Rants

Pine Pollen

So far it doesn’t bother me physically, but it sure does make a mess of anything externally.

Back the last week of January we had a warm spell and the yellow dust made a slight appearance. Then it got cold, real cold for a few days, then it rained hard. The back driveway near the plant was littered with a mess of the pods from the pines that hold the pollen. Several weeks of warm weather went by and no new pollen appeared, so I thought that we had dodged a bullet.

Not so, last week the pine tree branches were filled with more of those pollen pods and they have now started to give away those fine little specks that give everything a yellow tint. I used the California Duster on the Miata Saturday before the MMC breakfast and by the time we finished eating pancakes there was a light coating.

Don\’t even ask about the Purple Whale, from being parked way out in the Valve Store’s parking lot, surrounded by pine trees, it is well covered in yellow.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1120

Personalization

When we moved to Aiken we started banking at the Aiken County Bank. They had a whopping two branches, but one of them was right along our drive to and from work, so it was convenient as heck. Ten years ago they sold out to a larger regional bank called Carolina First, same two branches in town, but occasionally we would stumble onto another Carolina First while traveling and could save the ATM fees when we needed some cash. Middle of last year Carolina First was sucked up by the 15th largest bank in the US with assets of just over 200 trillion dollars, TD Bank.

When TD Bank loaded up their software into my old friend the ATM at 142 Chesterfield Street they added a nifty little personalization step that allows users to set what amount they want as their default Fast Cash withdrawal and whether you want a receipt with each transaction and I can’t really remember, but maybe one or two other things. This is really nice because 9 times out of 10 I just want $20 cash, but they left out one important setting.

The first screen that is displayed after swiping your card is one asking you to choose one of the eight different languages you could use to communicate with the machine. Oh, today I think I would like to practice my Arabic, no, no, French, nah…maybe Japanese. Come on, don’t you think that the language should be one of the things you could personalize?

Oh, Crap!

When we got home from work the PC wasn’t on. Hmmmm, the power must have gone off again? Yep, all seventy hundred LED clocks in the house were flashing the wrong time. For whatever reason this seems to be becoming a regular happening. I bet it has occurred on average every 6 weeks for more than the last half year.

I hit the power button on the new Dell Insipron 620 and was greeted after several seconds by a singular, stationary underscore style cursor. This is bad, I’m not even getting the Dell boot screen. The power supply wasn’t hosed or I wouldn’t have even gotten that. I tried turning it off and on a couple more times with the same results. Visions of a fried motherboard danced in my head. Oh, Crap!

Donna was so mad she got on the phone to SCE&G to read them the riot act and asked whether they were going to buy us a new PC or not. The CSR took down her information and promised a call back with on 24 hours. She then headed out the door for a power walk around the block a couple times to blow off steam.

Me, I followed the guy code to the word, i.e. even if you have no clue and so, probably no chance of fixing something, you still open it up and wiggle things around. Then you can shrug yours shoulders and in all honesty tell the woman in your life you tried.

I took off the side cover. The good news was it didn’t smell inside of burned electronic bits, so I wiggled some wires, spun the cute little fans on the CPU & back panel before turning it on one more time. And wouldn’t you know it, but it booted smoothly back up into Windows 7.

As an extension of the above section of the guy code, sometimes you get lucky and the thing fixes itself and the woman in your life thinks you are a genius.

Happy Valentines Day dear.

Bye Bye Powerball

Early on after we moved south, Retirement Plan B has been trying to win millions in a lottery drawing. At first we had to drive all the way to Georgia to buy our $1 Mega Millions ticket. Because we were over there at least once a month with the Bike Club and/or Miata Club we would buy a ticket for the next 4 weekly drawings.

Somewhere along the line they increased the number of drawings to twice a week, doubling our monthly expense to eight bucks. Then in 2002 South Carolina started selling tickets to the other multi-state lottery Powerball.
it was also a twice a week drawing meaning we were doubling our “investment” again.

Then two years ago we started saving gas because SC started selling tickets to both of the multi-state games and we could get them both on our weekly shopping trips. We would get a fresh Andrew Jackson as cash back at the check out and step over to the Service Desk and buy 5 weeks worth of plays in both lotteries.

Through all this time of buying tickets we never had a payout that amounted in the two figures. That’s right, we probably had about a dozen winning tickets of either 3 regular ball numbers or 1 regular number and the money ball, netting us about $100 total return.

