Pallet Pandemonium

Okay you bitches at Shipping, listen up!

This is a pallet.

This is a pallet on drugs.




Okay, okay, I'll be serious now. Let's go back to the picture of that pallet.

This is your standard run-of-the-mill wooden pallet used to haul stuff around with a forklift. Look at it closely. Notice how it's longer at its length than at its width. Notice how the slots on its width are larger and can accomodate all sizes of prongs, whether you use a forklift or a hand-driven pallet truck. Notice how the slots along its length are much smaller, and only the smallest size of prongs could be inserted into them. If you were a shipper that gave a shit about your customers, or have even an iota of common sense, which side should you have facing out when loading the truck?

Correct! The width of the pallets (also known as the front) should be facing out so that they are accessible to whatever equipment we have to haul them. Unfortunately, one of our suppliers wasn't as smart as you are when they sent nearly 15 pallets of plastic containers to us, under the assumption that we had a forklift with small prongs.

This wasn't the case with us. Our forklift wasn't even working because we haven't finished construction to build a charging station for its batteries. All we had to haul them were the larger-pronged pallet trucks. So whoever the retard was who shipped the pallets facing the wrong way, the poor driver had to come all the way here from California only to find out that we don't have the equipment to unload his cargo.

It also didn't help that the retarded supplier scheduled the driver to arrive during everyone's lunch break. I had to run all over the place to find people to help unload it. Since none of us were able to even handle the pallets, the pallet slots being too small, we had to manually turn the fucking things before our pallet trucks could get to them. That's right, we (or at least, two of the strongest guys) had to turn nearly 15 fully-loaded wooden pallets 90 degrees by hand.

Okay, you people at Shipping. To be fair, I understand that sometimes loading the pallets sideways is the only way to have all the pallets fit into the truck. If you're going to do that, CHECK WITH THE CUSTOMER TO ENSURE THAT THEY HAVE THE EQUIPMENT TO UNLOAD THEM!!!! If, like us, the customer cannot unload pallets that face sideways, book a different truck to ship them facing the right way.

You were lucky that the plastic containers were light enough for us to turn them by hand. If it was denser construction materials like bricks, concrete blocks, or elephants, we would've had the poor driver send them all the way back to you to fix the problem. If you really care about your customers, you do not make any assumptions about them.

It's like having me send you your mail-order bride wearing a chastity belt, and I assume you have the key.

Jobless No More! (For Now...)

Now I have a real reason to say that I'm too busy.

Since classes begin in May, I've found something to do until then. Well, in truth, it was my dad that found it, since it was one of his clients who needed my help in setting up a mushroom farm. That's right. It's quite an unusual job, but the good thing is that when you work for a startup business, your job covers a variety of areas in the company. Currently, the weight of my job is on helping to devise food safety operating procedures, and to comply with HACCP requirements.

Unfortunately, it's way out there in Abbotsford, so I have to wake up before the crack of dawn to get to work. Fortunately, my dad also works in that town, so I get to carpool with them. No, it doesn't look cool to still have to be picked up and dropped off by your parents, but I think it's cooler than being a complete dumbass by paying twice as much for overpriced gas when you don't really have to. And it's certainly cooler than getting killed, maimed, or paralyzed in a high-speed accident on the Trans-Canada Highway because you're only half-awake at the wheel.

The sudden early wake-up calls are totally screwing up my circadian rhythm. It's already bad enough that I can't keep any other type of rhythm, which you can tell when I'm on the dance floor, in music class, or at the organ during funerals. I'm always so tired after work that I can't focus my mental energy and wit to post on this blog, and trust me, my wit could use all the focusing it can get, especially if I am to entertain a funeral. I'll try to readjust my sleep cycle with the help of sleeping pills, but I should dose myself carefully, because a little bit too much would make it way harder to get up in the morning. Anymore and I'll go Marilyn Monroe.

I'll post more often when I can get used to sleeping at the same time as old people, and waking up at the same time as farmers. Don't worry, I'm working on it. I won't be able to live with myself if I leave you with nothing to read in the toilet. Well, maybe I am, since it does bring a certain amount of satisfaction to know you lost your appetite if you read my crass and disgusting rhetorical excrement anywhere besides the latrine. Anyway, expect new posts if I have an interesting story from work.

And remember, mushrooms are good for you and will make you sexy!

This Is It

It's all come down to this.

The exam for my CGA financial accounting course was at UBC tonight, and I had no expectations of acing it. This was because I learn by asking questions; I can understand and remember things much easier if I know how things work. Unfortunately, without any classroom or teacher, I had to accept the course material as is, without really understanding it.

Essentially, this exam was the culmination of a three-month exercise in rote memorization. To improve my chances of passing, I went to UBC early in the afternoon to spend time doing old and practice exams. At this point, I thought that a damage control strategy would be appropriate, and I'll be aiming to obtain at least partial credit for all the questions. Fortunately, the CGA posts the percentage weights of each subject on the exam, so I could focus on the most important subjects.

Now the exam is out of the way, and I think I could make the 61% minimum that I calculated to need in order to pass the course. Of course, I was totally clueless on the questions involving the subject areas that required the most memorization, but not being the kind of person to go down without a fight, I pulled several numbers and account names out of my ass in hopes of getting the much-needed partial credit. That's right, being able to pull numbers and shit out of my ass is where the real accounting test is.

