So I canceled City of Heroes. It just didn’t have enough to keep me playing it. Sure it is fun. But it just lacks some kind of depth. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I miss the phat lewt. I can play until the 28th of this month before it’s gone for good. But I honestly don’t think I will log on again.

I’ve also decided I’m going to upgrade my webhosting package with those fine folks over at Pas-Com Web Hosting. I’ve already got the advanced plan and feel my sites have outgrown that package. With the Webmaster plan I’ll get the following:

• 3 gigabytes Web Space
• 30 gigabyte Transfer a Month
• Unlimited* Pop3 E-mail Accounts
• Unlimited* Email Forwarding Accounts
• Unlimited* Email Aliases
• Unlimited* Email Autoresponders
• Frontpage Extensions
• PHP 4 and CGI-BIN
• 20 MySQL Database
• 30 something.yourname.com Sub-domains

3 gigs of web space! Man I can’t wait. Imagine all the god damn screen shots I could inflict on you all. I plan on giving the Guild Site a gig to keep it going. Which will also set up the Guild Site for it’s own domain, just need a good one before that happens. On the technical side the additional MySQL Databases will be quite nice. There are a few scripts I’ve tried out and I’ve had to use one database for four different scripts.

So you may notice the Google AdSense ads that now appear here on my website. I had tried to get these on the site a while ago and was denied. I tried again with my “webmaster” email address and voila I’m in. Which is cool, I’ve been meaning to sell out and never could find the best way to do that fit’s my particular style (or lack of style).

The neatest part of all of this is that I’ll make some money. And the ads are generated by the contents of the webpage. For example if you look at my page that tells about my time in the game Dark Age of Camelot you will see ads dealing with that rpg or others like it.

Of course I don’t expect to make a shitload of money off of this. As you can see above I won’t be quiting the hotel anytime soon. Truth be told I’m tickled pink I’ve earned 8 cents already. And as it is the banner add at the top of the page has a 75% chance of showing. I may adjust it depending on feedback from people (if any) or if the ads that are displayed are annoying.

The upgrade of my webhosting package has given me a lot more room to play around and I’m pretty happy. I have a few things I want to do/upgrade, that will make the way things work on my website a little bit easier for me (and you). The biggest thing I want to do is switch over to using the great PHP script Gallery for the handling of screen shots and what not. It will take a little work, but the end results will make it easier for viewing and navigating the screen shots on my site.

Google AdSense has almost generated me enough money to buy one pack of cheap cigarettes. I’m also running them over at the DAoC Guild Site and have had only one comment about getting rid of them. I’m going to give it a month and then go back to my non profit banner ads. I miss seeing the wang references in the Penny Arcade banners.

By the time I click submit it will be June first. June historically has been a month I’m not fond of. Which in retrospect it’s not even worth going into detail about it as it is in the very distant past. But being the stubborn bastard I am I’ll continue to go on hating June.

Well the new front desk manager is gone. Quit from what the grapevine has told me. Over issues that more or less involved actually working. Which is silly. If your hired on to do a job, do the job. In all fairness this front desk manager was not at all qualified. The three years of experience this person had in the hotel business made me laugh and often the remark “my left nut has more hotel experience than this person” would slip out of my mouth.

Now would come the part when I add a very touching and funny anecdote about just how great this last front desk manager really was. But alas I can’t muster any kind of legitimate fake sentiment to say. The rumor of wanting and relishing the thought of firing me still leaves a foul taste in my mouth when I think of this front desk manager.

Now we sit and wait to see what new terror the management will unleash on the hotel. It’s so sad that a place that used to have nearly competent managers has fallen so far. It’s to the point now I imagine they will take anyone off the street when it comes to filling the position. More likely they will just throw the job on to some poor bastard already at the hotel and make them do the job with no raise and no title. All I can say is it won’t be me.

The below is the description of my job as dictated by people who have been here for less than a year. And if the new front desk manager had anything to do with the creation of this document I have to laugh. How can a person that didn’t even work in the hotel business when I started doing the audit create a list of the things I’m supposed to do. My comments will be below this near work of fiction.

