I generally do not write about politics but I wanted to share a recent experience. I was reviewing a sample ballot ahead of tomorrow’s election. On the ballot is “Proposition A” which proposes to limit the “term of office” to “three years” and limit a person to “no more than nine years”.…
Read the rest “Study Before the Election”
I’m trying to part with an old futon sofa. It cost a lot of money new and it’s still in pristine condition. I’m trying to sell it on Facebook Marketplace. For about 20% of the purchase price. After I post it I immediately get inquiries using the exact same script.…
Read the rest “FB Marketplace”
My experiment with Citibank’s AAdantage MasterCard is (almost) over. Their security verification features pushed me over the edge. Every time I tried to talk to them on the phone I would come away frustrated.
Citi + Pay advertisement
Their phone verification system assumes that all their customers will have a land line or addition accounts with Citi.…
Read the rest “So Long Citi”
Side Panel
Sometimes companies do things that make no sense. When I looked at this breakfast sausage package for the cooking instructions I was confronted with a basic math problem. The sausage comes in a box of 20 links vacuum packed in four neat rows in groups of 5 links.…
Read the rest “LCD of Food Packaging”
I used to be a big fan of eBay. It used to be a safe and nearly guaranteed way to convert old electronics into cash. Lately I’ve be come increasingly disenchanted with the experience. I’ve been a victim if hucksters in Russia and Mexico so I refuse to make my items for sale there anymore.…
Read the rest “Math vs eBay”
The floodwaters in Houston have not finished rising 250 miles south. The ramifications are starting to be felt across the country in the form of higher gas prices at the pump. Here in Texas we have been enjoying gas prices that hover within 30¢ of the $2 mark.…
Read the rest “Fragility”
It occurred to me that I have a lot of old t-shirts. Most are not fit to wear anymore. I thought I would create a photographic archive of these old t-shirts. This will be a long project. I plan to just add the pictures to this posting and display them in random order.…
Read the rest “T-Shirt Archive”
Back in the early 90’s I wrote a few programs and released them to the nascent Internet via services like CompuServe and Usenet. I was not looking to make money for them. I “copyrighted” them and made them available for free.…
Read the rest “Creative Commons Surprise”
I’m usually fastidious giving my email address to anyone. If I need to give my email address to someone, I will give them an email address that is unique to them. That way if it gets out in the wild I can track it back to the source or block it.…
Read the rest “Walgreens Unsubscribe Fail”
We just had an earthquake with the epicenter just nine miles to the southeast. USGS rated it as a magnitude 3.4 and a depth of 1.7 miles.
Here’s an 18 second video from this morning’s hail storm. Most of the stones were in the 2-3cm range. They piled up quickly filling the streets and yards with a layer of ice.
This weekend my son helped me install our new bronze mailbox. It is an upgrade from our previous temporary mailbox. The only reason this was such a project is that with the heat the ground is like concrete. The posthole digger was getting bent when striking the ground.…
Read the rest “New Mailbox Installed”
Someone drove over our mailbox. For some reason the mail carrier won’t deliver to a mailbox on the ground. I ordered a new mailbox but it won’t be installed for about a month. In the mean time duct tape will allow our mail carrier to fulfill her sacred duty.…
Read the rest “Yet Another Use for Duct Tape” 
