CafeChatNoir

For the record, I’m not a big fan of China, their policy on Tibet and Taiwan, or their less than stellar track record with human rights, or their habit of putting lead and antifreeze in consumer products…

Judging from the number of protests I’ve seen lately, I’d say I’m definitely not alone.  They wouldn’t have been my first choice for the summer Olympics, and I really don’t understand how they got it if they are so despised by the rest of the world for their practices.  But, the IOC made their decision - if you don’t like it, start writing them angry letters.

But - how the hell does it accomplish anything to attack the Olympic torch runner?  Congratulations, you’ve just attacked one of your fellow countrymen - I’m sure China will sit up and take notice over that.

At the moment, we have police and fire crews trying to get protestors off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  Again, I don’t think the folks in China are glued to CNN and suddenly deciding to change their policies because someone managed to get a Tibetan flag on the bridge.

If you want to protest their practices, fine - but take a minute to think about an effective way to go about it, rather than just looking like a bit of an idiot.  Write your reps in DC, tell them how you feel about the situation.  Cut back on your purchases of Made in China products.  Write the IOC and ask them WHY China got the Olympics in the first place.

But don’t go attacking the guy running the torch through your neighborhood - it’s not his fault and it’s not going to fix anything.

Nothing quite like hunting through the house for a particular power supply.  Managed to find a TON of them, but of course not the one I’m actually looking for.

I suppose this should be incentive to get this place organized, shouldn’t it?

I am trying to add Caller ID to the service for the house.  That is all I want to add.

It keeps adding on “Anonymous Call Rejection” to the list.  I don’t want that.  I just want Caller ID.

I don’t care that the Anonymous Call Rejection is free.  I am not trying to order it in the first place.

Which means I’m going to have to call them so I can get only the services I actually want added on.  Which is what I was trying to avoid given how spectacular their customer service is…

I am having a HORRIBLE day.

I cannot find my keys, or my spare set of keys. If I cannot find either, then I have to have the car towed to the dealership to get new keys, because they have to have the car to program the keys.  (ETA: I have been just told that I may have left them in someone’s car last evening, and they will let me know when they get off work.  Watching the Super Bowl and drinking and not driving is good, until you cannot locate your keys the next morning.  But I’m still hunting for the spares.)

I managed to drop my cell phone last night and apparently didn’t get all the pieces back in, as it would not power up this morning - because the battery was gone. The replacement battery was at least cheaper than a phone.

I also cannot locate my ATM card. Brilliant. ATM card located.

Food poisoning (or “my body just doesn’t like some ingredient and hates me”) sucks.

Managing to get it 2 times in 3 days because you didn’t make the connection the first time around really sucks.

I don’t know what went wrong with that soup, but I sure as hell won’t be making it again anytime soon.

Why, oh why must you puke all over me when I am trying to get things done? Why must my CD drive decide to be incredibly cranky today - when I really need to burn a CD today. When I will be heading out of town and won’t be able to have it fixed (if it won’t fix itself here soon) anytime in the immediate future? Why? WHY? Especially when I just had this drive replaced last spring?!?

Please, oh please, burn this CD. And actually let it read properly when it’s done. Is that really too much to ask?

ETA: And the cable just crapped out, too.

To Mr. Andrew Speaker, the 31 year old personal injury lawyer who exposed who knows how many people to a drug resistant strain of tuberculosis.

Dear Dumbass,

Yes, you heard me right. You’re doing a bang up job of furthering the stereotype that lawyers are a bunch of self-absorbed twits, which you most certainly are.

You knew you had tuberculosis before you left the country. What on earth would ever, EVER make you think that traveling was an acceptable course of action? It’s freakin’ tuberculosis, you moron. This is not like getting on a plane with touch of a head cold. Just because you “felt fine” doesn’t mean YOU’RE NOT SICK OR CONTAGIOUS.

