Category Rants

Last night on the way home I stopped to grab the dogs.  They will be with me for a few days while Ali is out of town.  Even though we got home as daylight was starting to fade both of them hung outside for a good half hour.  Lately I have been propping open the lanai screen door so they can come in and out as they please.

Taking the dogs to daycare is a weird thing.  Nicki acts like she no longer likes going there.  When I park the vehicle she will just stay planted, acting like the last thing she feels like doing is going in there with all of the noise and activity.  Lately I have had to take Sadie in first and then come back out and physically lift Nicki out.  Supposedly once Nicki is at the dog daycare she acts fine during the day.  Of course I wouldn’t expect them to tell me she hates it either.

I really would like to be able to just let the dogs stay at the house by themselves like they did for years.  The only reason daycare started was because of Nicki’s issue with holding it for a full day anymore.  At the house they can relax indoors or out.  After 10 years I have become pretty in tune with Nicki’s body language.  It clearly tells me “Dad I’d really rather just stay home”

So yesterday I get this form letter from Comcast stating that they are making “adjustments” to customers that only have internet service, such as I have for the last couple years or so.  The rate starts at $40 a month for gimped service and scales up to $115 (before taxes) for their top tier level.

I currently have the Blast package which according to the letter would pull more than $75 a month  out of my pocket JUST FOR INTERNET SERVICE.  Now, I just negotiated the promo package for tv and Blast internet for $49.99 for 6 months last week, so this SHOULD not apply to me.  However I would not be surprised at all if Comcast somehow f’s up and starts billing me at the higher rate which will initiate a very swift and vocal response from me.

I forgot to mention that I do indeed have Comcast tv service piped into the bedroom now.  As I suggested from the get go, removing the filter from my line fixed the problem.  Of course the convertor box they gave me doesn’t even have a HDMI output, meaning the picture quality is non-hd.  I really don’t know when I will have occasion to use the service except trying to catch a MNF game on ESPN, and maybe using the On Demand rarely.  Otherwise I just don’t need it.

So I read yesterday the Senate voted down the bi-partisan gun bill.  Obviously the very deep pockets of the NRA lobbyists once again were successful in overruling what to me, is basic common sense.

I have never owned or even fired an actual gun, my $35 air rifle is the closest thing I have to a firearm in the house.  However my disinterest in guns doesn’t mean I think individuals should not be able to own a weapon, after all it is a constitutional right.  However as is the case with my position on many things, I like to apply logic to situations.

I do think there is something wrong with owning assault weapons.  I can not see a legitimate reason for an individual to carry a weapon intended to kill people by the dozens, in seconds.

As far as limiting the size of an ammo clip, 30 rounds isn’t enough?  Is it because you like to have longer bursts of Rambo moments or just because your arm starts to hurt after slapping in clip after clip?

However the biggest thing that annoys me is the NRA being so resistant to the universal registration of gun ownership.  You can not convince me there is a downside to this.  Own 100 guns if you want to, to me, asking you to simply register their ownership is a very small price to pay in my book.

You will hear gun nuts say that registering their weapons is a conduit for the government to come and take their guns down the road.  Please, if things would someday get to the point where the government would try to take away registered guns from individuals we would have much larger problems to deal with.

Others will cry “big brother” or it is an invasion of privacy.  Again, I would ask these people to step into the reality of 2013 and the Patriot Act.  You have no real privacy, if you think you do you are living in the Matrix.  Asking gun owners to register their weapons is a blip on the screen in terms of what the government already knows about you.

So anyway, I find it very disappointing but not surprising that once again doing the right thing, taking a small step towards curbing gun violence, was scuttled thanks to the cancerous tumor in our legislative system, aka. lobbyists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ROrpKx3aIjA

The fertilizer plant explosion is just incredible.

So when I had my physical the other week there was something that they wanted checked out.  Checking IT out meant a follow up appointment yesterday to have an ultrasound done, on my family jewels.  If receiving a DRE wasn’t humiliating enough, I now had to have someone hold a wand on an area that does not welcome visitors.

So I go to the imaging office and get subjected first to the financial shake down that is common in today’s medical profession.  It really pisses me off.  Before the appointment they called me to get my insurance information.  They then look up my account and try to determine ahead of time how far I am into my deductible for the year.  The purpose of this is stupid.

They want to know exactly what your potential out of pocket costs will be and collect it up front instead of submitting the claim to my insurance company and THEN seeing what my responsibility will be.  I think it is total bullshit.  I am there getting a medical test, not buying a BMW.  I hate the way health care is handled in our country.

