Yeah, But Will It Fit In A Yukon?

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

So we are trying to sell a lot of things.  Remarkably, it is cheaper to sell items and buy new in Texas than it is to keep them and pay to move them.  I am not sure why I am so surprised at this but I am.  Since I have access to an electronic bulletin board at work, it was my job to post what we had for sale and what we were asking for it.  I consulted the wife on some things but for the most part I set the prices.  This was a mistake and based on the wife's reaction ("You sold WHAT for HOW MUCH?") I think I should have consulted more.  Suffice to say some people got some deals, but hey at least we don't have to move it!  This argument did not work on the wife by the way.

I posted pictures of everything I had to sell but pictures really don't tell you how big something is.  I was repeatedly asked what the dimensions were on various items (bed, computer table, entertainment center, etc.).  I guesstimated as best I could but one guy did not ask for dimensions, he asked me if my grill would fit in a Yukon.  Now I have never ridden in a Yukon, or even seen the inside of one so I really have no idea.  So I said, "Sure, you bet!"  Not really, I IM'ed the wife and had her go out and measure it (gotta love technology) and gave him the exact dimensions of the grill.

So this got me to thinking (queue thematic music), wouldn't it be cool if there was a website like www.will_it_fit.com that would tell you these kind of things.  Just two pieces of info really to punch in, 1) what you are wanting to fit and 2) what you are wanting to fit it into.  Your result is just a simple Yes or No.

I think that just for fun I would code the site so that no matter what you picked, as long as you had a Yukon the answer would be, "Sure, you bet!"

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Where Did All This Junk Come From?

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Well, we are really in "move" mode now.  We are eating up what is left in the cabinets (this may be a blog for another day, but when in this mode, you combine things you never would have considered before), packing what we can (stuff we will not need this week), and really trying to assess what we want to take with us and what needs to be given away or hauled off.

It is strange to me that things I thought were so important to me a few weeks ago, I am so eager to put them out at the end of the driveway for the garbage man now.  When it all comes down to it, what is really so valuable to me that I want to throw it on a U-Haul and drive it with me for 900 miles?  Instead of one man's junk being another man's treasure, my treasures are becoming my junk.

For those of you keeping score at home, so far I have filled four boxes with stuff I am moving and hauled the equivalent of five boxes of stuff to the end of the driveway.  Deep down the question seems to be, "Which is worse, wishing I had kept something or wishing I had not?"  Time will only tell if I made the right choices.  I suppose the only sure fire way would be to give everything away to friends and family with the condition that we could take it back whenever we wanted.

But if I had friends moving, I would not take anything from them on those conditions.  So for those of you who know me and have ever liked anything you saw at my house, ask me real nice on Friday and you can probably have it.  Just be warned that I might want it back someday.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Where Are All the Pretty People?

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

My wife and daughter were out with the mother-in-law today.  They were trying to introduce her to Thai food.  That left the son and I to hang out (and start packing for the "move").  After we packed one whole box, we were getting hungry for lunch.  We decided on one of our favorite places, Taco Bell.

Now, I am a people watcher.  I pay attention to the clothes they are wearing, the shoes, hats, tattoos, etc. (you never know when a blog inspiration will hit).  The parade of people that visited the Taco Bell today between 1:00 and 1:45 reminded me a lot of the shoppers I see at Wal*Mart.

How can I put this nicely...OK, well I can't.  As I look at shoppers I wonder, "Where are all the pretty people?"  I sat on a bench in front of the optical center at our local Wal*Mart one afternoon and looked at everyone checking out.  As far as the eye could see (and since I just got out of the optical center, my eyes could see pretty far), not one pretty person (male or female).  After about twenty minutes, I realized that these people were not really "not pretty", they just made no effort to look pretty.  I saw torn and stained t-shirts, ladies with rollers in their hair, people that made no effort to comb their hair, little children with dirty faces, and of course, every kind of NASCAR t-shirt imaginable (I think the only car number that I did not see was -1).  It is as if these people were saying to themselves, "I am going to Wal*Mart, why bother even attempting to make myself or my family remotely presentable?  And I think then I will go to Taco Bell."

