Finally got myself to go back to a casino.  Haven't been in  - a couple of years I think.  I have been playing the free, online version through MyVegas for a while now and decided to go an see what happens.

First table: 2 guys that had no clue what they were doing.  Didn't sit there long.  Second table, would have had the table to myself but a guy showed up as I was placing a bet.  I sat there for a while - it was up and down.  I decided that table wasn't working and went to another one - which wasn't working at ALL.  I ventured over to the other side of the building to their other blackjack tables.

2 guys at the table I sat down at.  One got up and left - making bad decisions on hands - and that's when I made the comeback.  Nothing grand.  But there was one hand that was very interesting.  I was dealt a pair of Aces.  I split.  I get another Ace.  Split again. I get another Ace and yes, split again! 4 hands running now.  You only get one card per hand when splitting aces.  I got a 10 on 2 of them and a 2 and a 3 on the other.  2 21's and 2 bad hands but if I win the 2 21 hands then it will offset the other 2 and it will ultimately be a push.

Didn't happen.  Instead, the dealer busted! Woohoo! I had my money back and I left shortly after that.  Just wanted to venture into it once to see if I could still hack it.

That's it.  I'm not going back to that one.  I will try a different one eventually, but - not today lol.  

I slept in this morning having had the day off - and went to bed early last night.  I got up and cleaned out the dirty pond's filter again.  It had gotten filthy in a short period of time.  Going to keep doing that until that water is clear and clean.  Probably every other day or every 2 days.

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Long interlude.  Went to Fry's.  They have almost completely relocated everything in the store.  I know (knew) where everything is.  Now I can't find anything.  I mean, they have relocated everything from one place to another, most of it to completely different aisles.  I mean, people are walking back and forth along the main aisles looking down the shelf aisles looking for the things they used to know the location of.

I asked, yes I did.  Shrugging shoulders from management and employees: Whose bright idea was THIS?!!
A new front end manager.  Dunno him, talks to me with tones of authority and as if he had been working at that store forever.  He's brand new there, I simply told him what I thought of his attitude, directly, to his face.  When I got home, I called Fry's corporate.  Blah Blah Blahhhhh.  They said they would have someone contact me.  I distinctly stated I wanted to speak to someone in corporate, not the store's general manager.  Who calls?

The store's general manager. That conversation went on for less than 60 seconds.  I called Fry's back.  Not a happening event.  Next call was from the district manager.  I decided to let it ride at that point.  A long, involved conversation.  Her pathetic points - handed down to her from Kroger's Corporate - were lame and my responses had her grasping for something to say other than you're right, or yes, or I completely agree.  Kroger's decided to do panels with people in study groups to determine what the best layout of a store was. I wondered if, during those panels, the following or something similar to it might have been brought up: If this was to be implement at YOUR favorite grocery store and it meant that, over the course of less than a week, the entire store was going to be changed around to the point that NOTHING would be anywhere CLOSE to where it was before and you had to, in effect, learn an entirely new store, would you want those kind of changes? I am guessing it was not.

The point, presumably, is to change it around for "psychological" purposes, ie: the things that if a person sees, is more likely to want to buy, according to even more group studies and testing.  None of that kind of thing does anything for me.  I completely ignore all or most of that stuff going into a store - they already had junk like that out there - and go for what I went in there for.

Do you know how long it takes to learn where everything is at in a giant grocery store?  I'm sure many people do.  Once you learn all of that, you certainly don't want to walk in there one day and find the ENTIRE store has been completely moved around.  Further, the employees can't find anything, either!
I was using logic with the District Manager, was her label.  Umm, ma'am, if your own employees can't find anything - that work there in 8 hour shifts or whatever, how long, do you suppose, it's going to take a customer coming in 3 to 5 times a week spending 20 or less minutes in there?  I don't have the time or the desire to go walking down every freaking aisle every time I go in there!

Need not go into this further.  End of story? I'll take a list in there next time, hand it to someone - anyone - if they refuse I'll just be calling this manager back.  Why?  They could have done this smarter.  If they were insistent on doing this, they could have phased this in over time instead of completely changing the entire store all at once.   But, I guess that doesn't make sense if they were combining things from several aisles into one.  Right?

Done.