Pet (not so) Smart

I purchased 10 tropical fish from PET SMART. Within 24 hours 8 of the ten were fin-up (the other 2 were M.I.A.s.) The fish were reduced from $3.99 to a dollar each. Since PET SMART has a two week guarantee I put the dead and nearly dead ones in a ziploc bag and set off to return them. As a side note, when Marianne was about seven I returned a two inch long Oscar to Wal-Mart. It was coming to the five day limit on returns of tropical fish and I knew he wasn't going to live (a fish swimming on his nose with eyes popped out is a bad sign) so I dispatched him with a few whacks and an hour in the sun. With barely an hour to spare it's off to Wally's for the refund. Marianne is next to me in the car holding the Oscar in a plastic bag when it starts flipping around. She starts screaming, so I reach over and grab the bag and slam the fish on the dashboard and hand it back to her. Needless to say the Oscar was sufficiently dead to qualify for a refund.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I'm in PET SMART and have my receipt signed by the salesperson for a return of eight fishes at a dollar each. It seems to be going well till the young lady gives me $4.30 back. I tell her I had eight fish at a dollar each and should get eight dollars back. She calls the manager and he pushes a few buttons and opens the register for her and leaves. Then this perky cashier hands me $36 and change. Meanwhile, the line behind is starting to wind back to the Veterinary Clinic. I tell her it's not right, and that she only owes me $4.00. The manager comes back, they look at the receipt, talk some more and then he leaves and she resumes working the register and eventually hands me $16 and change. She tells me "I refunded the other four fish at the $3.99 instead of the one dollar sale price." Now the line is starting to back up to Brevard so I'm thinking to myself maybe I should just take the sixteen plus the four dollars before somebody in this line sticks a shiv in me.

In my earlier life I would have just put the register on my shoulder and walked out. While I'm paused the manager comes by and looks at me, and I guess he sees the pained look on my face so he comes over and I take the $16 in my hand and put it down and then pull the first $4 out of my pocket and put it down and say "I just want eight dollars". He picks eight dollars out of the pile and hands it to me and says "I still owe you the tax", to which I reply "forget the tax". He tells the cashier "just put rest of the money back in the drawer, we will talk about it later". I felt really bad for the cashier as I drove home. Perhaps the mistakes would have flown under the radar, but now she was in deep doo-doo. She had a pretty smile, but boy was she dumb.

Toyota 4.0

Toyota is being lynched by the Federalis. On C-Span today a Times reporter talked about recalls and for the whole hour women called in terrified of their cars as if it was a Stephen King novel. Most were afraid to drive them to the dealer for the repair and some were trading them in and taking a big financial hit.

All this drive-by-wire technology is a result of the environmental movement. In order to get the absolute best mileage while putting out zero emissions you need a computer. It is also driven by Americans' addiction to performance. We want a four cylinder car with every possible amenity and safety feature to turn a 14 second quarter mile time and avg. 30 mpg. Now we have smart cars that compensate for our lack of intelligence and driving skill. The problem however, is when HAL our computer co-pilot gets the hiccups.

Now I'm an old fart whose first car was a 1953 Chevrolet Bel-Air. What this tank lacked in gigabytes it made up for in grease fittings. However, the throttle was controlled by a steel rod, the steering was an erector set of steel bars and gears, the ignition switch was a simple toggle and between the brake pedal and the drums there only existed hydraulic fluid. I'm not ready to hand over steering, throttle and brakes to the geek squad. Perhaps some M.I.T. post grad fellow would feel fine going down I-80 in the middle of a convoy with their hand on a wireless mouse, but not me.

Commercial jets are controlled by computers but they have a few safeguards . Jets have redundancy built into the system. This usually translates to three independent systems that have to fail together for a catastrophe to result. The other is the jets have trained pilots that can recognize a computer malfunction. Even with all the precautions in aviation more than one Air-Bus has somehow unintentionally accelerated into the ocean. How many women driving their Starship-Caravans even understand the systems that make them operate, let alone know how to troubleshoot them in an emergency. In general most drivers have no clue how to handle a blow-out, a loss of brakes, a skid , a runaway, or emergency lane change. These incidents used to be seasonal occurrences thirty years ago. The cars get smarter and the people get stupider.

Now the Senate is having hearings. These morons are putting on a show, complete with weeping women and cowering executives. No scientist or engineers need be present when you are putting on a show. This unexplained acceleration is a dangerous malfunction but how often does it happen? Will they ever find the problem with the software? Twenty years ago Audi had unintended acceleration. They never found the problem but they gave us the brake-shift interlock which locked the shifter until the brake was forcefully applied. This solved the problem of people mixing up the brake with the accelerator and hopefully no more parents will run their kids through the garage wall. Before the neutral safety switch was implemented everyone had a story about being pinned against the garage door by their truck. I'm not sure that fixing a car's CPU will be that easy. Perhaps a big red KILL-SWITCH on the dashboard should be installed on all Toyota's just in case Window's-95 decides it "wants to see what this baby can do". In the meantime the media and the politicians will have a heyday trying destroy a good company and put more Southern Non-Union Americans out of work. On the brighter side this may be a time to get a great deal on a used Lexus.

