I figured out why I didn’t get the notice from the court on when to appear.

The Trooper who wrote my ticket wrote my address as “1A [Street]“. Whoever entered the information into the computer translated that to “14 [Street]“, which is what is displayed on the receipt I recieved from the court-house.

Ah, the minor bumblings of, y’know, traffic court.

The driver rotation at the Indy goes like this (the best example is Friday night, where almost every driver is scheduled). “Rush” drivers leave in the order they arrive at the store. The exceptions are the “late” and “closing” drivers, who leave at the end of the night when the cleaning chores are completed.

The “day” driver (the unlucky schmoe who arrived at 11) is the first to be cut. Following, that, the rush drivers are cut in the order they arrived at the store. Sometimes exceptions are made if the guy who arrived at 4:59 is on a run and its slow enough to cut him and the guy who arrived at 5:01. The guy who arrived at 5:01 is cut loose, and the guy who arrived at 4:59 but was out on a run gets to leave when he returns.

Well, tonight the orderly cutting routine was upset.

You might remember “Ass Alex.” Do a search (right-hand menu) for posts on this blog about him. He’s a real fuckin’ charmer, from coming back late from vacations to save a few bucks on plane fare to faking epileptic fits to get out of doing dishes, the guy has “LOSER” stamped pretty noticeably on his oversized forehead and the thick mop of greasy hair he refuses to do anything with (not to mention the foodbits stuck in his goatee).

Apparently, working a simple rush shift was too much for Ass Alex Friday night. He was scheduled from five through the end of the rush. As it was not a particularly busy night, that means he would’ve been out by about eight o’clock. Well, apparently expecting this shit-head-worthless fuck to work three measley fucking hours is too much to expect from him.

Here’s some background: the cat has cash. He lives with his grandparents rent free. He doesn’t even collect his paychecks until someone throws them at him. He took three and a half weeks off for vacation. He complained to a customer’s face about the size of a tip he recieved. Long story short: he’s a douche. I don’t know why he hasn’t quit, because I don’t see any fucking reason for this fucker to need to work. Bad enough he comes in and half-asses everything, but he can’t even fulfill the basic requirements of the job.

(Funny side story: he’s apparently in school training to be a nurse. I hope some day he has to go in to clean up a patient who had explosive diahrhea. He’ll claim an epileptic fit and the head nurse — a plump black woman who isn’t going to take no scam from a fat spoiled white boy who has never had to do any work in his life — rapes him up his fat ass with a dildo the size of an oak tree).

So anyways, he comes back to the store after a run and tells Steve his grandfather is dying of lung cancer.

“Um, okay?”

“I need to leave.”

“He’s dying now?”

“I need to go home and call an ambulance.”

“Can’t you call an ambulance?”

“My grandfather is dying suddenly of lung cancer. I need to go home to call an ambulance so he doesn’t die.”

“Can’t you call an ambulance from your cell phone? Why do you have to go home?”

“Please Steve, don’t give me any trouble, I need to leave! I need to save his life!”

So Steve checked him out — seriously, I don’t blame Steve, Alex is one fucking annoying piece of ass-expelled shit — and Alex was on his way. I wasn’t too happy because it had been a slow day shift and I wanted to leave, but I got stuck taking a few more runs to cover for Ass “I can’t work a three hour shift because I’m a lazy worthless bastard” Alex.

Steve and I chatted briefly about Ass Alex’s excuse, and we’re both convinced he’s lying. Here’s why:

5. If your grandfather was dying suddenly of lung cancer, wouldn’t you call for an ambulance from your cell phone as opposed to wasting precious time driving to his home before calling for an ambulance?

4. What skills does Alex posess to save his grandfather’s life? Perhaps he has an Emergency Lung Cancer Patient Saving Machine in the trunk of his car.

3. Perhaps not.

2. Is it possible to die suddenly of lung cancer?

And the number one reason we agreed Ass Alex was lying:

1. Ass Alex is a habitutal liar.

Have I ever mentioned Ass Alex’s attempt at insurance fraud? I’m tempted to get his insurance information out of his folder and rat him out. Naaaah.

Anyway, I work all day Sunday with Greg. Greg is reluctant to fire Alex because of a general shortage we’re experiencing with drivers, but I’m prepared to volunteer to pick up an extra few shifts to cover for his absence, which should mean — hopefully with this last bogus fuckamaroo — that a sufficient case can be made for Alex’s termination. Saddly, termination means “Alex, you’re fired” not *bang* *bang* *bang*. I think I’d rather the second.

