Comcast sucks

Our internet and tv has been out SINCE LAST TUESDAY. We have called and/or live-chatted with Comcast every day about it. Every day, they said it would be 24 hrs. This morning, I called them and after telling them that we've been out that long, I was told that the outage was cleared last thursday. Then I was left on hold for 22 minutes. When a different girl finally picked up, I asked for a supervisor. That girl set up a tech to come out one WEDNESDAY while we waited for the supervisor. AFter ten more minutes, I finally had to give up because I had to get back to work.

That was Wierd

I went for a bike ride this morning. An asian man flagged me down. He couldn't speak any English. After a long back and forth, I finally figured that he was asking me if I was Bosnian. He then told me that there are a lot of Bosnians in Suwanee and he was looking for a Bosnian restaurant. When I told him I didn't know of one, he pointed to my black t-shirt and said, "What Do?" Back and forth, and I figured out that he saw a dog hair on my shirt. "What dog?". I told him Beagle, and he asked if they are big or small, then he asked me how many pounds. As soon as I told him, he said Thank You and turned his back and walked away.

If he had gotten closer to me, I would have checked my pockets.

Thanks, dumbass government

Our brilliant county government has decided that having multiple, private garbage collection companies for residents to choose from, was inequitable, so it decided to take over trash collection, starting July 1st.
The cost of trash collection will be added to our property taxes, with the first 18 months of collection to be paid up front.

First, there are many people who do not need weekly trash collection. We just barely need it because there is a free trash drop off site on my way to work. I could easily bring my trash there, if I wasn't so lazy. There are many people; the elderly, single people, who just don't generate that much trash. My brother in law saves money by having a deal with his neighbor, where he brings his one bag of trash to their bin.

The second consequence is this: Mrs S forgot to bring our bin to the curb in time for pickup this week. So she called our current service to ask them to pick it up later in the week when they are in the area. We have had to do this in the past and they have been accommodating.
Not so much now. They know they have received the last payment from us they are ever going to get, so they basically told her to go pound sand.

Lessons Learned

1) Never go out on a Thursday, when you have to work on Friday.

2) When the insanely hot teenage waitress proceeds to take your empty plate away, and your wife asks, "Do you want to lick it?", just say, "No".

$55 !?

I loaded the canoe onto my pickup and hauled it to the closest landfill. I was shocked to discover that they charge a minimum of $55 to drop anything off.
I thought people dropped off washers and dryers and hot water heaters and it cost something like $10 or $15.
So I brought the canoe home. I'm going to have to cut it up (fortunately it's plastic, not aluminum) and drop it in the dumpster at work.

Yardwork Continues

I planted four more of the Ligustrum Lucidum bushes in the backyard, bringing the total to six. That's one of them above. They are currently about 1 meter tall. According to Wikipedia, they grow up to 25 meters tall.

Slash and Burn

One of the good things about the big fire of 2010, is that it burned up all the undergrowth that was clogging up the backyard.
So, we spent the weekend trying to spruce it up. We cleared out, as best we could, some of the evil, thorny, crawling vine-weed that is woven everywhere.
I bought and planted two ligustrum lucidum bushes. I hope to plant a whole bunch more of them, but I'm trying to do it a couple of plants at a time. I'm trying to make a natural barrier between our yard and that ugly burned down shed behind us. Uh! Why don't they clean that up?

They tell me they are going to look like this:

I Hate MLB

If you know me, you know that I hate pretty much all professional sports, or more specifically, the spectating of professional sports.
Now that the pussies who run our local AM stations have decided to be the bitches of MLB, there's nothing decent to listen to on AM.
In addition to that, NPR is in their seasonal beg-drive, so there's pretty much nothing worth listening to on the radio.

FIRE!

The neighbor's shed took the brunt of the fire, and went up like a meth lab. Hey, wait a minute....

