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You are browsing March, 2006

The Rules

From Ernie regarding this weekend’s sailfishing trip:

Below I will list some of the rules of the boat. These rules are strictly adhered too, and there are no excuses for not following them.

  1. Man up bitch! You will get screamed at when fighting a fish, and if you mess up during the fight, you will get screamed at even more.
  2. Don’t get sea sick! If you think you may get sea sick, then take some Dramamine that morning. If not, then I guess you’ll be chumming for us.
  3. There is a morning ritual when going on your first sail trip. 1 shot of Zambuca. That will get the juices flowing and prepare you for the ride ahead.
  4. If you have some kind of waterproof jacket (Wind breaker, rain jacket, etc.) Bring It! Chances are we are going to get wet on the way out there.
  5. Try to wear shoes or sandals without black soles. If you have non-marking shoes, that’s best.
  6. Bring a hat, sunblock, tampoons, etc. Whatever you need to get through a day on the boat.

What’s Up

Brainwasting

Netflix had sent Walk the Line our way. I was thoroughly entertained by the movie. I think Joaquin Phoenix did a wonderful job singing the songs of Johnny Cash. However, I would have liked to have seen less lip-syncing since it was actually his voice on the songs. I tend to be bothered in movies that feature people who are supposed to be singing obviously not really singing.

Other movies we’ve watched recently include: The Cave—eh, Into the Blue—eh, North Country—a little better than eh, The Man—pretty funny, The Cave—eh, Waiting…—fell asleep, The Transporter 2—fell asleep, Wedding Crashers—pretty funny but still fell asleep, Corpse Bride—totally snoozed, Girl with a Pearl Earring—don’t remember whether I fell asleep or not.

I have been listening to a lot of Alison Krauss, Johnny Cash and Lyle Lovett lately. I am not sure why. I am obviously getting old. That may have factored in to why I really liked Walk the Line. (Don’t think it’s been all straight up country/western/twang/bluegrass—there has been quite an eclectic, strange mix with some Trick Daddy, Mike Jones, and Weezer. But wait… it gets weirder. Throw in Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and that song Do Somethin’ by Britney Spears.)

Around the homestead

Our run in the current townhouse will be up at the end of August. We have been looking around off and on for a house. It’s just hard to know that the smallest, ugliest house in the worst area is going to cost us a quarter million dollars. I have a hard time trying to reconcile that as an acceptable thing to do. I could buy a small farm for that in Ohio. But alas, sonny, you aren’t in Ohio anymore, are you? We’ve checked out an area north of the Everglades that has a small town vibe. We’ll see what happens with that.

Workaday

I’ve recently moved into my own office at work. It’s small but it’s mine. My work of late has been less Web oriented and more Windows application interface design. It is something that I had only been doing infrequently until now. The people that have had occasion to review it see it as a marked improvement over what was there before. I still see it as needing improvement. Our new agile development methodology (it’s Scrum, thanks for asking) doesn’t allow as much of an incubation period for design as I was used to, so some of those improvements aren’t going to take place. That’s something I struggle with daily—the idea of where to compromise. What will suffice and what really must change?

What will suffice and what really must change? Indeed.

This Just In: CompUSA Loses Sale

This is from the email I submitted to CompUSA’s customer service:

Last night, Feb. 28, 2006, at approximately 8:30PM I went to my local CompUSA to pick up a high gain antenna for my wireless router, a D-Link USB Bluetooth adapter, a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse. After locating all of the items and walking back and forth between the Apple section in the back corner and the mice/keyboard aisle comparing the optical wireless mice, I was informed the register was closed and I would no longer be able to purchase the items every employee in the store saw me carrying around.

I don’t know if this is store policy or not to shut down and kick people out at close without so much as a warning but in doing so, CompUSA lost a few hundred dollars of my money. I cannot fathom how this location could stay in business with customer service like that. At any time any of the 8-12 employees in the store could have approached my wife or myself and told us they would be closing the register and I would have to hurry up and check out.

To sum it up, the empoyees working the store last night should be ashamed of themselves. That’s not the way to treat the people that make sure you have a job. In the past I haven’t had an unfavorable opinion of CompUSA but I would have to say that this has colored my view and I may never step foot in one of your stores again.

As soon as I got home I ordered the items I was carrying around the store from Amazon. Yeah, I have to wait for it to be shipped but at least they didn’t wait until I filled my shopping cart up and then remove the checkout button from the website.

Bastards!