Vote Early, Vote Often

Monday, April 30, 2012 by Dick.

The Media Research Center went to the Supreme Court protests to ask the question, Should Illegal Immigrants Be Allowed to Vote in America?

Cool.

The Right-Thinkers for Electoral Change (the RTEC) have a new engine to reframe the United States Congress. We’re all going to vote against Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. And we can do it.

Apparently California’s requirement that “you must be a U.S. citizen; a California resident; at least 18 years of age on Election Day; not in prison or in county jail (serving a state prison sentence or serving a term of more than one year in jail for a defined “low-level” felony), or on parole, post-release community supervision, or post-sentencing probation for a felony conviction; and not judged by a court to be mentally incompetent” to register to vote is only advisory. Nevada offers similar advice.

The California voter registration deadline for the general election must be postmarked no later than October 22, 2012. The last day to request a VBM ballot by mail is October 30. Registered voters may apply for a vote-by-mail ballot for an upcoming election at any time. If you apply by mail, your application must be received no later than 7 days before an election, otherwise you will need to apply in person to get a vote-by-mail ballot for that election.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi was number five of the top 20 liberals, once the highest-ranking female politician in American history, and still the go-to Democrat in Congress according to The Telegraph in 2010. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is number nine of the top 20.

If it’s good enough for an undocumented worker, it’s good enough for me.

The general election will be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. The RTEC encourages all voters from the right-thinking East Coast of the United States to apply the suggestions set forth by undocumented worker supporters and register to vote in California or Nevada today. Or both.

Posted in What? Are They Nuts?, Society, Politics & News, Random Access | 3 Comments »

Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 by Dick.

Posted in Wordless, Aminals | 2 Comments »

Can’t You Read the Signs?

Monday, April 23, 2012 by Dick.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?
Facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars this month (Apple marketing VP Phil Schiller immediately deleted his Instagram account and declared that Instagram had “jumped the shark”). Apple will probably buy Twitter next.Pictograms.

I take a lot of pictures both for the beauty and for the story they tell, but I tell most stories with words. 50,000 a year in newspaper columns. Nearly that many again right here. I could write a book …

That said, I just replaced my cellphone because its camera stopped initializing. When I need a quick note about a concert poster or a reminder of what that unusual car or eccentric person looks like, I prefer to snap a picture and text it to my emailbox. Sometimes I send it to one or two selected friends as well.

A quick and informal survey tells me that more than half the people I know do the same. Voice calls are down. Texting is up but texting with pictures and far fewer words is climbing exponentially.

Grocery fliers have both pictures and text, but the amount of text is dropping.

Gekko and I often Skype™ instead of “just” talking on the VOIP phone; it’s the next best thing to being there. OK, that’s not entirely true but having the (moving) picture is better than not having the (moving) picture to go with our words.

A recent story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel highlighted how our communications are changing: “On a cold October night a few years ago, I got out of bed and came downstairs because I realized my cat was still outside. I turned on the porch light, opened the main door, called him and went into the kitchen for a drink of water. When I came back, there was a young man standing in my living room.”

After worrying over the story itself, a cop friend suggested, “Put a Quarantined! Infectious Disease! sign out front.”

He thinks home invaders can read. (Jeezum, what’s our school system coming to, teaching burglars to read!)

“. . . attached to an explosive charge.”

It’s not the sign that will stop the burglar or home invader. It’s not even the silhouette of a weapon on the sign. It’s the 700 security cameras that take his picture as he walks up the sidewalk, turns up the lane, and steps onto the porch.

The world is progressing back to cuneiform.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?

I carry a 17″ ThinkPad workstation that my friend Liz Arden dubbed the “patio stone” but I do hope the next big Android isn’t a stone tablet.

Posted in Writing, Society, Random Access | 4 Comments »

Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 by Dick.

Posted in Wordless, Aminals | 2 Comments »

Tuesday Twaddle: the Mommy Wars

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 by Dick.

Timothy Geithner is just the latest Administration mouthpiece to try to convince American voters that the number of women laid off during Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the recession is a ridiculous, meaningless number.

Pfui.

Statisticians know the figures show that George W. Bush likes women while Barack Obama prefers men because all the men were laid off under Mr. Bush; under Mr. Obama, only 7.7 percent of those who lost their jobs were men.

