Jumpin' Jehosaphat! It's July! More mini-rants!

Is he blue and calling it Metrocity (like Atrocity)?

Update: Luckily, I’d ordered a new phone a week ago. FedEx says it will arrive before 7 PM. At 4:15 I see the truck pull up, guy get out… And put the ‘you weren’t here’ sticker on the door. Never even knocked. By the time I got out there, he was gone.
So, a 40 minute drive later, I’m at the local shipping station picking up the new phone. Get it home. Charge it up. Try to swap my number… It doesn’t work.
Now, this was almost expected; the Virgin Mobile ‘how to switch your phone’ thing on their website is -wrong-, and I had to go through that a week ago when I switched. So, I called tech support for a reminder on how to do it correctly…

…And the new phone doesn’t work. Same outage as the old one.
I stay on tech support for an hour, just getting angrier and angrier, and once again… I’m on a ‘ticket’. It could be solved within 72 hours. Maybe. I have to sit by my land line for that period and wait. Because, hey, 3 days, I’ve got nothing better to do.

FUCK YOU VIRGIN MOBILE. I’m about a millimeter away from an anxiety attack over all this. If within 72 hours this isn’t pristine, I’m definitely switching carriers and letting everyone I know what absolute crap yours is.

(Oh, and the kicker? Part of the ‘fix’ that was tried this time? “Oh, your plan isn’t recognized anymore. You’ll have to get the more expensive one.” FUUUUUUCK YOU!)

Well, I got them on sale from the local Half Price Books and only paid a couple of bucks apiece for them. Still, I don’t think the ROI on audiobooks is all that great, since I’d be highly unlikely to listen to them more than once, so for my next trip down I’m going to plan ahead and check one out of the library.

Speaking of phone problems…

Gah! My cell phone just freaked out and started playing the “calendar reminder” chime over and over AND OVER ANDOVERANDOVERANDOVERANDOVERANDOVERANDOVER. I had to turn it all the way off to get it to stop. Moreover, as soon as I power it back on the chime starts again – even removing the battery for a couple of minutes didn’t stop it. Guess I’ll be swinging by the AT&T Store tomorrow.

:: Hands out tissues, chocolate and hugs as needed; also shakes fist in anger when appropriate ::

 Directv and Viacom, you're both greedy bastards.  On the barely looked at surface, in this situation, Viacom is currently being the greedier bastard.  Both of you running "important announcements" that say the other is a big meanie and the viewer is about to be without certain channels is really annoying.  To do it during Murder, She Wrote though?  Shame, shame! :p Seriously though, both of you need to grow up and play nice and stop being idiots.  This happens every time a contract is about to run out and its damn annoying. (Hey I can dream that a company will one day grow up and not act like greedy children. :p)

 Person on other side of the country, stop being a dick and screwing things up.  You're adding an incredible amount of stress and pain to everyone's life.  We love you, we want you to stop hurting us and yourself.  How is it that someone so far away can cause so much trouble?  Gah!  Still in "real life" and not the internet ether (as it were) I'm their biggest champion and don't say anything bad about them outside of talks with those immediately involved.  Even then we're not talking bad about them, we're trying to find solutions to problems. :(

dog people can be so fucking saccharine. I sort of want to contractually forbid anyone who adopts one of my dogs from using the phrase “furever home”.

That would be too easy! No, they use all the boxes, but two of them get much more traffic.

Do you have an iPod touch or an iPad? Download Podcasts. Helluvalot of them are free.

Dear CSA farm, I understand that you would like the payments for our shares of the crop as early as possible. Really. You make this perfectly clear in the yearly signup when you give a discount for paying the whole amount upon registration. However, I don’t like budgeting that amount in one lump sum - especially not right after Christmas - and so opted for 3 payments by post-dated checks.

So I kind of expect prompt deposits of the last check… But seriously, the last check payment was dated for July 1, and it’s July 10 and you still haven’t fucking deposited my check. If you’re going to make me use this near-antiquated method of installment payments, then hold up your end of the deal and be prompt.

