More ruminations, rambles, rants and raves from the downhill side of the mountain.
Just so you know exactly where I stand vis-a-vis today's polarized politics, let me recommend this organization to you.
And I also recommend my gentle employer to you as well. The Barnes & Noble Affiliate Network, which seemed to have stopped working, is back in operation, so the links and banners are working again.
Now, go buy some books.
And I also recommend my gentle employer to you as well. The Barnes & Noble Affiliate Network, which seemed to have stopped working, is back in operation, so the links and banners are working again.
Now, go buy some books.
Links:
Fox Den: Creative (i.e. Fiction)Writing
A Pilgrim's Progress
Ian's Knowledge Modelling Weblog
Future Scan: Future Studies Department University of Houston at Clear Lake
PLSJ (aka Anne, the Anthropologist)
link
Lost in Transit
link
Coffee Grounds
Traveling in Style
Slacktivist Recommended with a bullet!
Hoofin To You: Bridgewater, NJ politics
Inadmissible Evidence
Big Black Van
Overflow
In Spite of Years of Silence
Metamorphosism (Mig's new blog)
Real Live Preacher
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Alas, A Blog
A Fistful of Euros
BuzzMachine
Eschaton
Pedantry
The Poor Man
Barefoot and Naked
Boing Boing
Craigblog
Fafglob
The Road to Surfdom
link
E-Mail Me
My Other Blogs, Journals and such
Fox Den: Creative (i.e. Fiction)Writing
A Pilgrim's Progress
Business/Economics/Future Studies and other Social Sciences
Ian's Knowledge Modelling Weblog
Future Scan: Future Studies Department University of Houston at Clear Lake
PLSJ (aka Anne, the Anthropologist)
link
International
Lost in Transit
link
New Jersey New York Pennsylvania and Delaware
Coffee Grounds
Traveling in Style
Slacktivist Recommended with a bullet!
Hoofin To You: Bridgewater, NJ politics
Inadmissible Evidence
Personal/General
Big Black Van
Overflow
In Spite of Years of Silence
Metamorphosism (Mig's new blog)
Real Live Preacher
Blogs with Attitude
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Alas, A Blog
A Fistful of Euros
BuzzMachine
Eschaton
Pedantry
The Poor Man
Barefoot and Naked
Boing Boing
Craigblog
Fafglob
The Road to Surfdom
link
E-Mail Me
![[Powered by Blogger]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sfvG2IbSQ11qwV2sIcntzu4NTYV-UFWBLx5vicIoNWdorAgMROkBnCqppxnF0XiVb7uVUx1P3a-pQO-V9CKhSnkHIpee_WBZNW4xlBVerh=s0-d){kind=small}
Syndication has arrived.
Click on the FeedBurner Icon for this site's (Mark(ings) of Zorro) feed.
Click on the following link for the RSS feed of my LiveJournal.
Subscribe to A Pilgrim's Progress
And finally, here are a few books I might recommend for your edification and amazement.
What's the Matter with Kansas?
Thursday, June 26, 2003
That's my excuse for not having posted a word size the 10th. For what it is worth, I work for the self-styled "world's largest bookseller", so Harry has been huge in my life lately. My hours at the store increased dramatically as we ramped up to deal with the June 21st release date. One of the Department Managers (the one who has moved on to another job) and I created an entrance to platform 9 3/4 where our customers could get their tickets which would allow them to buy a book and a couple other less elaborate settings for the night's activities. This plus an ever increasing volume of phone calls placing reservations for the book, occupied half my days pretty fully. The other half was, as usual, totally consumed by the role of primary person-in-charge of a very active toddler. God! The only time she slows down is for her one nap a day. And that time is used doing my share of the household chores--so I pretty much don't stop from 8am until I get home from work at (normally) about 12:15am. I am truly looking forward to my wife's summer break from being a Montessori teacher. For at least two months there will be two of us to split the baby watching duties, and that means some of the long postponed yard work will finally begin to get done. It also means that I'll be able to spend a little more time on line doing things like updating my Blog.
So, we go back to the Harry phenomenon. I actually was not scheduled to work the party on Friday night. However, I showed up at about 10:30pm just to see, and experience, this event. It took about 10 minutes for me to be pressed into service. I left the store a little after 2am after helping with the initial clean-up. I was scheduled to work the next day, though, so I had to get out of there for a while. For what it is worth, in 90 minutes, between 12 and 1:30, we went through about 700 copies of Harry's fifth book. In the first 24 hours, our store sold over 1000 copies. This was the largest first printing (somewhere around 8 million copies) in the history of publishing, and Barnes & Noble had a big chunk of that. Now, one week later, we are still watching 30-50 copies of the book go out the door every day. We expect Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to remain on the Best Sellers list at least through Christmas and probably a while beyond that. For all the crap that I go through as a Bookseller, the reward of seeing the huge smile on a kid's face when I hand him/her the book makes it all worthwhile. Ms. Rowling should see all those moments: it would make the money part of Harry Potter fade in importance...a little.
On other fronts, life goes on. The pool liner should be done this weekend...or at least the work should begin. I'm not quite sure how we're gonna pay for it yet since the second mortgage on the house hasn't been done, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. We also need to replace the upstairs central air unit. The service guy was out here yesterday and, after two hours of fruitless labor, he had to admit defeat and told the compressor was, in fact, deceased. Oh joy! Another major expense. The only silver lining there is that any new unit will be at least twice as efficient which means, when coupled with rebates from PSE&G, the payback period is only a couple years. The tech who was working on the old beast said that only about 40% of our energy dollars were actually making it into the house. That made the thought of replace it a little easier to take. Still...another expense at a time when I still don't know if I'll be getting the promotion at work.
The promotion: that has turned into a melodrama in and of itself. It seems that both our District Manager and the Regional Director want a role in deciding who gets promoted to this position. Guys, this is the bottom rung of salaried management. In the company's T/O, everybody below this level are hourly employees. I can understand the District Manager wanting to vet applicants for Assistant Store Manager as those people are next in line for having their own store. However, the micromanaging that is going on here sorta boggles the mind. What really makes it funny is that both the CEO and COO of Barnes & Noble are strong proponents of local autonomy:The believe that the local store management should be empowered to make many, if not most, of the decisions about how a store is run. Of course, if the store doesn't do well, the local management has its collective neck on the chopping block...but that is another issue entirely. Anyhow, I am still waiting for my interview with the upper echelons of management. I hope they get their acts together pretty soon!!
Well, that's enough for now. I have to go do some chores before the granddaughter awakes from her nap...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005
