May 4, 2013

Yesterday I was up for about twenty-one hours and I was at work for seventeen of those. It was kind of a long day. And then I only got five hours of sleep before going back to work. That is less sleep than I would have liked.

When I got to work this morning I learned that the manager in charge of scheduling forgot to schedule a doorperson this morning so after turning everything on upstairs I ended up coming down and tearing tickets for maybe forty-five minutes or so. Turns out I still got it. I know my right from my left and sent everyone in the right direction. Or the left if their movie was on the left. I always liked door. At least I remember it that way now that it is far in the past. I always liked the human interaction of the theater and I don't get that upstairs working by myself. Speaking of the human interaction, I saw a kindergartener and two of the first graders I work with, so that was cool.

The best patron of the day was a small boy that came to see Iron Man 3 with his dad. The boy informed me when they got up to the usher stand that they weren't going to the one for blind people. They were seeing the 2D one and in his mind the 3D one was for blind people because the people going to see that one were wearing the dark glasses. Like blind people. Flawless logic. His dad and I both started cracking up when he said it.

The rest of my day at work was spent almost finishing the first season of Arrested Development, finishing two and three-fourths potholders, and reading more about human evolution in Scientific American magazine. It was a decent day and I'm glad I wasn't working downstairs because it is officially summer thanks to Iron Man 3. We have it in four theaters, with a show starting every thirty minutes, and then at seven o'clock we add two more shows, so there are three showings of it starting at that time. I know from many years of experience that when shows start every thirty minutes, it is exhausting and it sucks working downstairs. So I am thankful that I was able to basically do nothing upstairs the whole time.

After work I ate dinner and then watched YouTube videos while setting up my mom's Nook. It got here a few days ago and she decided that she wanted me to get everything set up for her and then give it to her on Mother's Day. I don't know if she'll actually want me to hold onto it for that long but I got everything ready for her.

She bought the Nook a week or so ago and yesterday, Friday, Barnes & Noble made the huge announcement that they made a deal with Google so now Chrome is the web browser and the Google Play store is available. That is really important. Holiday sales were apparently not what they wanted so they made this deal and it bumped the Nook up to one of the best small tablets on the market, if not the best, depending on who you ask. If I remember the numbers right, the B&N app store had around 10,000 apps but the Google Play store has over 700,000. Including the Kindle app. So now Nook users have access to the B&N library as well as the ever-growing Kindle library. I had planned on having to download any Kindle books my mom wanted, stripping the DRM, converting it to the right format, and then downloading it onto her Nook. Now I don't have to worry about that. Which is great.

I am still planning on buying the Nexus 7 but the Nook just got a bit larger on my radar. The screen resolution is better and it weighs less, both attractive things in a small tablet. With the Google deal, the Nook is now a more fully-functional Android tablet and not just an eReader with Android tendencies. I think I will buy the Nexus 7 and then do some hands-on, side-by-side comparisons and see how I'm feeling. There is a chance I could end up sending it back and getting a Nook instead. Time will tell.