So please, the next time you go to Wal*Mart, take a few minutes to clean up a little.  Trust me, you will really stand out in the crowd.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

The Back Yard Is Alive

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

We are getting ready to move to Allen, TX.  According to the brochure, Allen has doubled in size in the last five years, from forty thousand people to near eighty thousand.  News travels fast about a great town I guess.

One of the "sacrifices" of our moving to Texas was that we gave up our dog.  This was not a sacrifice for me but rather (almost) a joy.  I was never really a fan of the dog.  Hey, if you can't be honest on your own blog, when can you be?

The dog in question was a Cocker Spaniel named Pongo.  We have had him since he was a puppy and he turned three this year.  Our son named him Pongo after the daddy dog in 101 Dalmations.  The brochure said that the Cocker Spaniel was "A happy little tail-wagger of average intelligence" and I fear Pongo brought down the average.

Since our back yard is fenced in, we would let Pongo loose to enjoy the backyard.  It turns out that Pongo was the field line of Cockers.  Among other things, this means he likes to run and chase / kill any wildlife in the near vicinity.  Once you let him out the back door, all you saw was a yellow streak flying across the yard and a trail of dust and grass.  So, for the last 2 years or so we have had no wildlife in our backyard.  And I mean none.  Pongo could sneak up and kill a bird that was on the ground.  Word traveled fast in the wildlife community (the birds told the chipmunks, then chipmunks told the squirrels, and so on).  The wife and I would sit in the kitchen and drink coffee in the morning and not hear any birds chirping.  And I mean none.

Fast forward to about six weeks ago when we took Pongo back to the Cocker rescue.  Did I mention that word travels fast in the wildlife community?  We have seen four rabbits, six chipmunks, and even had a nest with three baby birds in it.  The nest was only four feet off the ground too!  Amazing!

Our backyard is like the Allen, TX of our neighborhood.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Slower Traffic, Keep Right

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

In driving back from Texas to Indiana, we traveled through Missouri.  There were several sections of highway 44 that were quite hilly.  On the steepest hills there was typically an extra lane to the right for semi trucks and other slow moving vehicles.  Along with the extra lane were signs telling the slower traffic to keep right.  This worked great except for the time or two that there was road construction going on and we were down to one lane.

Now that I am back at work after five days of "vacation" I remembered a feature that annoys me about some of my co-workers.  They walk slow.  Now this is MY definition of slow but slow IS a relative term.

The main corridor that runs the length of the building (dividing the north cubes from the south cubes) is about five foot wide.  This would equate to two "lanes" of traffic.  Most people stick to the right side of the corridor as you would if you were driving on a two lane road.  However, there are those who (along with walking slow) walk in the middle of the "road."  Going around these people is a little difficult given the amount of room of clearance you have on each side.  There is not really any room for an extra lane for the slower traffic, but at least there should be a sign telling slower traffic to keep right.

There is a traffic law in our state stating that if you are driving below the minimum speed limit and there are three or more vehicles behind you, then you must pull over and let the faster vehicles past.  I actually saw someone get pulled over for having four vehicles behind them and driving 25 on a 55 mph zone.  I cheered.

Now if we only had such a law for the slow walkers in my building.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

More Coffee? and the Math Involved

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

As I have mentioned in the last few entries, the wife and I were in Texas.  We drove as far as Springfield, MO yesterday and then the rest of the way home today.  Last night we went to see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."  Wow, what an awesome movie!  I can't wait to see the next one due out in 2007.

This morning we drove about a block and had breakfast.  We ordered our food and some coffee.  Now I am a two sugar man myself and the wife is more of a one sugar woman.  Since we are an hour ahead of Missouri, we were up and at the restaurant by 6:30 local time.  The restaurant was not very busy at that time so we received a lot of attention from our waitress.  This meant that our coffee mugs did not get even close to empty at any time during our breakfast.

This was actually a problem as I had to keep a running math problem in my head as to the "sugar-ness" of my coffee.  The problem went a little like this...