This last time we went to get our group of tickets we were told that we couldn’t go past 3 weeks on the Powerball draws. Later we found out why, they were changing the game to make it easier to win. The total number of money balls were being reduced from 39, all the way down to 35, thereby reducing the odds of winning from 1 in 195 million to 1 in 175 million. But the buy in was increased to $2 of a draw.

We have decided that that was the straw that broke Brian’s wallet and have opted to just start buying just the MegaMillions tickets.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1099

Now That’s Insulting

In the past I have unknowingly gotten a senior discount and I haven’t ever called them on it to turn it down, the 5% off is a nice bonus. I have never asked for one that I’m not eligible for nor lied to the unattended self check out at Kroger on Wednesday. But, being 56 I do actually qualify at a few places and I’m not upset by the fact that the only reason they are cutting me some slack is because I am old or just look that way. I just didn’t think I looked that old.

Tonight we made a run to the dollar store for a few items that you can only get at a place like that. We bought 19 of them and the total came to $20.12. Nineteen bucks for the items. A nineteen cent discount. Plus one dollar thirty one cents for tax.

The nineteen cents represents 1% of our purchases and that discount is available in the State of South Carolina everyday on anything you buy…if you are older than 85!

Clean Bill and A Big Bill

We took the Sonata into the Whale Doctor for its 7500 mile check up and came away with a clean bill of health. It actually had a little over 8,142 miles, but we didn’t get scolded for it. Along with the oil change, fluids top off, tire rotation and wash and vacuum, they did a couple of service bulletins. The first one, left pulling (if you let go of the wheel the car would drift to the left), I told them I didn’t have the issue, but they insisted on following the procedure anyway. Number two was an ECU flash to adjust the transmission shift points, which I had wanted as I felt the car was shifting a little rough in certain gears and situations. It does seem to shift a little bit smoother now. I don’t know whether the ECU flash had anything to do with it, I’d swear the car feels peppier off the line…

By way of apologizing for having to endure the trouble of bring my car in to have these issues taken care of, Hyundai gave us a $25 Visa Gift Card. Sweet. The dealer even threw in a $5 Walmart card…

Tonight when I checked our Visa card card balance online I noticed that there were two charges on there for Delta Airlines. One for a $1500 charge and a second one for $25. The first thing I did was to ask Donna if we were flying anywhere. Then I called the Credit Card Company. They were polite and efficient about the whole thing and we will be getting some new cards in the mail within 48 hours. But they were too efficient in that I was left to try and remember who I had used that card with for reoccurring payments, because after I hung up the phone, I went back online to find out, the account was already gone.

Pickles

The MMC met for our monthly dinner, with a shouted over the din meeting, at Pickles Grill & Cafe in Martinez, GA. We had like 20 people there (18 more than showed up for the last event) and they put us at one long table (which is a strange predilection for this group), so conversation was possible with only the nearest 5 people. The others got nothing more than a wave.

With a name like Pickles you knew they had fried pickles as an appetizer, so I tried some.

My first experience with fried pickles occurred at Razzoo’s and it went a little like this: pickle chip number one made me wonder who thought up this vile food item, number two didn’t taste half bad and numbers 3 through 30 were great. Those guys were crinkle cut dill chips not much bigger around than a nickle and were a perfect one bite sized, easily popped into your mouth.

The offerings from Pickles were large dill pickles french cut style so that they came out about the size of a flattened Pringle. When you bit into it there was no way for your bite to cut and separate the pickle so you ended up with half the coating and the whole pickle slice in your mouth and half the coating still in your hand. Cutting them into smaller pieces fared only marginally better because the coating would fall off in the dipping sauce…

The hazards of eating with a group of 20 are many and we caught nearly everyone. If they were trying to serve all of us at one time, it failed. We got about 3 or 4 dishes served and then it would take about five more minutes for the next wave. Diner #1 was about done eating when diner #20 got their meal. If they were just trying to get the orders out as they were ready, that failed as well, as our pork chops were luke cold and the couple across from us got a rare steak in place of the medium well they requested. Those that requested loaded baked potatoes (smallest baked spuds I’ve seen served at a restaurant) only got them semi-loaded. We got the cheese, bacon bits and scallions, but no butter and sour cream while someone else got just the opposite.

They at least split the checks for us without adding an automatic 18% tip, but at least three couples bills were off in one way or another. The menu was varied and interesting and the food did taste good, so I’m betting that if you went as a couple or maybe two couples the dining experience would have been a whole lot better. I know this, if we were to ever go back to Pickles I won’t be ordering the fried pickles.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
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