Of course, I really love the fact that when you found out it was a drug resistant strain that you decided to take it mildly seriously - and yet again ignored orders NOT to travel and got on another long haul flight. Brilliant. Sure, you said it was because you were afraid you wouldn’t survive if you didn’t get home right away, but why is your health and well being more important than anyone else’s? A simple phone call to the embassy in Rome could have gotten the ball rolling on getting you back to the US without putting more people in harm’s way.

The folks on the news were pondering whether or not your father-in-law (who works with TB at the Centers for Disease Control) should somehow be brought into the inquiry - right now I’m sure he’s just beating his head into the wall over the fact that his daughter married such an idiot - punishment enough I think.

I caught a statement you made on the news earlier this evening that shows that you still don’t get it. You’re complaining about the fact that you are under quarantine with an armed guard. Frankly, the way you’ve acted so far, I think it’s probably the only thing that is keeping you from showing up at the Starbucks in downtown Denver.

I would think that as a personal injury lawyer you would really understand the concept of gross negligence, but apparently not. Frankly, if I was one of the folks you exposed to this, I’d be standing outside your hospital room so I could be the first to pop you in the mouth when they let you out.

I’d like to think that maybe you’ve learned something from this whole debacle, but I am guessing you’ll just find someone else to blame and sue them.

Yeah, new and improved, my ass. Google reader has made some damn modification to that my keyboard is damn near useless when I have that page opened - can’t use the keyboard to get to the browser menu, it just starts activating crap on the page that I don’t use anyway.

Second, Starbucks is supposedly phasing out whole milk in it’s shops for 2%. If I wanted 2% milk, I’d ask for it. Don’t force someone else’s damn diet plan on me, thankyouverymuch.

Here you can go from 75 degrees with a bit of overcast to 39 degrees, pouring rain with snow and sleet to come later in the day in a mere 24 hours.

This weather is absolutely disgusting to put it mildly, especially after 3 days of really NICE weather. It’s responsible for about 80% of my crappy mood this morning, and it’s one of those moods that really requires a trip to the batting cages or driving range to smack the crap out of inanimate objects, but because of the weather, I CAN’T DO THAT.

I wonder if there are any walls in the house that need to be knocked out… I would like a larger closet…

- it’s the stupid little shit that makes me borderline homocidal.

Case in point: Vendor calls Monday morning and says, “OK, so can we come out today?” Nope, I need a touch more notice than that and offer up Tuesday afternoon. OK, between 12-4PM it is, and they’ll call when en route. So, I make myself available between 12-4, thinking I might even get lucky and they’ll be early and I can get some other errands run afterwards. Of course, no call and 4 hours wasted waiting around for nothing to happen.

This morning? I get a voicemail - “OK, so what time is good for today?” Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot. I call back and get vendor’s call center… They have me scheduled for between 2-2:30 PM. Again, I need something slightly more than same-freakin’-day notice, and I pointed out the tech said YESTERDAY between 12-4PM, which of course they had no record of in their system. (Left hand, please let me introduce you to right hand.)

So, we’re trying this again on Friday, between 1-3PM, and again, they will call when en route. At least this time I’ll only lose 3 hours…

And I get to go to the DMV this afternoon. Icing on the cake.

So, little bro had to go to the DMV to get the title on the beater transferred to his name only so we can donate it to charity. He’d already done one title transfer on the other car, went in w/the court docs, death cert and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, shiny new title in his name.

Well, today they insisted that I had to be present to sign the old title as well since my name is also on the court documents. Oh, and that other person, too. Then my brother explained 2 of the 3 names on said document were me, and that f/k/a means “formerly known as” and as such there would only be the two of us at the signing ceremony.

So, I go over there, we get back in line, wait about 45 minutes, get a different clerk and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, he’s got a shiny new title in his name. Please note I did not mention that I did anything besides sit around waiting for 45 minutes with him. I’m not even sure this particular clerk even looked at the court papers. As the clerk is off collecting his change for the transfer, he’s mouthing “I am so sorry!” to me - hell, it was exactly what I expected would happen.

With this spectacular level of consistency, in the same branch no less, how is it even plausible that ID fraud could be occurring in our great state??!?