1. Cup is filled and put in 2 sugars.  Perfect sugar-ness.
2. Cup is 2/3 full and waitress fills to top, add 1 sugar, cup is now about 1/3 sugar pack too much
3. Cup is 2/5 full and waitress fills to close to the top, add 1 sugar since the 2/5 coffee in cup was slightly over-sugared
4. Ad Nausea

I thought about asking the waitress if I could borrow her pen.  I also tried drinking only 1/2 the cup or all of it if I saw her coming with a pot of coffee.  The whole thing reminded me of one of those 2 faucets, 1 drain math problems I had in school.  Though not the exact same kind of mathematical problem, you can see where I can make the comparison (assuming she was the faucet and I was the drain).

I kept the coffee sweet enough but not too sweet for the most part.  The wife actually had it a little harder as she had to keep track of the amount of creamer too, talk about hard math!  Jeesh!

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

The Joys of House Hunting

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

The wife and I are in Texas looking for a place to live.  We allowed ourselves a grand total of 2 days to find a place so we are under a little pressure.  We (OK, mostly the wife) have researched as much as possible on the internet over the last several months in preparation of our trip down here but now we are in crunch time.

Yesterday morning we met with a realtor to look at homes for rent and we reserved the afternoon to look at a few apartments.  Going in I was leaning toward an apartment and the wife was leaning toward a house.

We met with our realtor at 9 AM and started the day.  Our day could not have started any worse really.  The realtor punched in the key code for the first house and we went inside to discover twenty empty beer bottles on the kitchen counter.  As we moved throughout the house we were a little shocked that the first bedroom door was locked from the inside.  The second bedroom contained someone who appeared to be sleeping off the effects of the empty beer bottles and the third bedroom also contained a young lady that the realtor actually knew!  Most the houses after that were about the same quality only unoccupied.

I have had a day to think about this and I tried real hard to put a positive spin on this.  So here is my conclusion.  The first house is a staged house and the realtor always goes there first, no matter the price range of the persons looking to rent.  The locked door, the persons in the bedrooms, the recognition of one of the occupants, it is all staged so that no matter what homes you look at next, they all seem great compared to the first house.

I tried all night to convince myself of this.  I am about as convinced as you are!  We are signing the paperwork for an apartment today.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Are you a tonger?

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

While staying in Addison, TX we are at a hotel that offers a continental breakfast.  Now I am not sure where this phrase originated, but I do know that almost any food thrown hastily on on a table and offered with coffee is "technically" a continental breakfast.  As the old joke goes...

Q: What does "Continental Breakfast" mean?
A: It means you're hungry by 10:30.

Anyway, on the continental breakfast this morning were bagels and English muffins.  Next to these were a set of tongs to use to select your bagel / muffin.  It is simply a given that you are to use these when placing a bagel on your plate.  One of my pet peeves are the non-tongers out there who choose to use their hands to dig through the pile to select their choice.

The other place that we run into the non-tongers is at our favorite Panera Bread in Kokomo.  There is a plate covered with a glass top that contains small pieces of one of their monthly specials.  It is there for you to taste test before you buy.  It is here that the tongers and non-tongers meet.  We stop at Panera on the way to church and usually sit on the side of the building that has the glass covered samples.  My wife and I will place bets on people entering the building and heading toward the sample plate on whether they are tongers or non-tongers.  It is quite entertaining.  I give people the benefit of the doubt and usually bet that a person is a tonger.  I usually lose.

So the next time you are at a place where tongs are available, go with the tongs, help me win a bet!

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

This? Is Entertaining?

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Today the wife and I drove over 900 miles from Kokomo, IN to Addison, TX.  We left at about 5 AM and arrived 14 hours later.  All in all it was a great trip.  There was no road construction to speak of and traffic was really great.  There was a serious accident along the way on the other side of the highway.  We must have just missed it by a few minutes based on the amount of time between where we passed the accident spot and where we saw the ambulance.  The car had flipped and it looked like someone had used a fire extinguisher on it as well.

