Audiogalaxy lives! Sorta. It seems that my dearly departed friend Audiogalaxy has risen from its grave as Rhapsody. It’s not entirely back to life though. It’s more like its joined the ranks of the undead, although without that troublesome appetite for brains. Rhapsody is a file sharing service with a $9.95/month fee, something I would have been more that willing to pay for the original version of Audiogalaxy. However, the new version only features tracks from artists whose labels have approved them to be allowed on the service. The best thing about Audiogalaxy was the ability to grab stuff from any artist that caught my attention, regardless of the label they were on. On Audiogalaxy you could get anything that someone thought was worth sharing. Rhapsody effectively removes this ability by making labels the only arbiter of what’s worth sharing. That just doesn’t seem worth it to me. It’s a shame though, since the $9.95/month is supposed to pay full royalties to artists, record labels, publishers, and songwriters.

At CompUSA, we sell several software packages designed to help people write their wills. Every time someone comes through my checkout lane with one of those, I just want to deadpan in a flat monotone: “Yeah, we’re all going to die someday huh? We could go at anytime really. Anytime. *sigh* Do you ever say to yourself in the morning ‘Forget this, I’m not even getting out of bed. Just going to die someday anyway.’” Then I would look away quickly and continue the rest of the transaction in silence and without eye contact, punctuating it with only one final despairing sigh as I handed them their receipt.

One of the hardest things to deal with at work is with the near constant flood of crap spewed forth from the in-store “radio station”. Its unique brand of annoying songs and grating CompUSA ads really wears on you during a shift. I’m told that there was a time that each store got to choose from several different stations for store music. Then the corporate headquarters decided that there would be only one station, pumping the exact same thing into every CompUSA in America via satellite. It’s that kind of commitment to removing every bit of choice that might add a little happiness to employee lives that makes me proud to work there. Every so often something amazing happens and a Cure song comes on. As long as it’s not interrupted by the voice of that smug bastard announcer reminding me that there’s a great deal on CD-Rs this week, I get to enjoy 4 minutes or so of bliss… Immediately followed by rage and despair as I realize that’s the last good music I’ll hear for the next 8 hours. I’d like to volunteer to be the store DJ. Just let me sit in the back playing songs from my mp3 jukebox. Instead of the ads, I could periodically get on the store intercom and yell “You there! Buy that!”. Yeah, I’m going to pitch that to corporate. I think they’ll love it.

It was an exciting day at work today. We managed to foil a shoplifting attempt by a complete idiot. This guy came into the store carrying a laptop, which he showed to me at the customer service counter to make sure that someone knew he was bringing it in. He shopped for a while and then checked out, buying about $500 worth of stuff. Before he got out the door though, the front end security guy noticed that he had a laptop bag that we sold and it still had a sticker on it. They checked it out and it had his laptop in it, so he was trying to pass it off like he came in with the bag. However, I only remembered him coming in with the laptop, not the bag also. On top of that, before he checked out the guy had brought up the cardboard packaging for the laptop bag and asked us to throw it away because he “found it lying on the floor”. Right. That was bright. The store manager came up and pointed out that we had him on security camera coming into the store without the bag. At that point, he decided to purchase the bag. However, our security guy checked out all the pockets of the bag and found a copy of an older video game. The guy acted like he had no idea where it had come from and left it in the store. I had no idea why someone would buy $500 of stuff and then steal a $50 bag and a $10 game, but then someone realized that the name he had given us wasn’t the same name that was on the credit card he had used. Given his interesting shopping habits that seemed a little suspicious so someone called and reported the card as possibly stolen. Then we all chased him out of the store with our tiny tiny HP knives. Well we should have, but I was out-voted.

So it’s like this: I’ve decided that I’m not going to play any video games until I get my next job interview. Yeah, I know, it’s a pretty serious commitment. I don’t know if I can do it or not (especially since the full version of Battlefield 1942 just came out), but I’m sure going to to try. I spend every shift at CompUSA wishing I was doing something else, but then just sit around playing games instead of looking for a better job when I get home. That doesn’t seem to make much sense, so I’m going to try to do something about it.

They gave us all knives at work today. Maybe I should explain. Every so often when a company rep visits the store, they bring cheap little items emblazoned with the company logo. I guess it’s supposed to convince us to sell more of their products. Anyway, today our Hewlett-Packard rep gave us all little tiny keychain pocketknives. I don’t know if that was the best idea for workplace morale and safety. I think it was a none too subtle hint that management would really like to see us all fight to the death with knives. I wouldn’t put it past them. Or maybe we’re supposed to begin practicing a more aggressive form of customer service. (“Our return policy? Yeah, you ever return to this store and I’ll stab you in the eyeball. How’s that?”) It’s that kind of commitment to employee-customer violence that makes me proud to wear that red shirt every day.

Its been a while since I found any cool toys on the web, but this NASA Java app made my day. It’s a 3D real time capable satellite tracking program. You can see a live updating display of over 500 satellites orbiting the earth. Pretty crowded up there really, from the right distance out the earth just seems to be covered with a cloud of dots. As I wrote this, COSMOS 1263 R/B flew just about right overhead and then on to Canada. Even though I’ve got no use for it other than the “ohmygoodnessthat’sreallycool factor”, I still think it’s really great that NASA has all that data out there on the web.

Ok, so I’m slowly starting to get adjusted to being part of the working world again. Aside from not being anything close to what I’d like to be doing with my life at this point, CompUSA’s not such a bad deal. I think I’m getting it down, and I haven’t kept anyone else’s credit card again so that’s a step in the right direction. And we do get access to new games the very moment they’re available, which is nice. However, since I’m still flat broke until the paychecks start rolling in, it doesn’t do me much good at the moment.

Wow, that was sure a long game of Battlefield 1942, huh? Yeah, I didn’t exactly mean to take such a long break, but it just kind of happened that way. I’ve been doing a lot the past few weeks, but unfortunately things haven’t really worked out as well for me as I was hoping. I interviewed with Accenture last Friday, and I thought it went really well. Technically, it was an office visit, 3 interviews, and a lunch, all of which I thought went well. In fact, I was thinking that it went well enough that I might get to avoid working at CompUSA. That seems not to be the case. Tuesday was when I was supposed to hear back from them and as of yet I haven’t, but I plan to give them a call today just to check. I find it very frustrating to keep interviewing with different places, but never managing to get a job offer. Since it didn’t look like that was going to happen, I went ahead and started at CompUSA on Wednesday. It was pretty disappointing, and I’ve been having a hard time getting used to the idea of working there. CompUSA isn’t a terrible place to work, but compared to what I thought I might get to do for Accenture it comes up a good deal short. It’s definitely a learning experience though. Like today I learned that its a really good idea to remember to give people back their credit cards after you check them out, but (and this is the important part) before they leave the store. So far I can make it through the day by trying not to remember that I’ll have to come back and do it again the next day, and the next day, and on into the forseeable future. But I really need the paycheck at this point, so I’ve got to do it.