Respect earned.

I was telling Vanessa how I’ve come to prefer working days than nights. At night, the music feels horribly depressing. Plus, the sun isn’t out. It feels unnatural. It just kind of drags on until closing. Openning would be great if I didn’t have to get up so early. Put the pastries and bagels out. The usual morning customers. The rush of Asians that order sesame bagels. That one guy that wants a sesame and an asiago cheese. The other guy that wants a butter croissant. Suddenly, it’s ten, I’ve been there for five hours, and it’s time for a break. Two hours later, it’s the lunch rush. By 1:30, I’m looking to stock the fridges, clean up, do the pan-out, and get out of there by 2 PM. Nine hours goes VERY fast.

Vanessa commented that she doesn’t like working with Angie. Angie has high expectations. If the bakery floor isn’t swept, she’ll ask somebody to sweep. Well, if there’s anything she notices that needs to be done, she will be the first manager to say something. I told Vanessa that Angie works me really hard.

But today. I backing the two cashiers out, and doing necessary things like refilling the lemonade and green tea pitchers1. I had just wiped down the table where we made the Icees when Angie smiled at me and told me I was a good worker. I said, “You work me so hard and you think I’m a good worker?” She said yeah, and high-fived me. *smiles* Definitely the highlight of my day. It was only a matter of time.

I’m very close to having every component for Roxanne Covalent picked out. I have picked out a case, PSU, motherboard, CPU, OS, CD/DVD drives, and an LCD. I could go with cheaper RAM, if I want to, but I really want to go with the Corsair RAM I’ve picked out. I’m looking at a 74 GB 10K RPM Western Digital hard drive, but I’d prefer to have the 36 GB model. I’ve decided to get a small hard drive as boot drive, and get a larger drive as a cargo bay. Oh sure, I have a hard drive. But my old 100 gig hard drive is nearly full.

And then there’s the video card. I could very easily blow nearly 400 dollars on an X800 XL. I’m considering halving my allotment to 200 and saving that 200 dollars for a later video card upgrade. …BUT I WANT A GOOD CARD NOW. *snickers*

I indeed will be paying a bit more for Roxanne, simply because I’ll be tempted to buy “something a little better” for each component. In the end, I won’t mind at all spending a lot of money, because each component will be what I want. This is my hobby right now.

Reminds me, you can save a lot of money by buying the OEM version of things. OEM just means Original Equipment Manufacturer. I think manufaturer, either than or manager. Whatever. Just means somebody who builds computers. I will actually be purchasing a copy of Windows XP Pro, as opposed to abusing my pyrated copy. You can get the OEM version of XP Pro only if you’re buying it with a bunch of hardware. Which I will be doing. *smiles* Go me. Things are so much cheaper on newegg.com. There’s only one thing on tigerdirect that’s cheaper, and that’s the CPU. Don’t know why. I really should find other sites to browse to cross-reference prices. But, I’m lazy.

*sips chai* Ahhh. Nothing like free stuff.

As expected, I think Roxanne is going to cost a little more than projected. I’m not surprised, I expected that. *snickers* By the paycheck I get in three weeks, I should have more than enough. Excellent. My plan for world domination is almost complete!

1: This was before the green tea and lemonade bins were reassembled and refilled. Until then, we had to keep refilling these little pitchers with green tea and lemonade. A royal pain in the penis.