While 900 miles is nothing to sneeze at, I did drive about 1100 miles in one stretch coming home from Beaumont, TX back in the early 90's.  Not only was that trip harder because of the extra miles, I pulled it off in a Geo Metro.  This time I was in a Buick.

The wife (to put it mildly) does not do well on little sleep.  Her lips and her brain had difficulty connecting a few times.  The ears and brain we shorted out a little as well.  Of course it is reasonable to believe it was my lips and ears that were at fault.  It is funny how the body works when deprived of sleep.  For instance, I find this blog entry very entertaining.  For those of you who are reading this and thinking that this is boring, may I suggest you get up at 4 AM and read it again.  I can almost guarantee that you will find it interesting then.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

The Joys of Buying Salt

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Because I have well water, I have a water softener.  Because I have very rusty water, I have to buy the most expensive salt in Morton's line of products.  I have seen how rusty the water is coming out of the outside hose (this faucet does not get run through the softener) and I can say that this salt really does it's job.

In researching pricing for this salt, I concluded that even with the annual membership fee, Sam's Club was the best price.  We use about one forty pound bag per week and I just go once a month and buy four bags.  The salt is located at the far right back of the store.  You really could not get any farther away from the check out lines than where the salt is located.  This means I have to push one hundred and sixty pounds of salt the entire length of the store.  I just count this as part of my workout.

I usually get one of the flat bed carts and if either of my children are with me (or both) then they get to ride on the cart.  To them, this is a great adventure.  When I say to the wife, "I am going to go buy some salt." the kids eyes light up like I was going to Ritter's or something.

On a recent trip for salt, all four of us were there.  My wife pointed out that there was the kind of salt we needed available at the very front of the store as well as at the place at the back of the store.  I now had a decision to make.  Save myself the "workout" of hauling the salt across the entire store (and disappoint the kids since the cart trip would now only be a few feet) or "be the dad!" and head to the back of the store.  Well, one look at the faces of the cart's occupants and my decision was made.

After all, it is part of my workout.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

What a Great Name for a Band

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

If you head over to the Billboard website, you will find that bands are getting rather creative (or uncreative) with the names they chose.  Some names include: Panic! At The Disco, The Early November, Three Days Grace, Taking Back Sunday, All That Remains, etc.  The list is almost unending.  Now I have listened to a few of these bands and it seems that the most impressive thing about them is their name!

In a previous blog I mentioned that I am always on the lookout out for phrases that were never uttered before.  I also look for phrases that would be cool band names.  For those of you who don't feel you are that creative, you can go to THIS website and it will randomly generate band names for you.

Recently I had a teammate that was having eye problems.  She even had to wear a patch for a short period of time.  As I was talking to her one day, she described what her eye felt like to me and told me that it hurts to blink.  Bingo!  What a great name for a band!  Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Hurts to Blink!

Once I get tired of blogging, I will learn how to play an instrument (besides the tambourine) and get a band together.  With a name like that, we are sure to be a hit.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Touch Move, Touch Take

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Those of you who know me know that I have a son that is very good at chess.  We celebrated his eighth birthday this past week and one thing that comes out of him turning eight is that I no longer get beat by a seven year old at chess.  Anyway, we have a tournament chess set (with a chess clock) and we play lots of games every week.

When we play, we follow the "touch move, touch take" rule.  The basic concept is that if you "touch" one of your pieces, then you have to "move" it.  If you "touch" one of your opponent's pieces, then you have to "take" it.  Now common sense applies.  If the piece that you touch that is yours cannot be legally moved or if the piece you touch of your opponent's cannot be taken legally then you obviously cannot enforce this rule.  Following this rule makes you think about your move and see its consequences in your head.  This is probably the rule that is broken most in chess overall.  If your opponent does touch a piece, you simply have to say "touch move, touch take" and they know you are enforcing the rule.

This morning my wife made oatmeal along with frying up some bacon.  Now, we have this rule at our house that you don't touch other people's food.  As my son was carrying the bacon on a paper towel from the counter to the table, one piece fell off onto the table as he was setting the bacon down.  He picked it up and began to place it back on the paper towel when I found myself saying "touch move, touch take!"

