The (Other) End of the Internet

The last stop on the information superhighway. All traffic must exit in 500 feet.

About a week or so I sent my laptop to a guy in Washington State because it had a problem with the jack where the A/C adapter plugs in. It seems that Dell Laptops are famous for having the power jack break loose from the motherboard.

I couldn’t be happier with the job that “Dr. Laptop” did. Not only did he keep me well-informed about when it arrived, when it was ready, and everything in between, his repair price plus the cost of shipping it both ways was less than the price that the local repair shop quoted me.

Now that I’ve got it back, the first thing I had to do was go look at the weekly specials at buy.com. I found something that I could really make good use of, instead of my usual “wouldn’t that be fun to play with”-type toys.

206928310.jpgThis wireless mouse from Targus is a full-sized mouse, unlike the micro-mini mouse that my wife has. Given the condition of my hands, that would be a good thing. It also has the advantage of not having a cord or a trackball. The only potential problem I see is that, being wireless, and knowing me, it’d take me about 2 days to lose it completely. On the other hand, at $10 apiece, maybe I could just buy two and hope I never lose them both at once. ;)

For those looking for the update I never posted, the problem was, in fact, a timing gear that had had all of the teeth chewed off. The guy in Benton wanted $1500 to fix it. Remember, this is the same guy who TRIPPLED his tow bill when he found out he wasn’t going to be fixing the car. Mom’s mechanic fixed it for about $600 for parts and labor and $600 to tow the car 175 miles home. Even with the extra $600 tow bill, it was still $300 cheaper!

I just got back from returning the car we rented while Mom’s was being repaired. The guy who runs the rental place makes it crystal clear that he wants the gas tank full when he gets the car back. He informs all renters about his policy of charging $10/gallon if he has to fill the car himself when it’s returned.

gasimage.jpgI almost had a heart attack when I saw the gas price today. In this one-horse town there are exactly three gas stations. One is full-service and, therefore, always the most expensive of the three. Yesterday afternoon, both of the other two were at $3.45/gallon. This morning, when I had to buy gas :( they had both gone up 14ยข!

Around the time gas first broke the $2/gallon mark, someone emailed me a list of things that would be more expensive than gasoline to run a car on. For example, Vicks Nyquil worked out to something like $17.50/gallon. What brought this to mind is the fact that the first thing on the list was milk. At $3.49 a gallon, it deserved a place on the “more expensive than gasoline” list.

I realize that since I live in the middle of nowhere, I’m probably one of the last people to reach this point, but I’ve not heard anyone else say it, so I will:

It is now actually cheaper to buy milk than gasoline!

Given that the list of items cheaper than gasoline in increasing at a phenomenal rate, why doesn’t somebody find a way to use something on that list to replace gasoline? I kind’a like the idea of pulling up to a fuel pump and telling the attendant, “Fill’er up with LowFat, please”.

Technorati Tags: gripes, gas+prices

Mother’s day is mere days away. If your home works like mine, that means two things. First, if you haven’t gotten Mom that Perfect Gift you’re probably in a heap of trouble. Second, someone has probably realized that Father’s Day is looming as well.

While I wouldn’t be so bold as to try to speak for all fathers, I can give you a good idea what the average computer-geek who happens to have kids will be drooling over.

Buy.com has a list of weekly deals that would make anyone drool.

205761335_006.jpgThe item that got me salivating all over everything is this Western Digital 1TB MyBook Essential USB 2.0 External Hard Drive. We’re talking ONE TERABYTE, here. That’s 1024 Gigabytes. I was feeling really proud of myself when I got my first 80 Gigabyte hard drive. This monster would hold twelve full backups of that drive!

A really special feature is the fact that it connects through a USB 2.0 port. No need to go tearing your machine apart to install it. Another really cool feature is the way it’s designed to look like a book. You could put this thing on a bookshelf and people would have to loom twice to realize it isn’t a book. The effect is even better if you put two of them next to each other on a shelf.