Also a plus towards moving in this direction, Steve and Greg decided to fire a worthless insider named J. J was great when he first started last fall, showed up on time, worked hard, was dedicated, even employee of the month. Then he started calling out all the time, bitching about how he’d requested a day off but was scheduled (he’d wait until the schedule was up before making his request) and various other acts to which his mother calling out for him today (and blatantly lying to cover for him — he’d called earlier from a friend’s house) was the final straw and J. was terminated. Again, in a “you’re fired” way and not a *bang* *bang* way, which I guess is good because: murder = bad.

Cull the assholes. Fire Alex. That’s my new chant.

Last night I finally had the pleasure of reading C.S. Forester’s “The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck” which details the efforts by the British Navy in mid-1941 to locate and destroy Nazi Germany’s most powerful battleship, a ship that literally had the power to break Britain’s naval superiority and give Germany the edge needed to win the war.

I’d been trying (half-heartedly) to track down a copy of the book for some time. It’s been out of print for years, so no bookstores in the area, or Amazon, had copies. I enjoyed Forester’s Hornblower books, and imagined I’d enjoy the book. I finally located it on eBay and it arrived a few days ago.

The story of the Bismarck — the actual story, the one the book is based on — well, it’s an incredible story of luck and crazy odds in a storm tossed ocean. The British Navy was spread across the Atlantic, blockading German warships in port, safeguarding convoys from u-boats, and then what few ships were left struggling to locate the Bismarck after the ship was spotted off the Swedish coast, with her escort Prinz Eugen. The British Cruiser Suffolk then located Bismark in the Denmark Straights and shadowed the massive ship, radioing their position to the British Admirality, which dispatched HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Whales to confront, engage, and sink the Bismark.

Prince of Whales was a brand new battleship and right out of the shipyard — an untrained crew, and not entirely reliable equipment. In fact, workers from the dock yard were still aboard making sure everything worked right. On the other hand, battlecruiser Hood had been built during the first world war — in the intervening years, she’d been Britain’s “goodwill ambassador” to almost every nation on the planet. When people spoke of the Hood, they spoke of Britain’s naval strength.

Early dawn, Hood and Prince of Whales closed and began to fire on the Bismark and Prinz Eugen. Bismarck returned fire. Within minutes, the Hood was scattered in thousands of millions of pieces across the North Atlantic, and the Prince of Whales was heavily damaged and retreating under cover of smoke.

The death of the Hood was a heavy blow to Britain, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill instructed the Admirality, “The whole world is watching. Sink the Bismarck.”

I don’t want to give too much of the events away, but following the destruction of the Hood, battleships, aircraft carriers, and a squadron of destroyers based in Gibraltar sailed to fight the Bismarck. One could argue that it was the hunt for the Bismarck which proved the battleship-class obsolete for modern naval warfare, where power is projected not through multiple, high-chambered cannons mounted aboard a ship, but rather through the ability to strike from the air — indeed, it was British fighters flying from Victorious and Ark Royal which delivered the death blows to Bismarck. Not in the literal sense, no plane sunk that ship, but their torpedo attacks ruptured a fuel tank and left a trail of oil (in the case of Victorious’ attack) and damaged her rudder and propeller (in the case of Ark Royal‘s).

(PS – I’m going through most of this on memory, I’ve got some facts wrong, I’m sure).

The History Channel did an awesome documentary several years back, which is how I was introduced to the tale. Forrester’s telling of the story is exciting and decent, but lacks character involvement, which I found dissapointing. Anyway, it’s probably one of the most exciting tales of World War II — if you’re into that kind of thing — and well worth looking into.

“Sink the Bismarck!”

(No, I haven’t seen the movie. Yes, it’s on my queue on Netflix).

Construction lasted from July 20th(ish), 2005 to January 26th, 2006 (that’s about half a year).

The castle is constructed on a 64×64 peg baseplate.

The castle is 200 Lego Bricks tall.

The castle weighs [a lot of] lbs. (I think the table it’s on is about to break).

I would not even want to guesstimate how many Lego bricks the castle is made of, except that the number is somewhere in the thousands.

You can view more photos in my Brickshelf Gallery. New sections will be added as time allows.

EDITED 12/12/2007 to fix broken image links.

After traffic court yesterday, I drove over to the Indy to do two things: show my coworkers, yes, I can dress up, and second to work out a scheduling problem with Gary. I walked in to the middle of an arguement between Gary and Sketchy over smoking being banned statewide. It wasn’t odd what they were discussing, indeed, Sketchy and Gary like getting in political debates, no, what was odd was that Sketchy — the dyed in the wool lefty — was arguing against bannings smoking; and Gary — the dyed in the wool red-blooded American righty — was arguing for it.

People.