Today, I trained on doing the closing shift, which actually ended up being slightly more than 8 hours. Now I'm bumming around, not feeling quite like going to bed just yet. I'm catsitting this weekend, since Yanthor and Anya are on vacation until Sunday. (Though the word "weekend" might be somewhat of a misnomer, since I'll be working both tomorrow and Sunday.)

When I came in today, the older man who was working had the radio playing some baseball game. I made a mental note that it existed, and proceeded to do my job, filtering out the contents of the broadcast as background noise.

A few minutes passed, and a customer came in, and while I was ringing up his total, he asked, "Still zero zero?"

I was like, "Huh?" I thought maybe he was asking about a price on something -- maybe the latest gas hike, but the repeated "zero zero" didn't make sense.

"The score. What's the score in the game?" Oh. That.

"Um. I dunno. I just came in here."

Then the man who had been listening to it came out of the back, and confirmed that there was no score.

Within the span of the next 20 minutes, there must have been at least 5 more customers who came in and asked what "the score" was. Uggh. What is wrong with you people? Dammit Jim, I'm a clerk, not a sports announcer.

When the other guy would tell a customer what the score was, I made mental note of it, and repeated whatever he said to anybody who walked in next and asked. Except then, in one or two instances, my information ended up being outdated, and a customer would be like, "I thought they had made another run already."

If you already know, then why the @#$! are you asking me? "Um, ok, I guess maybe so."

With a little effort, I convinced my brain to stop filtering out portions when the score was announced. That seemed to work ok, until one of them asked a follow-up. "What's the inning"

Arrrrrrgghhhh!

Fortunately, my torture was put to an end after the elderly man's shift concluded, and the manager also left for the day. No more than 10 seconds after the door had closed behind them, the other remaining employee (female) said, "You can change the radio to something else if you want."

I smiled. "Gladly."

I started messing with the dial, but not being very familiar with Lincoln stations, I didn't have a particular destination in mind. I didn't even care. Anything but that. (Truthfully, the background noise itself wasn't too bad, but customers who expect you to interpret and summarize it are the spawn of hell.)

A customer came in, and I didn't have time to keep scanning the dial, so I left it.

My coworker: "You like country?"

Me: "No, actually I hate country. I just had to stop and wait on a customer."

So then she started fiddling with it. She confessed that she's actually a country fan, but didn't mind other music sometimes. I liked the metal station, but she didn't. Eventually, she found a pop station that was satisfactory to both of us. Then we had a good little bitch-fest about moron customers who are always coming in and asking about "the game". On this matter, we were of the same mind.

With the radio on its new setting, there were no more interrogations about scores or innings. Peace at last.

The rest of the evening was spent tutoring in the ways of cleaning stuff, totalling registers, taking out trash, blah blah blah. Each piece easy, but I'm sure I'll forget parts of it and have to ask again.

Having reached the end of the week with still no word from our friends at Nanonation, I have to suspect that my chances there are increasingly slim. Maybe when they say "a couple days", they mean a week or two, but it seems doubtful.

If I were going to guess the reason, I would suspect it has something to do with my lack of recent experience in C++ and non-web GUI programming. When they asked about it, I did make sure to talk about some of the stuff I had done with it, but that was all a long time ago.

"So basicly, all the stuff you've coded lately involves web database type of apps?"

"Recently, yes." My honest answer.

Could that have been the deal breaker? Hard to say. But it seems the most likely to me.

I was actually kind of excited at the prospect of getting back into coding some real non-web apps like that. So today, I was thinking that even if they don't hire me, there's no reason I couldn't get into it myself on my own time. I'd just have to be more self-motivated about it, and figure out what it is I want to make. That's the big first hurdle.

To get involved in an existing open source project, or start my own thing? Both have advantages and drawbacks. I'll consider this further in the coming days.