I’ve been tinkering with computers since the days when Radio Shack was selling the 205761335_004.jpgTRS-80 Model 1 and the machine I’m using at the moment is one I built out of pieces and parts I picked up here and there. I’ve gone through my fair share of hard drives (starting back in the days when 640 Megabytes was considered a lot!) and I can tell you honestly, I wouldn’t spend money on one that didn’t say Western Digital on it. I’ve never had one fail me.

The best feature of this Western Digital 1 TB external drive has got to be the price: $209.99 with Free Shipping. It doesn’t seem that long ago that one-terabyte drives were science fiction or, at the least, priced so that only the U.S. Government could afford them.

Given the situation with recent car repairs and what-not, I’d be really surprised if I were to see one of these on Father’s Day but, hey, a man can dream, right?

When I ended part one of this story, Wendel the Tow Truck Guy had just dropped me at a motel that was apparently experiencing an identity crisis. When I climbed down out of his truck - no easy trick, since the floorboard was even with my hip as I stood next to the truck - and staggered into the Benton Inn (or Ramada, or whatever), I must have still been all red, because the girl behind the counter looked up from behind her tattoos and her obvious need for acne cream and asked if I’d been out in the heat all day.

I nodded politely and told her I needed a room for the night. I was asked to present my driver’s license (like I was going to be driving the room around??) and paid for it with my Visa card. When she returned them I put both of those items back in my billfold.

I went to my assigned room and immediately noticed that A) those heavy drapes made the room DARK, even at 5 pm and B) the light switch by the door did nothing. I looked around and found that the light next to the bed, the television, and the air conditioner all worked, so I was good with that. Looking in the mirror, I noticed that I was, in fact, red as a tomato, so I soaked a small towel in cold water and wore it around my shoulders for about 15 minutes.

After cooling off, I went over to the restaurant that shared the building with the motel. I haven’t been to Denny’s in over a decade and was pleasantly surprised at the changes to their menu since the last time I was there. I got some beef nachos and went back to my room. As soon as I got there, the phone rang. It was the front desk, “I still have your Visa card.”

WTF? I put that back in my billfold!

Nope. It was waiting patiently for me at the front desk, in the little tattooed girl’s grip.

I passed the night watching movies on cable and listening to the freaks drag racing outside my door. My wife called in the late morning to inform me that Wendel the Tow Truck Guy’s boss had called about the car. It was going to cost $65 for the tow charge, $65 for the mechanic coming in to look at it (not WORK on it, just LOOK) on Saturday, and anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 to replace a broken timing gear.

Mom didn’t pay that much when she bought the darn thing!

She also told me that her sister was renting a car to come and get me. Once I got home we were going to keep the rental car for a day or two until we could come up with a game plan.

I checked out of the motel at 11:00 and was going to get something to eat then sit and drink coffee for the three hours it would take her to get there.

Right.

That waiter decided that I was allowed cups of coffee and then I didn’t exist any more. I sat there for 30 minutes and he didn’t even look in my direction, so I got pissed off and decided that his tip didn’t exist. Take that, you mamma’s boy! The word “Tip” actually means, “To Insure Promptness”. This “guy” (using the term generously) was NOT prompt.

I got home, ate dinner, watched a couple episodes of Sliders and went to bed. This morning, Mom called her mechanic she’s been using for 20 ears or so. He told her that he talked with a bunch of mechanic-types he knows and none of them have ever heard of the timing gear on a 1988 Pontiac 6000 breaking teeth off. He also said he could probably fix it for WAY under the $1,500 she was quoted. On top of that, he’ll probably be able to work out a payment plan that won’t have everyone in the family in hock for the next 200 years. He was given instructions to go get the car and tow it the 170 miles back here.

I turned the rental car back to the car lot, then turned around and rented it again, this time in my own name, for a week.

Hopefully, in that time we can have a little good news for a change.

On Friday morning I left the house with the intention of going to Hot Springs to pick up Daughter Number Two for the weekend. What follows is an in-depth description of what a fiasco that adventure turned out to be.