So anyway, after paying my calculated $102 fiscal responsibility up front the door to the exam area opens and an attractive 40 something year old woman pops her head out and calls my name.  Great, the awkwardness dial now will be cranked up another few notches…

So we get back to the ultrasound room and she describes what she needs me to do.  I can feel the blood rushing to my face as she describes it.  I needed to strip from the waist down.  She then points to a rolled up small towel on the table.  She says I need to lay my junk on top of that.  She then points to another towel and says I should use that to cover and hold my other part up and out of the way. Geezus cripes…  I literally said to her, “Wow, this isn’t awkward at all, is it?”  She laughed and said she would be back in a couple minutes.

So I did my best to follow direction and covered myself with a sheet.  The woman knocked and came in.  She sat by the machine, pulled back the sheet to check my homework and got busy.  First she applied some warm conductive gel and then brought out the wand.

Luckily for me, the woman was cool.  I tried to talk about stuff, anything to distract myself from what was actually going on.  I discovered the woman actually just started running, completing the 10K race I timed a couple weeks back.  This spun off into a good conversation which eased my anxiety.

The scan took longer than I thought it would.  I bet I was lying there exposed for close to 15 minutes.  After it was finished I was given some more towels to “clean up”.  I was quite happy to have the test behind me although it wasn’t painful at all and the woman was very nice.  I just HATE being examined beyond someone putting a hand to my forehead and saying “You feel warm”.

So both Ali and I have been waiting for the tax refund to hit my bank account.  I had already long ago spent a good chunk of my portion on the pool deck work.  I have been counting on the money to help refill my coffers a bit.  Ali has been asking me regularly about it as well.  The refund was taking a very long time compared to years past.  So long in fact that I emailed my accountant yesterday and asked him how long I should wait before I start getting concerned?

My accountant looked into it and told me two disturbing things. According to the IRS, the refund was processed on April 10th and should be sitting safely in my account.  However now 7 days later, it still has not shown up.  Second, the refund is $1200 less than what my accountant calculated it to be.  Supposedly there is some notice that will be mailed to me explaining the negative adjustment.

My accountant was baffled by both revelations which didn’t make me feel any better.  So now I have to find out where the f the money went and why 10% was knocked off the top.  I can hardly wait to try to navigate this mess.  Up until this point I have been lucky enough to not have to try to get anything fixed with the IRS. There is a suck storm coming…

So after my dentist appointment (no cavities), I stopped at the local Comcast office to try to straighten out the issue with the convertor box.  As usual, the waiting room was packed with people, most of which were exchanging their negative thoughts regarding Comcast.

The funniest of these was a very old woman seated next to me.  She was complaining that they no longer have a payment window with a clerk.  I pointed to the box on the wall in front of us that was labeled DROP PAYMENTS HERE.  The woman said she couldn’t do that because she doesn’t know the amount to pay. Evidently she comes into the office every month, asks what she owes and then writes a check for that amount.  Yea, that is efficient.

So my interaction with the clerk was very brief.  She actually listened to what I said about a filter being put on my line and agreed immediately that it was the cause of the problem.  She said she would schedule a tech to go out to the pole to remove the filter but once again the turnaround is very slow.  He won’t be out until next week.  Thankfully it won’t require me to be home.

Comcast has a real big image problem.  I have yet to find somebody that thinks they offer good value or good customer service.

So I had a trial hosting account with Dreamhost.  They bill themselves as being a host that specializes in WordPress shared hosting.  The control panel they present customers is not the standard Cpanel variety you will find most places.  Supposedly this is a custom control panel they wrote themselves.  I have to admit that I actually prefer Cpanel.  I found the Dreamhost panel dated and not very efficient.

Getting a site up on Dreamhost was easy enough but it wasn’t long at all until the issue that caused me to cancel popped up, performance.  Response was consistently poor, with some clicks requiring a 10 second wait until anything happened.  It got bad enough that I contacted support multiple times.  Each time they said they found an issue that they corrected.  After these support contacts, the site performance would be better for a short while only to return to sluggish city shortly thereafter. I can only assume Dreamhost either doesn’t monitor server performance very closely or their shared servers are overpopulated.

There were other things that annoyed me about Dreamhost like having to pay extra if you wanted phone support.  Basic shared accounts are relegated to email only support with a response within 24 hours. (shitty)

So anyway, I pulled the plug on Dreamhost today although I did keep the domain name I registered with them, I might utilize the name going forward.