I am greatly lacking in motivation right now. Or overdone with frustration, one of the two, or quite possibly both.

Got a call from the painters today, they’re coming on Monday. Mind you, this was originally scheduled for the 16th, and I guess got moved up - except that this was the first I’d heard of it being changed.

Just seems like there are so many hurdles to get from point A to point B and I just want to fucking get to point B already. Except that point B is several years away. Which obviously means I need to find some closer points in between to work towards so I don’t lose my mind. At the moment, I guess that is getting things ready for the painters on Monday. Fortunately it shouldn’t take much of anything, as there really shouldn’t be much of anything left on/near the walls. Next step - wrangling an approval out of the ACC for the windows so I can actually schedule an installation. (I may just schedule the installation anyway and if they drag their feet I’ll reschedule.)

Estate stuff is not as critical at this point, cause we’ve missed the “try to get it all done before the end of the tax year” goal anyway, and it’s not like we’re broke because of what is still unsettled. Still on the radar, just not the “Oh fuck gotta get it done RIGHT NOW” it was before. The brain trust over at Computershare managed to do the distribution the day before another dividend posted…so now I have to find out if I have to fill out another set of papers to get *that* distributed… So freakin’ close.

Also need to start making inquiries next week as to how long it would take to have the DVD drive on this laptop pulled out and replaced. It’s not under warranty anymore, so it’s not like it would have to be shipped off to Toshiba. In theory, that should be a quick fix, shouldn’t it?

Guess there will just be a flurry of activity of fixing a bunch of little things I don’t give a damn about in order to ignore the fact that I can’t figure out how fix the things I do care about.

It’s probably a good thing I know that drinking myself into oblivion doesn’t fix things, make time travel possible or any number of other things. But damn, I can understand why people try it.

We have to leave here to pick up my grandmother in approximately 20 hours. Now is not the time for the vacuum cleaner to break.

I’m in a completely foul mood and it will likely not change for the next two weeks.

I honestly can’t remember at this point when this time of year was actually about Christmas, instead of being about surviving my grandmother. Christmas is just this additional piece of stress on top of it that gets really no attention because everything has to be focused on her.

If I thought that she would ever accept that I have different priorities and just be happy to be here, it would be nice. Instead, it becomes putting aside everything that I care about to cater to her damn whims.

Makes for quite the meaningful holiday.

Cox Communications is going to get such an angry letter…if I can ever actually get the damn account switched over.

And I need more trance for my ipod.

OK, I’ll admit, I am easily spoiled in the first place…

But, there is a reason that 9 times out of 10, I’ll take the extra time to go to Wegman’s to do the marketing, even if it is 20 minutes away vs. the 5 minutes to the closest Giant. However, since I am somewhat pressed for time today, I went over to Giant this morning to get what I needed so we’d have something to eat tonight down at the beach.

Simple things: chicken, mayo, mustard, croissants. Mayo & mustard, no problem. Chicken? Well, they didn’t have any “generic” chicken breasts in anything less than a 4# package. I don’t need 4#s. I don’t want 4#s. I don’t care that I could freeze them, I just don’t like buying more than I need. (If I freeze it, I’ll forget it’s there anyway and it will never get used.) So, I had to get the Perdue’s, which are fine and all, but more expensive and not *that* much better than the generic chicken. Annoying.

Croissants? None. This is a store that supposedly has a full service bakery. I asked if they would be coming out anytime soon. Nope. Great guys, thanks. Fortunately, The Swiss Bakery came through for me, and were rewarded with an extra sale for having ham & cheese croissants ready to go to boot. I’ve got lunch now. :)

But honestly, it seems every time I go to Giant anymore, they don’t have at least one thing that is on my list.

Dear Dateline NBC,

Tonight I listened as one of your “reporters” rather patronizingly implied that people don’t recognize what Memorial Day is all about. This based on his skimming several blogs that mentioned folks being happy for a long weekend and talking of barbecue plans with family.

Kind sir, I take great exception to what you had to say tonight.

