Pieces of Shep

Inspired by my friend Trix, I decided to let you, my loyal reader(s) in on some pieces of me that you might not know.

I collect the board game Monopoly.  I’ve done this for several years.  I have only purchased 1 of the 20+ versions of the board game I have.  I didn’t intend to start collecting them.  It is my favorite game and one year for Christmas I received 3 or 4 versions from various family members.  Since then, I’ve been getting them on a regular basis as gifts.  My favorite has to be the St. Louis Cardinals version or the Classic version that comes in a wood box.  The only one I purchased for myself was an edition from 1935, which is the first year they were mass-produced by a game manufacturing company.

I have a BSEd in History but I work as a web developer.  Finding a job teaching high school social studies is hard as it is an overpopulated field.  Will I go back to teaching?  I’m not quite sure yet.  I also work part time as a teacher for Sylvan Learning Center.

The worst job I ever had was working at my family’s restaurant. It was the summer before my freshman year of high school.  Most of the time I did maintenance jobs around the building.  This was not an easy task on a building that was built before the Civil War.  When I wasn’t in the blistering heat (that was a hot summer!) doing maintenance, I was in the kitchen either cutting strawberries or wrapping potatoes in foil.  Fun stuff, I know.

I love the TV show Saved by the Bell.  Yeah, if you read this blog, you already know that.  It’s a guilty pleasure of mine and reminds me of a much simpler time.

The only movie to ever scare me as a kid was The Exorcist.  That movie was ahead of its time.

I wish I was still in college.  I love the college environment and would love to go back.  I also love learning and would love to take all the classes I wanted to while I was in school but didn’t have the time to take them.  I would also love to teach at the collegiate level.  I’d need to get my PhD in order to be a professor in history though, and I don’t have the time or the money for that right now.  I don’t even have the time or money to start my Master’s.  Some day…

Well, there you have it.  Some things about me you might not have known.  I hope you learned a little more about me and now realize I’m more awesome than you once thought. ;)

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Local TV Affiliates

One thing I hate about my local CBS affiliate, KMOV, is that about once a month they replace normal prime time programming with their own programming. I can understand doing this during the summer when everything is in reruns, but when they do it when new programming is airing it bugs me. The only time slot I notice the change is on Mondays at 7:00pm. This is the time slot of The Big Bang Theory, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite television shows. Most of the time they replace it with a local cooking show sponsored by one of the big grocery store chains in the St. Louis area. You know what, if I wanted to watch a cooking show, I’d tune into the Food Network. Broadcast the show you are supposed to in that time slot, and don’t move it to 2:30 in the morning. If you want to show that programming so bad, show THAT at 2:30 in the morning. I’ll bet you they’ll have just as many viewers: 3. So please, local affiliates, if the network has new programming on the schedule, air that programming! No one wants to watch crappy local TV specials. We want our regularly scheduled programming.

Total Geekery: Saved by the Bell Comic Book

sbtbI’m going to geek out hardcore right now.  I just found out that there was a Saved by the Bell comic book published in the 1990’s.  There weren’t many published in the series, but enough to make this SBTB geek want them.  The stories are probably more lame than the stories of the TV show (which I still contend are not lame at all and can help save the world).  The drawing looks very Archie-ish.  Look, they even drew Slater’s mullet.  There are two issues that feature a photo of the SBTB cast instead of a drawing.  One is a special collector’s #1 issue, the other is a special Christmas issue.  The photos on the covers of both are essentially the same and from what I’ve read on the internet, the stories in both comics are the same.

Besides those two issues, it looks like there are 5 additional issues of the hand drawn cover variety.  I can’t seem to figure out which were published first, but I would guess the ones with the real cast on the cover were published first to get people interested and then they switched to the illustrated covers.  It must not have sold well if only a total of 7 issues were made.  Then again, it looks like these were published near the end of the SBTB series so the popularity of the comic book could have died out when the series went off the air.

Yes, I am a huge geek for wanting these.  The only thing I can say is I love SBTB.  It was a fantastic show.  You can find a few of the issues online at various online comic shops and ebay and they are cheap.  I guess they are not a huge collector’s item for the comic geeks out there.  That’s a shame, they don’t know what they are missing.  Anything SBTB related is pure gold.

Customer Service

My MacBook developed a crack along the wrist rest due to the lid’s impressions on the surface. It was a common problem with the model that I have and is covered under the AppleCare plan. The same thing happened to a friend of mine and several other people on the internet. It was one of those flaws that were just cosmetic and didn’t inhibit the use of the computer.

This past weekend I finally had time to take it to West County Mall’s Apple store to get it fixed. I made an appointment with a Genius and they took a look at it, gathered information and grabbed the part from the back before anyone else could. The Genius told me it would be ready in 2-3 days. I was kind of bummed because I heard reports of it taking 20 minutes if they have the part in stock. Apparently they were quite busy with repairs. So, I leave expecting it to take 2-3 days. 3 hours later I get a call from the Apple store telling me it’s ready to be picked up. I hate fanboys as much as anyone, but I can see why people like Apple so much. People rave about the customer service they experience when buying an Apple product and now I can too.