Rants

No, It Is NOT OK!

When AutoCAD crashes it pops up a dialog box that reads something like this – FATAL ERROR: Unhandled Access Violation Reading 0x000c Exception at 654bdec7h – and underneath there is one button to push, the button that you know when you push you will lose all the work you’ve done in the last half hour, and that button is labeled OK.

No, it is not OK. Maybe it should read We’re Sorry or You Are So Screwed or maybe it should read my personal favorite AutoCAD Crash Slogan – It Always Goes Faster The Second Time You Draw It.

I’m A Winner

Thanks to the insistence of a co-worker (Hi Mark!) I registered at drpepper.com to play along with their current promotion. I have so far steadfastly refused to sign up for any of these soda company promotions as it seems as if the value reward is nowhere near worth the effort. (I can’t say the real good payouts are too far between to warrant participation because after all I’m plunking a buck down twice a week in the state lottery.)

Don Draper when asked how he likes smoking pot: I feel like Dorothy, everything just turned to color.

The Dr Pepper promotion promises “1 in 6 Wins! Fantastic Prizes.” so how could I resist. After a couple weeks and entering 5 codes from 20 oz. Diet Dr. Pepper bottles all I had ever gotten was “Sorry, try again.” I figured that number six would be a winner, they promised. Bastards. Liars. “Sorry try again.”

When I tore the box up from my 12 pack in the home fridge to throw away I noticed that there was a game code on the inside. What the heck, I’m already signed up and besides now it becomes a test to see just how long it will take to win something.

Didn’t take long as seven was my lucky number. What did I win? The Grand Prize, a trip for two to a college football conference championship game? Nope. Third Prize, an Aero Tailgater Chair? No chance. Seventh Prize, an XL Dr Pepper t-shirt? Hah! Tenth Prize, a Dr Pepper Cell Phone? No sir. I just won 1 of 23,028,000 Fifteenth Prizes, a Dr Pepper Football Computer Wallpaper (Average Retail Value: $.99)

Yippee!

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Have I Learned My Lesson?

I’m going to say no. The FRS forced a deciding game seven in their series with the Rays by winning last night’s game. But tonight, if the Sox are trailing by a bunch of runs in the late innings, I’m going to bed at 11. Tomorrow is an early start and the 5:00 AM alarm will come quickly.

I’m kinda glad I don’t have HDTV, John Lester’s sweat salt encrusted hat is ugly enough in plain ol’ analog TV.

Although I like the theme of the Brooke Shields commercials for the new Volkswagen minivan, I just wish there was some actual German engineering behind the Routan aside from figuring out where to paste a big VW logo on a Chrysler Town & Country.

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Do No Harm

Tonight we watched episode 20 which finishes disc 5, leaving only 4 episodes of Season 1 left. Off island in flashbacks, Jack gets married to a women he saved after a car accident and on island Jack tries to save a Lostie who is injured badly in a plane crash that wasn’t Flight 815. Definitely a 4 hankie episode; the wedding, a new romance blossoms, Boone dies & a baby is born.

If you follow sports even in the slightest you know what happened last night. If you don’t, a quick recap, The FRS were losing last nights ALCS game seven to nothing in the seventh inning with two outs (meaning they only had seven outs left) and they pulled it out winning 8-7 on a two out single in the bottom of the ninth. It was the second largest run deficit overcome in a playoff game. The other one didn’t really count because it happened nearly 80 years ago, so the only people who knew about were baseball statisticians and they had to look it up (and the only reason they looked it was because of this game.)

As I said last night I figured the FRS were out of it in the first inning when they were trailing 2 zip. I handed the remote to my wife in the 4th with them losing five to nothing. I checked just before my pre-bedtime shower and Tampa’s lead was up to seven. After the shower the Red Sox had broken through for 4 runs thanks in the most part to Big Papi’s 3 run homer. It was after 11:00 o’clock and even though my wife asked if I wanted to stay up to watch the end of the game, based on they way they had played tonight and in the series so far, I went to bed. I figured stick a fork in ’em, they’re done.

