Rants

Invisible Customers

On the way home from work my wife and I stopped into the Food Lion on the way home, we needed one item. Once we got what we needed, we headed for the checkout lines. There was one right at the end of the aisle that we were coming down so we went there even though the light wasn’t on. There was a cashier and another employee on the register side and a “customer” on the other. They were all deep in conversation. As we got up to them my wife asked, “Are you open?” Perhaps they didn’t hear so we waited a bit and she asked again. Still no response. We turned around in dismay and headed over to 2 other aisles that had there lights on. The first one had no cashier at all and the other one was busy. We looked back down towards the three people at the one we just left and there was still no motion to move or acknowledge us, it was as if we were invisible. Needless to say we put down the item at the empty cash register and left the store. Plenty of other places to stop.

We ended up at a Bi-Lo near the house and got an over friendly cashier. (Almost as bad.)

Low Level Hum

Here is today’s: The old Sear’s chain drive garage door opener was jerking and spasming while opening and closing the door. It was almost 8 years old and considering it is the main way in and out of the house it gets used at least 4 or 5 times a day it was time for a new one. Replaced it with one of the Genie screw drive ones. Works faster and a lot quieter, but when it is not in use it generates a low level hum. Not loud, not annoying, just a sound that used to not be there when in the garage.

Why does my new $159 thing make a noise? Is it normal? Is it about to explode, showering the car below with shards of white hot metal bits?

That Hosting Company

This is really yesterday’s rant. ThatHostingCompany that webhosts the Miata Club website I do, disappeared from the face of the internet for about 5 hours last night. Even their site was unreachable! Did somebody kick out the plug on the server? Was the custodian dusting and accidentally flipped the switch to off?

No big deal, you say, well this seems to happen with alarming frequency. And on their about page they claimed 100% up time in 2001 – HA – they were off the air for almost a whole weekend in October.

They are the genesis for this little blog, I wanted some way to remember all the outages. They don’t go down everyday, just seems like it, so I will have other things to rant about here. Trust me, I am of an age where I am on the cusp of cramudgeondom and lots of things p!ss me off.