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Archive for the 'Observations' Category

January 15th 2008

Recliner nightmare

I’ve been slowly been getting furniture for my living room. I wanted a recliner that looked a bit better than your average recliner. After a lot of web browsing I found a recliner that I loved:

recliner as pictured

However this is what I received:

recliner as received

See the difference? The wood is not even close!

The kicker? The people at Modern Furniture claim that they never stated that the wood is black. Well, if they don’t specify the color of the wood, what is one to assume? That the wood is the same of that on the picture.

They do not seem to be very willing to work with me on this. We’ve already exchanged 3 emails about the issue. But I hope we finally get somewhere and get this resolved because I’m ready to pull out all stops.

UPDATE: You can read about my email conversation with the company at this Consumerist.com story.

Posted by david at 7:48 pm | Permalink |
Filed under Observations, Personal

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December 16th 2007

HAHA

Snow in Hays

I laugh in your general direction, most of the country.

Posted by david at 11:22 pm | Permalink |
Filed under Observations

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August 30th 2007

Flakiness

Flakiness is my biggest pet peeve, closely tied to people who are late to an appointment.

I’ve decided that flakiness is due to 3 things.
- Bad scheduling skills. “OOPS! I forgot I already had a previous engagement. Sorry it’s now too late for you to make other plans.”
- Opportunism. “Oh, something better came up. Bye!”
- Inability to say no. Some people rather give up their left arm than to say no to your face.

No, I’m not bitter or anything.

Posted by david at 12:51 pm | Permalink |
Filed under Observations

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August 15th 2007

The home ownership dream

It’s really more of a nightmare.

First I had a leaking toilet. The plumber didn’t find anything.

Then the toilet stopped flushing. The plumber lied to me, but I saw through his lies, I told him to forget it and I fixed it myself.

After that, my huge elm tree was dying and it had to come down.

And the same day, as soon as the elm tree was taken care of, my AC unit started leaking water like crazy into the garage which leaked into the living room. So this is another day off work, waiting for a HVAC technician to call me back. Once that is repaired (hopefully not an expensive fix), I’ll have to replace some floor boards in the living room.

After this is taken care of, I’ll need an electrician to upgrade the 220v outlet in the garage so that I can buy a modern clothes dryer.

This never ends. Like the song goes “I’m no superman.”

Posted by david at 7:18 am | Permalink |
Filed under Observations

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August 9th 2007

Fiesta of weirdness

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 9, 2007

‘Man falls out of car while trying to spit. Guess which state.’

We don’t have to guess because that headline, from an Internet news-posting site aimed at young adults, included a logo that simply says ‘Florida.’

Drew Curtis, a media critic who runs the Fark.com site and may well scan more news stories each day than anyone else in the country, says Florida is by far the leading source of strange news. His readers send in quirky story suggestions by the thousands. He selects the stories he likes, posts links to them, and tags them to give an idea of the content, such as stupid, spiffy or asinine. Florida is the only proper noun on his tag list.

We asked Curtis what the Florida tag means. After he stopped laughing, he referred us to his new book.

His viewers suggested that ’so many stupid things happen in Florida, it deserved its own Fark tag,’ Curtis wrote. ‘I wasn’t convinced it would get much use, but I decided to go ahead and put it up anyhow. Boy was I wrong.’

Below are recent examples of his Curtis’s use of the Florida tag.

• Here’s a great idea. Take a cougar to a 4-year-old’s birthday and take it off the leash.

• Man evicted from place of business because he doesn’t speak Spanish.

• If you’re going to go into an office to ask for donations to cover the costs of your daughter’s death, make sure your daughter isn’t waiting in the car.

• Woman decides that Chuck E. Cheese would make a better parent than she would.

• If you’re going to spread oil all over the floor of a grocery store and fake a fall, make sure the surveillance cameras aren’t rolling.

‘For some reason,’ Curtis concluded, ‘Florida is messed up. … Perhaps it’s the warm weather that makes people stupid. … Whatever the reason, Florida is without a doubt the No. 1 state for weird news.

‘I would be willing to bet that most of it begins with a few beers and goes downhill from there. … Throw in some old people and some lost tourists and you have a fiesta of weirdness.’

We know. We live here.
[source]

Posted by david at 4:08 pm | Permalink |
Filed under Observations

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August 4th 2007

Where do you take my money?

My router died. OK, the one I was using. As a good nerd, I had a back up router that had been giving me problems in the past but I thought I’d try it again.

Everything was great after setting it up. For about an hour. Then it started doing what it always did, which is its inability to sustain a wireless connection. A firmware update didn’t do any good either.

So I finally got annoyed, drove to the nearest Apple Store and decided to just fork out the money for Apple’s Airport Extreme router.

The store was packed, as always. People trying one of over 10 or 15 iPhones they had on display, teenagers browsing the Internet (thankfully they’ve blocked MySpace, so that’s helped some.) But not a big deal. I spotted the white box that I needed and proceeded to find the cashier. I walk to the back, nothing, I walk to the front, nothing.

Finally I ask an Apple employee “where do I pay?” and he points to a long line at the Genius Bar (where they do technical support and repairs.) I think he saw the expression on my face and he said “are you paying with cash or a credit card?” I told him that I was planning on using a credit card. He pulled out a small palm pilot type thing and next thing you know, he took care of everything.

So that was kind of cool but they really need to figure do something with their check out process. And all the teens!

Posted by david at 4:37 pm | Permalink |
Filed under Observations

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June 19th 2007

We are the Web

Net neutrality. It’s a good thing. Really.

Speak up.

Posted by david at 6:05 pm | Permalink |
Filed under Observations

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May 24th 2007

Sucker

I’m a sucker for marketing. I’ll admit it. I was at the grocery store the other day and something caught my eye. It was a large black bag with some white writing. So I took a second look at it.

Sure enough, all black bag and white text and logos. No other colors. It had the Doritos logo and in big letters it said “X-13D Flavor Experiment.”

So being the sucker that I am, I just had to buy it.

Apparently you are supposed to taste it and then go to a website and name the product.

When I first tasted the chemical goodness, I thought it tasted like chipotle mayonnaise. But the bag says “Tasting notes: All-American classic.” And then it hit me, wait a second, this tastes like a cheeseburger!

Dude! Cheeseburger Doritos! Delicious!

Posted by david at 5:14 pm | Permalink |
Filed under Observations

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May 3rd 2007

Haunted bathroom

I think that our bathroom at work is haunted. I went in this morning and while I was opening the door, I heard some weird noises in there and the lights were flickering.

Once I entered, the noises stopped immediately and the lights didn’t flicker.

Who is haunting our bathroom?

Posted by david at 10:17 am | Permalink |
Filed under Observations

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April 25th 2007

Hell is snow on Earth

Colorado got 16 inches of snow [image gallery]

Excuse me while I run outside and kiss a palm tree.

Posted by david at 8:42 am | Permalink |
Filed under Observations

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