IX webhosting actually seemed good in comparison to what I saw at Dreamhost, scary.  I’d really like to host with wpengine.com.

So after my epic waste of time with Comcast on the phone last week, the end result of which was my getting Blast internet and digital tv service for 49.99 for 6 months, my single convertor box arrived yesterday.  My plan was to hook it up to the tv in the bedroom, enabling me to have conventional cable tv access in one room of the house.

To make it work I needed to spend some time in the sweat box attic, redirecting one of the dozen lines of coax I have in the house to connect to the Comcast feed, which has been used exclusively for internet the last couple years.  After doing this I hooked up the cable box and let it sit for awhile as directed in the instructions, presumably for it to configure itself on the Comcast network.

So I went back in later and turned the TV on, I was supposed to be seeing an activation screen.  Instead I saw nothing.

I unplugged the box and plugged it back in.  The LED’s on the front of the box went through a series of flashes and on screen I saw messages about the box booting up.  However after the boot screen went away I was once again returned to blackness.  WTF?

I immediately had a theory as to the source of the problem.  When I went internet only with Comcast, a tech put a filter on my feed from the pole that blocked the frequencies used for tv service.  In my phone discussion with the clueless woman last week, this was never brought up and I am 100% sure that physical filter is still in place.

So it was later at this point, I fired up an online chat with a Comcast rep named Mary.  I explained the background as well as my the reason I suspect it is not working.  She proceeds to totally ignore the information I gave her and starts going through her script.  “Are the cables tight, unplug the box, blah blah”

I explain to “Mary” that I did check all of these things and that I have a decent amount of experience when it comes to connecting AV equipment.   She ignored that information as well and just kept spitting out items on her checklist.

Mary’s final diagnosis was something is wrong with the brand new box which I am 90% sure is not the case.  She said she could have a technician come out, ON FRIDAY.  I laughed out loud out at the idea that Comcast had so many problems that the quickest they could get to me was 4 days later.

I shared my amusement with Mary at Comcast’s inability to address my problem in a faster manner.  She said if I wanted I could go to the local Comcast office and swap the box. Great, so I get to go out of my way to swap a box that I am sure is not the problem, awesome.

I chose the latter option. I am hopeful I will get someone behind the desk that actually listens to what I tell them and arranges to have a tech take the filter of my feed.  Of course it probably is a pipe dream.  I knew when I hung up the phone last week the odds of this going as planned was slim to none. Nice of Comcast to meet my expectations.

So I posted some of my online chat interaction with a Comcast rep yesterday.  This interaction was spurred by my seeing the latest bill from Comcast which had rocketed up to more than $60 for just internet service.  When Ali and I first split I had secured a 12 month promo rate for internet that was dirt cheap, $29.99 although it was for the “Performance” internet which is not as fast as their “Blast” service. So anyway, just as I have done in the past, I utilized Comcast’s online chat system to try to secure a new promo rate, $60 for just internet is pretty outrageous in my opinion.

So as you read the chat log you saw I made no progress with my online interaction with Willmore.  The best he could offer was a measly $5 off the full rate and when I asked to be transferred to his supervisor to further pursue things, he flat out refused.

You keep hearing how Comcast is losing market share by the truckload.  I was sort of surprised Willmore was so willing to piss me off.  His suggestion was that I contact the local office to see if I could get a better deal which made no sense.  Comcast is Comcast, why do I need to jump around the same company looking for a better deal?

So I got off the chat finally after wasting at least a half hour and called up my local office.  I explained that I needed to save money on my internet bill else I would have to look at lower cost alternatives like Century Link DSL.  The guy I talked to said he wasn’t seeing any good promos available but suggested he transfer me to the “retention” department since they supposedly have more flexibility.  I said fine.

I was on hold FOREVER, I bet it was 10-15 minutes until someone picked up.  Evidently Comcast has quite a few people that need to be “retained”.  The woman I got on the phone was nice enough but it became quickly apparent she either was not all that sharp or had just started there and was getting trained.

She had absolutely no grasp of what options she had available to her, she was just flipping through screens and asking me the same questions two, three, four times.  For whatever reason I never flipped the prick switch on for this woman, calling her out for being absolutely terrible at her job.  I guess because I could tell she wasn’t trying to be incompetent. I just patiently hung on the phone for a long, long, long time.

