Whatever

You Can Call Me Dave

When I read the article about the fire at our plant in the Augusta paper this morning, I noticed that the reporter got our Human Resource Manager’s name wrong. He was quoted as Dave Gustafson, not Mark. Upon arrival at work I made a beeline for his office to introduce myself to the new HR Manager, Dave. Mark took my kidding in good graces and said, “Let me tell you a story.”

That reporter was being a real pain; I spent most of my time riding herd on him. Even after a polite request to him that I was the point of contact and if he wanted any information to come to me, I still had to break up him talking to employees several times. We had one female employee of the department the fire was in that was overcome by smoke and was being treated by paramedics on the scene. Her husband had shown up, and she was sitting in the passenger seat of their pickup while she received oxygen. The reporter had taken a couple of pictures, and the husband told me about it and asked if he would tell the reporter not to print the photos. When I asked the reporter to not run the pictures, our fourth estate friend said something to the effect of freedom of the press and that he was allowed to be there and take and use whatever pictures he wanted. I agreed that what he said was true, but only if he did so from across the street, but he was on our private property and as such subject to our whims. That reporter was not there to cover the news; he was there to find a story.

Not knowing whose legal ground was firmer, I guess the reporter decided that he wouldn’t run any of those pictures. Seeing as most people love to see their name in the paper, maybe he thought that he could punish Mark by printing his name as Dave. But Mark is only to happy to be Dave as long as those unflattering pictures of one of his employees don’t get published.

Vogue

Today was haircut day for both the Bogarduses. We go to a place called Sheri’s Hair Affair because Sheri was in the bicycle club with us at one time and she does a right nice job too. It is a typical salon and the place is just littered with women’s magazines for me to look at while Donna gets her hair cut. I hunted through the stacks until I found a relatively recent one to look at, a Vogue from March 2003. I actually don’t mind looking because they are usually chock full of cheesecake. It was my turn to hop in the chair. When I sat down, there on her table in front of me, was another issue of Vogue. About that time I became conscious of the music playing in the background, Madonna singing, pause for effect, Vogue.

SETI@Home Stats

I added my SETI@Home stats to the Miata Diaries site. I got it to work after several failures. I wanted to add it to this site as well, but I was stymied by the same thing that slowed me down on the other one, I couldn’t get it to work in anything but the root directory of the plog. So I had to use two copies of the PHP script and two copies of the XML file. For whatever reason the one on this blog doesn’t update. It still has last night’s stats.

So I tried once again to get it to link to the one file that is residing in the diaries directory. After one messy failure I think it hooked up to it, but it still shows the old stats.

I guess it wasn’t linked after all, I just deleted the supposedly not being read .php and .xml files and the script fails and outputs what you see on the left.

Back to the drawing board.

American’s Love Stuff

We have way too much of it. A majority of the people I know have two car garages and it is rare that any one uses them to park even one car inside. Those are really 20′ x 20′ storage sheds connected to the house. They are a place to keep toys, old exercise equipment, boxes full of old books, the lawnmower, whatever, just not cars. Once your garage is too full to even walk through you can drive, usually, less than 2 miles and for a small monthly fee, rent another 10′ x 20′ space to put the overflow. What is so amazing is that these places are hives of storage rooms, hundreds per location. Man we have too much stuff.

While watching TV this weekend I saw an ad for the latest in American storage solutions, PODS. now you don’t have to drive two miles to the hive, these people bring a cell of the honeycomb to you!

Harry Belafonte

Whenever the three of us go anywhere, we of course have to drive Donna’s Moms’ Civic because the Miata holds just two. Mom has a 6 disc CD changer in the car and it is always stuffed full of music that is appropriate for the listening pleasure of a 70 year-old woman.

It has always been a rule between Donna and I that whoever is driving, gets the music choice. This works out well for me because I do 95% of all the driving. It is different in the Civic, maybe in deference to her age or because of the fact that it is Mom’s car, I usually listen to whatever is in the changer. Most of the stuff is tolerable and we are usually going under 30 miles so it won’t be for too long.

Unfortunately one of her favorites is a Harry Belafonte CD in which he thoroughly butchers several recognizable songs. And then in others, the production is way over the top for the song involved. His rendition of Michael Row Your Boat Ashore is a shining example of this. I just spent the last 30 minutes listening to this tripe and my head is swimming. Where is my copy of Guns ‘n’ Roses’s Appetite For Destruction? I need a little “Welcome To The Jungle.”

RADIOIO II

To listen to the free stream with Windows Media Player you need a plugin called Abacast. Tried installing it here at home and for whatever reason it doesn’t work. The low band (mono) mp3 stream is still there, but I can’t listen to mp3 at work because it uses an IP address and the network weasels have blocked access to anything with just an IP. In searching for a replacement I found something really close, Radio Paradise, and there stream is stereo. They are also listener supported and if I can get the stream at work I will consider donating something to the cause.

Well That Shit Ain’t Cuttin’ It

A couple weeks ago at my last Doctor’s appointment my blood pressure had creeped back up to the 150/100 mark. Whatever drugs we tried and though worked had lost their effectiveness. The Doctor tossed up his hands and said, “let’s send you to a Cardiologist.” Not only was the BP back up, but the palpitations that started at Thanksgiving hasn’t totally gone away either. Last Thursday I saw the heart Doc and he said, we’ll put you on this different medicine Lotrel 5/10. It is a combination of a couple of drugs, come back in 3 weeks and we’ll do a check and see how you are doing. He suggested I buy a home BP monitor and check my pressure everyday. I have been taking the new meds since last Friday and I have been checking my pressure and it has been hold steady and actually today it was the highest it has been, 152/104. Trouble is, I have been feeling crappy the last 2 days and is it because my BP is up or is it something that makes the pressure rise? I’ll call tomorrow and see if I need to muddle through another week or should we change something now.