33 posts tagged “monday”
Well, we didn't go to Boston - blah - I'm going to check out everyone's review, though - I'm sure it was a fun time.
I received an email from eWeek about Vista not getting accepted by Enterprise users (and everyone else). What caught my eye immediately were the comments. Tech people are so freaking relentless:
Here was their reply:
Hello DeWitte,
Thanks so much for writing!
We are pleased that you took the time to share your thoughts with us.
All of our advertising is created to sell Degree products in an
entertaining and informative way.Thank you so much for your interest in our advertising. Your comments
will be shared with our media department.Thanks again for your interest!
Your friends at Degree
JB
(They are my friends now!) Thanks, JB!
I had a really good customer service interaction with Amazon last week. I bought an MP3 and it did not download. They have a link on their site that says something like "Call You Now". I put in my number and the phone rang like two seconds later. The CS person reset my link so I could re-download the song. That's cool beans.
We went to see this over the weekend for Nathan's birthday:
Michael Crawford - wow!
We went fishing over the weekend. The tourists were the real show:
NJ Woman "OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! I CAUGHT A FISH!!! OMG!"
NJ Woman "GET THE CAMERA!"
I can't emphasize how loud this came out. Try envisioning that in 72 point type with a few extra "!"'s on the end.
There was also this old guy who caught a crab and made a dive for it - sadly, without even the least attempt to block his fall. I'll leave the visuals up to Jamie on that one.
We watched that McCain/Obama political forum thingy - does anyone else feel like McCain knew the questions ahead of time?
I took Friday off and we tore into the garage attached studio and took everything out of it - Clean Sweep style, tarp and all. It was quite refreshing. Nathan wants to make it into a workshop and I'm all for it. We'll get everything in place this week and I'll post a picture. I'm sure we'll start making something ridiculous and sell in on Etsy.
All this and then President Musharraf resigned.
I think that's everything (for me) so far.
Do you ever find yourself reading a spam email and just being mesmerized by the content?
Here is my latest one:
The subject was just :
>:-(
And the body (along with a link to make my girlfriend happy) is:
Called in and informed of this resolution, offered yours!
and her agitated hand waved to them from you, with excellent
reasons, what would you do some ties at a haberdasher's.
i was bored but angrily who made your millions for you?
me and another convention which was sitting at pittsburgh,
to make peace. And that he might have peace, pryderi for
opinion's sake, had been murdered at alton. Not care for
anyone. If you should be contemplating great force on them
both, almost knocking them beg pardon for only looking solemn
laughter was dangerous man. No, no, not dangerous say, a
man me ri', i treats zem ri'! Shee! Sure! Cried the alert
little man, adjusting his glasses with nervous him. He seems
a likeable chap—american, i believe..
Kirk (eating cookie) "nahm, nahm, nahm, nahm"
Bones "Are you gonna share that or what?"
(Ha - these won't be around once the pirate police find them.)
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Current Mood:
We set the train up on Saturday - what a blast. I didn't think I would like HO scale trains since I grew up with all O scale - but these are actually easier to work with because you don't need a huge area to lay them out. Nathan and I played and played! I think I'm going to set these all up in the attic so we can do it right - which might involve explosives like on the Addams Family - we'll see.
I guess all power tools are dangerous - but nail guns seem especially so. You've all seen that guy (you know THAT guy) on CNN or Headline news - here, let me refresh your memory:
Ouch! "That's gotta hurt!" I think we'll be more careful than this guy. I wonder how this happens?
Guy#1 (using nail gun)
Guy#2 "So what do you want for lunch?"
Guy#1 (rests nail gun against head) "Hmmmm.."
POW!
I think nail guns are safer than they used to be. Now you have to actually have them against something (besides your head) to allow the trigger to fire. That's a good thing. Otherwise, it would be only a matter of time before I end up in the emergency room.
On a lighter note - we tried it out last night - FUN! This is really going to help out when we work on the new floors in the kitchen.
The new kitchen appliances showed up on Saturday. I had to clean out the garage to make room for them. Do you ever feel like you live on one of those Fifteen Puzzles where you can never accomplish anything because you are busy doing something else first? I had to move stuff around which involved FINALLY giving up on my old paint collection (?). I have about forty gallons of paint in various stages of dryness. I checked with the city to see how I might get rid of them and they will accept five gallons a month. Nice - so I can clean it up in only eight short months. Then Jamie gave me an idea - she said "Freecycle!" - so I put an ad up and had no less than nine requests for them by Saturday. Wow - that was EASY! I'm starting to think I can put anything on there. "OFFER: Dog Crap from my neighbors' yard" and sure enough I'd see "Oooo - I want that for Halloween!" from at least three people.