In total I think I spent close to an hour on the phone with this woman, literally smacking myself in the forehead in frustration with the receiver towards the end.  Who knows, maybe this is an intentional maneuver by Comcast, man the phones with incompetent people so you get so frustrated you just hang up and pay the damn bill.

So the end result of all of this was my getting Blast internet and digital cable for 49.99 for 6 months.  As you may know, my house has been running off of an HD antenna for quite awhile, I have no real need for conventional cable tv anymore but if they are going to throw it, fine.  I might hook it up in one room of the house although it will take some creative tweaking of my attic splitter configuration.

Needless to say, the experience yesterday lowered my already low opinion of Comcast.

Yesterday was my last night with the girls, Ali flies home today.  Just as I have many times in the past few days, I hung out in the back yard with the dogs for an extended period of time.  Nicki really seems to enjoy yard hang out time now, as much if not more than anytime I can recall in her life.

She loves to alternate between chewing on sticks, rolling around on and eventually sleeping in the grass.  After Sadie and I went inside, Nicki remained in the yard happily snoozing away.  She particularly loves laying on the St Augustine parts of the yard.

After awhile I went back outside and snapped a couple pictures of her, this was my favorite.

Part of my time outside was spent shooting various footage for this month’s BB forums challenge, take a look at normal mode here if you like.

I noticed my promo rate for my home internet service recently expired, more than doubling my rate.  As I did in the past I contacted Comcast online where they have been able to help me with a new promo rate.  Well this time I got connected with someone named Willmore that offered me a tiny $5 discount.  You can see part of the interaction here.  I am not pleased.

Willmore: The available online promotion for Internet Blast is $54.99/month for 6 months.

Shawn: yea I cant afford that

Willmore: I understand that, Shawn.

Willmore: For more options like the same service promotion or current customer promotions or discounts, you may check the local office.

Willmore: Local office promotions are different from online promotions.

Shawn:  I never had to do that in the past

Shawn: I thought Comcast would be more interested in keeping customers they have had for a long time

Willmore: Yes, that is why the local office option is available.

Willmore: If you were not able to do that in the past, that was because process changes as time goes by.

Willmore: What we can also provide here depends on what is available.

Shawn: no, I have already spent a half hour of my time

Shawn: trying to keep my business with Comcast

Willmore: We checked on what is available, however, you are not agreeable with it.

Willmore: In order for us to provide you what you need, we would also need your understanding.

Willmore: I apologize though if this seem inconvenient for you.

Willmore: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Shawn: yea what is your last name

Willmore: We are not obliged to provide such private information.

Shawn: ok

Willmore: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Shawn: can you transfer me to your supervisor?

Shawn: the woman I spoke to prior to you, provided her last name btw

Willmore: I apologize, but, the issue does not merit a supervisor.

Willmore: We use the same system and we have the same option.

Willmore: We are not allowed to transfer chats to supervisor with the same resolution in hand.

Willmore: You can have my ID number.

Shawn: so you are refusing to transfer me to a supervisor?

Willmore: If the previous rep provided hers, I apologize I will not provide my last name.

Willmore: You can have my ID number instead.

Willmore: We can only transfer chats to supervisor if the issue needs to be addressed by a supervisor.

Shawn: if a customer requests it, dont you think for customer relations it is wise to do so?

analyst Willmore has left room

You may have noticed this image popping up on Facebook yesterday.  If you were like me, at first you were like, “What the F is that?”

With a little legwork I found out it is a simple icon for equality, specifically equal rights for non-heterosexual individuals, including the right to get married.  If you know me either personally or through my brain dumps here you know this is a concept I support.

I considered making my profile picture the image as well as many others have done but I never enjoy being a “me too” kind of participant.  I figured it would be more meaningful for me to express my support here.

Most of my mental energy today is going to be directed to a post on Dufisthenics, jump over there if you feel like it.

Since moving to Florida I have been a member of four (technically 6) gyms.  Each gym was unique in some of the annoyances about them.  Gold’s Gym was well equipped but was  a social club as much as it was a gym. There was a lot of people just standing around looking pretty. There also was enough silicone, steroids and saline walking around in there that I felt like I was in a science lab.

Next was Powerhouse which was very close to work.  This was a gym that was the magical combination of a shoe string budget and an owner that didn’t give a fck about anything.  I think you could have dropped your pants and taken a shit in the middle of the gym floor and he wouldn’t have cared.  He would not have cleaned it up either. The place was absolutely cruddy with cob webs as decorations and piles of dust in every nook and cranny.

