| Friday, May 4th, 2012 |
| 1:25 am |
now even vending machines e-mail me
Coinstar has evolved from just a coin sorting machine to a way to donate to charities, pay bills, transfer funds to cash cards and such. Of course, they have a FACEBOOK account and e-mail only deals, so now I am faced with the decision of getting more spam and creating yet another account just for possibly useful promotions :-/ |
| Saturday, April 21st, 2012 |
| 12:28 am |
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| Friday, April 20th, 2012 |
| 11:47 pm |
celebrate the choo-choo!
*sigh* It's no Hoboken Train Fest but might be fun: May 12th, 11-4 at New York's Grand Central Terminal (and other locations): the National Train Day! http://www.nationaltrainday.com/citing wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Train_DayNational Train Day is a holiday started by Amtrak in 2008 as a method to spread information to the general public about the advantages of rail travel and the history of trains in the United States. It is held each year on the Saturday closest to May 10th, the anniversary of the pounding of the Golden Spike in Promontory, Utah which marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Events are held at Amtrak stations as well as railroad museums across the country and often have passenger cars and model railroad layouts on display. |
| Thursday, April 19th, 2012 |
| 2:05 pm |
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| Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 |
| 1:28 pm |
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| Monday, April 9th, 2012 |
| 6:16 pm |
no peeps for me, it's CHOCOLATE BUNNIES and EGGS!
Meep meep hooray! for the day AFTER Easter! I just got a big bag of Easter chocolates for half price! My freezer's gonna look like a morgue with all those frozen foil wrapped Lindt bunnies all waiting their turn to become a sweet treat for a ravenous ferret! GNARR! GNARR! nom-nom-nom! |
| Tuesday, March 20th, 2012 |
| 11:22 pm |
so many memories on just one index card
There's no date on the card but once upon a time, rabbit ears or a roof antenna were sufficient to receive TV from the air, for free. No cable or satellite bill. It was a golden time of Animaniacs, Tiny Toons and the Disney Afternoon. All new animation that was LOL funny. One side of the index card listed the programs I favored weekdays 3 PM channel 5: Peter Pan and the Pirates weekdays 4 PM channel 11: Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers weekdays 4:30 channel 11: TaleSpin Saturday 8:00 channel 5: Peter Pan 8:30 channel 5: Bobby's World 9:00 channel 5: Tom & Jerry kids 10:30 channel 4: Chip & Pepper 11:00 channel 2: Bill & Ted the other side was my VCR programming for Peter Pan, Chip & Dale, TaleSpin, Star Trek, Tazmania and SpaceCats *sigh* I miss fun stuff like that. That's why TV is no longer invited into my home. The cable company wants $50+ for programming that's just not funny or entertaining. I watch my videotapes & DVDs instead. Fox TV had the "Fox Kids" Saturday morning lineup. Peter Pan and the Pirates was the star of that lineup with a fun interpretation of the Barrie classic. Peter Pan had a cute little pony tail (a delight of mine). Billy Jukes was a lost boy who converted to piracy. He had long straight black hair and was a clever engineer, often inventing & improving machines and maintaining Long Tom: the cannon decorated as a giant tiger. The Pirates of Blackwater was probably not on at that time, another series that caught me by surprise. |
| Saturday, February 25th, 2012 |
| 11:40 pm |
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| Saturday, February 11th, 2012 |
| 1:30 am |
making it simple
I'm tempted to make stickers for the men's room wash your hands with SOPA but keep it off the internet!And this on the little barriers between the urinals This is the only PROTECT IP I need! |
| Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 |
| 3:40 am |
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| Monday, February 6th, 2012 |
| 11:09 pm |
some NICE store managers, for a change
One of my "standard rants" is how most store managers just won't life a finger to help customers, regardless of the merit of their complaint or request (such as "please sell me a can of X" "sorry, we don't sell that and won't bother ordering it") I was delighted to encounter some store managers at the Tinton Falls NJ outlet mall who WERE HELPFUL, polite and nice! I had a coupon for $10 off a purchase of $50 or more at Famous Footwear. My total before tax was $49.98. The manager keyed in the magic code and give me the discount! The receipt had a coupon for my next purchase, so I checked if it was transferable. Yes it was, so I gave it to the person next in line since I wasn't returning in time to use it. I <3 Puma sneakers and the sports stuff featuring the leaping cougar. So silly ferret bought more since everything in the store was half off that day. The fellow in front of my didn't want the cute red boxes from his sneakers, so I asked for them. The store manager was at the counter and told me to return in a few minutes to give me more from the back! I got over a dozen empty shoe boxes! I carried them all to the car and must've looked like some shoe maniac like Amalda Marcos. They're all now in the museum warehouse, ready to help sort vintage computer parts. Thanks for making my shopping really fun! |
| Friday, January 27th, 2012 |
| 2:16 am |
RANT: spec sheets full of marketspeak
I'm currently reading microcontroller spec sheets. I'm tired of buzzword-compliant drivel instead of real tech info. Let me tear apart this AVR spec sheet a little: Features - High Performance, Low Power 8-Bit Microcontroller
EVERYONE claims high performance and low power.
