Rants

When I took POTC:At World’s End out of the sleeve I noticed the running time, 2 hours & 49 minutes. Yikes, that’s nearly three hours, may have to split watching it into two nights. Well I needn’t have worried about the running time, at 19 minutes in, I hit the eject button.

What started with a surprisingly good romp of a movie, then in the second turned into something trying too hard, by the third had turned into a pompous Mad Magazine satire of itself. It took George Lucas 22 years to screw up the Star Wars franchise, it took Gore Verbinski three short years to sink the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Forget the endless line of dirty people heading to the gallows, when 4 would have done to let us know that Lord Cutler Beckett was bad and needed his comeuppance. I could almost overlook the fact that they make Ms. Swann undress to make sure see wasn’t hiding any weapons (of which she had as many as there are clowns in a circus car) when Barbossa walks in with a long bulky coat and fluffy hat that could hide 9-pounder cannons. Why does Barbossa tell Captain Sao Feng he needs a ship, how did he get to Singapore? There are nine pieces of eight? But most incredibly, Jack’s a Pirate Lord? He’s lost his ship what seems like a half dozen times and got eaten by a giant squid!

I think tomorrow I’ll watch POTC:The Curse of the Black Pearl to cleanse my palette.

Wanting a drink for the afternoon that had a little flavor, I opted for something out of the vending machine instead of from the faucet today.

Lipton Diet Green Tea with Citrus
CONTAINS: Water, Citric Acid, Green Tea, Natural Flavors, Sodium Hexametaphosphate (To Protect Flavor), Phosphoric Acid, Potassium Sorbate and Potassium Benzoate (To Preserve Freshness), Ascorbic Acid (To Protect Flavor), Aspartame, Acesulfame Potassium, Calcium Disodium EDTA (To Protect Flavor), Caramel Color, Yellow 5, Blue 1.

Somehow I don’t think this is what they had in mind when health professionals recommended consuming Green Tea. I’m betting it was more like “tea + water = drink.” I could only stomach 2/3 of the 20oz bottle before giving it to someone who claims to like the stuff.

It has happened sooner than I thought. Five episodes. It is funny in moments and interesting occasionally, but pretty repetitious. Person gets sick. Doctor treats person, person gets sicker. Doctors find obscure and rare disease, treat person. Ack, person gets sicker. Doctors run lots of big dollar tests. Treat for a different ailment. Person gets sicker still, requiring surgery. Doctors stumble on simple solution. Person gets better. We will probably finish the other three episodes of House on the DVD before sending it back.

Now we need another TV show to watch.

At ASCO, management takes communications seriously. Once every other month the Director of Operations, along with the HR Manager meet with a dozen or so randomly selected hourly employees to answer questions on issues of importance to them. The names of the employees chosen to participate are posted on the bulletin board so anyone who has an issue can bring it to one of the chosen to be presented at the meeting. Some questions get handed in after the meeting for various reasons, chief among them for anonymity. The questions run the gamut for why don’t we get bigger raises to we need more chairs on the assembly line. A couple weeks after the meeting the minutes (both the questions & the official answers) get posted on the bulletin board for all to see. Sometimes they make amusing reading, but this question handed in anonymously at the November meeting takes the cake:

16. While I would not overtly accuse anyone within this establishment of prevaricating, there appears to be an effervescence of obfuscating in regards to these interrogative vituperations. Incredulous though it may be, the difficulties with the Communicator-Hub (programming upload/download system as mentioned in the previous two communication meetings) have, for the most part, mysteriously made their egress. I submit, that the system as of yet is still not functioning as advertised?alternative means have not necessitated themselves of late. I maintain that protestations to the contrary as previously disclosed, are controvertible at best.

Managements answer, basically, “Huh?” I would have chosen to quote Captain Barbossa here, “There are a lot of long words in there, Miss; we’re naught but humble pirates. What is it that you want?”

The person who wrote that also penned a half dozen other questions in a similar vein, those were decipherable, and were answered. At one point management decided to fight fire with fire:

19. I may merely be a cognitively challenged troglodyte lacking a diurnal existence, but I found myself in somewhat of a quandary within the stockroom. There was placed a sign, upon what I presume to be the appropriate document table, requesting that any papers, once completed, were to be filed into the yellow bin. Imagine a simpletons chagrin when, after reading these instructions, they are confronted with not one, but 3 yellow bins with a variety of papers within each. Whilst pondering this newfound dilemma, it occurred to said troglodyte to perhaps label the aforementioned bins, apropos to their pertinent documents.

The answer this time — The amber bins interpolated in the depository have been incontrovertibly identified to abrogate any misconception that anyone may have in the morrow. Or I think we changed the bin color.

The DC adapter for the Dell Laptop started to go wonky about a month ago. The cable near the plug was breaking internally from all the hanging it does off the back of the computer. I worked around it for a while, but it got tiring trying to prop it just so that the wires inside touched and it didn’t run down the battery.

I checked the Dell site for a replacement and they wanted $69.99 + S&H for the adapter. Yikes! Hunted around the web for a generic replacement. I found a few places and decided on Ebatts.com. They had a unit, the AC-C10, for $39.47 with the shipping included (must have been on special as they want $52.95 for it tonight.) Ordered it on the 31st of October and got it November 6th, UPS ground from California.

The cords were as long as the OEM unit, but the whole thing was a lot lighter, probably mostly in the wall cord. The Dell unit has a 3-prong plug and the Ebatts unit has only two, which is an advantage in my 50 year-old house with almost zero grounded outlets. Another nice feature is it has a 90-degree angled plug for the back of the laptop which should eliminate the broken cord syndrome I had from repeated bending in between the plug and fuse block thingie.

Things were all wine and roses until last night when the battery stopped charging and the task tray icon reported time remaining as 100 times longer than it should be for my then dwindling battery power (98% 2830.57 hours remaining.) Huh? Unplugged the adapter and re-plugged it in, still the same. Ran the computer on battery for a while before shutting it off and going to bed.

Tonight when I got home from work, I started up the laptop, it said I had 53% battery with 1430.66 hours remaining. Went into the garage and got out my old Radio Shack Multimeter (it still has a needle and several scales to read from) to check the adapter. Fifteen volts. Returned to the garage and got the old AC adapter to check it, 19 volts, that’s probably the problem. Wonder if the voltage was higher when I first got the generic unit and it went bad in 9 days?

Logged onto Ebatts.com and filled out the form to return the unit for a refund. There was a place to select Check and Replace, but opted for a refund because I’m sure they think that the unit is OK as it is listed as a 15-20v part and it is putting out 15v.

With the new cord no good, I decided to try and repair the old cord. Cut, trimmed, spliced and soldered, not very pretty like, then wrapped it in duct tape. Hey, dont’ laugh, it works (for now.

Might as well break down and buy the Dell branded unit, after all, that $69.99 doesn’t look too bad compared to the $52.95 for the who knows if it’ll work Ebatts part.