Movie theaters have days called bargain days. Bargain days are just like any other day, except during bargain day, one can purchase bargain tickets, which are just like any other tickets except they are usually cheaper. Dipson Theatres has its bargain day every Tuesday.

The catch, if there is a catch, with bargain day is that one cannot purchase bargain tickets for all movies. Those durn theaters, keepin’ us down by not selling the cheap tickets for the good movies, right? Well, that’s not how it works. Theaters would gladly offer bargain tickets for all movies, but certain distibutors do not allow theaters to sell bargain tickets. That’s right, it’s the distributor that hates you, not the movie theater.

This past Tuesday I was the only concessionist/box office representative/usher working at my local Dipson Theatres. During the first round of movies on my shift, one nice, cheery lady came in and demanded, in the generic nasty old lady tone, that I sell her three tickets at the bargain price for Nancy Drew because Dipson Theatres engages in false advertising and does not let customers know that [this week] Nancy Drew and Surf’s Up are exempt from bargain tickets.

Well, it is true that one cannot purchase bargain tickets for Nancy Drew and Surf’s Up. However, this is printed in the local newspaper immediately following movie showtimes for each movie. I told the woman I would have to ask my manager and then I checked the paper, proving the woman wrong. I showed her the paper and she threw it back down. She then asked for three tickets for the movie and commented, in the same nasty tone, on how not selling bargain tickets on bargain day is an unfair practice. I tried to tell her that it was not the decision of any person at the theater, but she did not want to hear it.

Obviously, there were a few problems with the woman’s argument. First, if you have a problem with a policy of a business, the person behind the sales counter wearing the cheap polo shirt with a sewn-on corporate logo is not the person to take up your complaint with. Ask to speak to a manager, the person wearing clothes suitable for an office environment. The manager is paid greater than minimum wage because [s]he the person you bring your complaints to. They also are somewhat affiliated with setting up policies, unlike the lowest level employee you cannot wait to scream at.

The second problem was that the first words out of the woman’s mouth upon entering the business premises were a complaint and in a nasty tone. Our country is not one of martial law and vigilante justice. Argue out your complaint like a calm person who knows what’s going on and the manager you’re speaking to might actually take you seriously.

The final issue with the woman’s complaint is that it was wrong. As previously mentioned, movie distributors are accountable for the availability of bargain tickets for movies. Thus, if you don’t even know that you have a valid complaint, try to avoid the first two problems and find a manager and don’t get overly excited. The entry level employees will thank you by not spitting on your food.

I decided to take a walk on the nature trails at RIT that I discovered today. The trails are alongside the quarter mile and behind Gracie’s. They’re pretty lackluster, but they’re existence alone is still interesting. The trails are lackluster because there’s nothing to be seen on them: many trees, some bugs, and innumerable squirrels [Bonus: I think the squirrels are becoming aware.].

I did find one thing of interest. In one of the streams the trail crosses, I saw two ducks standing on one leg (each) on a log with their heads tucked into their little duck bodies. I thought, Wow, this is the most picturesque thing I’ve seen in a long time. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, so I had to run back to my room and get it.

Much to my elation, upon my return the ducks were in the exact same position as when I had left. So, I got in the right spot, turned on my camera, and then the male duck lifted up it’s head. It retracted its head and lifted it a few times before jumping in the stream and going hunting. Farking ducks. I still took a few photos of the scene, one of which is atop this post.

For anyone who’s interested in my plans to entertain myself over the summer, here’s a fun list of what I want to do or what I will do:

• Two roller hockey games every Sunday
• possibly roller hockey Wednesdays in Hamburg
• work at the local Dipson Theatres
• ASL II class Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday every week of July
• read all the web design books I purchased
• read The Sickness Unto Death and The Tower
• read other books
• go for a walk or ride my bike everyday I don’t play roller hockey or work
• work on my web site idea, nandthis.com
• learn Ruby on Rails?

That seems to be all I can think of for now.

I’ve changed a lot on this site recently. The first thing I changed involved URLs. Everything on Digg is either TOP ## ________, Free CSS Navigations, or ________ Linux ________, but I saw something about URL rewriting using an .htaccess file, so I thought I’d give that a try. Now the URLs on this site are a lot shorter and simpler.

I also added some Digg buttons. So, now the zero people that read my posts can submit them to Digg a lot easier than before. However, the content on here isn’t even that worthy of reading if you’re not in my family or one of my friends, but I’m trying to think of some interesting things I can write about.

The last thing I changed was the updates panel. It now displays the ten most recent posts. I might work on one other thing: the month panel only displays the current month, so I’d like to get that having links to past months.

Friday lived up to its expectations. I started out the day by finding that my group of three fellow students and I was assigned to live in University Commons next year, the newest, furnished apartments at RIT. Also, classes were okay. Then, I went home.

On the ride home I played with my new phone, the LG vx8600. So far I can say that the phone is very swell. I’m a bit annoyed that the ringtones, when emailed to the phone, sound very poor after being saved to the phone as ringtones. Besides that, everything about the phone is pretty great, including the size and appearance, which you can see for yourself in the photos linked to below:

view 1

view 2

view 3

view 4

view 5

Last night was a lot of fun, too. I went to the Sabres/Toronto game with Kim. I had a lot of fun with her and the game was pretty great, as the Sabres scored four unanswered goals in the third period to come back from a 4-1 Maple Leaf lead to win the game. Go Sabres!