It’s unwarranted! It’s irrelevant! It’s miscellaneous! That’s this Oddball entry, 1960s movie poster style. Sometimes I have used Classic Oddball as a vehicle for notes to myself, or as a means to set “life waypoints” that I can use later to glean a timeframe around which certain things happened to me. Thus I don’t really care whether you find any of this content interesting or not. Also, I’m quite bored to death right now, so I thought I would post something again.
I don’t know if I mentioned it, but we got our new refrigerator. Our new free refrigerator, thanks to GE who apparently is in “major concession” mode right now because they can’t afford to have any consumer lawsuits filed over the fact that they really don’t know how to build a decent fridge in the first place. Or didn’t, anyway. My hope is that those times have changed, and so far it looks like they may have. The new side-by-side refrigerator they sent us has been really great so far. Apple and I both have commented that we really like the fridge, and that’s something we never said about our old one, even when it was new.
For starters the thing feels a lot more solid. The doors don’t rattle or act like they’re gonna fall off, it doesn’t make as much noise, and the water pump doesn’t go SLAM when it shuts off (like the old one did). Even at a warmer temperature setting, it keeps food much colder than the old one did. Plus it looks like it was actually designed as though a human being would use it; to wit: You no longer have to remove the shelving in the freezer just to turn the icemaker on and off. The temperature regulators are now digital instead of analog, the door contains a nifty integreated can rack (which we found works just as well for jars of things like mayonnaise and spicy chili sauce), and the buttons on the front panel water dispenser—while they no longer beep when you press them—are much easier to press. There’s even faux chrome around the door handles, wooooo.
So anyway, I’m quite happy with the replacement fridge. I’m even happier, though, with the people at Ralph’s Trucking Company who brought it, installed it and hauled the old one away. The young guy and girl (both apparently in their mid twenties) who arrived were two of the nicest delivery people I ever met, and I was even chatting with both of them the whole time on topics ranging from muscle cars to really bitchy old ladies who lived in my community and were also getting fridges. Apparently one woman screamed and cursed out the delivery people when they called and said they were bringing her free refrigerator in half an hour. “HALF AN HOUR?! THAT’S UNACCEPTABLE! I NEED AT LEAST TWO HOURS NOTICE!” the old bat screamed, and hung up. God, look gift horses in the mouth much?
And this happened on a Saturday, too! Ralph’s Trucking doesn’t usually work on Saturday, but the fact that 625 fridges needed replacing in our community alone necessitated that they work the overtime. The old fuckface could at least show a little appreciation, but nooooo. I guess when you’re retired and bored and sitting on your rich ass in Naples Florida all day long, you lose all ability to be nice to the rest of the human race? Whatever. I may prefer to be left alone, but you will not catch me being downright rude to people like that. They’re just doing their jobs…and in the process, doing you a favor. Lighten up.
It’s 4:46 in the afternoon now! Just another 45 minutes or so left before this day—and this week—is done. The bad news? I have to spend probably the full, entire weekend slaving away on Bikini Dude’s website, because I am running behind on those changes and absolutely NEED to get them off my plate. It sucks, but I should probably get up around my usual work time and get an early start on at least Saturday morning.
Last night I watched a four-hour marathon of Battlestar Galactica. I hadn’t watched that show in a month and a half. I missed an episode way back in Februrary because I was obsessed with finishing another project, then I didn’t feel like watching it the next weekend, and by then I’d fallen out of the loop and couldn’t watch it again until I’d seen the old ones. Back then DS9 was in its final season and I was geeking majorly over it. Anyway, the TiVo’s hard drive has been getting loaded down with BSG so I started to catch up, and watched half of my stash last night. God! That show is just so smegging good. Interestingly, Ron Moore worked on DS9’s latter seasons also, which probably helps explain why they were so good. I hear BSG got picked up for a second season and will begin filming shortly, so that’s great news.
Speaking of the TiVo, ever since I received the new 7.1a firmware update, the damn thing has been running as slow as molasses. It was having an especially hard time just drawing its menus and interface screens, and for actions that take two or more button presses, you’d have to sit around and wait for it to catch up because it wouldn’t queue up your requests. I read on the TivoCommunity forums that rebooting (read: unplugging and replugging) the device solved that problem for a lot of people, and lo and behold, it seemed to work for me. Amazing, that the easy suggestion actually worked. I’m quite pleased.
I went for a nice bike ride last night at around 9:00 p.m. As great as riding is, it can be irritating when you’re blasting down the trail and you notice, up ahead, that there’s a bunch of people walking their dogs and they’re totally using up the entire path. Plus they’re walking away from you, so you have to be real careful as you approach because they can’t see you. Worst thing about it, though, is that their dogs will oftentimes go absolutely berserk when you show up. Once I had some mentally unstable old man’s toy poodle actually scream at me (I swear I have never heard a dog make this kind of noise before) and take a flying leap at me, reach the end of its leash length, and abruptly snap back in midair like a fucking Hanna-Barbera cartoon. I stopped so suddenly to avoid the dog that I nearly flew right over the handlebars; thankfully I habitually panic-stop with both brakes instead of one.
So, naturally, now when I’m out biking, and I see some people and their dogs using every available inch of space, I usually take another route. That’s the beauty of our community—there are so many non-linear ways to get to every destination, you can always take a different route to get to the same place. Last night I left late (I was going to pick up the mail) because I figured there wouldn’t be anybody out walking, but I did run into some people with a dog. So I circled around the central lake. I didn’t encounter another soul the whole rest of the way, so I dropped into 14th gear and took it up to some pretty insane speeds. At one point I caught some air and actually launched my gearing out of 14th and into 13th without touching the shifter paddle, heh. Of course, when I finally got to the post office, I (comically) saw the same dog people standing in the middle of the bike rack, blocking access to it, talking VERY LOUDLY about some person who they obviously didn’t have very high regard for.
I managed to get them to move aside so I could park my bike, then I went in to get the mail. When I returned, I didn’t see the buffoons anymore, so I sighed with relief—but then I saw them a few yards away, still talking at stentorian decibelage, this time totally blocking the brick path away from the town center and back onto the central path around the community. God! Why is it always in the middle of a roadway or walkway? I decided to just avoid them again and took the long way home, cycling around the outside perimeter via Whidbey Way. That was much better, although I had to avoid some lawn sprinklers. Overall it was a great ride, and some good exercise. I’ll probably do it again tonight. I like leaving later in the evening so I run into fewer people on the trail, but I need to buy a headlight and taillight if I’m going to keep that up. And a DUKES OF HAZZARD AIR HORN, too! Just kidding.
5:00 now! I have just one batch of files to deploy (I was told to wait until the end of the day to do it) and then I’m outta here. More Battlestar tonight. I’ve officially cancelled the DS9 “season pass” because Spike TV has cycled back around to the point where I started watching that show again, so I’m officially done with it. DS9 has now moved up in the ranks to my third-favorite Trek series, behind TOS and TNG.
All righty…time to cap this update off. I think I’ve written more than enough random hoo-ha for one day.
