Whatever

I’m not sure if it is a local franchise owner thing or corporate wide, but the two Dunkin Donuts in town have a Wall Street Journal delivered to the store for the customers to read. Donna and I take advantage of this and enjoy reading it on the mornings we eat in the store. On the week days we are usually the ones to unwrap it as we are there by 6:15, but on Saturdays we are often much later and sometimes it has been read, is being read or completely gone.

After several Saturdays in a row of it not being there we asked what happened to the WSJ and one of the employees said somebody comes in and takes it. No further explanation was forthcoming, so we speculated; it was the franchise owner and it was really “his” paper or they were just afraid to say something or they just didn’t care. After a couple more Saturdays of it being there, the next visit there was somebody already there reading it. The nerve of him. Not only that, this fellow was sitting in our usual spot.

We sat down at a table on the other side of the store and made light conversation all the while thinking evil thoughts about the interloper. Part way through our breakfast that fellow got up, tucked the WSJ under his arm and walked out the door like it was the most natural thing. We mentioned it to an employee and she said, “Oh, he pays us for it. After all most mornings it never even gets taken out of the wrapper.” This didn’t sound right to us, but we figured if we wanted to read the Saturday Wall Street Journal we would just have to get to the store earlier.

A couple of Saturdays ago when I made a DD run and had to go back inside to get my coffee, I noticed the Saturday Journal sitting there at the condiment station right by the door. On my way back out I should have picked it up and taken it with me, no one would have been the wiser, but my warped sense of right and wrong wouldn’t let me.

According to wikipedia the human body is 60% water by weight, I had always thought it was 70%, but whatever. I do know that given the right set of circumstances, like say a stomach flu, you can come to believe that nearly all of that water has been expelled from your body under extreme pressure (from a couple different openings) in a little under an hour…

That was Thursday morning and I am just now returning to normal.

Yesterday after breakfast we were off to visit with a friend for awhile, get some lunch and do that grocery shopping thing. Donna suggested getting some cash from the ATM to pay for lunch seeing as we were driving right by our bank on the way out of town.

Insert card, type in my PIN and when the screen comes up with my choices for services I tap the screen for $20 Fast Cash. Nothing happens. I hit the touch screen again with the same results. I try again, nothing. I pull back my hand and look at my fingertip like it could possible be the cause of failure here. I try tapping on Other Services, but, you guessed it, no response. While I contemplate the location my next futile screen press, the ATM beeps and the screen changes to a question, “Do You Need More Time?”

I think to myself, “Do I really need more time to unsuccessfully poke at the screen?” I answer myself, “Nope.” So with out thinking further, I press the screen where it says NO. Doh! As you would expect, nothing happened. Fortunately there is an physical Cancel button on the PIN number keypad.

So I go inside and walk up to the one of the two tellers and say, “The ATM touch screen isn’t working.” The other teller says, “We know, a technician is on his way.” My teller asks how much do you want, to which I say, “Just twenty bucks.” While my teller is filling out a withdrawal slip, the other teller asks, “Got big plans for the weekend?” I look at her, smile and say, “What do you think? I only asked for $20 bucks.”

I have spent the last couple of nights patching up posts and pages from the database hiccup. I’ve had to redo every one of the “Best Of” pages and about half of the other pages. As for posts, I’ve worked my way backwards through all of them back to July of this year. Most of times it is obvious that a post is messed up, the Miata Top Transitions will be missing from the top count at the bottom of a post or a blatant shorten story, but for thoroughness I’ve been checking every post.

The repair process goes like this, I find the post number and search for it inside a backup copy of the database. Once the line is located I copy it and paste into a word document. The header and footer code is stripped and every instance of /r/n is replaced with a paragraph mark. Then every ‘/ is replaced with just a ‘. For good measure I copy the results into notepad to convert any smart quotes into plain ones. The whole thing is then pasted into WordPress’s empty post editor box. That is how I really know the post/page is corrupt, it may display correctly on the web, but the post editor box is blank.

It is tedious, but for me right now, easier than writing a real post.