The kitchen remodel is coming along pretty well - now we have to keep to our schedule which right now involves some minor plumbing, getting a gas line installed into the kitchen, painting and putting down the new floor. Jamie is the foreman on all of this - I'm just the helper. I enjoy that - she knows what she wants done, I just have to make sure it happens when it needs to.
We're all set for the premiers this week. I'm excited about the Bionic Woman and Journeyman and it will be terrific getting back into Heroes. I'm also still watching the SciFi series, Eureka - which I'm glad was renewed for the second season - but I'm not sure if it will make it to the third yet. It's not as heavy on story line this year. I'm starting to think that they took on some of the old Star Trek The Next Generation writers because everything gets solved in the last five minutes.
Remember that?
Stephens (Red Shirt):Captain, the warp core is about to blow and the aliens have stolen most of the crews brains. The holodeck is out of control, Worf is going through his seven year mating ritual again and ten forward is out of Romulan ale!!
Captain: What?? Didn't Worf just go through that two seasons ago??
(commercial break)
(last five minutes of show)
Captain: Captains log - well, we got out of that mess. Send my condolences to Ensign Stephens family.
What I want to know is - what happened between the 7:54:30 and 7:55:30 during the commercial...?
I must say, however - I'm starting to like this guy:
Now that he isn't in charge of Global Dynamics - he's a lot more fun. Here's his bio from the Eureka site (you can also watch full-length episodes there if you've
Ed Quinn grew up in Berkeley, Calif., and earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating he worked as an actor in Paris, Barcelona and Milan, landing parts in more than 35 international television commercials. When he returned to the United States, Quinn landed the starring role of Finn in the WB summer series Young Americans.
Quinn recently wrapped production on the independent feature The Neighbor, in which he stars opposite Matthew Modine and Michele Laroque. He starred in LionsGate's House of the Dead 2, which was broadcast as a SCI FI Original Movie. Quinn currently can be seen in a recurring role as Frankie Mala on the CBS drama CSI: New York.
He has starred in the feature films Starship Troopers II and Beeper, opposite Harvey Keitel. He also had recurring roles on Crossing Jordan and Jack & Jill, and he has guest-starred on a number of hit shows, including Jake in Progress, CSI, What I Like About You, JAG, According to Jim, It's All Relative and Life with Bonnie. In addition to his role on Eureka, he is featured in Lions Gate's horror-thriller House of the Dead: Dead Aim and plays a recurring role on CSI: NY.
Before acting, music was Quinn's main pursuit. He studied with world-renowned guitar legend Joe Satriani and played in the Los Angeles-based bands Mad Theory and Scattergood, which led to a recording contract.
Current Mood:
1) Why are you fund raising in the first place?
2) What do you do with all of your funds?
I'll come back to those - first, here are a few headlines:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/23/AR2007082302185.html
Woman Is Charged In PTA Embezzling
$180,000 Taken From Fairfax Group
A Fairfax County woman who was formerly president of the parent-teacher association at her children's elementary school has been charged with embezzling $180,000 from the association, Fairfax police said yesterday.
http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=7075160&nav=9qrx
Former treasurer for Concord school PTA placed on probation in embezzlement case
CONCORD, Calif. (AP) - A former treasurer for a Concord elementary school PTA will be on probation after pleading no contest to embezzling from the group's account.
Prosecutors say she pilfered an estimated $13,000 from a Wrenn Avenue Elementary School PTA account.
http://www.savannahnow.com/node/356263
PTA president accused of stealing $14,000
Pooler Elementary School leader arrested three weeks ago for writing organization checks for personal expenses .
The president of the Pooler Elementary School PTA has been arrested on charges she stole about $14,000 from the organization's checking account.
That's only three stories - but there are more - I ran out of patience. Three stories and over $200,000 in theft from the PTA funds. So outside of letting these presidents pay their personal bills with the money, what do they REALLY do with the money? They can stop whining about NOT having enough money, because apparently they have SO MUCH of it that people can walk out with tons of it - and these are only the people who managed to do it so poorly that they were caught.
You are probably reading this and saying, "Oh, you are misinformed - just go the meeting and they will tell you!" Uh, no - I went to the meetings. Outside of saying they made a "mistake" by choosing the wrong fund raiser company, I didn't hear anything about where the money actually went. I've heard this advice before "Oh - just go to the meeting" No - the meeting I went to was where they sold pizza. A pizza meeting - where we all sat around and ate pizza. What was funny about THAT night is that the meeting started at 7:30 and at 7:25 the PTA president said, "Oh, look at all this extra pizza!" and then she sold it all for half price - THEN - at 7:40 when other parents arrived late, they had to go OUT to the local pizza place and buy more pizza. To me, this sounds about right - if you are dealing with complete idiots.
