and I were standing at the front door talking when a Mitsubishi Evo pulls into the parking lot, races towards the front door, coming to an abrupt stop right in front of us.  My co-worker just stood there, I jumped  to the side, out of the way just in case something didn’t go as the Mitsubishi moron planned.  Two guys get out of the car (30+ yr olds, not 17 yr olds) and laughing say something like “Yeah, we’re here to rob you.”  First of all, joking about robbing a convenience s tore is about as funny as yelling “Hi Jack” to your friend as you board an airplane.  Second of all, I wanted my response to be something along the lines of “No you dumbass, I was more afraid you’d miss the brake and come screaming through the front door.” 

You see, many, many years ago, in my mid-twenties, I was in the front passenger seat of a ‘72 Ford LTD Wagon with friends going to the 7-11.  The driver, we’ll call him Tim Cavalier, decided to do the exact same thing except, fortunately, in front of the 7-11 ice machine, instead of the front door.   Fortunately, because his foot slipped off the brake and he ended up parking inside the ice machine.  Only 18 year old I’ve ever known that ended up owning a trashed 7-11 ice machine.  The cashier had a good sense of humor, as we walked through the front door that we avoided by mere feet, she said “I’m sorry, we haven’t installed the drive-thru yet.” 

Gnatmobile

I parked directly underneath the lights in the parking lot at work tonight, and when I got off work the car was swarming with little flies or gnats.  I think I’m going to start calling the Subaru “The Gnatmobile” (You’ll have to click on the picture if you don’t believe me that there are gnats on the car).

Duped, the conclusion.

So I get in to work today and the manager (We’ll call him Fred) starts telling me the rest of the Pre-Paid Card Saga.  He called the company that basically brokers the cards (Co. A) and they told him that he had to call the company that actually sells and manages the cards (Co. B).  Company B tells him that they just manage the cards, he has to talk to company A, who actually sold it.  Somewhere in there he called the police and talked to someone in the Fraud Division, who all but told him not to even bother filing a complaint.  They didn’t put it that bluntly, but said that all he really could prove is that this guy tried to buy the card, but didn’t.  We had no actual evidence that he was the one that got the $100.  Mister criminal douchebag could always claim he has absolutely no idea who got the $100 or where it went, after all we still had the physical card.  True point, but you’d think they would at least want the car’s plate number and our surveillance of him so they could at least keep half an eye on him.  Like Fred said, we don’t expect to ever see the $100 again, we just want to prevent it from happening again.

So Fred calls company B back, to see if he can get a list of where the $100 was spent, to somehow track it so we could prove the guy spent it.  Let’s just say he got so mad and frustrated that he ended up hanging up on them.  Seems that there is absolutely no way to track those cards.  The numbers on the physical card actually have absolutely no meaning whatsoever, the real numbers are somewhere on that electronic strip.  And even if we had those numbers, the company only keeps track of the balance, not of where the money is spent.  Fred spent 20 minutes on the phone trying to get someway to track down the purchases, and in the end said something like “So, in other words, you produce something that seems to be designed for fraud?”  and then hung up the phone.

So there’s nothing we can do, except now that we know the scam we can prevent it from happening again.  At least at our stores.

Arrrgh!