Rants

My wife was watching some of a marathon of yet another sneaky redecorating show on the Discover Channel, Surprise by Design. At about at the 50 minute mark of the show they went to a commercial (nothing unusual there.) The commercial was for The Sharper Image’s Ionic Breeze Quadra Silent Air Purifier (nothing unusual there.) The difference was it looked like an infomercial with the snappy pitchman, the perky woman hype-cheerleader and the testimonials from users. Plus it just kept on going. At first I figured it was one minute commercial (which in themselves seem long in today’s 15 second spots) but no it went on some more. I’m guessing 5 minutes but it could have been three. We no longer have the time for whole 1/2 hour infomercials, 5 minutes is enough. I only wish that what I saw was 1/6 as annoying as 30 minute jobs.

…for me to ignore a little longer. I have had some pictures that I scanned on my desktop since the middle of October of family that I was going to add to a little webpage, but I can’t bring myself to do any HTMLing. I real quick like a bunny burned all 15 of my Christmas CDs to take to work to share with other people who wanted to listen to some holiday music. The directory ended up being a little over a Gig in size. I need to go through it and pare it down to 700 Meg so I can burn a CD full of MP#s for the car (and next year.) But I can’t get started because they were mostly various artist compilations and the tags all need to be fixed and that task is too daunting. I thought that perhaps I would weed out the garden that is my “Favorites” folder, after all there are 451 links in 35 folders, I can’t need all of them. It’ll be simple I’ll start clicking and delete the dead ones and ones that I don’t use. HA! I started at the bottom with the X-Files folder, it should be a goner as I don’t even watch the reruns anymore, but instead I got lost in that world I enjoyed so much.

Today I decided to clean up some of the Desktop clutter that has been accumulating for the past couple of months. Out went links to blogs I read, pictures I saved there temporarily until I uploaded them and such. I found a Winamp playlist from my too late to submit for October CD Mix of the Month, entitled Scary Music. I couldn’t just toss it out because it was such a good idea. The music was still stored in a directory on the C: drive in a temporary location. So that is what I spent the afternoon working on, a Halloween themed music CD. Yesterday I wasn’t sure what day it was, but today I was not sure what holiday I was celebrating….
01 – Danny Elfman – This Is Halloween
02 – John Carpenter – Halloween Main Theme
03 – John Carpenter – Halloween II Laurie’s Theme
04 – Sheb Wooley – Purple People Eater
05 – David Seville – Witch Doctor
06 – Misfits – Monster Mash
07 – Rob Zombie – The Munsters Theme
08 – Vic Mizzy – The Addams Family
09 – Ray Parker Jr – Ghostbusters
10 – Oingo Boingo – Dead Man’s Party
11 – Fred Schneider & The Shake Society – Monster In My Pants
12 – Mike Oldfield – Exorcist Theme
13 – Bernard Herrmann – Psycho
14 – Harry Manfredini – Friday The 13th
15 – Lalo Schifrin – Amityville Horror Theme
16 – John Carpenter – The Fog
17 – Don Davis – House On Haunted Hill
18 – Danny Elfman – Into The Woods
19 – Christopher Walken – The Raven

The calendar says Monday, but I’m not really sure what day it is. It was the first day back after 2 days off so it seemed like a Monday. For some unknown reason, paychecks were distributed today which made it seem like a Thursday. But we have the next 2 days off from work so it seems like it should be Friday. I’m sitting in front of the PC blogging so it could be any day….

This year’s icicle lights. My wife and I walked around our neighborhood and must have seen 4 of these beauties. I’ve seen them in various stores and they only go for around $40. Hard to resist something like that for so cheap and apparently a lot of people felt the same way. When I first saw one, I thought that would look really cool in the corner of my cubical. But didn’t get one because it would have taken up too much room and the fan would probably be annoying after awhile. Still, it would have been a perfect statement on what Christmas has morphed into these days – something bright, loud and over the top.

We put the modified Plan A into action this morning. We went back out to our local mall and shopped for stuff we wanted and brought it home. I’ll wrap the stuff for her and she’ll wrap my stuff. We’ll act all surprised on Christmas morning, “Oh, it’s just what I wanted. How did you know?”

I bought a couple of long sleeve polo shirts for winter wear at Sears. The original price was $36, they were on a rack with a big tag that said, 40% OFF. At the register they were taking an additional 10% off for an Early Bird Special, so the shirts cost me around nineteen and a half bucks. What are they really worth, probably just that, a sawbuck. What did Sears pay for them in the first place, probably $10….and they wanted $36.