Quote of the day: “I won’t be mowing the lawn every four-five days this summer,” our postmaster told me when I said I needed to get out on the lawn. “I can’t afford the gas.”
Category Archives: Dick’s Dumps
Premte Peeves
I ordered a couple of items from a major online retailer who would not accept my South Puffin address because it is a post office box. I tried moving the P.O. box to the second line with the street address on the first. No joy. I tried including the P.O. box on the street address line. No joy. I left the street address. After all, they don’t mail this stuff, right?
Naturally, I popped the tracking number into FedExdotcom to see where it was this morning. The seller had handed it off to FedEx who put it in their SmartPost system. “When it comes to low-weight shipping for residential customers, consider the efficient, economical FedEx SmartPost service. By utilizing the United States Postal Service for final delivery, FedEx SmartPost reaches every U.S. address, including P.O. boxes and military APO and FPO destinations. You can even use FedEx SmartPost to ship to Alaska, Hawaii, and all U.S. territories.”
SmartPost means FedEx will mail it to me.
To the P.O. box I couldn’t include in my shipping info.
Premte Peeves
The Journal of Animal Ethics says calling the family dog a pet is simply derogatory. And don’t call rats, raccoons or any other woodland fauna “wild animals,” or “pests.” The Journal asks people to call all those untamed animals “free-living” or “free-roaming.”
The Journal writers say owners should call their dogs and cats “companion animals.”
What’s the matter with these wack-a-doodles at the Journal, promoting slavery like that? Don’t they know we cannot own another being? These companion beings choose to live with their human partners to bring comfort and cheer to us.
Prempte Peeves
!@#$%^ Windows.
I disable automatic updating on systems I own or manage. Day before yesterday, I manually updated a single Windows 7 component because it offered a new feature I needed. Microsoft also installed a trial version of Office 2007 and, unbeknownst to me, turned automatic updating back on. It tried and failed to update itself that night so yesterday morning, I explicitly turned off “install updates automagically on shutdown.” Again. Windows began installing 81 updates automagically when it shut down yesterday.
“Do not turn off this computer” it told me when I went to bed.
I left it running and went to bed. It apparently turned itself off when it finished; at any rate, the screen was black when I arose.
This morning, it spent 10 minutes trying to configure Windows, failing, and “reverting changes.” Naturally, I found more M$ Office components installed this morning. This ain’t a Private Foulup or even a Captain Foulup. This is a Major Foulup. Major.
!@#$%^ Windows.
Rufus reminded me to “be glad it ain’t a General Foulup or, worse yet, a Kernal Foulup!”
Prempte Peeves
The latest Dairy Queen advertising blitz sells us on the “mini-Blizzard,” a newer, smaller version of the thick shake for $1.99.
Great. That’s just great. DQ spins up a smaller product for more money and makes us like it with flaming rainbows and shaving bunnies.
RiDQulous.