Month: February 2007

Look at me, being helpful

Complaint Hub » Blog Archive » Things every guy should know

Anyway, every guy should know basic garbage disposal maintenance. You never know when your wife will spill half a can of Quaker Oats in her purse on the way home from work, then dump a penny down the disposal as she’s cleaning it out.

Awesome.  Someone found this entry searching Google for “remove penny from garbage disposal”.  I hope I helped him or her out.

I love looking through my referrals and search term results.  It would be even cooler if I had more visitors.  But it makes me happy that searching for “whatever” + “complaint” often brings people to me.

Stupid federal holiday

I’m at work today, despite the fact that it’s Presidents’ Day.  Or is it President’s Day?  A day for all the Presidents?  Or a day for the office of President?  I don’t know.  But all you should know that, if “Presidents’ Day” is wrong, it means I got the the name wrong.  It’s not a grammatical error.

In any event, the point is that no one is here.  More importantly, Caribou Coffee is not opening until 8AM.  That’s 15 minutes from now.  I know it opens at 8AM because I just walked down there in the cold to find them closed.  I’m so mad I briefly considered not going back after 8.  That’s how mad I am.

Couldnt they find anyone less suited for the position?

Bush Expected to Name Industry Lobbyist to Head Consumer Safety Agency link via Consumerist

The recess appointment authority is intended to fill vacancies in agencies during an emergency while Congress is in recess. Presidents have used it in the past as a way to ensconce controversial, often spectacularly unqualified political insiders who would be unlikely to win Congressional approval.

They need to close this loophole. If there is an emergency that arises while Congress is in recess (That’s what, 50% of the time? 60%?), then certainly exceptions can be made in the interests of the country.

But our fearless leader wants to use a long weekend to appoint a spectacularly inappropriate canidate to an important position that has been vacant for six months. This is quite plainly a violation of the spirit of the rule. I understand that we are not bound by the spirits of rules, but wouldn’t it be nice to think that our President would hold himself to a higher standard?

And then we can examine the choice itself. “Michael Baroody, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), a powerful trade group that opposes aggressive product safety regulation” is now going to be the chief of an organization meant to protect consumer safety. I think we can safely replace “the fox guarding the henhouse” with “Michael Baroody protecting consumer safety” as the default cliche.

New Nine Inch Nails single

You can hear it on the NIN MySpace page.  I’m really not sure whether I think a Nine Inch Nails MySpace page is one of the great things about the internet, or one of the signs that it’s all ready to come crashing down.

Nine Inch Nails is one of the few bands whose cd I will buy without hearing anything from it.  It’s a pretty short list, especially after Garbage’s most recent cd refused to let me rip MP3’s and they fell off the list.  Actually, the list may just be Nine Inch Nails at this point.  Cake’s most recent cd was pretty mediocre.

Anyway, hearing that the new cd is coming out in April is the first time I’ve been excited about music in a while.  I haven’t listened to music on the radio in a long time.  When HFS went away, leaving us with only DC101, I mostly switched to NPR.  I’m tired of the RIAA, of copy-protection, of DRM.  And I’m tired of the same old crap music being played over and over.

But I should have a new cd on April 17th.    I’m looking forward to it.

Moving Tuesday

So I have a question. Let’s just say that we need to park a moving truck in front of our new place for a few hours while we unload. So, we go to the police station to get “No Parking” signs 72 hours in advance, just like we’re supposed to. We go put up the signs in front of the house and realize that on the day we’re moving, the side of the street where we live is already no parking because of street cleaning.

So, my question is this: Is it unethical to just park the truck there, on the restricted side of the street, for as long as it takes to unload? Tuesday was chosen in good faith. That is, we chose the day and then found out that it was street-cleaning day.

I don’t suppose it matters too much whether it’s unethical or not, because we’re going to do it anyway. But we’d like to not piss off our neighbors (or the police) before we even finish moving in.

Dont talk about hot weather when its 18 degrees F out.

Report: January hottest on record – CNN.com

That didn’t just nudge past the old record set in 2002, but broke that mark by 0.81 degrees Fahrenheit (0.56C), which meteorologists said is a lot, since such records often are broken by hundredths of a degree at a time.

Explain that, Neil Cavuto!  Warmest on record!  By almost an entire degree.

Of course, clowns like U.S. National Climatic Data Center scientific services chief David Easterling give him plenty of ammunition.

Larger increases in temperature farther north, compared to mid-latitudes, is “sort of the global warming signal,” Easterling said.

Scientists don’t use phrases like “sort of”.  It makes it sound like you aren’t sure.  And maybe you aren’t, but you have to sound like you are.  Especially when many are so quick to dismiss your work as liberal propoganda and lies.

Its official

The wife and I are officially District homeowners. Now all we have to do is move in. The snow and ice, combined with missing the deadline to reserve parking in front of the house for a few hours, are making that difficult. But the wife remains optimistic that we’ll move no later than Monday.

I got to the house early yesterday for the final walkthrough, so I wandered around the area for fifteen minutes. It’s quite different than Falls Church. There are actually people around, for one. And two police cars, lights and sirens going, arrived rapidly in front of 7-11 as I waited at the light. I imagine it was a belligerent customer, or perhaps a shoplifter. I can’t imagine the store was being robbed at 2:30PM on a Thursday.

Anyway, I can’t wait to move. I can’t wait to be finished moving.

Finally, a reason to hate elevators

I just got stuck in one for about five minutes.  I was on the way back from getting lunch, so I imagine this is punishment for eating at McDonalds.  Still, I don’t think it was really necessary to be stuck there with one guy who thought he was really funny (He wasn’t), a guy who stuck his phone out between the crack in the door trying to tell his office-mates that he was stuck (We were there 5 minutes.  You aren’t that important), and a woman who laughed incessantly and also made jokes (She wasn’t funny, either).

So, this is a message to everyone stuck in a small space with people you don’t know:  You aren’t funny.  I don’t care if you are a professional comedian doing very well for yourself.  If you are stuck in an elevator with me, do me a favor and keep your wit to yourself.

Snow day

Little Mazda that could So, I’m not going to work today. I’ve got stuff I can do from home. But the wife had to go in because her boss is completely insane, so I took her to the Metro. It took a few minutes to get out of the parking spot, because they haven’t plowed the parking lot.

Big snowy hill But a little push from the wife, and I was out. The roads are bad. I made a nice little U-turn after dropping her. All I had to do was turn the wheels a bit, give it a little gas, and wait for the back end to swing around. Even in a front-wheel drive car, you can do a power slide if the roads are slick enough.

When I got back, some clown had taken my parking spot, and I had already passed the only other open spot, so I had to do a three-point turn in the snow. Keep in mind that the snow is piled anywhere from an inch to six inches, and the ground clearance of my car is probably more like four inches.That's where I made my three-point turn

In any event, you shouldn’t be driving out there if you can help it. And if you have an automatic and don’t know how to drive, like the woman I tried to help out of her spot when I was outside taking these pictures, don’t even bother. It’s days like these when the shortcomings of automatic transmissions become most apparent.

The roads were much less plowed than I had anticipated when I went out. The intersection of 66 and Lee Highway was particularly bad. Considering that’s one of the busiest intersections in the area, you’d think they’d plow that one first. However, you’d be wrong.

So, if you live in the DC Metro area, don’t go anywhere today. It’s not worth it.