This week was my first week on the job at Hitachi. Many people kept asking me, so what are you going to do there? And you know what, I had no clue. Even after this week, I only have a vague notion of what I'm gonna do. In any case, Hitachi makes all kinds of things but in San Jose, they make hard drives, a product from buying out IBM's hard drive business. I'm in what they call the Mobile BU (Business Unit). They are in the business side of selling mobile hard drives to distributors and manufacturers which includes the pricing and allocating and forecasting, etc. So again, what do I do? Well, let's see. This week, I didn't do much as they wanted to ease me in to everything. So my week consisted of reading the basic files they use and running around meeting the other team members and having them explain these basic files to me. My manager is a young guy who's about to temporarily leave soon as his wife is gonna have a baby. He got lots of keys and stamps around a lot so you can hear him coming a mile away. I've got a cheap laptop in my very own office. How cheap? It couldn't run one of the files they gave me so they're requisitioning another one. At times, it got very boring. Even fell asleep once in that white-walled dungeon. But hey, soon I'll do something. Apparently, I'll be responsible for two things in the short term: in-quarter forecasting and maintenance of the main file used to keep track of sales.

So, it's been a week. What have I missed?

Last Comic Standing whittled down the competitors to 10 from 20. This was the episode where the celebrity judges complained the wrong people were being chosen to enter the house while more deserving comedians were being left out. Dan Ahdoot, Monty Hoffman, Kerri Louise, Dan Naturman, and Jim Wiggins all deserved to get in while Ant and a couple of others obviously did not. According to Jay Mohr though, each celebrity judge got to pick 10 of their favorites of the 20 and if at least 3 of the 4 celebrity judges agreed on a comedian, they would get in. This applied to 7 of them, meaning NBC and the producers of the show got to choose the other 3. Man, as long as they can get a better comedian than Dat Phan, then I'll be happy. And from the looks of it, that should be easy.

I'm unhappy though that they've taken out Dave Mordal's rants about this season. Mordal was the funniest of the bunch in Last Comic Standing last year. He said some things about Ant and the talent scouts but those were edited out a few days later. And now, they've completely taken his comments out. What's the deal?

My sister discovered Nick GaS at her friend's house. Apparently, they show old Nickelodeon game shows and other things. You remember, shows like Finders Keepers, the Legend of the Hidden Temple, Guts, Double Dare, etc. So then, they were talking about game shows and she remembered a show where one half of a duo would pick out prizes and then they would get those prizes if the other half picked the same things, but she couldn't remember the title, so she came to me. I remember it too, but I don't remember the title. Anyone??

They've announced the dates and times of the presidential debates and one thing caught my eye. The second debate, which is a town hall meeting, is going to be on a Friday. Friday!!! It's bad enough barely anyone watches the debates, but you had to put it on Friday?

Long live Camera One and Camera 3. Both theatres in Downtown San Jose are closing and being consolidated into the old Pavilion which was an 8-screen theatre by United Artists. Camera is re-opening it up as a 12-screen theatre. Good for them. I never did like the empty feeling the area had out there.

You would think I would have officially moved out of the Berkeley apartment but no. One bill still remains. I got sent a $60 bill from Comcast. My internet account was apparently still active. So I call them up and they say this is normal. NORMAL? I cancelled my account in May! They said the accounting will reflect that, but until they physically disconnect my account, billing will go on. When will the disconnect happen? Early July. Please, they should really get their act together.