Today the sports world was all ga-ga over the comeback. There was tons of second guessing of the Rays manager; he should have left the starter in longer or he should have brought in so ‘n’ so to face that batter or whatever. He played it how he played it to get the team to where they are, one victory away from the first World Series in the team’s short and up ’til now, dismal, history. Pretty easy to second guess on the morning after isn’t. And just how many Major League Baseball games have you managed?

There was also plenty of negativity hurled at the fans at the stadium who were leaving after the middle of the seventh. The same went for the folks at home who turned off their TVs and radios (like me.) We were told we need to get off the bandwagon, turn in our Red Sox Nation membership cards and should never be allowed into Fenway Park again. Screw you. I’ll root for the team in the manner that got me here, watching them win and turning off the game if I think they are going to lose.

I wasn’t always able to turn away, but something happened in 2004, against all odds the Red Sox won a World Series. And to do it, they had to come from a 3 games to none deficit to the MFY in the League Championship Series. The fate of the world no longer rested on a victory in a playoff game or series, they had done it and I had reached a zen like level of fandom. If a game ran late I could just go to bed and find out the score in the morning. If they blew a lead and lost there was no more tossing and turning replaying the failure, as my head hit the pillow I was asleep. To quote the Great Guru of Baseball, “(If) It doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

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The Moth

Show number seven. Charlie-centric. Before I started rewatching the TDTVS episodes I would have told you that season 1 was my favorite, because it was new and it was interesting getting introduced to the characters. Now I’m not to sure, maybe because I already do know their back stories…

Ironman was waiting on the front steps today thanks to the UPS guy. I watched it tonight and it is just as good as I remembered. It is so good that I can overlook one of my pet peeves in action movies, the clich?d car wreck scene that destroys dozens of cars when just a few would get the point across. The one thing I couldn’t overlook is the hiring of an actor that was unsuited for the role or they changed the direction of the role and kept the same actor in the part (hey, maybe he was the producers brother-in-law or something.)

You are saying to yourself, I’ve seen that movie, the casting was spot on, what’s this guy talking about? There is this scene late in the movie where Obadiah Stane is berating this scientist guy because he has failed to recreate the mini “arc reactor” needed to power the Iron Monger suit. They shaved the head of the scientist guy in such a manner as to give him a typical male pattern baldness look. Was it in an effort to make him look more scientific? I’m surprised when this film was first released there weren’t members of the SPODAAAS (Society for the Prevention Of Discrimination Against Androgenic Alopecia Sufferers) protesting the not hiring of an actual bald actor to play this pivotal role.

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Red Envelope in the Mail

When we got home today and checked the mail there was a familiar red envelope in the box. Upon closer inspection it was a clever advert for the service. Inside were four cards, offering 1 month free trial to Netflix that you would hopefully pass out to your friends and when they signed up you would get a bonus movie shipped to you from your queue.

Sounds cool, but I won’t be passing any out and here is why, when you sign up you need a valid form of payment (most likely a credit card, but I’m sure direct debit from a checking account is an option) and this I understand, but the part I don’t like is that they will automatically start charging that card or whatever if you do not cancel before your month is up. I’m not stupid, I know why they are doing it that way, they are betting you won’t remember to cancel in time and they can charge your account. They are also betting you won’t even see it on your monthly bill and can probably get a couple months of money before you figure out what happened. That just smacks of sleazy.

How about playing fair and using the opt in policy, send a couple three emails after the three week time frame and ask if they would like to continue? We had just recently considered giving someone a gift of Netflix for Christmas, but decided against it for the same reason.

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Oh no! Commercials!

What makes Visa think that a skit that was funny once, maybe twice, on Saturday Night Live a couple of decades ago would make a good commercial spokesman?

I’m thinking that I need to start an auto insurance company because there sure are a lot of them in the business and they all seem to be advertising heavily.

I’m watching Season 5: Episode 1 of House on regular TV and I thinking there must be some correlation between House viewers and movie goers as we are just past halfway through and that was the 5th upcoming movie promo commercial.

For the record, I didn’t really enjoy the Victoria’s Secret commercial either.

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