I should preface this by saying that I do not own a car of my own. The drawback to surviving on a disability check is that I cannot afford the insurance, tags, gasoline, and maintenance that a vehicle requires. Throw in the fact that the Money Faeries have steadily refused to drop the down-payment and monthly payments out of the sky and it’s suddenly very understandable why I don’t own an automobile.

I do, however, have the world’s most understanding mother-in-law. She has been allowing me to use her vehicles as long as I replace the gasoline I use and drive sensibly. This is the reason I was driving her van back in February when it got rolled by a passing tornado.

Because the van was totaled in February (and, as far as I know, FEMA still hasn’t made a decision about what, if anything, they’re going to pay her for it!!) there has been one car to handle all the trips to America’s Largest Retailer, the doctor’s offices, trips to Hot Springs, Karate classes, panicked trips to the hospital, and everything else. It’s been ..erm… fun … scheduling who needs to use the car and when.

I left here around 10:15 on Friday morning with plans to arrive in Hot Springs around 2:00pm. This allows an extra 20 minutes for the 4 or 5 ‘pit stops’ I normally have to make thanks to the fact that I take Lasix every day.

Things were going normally and I was about 16 miles from my destination when I heard “crunch” from somewhere. I listened and didn’t hear anything else. I didn’t notice any problem with the car, so I assumed it must have been something in the road.

It wasn’t.

About 10 minutes later, for no discernible reason whatsoever, the engine quit and I had to coast the car onto the shoulder. Repeated attempts couldn’t convince the car to start, so I quit before I killed the battery. Looking under the hood, I didn’t see anything obviously wrong. Bear in mind, please, that my mechanical expertise is limited to adding motor oil and, maybe, changing spark plugs provided they’re easy to get to. First off, my twisted up hands won’t allow me to do much more than that and secondly, I have absolutely no desire to learn any more than that. Other than what I’ve said, my entire knowledge of automotive mechanics can be written legibly on the underside of a quark and I’m pretty much okay with that.

Not knowing what else to do, I picked up my handy-dandy cell phone and called my wife. I’ll admit it: I was a little panicked and needed her calmer head to figure out a solution. She called Daughter Number Two and broke the news that she was probably spending the weekend at school. Next, she called the Saline County sheriff’s office to try and get an officer to at least get me off of the side of the road. The county sheriff insisted she needed to call the state police, who told her they’d have an officer and a wrecker out to me “in a few minutes”. She called me back and told me the wrecker was going to come out and take the car to his shop and drop me at a motel for the night. They were also going to call me for better directions to where I was.

I waited about 10 minutes and they never called, so I called them - my wife had given me their number. I explained that I wasn’t sure if I was in Saline or Garland county. I told them that 10 minutes before the car quit I had passed a sign saying that Hot Springs was 16 miles away so I was guessing I was about 5 miles from there. I gave them the year, make, model, and license tag number of the car. The dispatcher assured me there’d be an officer and a wrecker at my location shortly.

A few minutes later, I got a call from the wrecker service. They needed to know where I was and what I was driving, so I gave them the information I had just given the state police (who said they were going to give all this information to the wrecker). The wrecker service’s dispatcher assured me there’d be someone to get me in 15 minutes or so.

By this time I had already been sitting on the side of the road for 20 minutes or so and not only had there not been one single person stop to see if I needed help, there were 4 or 5 bright individuals who found it necessary to blow their horns as they drove past. The car was WELL off the road. I had room to open the driver’s door all the way and still not go over the white line. Had I gone any farther into the ditch I may very well have rolled the car! I have come to the conclusion that, since the only way these people would have hit me is if they had been driving on the shoulder TRYING to hit me, the only reason for blowing the horn on the way by is because this state is over-run with asshats!

About 15 minutes after the last phone call, one person did finally pull up behind me and ask if I needed help. I explained to him that there was supposed to be a tow truck arriving any minute and thanked him for stopping after confirming that I was, in fact, 5 miles East of Hot Springs. He asked again if I was going to be all right and, when I said yes, went on his way.

