Rants

J.C. Whitney

I bought some fru-fru for the Miata the other day – $7.95. Some stainless steel stone guards to put over the 7″ round headlights. It’s not like I travel any gravel roads or anything, I just thought it would look kind of retro (and different.) They charged me $9.95 for shipping! They can’t weigh much and they are sending the stuff via the US Postal Service, so $5 would be more like it. Maybe this rant shouldn’t be so specific because they are not the only ones who probably make a good percentage of their profits from the so-called shipping & handling charges. FWIW, Best Buy is shipping me my new DVD player for Free!

I’m a Hypochondriac

Finally got around to looking through the copies of my medical records from the doctor that fired me. Right in there he calls me hypochondriacal about my BP! Yikes. He also mentions that they told me I might want to seek some psychiatric care for my worries. I remember asking about that after all the test came back negative, but they pooh-poohed it. Hmmmm. Trying to sabotage my new doctor with those kind of comments? Or is that my paranoia showing?

I’m a Cheater.

Screwed around on the computer doing stuff I wanted instead of what I should have and lost track of time. So instead of actually trying to Blog at 10:20PM I just went to Blogger and typed in a couple letters and posted it. It is now 7:30AM on Tuesday morning and I’m at work entering this drivel. But because I did what I did last night, it will look like I blogged this last night. Too bad Enron isn’t hiring executives, I’d be a shoe in.

Craig Biggio’s Batting Helmet

I owe Manny Rameriz an apology. Watched most of the Braves/Astros game on TV this afternoon and Craig Biggio’s batting helmet was so encrusted with crap that it looked like the turret on the Monitor that they dragged up from the ocean floor the other day. Sorry Manny.

Also a bonus rant for Brave’s pitcher Kevin Millwood’s sweat stained, salt encrusted hat.

Saturday Afternoon Baseball

What the heck happened to Saturday afternoon baseball? Had a couple hours to kill this afternoon and went in search of a game on the tube. Nothing. There were plenty of teams playing this afternoon. Fox just wasn’t in the mood?

I hope there is a strike. Maybe then I can lose the baseball habit entirely. I’ve already stopped watching Pro Football – sick and tired of the grandstanding after each play. Jeez, so what, you tackled him, that is your job after all. Pro Hoops fell by the wayside for nearly the same sort of thing – in your face slam dunks….

Where’s My Email?

The last couple of days my in basket has been extremely light. One reason is I haven’t been getting any mail in the Masters Miata account. Way back in April Yahoo cut off POP3 access to your email. You had to log on and use the web based mail program (so they could subject you to several ads just to read one email message.) A couple of clever folks figured out a way around this (you just knew somebody would.) YahooPops worked fine up until a little while ago, then Yahoo changed their layout. This made the program hang and when it didn’t hang, the mail just wouldn’t come in via Outlook Express. Turns out I just needed to get the updated version of YahooPops and change a setting. Mail again.

Another reason is BellSouth got their spam buster, Mail Guard, online and running. When they announced it a month or so back, my first instinct was to turn it off, I wanted to choose what I saw not some software filter. Forgot all about it until I thought today that maybe that is why my mail has been light. Sure enough it has been running for the last 5 days and had snared 64 messages in it’s filter. I waded through looking at the subjects and you know, they were all junk! I guess I’ll leave it on and if it works 100% for the next 2 or 3 weeks I ‘ll just leave it and forget it.

Ice Cream on a Summer Night

We headed out for a little shopping expedition this evening and it was still hot and ugly humid out. On the way back we stopped at an ice cream place to get a scoop each. Most folks were eating their ice cream on the benches surrounding the stand, but quite a few were inside their air conditioned cars. I don’t know about you, but part of the reason you eat ice cream on a summer night is get cooled off, just doesn’t seem like the same enjoyment can be had from eating it inside the air conditioning.