Category Archives: Rant
My work project is entering the final stretch, so long days and no blogging to speak of. But this morning, eating toast induced a Brain Bubble I thought worth recording, so here I am for a drive-by quickie, a blogging booty call.
You know how people like to say (usually in that annoying sing-song voice), “When you ‘assume’ you make an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me’.” This is often in retaliation for someone having assumed something someone else found unwarranted.
To those people I’d just like to say, “Huh?”
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38 Comments | tags: assume, F.U., Felix Ungar, Neil Simon, Oscar Madison, The Odd Couple | posted in Brain Bubble, Rant
The dung beetle, a far more noble form of life than a spammer!
Going to try something a little different. Rather than write a longish comment in response to someone’s blog article or comment, I’m going to write a shortish article on my own blog. (Well, short for me, anyway.)
Sometimes when writing a long comment, I find myself thinking that what I’d like to say would be better served as an article rather than a typically long-winded comment. There is also that comment sections can be a bit confined space-wise, plus it’s a bit harder to include pictures or do formatting.
Today’s “comment” is actually a long-standing observation about the interweb but was triggered by the sudden rise in spam Follows and then Michelle’s latest article over on The Green Study.
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42 Comments | tags: die die die spammers, die horribly spammers, die painfully spammers, die spammers, TWIOWASBE, vanish from the earth spammers | posted in Life, Rant, The Interweb
A bit over a month ago I wrote that, after six months of effort and three weeks of idly waiting for others to complete work, maybe things would finally start moving on my data integration project. And I haven’t posted since (other than the Rick O’Shay post later that same day).
As it turned out, things did finally take off, and the month got very busy. Things got even busier when they dumped an urgent “can you help with this” project in my lap. (I’ve also spent the month struggling with whether I wanted to continue blogging, and if so, whether to change my approach.)
Today I thought I’d post an article about all that (and the Minnesota Twins).
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11 Comments | tags: Minnesota Twins, retirement, work | posted in Life, Rant
Go pound sand, TC!
This is just a running-at-the-fingers marker post, a diary page for the weblog. I have a special Sunday post almost written, but it involves some (great Americana) artwork by a living artist, and I’d like to use more than small “fair use” thumbnails.
I would probably be within fair use using the low-res versions I want to use, but these pieces are so meaningful to me that I want to be as respectful to the artist as possible.
So — hopefully — you’ll be seeing that article down the road one of these Sundays. I’ll just give you a one-word clue for now. It’ll be a giveaway for anyone familiar with the works in question and likely utterly useless for everyone else (at least those not motivated to Go Ogle for it). The word is: Hipshot.
Instead, I thought I’d ramble on a bit about work and what I do for a living.
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8 Comments | tags: anger, data integration, restless leg syndrome, retirement, work | posted in Life, Rant
The week is off to a weak start. Last week I thought things at work would finally start to move along on my project. But it turns out the guy who told me “next week” didn’t expect me to read his email until last Monday. So this week turns out to be the week he thought he’d have something.
No word so far, and he didn’t answer my email this morning.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the data chain, oh, it’s a big disaster that makes me shudder. Late today we got an opportunity to test just one link in the chain I’m trying to build. Tests failed, so it’s back to the vendor.
I’ll rant about that later (and you’ll be free to leave). First, I just want to share the only time management tip I ever learned that turned out to be hugely useful.
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6 Comments | tags: Babylon 5, bill, Captain Kirk, cow, Fruitcakes, Jimmy Buffett, Shadows, time management, tips, Vorlons | posted in Basics, Brain Bubble, Life, Rant
You know the story about that nice family of bears whose home is invaded, robbed and vandalized by some pre-teen female hoodlum? I have a vague feeling of how that poor Ursine family must have felt when they discovered their food missing.
Indeed, we all must identify with the bears these days. There is a huge Goldilocks in our midst, and she’s been nibbling away at everything! We’ve all seen the candy bars get smaller while the price gets higher. And that space-reducing dome at the bottom of most plastic containers gets bigger and bigger. Consumers purchase ever-increasing amounts of air these days.
This is brought home to me full force every time I open a container of raisins.
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16 Comments | tags: ginger cookies, Goldilocks, humor, product packaging, raisins | posted in Life, Rant
It happened again last month. My heart is broken, I’ve lost my love and now I have to find a replacement. I’ve been in this position before; the “good ones” are so hard to find. And even when I do find one, the relationship never seems to last.
I will admit that my tastes have evolved over time. It used to be that simple and refined… and white, very white… was my preference.
Actually, it was all I knew. Back then, it was all white. But as I matured, my horizons expanded, and I came to prefer more complexity and a darker coloration. I rarely go with white now — only for rare occasions that insist on it. I’ve learned the beauty of going brown!
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61 Comments | tags: bread, bread sticks, Brownberry, cake, frosting, ginger cookies, Hostess, icing, Natural Ovens, Nature's Pride | posted in Life, Rant
You know what bugs me? Well, a lot of things bug me, but this post is about something that’s bugged me for a long time. It also concerns a lesson learned about things that bug me. And it’s about why this post is being written in the first place.
Let me start with that last one. (Because it just now happened again!) I have notebooks, Post-It Note collages and scribbled note collections of blog post ideas. But new ones pop up constantly (like the idea I thought of while writing this paragraph). Some of the new ones are so demanding, they shove the patiently waiting ones aside. The backlog is building, yet my time is short. Very aggravating.
Which brings me to the post’s point: my aggravation about counting change.
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25 Comments | tags: amount tendered, bills, cashiers, coins, insanity, mangoes | posted in Life, Rant
Yes, it’s that time of year again. I don’t mean Christmas or New Year’s. I don’t even mean Winter Solstice (the actual, true & proper, physics-based holiday of the season). I don’t even mean Chillaxmas. I mean that the friggin’ Ants have once again invaded my demesne.
They have come every winter, except for the very mild one last year. I believe they come seeking water. Even Ants cannot live for more than a few days without water. My theory is: fuel prices being what they are these days, the poor Ants cannot afford to keep their tiny furnaces running. This leaves them unable to melt ice or snow, and so they come seeking liquid water.
This, then, is a tale of species war! One man’s fight against thousands of alien invaders!
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26 Comments | tags: ant poison, ants, Formicidae, Hexapoda, humor, Hymenoptera, Them! | posted in Life, Rant
It’s bad enough now in politics (and for all I know, it has been ever thus) that one winds up so often voting for the least worst candidate. This year many of us are faced with having to vote against a candidate we feel would be real disaster for the country.
I’m speaking, of course, of the Republican contender for the Presidency, Mitt Romney. It’s hard for me to understand how someone like him got as far as he did, but the Republicans are the ones who thought Sarah Palin was a good idea.
I never imagined I would write about politics here, but the current situation seems to demand all able bodies speaking up and making their voices heard. I doubt anything I write will change anyone’s mind, and so this may be nothing more than a rant.
But apparently this is my week to rant about stuff that’s going on. I started the week ranting about NCIS, now I rant about politics.
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2 Comments | tags: Barack Obama, Between the Bridge and the River, Craig Ferguson, Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Obama-Romney debate, vote, weasel | posted in Rant
Logos con carne 