Another month is in the books and 2016 is starting to wind to a close in its 4th quarter. Soon we’ll see cooler temperatures and Halloween decorations going up. The holidays are quickly approaching. Here in the US we’re going to elect one douchebag or another. The only constant, is change.

Recently my work schedule was forced to change. There was a kid working for us on the weekends all summer long so I had gotten used to the idea of having weekends off. It was supposed to end in August, as he was supposed to go back to school at that time, but apparently he wasn’t doing so well in school so he was still available to cover weekends, and that continued through September. His performance on the job wasn’t so great either though, so the boss was wanting me to shift my schedule around a bit so that we could see if it was just his lack of effort, or if things have truly slowed down enough that the sales just weren’t coming in.

I’m at work now. Sundays are painfully slow, but I’ve still managed two sales today. That’s double what the kid did over the course of the past two weekends that he worked. Hence the swapping of schedules to test this, and I’ve proved already that it was mostly his lack of effort that was costing the business money. Either way, my shift for this week was to take Friday/Saturday off and work Sunday, but guess who decided not to show up for work on Friday? Yeah, the kid pulled a no-call, no-show. So he’s out of here. My boss and I had mutually decided that closing on Sunday was fine because it’s typically the slowest day of the week, so my new schedule going forward will leave me with Sunday and Monday off each week. How exciting.

This affects more than just my work schedule. It also affects how I go about the other things that I do when I’m not working. Thankfully with those days off I’ll still be able to watch football every week. That’s important to me and I’ve had jobs where I always worked on game days so I’m thankful for that. The big negative here is that my girlfriend and most of my friends/family have weekends off, so now I’m going to potentially miss out on fun things to do in my off-time, but that’s okay because I’d rather be working than not.

Speaking of the girlfriend, I spent the past couple of days with her, helping her move into her new place. It’s a really nice house, and she has roommates whom she’s knows for years, and it just so happens that two of the roommates are guys who are nerds. As soon as I met them they were speaking my language. We found that we all have PS4s, and it sounds like some PC gaming goes on as well. One of the guys mentioned being a guild leader in WoW back in the Burning Crusade days, and it appears that we all play SMITE on PS4. So that’s a plus within a plus. I also saw a collection of Magic The Gathering cards that I really wanted to pour over but I’ll save that for another day. I’m stoked that I may have come across some new friends in this round about way.

Going forward, this should actually be helpful for the blog and podcast. I’ve been dragging my feet telling you all this, but Eri and myself have come up with a game plan for Couch Podtatoes going forward. Our differences in timezones has always been difficult, but we made it work. Lately it’s been more difficult because our work schedules conflict, so we had a long talk and decided it was time for a change. I’m basically the only constant when it comes to the show, I plan the recordings and do all of the editing and posting, so I’ll still be carrying on with the show. She is going to take a step back and only be a contributor at times. She was suggesting I find a new permanent co-host in a nearer time zone, and I have done so. I asked my long time friend Jasinner to take up the reigns and he agreed. We are still mulling about what to do next though.

I think keeping the name is fine. Couch Podtatoes has been successful in that regard. I’m toying with the idea of calling the next episodes part of a “season 2” of the show, but 100 episodes is a bit long for one season, so maybe not. I’ve also thought about maybe rebranding altogether, but haven’t really decided. I’ll probably just stick with Couch Podtatoes and release episode 100 soon. We shall see how that goes, but expect new content this month and going forward.

That’s about all I have for now, just wanted to touch bases with you all once again. Thanks for dealing with my randomness as of late!