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Of course, statisticians also know that fewer workers of any gender would have lost jobs had Obamanation actions not lengthened the recession.

Posted in Quickies, Business, Politics & News | 2 Comments »

Say Cheese

Monday, April 16, 2012 by Dick.

A short collection of whine.

I needed to replace my clock radio because the buttons have stopped working. The radio plays, the clock tells time, and the alarms sound at the appointed hour but the snooze and the alarm set and the time set buttons all do no more than make satisfying mechanical clicks. They don’t change or set anything.

For Sale: good clock radio for someone on a rigidly fixed schedule who likes to listen to 94.3 FM. Click the Paypal button. ==>

The most amazing online store offered an RCA RC40R Dual Wake Clock Radio with Large Green LED Display by RCA with all the features I want:

Product Features

• Auto time set for seven different time zones, six more than I live in.
• SmartSnooze converts all top buttons as snooze button when alarm has been activated to confuse me when I want to turn the radio back on.
• Dual wake features two different alarm settings for two different users: radio or buzzer and turns off one when the other activates.
• Programmable snooze; Programmable sleep
• Graduwake ramp-up alarm makes waking from a deep sleep easier and annoys the neighbors until you do.
• AM/FM clock radio with a large LED 1.4″ display for clear viewing
• Graduwake Ramp-up alarm eases your awakening
• Programmable Sleep feature plays the radio for up to 2 hours before automatically turning off the radio, allowing you to gently fall asleep to music while your neighbors enjoy techno.
• Programmable snooze feature turns off the alarm or radio for an extra 9 minutes of sleep or for 1-30 minutes

35 customer reviews gave it 3.4 out of 5 stars. Not bad for $19.99. Did I mention it’s an RCA? And that it has a Graduwake ramp-up alarm?

I was about to click the Buy Now button when the most amazing online store piped up that

There is a newer model of this item:

The RCA RC141 Dual Wake Clock Radio costs just $20.89 and is also In Stock.

Product Features

• Automatic time set
• Large 1.4-inch LED display
• FM radio with digital frequency readout
• SmartSnooze - multi-button snooze activation
• Wake to radio or alarm

I’ve seen this marketing technique before in the ice cream wars put less of the juicy stuff in the tub and charge more for it. And the airlines deciding to charge for the overhead compartment space where babies could previously sleep free. Now we’re going to suffer with squalling babies down in the rows with the rest of us.

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The optometrist ordered me a new set of specs on my VSP vision plan. It’s a lousy plan but, as he says, “it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”

The new replacement glasses arrived a few days after I left so Anne had to mail them to me. They look nice. They don’t look through nice, though.

The optometrist had to send the first set he received back to the vision plan to correct an unspecified error. I don’t know what was wrong with the originals but I do hope the replacements have someone else’s prescription because I can’t see through them. Either the new Rx was ground incorrectly, the pupillary distance is wrong, or the optometrist got the wrong numbers from the refraction.

I’m wearing last year’s glasses as I write this and hoping that the Aviator sunglasses I ordered at the same time are correct. They should be in the mail any day now.

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Speaking of shipments, !@#$%^ Comcast has done it again.

I spent more than half an hour on the phone with !@#$%^ Comcast because I got back here to find no cable TV. We had a little power outage. Not unusual. Both cable boxes dropped out. I hope that’s unusual. One required reset from their end, necessitating a call all by itself. One would not power back on, necessitating a replacement.

There’s no excuse for that. I told the customer service rep (she offered to send a tech out but said it would cost me $30 to FIX THEIR EQUIPMENT) that I’d better not have to call them every time the power goes out. She didn’t care.

She ordered one shipped. It didn’t come overnight so I was out of service but it did get here. In two boxes. Two very large boxes.

I don’t have a DVR in South Puffin so to “time shift” requires setting up both the VCR and tuning the newly replaced digital box. For a reason I don’t understand I got the Special Audio Program on both Criminal Minds and CSI. The voiceover kept saying this was for blind peeps and I could turn it off except there is no SAP setting on the recorder I used and I don’t get SAP from any live broadcast, either from Dish or Cable on the TV. Both VCRs played it back on the tape though.

I’m thinking it was !@#$%^ Comcast. Good I didn’t order the special X-Ray vision glasses they were advertising, too.

Posted in Business, Grumpery, Random Access | 4 Comments »