If there was anywhere the owner he would cut corners he would.  Instead of turning on the AC, many days he would just have the small front and back door open, thinking that was enough to cool off the roughly 2500 square feet of floor space.  If a machine was broken it would not be fixed for months, if at all.

To top it all off, I later found out the owner had a drug/gambling problem.  Towards the end he jettisoned the Powerhouse franchise name (another way to save money) and renamed the gym Pure Fitness.  Less than a year after that he closed up shop without notice and moved all of the equipment out of the place like a thief in the night.

Then there was World Gym, which was very close by.  I liked World Gym.  It was clean, had brand new equipment and was staffed by nice people.  Well the owner then sold to Planet Fitness, the worst gym franchise in the world and home to the infamous “Lunk Alarm”

In a few weeks they transformed the place from a nice gym into the shell of one, removing many of the machines and weights that only a “lunk” would use.  They also implemented a lengthy and ridiculous set of rules, the violation of which could result in the staff ringing the lunk alarm on you.  I HATED Planet Fitness.

That brings me to my current gym, Retro Fitness, where I have been a member for somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 or 4 years.  When it first opened I was really impressed.  Again the place had all new equipment and a huge cardio theater room.  The place (I thought) was owned by a younger guy that seemed to have a real good attitude.

Things have been generally good there although there were a few warts like hot water that basically never worked, the cardio theater not being maintained and some cleanliness issues that were masked by the dark rubber floor.  If you get down to do anything on your hands like push ups you come up with two very dirty hands.  There are definitive islands of dust under the machines and weight racks too.

As time went on I discovered the young guy whom I thought was the owner, actually was not.  He was the son of the owner.  The owner was a dentist that lives in Michigan.

Well the son had some personality issues, mostly anger related.  He was not very good with his staff and not adverse to causing a scene in front of the members if he was off the hook.  He evidently did not run a very tight ship either.  At one point there were people from Retro’s main office that were there for an extended period of time to try to clean things up.

I heard there was something like $5000 in missing product like protein drinks and supplements and a number of other book keeping issues.  Part of the revamp was installing a new, multi-camera security system.  The son was actually banned from coming into the gym for a period of a month or two.

Well eventually things settled down, kind of.  The son was back and the ship seemed to be moving along however there were various tweaks being done.  They smashed all of the cardio equipment in the theater room into half the space so they could offer fitness classes in the evening.

Then they set up a small caged area for some weird dude to try to pitch his fitness supplements.  That lasted all of 6 weeks until the guy and his cage disappeared.  I never saw anyone buy a single thing.

These moves concerned me as it was a pattern I saw repeated at Powerhouse.  The owner was always trying to make side deals to make some extra money.  None of them worked out either.

The other danger sign was the revolving door of staff.  When the gym first opened they had a solid crew of 5 or 6 people you saw consistently.  In the last year I bet no less than 15 different faces have been behind the counter.  Sure, working the counter at the gym can’t be a job many would select as a career path but the high turnover was a clear indication of problems.

So that brings us to this week.  All of a sudden there is a new guy behind the counter.  He is a little nerdy looking guy wearing a sport coat.  He sort of looked like he would have been a character in the old school Leisure Suit Larry games.  I never saw the guy before but he was giving the girl working the counter orders like he was running things.  The son has been nowhere to be found and the trainers seem to have pulled all of their stuff out of their former location as well.

I have heard rumblings that this creepy little guy was the new owner but I have not confirmed it 100% yet with any of the remaining staff. Based on my past history with gyms, a change in ownership is rarely a good thing.  I am already starting to scope out my alternatives if things go south quickly as I expect them to.

There is absolutely no way I would consider going back to Planet Fitness.  Hell if I have no other viable options I may just keep equipment in my truck to do outdoor calisthenic style work outs.

So last night on the way home from work I stopped at the Auto Zone near my work to pick up a set of valve cover gaskets for the Tacoma.  Well evidently they recently sold their last set but a quick check of inventory showed the store located on Pine Ridge had them.  I redirected my normal home route and picked them up.

I inadvertently secured myself a 10% discount from this chain of events and realized it is something anyone can do with a little planning.  AutoZone has a policy that if one store doesn’t have an item and you have to drive to another AutoZone location to get it they knock 10% off the price.  This is the second time they have done this for me.

The way you could manufacture this discount is to check their website ahead of time which has pretty accurate real time store inventory.  If you see two nearby stores and one has the part and the other doesn’t,  you simply stop at the store that you know doesn’t have the part first.  They will give you a little print out that you take to the second store, instant 10% discount.  Now of course this would only make sense if the item you are buying costs more than a few bucks and if the stores are close enough together.  In my case both of these criteria were met.