Because of the heart trouble I have, combined with the fact that I haven’t been able to sweat since I suffered heat exhaustion about 5 years ago, when the temperature gets over about 75 degrees or if I exert myself at all, I start huffing and puffing, I turn bright red, and I sound like I just ran a couple of miles. I’m thinking the inability to breathe must effect my brain somehow - maybe oxygen deprivation or something - because I turn into a completely different person under those circumstances… one who is not very reasonable.

For example, after I waited 25 minutes for the tow truck that was supposed to be there in 15 minutes, and seeing a couple of Saline County sheriff’s cars zoom by without a second look, I called my wife and asked her to call the police back with a message. I explained that if I talked to them at that moment they’d be out to arrest me. I then went on a full-volume rant about how I was told there’d be someone here 10 minutes ago, I’ve tried 3 times to tell these people that I’m a heart patient and I can’t breathe and if they don’t get someone here right now they were going to need to send an ambulance along with the wrecker and so on.

While I was busy screaming into the phone, who should show up behind me but the Arkansas State Police. Suddenly I’m thinking that he’s probably going to arrest me for Drunk and Disorderly conduct because, thanks to not being able to breathe, my legs are like limp noodles and I can’t walk a straight line.

I got out of the car and started to make my way back to his car. As I turned around I saw the car keys lying on the seat. I distinctly remember turning around, bending over, picking up the keys, and putting them in my pocket before I got in the (wonderfully) air-conditioned police car.

The officer made small talk with me as he tried (unsuccessfully) to get the tow truck driver on the radio. Finally he got the number from his dispatcher and called them. He told them again (this would be at least the 3rd time they were told) where I was, what I was driving, and what the tag number was. He was assured the wrecker would be there any minute; he had to stop for gas and there was a line at the pump.

After the officer got off the phone I realized that I did not, in fact, have the car keys. The officer went to look in the car and found them on the front seat, right where I saw them before I remember picking them up.

About 10 minutes later the tow truck finally arrived. By this time it had been an hour since the car first stopped!

Once the car was secured on the back of the tow truck, we were on our way. I was not quite into the truck yet when the driver noticed my hands and asked what kind of arthritis I had. I told him it was rheumatoid and then I noticed that his hands were in the same condition as my own. I learned that the guy’s name was Wendel, that he was 48 years old, that he started showing arthritis symptoms at about the age of 33 (same as me), and that, except for 2 years, Wendel had spent his entire life in Benton, Arkansas and didn’t recognize the names of towns that were only 50 or 75 miles away. Wendel, frankly, reminded me of Larry the Cabelguy except he didn’t seem to realize that people could understand you easier if you used your lips to form words when you talk instead of just forcing the words out around them.

Wendel dropped me off at a motel whose name I still am not sure of. The passkey to my room said Ramada. The sign out front said Benton Inn, and the receipt I was given said Econolodge.

This is getting on the long side, so I’ll cut it off here and tomorrow I’ll tell you about the room with its teak furniture (NOT!) and the wonderful news the mechanic had about the car.

The other day I happened upon a list of 30 random facts that was posted at PurpleSlinky.com and found a couple of these “facts” a little hard to believe.

I’m not going to reprint the whole list here. You can click the link above for the list.

“Fact” number one on their list says,

In a lifetime, an average person walks the equivalent of 5 equators

Okay, let’s examine this in detail. First, we need a few definitions.

We need to define how long “the average lifespan” is. I found a page at www.efmoody.com which lists the average life expectancy for males and females born in 1996 in 36 different countries. That sounds like a reasonable sampling, so I added the numbers for male life expectancy in those countries, then divided by 36 to get an average human male life expectancy of 67.0278 years. The same procedure for the women gave an average female life expectancy of 72.583 years. I averaged those two numbers to come up with an average human life expectancy of 69.8056 years.

Next we need to define the distance around the Earth’s equator. The Physics Factbook estimates the diameter of the Earth at its equator to be 12,756 km or 7926.2109282 miles.

Now, FIVE times around the equator is just over 39,631 miles.

In order to walk 39,631 miles in 69.8 years, one must cover just under 568 miles per year. That works out to a shade over 1.5 miles each and every day of the average lifetime (and I did not allow for the first 12 to 18 months when most humans aren’t even able to walk).