Who knew that chess rules applied to breakfast?

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Didn't this use to be something else?

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Before we started frequenting Panera, we frequented My Favorite Muffin & Bagel.  They had much better muffins and many more varieties of coffee as well.  Unfortunately, there was not enough business in our town to keep both of them open and Panera won out.  The building where My Favorite Muffin used to be is now a place that sells mobile phones and accessories.  There are a lot of buildings that play musical chairs in our town.  We have a bank that used to be a fast food place.  We have an insurance office that used to be a pizza place.  We have a putt putt place that used to be a department store.  We have a Chinese restaurant that used to be a Chinese restaurant (before that it was a Chinese restaurant).

This leads me to my random thought.  I wonder if there is a report somewhere that shows you the odds of succeeding in your particular business based on the type of business that was in the building before you?  I imagine that it should not be too hard to research and produce such a report and who knows, it might be just as good an indicator of success as anything else.  At least there should be a clause in your lease that shows you all the previous businesses that failed (or succeeded) at that location.

Several years ago there was this cubicle at work that was "cursed."  No matter who sat there, they were eventually fired.  There were 4 straight employees over an eighteen month period and all of them were let go for some reason.  People who were transferred to our group would refuse to sit there for fear of the curse.  One lady who sat there was an avid coffee drinker and really liked this coffee shop uptown.  But that place is now a Mexican restaurant.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

I guess I just can't be happy

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Every Tuesday since the middle of last year, I have had to prepare a report at work.  Initially the report guidelines were sketchy and no one could even tell me how it should look or what it should report.  Eventually we got the format figured out.  The first report took me over two hours to complete.  Every week I try to cut a little time off of my preparation.
I fiddled with some code in the spreadsheet program I use, I learned a few more keyboard shortcuts, I reconfigured the raw data so that it could be copied and pasted more quickly, etc..

About the time that I initially had to start providing the report, I was really into Blindside's "Silence" CD.  While I did not like running the report, at least I could pass the time listening to my favorite CD.

As the months went by and I streamlined the report I got to the point where it was taking me less than an hour to complete it.  The "Silence" CD runs about that length so I was still happy.  Today I completed the report in twenty minutes.  Instead of being happy that I have almost perfected this report, I found myself upset because I did not get to listen to even half the CD.

I guess I just can't be happy.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

There ought to be a lane for that

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Today for lunch I stopped by one of my favorite places to eat.  I love the bagels at Panera Bread and the line at the bakery portion is usually really short at lunchtime.  I can usually pop in and out in a few minutes.  Today however was a different story.

I was only second in line but the lady in front of me was getting some sort of iced coffee drink that required some preparation time, making my wait in line an extra four to five minutes.  If the lady would have let me cut in line, she would only be out a minute or so as I all needed was two bagels thrown in a bag and I was done.  Alas, she took no pity on me.  This reminded me of the people in front of me at the convenience store that want to buy several of each kind of lottery ticket when all I want to do is pay for my thirty two ounce soft drink.

I was not really upset.  I have learned long ago that you only learn patience by practicing it.  Today was another chance to practice.  But still, I pondered what would happen if Panera had two lanes there at the bakery section.  There could be one for people ordering the "five minute preparation" drinks and one for people like me who have simpler, faster orders.  I sat there thinking about this when all of a sudden it was my turn.  I also noticed that there was one lady behind me in line.  The cashier took my money and gave me my bagels.  It had to have taken less than one minute.  As I was leaving, I overheard the lady behind me place her order.  All she wanted was a paper bag to hold a muffin she had bought earlier.

If only the guy in front of her wouldn't have wasted her time and let her cut in line.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

The "Express" Service

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Our church (like many churches) has two services on Sunday mornings with Sunday School sandwiched in between.  The "late" service at 10:30 is the "normal" service and typically goes like this...