I wanted to go walking more with my niece and nephew but now I understand why, and while people drive everywhere, it seems easier, even if i am burning gas. I hope that I recycle enough to make up for it.

Early results: it’s the location, not the box itself.

Now I’m wondering whether that study will, once completed, be publishable, or it will not due to the small sample size :slight_smile: Perhaps as a case study…

Ok, I know if you’re manning the counter at Radio Shack you’re not a genius.

So I am looking for a 12v adaptor and the clerk comes over to “help” me. She looks at the device for which I need an adaptor, looks over the adaptors on the rack and says “I’m sorry, we don’t have it”.

And this is an emergency situation, I really need the adaptor now.

I continue to study the adaptors and she gets all bent out of shape…telling me how I will damage the device if I use the wrong adaptor…duh and trying to block me from the rack and chase me out of the store.

I see the correct one on the rack and grab it…saying, “but you were wrong, they DO have it”.
She looks at it and sneers and says but this one is 500 amps and your device is only half an amp, it will blow up your device.
I say “Milliamps, sweetie”…pointing to the “m” in 500mA …( OK, I’m a snarky old lady I did call her sweetie ). It’s 500 Milliamps and that the same as half an amp. See, you learned something today."
I don’t think she appreciated my help though, maybe I should’ve dropped the “sweetie”.

What I didn’t say is "I know you don’t have much technical knowledge but do you have any idea how much power 500 Amps is ??? You should realize that there is no way a plug-in wall adaptor could have anywhere near a 500 amp capacity, that is just totally and completely out of range by a huge factor for any electronic device and when you say “no that is a 500 amp adaptor you just sound like an idiot !!!”.

sounds like some serious drama you have going on there. yeah, and it sounds like they’re getting REAL paranoid smoking their own product. For good reason maybe.
STILL…i would rethink this…contacting the FDA about them would have the whole family probably arrested, and it would not necessarily reflect bad on you.

I hate it when someone is being interviewed on the news or a show like Dateline, and they start crying, and the camera zooms in on their face. HATE IT. It’s like everything that’s wrong with our culture of rubbernecking condensed into one moment. It’s so gross.

It also makes me think of the line in “The Silence of the Lambs” (the book) when Harris describes such a moment with a victim’s mother on TV, with the cameras like thirsty chickens pecking at her tears.

Actually ‘furever’? That’s even worse than ‘forever home’. I get the point of it, but give me a break. That and people who insist that they aren’t the animal’s owner, but it’s ‘guardian’ or, even worse ‘parent’.

I took the day off work yesterday ostensibly to celebrate Mr. Shoe’s birthday, but he had to work so I spent most of the day going through all those boxes of stuff. I’d [del] gotten a bit drunk [/del] mentally geared up and managed to get through it without too many sniffles. My car is chock-full of stuff to drop off at Goodwill - including, of all things, an oil painting of me at about age seven or so. (Who needs an oil panting of themselves? Besides, the frame was ugly so nothing salvageable there.)

Ugh. If I puke or get gestational diabetes, I’m blaming those idiots.

I am now a co-executor for my mother’s estate . . . in Idaho. It looks like it’s going to be a long slog. If it sounds like I’m not really ranting, it’s because as annoying as some things are, most of the family have been supportive and my sisters and I seem to be mostly working together. Things could be so much worse.

That said - Mom had apparently asked a neighbor to sell a steamer trunk on Craigslist for her for $150. Guess who now has a rusty steamer trunk in the back of their van. Some of its insides have come loose. No clue how she decided it was worth $150.

I’m guessing my best bet is to find a consignment shop. Maybe I should take pictures. There are other things to have appraised, but this is the thing taking up half of my van, so I’ll probably work on it first. Not my idea of fun.

Its hot, dont have AC, and my bedroom window is very close to my neighbors driveway. All week other neighbors have been setting off fireworks at night, which causes all the dogs to bark for 30 minutes straight. I have to work really early in the morning, so I have to go to bed before the sun goes down, sweating, with a pillow jammed over my head, trying to ignore the cacophony of:
pop WOOFWOOFWOOOFWOOOFWOOF…woof