Rough week ahead

I am NOT looking forward to this week.  Bro has to go to a wedding (in-law side of his family) in Michigan and is driving there with two other couples.  I've been recycled as CEO / head flunkie again, this time for 6 days.  Ugh!

I can feel summer a-knocking.  For several days our temps have topped out in the nineties.....probably the first of about 150 this year.  It's 7am as I write this and I can already hear the lawn guys out mowing.  It's times like this I remember why I'm a happy renter.  Also, K found a leak under our kitchen sink.  I fixed it.  Didn't even break a sweat.  (I fired off an email to maintenance :)

Building Crane....the official bird of Dallas

Two more of these things have gone up near where I live.  This one is about 1/2 mile SW.  I'm told it's to be an 8 story office building, all pre-leased to an insurance company.  The other is about a mile S.  Plus the news reported local pre-owned house prices are up over 10% from last year.  Listen....can you hear it?  *inflation*

More drivel later.  Gotta go.  Have a good day everyone.

S

This is really startin' to chap my hide

My newest technology issue (actually this is a techie issue, not with the technology itself):  I have for years bought Car magazine at the news stand.  This is an expensive magazine ($10.99) published monthly in the UK.  I used Barnes and Noble discount coupons to bring the price down considerably, but they no longer allow coupon discounts on magazines.  Bye-bye B&N.

I went online and bought a DIGITAL subscription to Car for my tablet at less than 1/2 the retail price.  This required that I "create an account" for my new DIGITAL subscription.  Name, email address, password....no problem.  But then they asked for my "customer number".  It says, "The customer number will appear on your PRINTED magazine address label."

Once again, I bought a DIGITAL subscription.  I don't have a PRINTED magazine with an address label to reference.  Without a customer number, no account can be created.  No account, no sign-in, no DIGITAL subscription to read.  *beating head against wall*

I fired off an email to Car magazine customer service. "Oh, we're so sorry for the inconvenience.  This was purchased through iTunes, so go to your settings, then 'iTunes & App Stores', then 'manage subscriptions'.  Enjoy!"

Nope, nothing.  They still require you to create an account in order to read a DIGITAL subscription, and this requires a "customer number", no exceptions.  Another email sent, which they promise will be answered within 3 business days.

All I want is my customer number.  Does this require a meeting of the publisher's Board of Directors?  Am I the first person to ever buy a DIGITAL subscription to Car magazine?  Nobody's ever said anything before now?

This confirms what I've said for a long time:  Nerds can do amazing things with bits and bites, but they don't have the sense to pour pee out of a boot with the instructions on the heel.

This is so ridiculous it's comical.  :)

S

Today's rant....

My nemesis, passwords, have reared their ugly head again.  This morning my inbox was loaded with receipts, "notes about my new service", etc, from Verizon.  (This week we moved some service K had with AT&T and bundled it with my Verizon service.)

"Go to 'My Verizon' to see this valuable information."  OK....click...."enter your phone number and password".

Issue #1:  They don't want my "phone number" phone number.  No, they want the phone number for my tablet WHICH IS NOT A PHONE!  Why does a device that isn't a phone have a phone number?  That's how my account is listed in their system, they say.  Well, it's YOUR system, YOU figure out my tablet's phone number.  I have no idea.  I don't ever call it BECAUSE IT ISN'T A PHONE.

Issue #2:  Security experts universally say to NOT use the same password over and over.  I can understand that.  But I have accounts for multiple bank accounts, multiple utility accounts, newspapers, magazines, on and on.  How am I supposed to keep up with which account has which password?  Write 'em on a piece pf paper and keep it in my wallet?  Doesn't that defeat the purpose of security passwords?

You get one try at entering your password.  Botch it and your account is "locked down".  Now you have to call their 800 number and press 1 for this and 2 for that before they'll send you a new temporary password that you must change within 24 hours.

Hey assholes, YOU emailed ME.  I'm not phishing in your system looking for customer account info.  You have something to say to me, JUST SAY IT!  

Sheesh!

S

Land of the Brave, Home of the Fee

I just read that last year the airlines raked in $6B in baggage, reservation change, and other assorted fees.  And just coincidentally, last year the airlines made a profit of $6B. 

Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just board with NO bags, buy new clothes when you get there, then give 'em to Goodwill when you leave, flying back empty handed?

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"WE JUST CAN'T HAVE NICE THANGS"

The BBC reports that more than $1M worth of Chopard jewels to be worn by celebrities at the Cannes Film Festival was stolen from a hotel room there.

"Earl....I told you puttin' my diamond stuff under the mattress was dumb.  That's the first place them crooks look!"

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SMART MR. MAYOR.  REAL SMART.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is proposing the city build an $80M maritime museum on the banks of the Trinity river. 

No joke....this is it!

Has he ever seen the Trinity river?  Most days you can wade across it.  He wants to make the soon-to-be-decommissioned nuclear submarine USS Dallas the centerpiece. *good luck getting it there*

Riiiight....Dallas has such a strong maritime tradition.  I think a bigger money-maker would be to charge a few bucks a head for people to see where the knucklehead that proposed an $80M maritime museum in Dallas lives. 

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And finally, I read that Speaker of the House John Boner is incensed that the IRS singled out conservative groups for harassment.  I don't blame him.  But he says just apologizing and firing a few IRS officials isn't enough.  He wants to know "Who's going to jail?"

Ummm....John....where was your outrage when all your banker buddies / campaign contributors defrauded investors and taxpayers back in '08 and nearly crashed the world?  I'm still waiting to see who's going to jail for that. 

