This morning, blam blam blam blam blippity blam blam exactly at sunrise. Duck season has commenced.
I ran a gas-powered one as part of my ground keeping job decades ago, and I own an electric one now.
It makes a big difference. But are loud, but one is loud and the other is LOUD.
It does. The noise from electric ones are more subdued, and the sound register doesn’t carry as far as the %&@$-ing two-stroke gas ones, especially those orange and white backpack style ones. I’m devilishly pulling for an uncontained impeller failure every time I see ( HEAR ) one of those things rasp-ily “Raaahhhhh raaahhhhhh”-ing. Even moreso when the operator keep blipping the throttle for no reason like a goddamned dirt bike.
I bought a really nice mug, and I dropped it and broke it before I even left the mall. 
And I spent too much money on a Taco Bell Mexican pizza and nacho fries, and neither one of those is as good as they used to be.
That’s what I used when I had one as part of my job. I felt like a Ghostbuster.
We had one of those in the elevator of my old apartment building during Halloween season. The building put a 4 ft tall witch figurine in the corner of the elevator, the witch held a bowl of candy. The witch was also equipped with a motion sensor, which would trigger a cackle routine and flashing red eyes when someone stepped into the elevator.
It really scared a couple of people, and they ended up turning off the motion sensor. I mostly liked getting a little bit of free candy a couple of weeks a year.
Theres a guy on my floor who sometimes burns incense.
Not a good idea. The fir alarm went off. It does from time to time, maybe someone overcooked. I hold my hands over my ears as its way loud. After 5 min, I walk near the door. Uh oh. Smoke is leaking in! I know theres a door very close to me that has stairs down. I cant see it, smoke filled the hall. I didn’t have a flashlight.
Thank God, someone says Rena, over here. I walk in the correct direction and a neighbor opens the door, where theres light, and no smoke.
I get out. Everyone eventually does.
I have to pee, so I walk to the side of the building and do so, wetting my socks. Its cold out.
I brought my blanket( to breath into) so I’m not too cold.
After a long time, we were all let back in.
The guy was taken in ambulence.
I decide to call my friend, now ex, and tell him I almost died. He said he was sleeping. Thanks for your concern and comfort!
I know now to leave the building if the alarm goes off, And, to get a flashlight.
How much fucking incense was this guy burning?!
Its speculation. People know he uses it. It also may be another substance. Its a smoke free building. No answers yet on what caused it.
I rarely curse. There was a stupid asshole at the supermarket.
There is a lottery ticket machine near the exit. She wanted to buy a bunch of tickets. Instead of pulling her cart to the right (where it would have been out of the way of traffic), she pulled it to the left (where it nearly blocked all out going traffic from the check out lanes). Congratulations, you have flunked basic knowledge of how to live in our society.
I’m just glad you got out okay.
I knew to put a blanket over my nose. I knew to walk to the right to get to the exit(10 steps) but because I couldnt see, I froze. Thank God my neighbors directed me.
And thank you for saying that.
I called my ex to tell him I’d almost died. He went back to sleep. Said he’d call this morning.
Probably busy as his brother brought his 55 inch tv and bought a bracket and attached it to the wall, along with putting a lot of pictures up, and buying and bringing a mini fridge.
I have ranted before about the spectacular incompetence of my cable provider. I’m no longer wasting money on cable TV service, but I have to rely on the bastards for broadband internet. They have a habit of taking it offline for an hour or so in the early morning hours for whatever the fuck they do when it’s down – not every night by any means, but often enough to be annoying.
A couple of nights ago it happened again, and after it was down for several hours I called “customer support”. I put that in quotes because they have never actually supported or helped a customer in their entire sordid history.
The experience gave me the opportunity for a couple of smiles, and in this life of tears and strife a few smiles are always worth sharing.
The first was, while on hold, getting the message – among other cheerful messages – that “verbal abuse of our staff will not be tolerated and will cause your call to be terminated”. Now, I wonder what on earth could possibly cause reasonable people to become abusive towards the staff of a cable internet service provider? And to such an extent that an explicit warning has to be given? Geez, it’s almost like all your customers hate you!
I got hold of a dude who was grovelling and apologetic about my outage but had no idea what caused it and could only submit a ticket, all while continuing to profusely apologize. I repeatedly said that I was sure it was just another of their nightly maintenance procedures, but just wanted to know how widespread it was and how long until I had service again. He had no idea, but gosh darn, was he ever sorry about it.
As I expected, service resumed about an hour or two later, when whatever maintenance they were doing was completed. I tested my internet speed and it was faster than ever. But that’s not the part that made me smile. That happened about two days later.
Two days later, I got an automated call apologizing for the service outage and stating that their technicians were working on it as their top priority. Yes, the internet service that had been restored and working for two days now was being carefully investigated by their crack team of technicians, and perhaps being escalated to the highest echelons of their engineering department to figure out why my internet service, which was working fine, was not working.
I must applaud this kind of dedication, but above all, this kind of situational awareness and customer service responsiveness.
I’ve been keeping a record of all the outages and customer service incompetence since early this summer and am planning to file a complaint with the federal regulator. This last bit of hilarious incompetence will be part of the record.
My call to the Motor Vehicle Department, which is very important to them, is now well into the second hour of being on hold. I wonder what the odds are that it will be answered before they close in an hour?
I have a small (5 oz) package that I need to mail.Getting to the Post Office is a bit of a hassle for me, so I decided to go to the USPS website to find out how much it would cost to mail. After answering a few questions about the size and weight, I was given a list if mailing options. First Class ground was the cheapest, at $5.85. Since all I have is Forever stamps, I go to the shop to buy stamps. What I find there is a stamp for $1.08 which is labelled as “3 ounce mailing stamp” and 24-cent stamps which are labeled as “extra ounce postage”. Now I’m confused; while was I told it would cost me $5.85 to pail my package?
So I decide to call the toll-free customer service number. There I run into a bunch of “press X for” options, none of which remotely address my problem, with no option to speak to a live person. I guess I’m going to have to figure out a way to get to the PO without hiring an Uber.
I bought a bottle of all natural strawberry syrup at the Russian market. It tastes great and is reasonably priced. The bottle is too tall to stand up in my fridge. The cap won’t go back on properly, so I cannot store it in the fridge on its side. As the ingredients are ‘water, strawberries, sugar’ I’m guessing it won’t last long without refrigeration.
Can you find a cork? Or improvise one? Or simply decant the syrup into another container that DOES close properly?
There are genuine reasons to keep a few empty boxes and bottles and such containers on hand, though not hundreds of 'em. Also be sure to prominently label anything you move to a different container, or some day you’ll pour molasses into your beef stew.
Go to Stamps.com and print your postage.
In other news, my company transferred me to a new position (I started a thread about the demotion). I started training for the new position today. I put in for a day off on Halloween and on November 10. I expected the 10/31 request to be declined. But, I explained that on November 10 I had an appointment with a sleep specialist to get a new bipap machine. The response e-mail said simply “both requests declined”.