Category Anything and Everything

Quote of my letter to Amazon after trying to place an order for some xmas gifts…

“I have been a loyal Amazon.com customer for many years. I have always enjoyed the convenience and great service I have received from your company. However, it looks like this year you will be getting no business from me. Today, December 8th, I went to my wife’s wish list and checked off a few items. Most of the items were listed as shipping within 24 hours or 2-3 days. However when I went to checkout, EVERY single item was listed as arriving after Christmas! This was using the standard 3-7 day shipping option that I pay for. As an experiment I went back and checked off everything on her wishlist. The checkout window reported that EVERYTHING WOULD ARRIVE AFTER CHRISTMAS. I never had such issues like this with your company before. We are 2 and a half weeks away from Christmas yet you can not promise delivery before the holiday with regular shipping??? I do not know if this is an attempt to pad the bottom line by forcing customers to pay for more expensive expedited shipping or just a result of poor performance of your delivery model but the end result for me is I will not be buying ANY of my Christmas gifts from you this year and I highly doubt I will return next holiday either. I am very disappointed with Amazon.com.

Sincerely,
Shawn Duffey”

First let’s get the visual entertainment out of the way. Here is a pic of the little dogs that were on our property the day after Thanksgiving. (hopefully) they got a good home.

There are some updated pictures of Nicki available. I have to admit that I love her now as much as any pet I ever had.

This weekend we finished up our Christmas decorations, see pics of it all here. (as well as some non holiday pics)

The weekend was another good one. The temperature was below normal with highs in the 60’s both days. It is a result of that nasty storm that hammered the northeast this weekend. Back into the mid 70’s this week. My mom got her first taste of REALLY being glad she was here. We feel bad about our friends and family having to deal with the crappy weather but at the same time we feel content about not having to deal with it anymore.

As I mentioned up top we finished our decorations. I got inspired and hung additional lights across the roofline of the house. I never did that before at any place so it was cool. Ali made the wreath you see on the door by hand from branches we had to trim off the xmas tree. Our tree is a bit of an ugly duckling, a charlie brown tree. It’s trunk is crooked, is split in the middle and has a big bare spot up top. We really loaded it up with ornaments to cover up the blemishes. I think it looks good.

I did some mowing and weed whacking on Sunday. I have a strained back and a welt on my forehead that looks like I was shot with a bb gun as a result. The strained back was from being lazy and trying to mow the trenches in the back (instead of weed whacking them) and getting the tractor mower stuck. To get it out I had to lift up the backend and pull it out. Of course I didn’t learn the first time, I got it stuck at least 5 times before I gave up on that plan. When I went back with the weed whacker a branch somehow wound up pelting me on the forehead. When I went inside I noticed I had a small stream of dried up blood there. Always wear those safety glasses!!!!

What is up with college football? The BCS ratings are f’d up. The number 1 team loses, the number 2 and 3 team win in convincing fashion and the national championship game puts the number 1 team that LOST against the number 3 team?????????????????? Come on that make no sense. Stupid system.

Sunday great day for pro football. The Eagles came back in the second half and humiliated the Cowboys. Another great game, I can not believe how well it is going now after it went so terribly in the beginning. I’ll just enjoy the ride and be happy to eat all the crow I have to. I loved watching the New England – Miami game. Thousands of seats were buried! People were digging their seats out or in some cases just sitting in the snow! The scenes of the fans throwing the snow in the air to celebrate was one I’ll never forget. Talk about diehards….

The carnivore fish I had in my office died, no tears shed. I’m decommisioning the tank.

I’ve GOT to get some Christmas shopping done soon…..

Last night I was walking up the driveway after putting the garbage can at the curb when I noticed a huge shadow go flying over our neighbor’s roof. I could see something sitting on their roof so I went over to check it out. It was dark so I couldn’t really make it out until I was right next to their house. It was a HUGE owl. The biggest owl I ever saw. It just kind of hung out, gave me a look like it could care less about me and then went back to looking around. It stuck around long enough for me to show Ali. Wild.

This weekend we will be putting up the christmas tree and the rest of Christmas decorations. Back home in PA they are having xmas like weather, a big snowstorm is hitting. Hopefully they don’t get buried again this winter like last.

BIG Eagles game Sunday. They can take firm hold of first place with a win, here’s hoping…..

I forgot to mention that the reproximation at the orthodontist SUCKED. I had 6 spots worked on. It was a little reciprocating tool with an attachment that looked like a little hack saw (but it wasn’t sharp) The guy basically jams it between your teeth and it vibrates back and forth, grinding away tooth to give clearance for movement. I would not say it was painful (until afterwards) as much as it was very uncomfortable. It rattled my skull and the first 10 seconds of each new pass really sucked as he wedged the tool between my teeth. I also found out that I am going to have this done multiple times through out my treatment. (something that was conveniently not mentioned during my consultation) The 24 hours after the procedure, my teeth were the most sore they have been since I started waering the aligners . I could not bite down on anything with my front teeth. Ali only had to have 3 spots reproximated and she may not need to have any further done. Lucky her.

Heard on a local radio show “Nobody can ever be called a total waste, in the very least they can always serve as a bad example…”

Best part is it’s free!!!!!! Very complete, and it cleaned up an ton of stuff on my box as well as immunizes against known exploits! Get it here!

Wow getting blacklisted sucks. As a result of a misconfiguration I made in our firewall, I inadvertently had an open 8080 http proxy on our box for a week or two. This was eventually sniffed out by spammers and they were spamming away through our box. I stopped it as soon as I found it but as a result our IP address has been blacklisted on a number of spam lists. Trying to get off these lists is cumbersome at best and in some cases downright impossible. Frustrating.

You think you have problems? Look at what this angry Reading, PA resident posted regarding the latest polls that indicate that Reading, PA is among the nations 25 MOST DANGEROUS CITIES! No wonder I moved huh?

I have to admit I am getting more and more into Linux. I am picking up bits and pieces here and there and just bought a book about Suse Linux I am working through. Except for gaming, there is no apparent disadvantage to me of running Linux and a lot less issues since you aren’t running Winwhatever which is the number one target in the world for hackers to attack. Learning a different OS is somewhat similar to learning a new language. If I were to make a comparison I’d say I can carry out a crude conversation in Linux right now but if you spoke too fast I would be lost. 🙂

The only things my gym has going for it is the fact that it is 2 minutes from work and it’s cheap. In the 2 years I have been a member there, there has been no new equipment purchased, they reduced the amount of space that was useable by the members and it is the dirtiest gym I have ever been in. The water fountains are permanently discolored and are only washed by the spit residue members leave on it. I try to avoid touching them and rely on my bottle of water. They constantly play these horrible techno dance crap cd’s that sound like they are permanently skipping. The music may be enjoyed by the teenage girls that go there but since I can count them on one hand, I’m not sure what the point is of blaring that shit. The men’s bathrooms are so bad that I do everything possible to avoid going in them. Today I forgot to take a leak before going to the gym so I had to go while I was there. Terrible. The urinals look like they haven’t been cleaned in weeks. If someone blindfolded me and took me into the bathroom and asked me to guess where I was I would say a strip club or a truck rest stop. Gross.

Today, Ali and I go to the orthodontist to get our next set of aligners and to have PROXIMATION done on our teeth. Proximation was described to us as thinning the teeth to give some additional clearance to move and straighten them. Ok great. What wasn’t great was the way the process was described, like using sandpaper dental floss on a jigsaw. Somehow that imagery does not seem very appealing. Hopefully it is better than I am anticipating it being.

Have you ever known anyone that looks like a yard gnome?

Some pretty cool stuff done by the home movie maker. Broadband required.