Pulling shit out of my ass!?!? EWWWWWW!!!

Oscar And Kirby

I had all-you-can-eat pizza last night.

After a long session at the gym in the evening, I was very hungry after burning up a lot of fuel. There is this really nice local pizza chain called Flying Wedge Pizza that has All-You-Can-Eat Sundays. As the promotion name suggests, they offer all-you-can-eat pizza, and even a bottomless drink, for $10 (Canadian!). Okay, so their pizzas are a little avant-garde, as in Texas BBQ, smoked salmon paté, and feta with squash sort of avant-garde. They also offer the occasional traditional pizza, like pepperoni, so there's enough of everything as not to bore my taste buds. Perfect.

What's so nice about my nearest Flying Wedge was that they have two tables up against the wall, where each table has its own flat panel LCT TV hooked up. It's not a big place, so the whole establishment is able to see what's on. Best of all, they let you control the TV.

But last night, there was no disagreement as to which channel to watch, because we were all tuned in to the Oscars. I was thinking that Brokeback Mountain would get all the big awards, since that kind of sweep is what gets a lot of people watching the Academy Awards. I was so proud of Ang Lee for winning Best Director, but when they announced Crash as the Best Motion Picture, this prompted a, "What the fuck!?" from around the whole premises. None of us in the restaurant saw it coming. After all, everyone in all forms of media was talking about Brokeback Mountain. Although Crash seems to be a good movie in its own right, its plot format is not unlike Magnolia, and no one has really heard of it let alone talked about it.

Perhaps the Academy is trying to reel in viewers with this kind of shocker. After all, the Academy Awards has been lagging in viewership lately. But then again, who am I say, when I have never seen the movie for myself? The whole establishement agreed that we should rinse off the shock of the Oscars with some Family Guy.

But today, what happened was a different kind of shock. I just read in the news that baseball great Kirby Puckett has died from his stroke. I first knew Kirby (not personally) when I was collecting baseball cards, specifically the Upper Deck 1991 set, and I would find his card many times. I guess I rembered him distinctly because his photo wasn't an action shot, just a big guy in the bullpen with a big smile.

So now I can't believe that the big guy is gone so soon. Although I don't know him enough to really grieve, I can't help but feel a twinge of guilt for wondering how much more all those copies of his 1991 baseball cards that I have is worth now that he passed away. After all, not only artists and authors, but anything that comes from celebrities are worth much more when they're dead.

Although if I REALLY wanted to make money from celebrity deaths, I should've joined a celebrity death pool.

Trashcan Slalom To Education

It's such a windy day today.

I have to go to UBC today to submit the rest of my housing application, and also find a nice quite place to study for the CGA exam this Thursday. It turned out that I didn't get exemptions on some of my MBA courses, so I'll have to stay in UBC until December.

Because the garbage truck makes its rounds after everyone has gone to work, there were a lot of trash cans left outside, only to be blown onto the road and become a hazard. Hmm...that does sound kinda funny...the road being "littered" with trashcans. Fortunately, there wasn't much traffic on the road at the time I left, so I could easily use the oncoming lane to bob and weave my way out of the neighborhood.

Once I made it to the highway and hit 100km/h, I could REALLY feel the wind trying to throw my chunky, aerodynamically challenged SUV off. Oh great, as if the mileage on my SUV wasn't crappy enough, and as if gas wasn't horrendously expensive enough.

Once I made it on campus, with no surprise, all the lots were full. I was finally able to find a space, but only because no one else wanted to wedge their vehicle next to a poorly parked Civic with Sanrio stuffed animals wedged against the back window. Damn inconsiderate Asians. It's not that their parking (and driving) skills are so crappy, but it's that they don't make any effort to straighten out their vehicles, so that the people next to them don't have to do the the Car Door Mambo to try to get out without denting their expensive daddy-bought BMW's, rice burners, or in my case, brand-new Civics.

So once I managed to mambo my way out of my vehicle, the first thing I had to do is get a reference letter from my ex-Japanese professor, to vouch for my character as part of my on-campus residence application (I'm so glad he doesn't know about this blog!). He is pretty much my favorite teacher. He's the nicest guy and he never gets angry, too strict, or too pushy on his students. He actually cares about his students, both in and out of class. I usually don't have kind words for teachers, nor would I promise to invite them in the highly unlikely event that I have a wedding, so he really is that good.

So once my residence application is out of the way, it's off to study. Like I said before, I don't like this CGA course because I'm totally on my own, other than online forums with tutors. So, I downloaded from the CGA website a set of review questions, with answers so you could check them. However, one of the questions is missing a solution, and I really want to check my answers to be sure that I did that type of question right. So I turn to the forum tutor for help, for once. She suggested that I check the online lecture notes and old exams for that particular question, and I tell her that the solutions on those are incomplete, which they are. She then gives up. God forbid that the tutor works through a question to help out a student!!!

Oh well, at least I didn't have to dodge trashcans again on my way home tonight.

Your alcoholic dad could naturally wobble his car through this.