Category Archives: Goods and services

PC issues; Guns; Home depot

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Well I have had a couple of busy days, thus leading to the lack of anything new posted here. On the up side I did do some things that simply require bitching about, so here we go.

First a website issue. Had I known how much work was actually going to be involved in tryin to maintain this little site, I would never have started it in the first place. I suppose that it isn’t really true that it is a lot of work, more so that I make it into a lot of work. The odds that anyone reading this right now will want to read it again so badly, sometime in the future, that they will actually go back into the archives looking for it are pretty small. I am pretty sure that I am the only one who ever goes through my archives, and that is for one of two reasons, either I am looking for a link from where I bitched about something previously or I am reading the post to put a brief description on the archives main page. Unfortunately, as I found out on Saturday night and again on Sunday I am so damn far behind on the archive main page that I had to go through over three months of posts by clicking the ‘next update’ button until I found the page that I was looking for. That sucked!

That being said, I was thinking that I would take the time to go ahead and throw brief descriptions of them onto the page right then, unfortunately I encountered a problem. Out of the sixty or so pages that I had to click through to find the one I was looking for, twelve of them didn’t display right. Not a problem with the coding or anything, just that a portion of the page wasn’t there. I always check the index file when I upload it to make sure that it works correctly, it never occurred to me that uploading it to the archive page would be any different. Yet somehow it is.

I am relatively sure that this is happening because of the cheap ftp program that I am using. It always tells me that the upload was successful, but unless I actually refresh the web directory and compare the size of the file to my local directory I can no longer assume that it went through. Not that it would take a tremendous amount of time to do that, more that it is just a really annoying problem, more annoying since I went through every file on my computer to compare the file size with the version in the web directory. It took about two hours to get that all straightened out, so I will try to be a bit more careful in the future.

As a sort of proof of the lack of desire to read the archives, I never once got an email from anyone telling me that there was a problem. If anyone had actually looked at the pages they would have known that there was a problem. The pages didn’t look like I just didn’t have a lot to say, they were cut off in mid sentence, even mid-word on a couple of them. Two of the pages had absolutely nothing but the sidebar and date. Trust me, if I am gonna waste the time to write out the date at the top of the page there is going to be at least something written on the page. Whether it is worth reading is questionable, but there will always be something there.

• On Sunday morning I was going to borrow a truck from George so that I could go get a new washing machine at Home Depot. I don’t suppose that it was a coincidence that he knew I would be at his house at nine in the morning, and he had a semi-automatic Colt handgun disassembled on his table at the time. Mind you this is one of the four or so times that I have ever been to his house, and one of the other times was also to borrow his truck, so I wanted to be friendly and chat with him a bit.

The fact that he had a handgun stripped on his kitchen table, as well as a recent copy of ‘Guns and Ammo’ there also probably dictated our conversation just a bit. I used to be really into handguns, my father always owned at least a half a dozen of them, as well as fifteen or twenty rifles, and growing up around them I guess you really just get accustomed to them, then eventually you start to like them, desire them even. As the conversation about ammunition, old Colt revolvers and the such carried on, I mentioned that the revolver on the front of the ‘Guns and Ammo’ magazine was one that I would really like to try out. The firearm in question is shown below (stock photo, I was not able to find the actual magazine cover).

Imagine my surprise when George went into his bedroom and came back with that very weapon (of course I should note that it was an older copy of ‘Guns and Ammo’ so I did know it was coming). The picture does very little justice to the actual size of that revolver. The barrel is 10 1/2″, the thing is 18″ overall and weighs five pounds when it is not loaded. Simply put, it is fucking huge.

He checked to make sure that it wasn’t loaded, then handed it to me. I proceeded to also check to make sure that it wasn’t loaded, which, thankfully, didn’t seem to offend him, of course if everyone were to take those kinds of precautions there would be far fewer accidental shootings. It was simply amazing how comfortable the thing is in your hand, not despite its size but in general. It didn’t feel like a five pound, foot and a half mammoth, it felt like a very well balanced revolver. Were it not for just how far the tip of the barrel was from my hand I could have mistaken it for a .38. Knowing, through experience with my father’s gun-collecting friends, that some people would get really pissed off if you pull the trigger of an empty firearm, I asked him if he would mind if a gave it a squeeze or two, which was fine.

I am not kidding even slightly when I say that I have had capguns that took more force to shoot than this huge revolver. I was gripping it with my right hand, while the barrel rested in my left (pointing up and to the left so that I could watch the trigger, hammer and cylinder), when I started to squeeze. The trigger was so fluid that I found myself thinking they must have rigged up a few pulleys inside the thing to make it move that easily. I tried it again just to make sure that I was not just thinking it was less difficult than I had expected it to be, and again it struck with just very light pressure. George then instructed me to pull the hammer back and try the trigger that way. With the hammer back it took less pressure pull the trigger than it takes to click the button on your mouse. Even if you are not a big fan of firearms, this one should make you at least pause long enough to think that American craftsmanship is not dead. That was simply the most beautifully built handgun I have ever handled.

George did offer to take me out and have a couple of shots with it, which I would have loved to have done, but I had already been there almost an hour and the washing machine has been out almost a month. I told him that I would take a raincheck on his offer though. I really do want to see what it feels like to fire a handgun of that size. Well, enough deadly weapon porn for today.

The trip to Home Depot was pretty uneventful. Of course his truck bounced a lot more than the little cars that I am used to driving/riding in so that took a little getting used to. One thing that I did find really strange was that the truck has no stereo. It doesn’t have just a shitty AM/FM radio, it doesn’t have a cassete player, it doesn’t have a cd player, it doesn’t have hole in the dash where the stereo used to be but got stolen, it just has nothing at all. The spot where the thing would have been in the dash was just a solid piece of plastic. The truck has simply never had a radio or stero in it at all (more on that later). Now, first off, I didn’t know that you could even buy a car that doesn’t have at the very least a cheap AM/FM radio, but he found one. Which leads to three important questions: 1) Why did the truck have a radio antenna if it never had a radio in it? 2) Why did it have speaker grilles in the door panels and on the dashboard? 3) Were there actually stock speakers behind those grilles?