1. Prelude
2. Greetings
3. Song, Hymns and Spiritual Songs
4. Pastoral Prayer / Offering
5. Special Music
6. Sermon
7. Closing Prayer

The service lasts about 75 minutes.  All services don't go in that exact order and occasionally there is a comic / topical skit thrown in, but for the most part that is what happens.  The "early" service lasts about 45 minutes so it is sometimes dubbed the "express" service.  The Prelude is axed along with Special Music.  The 3) Songs is cut down to about two hymns and verse three is usually skipped as well cutting that section down further.  However, the essential part 6) Sermon is left in its entirety.

Since we had a birthday party to prepare for today, we decided to go to the "express" service and then attend Sunday School.  That put us home at around 10:45 giving us a few hours to get ready for the party.

As I sat in the service this morning I got to thinking (no offense pastor!).  What if other parts of our life could be condensed in this manner?  Can you imagine your job being done in roughly sixty per cent of the normal time?  I mean, surely there are some non essential parts of your job that could be omitted.  You could work an eight hour shift in just under five hours.  If we applied this to TV, we could watch a half hour sit-com in eighteen minutes (even less if we could skip the commercials!).  How about sleep?  If I could cut that down by 40 per cent that would save me about two to three hours of my day.

Think of all the extra blog entries I could write!

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

I've never heard that before

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Some years ago, David Letterman had a segment on his show where he talked about certain phrases he had heard. He had speculated that these phrases may have never been spoken before. For instance, he heard a host of a late night infomercial say the phrase, "Let's measure Pablo's bald spot." Dave even showed the segment of the infomercial where they actually measured (before and after) Pablo's bald spot. He proposed that no one, in the history of the English language, had ever said those words in that order. In the weeks that followed, they would add to the list with other various phrases that he (or his sidekick Paul) had heard. I seem to recall one from the Home Shopping Network involving Swiss candlestick holders.

Since that time, I have been on the lookout for phrases that perhaps were never uttered before. I think I may have one.

Right before I got married I had a roommate. He had a young daughter and she would stay with us every other weekend. One day the father was eating a donut and dipping it in some milk he was drinking. The daughter was eating bologna and drinking orange juice. Now as children often do, she was imitating her father causing him to say the phrase, "Don't dip your bologna in your orange juice." May I suggest to you that no one had ever (nor has since) uttered that phrase. I surely hope that is the case anyway.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Princess Quarter Cup

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

In preparing to put our house up for sale, we boxed many things up so as not to have such a cluttered house.  My daughter lost a lot of toys to the boxes and I thought that she might be upset or complain.  Initially she did ask where this toy was or where that toy was but once she figured out they weren't coming out of the boxes anytime soon, she made do with what she had.

One afternoon (shortly after the "boxing") I noticed she had pushed one of the kitchen table chairs over to the edge of the countertop between the stove and the refrigerator.  On the wall between those two appliances we keep a small wooden board with some pegs on it to hold measuring cups and wooden spoons.  However, those cups and spoons were now part of a very detailed play that was going on.

Princess 1/4 Cup it seems was having some issues with her mother (Queen 1/2 Cup) and father (King 1 Cup).  My daughter had voices for each one so it made it easier to follow along with the scene.  It seems that the King had ordered all the soldiers (played by the wooden spoons) to take the princess to the dungeon.  Now, I did not get to catch the end of the play so I don't know where the dungeon was or if she ended up there.  I think that the dungeon was inside the cat food container (since that is where we keep the 1/3 cup, presumably Prince 1/3 Cup).

I began to wonder why I even bothered buying my daughter any toys at all since it seemed that she was having just as much fun with the cups and spoons as she ever had with any toy that I had bought her.  I am pretty sure though that if I stopped buying her toys altogether I would end up in the dungeon with Prince 1/3 Cup.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Sign Sign Everywhere A Sign

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

While the Five Man Electrical Band may have had issues with some signsin their day, they could not possibly have envisioned how it is now.  Everywhere you look there are billboard signs, scrolling electronic signs, LED signs, the classic yellow flashing arrow signs and every other kind of distracting sign along your way while you are supposed to be looking at the road.  But (and you may be shocked to know this) I am OK with that.  What I really think has gotten out of hand is...bumper stickers.