Do you walk 1.5 miles per day? Do you know anyone who does? Do you realize how much work it is taking for other people to pick up your slack? Or, do you think somebody might have pulled that “statistic” out of their butt?

The other “Fact” listed at PurpleSlinky.com I wish to take issue with is this one:

14 The average person makes over 1000 phone calls a day

Get serious!

One Thousand phone calls per day is about 41.67 calls per hour.
That’s about .69 calls per minute, or 1.43 minutes per call. Converting the decimal portion of a minute into seconds, that’s about 1 minute 25 seconds from the start of one call to the start of the next.

The only way you could make 1000 calls per day is if you started a new call every minute and a half or less for 24 hours and never took time to watch tv, sleep, eat, do what most of us do at least once every 24 hours as a result of eating, or read stupid crap on the internet.

I really wish people would do a little simple math before proclaiming some ridiculous fact is true.

I found this and thought I’d share:

Mr. Smith goes to see his manager in his Wilmington NC real estate office.

“Boss,” he says, “we’re doing some heavy housecleaning at home tomorrow, and my wife needs me to help with the attic and the garage, moving and hauling stuff.”

“We’re shorthanded, Smith,” the boss replies. “I can’t give you the day off.”

“Thanks, boss,” says Smith. “I knew I could count on you!”

Since I can’t actually think of anything else at the moment… here’s a joke you may have already heard:

A man goes to Frederick’s of Hollywood.

He wants to buy his wife the most sheer lingerie he can find.

The woman behind the counter goes and gets an outfit.

“This is $200,” she says.

“I want one that’s more sheer,” says he.

“This one is $350.”

“I want it even more sheer than that.”

“This one is the most sheer that we have. It’s $500.”

“I’ll take it!”

The man goes home to his wife and shows it to her, saying, “Go put this on and come down to model it for me.”

His wife goes upstairs, opens the box and thinks, “This thing is so see through that the old coot won’t even notice if I’m wearing it or not.”

So his wife comes down, wearing nothing at all and strikes a pose.

“So, how do you like it?” she says.

“Damn, you’d think for $500, they’d at least iron the damn thing!”

Technorati Tags: jokes, lingerie

Sometimes I’d swear that other drivers are out on the road with the sole intention of seeing how high they can make my blood pressure go.

I was headed to the school to pick up Daughter Number Three for a doctor’s appointment. I was approaching the only traffic light in town. I saw the light turn green about 10 seconds before I got to the intersection. As I approached the intersection I noted that the light was still green and the guy in the oncoming lane was waiting for me to pass through the intersection before he turned left.

Or so I thought.

I got about 20 yards from the intersection going 50 miles per hour and this asshat decided that was the perfect time to turn left in front of me.

I managed to stand on the brake pedal quickly enough to not hit him as I left some really impressive skid marks behind me. Had I been the owner of the car I was driving instead of my mother-in-law, I might have tried out his insurance company’s claim service.

I swear, sometimes I think that whatever car I’m driving has been equipped with some sort of vehicle tracking system and there’s a guy somewhere with a radio coordinating the other drivers just to torment me.

“Okay, he’s in a one-lane no passing zone. Now, slam on your brakes and don’t go over 35 miles per hour. Once the passing lane appears, speed up to 65 and don’t let him by for anything.”

Maybe I’m just paranoid. Maybe I’m over-dramatizing.

Maybe I’m right.

Technorati Tags: gripes, traffic

Yesterday afternoon or so I got an email from my little sister (I’ll bet now that she’s a grandmother she must love it when I use that phrase!) that I thought I’d share here instead of forwarding it to 26,547 people.

I would normally give credit to either the photographer, or the website where the pictures were found, or both, but all I know is these came to me in an email. I did not create these pictures and it is not my intention to make anyone believe that I did.

That said, the only other explanation needed is that all of these pictures were created entirely with food. If it’s in this picture, it’s food. You’ll probably want to click the thumbnails so you can look closely.

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Technorati Tags: weird, pictures, food