Rat thoughts

So, for my convenience, instead of putting the package outside the gate, or even, heaven forbid, getting out of his car, walking 2 feet to the button and ringing the bell, the mail carrier decided to return the package to the post office 15 minutes away?  And I can't go get it until tomorrow?  Gee, thanks!

They've been saving 10 Nissan Altimas for 5 years just for this contest!

I was making a package of Cashew Chicken for dinner tonight.  Inside the package was a small packet made of clear plastic, so you can clearly see the contents, cashews.  Printed in half-inch high letters all over the packet is the warning:  "Contains Cashews".

Duh?

Whoever decided that the default behavior of Windows Update is to suddenly reboot the computer with absolutely no warning needs to be fed feet first into a wood chipper.

From the Letters to the Editor in today's San Jose Mercury News:

"In order to stimulate the economy, President Bush wants to give individuals $600 at a total cost of $150 billion. Now, since the war in Iraq is costing us approximately $250 million a day, adding up to that $150 billion every six days, why not leave the Iraqis to solve their own problems themselves, and instead of spending our money there, give everyone $600 once a week? That will save us $250 million a week, stimulate the economy big time and save lives as well."

250,000,000 x 6 = 150,000,000,000?

Maybe this should have been included in the Reader's Digest article last month on teachers helping students in California cheat on achievement tests.

The case for the Dr. Demento CD was cracked, but I wasn't going to complain, CD cases are a dime a dozen.

But then I noticed that the case for The White Seal was cracked.  This is a bit annoying, as DVD cases are a bit harder to come by.  But the damage didn't appear to be too bad (until I looked inside), so I was still about to let things slide.

Then I noticed that the third item I'd ordered, Meet the Feebles, also had a broken case.  A badly broken case.  With chunks missing.

The shmucks apparently didn't understand that putting fragile plastic cases into a box with a VERY HEAVY SET OF BOOKS just might result in some damage.

I'm exchanging all three items.  At least they will be paying the postage on it.

I've ripped the Dr. Demento CD so that I can at least listen to it while it is being replaced.

There is some scoring on the slipcase the books came in.  It's not noticeable unless you look for it.  I'm halfway tempted to force them to replace the whole order, but they'd probably ship the replacements in the same box again.

I've ordered an iced coffee from McDonald's 4 times now.  Only once have they actually gotten the order correct.  This time around I ordered a vanilla coffee and they gave me hazelnut.

I don't particularly care for hazelnuts.  :P

Yesterday I called AAA to get some assistance in getting my SO's car out of the ditch.  They said a tow truck from Cass Towing would arrive some time before 8 am the next morning, so I took our friend with the pickup truck to Outback Steakhouse to thank him for his help.  Halfway through our meal, I get a call that the tow truck is on its way and will arrive on scene in 10 minutes.  We were about 30 minutes away, so we rush through our meal and just as we get on the road, I get a call that they don't want to drive on that road because they were afraid of getting stuck.  We drove along the road the truck would have taken

So that night, I call AAA again and schedule a new service attempt, which they estimate sometime before noon the next day.  My SO borrowed a ride to work and stopped by the car to hide the ignition key inside, in case the tow driver needed it and I wasn't available (the car is stuck about 3 miles away, too far to walk, and the driveway is too slippery here for a 2 wheel drive car).  That was about 9:30-10:00.

1 pm rolls by and I haven't gotten a call yet, so I call AAA again to find out what's going on and I am informed that the tow driver couldn't find the car and they couldn't reach me by phone.  I know cellphone service sucks out here, but they didn't leave a message on my voice mail, so I was a bit suspicious.

I had AAA schedule yet another service attempt, which they estimated some time before 7 pm.  I got a call around 4 that the driver was in the area and couldn't find the vehicle and that maybe the Sheriff had towed it away.

I called the Sheriff's office, and they didn't have a car matching this description.  So either the car was stolen by someone with a wrecker in the hour or two between Animale leaving for work and the first time the tow truck got there, or the driver is a moron.

I'm leaning towards the latter.

My SO is going to pass through the area tonight and check to see if the car is there.  EDIT:  The car is still there.  I don't know how anyone could possibly miss it, you can see it from a half mile away!

God DAMN but there are some stupid people in the world!

I'm sitting at a red light, waiting to make a turn onto a road with 3 lanes. There's one car in front of me. The light turns green, and she slowly starts to make her turn. As soon as she's pulled into the right lane, and pull into the middle lane and hit the throttle. There's over a half mile before there's anymore traffic, so I blow past her and forget about it, like the hundreds of other cars I pass every day. I get hundreds of feet ahead of her, and pull into the right lane, which becomes a turn lane. I end up behind a half dozen other cars making that turn.

The road I'm turning onto has 2 lanes, but it narrows down to 1 in under 100 feet. It's clearly marked as a no-passing zone. The car ahead of me pulls wide into the left lane while I pull into the right. I'm tempted to try to pass the slower moving sedan, but there's not quite enough room, so I hang back.

Then this woman I'd passed before comes zooming up in the left lane trying to pass! What the hell? By now I'm already past the point where the lanes merge, and she's trying to shove her way in? She was still behind me so I stick my hand out the window and flip her off while hitting the throttle to scoot up into the space ahead.

She keeps riding on my bumper, so I hit the windshield washer, the overspray drenching her car.

The road then goes up a very steep hill and splits into two lanes. Unfortunately, I pick the one with slower moving traffic so she gets head of me. We get to a red light, and she jumps out of her car and comes storming up at me SCREAMING at me. How dare I pass her! How dare I give her the finger when she does something stupid! WTF?

As she gets closer to my car, I kill the engine and quite obviously pull the 6 inch folding knife from my pocket, though I don't open it, and I don't open the door. She quickly retreats to her car, but keeps up her verbal tirade.

Geez, all I did was pass a slower moving vehicle, then flip off someone trying to pass in a no-passing zone. What the hell? If you're going to blow your top because someone passes you, you've got a one-way ticket to the nut house.


Damn, I forgot my phone could do video! I'd have loved to have recorded that.

The Dell Fairy visited yesterday and left 12 laptops in my office. Not the Latitudes I'd asked for, but absolute bottom of the line Inspirons, which saved the company about $50 each. Riiight.

Latitudes come with just Windows, nothing else installed. The Inspirons get loaded up with as much crap as they can squeeze onto the drive. AOL, Earthlink, Google Desktop, a trial version of McAfee, etc.

These laptops came with XP Home, so I had to go out and buy an XP Home OEM CD ($100) so I could format the hard drive and install a fresh, clean copy of Windows. The amount of time I'm spending screwing around with this could have gotten several of the Latitudes set up.

I got the idea to try saving some time by installing everything onto the first laptop, then use Ghost to make an image and use the image to prep the other laptops. So I put the drive into my desktop and tried to boot to the Ghost floppy. Except I get an error message, the S.M.A.R.T. system has detected that the hard drive is about to fail. Oh goody! It's a Toshiba hard drive, naturally.

I finally managed to make an image of the drive, and popped the second hard drive into the desktop. And I get the same error message, the drive is about to fail. And of course, it's another Toshiba drive.

The imaging process was taking FOREVER, so I'm just going to let it run overnight.

And if the drives fail, oh well. I wasn't the one who insisted on buying the cheapest thing possible.