Month: March 2011

What Goes Up

Must come down.

We have a co-worker who has been lusting after a New Camaro Convertible ever since the concept version appeared 4 years ago. It is practically all he talks about. He has been running the same Camaro Convertible Concept screensaver on his work PC for nearly that long. A couple years back I found a Matchbox version of the car of his dreams (orange with black stripes) and it has sat on top of his monitor peacefully until a few months ago.

When we moved into the new area with its lower cubical walls, his Matchbox car became visible to passersby and a target for messing with. If this person’s obsession wasn’t so pronounced and he didn’t make such a big fuss about it being moved it probably would have stopped after a few days, but it was just so much fun. The weekend before last when he wasn’t around, someone tied it up so it was hanging about 2 inches down from the ceiling. On Monday morning the fellow’s reaction was priceless, he kind of stamped his feet and moaned. “Why won’t people just leave it alone.”

That move actually backfired on all of us who enjoyed his reactions to his car being moved an inch or two or rotated 90°, because he decided to just leave the car hanging, making it more trouble than it was worth to mess with it. The car stayed right up there until today. The department manager came in this afternoon and told him to take it down. Which prompted the best reaction from him yet, he whined, “But I didn’t put it there!”

The manager wasn’t just picking on him, I was told to take down the Stubby Rocket that I had hanging from the ceiling too. To be fair, his boss, the Plant Manager, has this rule that nothing should be higher than our low cubical walls.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 963

More Randomness

For the past several years we have paid the Weather Channel online for a service called Weather Gold which removes all the ads from our weather page and allows us to view a more recently updated local radar image. I’m not sure how long it has been going on, but there is a small red colored temperature in the upper left hand corner of the page that never matches what our current temperature.

For the longest time it seemed like it was only a couple degrees off, but more recently the gap has gotten larger. The other day it was 64° here and the red number read 12°. Out of curiosity I placed the cursor over the number and it turned out it is a link. I clicked on it. I was taken to a weather page for Rochester, MN. If you reload the page it changes cities. I’ve tried it four times this evening and I have made a tour of the south, Saint Petersburg, FL, Charlottesville, VA, Charleston, SC and Montgomery, AL.

On Thursday, after several minutes of hunting and having to create a login I managed to write Customer Service :

The Weather Channel Interactive Support
Ticket Information:
Ticket #: 1409-3170291
Date Created: 3/3/2011 2:11 PM EDT
Issue:
Issue Type:
Details: In the upper left hand corneer of my WeatherGold page there is a small temperature reading that is different from my home city’s temp. When clicking on it it takes you to the weather page of a random city. Why?

I’ll keep you posted…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 963

Plugging Away

I would like to tell you the reason that I did not post anything yesterday was because it was National Day of Unplugging 2011, but it wasn’t, it was pure unadulterated BA. And if it wasn’t for me stumbling on news of this event I probably wouldn’t have written anything tonight either.

But now that I’m here I will update you on my day. Breakfast at the same old place, clothes shopping for the niece and nephew in WA at the Kidsignment Sale, followed by book shopping for the wife and I at the American Association of University Women Books ‘N’ Things Fair. We stopped at home to off-load our booty and then finished our outdoor activities with the weekly grocery shopping at Kroger after brief stops at Rite Aid & Home Depot.

The afternoon and evening were spent watching TV and eating.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 963

Merely An Observation

I know that folks who live elsewhere are paying a lot more than we are here in Our Fair City for gas, so this is not a complaint. We filled the Emperor up with gas tonight and it cost $3.389 a gallon for 10% ethanol premium grade. And that price is with the 10¢ off because of our Kroger shopper’s card. We filled the tank 12 days ago and the cost was a “mere” $3.039 a gallon. That is an increase of 11.5% in less than two weeks.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 962

The Hunting Party

Two hunters chartered a plane to fly them to Canada, to hunt moose, and they managed to bag six.

As they were loading the plane to return, the pilot said the plane could take only four moose.

The two hunters objected strongly. “Last year we shot six. The pilot let us take them all, and he had the same plane as yours.”

Reluctantly, the pilot gave in and all six were loaded.

However, even on full power, the little plane couldn’t handle the load and went down.

Somehow, surrounded by all the moose bodies, both hunters survived the crash.

After climbing out of the wreckage, one asked the other, “Any idea where we are?”

He replied, “I think we’re pretty close to where we crashed last year.”

Randomness

Here at the Valve Store(tm) we play a Safety Bingo game. Each week day a new number is “called” and the idea is that when each employee checks for the number he or she will be reminded to be safe.

Normally bingo numbers are chosen by computer or the old fashioned way by a ball dropping out of a barrel, but here, the company nurse, AKA: The Bingo Coordinator, uses a deck of cards.

I don’t know how long this has been going on, I just noticed it with the current game (only because it started on a Monday), but a random number from a particular row is always called on a particular day (on Monday it is B, Tuesday is I, Wednesday it’s an N, etc.)

So my question is, how less random is that than calling a number from all 75 at once?

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 960

AstroGnome

I’m going on a slight papercraft kick these next few days. There is a good reason and I will share it with you later, so just hold on to your britches. Here is a link to yesterday’s Darth Vader and today’s AstroGnome if you are interested.

House has jumped the shark, I can’t pinpoint exactly when, but it has a lot to do with the whole Huddy thing. Castle has also jumped the shark or should I say Nuking the Fridge and I can pinpoint when that happened. The take off for the jump was last week in Part 1 when our “heroes,” instead of solving the usual MOTW (Murder of the Week), are tasked with saving New York from a dirty bomb, complete with a big bright red digital countdown clock (probably purchased from ACME.) The jump’s landing occurred in Part 2 this week when Castle and Beckett* had not just one, but two, near death experiences where they could have professed their mutual love for one another, but didn’t.

* There really should be a cute abbreviation for this relationship, but I can’t seem to find one on the net. Maybe because when you combine their last names you come up with Caskett which is not really romantic. Well, let’s try it with first names, Rickate. Hmm, sounds like rickets. Guess maybe that is why there isn’t one…

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 958