So back to my questions -
1) Why are you fund raising in the first place?
2) What do you do with all of your funds?
Let's look at the fund raising - you get 6 to 8 year old kids all hyped up about "Here's what you need to do get to the GOLD level" or whatever level they are pushing this year. Last year it was "LIMO" level - where the winners get to ride in a limo. But the 6 to 8 year olds are too young to go out on the streets by themselves - so you would have to go with them, but you don't do that either because - you don't want to go door to door for the same reasons - someone is going to shank you when they don't know who you are looking through their peep hole. No thanks.
To get around this, they suggest you, the parents, take the order form to work and get all of your friends to buy something. Well, that's no fun - did I mention that I generally avoid talking to people I don't know and that I also don't want to trouble the people I DO know to purchase stuff. What am I, ebay? No - I'm not. To top things off, the first year we had problems and then I had all of my "friends" calling me to say they never got their stuff and then I was on the phone with the company trying to track it all down - yes, that's a lot of fun - I suggest you all try it.
What's the margin on the items? How much money does the PTA make on crappy wrapping paper? What's the margin - do they make $0.10 on each roll? Why do I need to buy $36 dollars worth of wrapping paper so the PTA can make $3.60?? Can't I just give them $20 and call it a day? I'd do this IF - IF they didn't make the kids feel like such losers for not selling -
"Look - Johnny sold $4920 this year! Looks like a limo ride for him!! - Oh, too bad, Nathan - you only sold $36 - what a loser! You'd better start thinking about a career in shoe shining" (sorry to those of you who shine shoes for a living - I'm not being rude to you or anything - but I couldn't think of anything else right off). Can you shine shoes? Oh, no, you don't even have shoes. We'd give you some from the PTA fund - but someone already STOLE IT!
I confirmed this on snopes.com - it's a true story. I think I remember when it happened.
Current Mood:
I don't recall anything odd happening there, but oh well. We ended up going out for Mongolian BBQ.
On Sunday we were out and about doing Kitchen remodeling stuff and wanted to go somewhere with soup. I think this time she suggested Friendly's and I asked what was the deal with it, and she couldn't remember - so we went.
About a second after entering the door, we realized what 'the deal' was with them. They are WAY TOO friendly. In trying to live up to their name, they come off as not so friendly, but creepy - or friendly to the point of being down right scary.
"HI!! WELCOME TO FRIENDLY'S!!!!!!!" They shout this when you walk in the door. If they shouted "GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!" in that tone, I would have run for my life. The tone is more likened to "GRENADE!" than a welcome to lunch greeting.
They say this with all of the enthusiasm of someone who, possibly from past experience, knows that they are being monitored carefully from closed circuit television cameras and that the slightest UN-friendly gesture will be greeted with 10,000 volts provided by their ankle bracelet.
"WHAT CAN I GET YOU TODAY??"
She says this with such excitement that you kind of jump in your seat. Jamie ordered soup and a salad, I ordered a chicken sandwich and Nathan ordered his traditional chicken tenders. There was a lady sitting next to us with two kids - she looked frazzled. The kids were bouncing around in their seats. They'll probably work here someday.
After a bit our food showed up. Mine and Jamie's looked normal. Nathan's was in this weird rocket ship looking mixture of chrome and skewers. It looked dangerous.
"MORE SWEET TEA???!!!" - Again, I have to lower back down to my seat. Uh - Unsweet, and sure.
"UNSWEET OF COURSE!!! THANK YOU!!" - Uh - you're welcome. I think my stomach jumped on that last shout. Jamie never got her soup. I slowly started to recall that they had issues with things like soup - and if you ordered soup with something - and getting you your soup. I should take notes on these things (or make a blog entry) so I'll remember.
"ANYTHING ELSE????!!!" - Yeah, we had some soup...? "OH YES!! THEY ARE HEATING IT UP NOW!" - (heating it up... why would it require heating up if it is the soup of the day and it's already well into lunchtime) Uh - could you just take it off our bill? "OKAY!!"
Later she came back and said "THEY TOOK THE SOUP OFF OF YOUR BILL!" - Who are they? Are THEY the same THEY that monitor your electric bracelet?
I think the first time I went to Friendly's, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the food this weekend, I'm just curious about the excitement of the wait staff. Joanna from Office Space would never have enough flair if she worked here.