*Still waiting*

S 

Careful what I wish for

I love "weather".  I mean the kind that goes FLASH and BOOM!  I love it when you can see it coming from miles away, and then you can smell it, and then finally you hunker down back inside and watch it blow over.  And afterwards, the air smells so clean, and hopefully has been scrubbed clean of all that nasty pollen that gives me such fits.

I vividly remember one spring back in about 1970 when I was a student at Harvard On The Plains (Texas Tech to you).  Every evening for about two weeks we had what they passed off as "dinner" in our dorm cafeteria, then went back to our west-facing rooms and watched the storms build to the west.  

They grew bigger and taller until finally winds at altitude began shearing off the tops, giving them that distinctive "anvil" head.  It sucked together whatever moisture it could find in the dry West Texas sky, and finally dumped it on top of us, complete with an accompanying light show.  Awesome!

One night it lasted for 6+ hours.  There was a flash / boom every 3 or 4 seconds, all night long.  The next day everyone you met around town was bleary-eyed from lack of sleep.  It was the talk of the town for sure.

Sometimes there were tornadoes involved, too.  In the springtime in West Texas they're common.  In fact, we made a game out of chasing them.  Today "storm chasers" have mobile 4G computer access to satellites and know where the tornadoes are likely to spawn.  It's become a fine art.

We weren't that sophisticated.  We were just a bunch of guys with a car, a full tank of gas, and nothing better to do. Well, except for studying.  Knowing that tornadoes generally travel SW to NE, we'd just maneuver ourselves SW of one and follow it.  

Most were harmless.  In the vast expanse of the South Plains of Texas there isn't much to hit.  Sadly, a few found their way to town, as in June, 1971 when one hit Lubbock and killed 26 people.  The apartment I had left the day before to go home for the summer was one of the casualties.

This is what the sky looked like yesterday evening around Cleburne, TX, just south of Dallas/Foat Wuth.  That dastardly funnel in the center of the picture was one of 10 (?) that plowed across North Texas last night.  Six people didn't survive, and property damage was extensive.  (My area was well north and experienced no damage at all.)

I still love weather, but now I'm wise enough to take it more seriously.  It can bite hard.

Prayers to those affected last night.

S

"Got Milk?" Yeah, and it gave me PTSD

It was 1967, and my dad had just bought one of these, a new Oldsmobile Delta 88 Sport.  No, dad was not a pimp.  This was considered super-cool back in '67, and I thought I had pulled off quite a coup getting him to buy it.  Back in my 17th year, most kids in my social circle didn't have their own cars.  (My first car was still a year away.) 

Back then we were dependent upon "the folks" to share their wheels, therefore the more hip the car we could get them to buy, the better we looked cruising around on evenings and weekends.  Since by then I had a drivers license, I was the designated family gofer, which I didn't mind as it meant I could get a few more minutes/hours behind the wheel.  (A five minute errand soon became a half an hour trip, allowing for all the detours.)

One evening while talking on the phone to one or another girlfriend, mom interrupted asking me to go up to the corner convenience store and get a couple of gallons of milk, so off I went.  (Thinking back on it now....damn....we drank a lot of milk!)

I should say right here that this childhood memory was prompted by Cranky Old Man's post from yesterday. Check out his milk story here.

Back in those dark and ancient days, this ^ is how a gallon of milk was packaged, in a returnable glass bottle with a heavy wire handle.  After buying the two gallons of milk, I got back in the car and put both milk bottles on the floorboard, holding both wire handles in my left hand between my legs while I drove with my right hand.  This worked well until I was almost back home.

Just as I made the hard right turn into our driveway (which had a pronounced hump to it as the ramp jumped the curb) the glass bottles bounced a little, then gently "kissed" each other.  Not very hard, but apparently hard enough.  One of the jugs shattered, and I had a gallon of Vitamin D milk sloshing around my feet.

I ran inside and grabbed a bunch of towels and tried to sop it up, but it was like putting out a forest fire with a garden hose.  I did the best I could but by then the damage was done.  The milk had penetrated the carpet.  Dad was not happy.

The next morning as we got in the car to go to school the stench of soured milk overwhelmed us.  Dad was really not happy then.  Long story longer, dad tried every carpet cleaning product made, even renting a carpet cleaning machine, but it was too unweildy to use inside a car.  He finally had to take his brand new car back to the dealer to have all the carpet replaced.  And that new-car smell was gone forever.

I really haven't cared too much for milk ever since.

S

"Fight Organized Crime....Abolish The IRS"

That bumper sticker always made me chuckle.

Now they say the IRS has targeted Tea Party groups trying to set up as non-profit organizations, technically  known as 501(c)3 organizations after the IRS chapter/verse that defines them.  They want to get the IRS out of politics.

I say fair enough.  Why don't we take it a step farther and get politics out of 501(c)3's?  Did you know there are one million non-profit organizations on file with the gubment?  And that doesn't count the other half million with revenues of $25,000 or less that aren't required to jump through all the hoops.  And none, of course, pay taxes.

This all sounds like one giant tax dodge to me.  Sure, I can see the Cancer Society, Heart Association, food banks, etc. as legitimate non-profit organizations doing work for the public good.  But the Tea Party?  Or MoveOn.org?  If some rich guy wants to contribute to a political group, fine with me, but don't ask me to subsidize his bribe generosity.  This is essentially what's happening when a group gets 501(c)3 status.  

I say we need to severely tighten up the IRS definition of "non-profit".  In too many cases it's little more than a legal tax avoidance scam.  I could live like "The Donald" if I had just a fraction of what the IRS leaves on the table.

Put me in charge for a few months and I promise our tax coffers will soon be overflowing.  (Well....less low.)  And there will be a lot of formerly highly paid non-profit CEO's crying in their domestic beers.

S