I got to the Home Depot and took the internet printout of the machine that I wanted directly to the appliance section. I thought that they would try to sell me up to some other machine, but I guess the guy was just happy to get his commission without having to work for it. Ten minutes or so later I was back on the road with the new washing machine in the bed of the truck. Unfortunately I had completely forgotten to take along anything even resembling a rope. That meant that I had to drive at 50-55 the whole way back, as any speed beyond that started to tilt the box over and made me slam the brakes. Sure it was just a 279 dollar purchase but there is no way in hell I am going to break a brand new appliance to get home a couple of minutes sooner, if only the rest of the people on the road had felt the same way. At any rate, the washing machine was home and I wanted to get the truck back to George as quickly as possible (since he begged me not to put any gas into it, having something to do with a weird superstition about gas mileage and a particular pump at a particular gas station).

I threw a five dollar bill under the seat of the truck before I left my house. I knew that if I offered to pay for his gas that he would refuse to accept the money, which was true. That way he will just find the five in his truck sometime later and there will be good karma for him for not letting me pay as well as good karma for me for paying him anyway. The devious things that you have to do to be a good person these days…

I did ask him about the stereo when I returned the truck. He pointed out (which I had noted) that the only two option that he had on the truck were the air conditioning (which is simply mandatory in Arizona), and the automatic transmission (which is mandatory for someone with such horrible diabetes that they can hardly walk). He said that the rest of the options all came in packages like radio, rear-window defroster and glove box light. He didn’t want any of the other shit, and, being an audiophile he didn’t want the factory stereo anyway. Something to do with how much power can travel through your average speaker wires, subpar sound from the speakers that are not able to hit the high and low frequencies, inferior sound from the stereo not being powerful enough to handle the speakers (which I always thought was the other way around, but listen to the system in his house and you will understand). I simply gave up on the stereo thing about four seconds after I asked the question, yet the explanation was easily a half an hour long.

There are a couple of other things that I really want to get into, but I am getting really tired of typing. This post is easily in the top five, as far as length, that I have ever written. With a bit of luck I will be able to go into other issues tomorrow.

Time will tell.

Diablo; Huge hot dog; writing

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I had every intention of having a new post on Monday, but then we decided to go out to dinner and I lost the interest to write anything. Yesterday I would have posted but there was a DOS attack at the server that made it so that I was not able to check my email or view my site, not to mention killing any hopes of getting an ftp connection. So I said screw it and played some DiabloII instead.

Funny thing, DiabloII, it is just so comforting to play. I think it is sort of the way that people really long for their favorite foods from childhood when they are really starving, something familiar and comforting. Just like DiabloII. What could be more comforting than beating the ass of the most powerful beings that Hell can come up with? Nothing, damn right.

Of course I have been playing on a newer character for some time now and as I lost most of my characters to inactivity some time ago I am having to go virtually untwinked. The gear that I still do have is all of the must be level 50 or more to use variety so it doesn’t really help much on a new player. I did twink the guy an amulet (can’t remember the name, +1 to skills is basically its only real attribute), and a belt (nightsmoke maybe? 10 to all resistances), of course these are just worthless crap that I would gladly give up in favor of better resistance or a bit of life leech. I also gave him a Spirit Shroud armor that he can’t use, and likely never will since I will be into nightmare by the time he can actually wear it and it has not resistances, so it will be all but useless.

So why do I like to play this damn game again? I suppose it has been challenging to play with inferior equipment, but challenging just means frustrating. I can see why people like to get turboed past all this crap. I still have a few characters that I can take in and walk all over hell Baal, yet I have another character that gets killed in one hit by your garden variety Venom Lord. I don’t know if they actually made the resistances matter more when they put out the patch, but it sure seems like it. The first time I played the game, which was pre-LOD, I beat Diablo with almost no resistances and most all of my skill points wasted in the Thorns aura. Now I can’t even get to Diablo with 30ish resistances across the board. Hell, if it weren’t for my mercenary firing cold arrow I likely would never be able to kill a group larger than two people.

• Now on to disgusting food stories. Of course Las Vegas is famous for a lot of things, gambling, hookers, the fabled UNLV basketball team…But what they really should be getting a lot more credit for is the most disgusting hot dogs on the planet. Now I now that the ingredients that go into hot dogs should be enough to keep me from ever eating them in the first place, in fact I saw a special on PBS about how they were made when I was 15 or so and didn’t eat one for at least five or six years after. Just something about it being a dull grey paste before the coloring is added, ewwww.

Anyway, the Westward Ho casino in Vegas advertises a 3/4lb. hot dog for 1.49 and I figured I would give it a go. I did go the extra 59 cents to get them to add chili thinking that I would never be able to eat that much hot dog by itself. Boy was I ever right. The hot dog is served on a paper plate, my best guess is that the plate was of the 10 3/4in. size. The bun covers the plate from edge to edge, while the hot dog sticks out of the bun and off of the plate by about 2inches on each side. When you add to that the fact that the hot dog is about the same size as a half dollar you will get an idea of how big the thing really is. The worst part is that without the chili I would likely have taken about one bite and thrown the whole thing away. It was just so salty, it didn’t taste like a grilled stadium frank or anything of that nature, it tasted like a boiled salt lick. I guess salt is about the cheapest spice you can get your hands on and likely the only one they used judging by taste.

I did manage to eat the entire bun, all of the chili, and maybe half of the hot dog. I suppose that I shouldn’t have been expecting gourmet cuisine when paying two bucks for 3/4 of a pound of food, but I will know in the future that if the price of an entree seems ridiculously low that likely means that the quality of the entree is likely also ridiculously low. This could also be just because I am really sensitive to the taste of salt, there were dozens of other people there eating these horrendous things with nothing on them but ketchup and mustard, perhaps these people had taken in a few more cocktails than I had? In short, Westward Ho hot dog, do it once for the novelty, never eat another hot dog as long as you live.

Let’s see. I have talked about video games and huge weiners, what more must I do to attract the middle aged nerd demographic?