Sadly, my canoe was also a casualty

Clash of the Titans

We went to see the 3-D version today. It was ok. It turns out that 3-D costs $12.50/ticket. That seemed a little steep, but I figured the new version is geared for 3-D.
It didn't help that I already knew the storyline. It also didn't help that I felt like I was watching Pirates of the Caribbean.
You know how I hate to stereotype? Well, the black family seated in front of us did everything except yell at the screen. Fortunately, they were talking away from us, so it wasn't too loud, but several other people repeatedly shushed them, to no avail. The last phone call they received was during the credits, but one of them did start texting about 3/4 of the way through the movie. As usual, I am amazed at the parents who will take very young children to a violent movie, including infants. I saw a guy walking out of the theatre with a sleeping baby that couldn't have been more than 2 MONTHS old. Seriously. Here's a tipoff to the parents: there are people ripped in half, hacked up, and at least one beheading.

Wait for the DVD

Lazy, but Inventive

I discovered that the hot water heater has a very slow leak in the pipe. Repairing it involves disconnecting the plastic compression parts, borrowing the torch from my boss, and resoldering the connection. Orrrrrr.....

Walmart

Is there any place in the world more inspiring to make you want to kill your fellow human being?

I submit there is not.

Caprica

Anybody been catching Caprica, on SyFy? I saw the pilot and some of the 2nd episode. So far, it's a pretty cool concept, especially the way they have explained the creation of the Ceylons.

Basically, young people go into a cyber world, where they interact with other people online. Like World of Warcraft, except there it's much more realistic-looking and they log in with a little 3-D headset, that looks like it directly beams into your brain.
One teenage girl gets the idea of basically "Googling" herself and accumulating all the information on herself that's been collected over the years; everything from school records to ATM cameras. In this SyFy world there are far more "Big Brother" devices than here on earth. She creates an avatar of herself from this and dumps it into the "World of Warcraft"-type online cyber game.
Then she gets killed, but her avatar lives on in cyberspace. Her father finds out about it and, missing his dead daughter, logs on and interacts with her. After a while, he decides he wants her in the real world and downloads her avatar into the first Ceylon.

An Anxious Mind

One of the things that I've come to realize since I quit drinking is this:

Drinking, even when not drinking a lot, numbs the brain enough to where watching tv and laying around isn't boring.

Now that I'm not drinking, I can't stand to watch tv, unless I'm surfing the web at the same time. And watching something that I've already seen? Forget about it. I can't take it. I've got to be DOING something.

Need Some Polka?

The Missus is half Polish and half Czech, so polka's in her blood. She grew up going to Happy Louie's Polka Review.
So I found a website that allows us to have polka any time "we" want.

The Polka Jammer Network!

Jesus, Microsoft. You do Suck

After taking a few days off for the holidays, I returned to discover that Windows needs to install 60 updates to my work computer. I unfortunately clicked ok.

My pc has been bogged down all day, bringing productivity to a crawl.

I've had to reboot TWICE so far, causing Norton's to activate a new scan each time, further killing productivity.

Windows also wants to install "Windows Advantage", aka "We want to approve everything you do".

I now have IE 8, whoop de fucking do. Now, none of the shit I had embedded in anything is visible anymore.

FUCK YOU Microsoft. I'm installing Firefox at work as soon as I get a chance.

Peace On Earth

This will be the first year in quite a while where Mrs Schwartz and I do not go to Binghamton for Christmas.
Last year was a debockle.

1) The Beagles and Ma Schwartz' cats just aren't a good mix.
2) The weather sucks.
3) It costs a bunch of money and time.

Since I haven't been getting much in the way of quarterly bonuses, and Mrs Schwartz can't buy a job, we figured it made better financial sense to stay at home and just enjoy each other's company.

I have the week off of work, so today we went to the Mall of Georgia for some shopping. Malls in general provide a fantastic opportunity to show that stupidy accumulates not linearly, but exponentially. Combine a few hundred people together, and the stupidity factor goes through the roof.

Xmas in Gainesville

Halloween in the Biblebelt

We took the neighbor's kids Trick or Treating (don't ask). The local participation was spotty, at best. There was one cool house that went all out.
One interesting part of the evening was a house where I heard the guy at the door say, "I don't have any treats, but I have something better."

That's right! He was handing out Jesus Tapes!

It's all Relative

I've been kind of grumpy lately over some of life's usual problems, work, money, etc. Then I saw the pictures from the flood and thought, "Life's pretty good. At least my house isn't under water"