You see, with most advertising signs, the job is just to get your business noticed.  With bumper stickers, anything goes!  There are all kind of stickers for rock bands, favorite bars, favorite NASCAR drivers (or NASCAR drivers that you don't particularly like), etc.  Now I will say this, they have (at times) provided some entertainment while I am stuck at a traffic light.  Others though are quite offensive and probably even illegal in certain states.

I do think there are way too many though touting that the driver's son or daughter is an honor student at some school.  Perhaps I am just upset that when I made the honor roll 20 years ago, there weren't any bumper stickers like that for my mom to show off with.

I did see one sticker that really made me think.  It may have even changed my outlook on life.  The bumper sticker simply said, "Humpty Dumpty was pushed."  I mean, I never questioned the story really and here is this competing theory on what really happened.  They should make a movie about this - Humpty Dumpty, The Untold Story.

They could even use bumper stickers to advertise.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Abolition of the Penny

Greetings and welcome to todays random thought.

I try to watch the McLaughlin Group each week.  It is this political round table show that airs locally on PBS on Friday nights.  Now, I know you are thinking, "This guy needs to get a life if this is his idea of a fun Friday evening."  Perhaps you are right.  But if I had not stayed home a few weeks ago, I would have nothing to blog about today.  So maybe is it good for you that I have no life.

Anyway, one small segment of the show focused on a house bill that would in essence abolish the penny (CNN Money Article).  This intrigued me a little.  I mean, do we really need the penny?  We could probably do without it but I am sure there would be some way the credit card companies would kill us financially by some sort of evil rounding up scheme.  Did you know that the pennies from before the 1980s could now be melted down for a profit as there are over 2 cents worth of copper in them?

The wife and I did try a new Italian restaurant recently and all the pricing looked a little odd.  Extra dipping sauce for the breadsticks was $0.33, my sandwich was $4.01, etc.  We quickly figured out that after the 6% tax was added in, everything came to a total that did not involve any pennies (sauce was 35 cents with tax, sandwich was 4 and a quarter).  Maybe they have seen the future and did not want to have to change their menus when the "get rid of the penny" bill passes.  I tend to think the owner is just anal-retentive.

I had a French professor in college (he was not French, he taught French).  He stated on more than one occasion that when he died he was leaving all his money to the foundation to abolish the apostrophe.  I think it might make French easier but would confuse English.  Just so you know, there are people that are particular about their commas as well.

Now Xanga does not charge me to post my blog (or charge for you to read it) so I did not have to use any pennies for this posting and if you look carefully, I did not use any apostrophes in this post either.  Maybe I am just ahead of the game (or maybe I am really anal-retentive)

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

How long does it really take to get from there to here?

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

There is a problem with my mail delivery. It is not the fault of the United States Postal Service or their employees. You see, the mail gets from its origin to my mailbox at the end of my driveway in the normal amount of time. It is there the delivery stalls. It usually gets from the mailbox to my wife's van in pretty good time too as she checks the mailbox as she is on her way out to run errands. It is that last step, from the van to the house, that takes an inordinate amount of time. For even though it is only 10 feet from the garage to the house, it sometimes takes days to make that final step in the process. I have discussed this with my wife many times to no avail. What I need is another class of mail that bypasses this hitch in the system. Perhaps I should contact the post office with my suggestions on the matter. My father retired from the post office, maybe I could throw his name around for good measure.

This reminds me of my lunchtime "errand" today. When I leave my cubicle at work and head downstairs and through the double doors to the parking lot, I pass a table that usually holds packages from FedEx, DHL, etc. I think everyone that comes in or out of the building has to pass this table and has to notice these packages. I generally take the time to see if any are for me (they usually aren't but one time someone did FedEx me some M&M's, but that is a story for another day). I also check to see if I know the person they are addressed to or if the package looks important or was sent via Next Day Air (NDA - not necessarily  a sure sign it is important). It really kills me the number of NDA packages that sit there for a day or two before they are picked up. Think of the money the sender could have saved it they shipped ground or second day air! Anyway, today there was a NDA envelope there and it had the word "Payroll" written on it. This is a little odd since payroll is not done in our office. It turned out, it wasn't even supposed to come to our building but to a building a block away. I called the number listed on the package and this (according to them) this was somebody's paycheck (an important package indeed!). Now the delivery guy obviously messed up, as did the person in my building that signed for the package. So this NDA package made it several hundred miles in less than a day, but it took another 4 hours to get the last block of its journey. Which is still better time than my mail makes in its last leg and it only has 10 feet to go.