• In other news, I have just surpassed the $1 mark on my Amazon associates account. Of course all of the purchases were made either by my wife or myself so I am not entirely sure if that is a good thing. Hell, I’m not even entirely sure if that is a legal thing. I just figured that if I am going to buy something off of Amazon and someone is going to get a bit of money for the transaction it might as well be me. Prior to having this page I always clicked through BlackChampagne for all of my Amazon purposes. It is not like I am actually trying to make money with this site though, if that was the case it would be nothing but hardcore porn, probably have a lot of scumware and that sort of thing. This is just my little soapbox from which to say whatever I want.

Funny how it has changed. I started this site with every intention of typing all of my short stories onto it, with the hopes that people would read and enjoy them. Then I actually read some of my short stories with fresh eyes…All that just went right out the window. I do still enjoy writing the Arthur Witles stories, and people do still email me to tell me how much they enjoyed them. I think this is simply because we just don’t expect nearly as much from a story that is meant to be humorous as we do from a ‘real’ story.

I really should sit down someday and start to type up a few more of the Witles stories. As I wrote more of them I expanded on the little nuances of his character, as well as the Dr. Ampere character, and found that it was probably more enjoyable for me to write than it ever could be for anyone to read. I think the thing that makes that possible is that since it is a humorous story a lot of really absurd stuff happens, not impossible, just extremely unlikely. With paramaters like that it is really easy to surprise the reader, even make them laugh in a way that I would probably never be able to do if I were trying to cause the same emotion with a more by the book approach.

Isn’t it strange how it can take someone so long to realize the actual limits of their ability? I have a file cabinet full of absolute crap that I have written which will never see the light of day. From the time I was in my early teens until the mid twenties I really believed that I was going to be a writer, I really believed that I was going to get a novel published, I really believed that I was a pretty good writer. I have now kind of sobered up to the fact that I am likely never going to see a book in print, if I do it will likely be with my paying all of the costs of publishing for the sole purpose of gifting it to friends and family. I suppose that is a sort of pessimistic view of it, but it seems to be the most realistic. All that being said, when is the last time you saw an author that really came into success before they were in their mid thirties? So maybe I should just scrap everything that I have done previously and start with a clean slate. I had a really bizarre dream a few months ago that would make a great premise for a novel, the problem is that I don’t think I would be able to make it anything better than mediocre, and mediocre doesn’t meet the mark when you are competing against established authors.

When it comes right down to it, I will never know if my writing is any good unless I try. I know that my grammar is far from perfect, but as for my ability to tell a story how will I know unless I actually complete something and test the waters? If I do try, and ultimately fail, it will at least be something to be handed down from generation to generation, that is what I have to tell myself for motivation to at least try…

Jaguar

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As the title would seem to indicate, it has been a day since the events that transpired yesterday. While I am still far from happy about the outcome of events yesterday I am also a very realistic person. All of the random events that happened yesterday could have happened to anyone, yet they didn’t happen to anyone, they happened to me. Is this the hand of god trying to smite me, but always a step behind, or is this the reason that I just do not like to leave the house?

The cars called “Jaguar” have been the butt of many jokes over the years. I say this knowing that the cars called Toyota have been the butt of even worse jokes. This Car is very much like the one that I had to ride in yesterday. The fluff certainly makes it sound nice, yet, the fact is that it is the worst piece of shit that you have ever encountered. The air-conditioning just does not work, the leather seats make you have to peel yourself off of them. This car is a complete piece of shit that you would do better to never ride in.

The name “Jaguar” should have to take a point off for building this piece of shit. There is roughly seventeen inches of legroom in the back seat, compared to the twenty-six inches offered in your average Honda. The entire “cabin” of this vehicle is about half the size of an average Toyota. Why do people buy this piece of shit? The Name-Plate. There is no other reason that a thinking being would buy such garbage. If you own one of these cars, rid yourself of it immediately. Thay have no resale value, being the shit that they are, get out now, if you still can.

Why someone would pay 8,000 for the actual car, and then pay 35,000 for the name-plate is something that is totally beyond me. Yet, when the car starts to have problems and you then sell it to the unsuspecting couple, that I understand…

Jaguars have entire books written about them, based on the fact that they are so unreliable. I do not know why anyone would actually buy one just for the sticker on it, especially when they are the car that is sitting by the road more often than not.

Restaurants; jaguars

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I am not even going to mention yesterday’s missed post. If you care enough to be unhappy about that, go ahead and Shoot me an email.

One other thing to mention before I get into bitching today is that it is Flux’s birthday. Flux being the guy that runs that website over at BlackChampagne.com and who also handles a lot of the stuff over at DiabloII.net, and whose site layout I completely ripped off when setting up this site. I knew that his birthday was close on the calendar to mine, but I did not know the date. Now I do, and as it happens I sent him a Terry Pratchett book a couple of weeks ago (totally unrelated to his birthday) which I will call a gift to him for both his birthday and the multiple times he has helped me with issues regarding my own site. It is certainly not something that could/would compensate for the time that he spent helping me, yet, I think that he did appreciate getting the book as a gift, and was not looking for anything in return when he was helping me with issues regarding this site. Of course when I totally ripped off the layout of his site he would have either been pissed off or flattered, I am hoping it is the latter.

• Today was father’s Day also. As I have previously written, my Father died on Christmas Eve in 1990 and I therefore don’t have any real reason to celebrate this day. What I do have is my wife’s step-father, who brought my wife up for the most part, and without whom she would likely be instilled with a lot of different morals and the such. Being father’s Day, we went along with him, my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, the wife and myself to beautiful Sedona, or that was the plan at least. I guess no one actually thought it through enough to realize that the beautiful Sedona is actually a three hour drive -each way- from our current location. Not the best destination for a day trip.

The Father-in-law was the first to pipe up about maybe just going out to lunch instead, which seemed like a pretty reasonable idea, compared to sitting in the car for six hours, and after all it was his day. Everyone seemed satisfied at this point, except the mother-in-law who went on to bitch about how they had been to Phoenix every day since thursday, and she just wanted to get out of town. That particular story took a right turn, missed some exits, and ended up not being the story that she had originally told, even though there were four witnesses. (more on that later)

So Lee, the father-in-law, wanted to eat at a place called the Texas RoadHouse. My brother-in-law went in to check how long it would be to get into the place. 30 minutes, he said. But that thirty minutes was to get the timer box thing that lets you walk around while you wait, the actual wait time to get any actual food was more like three or four hours. That is a long time to wait for a slab of dead bovine.

What happened next was a nice little ride to the next Black Angus. There was absolutely no wait, as a matter of fact we were wondering if the place was in business when we rolled in. The place was just dead. I came in a bit after everyone else, as there is no smoking in the area where the restaurant is located, and the car I was riding in smelled like dog shit and copenhagen, but somehow the smell of a bit of tobacco smoke would sour the smell of it (that, the tobacco smoke souring the smell of her car, was what the mother-in-law actually said to me, whether she realized that the car currently smells like a cross between dog shit and copenhagen I do not know.)

The server there immediately spilled water all over the table, and as flat surfaces do the water ran to the lowest spot, the lowest spot on this day was my crotch. I had two full glasses of ice-water dumped on my crotch, I would have liked to have gotten angry, but anger never gets you anywhere. Instead, I smiled at the waitress and excused myself to the men’s room. I was actually wearing some rayon-blend shorts so the water didn’t actually soak in, but I was also wearing cotten-blend briefs that felt very cold at just that moment.

We went on to order our food and I just wanted a sandwich. I had a huge sirloin steak just the other day. I actually hoped that Lee (the father-in-law) would have ordered a really big hunk of beef (like a 16oz. T-bone, so I could have paid for it as a gift), what actually happened was that we split the check, I offered at least ten dollars more than what the meals my wife and myself had cost. I would have happily paid for their meal as well had they asked, but what happened is that the mother-in-law took a calculator out of her purse and started running numbers. I put $100 in my wallet before we left the house this morning, thinking that I would pick up the cost of the entire meal (as a gift to my father-in-law), when she took out that calculator to try to figure who owed how much I was so out.

Tommorrow I will likely go into a discussion about “conditioned air”. The thing about air is that you can ‘condition’ it in any way you would like. The fact that we americans are used to the air being conditioned to be, well, colder than the outside air, and hopefully not nearly as humid leads me to wonder if maybe the A/C in that car is just not working. If it is 115 outside, and you are just praying for the car to stop so that you can get outside, wouldn’t that make you think that possibly your A/C is not working quite right?

Yes, it was 115 degrees today outside the car, inside the car it was likely 125 degrees and very humid. I had sweat pouring off of my forehead from the second that I sat in the car. Defend that car to the death and it will still not hold a candle to the A/C that you get out of the cheapest, piece-of-shit car that you can get in Arizona. No A/C=No Fucking Way….

Would you rather ride in a car with a nice nameplate or a car that actually works?

Steakhouse and Deadly Rooms of Death

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As anyone who has read this site at all would expect, I went ahead and played some more of that silly DROD game, both yesterday and today. For similar reasons you would also know that whatever board was just “absolutely impossible” yesterday was easily overcome with a bit of thought. As well as a couple of other boards that I had been stuck on for a while. It is for that reason that I will not go into any detail of the particular board that has me stuck currently, since that will be a non issue by the time I post again, at least to follow the trend.

• The wife and I went out to dinner tonight, which is kind of unusual on a Friday night, but not unheard of. The place that we went to was “Yolanda’s Chuckwagon”. I would love to give you a link to a website, but the place doesn’t even accept credit/debit cards so it is probably unlikely that they have a website. The steak was excellent. If you ever happen to be somewhere between Phoenix and Tucson I would highly recommend stopping by for a taste of their Sirloin. Unfortunately there is just the one location, and it is a long way from damn near anywhere. Well worth the drive from where I live, maybe not worth the drive from upstate New York. I must say that it is the best steak that I have ever eaten in a restaurant though, far better than what passes for steak at the Outback Steakhouse.

The only problem that Yolanda’s has is the location. I think that they probably get a lot of traffic from the people who work at the prisons but live in Tucson, those people would have to pass the place twice a day on their commute, and it is the only thing resembling a steak for fifty miles in any direction. The fact that the Steak is extremely good and the portions are simply huge just makes anyone who eats there tell their friends. I would do the same, if I had any friends, instead I will tell you all about it, just in case you ever happen to be in the area. They do offer non-bovine meals as well, but only chicken as far as what I could tell. There were options on the menu for shrimp and lobster but they did not list a price and just simply said ‘varies by market, when available’. You could also just indulge in the salad bar, 6.25 gets you that in unlimited quantities and there are enough things to put on the salad that you certainly would not be disappointed. (unless, of course, you are that one asshole that wants fresh-steamed pumpkin on your salad, even though pumpkin is way out of season).

I sure do wish there were places to eat around here that had more than just one location as I am sure that it is pretty boring to read about a restaurant that you will never dine at. Of course lots of people read about Mc’Donald’s in the news and would never dine there either, so perhaps market saturation alone does not a restaurant make.

For some reason continuing on the restaurant thing, why I got no idea, I began to think about the place that we usually eat our mexican food. I have spoken about the place in at least a few posts, which I am not going to look up currently. L&B has extremely good mexican food, and I suppose it is not a real big surprise that the people who started the restaurant were hispanic. They were serving the chips and salsa prior to the meal long before someone figured out that if you did that you could have smaller entrees. L&B serves huge portions that are far better than any chain restaurant could ever do.

It was only when I started to think of the two local places that I realized why the Denny’s and JB’s of the world do so well. If you roll into a town you have never been to and see a Denny’s sign you kind of know what to expect, while when you see the sign for “Pete’s Good Eats” you don’t really know anything about it. While every town likely has a couple of eateries with wonderful reputations, most also have that one place that no one ever visits. How are you to know which is the one that has a golden reputation and which has recently reopened after bribing the local health officials to hide their insect problem? I guess that is why the Denny’s and the JB’s will spring up on every corner while the local place will get shut down; people would rather eat mediocre food than gamble about whether it will be great or garbage -I am not going to exclude myself from this group of people-.

That is why I find it such a wonder that McDonald’s is as big as it is. We know that the food is mediocre, at best. We know that the food is going to lead directly to obesity and heart conditions, yet we continue to eat it. Subway has started to expand rapidly in the last few years as well, but seriously, if you are eating a 12″ sub sandwich for lunch everyday, and then layering it with mayonaise, cheese, olive oil and the such, you would be better off with a big mac.

There is no way that anyone would mistake me for someone who lives an ‘active lifestyle’, but I was trying to get an estimate of how far I walk in an average day of work. I tried to face it like the way one would try to determine the word count on a thesis. I simply counted my steps during one-minute time-frames (randomly, you know, like when I remembered to do it again) over the course of a day. I averaged the number of steps based on the eleven one-minute examples, then multiplied that by the number of minutes I was at work. Then, assuming that each stride is about (I said 24 inches, since there are a lot of corners and the such that can not be compensated for otherwise) I calculated that I walk just a bit over eight miles while I am at work each day. That might not seem like much, but I also do not have the opportunity to sit down and the motion is pretty much constant. To someone who didn’t do what I do it would be a real cardio work-out. When you add to that the fact that I have to move around boxes of beef (average weight about 70 pounds) in the walk in every day, I think that I probably get more excercise than the majority of people in my age range. Now if I could just quit drinking all the beer I might be able to reverse the nine pounds that I have gained since the neck injury I had earlier this year…

Appliances; Feedback; Pogo

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This is going to be a pretty late post even by my standards. To the point that it will likely no longer be the 12th by the time I get it finished and uploaded. Not that I think anyone reading my site is actually looking for late breaking news or anything, just that I was going to skip the post today, but decided to go ahead and type something up shortly after 10p.m. That being said, this might not live up to the high standard of journalistic integrity that you have come to grow and love…somewhere…definitely not here, but it likely won’t even hold up under my, much more realistic, ideals concerning site content. Reading further will be your choice, not mine…

I got some feedback about the site today, but not in the typical fashion. Someone actually came into the store to tell me that he had felt exactly the way that I did when I took customer service to a whole new level. This was not a person who happened upon the site by accident of course, I had given him the URL a couple of weeks ago but had no idea that he was actively reading what I was posting. While I did enjoy the fact that he could relate to the story, I now understand why it is better to let people that you don’t know read the posts if you are going to be getting into stories regarding your work or other personal affairs.

Not that I am going to let that stop me from bitching about local events or anything, just that I am going to make sure that the actual names of the persons involved are not used. I mean if I were to quit bitching about the idiots I have to work with where would I find the same quality of idiot stories to tell? Dubya is too easy a target, btw.

The reason that I was going to be skipping the post today was two-fold. The first reason is that I have been playing yet another silly game over at Pogo.com. The game that I was playing tonight was ‘Tri-Peak Solitaire’. I think that every gaming site out there has a version of the game, I chose to play this one since it adds to my total token count. I have played the game extensively in the past, but rediscovered it after I got tired of Phlinx. So I had to clear the board six times to get the ‘bonus spin’, and I proceeded to do that about 4-5 times. It took a bit of time, time that could have been better spent doing other things, but then again that is true of most endeavors.

The other reason is certainly not something that I would care to go into in this venue, but something that was far more important than the silly game that I spent so much time playing. The immediate concern was for the happiness of my wife, which is priceless, but also shattered today by conditions that were ‘kind of’ beyond her control, but that she should have seen coming. Much like standing between two railroad tracks, you may not see the train when you take that position, but a train will eventually be going that way. There likely aren’t a whole lot of options if you are the one between the tracks either.

Sure the reference is pretty vague, but that is all that I am willing to commit to at this time.

So we got our new washing machine today. It sure looks nice, all sleek, like something that is very sleek, and white. It is much more streamlined than our old washer, but then one has to ask one’s self if they are going to base a washing machine purchase on said machine’s aerodynamic qualities. I am not going to throw the thing out the window, I doubt that my wife is either, even as sleek as it looks I don’t think it could fly. Even if it could fly it is not sapient and would likely just sit there in the laundry room, hovering. That would be pretty cool though; view the amazing, flying, washing machine.

I suppose the “Consumer Reports” mag. has been a bit lax in the last few years. I mean what, they didn’t even test the aerodynamics of large appliances? If and when I do decide to throw my refrigerator at the kids in the lawn, I want to know how well that sucker flies! If it is going to fall after ten or twelve feet based on the fact that that was the height of the window it was thrown from, that is stuff I need to know! If no refrigerator can be thrown that distance with a man of average strength throwing it, that is something that I also need to know. If two of the top body-builders in the world can not make the thing get air-borne, that is something that I should also know. Every appliance does what it is supposed to do, if they didn’t they would never be sold. I want FEATURES, like the refrigerator flying around and smacking the heads of kids who piss it off. Damn it, Features.

Also, I have taken the liberty of ripping off the latest “Guadalupe Squares” from 98KUPD. It seems that they get less and less funny the more that you listen to them. By that I am not meaning to listen to one over and over again, more that the originality of it is totally gone and they are redoing stuff they did only weeks before. It still is pretty funny, and you can hear the latest one by downloading this file. I think this may have been their longest game ever, and while it was humorous, I would not recommend you waste the tiem on it if you do not have a cable modem.

washer & dryer; Reagan

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This week reverted back to the non-post on wednesday, I would have let the fact be known on Tuesday had I known it anytime before about 4p.m. on Wednesday. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I have recently realized that there are only two types of people in the U.S.. Yes, I have broken down every single race, denomination and class into exactly two groups. Those two groups are 1) People who own matched washer/dryer sets, and 2) People who do their laundry at a central facility in an apartment complex, or, worse yet, have to take their laundry to some laundromat in a really bad area of town where fear of life becomes more important than the quality of cleaning. Now, this second group of people (like me) are the ones that are happy to find a used washer or dryer at a favorable price, brand names be damned! Having your own machines makes it an experience that is not quite so intolerable, as the machine is just running in the background while you are doing your normal routine. No special trip to the laundromat, no changing in dollars for quarters, no having to question why the one guy has seven garbage bags filled with bloody towels, etc..

I do understand that in some apartment complexes, and particularly in condos, they really don’t want you to have the machines. That is likely the reason that most apartments/condos do not even provide a hook-up for the devices. I understand also that the space in an apartment is pretty cramped but they have full washer/dryer stack things that are made to fit in the space of a small closet and have all of the features of normal machines, though not the same capacity. Imagine that your options were to do a few small loads of laundry a week, or drag it all down to the public laundry at the end of the week, I know which option I would choose, but, as previously stated, many apartments/condos do not have proper ventilation for the dryer.

That little digression aside, I was meaning to explain why washers and dryers can start out as pairs yet end up as singles. The reason for that is pretty simple; the washer just lasts longer than the dryer in about 90% of the pairs. The simple reasoning behind that is that the washer is a big tub that spins with a direct drive, while the dryer is an enormous drum that is belt-driven and relies on little wheels to keep it on course. The wheels on the dryer are likely to give out under a large load, that is, the bearings will begin to disentegrate and the dryer will sound like it is spinning a piece of lumber in it. When that happens, the people who own the matched set of laundry appliances will likely call a repairman. The dryer can be fixed for about Eight dollars retail in parts, anything above that is them being screwed by the manufacturer.

The dryer is the first casualty in most every case. While the dryer could be repaired for less than a week’s worth of quarters at the laundromat, it is very rare that a ‘set owner’ would actually call the man to repair it (since that would cost more than the value of the dryer in many cases) and so another dryer ends up on the street, soon to be picked up by a local “re-seller” of such items. Said ‘re-seller’ will pay the eight bucks for parts, fix the dryer, and then sell it for fifty. Hefty chunk of change for such a quick/easy repair, and having picked the dryer up from the side of the road, he had no investment into the machine.

The fate of the washer then goes into a kind of limbo. Some may sell the washer, some may gift it to a friend or relative in need of that appliance, it is just a bit strange that the washer never seems to hit the side of the road.

I have had to replace the wheels on a few dryers in my time, I don’t think I have ever had matching laundry appliances in that time either. Yet, when the washer starts to leak, I have no idea how to fix it. I am sure there is just a hose that is broken somewhere inside that porcelain machine, where it is I do not know. It is for exactly that reason that we will continue to use a Kenmore dryer once we get the Maytag washer. The old Gibson washer will be pushed to the curb, and likely someone will pick it up and throw a two dollar piece into it, then sell it along with a random dryer for 150 bucks for the set.

This one just goes to prove my point that while technology has advanced, if you do not know the exact type of technology necessary for said operation, you will pay whatever they ask.

• Random Thoughts on Reagan

I found out today that there is going to be a Federal Holiday (day of mourning) for the loss of ex-president Ronald Reagan, who passed away on Saturday. I was not old enough to understand a lot of the things that happened while he was president and I likely remember his successes more than his failures, even with that in mind, what did he really do?

The first thing, the one that comes immediately to my mind is the Iran Contra Scandal. Trading weapons for POW’s may seem like a good thing at the time, but in the end it is just wrong. Reagan introduced a tax cut that went across the board, low, medium, high class, the tax cut affected you immediately. Then he signed legislature to raise the same taxes many times over his presidency. It is not my intention to belittle him, but it is just so easy.

I am pretty liberal, very democratic, and I still think that Reagan was possibly the best negotiator that we have ever had when it comes to foreign policy. Some of his Kooky ideas, site “Star Wars” for example, were a bit over the edge, but he did preside at the time that communism was ending and for that I will respect him. Could the same thing have happened if there had been a different president at the time? I think the more relevant question is could it not have happened with another man in charge.

I suppose we will start calling this “Reagan Friday”. What is to stop the national rememberances from having a “Biggy Tuesday”? Biggy died for “gansta rap” and should be remembered…Where is his monument?

Mastercool

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Well, yesterday’s post went all to hell. I wrote a paragraph or two, but it was so damn hot in my house that I was no longer able to take it. It was around six when I asked my wife to provide transportation to the nearest Home Depot so that I could buy a new pad for our evaporative cooler. We have a MasterCool cooler in our home, and it works pretty well. It can normally keep the interior temperature thirty degrees colder than the exterior while providing a nice breeze. The MasterCool is a lower maintenance system than your average evaporative cooler as it only has one pad (as opposed to the eight on the ones at work) and can be easily cleaned/repaired by a layman. The major problem with the cooler is that the cost of that pad was $97 yesterday, and at least that high the rest of the days of the year (even higher if you are not at the home depot), while the “aspen” pads for normal evap. coolers are usually a couple of bucks each. 97 is a larger number than say 12 (which is what the cost of the 4 pads would be if I had a similar size cooler that was not a MasterCool.)

The MasterCool system does certainly work a hell of a lot better, but the difference in prices is pretty considerable. MasterCool does offer a five year warranty on their pads, but that warranty does not cover damage due to water, calcium, lime, hell anything that the pad might be damaged by. I guess they are saying that if you leave the box on the shelf in your shed for five years it will still perform as if you bought it new, since the warranty doesn’t cover any of the things that could actually happen to the pad if it was in use.

I have always likened the warranty on the MasterCool pads to the people who sell stuff on eBay with a “guaranteed not to be Dead On Arrival” guarantee. So the second that you touch the thing you broke it. If you say “but it never booted.” They will say, “it powered up, didn’t it?” If you try to say that you really don’t know, but a light came on, that means that it did power on and therefore you broke it…

To use the same logic, I have a PC that totally works, it will boot right up and run without any problems. Well the fact that it has a boot-sector virus and can not actually do anything might be mis-interpreted by some as a problem, but I can certainly guarantee that it will start when you push the button…

• *sigh* . I had a direction that I was travelling here, with my thoughts, but instead of that happening I totally lost that track after having been on the phone with my wife until the very second she walked in the door after work. Good, bad, indifferent, whatever thought I lost is just that, lost. Not that I write anything that could end world hunger over here anyway, just that I sure needed something other than a *sigh* to signal the formation of a new thought.

• Lollipops and Pentagrams, if one could combine the two they would be quite a wealthy person.

Car; Diablo; Barber; Baby story

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Well, I skipped yet another post yesterday. No real reason for it, I just didn’t write anything. Sure there were external factors that controlled it, such as wasting my time in numerous ways, but as writing anything here is not really productive in any way it is hard for me to gauge which action would have been more productive.

I actually got off of work early yesterday, (well, I got of at noon, which is when I am supposed to get off, but it rarely ever happens) and after also just picking up my pay, I decided that I may as well go get the oil changed in my car. I did not know until I got to the oil change place that it had not been done in fourteen months, but that is another story. Anyway, after an hour, and dropping $105 dollars, I walked out of the local grease ‘n go joint with fresh oil and a flushed cooling system. It kind of made me grit my teeth to have to pay for them to do it, but I just did.

There was a time, say a year ago or so, when the thought of simply letting someone else change the oil in my car was laughable. I kind of let go of that foolish notion about the time that it cost the same or more to do it myself. That really only started to happen when someone decided that you couldn’t just dump used motor oil on the ground anymore, which requires that you haul your used motor oil to a place that has the facilities to recycle it, and you have to pay them. So, if you don’t buy the oil on sale (or if you buy a really shitty brand, the type that I wouldn’t even put into my neighbor’s lawn mower) you are out ten bucks for the oil, say five for the filter, then three bucks to dispose of the oil, add on the gas to drive the oil to the nearest recycling center and you are at about twenty bucks; that is assuming that you have all of the necessary tools to do it in the first place. When you can get it done at a shop for 25, without getting your hands dirty, and with the airing the tires and vacuuming and the such, I just no longer see the reason to do it myself.

The cooling system flush, on the other hand, was something that I really hated to pay for and wish that I had done myself. I believe that the manufacturers recommend that you get it done every 50,000 miles, though I could be wrong on that. The truth is that it doesn’t really matter all that much how many miles are on the car when you do it. If you have a car with 300,000 miles on it, and the water in the radiator is still clear, well, green Kool-Aid colored, but without a lot of rust or gunk in it, then you don’t need to get it done. My car has 105,000 miles on it, and it has never been done, so I went ahead and let them do it. I don’t know how they can charge you 60 dollars to do it with a clear conscience. I figured they would drag out some big extragavent device that would send little robots with scrub brushes into the motor to clean it out, but no, they did it just like I have always done it. Only they did have a machine that took out the human effort. All you have to do is run clean water through the engine and radiator. The way I have always accomplished that is to drain the radiator completely, then hook my radiator hoses to clean pans of water and let the engine run for ten or fifteen minutes, pumping the clean water in through one hose and the dirty out through the other. No real science to it, it sucks the water in clean and pushes it out dirty, when the engine is clean the water is pushed out clean. After that I would just use a sprayer nozzle to blow all of the gunk out of the radiator. Total time, about 25 minutes, depending on how dirty the engine is. The same amount of time it took them to do it, but for only the cost of water, Not the sixty bucks they charged.

• The other thing that happened yesterday that directly contributed to my not getting around to doing an update was Diablo. I hadn’t played the game since the last time I mentioned it here. I was worried that my on-line players may be getting near the termination date, so I logged them all on to make sure it wouldn’t happen. Then I noticed that I had a Paladin that was just starting act 2 in normal, I hadn’t played in so long… What could 30 minutes hurt, or so I thought. Radament was gone in ten minutes or so, so why not go get the cube? Of course since the map doesn’t save in on-line play, I also wanted to get the waypoints for the other two staff quests. About thirty minutes into it I had the cube, so why not just run and get the staff, I never have any problem with the worm pit (or whatever they call it). I don’t remember them having those lightning beetles in there before, but anyway, I mowed right through it. Might as well go ahead and complete the staff quest, only one item left. I found the temple, got all the waypoints along the way, and got the headpiece. I then stopped, since the rest of that act can be done as a stand alone. It only took me about forty-five minutes…in my mind…In the real world it had somehow just consumed almost three hours of time. That damn Diablo time warp is a very strange thing. I bet there are physicists out there that wish they could explain how it works and harnass the power…

• As for today, well nothing happened of note. I got up in the morning and went down to the barber. I have been in desperate need of a haircut for a couple of months. The barber shop was, of course, closed, so I came back home and jumped into the shower. –That is something that I have always thought was a bit odd. If you go to a barber they prefer that you have dry hair for the cut, while if you go to a salon they prefer that your hair be wet. I don’t have any idea why that is, but it is.–When I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror, my bangs were hanging to my bottom lip. That is way longer than I have had my hair for about a decade, so I took matters into my own hands. I have never used scissors on my own hair, at least unless there was a big wad of chewing gum involved, so I was a bit apprehensive. It turns out that it is not that difficult to cut two inches off of one’s own bangs, at least if they are long enough that cutting two inches off of them still leaves the hair pretty damn long. No one at work noticed, and it kept my hair out of my eyes, so it will do until I can find the barber shop open. Though I am now developing a theory that he hides when he sees me coming. He is the only game in town, and charges a flat fee for all haircuts. It usually takes him three times as long to cut my hair as the other guys that go in, so I can see why. Fear not, I have developed a new strategy. The barber shop has windows on only two sides of it. I normally approach from the main road, where he can see me coming. If I just use some of the back streets to get behind the shop, park in the alley and crawl past the one window to reach the front door I will be in! Though that seems like a hell of a lot of work and planning to go through just to get an eight dollar haircut that looks like an eight dollar haircut…

• Now a quick story about the least intelligent mother in Florence:

Have you ever seen those wide, white stripes that are painted on the ground next to stoplights? Sure you have. Do you know what they are for? Sure you do. They are cross-walks. Those are the places that are designated for pedestrians to cross busy streets. Now I am not sure how the laws work in all states, but in the state where I took my drivers test, “Pedestrians have the right of way in all cross-walks, marked or un-marked”. I take that to mean that you can cross the street anywhere you want to, and you will have the right of way, as it should be, but use some discression for your child’s sake.

In case you are really bad at picking up on fore-shadowing, there was an incident that happened to me today that directly relates to this all. You see there are only two stoplights in this whole town. Neither of them is ever very busy. Cars will usually stop for anyone crossing the street on North Main St., which is the historic part of town, regardless of whether there is a cross walk nearby. The thing that one must consider, especially one pushing a baby carriage, is that if you are pushing your baby across the street, behind a huge SUV, and only the SUV’s length from the cross walk. The driver, that is turning left, not being able to see past the SUV, is not going to see you pushing your baby across the street only 10 or 12 feet from the cross walk.

Follow me here. I had full view of the sidewalk on the other side of the street, there was no one on it. I had full view of the cars in front of me and no one turned down the street I was going to go down. There was no indication that there would be anything but clear pavement there. I made the turn and had to lock up the brakes when I saw an obese woman pushing her kid out from behind that SUV. Honestly, in the entire time I have been driving I have never seen anything like that. That was more like the scenario that they put on the driver’s education videos. Why didn’t she walk the additional ten or twelve feet to get to the cross walk? Why didn’t she wait until there were no cars coming? Why did she give me the finger after I locked up my brakes to keep from hitting her and her child, without even honking my horn?

I was not going fast enough at the time to kill anyone, at least I don’t think I was, but had I hit her and the little stroller, I would likely be going to jail for manslaughter. Not because I was drunk, not because I wasn’t paying attention, not because I was talking on the phone, but because this little fat mom pushed her baby into traffic only a few steps away from an intersection. Though I don’t suppose she got fat by walking all the way to the intersections.

I must note that had she not flipped me off, I would not be writing about this now. I must also note that had she not been wandering into traffic behind an SUV I would have seen her before I rounded the corner. I must also note that if it had not been be (or another responsible driver) rounding that corner (someone in an SUV on the cell phone, for instance) this would likely have a vastly different outcome.

Now the question. Would you risk the life of your child to save yourself taking three steps?

Stupid Bitch.

Collection agency; News; Gay marriage

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I was thinking that when I got home from work today I would go ahead and finish off cleaning up the chaos that is the ‘computer room’. Instead, I got a letter in the mail from a collection agency regarding a long distance company that I have not had for several months. I did a quick check of my banking register to find that yes the amount in question was 103.53, and the check for it had been written and mailed forever and a day ago. I don’t keep my bank statements anymore so I had to get online to find the particular check (706 in this case) to make sure that it had been cashed. The company had cashed the check a couple of weeks ago, then turned me over to a collection agency without even sending me one of those demanding ‘final notice’ type letters. So, I called the collection agency to give them the information about the check, the date it was cashed and an offer to get a copy of the check emailed to them. She asked me to hold for a moment, I assume she was calling the referring company at that point, then came back on and said that the processing time for payments can sometimes be longer than expected, but noted that if I call her back in a week we can see if the problem has resolved itself.

I know that companies make this type of error frequently, I do not really hate them for it as it is just a clerical error that is usually quite easy to fix. What can their defense possibly be when you produce a copy of the check that they cashed? The thing that I find irritating is that she would not say that, yes, the company had cashed the check weeks ago and it was an error on their part to turn the bill over to collection. So will my credit report now show that I left the bill unpaid long enough for it to be turned over to a collection agency, while the reality is that the bill had long been paid? If that turns out to be the case I will likely be more than irritated, hostile perhaps. And honestly if they thought that I had not paid them, why not one of those lame courtesy calls that could have cleared it all up when I explained to them that they had cashed the check? I am not entirely sure if companies moving their call centers to foriegn countries is really working out all that well in that respect.

Hopefully this situation will not escalate to the point where I have to get the Attorney General involved. That may seem far fetched, but my wife had to do exactly that to get her cell phone company to finally admit that they had cashed her check. We still don’t know whose account they posted that payment to, but it certainly wasn’t hers and it took government intervention to get the matter cleared up. Now That is customer service.

• I haven’t posted many news items here lately since the only thing there seems to be to post is about prison abuse. Today, however, I found a few things that I am going to comment on, not because they are newsworthy but because they are humorous, except one.

I usually just read the headlines from Yahoo News, and the little story that they have there, if the story interests me I will go to a major news site and search for the subject. This has worked pretty well for me in the past, it seems that I may have been getting a lot of bogus information though.

The first instance can be found Here. It is in regards to drugs being used by participants in the Olympics. But read this quote:

Greene said Monday he stands behind the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency rule that can bar an athlete from competing in the Athens Olympics without a positive drug test. On Sunday, Jones said she would go to court if USADA held her out because of the rule.

I read that paragraph several times to make sure that I was seeing it as it appeared and not omitting any words. You see the thing is that most athletes get banned from the sport because they test positive for drugs. So is that saying that we actually require our Olympians to use drugs? If that is the case then perhaps the athletes in question should just smoke a joint and get re-tested.

This one is pretty good also. It is an article about states that are run by republicans raising taxes. And at quite an alarming rate:

Ohi o. Spending in the Buckeye state has risen 71% during the past decade, when Republicans have controlled both the governor’s office and the legislature. To fund this spending, Republican Gov. Bob Taft, backed by the GOP legislature, has increased the sales tax by 20%, upped the gasoline tax by two cents a gallon and increased numerous small business fees.

Wow. The sales tax here just went up by 2/10ths of a percent (city tax) and I found that a bit irritating. Imagine if someone suddenly upped your sales tax by 20%! That would likely be the start of a revolt. I think that what they mean is that if the tax there was 10% previously it is now 12%, yet since the tax itself is measured in percentage it makes it look like it would have gone from 10% to 30%. Perhaps they could have elaborated on that just a bit to let you know exactly what they were trying to say?

I have said it since day one, I don’t proofread. It may be a fault but it is all mine. I really think that a site as popular as Yahoo News should go ahead and do a bit of proofreading.

• Here is a news item that is just plain depressing. Dubya has decided to start attacking gay marriage again. Could there be a worse time for him to do it? Actually I guess the question should be could there be a better time for him to do it. A quote from the article:

Noting that he had called on Congress some time ago to pass a constitutional amendment banning such marriages, Bush said “the need for that amendment is still urgent, and I renew that call today.”

Hmmm. Makes me wonder why this is suddenly ‘urgent’. Maybe he actually has advisors that read the latest popularity surveys for him and let him know that he doesn’t have much time left in office? Imagine if they do get that legislation pushed through. In they eyes of all but the most hardcore right-wing supporters, the legacy of Dubya will be failing to finish the job that his daddy started and pushing western society back a few decades by making homosexuality illegal. How can anyone have a set of beliefs that are just so idiotic and be in control of the most powerful country on earth?

Well I guess that is about enough for today. Check back tomorrow for more of my cheery, happy writing.