Morris Broadband is a Rip Off

About 6 months ago our cable company went belly-up. It was replaced by "Morris Broadband" which I affectionately refer to as "Boob-Band" (BB). With great fanfare BB was introduced to the public. We were assured of a smooth transition, better more professional service.

The transition was anything but smooth. I had to get a new e-mail address and the instructions on how to access the new server was contained in the first new email message. If I could access the new mailbox I wouldn't need instructions on how to access the new one. This new server couldn't transfer my address book or automatically contact everyone with my new address. The service was horrible. When I was on call the phone went out. If the wind was more than a breeze the Internet went out and the cable picture had all the quality of a library DVD. Any complaint was listened to courteously (I am in the south) but nothing was ever resolved. It seems that there were more BB vans on our street than personal vehicles.

After notifying a few hundred people of my new address, I settled into the poor service. Then they started taking away the few channels I watched and filling their menu with infomercials. TV, Internet, and phone all for $90/month. Then one month the price jumped to $143 and the following month it went up to $174. This unannounced price led me to consider the drastic move of finding a new company and changing my e-mail address again.

I signed up for ATT and Direct TV. However, Boob-Band wasn't going to make the change easy. When they took over they installed locked boxes in the neighborhood and they were supposed to give the property manager the key. Of course they didn't and to get the BB guy to come out and unlock the the box for the Direct TV guy was like trying to arrange a meeting between George Bush and Bin Laden. The BB guy came and turned off his cable and hesitatingly left our wires out for the dish guy. The dish guy had to put up a separate dish just for us because he couldn't get into the locked box. So Morris Broadband is like the "Roach Motel" of cable companies. The side of our house looks like a NORAD base with two Direct TV dishes and one HD dish. The property manager is going to drill the locks off all the boxes if BB doesn't have a key in their office in a week. What a mess, Carol probably spent 10 hours trying to extricate us from this terrible cable company.

Kids Know Better

Carol really stepped in it at Sunday School.
The class has been trying to decide whether to continue the $150 per month support of a campus missionary. The young lady (who had grown up in this church) had just graduated college and wanted to work for a campus ministry doing their graphic design. After her presentation to the class, we agreed to sponsor her for a year. She promised to keep us updated on the ministry. The year is up, and now the class has to reconsider supporting her or a young missionary leaving for Iraq. Last week it was discussed and some felt we should end our support for the college girl because we haven't heard from her for awhile and when someone checked her blog it had been shut down. This week the topic comes up again and voila! a letter had shown up describing how she talked to a student who talked to another student about Jesus. Carol and I were not impressed with this take-off on the "even if only one soul gets saved argument". However, some in the class were moved by the note she wrote to us. Meanwhile, Carol and I are thinking to ourselves:

Why doesn't she just do this in her spare time?
The girl in Iraq seems more serious.
Could this be something she's doing till she finds a husband etc

I'm thinking we really need a secret ballot for this issue, especially since some of the non-supporters from the week before are absent. There was an awkward silence, but then it happened, Carol spoke out and said, "I think we agreed to support the college missionary for a year but now we should end it and support the Iraq girl". Now I'm sitting there stifling a giggle like Schwartz sitting behind Ralphie. There was another pause as I waited for the class to start calling for Barabbas, but the crowd didn't recognize their cue. Then a classmate, in true Christian goofiness came up with a plan to split the $150 class missionary budget between the college student that talked to a girl that talked to a girl about Jesus and the girl who is risking her life in Iraq.

As soon as we left I cracked up and Carol started fuming. It was sort of like the wedding where Carol was part of the talent show and everyone else bowed out. Like Ralphie says "It's always better to keep your mouth shut".

Driving with CPS (Carol Positioning System)

Carol my GPS is driving me crazy.



On our way to Charleston: Go right, we need to stay on 52 East.










Which way do I go right or left?
Yes.











Which way do I go?
Straight.

Stand Up To The Facist

Obama's next bogeyman is Toyota. Could it be that the thousands of Americans that work for Toyota are freemen? They don't work for GM (Government Motors) and they don't pay tribute through their corrupt unions. This is a not so veiled effort to crush the competition to the state run auto industry. It is also a slap down to the free south where Toyota's are made. UAW/Obama Motors can't compete in the market place so the bully pulpit is the new platform for Chicago style thug politics.

Personally I would take a Toyota with a stuck gas pedal over anything that comes out of Detroit. My 88 Toyota 4-Runner with it's 22-RE engine would routinely last for 300,000 miles. Compared to its competition, the Jeep Cherokee, it was a marvel of engineering. The Honda Fit is having a problem with their driver side power window switch overheating; boy that can kill you. Now how about that little problem Ford had with their coils overheating and causing the car to catch fire. Do you recall the Chrysler automatic transmission that lasted just as long as the warranty?

Government Motors is dead. It's like a deer with a broad-head arrow in him, he's running but it's just a matter of time. Ford still has a chance, but within ten years GM and Chrysler will be toe-up. Toyota and Honda customers will remain loyal as long as their dealers treat the customer well. Telling a free-man what car to drive will just piss him off. Support freedom and liberty, buy Toyota.

Despair Inc.

And she's not even eligible for a senior discount.