So yesterday I got another email from IX.  It was from somebody in the Ukranian part of their help desk had responded regarding my CPU utilization issue.  The email made no sense.  The person said my account was still using too much CPU time but the stats she included for each day had no numbers and the scripts listed had small CPU usage numbers.  I was pissed and immediately called them up.

I told the guy this email made no sense, stating I was still using too much CPU time but the stats in the message did not back that up.  He did some quick checking of my CPU usage and he saw that for the past two days my CPU use has been well below the threshold. (thanks to the wonders of CloudFlare)  He said he was not sure what his Ukranian counterpart was looking at.  He marked the ticket as finally being closed, after more than a month of my scrambling to get out from under the problem.

When I got home last night I decided I wanted to try to beat my pull up reps max.  I did a strong set of 23 at the gym over lunch and I thought I might have a shot at at least matching my improbable 30 reps I nailed down last October.  I wound up a little short, bailing after rep 28, my grip was burning.  It would have been cool to hit the magic 30 rep number again.  It’s coming.

Last night Tuki made me snap for a brief period of time.  Tuki does a lot of things that are annoying, like screeching when I go into certain areas of the house, trying to attack me when I do stuff like change his crocks and clean his cage.  He also likes to fly off the top of the cage when I have him out as I walk by, giving my head a fly by.  99% of the time I just ignore his antics since it is well established the bird doesn’t like me.

Well last night I was carrying laundry back to the bedroom and Tuki was on top of his cage.  As I walked by he launches himself and bangs into the side of my head during one of his flight loops.  Well that flipped my switch instantly.  I get within 6 inches of the bird and scream “Do NOT fly into my head!”  I follow it up by smashing my fist on the top of his cage several times for emphasis.  I think I got my point across.

This weekend I would like to tackle the valve cover gasket replacement on the truck.  I am a bit hesitant to embark on this repair as it requires a LOT of disassembly, more than any Tacoma work I have done thus far.  I need to allow myself an entire afternoon to do the work to accommodate the hurdles I always manage to hit.

I’m hoping to rack up another training brick Sunday morning as well.  For entertainment I always have 4 more Walking Dead the game episodes to play through and Abraham Lincoln:Vampire Hunter sitting in a Netflix envelope on my counter.

I am annoyed that the opening game for the Florida Tarpons, the arena football team that I bought two season tickets for this season, has their opening game on Monday night.  Monday, wtf?  Last night all the home games were on a Saturday night but one.  I need to find someone to go with me.

I had to just stand in the background and quietly laugh to myself over all of the new pope hoopla yesterday.  It almost seemed like Super Bowl style coverage. The tight chimney video feed so people could see if the smoke was black or white, the evening news broadcasts live on site at the Vatican,  the endless shots of massive crowds going wild, it was crazy.

Once it was announced I heard a lot of people in my immediate environment buzzing as well, talking of how exciting it was to have a new pope.  One woman was excited that he was “only” 76.  Others were impressed that he was a jesuit, the first ever to be pope.  Others thought it was cool that he wore a plain wooden cross instead of an ornate gold cross that most popes chose to wield.

Personally I am a bit disappointed that they didn’t go with the black candidate from Africa.  Now that would have been something that would have impressed me.  Of course I am sure they realized all the old, white, religious closet  racists would not be very excited to hang a picture of a brother on their wall.

Of course all of this excitement is lost on me.  From my non-religious viewpoint, I am pleased that “Francis” does at least not look like pure devil spawn as Benedict did.  However when I read a headline like this, where he states gay marriage is the work of the devil, he loses me instantly.

In the end, Francis is just the latest figurehead for an organization that has been responsible for some of the largest atrocities in history in the name of “God” and more recently, the worlds biggest cover/enabler for a network of serial child molesters.  Another 10 mil was just paid out to cover the tracks of another pedophile priest in LA the other day.

So I finished up episode 1 of the Walking Dead game.  I got frustrated for awhile when I was spinning my wheels trying to figure out how to get through certain points in the game.  I mean how was I supposed to know that to break the padlock on the security gate I needed to first drive to the motel, kill a bunch of zombies and then grab a fireman’s axe?

I am sure there is a step by step walk through out there of how to get through the game quickly but at this point I want to continue trying to progress “naked”.   My difficulties wound up in my staying up later than normal.  My eyelids paid the price this morning.