Archives October 2006

It seems my 60 minute daily lunch period always has some sort of incident, visual or thing that sticks out.  Yesterday I saw short hair, skinny, balding, smoking bike riding guy.  Yep he had his oversized button down short sleeve shirt, cigarette in hand and to mix things up, a Mountain Dew in the other hand.

Today as I was on my way over to the gym (which is in a strip mall) I was following behind a late 80’s Chevy Caprice that was pimped out with 22 inch rims and a jacked up suspension, of course it looked silly.  Well anyway I am maybe 15 feet behind this car, going maybe 10 miles an hour.  As we approached the entrance to Beal’s in the first parking spot to my right was an older woman that just finished putting her junk in the trunk and had the empty cart.  I could tell she had intentions of walking the cart back to the door but assumed she would wait until we both passed since we were so close together.  Well the Caprice passed before she closed the trunk but as soon as she did, she instantly made a move like she planned to just walk out in front of me, she never looked, she was just gonna go.  Well depending on my mood sometimes I will just grin and bear a pushy pedestrian, sometimes I won’t. 

 I know as a pedestrian I never play chicken with an automobile.  If a car is right there, I am certainly not going to stride right out, making the assumption that the driver is paying attention and not caring if he has to jam on the brakes to not hit me.  Well this woman seemed to be one of those type of people that didn’t care..  So I stared her down and kept trucking along at 10mph, making her delay all of 3 seconds until she could pass.  F her. After I passed I saw her giving me a look in the rear view mirror and shaking her head, I shook my head in return as I mumbled “Stupid old bitch…..”    If you are stupid enough to think it’s ok to wedge yourself in between 2 cars so close together I could care less about being courteous to you as you obviously are extending no courtesy to me.  If I was an rosy mood, perhaps I would have slammed on the brakes to let the old hag jump in front of me, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t.  I have to admit if she was an attractive younger woman I probably would have reacted differently.  It’s a knee jerk mental reaction that occurs before you can even think about it.

 Stumbled across this on You Tube, funny, funny stuff (unless your name is Mark Foley)  Here is more funny Foley You Tube stuff, this one has the full transcript.  Damn they pump it out fast.

Well my other Audiovox PNP 2 unit bit the dust yesterday.  The antenna connector on it degraded to the point where I had to continually press it back into place ad the slightest bump would break the connection.  So after the gym yesterday I stopped by Radio Shack and picked up a Sirius One unit.  This model is the price leader of all the Sirius receivers because it is rather barebones.  It has a single line LED display, a reduced feature set and has no home kit option as it is designed to stay in a car.  As a result it is extremely inexpensive, I got it for $29.99!

It is extremely compact and as a result can be installed very easily.  Last night I installed it in the Sentra in 45 minutes.  I love it.  Instead of having a big gooseneck mount attached to the passenger seat with a big clunky unit attached to it, I have the Sirius One neatly installed using the included sun visor clip.  It’s up out of the way, functions just fine and looks much, much cleaner than the set up I had before.  The only glitch I had was when I first fired it up, it wouldn’t hold preset stations.  A quick search on the net showed many others having the same issue which apparently was a result of a software update.  Luckily they had an update to fix the update and when the unit downloaded it the problem was fixed.  It’s a great little unit.

  Even though it isn’t designed for home/office use, I have it hooked up at work right now using the power adapter and antenna for my Xact Replay unit.  One thing I have noticed throughout my recent radio merry go round is the power and antenna connections are universal.  The power adapter I used for my Audiovox PNP2 unit works with the Xact Replay and the Sirius One unit. 

I saw episode two of Heroes last night.  It is just awesome TV.  I sort of forget that there is non-reality based tv out there. It is the type of show that you wish was longer.  The hour just flies by. 

I am rather groggy this morning but witnessing a strong Eagles performance last night made it worth it.  After a mistake filled first half, most notably 2 fumbles inside the Packer 5 yard line, the Birds put it all together in the second half and coasted to a 31-9 win.  I felt bad for Farve in the second half.  He should have retired or signed on with a contender.  Wallowing along with a scrub team isn’t the way he should go out.