Job Descriptions: Night Auditor
Reports to: General Manager
Required Training/Experience/Education: Computer experience is very helpful. Bookkeeping skills or training is preferable. High School diploma or equivalent. Experience with Excel, and Microsoft Word

Minimum Qualifications:

• Strong independent skills
• Able to lift about 25 lbs
• Command of the English language
• Knowledge of calculator operations
• Knowledge of copier/fax/printer

Responsibilities/Duties

• Audits shifts one and two and balances records
• Performs Bucket Check
• Posts daily room charges to folios
• Produces back up tapes for computer system
• Records Payroll
• Daily revenue reports
• Make packet properly
• Performs daily duties listed in “Audit Book”
• Counts drawer at end of shift
• Clean lobby, and desk area during shift
• Sets Wake Up calls
• Assigns rooms for Reservations for the following day
• Performs light maintenance (light bulbs, plunge toilets)
• Set up of breakfast area
• Write out Maintenance Sheets
• House keeping assignment
• Performs all other related jobs assigned
• Meet all requirements as stated in the Employee Handbook

There are a number of things here that make me realize just how bad I got to get the fuck out of this shithole.

Records Payroll, this is new to me. Of course I’ve always assumed that was the job of the hotel accountant, not the night auditor.

Clean lobby, and desk area during shift, ok sure maybe I need to keep the desk area tidy. But I’m sorry keeping the lobby clean is the job of housekeeping. I smell a lot of job cut backs. Anyone for cutting corners?

Performs light maintenance (light bulbs, plunge toilets), not a fucking chance. Night Audit people. Not night fucking maintenance guy.

Set up of breakfast area, that would be another one that just isn’t my job. Fucking hire some restaurant people. Not sure what night audit has to do with setting up of the breakfast area. Once agian a way to cut corners.

Write out Maintenance Sheets and House keeping assignment again sound like the job of someone else. It looks like a lot of things are going to change at the hotel.

One of the duties of a person that is a front desk clerk at the hotel I work at is balancing credit cards. Now to me that is a pretty cut and dry thing. You use the fundamental skills you learned in grade school. You know adding and subtracting? So either people there can’t add and subtract or the training at the place is fucking horrendous. Take a look below and let see if you can figure out this task that apparently is to hard for some people. Example A is the credit card receipt totals that the front desk clerk added up. Example B is the totals for the credit cards off of the computer report.

Example A
room 101 25.00
room 102 50.00
room 103 25.00
room 104 25.00
room 104 25.00
total: 150.00
over: 50.00

Example B
room 101 25.00
room 102 25.00
room 103 25.00
room 104 25.00
total: 100.00

Now the way it is supposed to work is that if the total you get from adding the credit cards receipts up don’t balance you run the report to see why the amount is out of whack. Simple right? Again it seems it’s not that simple.

So in Example A it should be clear to anyone that there is something wrong. The front desk clerk knows that the total should be 100 bucks. I know this because they wrote on the adding machine tape that they were over 50 bucks. Now in the old days a front desk clerk was trained properly this didn’t happen. But that was then and this is now.

Back then we were smart enough to print out the computer report and compare the two. You take the computer report (Example B) and your credit cards receipts (Example A) and figure out why you are over. Granted this can be a pain in the ass. When you got over a hundred credit cards to go through it is a major pain in the ass. But it’s got to be done.

So lets look at our computer report (Example B) and see why the credit cards (Example A) are off. You just go down the list. First off you can see that for whatever reason the credit card for room 102 is different on the credit card report. So you take a look and you will find that the guest was overcharged and a adjustment was made. The old credit card slip wasn’t taken out and a new one put in. That is the hard one. Now we look at the list again. Pretty simple here. For whatever reason room 104 has a duplicate receipt in the pile and no one tried to balance at all.

So by checking the computer totals to see why the credit card receipts are off you can easily balance up the credit cards. This is just one of the things that irks me to no end. Now the last front desk manager fumbled the ball here. I only hope the next one we get can start to do things right.

It’s funny how one conversation about a tattoo will get me interested enough to make a post about it. But this subject is actually one I am interested in. This goes back to one of my all time favorite comic books called the Master of Kung Fu. It was a 70’s era kung fu comic about a character called Shang-Chi. Now Shang-Chi’s name means “the rising and advancing of the spirit” and he was in a constant battle between his good side (himself) and his bad side (his dad) which leads to the whole Yin and Yang thing which this post is about.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about here is a good definition (and a picture above of what the symbol looks like):

Yin and Yang are symbolized by the sun and moon. There are two opposing forces active in the universe. Yin exists in Yang and Yang exists in Yin. This is the the changing combination of negative and positive, dark and light, cold and hot which keeps the world spinning and creates Chi – the giving life force.

Now I’ve always been fascinated by this. To me what this means is that there is a good and bad in everything. The trick is to figure out how to balance the one over the other. But not without forgetting that there is that balance of both in you. And everyone needs balance in their lives. You just got to find it where you can. I guess you can add this to my list of things that make sense to me.