I guess FedEx owes me some mileage money.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Never finish a (insert noun here) just because you started it

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I was reminded of a saying recently, "Never finish a book just because you started it." This is really good advice and I must say I have started several books recently and abandoned them. The one I just abandoned today is Tim Allen's "Don't Stand Too Close To A Naked Man." It was entertaining but it is obvious that Tim and I have different outlooks on..., well on just about everything. I also abandoned "Soul Music" by Terry Pratchett.  A friend recommended this and other Pratchett books to me.  I tried, I really tried to like these books, but in the end, I chose not to finish them.  But that's OK.

I have wondered recently if you could take that saying "Never finish a book just because you started it" and substitute other things in there for the word "book".  I was actually pondering this as I was trying a new coffee shop we have in town.  Coffee Junkies sounds like a place I would like so the wife and I went there.  Perhaps I went on a bad day or perhaps they got a bad batch of beans in or perhaps, well perhaps something else happened that would explain just how truly "not good" this coffee was.  I felt obligated to finish the coffee since it cost me $2.  It is the same feeling I have when feeling obligated to finish a book since I have "invested" time into reading the first 100 pages or so.  Ultimately I abandoned the coffee and we have not returned there.

Life is too short to waste it on bad coffee, or a bad book.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

My First Post

Greetings and welcome to my first (attempt at a) blog. I have wanted to do this for some time. I have even convinced the wife that she should have one as well (since she seems to live a more interesting life than I).

Here is my first Random Thought. Recently the wife and I were staying at my mother's house. We were staying there since we were not allowed to run any water in the house for 15 hours due to a chlorine treatment on our well. The well had an "unsatisfactory" level of E.coli in it. I am not sure what this means as this test is only a pass/fail. Anyway, we were at my mother's house for this reason. The following morning we could not locate the coffee and so I went down to the corner store (it was a Casey's) to purchase some coffee for us. The total came to $2.10 and I paid with a $5 and a quarter. I handed this to the nice older lady who was running the cash register. She handed me back 3 $1 bills and said have a nice day. Now, at this moment I had a decision. Do I go on with my life and ignore the fact that I am getting shorted 15 cents, or do I point out her mistake and demand what I am owed. I thought about this for about 2 seconds. Now, that may not seem like a long time but in that short amount of time I weighed several things.

1. The difficulty to prove what I was owed. Like many convenience store cashiers, she had not punched in the fact that I paid $5.25 but rather that I had paid $2.10 (by hitting one key on the cash register). I was a cashier one summer and I could appreciate the tediousness of entering in the amount tendered as the only real value was that the register would tell you what change was due. If you are decent at math, you don't need this help. I would have to prove I paid with a quarter and not with a dime.
2. The difficulty of getting the drawer back open. The cash drawer was closed and so in order to get my 15 cents, it would have to be opened again. Typically this requires a key or a manager or both. This seemed like a lot of work for 15 cents.
3. The effect on the cashier. I actually did think of this. No one likes to be told they are wrong and I took this into consideration. Pointing out this error might cause this nice lady to have a bad start to her day.
4. What is 15 cents really in the big picture of life. Not much.
   
   In the end (2 seconds later) I just said Thank You and brought the coffee back to my wife. It was only later that I thought of...
   
5. This might be a scam. I mean, if you were a nice older lady working as a cashier at a convenience store, this would be the perfect scam. You could get about 15 cents or so from each customer and over the period of a shift this could really add up! If you successfully did this to 7 customers per hour, this could increase your hourly wage by over $1 / hour. If you are caught or questioned, you just smile and give them their change. Who would suspect you really?

Now that I have thought about it, I think it was an honest mistake by a new cashier. But who knows?

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon