Rants

I subscribe to nearly every Lockegnome daily newsletter. Well when That Hosting Company went dark last Thursday who knows what happened to those email newsletters. Eight days later my email started coming back in and 2 of the 4 newsletters started right back up. What happened to the other 2? Does the listserver automatically remove you after repeated bounce backs?

I went to the site Lockegnome and tried to resubscribe to one of the missing ones and I got this in response:
The email address ‘Brian_the_Red@mastersmiataclub.org’ was a held member of ‘lghtml’. Your status has been reset to ‘normal’.
Does that mean there are still sending them and I’m not getting them or does it mean I’ll start getting them again tomorrow?

We got a little flyer included with this month’s checking that describes a service the bank likes to call Overdraft Privilege. If you can understand the gobbledy gook they have printed on this 1/3 page you are either a banking lawyer or certifiably insane. I wish I had a scanner at home so you could see it, but I think this little asterisked portion on the bottom sums up this service nicely:

The Overdraft Privilege Service does not constitute an actual or implied agreement between you and The South Financial Group, Inc. Nor does it constitute an actual or implied obligation of or by the bank. This service represents a purely discretionary courtesy or privilege that the bank may provide to you from time to time and which may be withdrawn or withheld by The South Financial Group, Inc. at any time without prior notice or reason or cause.

I just knew I could count on them…

Donna’s Mom has a 1997 Honda Civic DX. It is an official Miata Support Vehicle and as such every time the 3 of us go anywhere I get to drive the Civic. The one thing that always bothers me is the location of the gas gage. It is an automatic and there is no tachometer. The instrument cluster consists of three circles. The biggest one is the speedometer in the center which also has the odo and trip odo in it. To the right of the center circle in a slightly smaller circle is the gas gage to the far right, while the gear indicator lights are to the left in that same circle. To the left of the center circle is another slightly smaller circle with the temp gage to the left and to the right are the words, “Unleaded Fuel Only.” Why didn’t the verbiage about unleaded fuel go in the same circle as the gas gage? To logical?

Watched it again last night. I could have sworn last week John Doggett was in a coma. This week he is just fine, but in the intro his partner Monica Reyes is in a car accident and guess what, ends up in a coma. The show is becoming like a daytime soap opera in fast forward. Next week is Agent Scully’s turn? They are calling for the return of Fox Mulder to end the series with a bang, I’m sure when we first see him he will be in a coma….

Oh, yeah, this episode reminded me of something, I could swear I saw the same plot in an old Twilight Zone episode.

Below are a couple of quotes from their email a week ago….
“This transition period will begin Sunday @ 8:00am PST, March 10th, 2002. And will require approximately 5 days to complete.”
It has now been 6-1/2 days and they are not finished. I know this because…

“During this transition period you may experience unexpected downtimes.”
They didn’t need to pluralize it because it has been *downtime* since about 4 AM Tuesday morning. Nothing. My site, my friend’s site, their own site…..n o t h i n g .

I think the 5 day thing was just to let them get a head start before we sent the Internet Police after them.

It is March Madness time and I’ve entered the office pool. In a couple of weeks that $7 will be lining some one else’s pocket. I have never come close to winning the NCAA Tourney pool. I take that back, I came close 4 years ago when my cubical neighbor didn’t know what to pick so I told him to just go with the highest seed and for the final four take them on the order of their year end poll position. He won! and he gave me $10 for my help.

We also have a Football Bowl pool that I fare much better in, 2 years ago I won and a year ago I finished second. For football the point spread counts, so I have a Excel spreadsheet that generate a random number, which is then used to pick the winner. This past January it failed miserably and I came in dead-last. But that is OK too, because the last place person gets the booby prize of his or her money back.

This year instead of grappling with trying to pick the upsets right in the NCAAs, I went back to that highest seed thing – I’ll let you know.