Your “report” is pathetic on several levels. First, your inability to comprehend that folks do not necessarily put every thought in their head on their blogs. Second, that if they are writing about a welcome day off and spending time with family, that they’re not somehow capable of remembering our war dead as well. Third, you decided to cut a rather wide swath there and decide that a large proportion of the population isn’t being respectful of Memorial Day based on source material of…weblogs. I cannot even imagine how you can consider that to be representative of an entire nation, considering that as of March of 2005, only 6% of the US adult population had created a blog*

Just because the entire internet isn’t writing about remembering their war dead tomorrow doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it. Some of us think about it near every day. All in all though, it did make for a nice lead in to the stories of the soldiers remembering their fallen comrades, as though no one else would. Hopefully they have more faith in the rest of us than you do.

*Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

Forever Pregnant - Guidelines: Treat Nearly All Women as Pre-Pregnant

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves — and to be treated by the health care system –as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.

OK, this has struck an ugly nerve with me this morning. Granted, for the most part it’s just taking care of yourself in general - and that’s certainly not a bad thing. If you’ve got a chronic condition such as asthma or diabetes, you should be taking care of that ANYWAY. They’re going on the whole “so much can happen between conception and when the pregnancy is confirmed” track and as such, you should always act like you may have just gotten knocked up and don’t know it yet.

Dear feds, while the attempt to reduce me to nothing more than a baby making factory is admirable to some I’m sure, I don’t feel the need to be treated as though I could get pregnant any day now, and I don’t like the direction I see this going. No more alcohol - can’t do that if you could get pregnant. Stay out of those smoky bars, even if you’re just having club soda. No more carpaccio, brie, caffeine, or deli meat… (There goes my chicken sandwich for lunch…and Starbucks’ profits are gonna tank if I can’t get a latte anymore…) What about all those women training for Ironman Florida in November? Should they really be doing that level of training if they could get pregnant?

Can you tell this annoyed the crap out of me this morning?

Does anyone know ANY way I can get hold of an actual live person at Verizon without having to wait until tomorrow morning??

Edit: Damn, y’all are quick - I got through on the repair line, and I’ll be calling customer service again tomorrow anyway. So, yeah, 7:30 at night, the doorbell rings, I do my normal open-upstairs-window and ask who is it. “Verizon” I say, “You’ve got to be crazy if you think I am opening the door, go before I call the cops”

Then I call Verizon, they say they don’t do that and tell me I should call the police. Nice. Call the cops, they said they’d be on the lookout in the area. Of course, I have no description or anything of this idiot.

Seriously, I think it was someone selling Verizon crap door to door - someone came by today when I was working and I didn’t even bother to ask who it was, but I saw a college aged kid w/a clipboard walking off - I bet it was the same person. And Verizon saying they don’t do door to door? Bullshit.

When I have a flag up on my IM that says, “I am at lunch until 2:15″ and you IM me and get the auto responder, do NOT then AIM me 10 minutes later asking if I have any suggestions on your problem. I AM AT LUNCH.

And no, I am not going to wait tail I have 0 calls to quit, just an amount that can be reasonably closed in two weeks so there is as little as possible to dump on my coworkers - and I am actually getting there, 30s now vs over 60 at one point week before last. (Yes, I know, it shouldn’t matter, but I am a dork that way.)

Some people just do not get it.

If you’re going to IM a coworker with a question, at least have the courtesy to start with something along the lines of “Do you have a minute?” or “Hey, can I bounce a question off you?” - don’t just launch straight into it.

Common courtesy folks, give it a whirl.

Dammit, some people just need to have a 2×4 taken to their head.

Well, a good weekend has been fairly well trashed by now, between work and people going out of their way to piss me off. Exceptionally bad idea.

Safeway is having yet another “grand reopening” - they seem to do this about every 6 months. This time they seem to have succeeded only in making the store smaller and more crowded. While of course, rearranging everything so you can’t find anything to save your life.

Only took til 3PM on a Monday to hate 97% of the general population.