My biggest concern with the Eagles are the injuries that are snowballing every week.  Westbrook was a surprise scratch, they still are hurting in the secondary, Stallworth tweaked his hamstring more and late in the game Reggie Brown hurt his shoulder.  If any of these are prolonged, serious injuries they are in trouble.  The Cowboy game this weekend should be extremely interesting.

For whatever reason, I am having a hard time finding the full transcripts of the Mark Foley young boy IM love affairs.  If anyone has a link where I can see them drop it in here.  I have to admit I am pleased with the timing for the dropping of this bomb.  Anything that will help get more Republicans out of congress is great news.  It’s too bad it has to be as a result of yet another cover up, another example of ultimate hypocrisy.  Of course I would be ignorant to think such things are limited to one political party, the vast majority of them are hiding something I’m sure. ** Update, I found one of them here, creepy **

The world is just chock full of miserable news nowadays.  Yesterday, the second school shooting in the span of a week in of all places, an Amish school???  I mean it is just disgusting.  The world really is a scary place filled with ignorance, evil, greed and lunacy.  Does anyone really think it will get better over time?  Not a chance.  It will only get better once the “reset” button is pressed which will be whatever the next worldwide disaster is whether it be a pandemic disease, natural diasaster, nuclear exchange or enviromental failure.  The world is sick.

I don’t really feel much like blogging today for whatever reason.  The weekend went fine.  Saturday we did extensive mowing.  We had a rain-free week last week so all the standing water dried up.  We took the opportunity to mow down the 2 acres in the back of the house as well.

Saturday night we went to a baby party at our friends house.  Their daughter and other friends of ours just had babies around the same time and the party was for them.  It also was an opportunity for the females in attendence to grill me over when I was going to have a kid, which I artfully sidestepped or replied back that we have a black and furry kid at home already that keeps us busy.  We stayed later than I anticipated and didn’t get to bed till after 11.

Sunday we decided to do something we hadn’t done in who knows how long, go to the beach.  The Eagles play tonight so my Sunday was uncharacteristically free of football commitments, so we took advantage of it.  We drove down and spent maybe an hour and a half there.  When the sun was out it felt quite warm.  After we ate lunch there we sat back down for a little bit and then headed out.  As I was sitting there, I glanced down at my chest and saw one of my suspicious looking mole/freckle things on my chest  and thought about how it was rather dumb to be sitting out in the sun, sans sunblock considering I had two things cut out of my head in the past year.  I put my shirt back on.  I think I will need to be one of those old farts that sits on the beach under an umbrellla. I guess I could have just slapped 45 spf sunblock on too.  Well even so it was nice to hang at the beach for a little while, something that when we moved to Florida we thought would be a weekly thing.  Right now we are lucky if it is a semi-annual event, crazy.

The rest of the weekend was laid back. Well except the part where Ali did the bills.  The bill for the computer I built was in the CC bill for the month so that added a nice chunk to the already high bill.  After paying the bills, the idea of jumping into a hybrid has cooled considerably.  I got a second online number for the trade in value of the Sentra which was considerably lower than the one I saw last week, further dampening any enthusiasm for making a move now.

  I did do some more research online about the Camry and Prius Hybrid.  It amazes me that if I equip both vehicles as I would want, they are almost identical in price.  It makes no sense to me since the Prius is a much smaller car than the Camry.  The Camry appeals to me because it is a much roomier and stylish car.  I have been driving sub-compacts for over 10 years, and specifically some sort of Nissan Sentra since 98.  The only explanation I can get for the near equal cost is the Prius gets significantly better mileage than the Camry Hybrid. The Camry gets 38 highway/40 city (theoritically) while the Prius clocks in at 51 and 60 respectively, a big, nearly 40-50% difference in mileage.  I suppose that is the basis for the cost difference.  Well I think it is a mute point right now anyway.

I lost again in fantasy football, it is pissing me off.  My running backs, Edgerrin James and Jamal Lewis sucked.  Carson Palmer pumped in anemic 7 points against a shitty NE secondary.  FF causes me more stress than enjoyment.

That’s it.