Will the Z80 spec sheets be re-written as "low performance, power-hungry"?
- Advanced RISC Architecture
Ooooh, as compared to the competition's NON advanced arch!
- 131 Powerful Instructions
It's RISC: NONE of them are powerful :-)
To be nice, maybe 30 of them are powerful and 101 are not, like setting or clearing a specific condition bit. Yes, it has separate instructions for that.
- 32 x 8 General Purpose Working Registers
Except for those less-powerful instructions that can address only 16 of them.
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| Thursday, January 19th, 2012 |
| 10:36 am |
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| Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 |
| 3:35 pm |
where are the word inventors?
Long ago, Rich Hall did "Sniglets": words for things that didn't have a word for it. I wish it were still going. I think there was a word for people afraid to tear off the mattress tag "under penalty of law". I need a word for people who never remove the protective plastic from their electronics (VCR, DVD player, router). It's amazing how many devices I get second/third hand or salvage with that protective plastic on it. I guess it's this generation's version of putting plastic on all the living room furniture :-) |
| Friday, January 13th, 2012 |
| 5:27 pm |
*sigh* when a bank steals enough money, they get to keep it
I just received a check for $18.04 from the Foreign Currency Fee Litigation Settlement fund www.ccfsettlement.com with the fine print "all refund amounts are reduced because the full amount of the claims exceeds the amount in the settlement fund". Which means: not only did the bank rip us off AND they get to keep most of the money that they stole BUT they also don't even need to pay all the penalty. I wish I could pull that shit on the IRS and pay only what's left in MY "settlement fund" since that's far less than what they're asking of me! |
| Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 |
| 2:10 pm |
Broadside!
http://www.johnforster.com/ is a wonderful folk singer/storyteller. I just saw him in concert and he has a new CD that's topical and funny, kinda like a contemporary Tom Lehrer. |
| Monday, January 9th, 2012 |
| 7:58 pm |
school uniform(ity)
I never attended a school requiring any uniform, so I'm amused by the way so many kids & teens are so totally into "fashion" that they're essentially wearing uniforms BY CHOICE. I can't believe how many gals are not just wearing Ugg sheepskin boots (they all have such a huge allowance?) but they're all the same color & style! It looked like an Ugg convention at the aviation museum! They could form a marching band at any shopping mall with the sheer number of gals with identical or matching outfits. They're not cheap and they're NEVER discounted (now that price fixing is back with the overturning of consumer protection such as the Sherman Anti-trust act). Even the Ugg store at an outlet mall was full of security guards since they're so expensive. I like purple but why are all girls wearing the SAME shade of purple now, whether it's their Ugg boots or winter coats? Whatever happened to individualism? Everything is now just a mass produced product, made in China. It's now all the establishment, man :-( Even the anti-establishment symbols such as the Peace Symbol and tie dyed shirts are now available in department stores and worn by kids without a clue what it originally ment. Why can't we all be unique and original like everyone else? :"> Citing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HippieEthos and characteristics
Hippies sought to free themselves from societal restrictions, choose their own way, and find new meaning in life. One expression of hippie independence from societal norms was found in their standard of dress and grooming, which made hippies instantly recognizable to one another, and served as a visual symbol of their respect for individual rights …
At the same time, many thoughtful hippies distanced themselves from the very idea that the way a person dresses could be a reliable signal of who he was, especially after outright criminals, like Charles Manson, began to adopt superficial hippie characteristics, and also after plainclothes policemen started to "dress like hippies" in order to divide and conquer legitimate members of the counter-culture. Frank Zappa admonished his audience that "we all wear a uniform" |
| Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 |
| 12:07 pm |
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| Friday, December 23rd, 2011 |
| 5:15 am |
half past dead phrases
Now that several generations of kids have grown up with primarily digital watches and digital time pieces (cellphones, computers), I gotta wonder if they can even TELL TIME on analog clocks, which are still on buildings and on walls worldwide. And what of phrases like "half past" "a quarter after" "a quarter to" "ten to" since they all kinda refer to the clock dial. I'm yet to hear useful digital phrases to replace that. Someday I'll format my list of "phrases that died in my lifetime" to muse about how people have lost ways of describing things mostly due to changes in technology and how things like typewriters are no longer ubiquitious. |
| Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 |
| 2:17 am |
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mejeep's journal
