Lemonade

On the way home this afternoon when we got to the exit of the parking lot at work, Donna said, “Go left.” As we normally go right, that phrase meant, let’s take the long way home. This is a great stress reliever for both of us, I like the drive and Donna likes the ride.

I proceeded to wind my way home via some of our usual back roads. It was a warm afternoon, but it felt good to be out driving around. The dogwoods are blooming along with the azaleas and everything that is not flowering is turning green. Even though there were a few more cars on our route than usual they didn’t diminish our enjoyment. About 3 miles from home on a relatively lightly trafficed road we passed a little girl selling lemonade along the side of the road. We looked at her as she looked at us as we went by.

It is spring break for the local schools this week and both Donna and I envisioned this little girl telling her mom she was bored and her mom saying, “Why don’t you go sell lemonade out in front of the house,” in an effort to keep her entertained and get her out of mom’s hair.

We got about 200 yards down the road and Donna said, “Do you have anything smaller than that ten?” I pulled out my wallet and sure enough there was a single in there too. We turned around in a driveway a little further along and headed back. The lemonade was 50 cents a glass, so we bought two. We drank it right there at the side of the road and chatted with her a bit. It was from a mix and not too cold, but it did hit spot. When finished we turned around in her driveway and drove off with a wave and toot of the horn.

I think we kind of made her day, I know she made ours.

Heard From Beth Perry Lately?

This morning in my inbox I received this little ditty:

From: Beth Perry [mailto:beth@bethperry.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 09:16 PM
To: [Brian_the_Red @ barndoorfanclub.org]
Subject: barndoorfanclub.org ranked # 14 in Google for extenze ron jeremy

I’m a web master, and I was just searching Google for extenze ron jeremy. I found your domain, barndoorfanclub.org ranked 14, which is pretty cool.

My site is all about Health – Men, too . Maybe we should link up? I wouldn’t be stealing any of your sales, because all I do is write informational articles…not selling anything on my site at all. And most of my visitors write back to say that they love the fact that I only write good, quality info. As a matter of fact, I’ve got a pretty loyal following of people that come back over and over again (they use the site as a reference), so if you link to me, you should get some pretty good traffic from it — which is always nice.

Anyway, let me know if you’d like to swap links. I’ve already linked to you, and will keep it up there for a few days until I hear back. Hope to hear from you soon!

Beth Perry
RAC IM: 1175455.

I actually did rant once about Ron Jeremy and Extenze so it is conceivable that I might show up on Google when searching for that combination of words. There wasn’t any clickable link to Beth’s site, so I typed in www.bethperry.com and got a “Page Cannot Be Displayed” error. Hmmm. Type in the URL in Google and get 3 options, 1) web pages similar to – nothing, 2) web pages linked to – nothing and webpages that contain the term – one hit, a fellow blogger with the same experience, just different search terms.

Curious, I type in extenze ron jeremy in the Google search window and there is my site, not at 14, but on the 3rd page about #27. Because I have been in a playful spam mood this week, I decided to write back to Beth:

From: “Brian Bogardus” [brian_the_red @ barndoorfanclub.org]
To: [beth @ bethperry.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 07:53 AM
Subject: RE: barndoorfanclub.org ranked # 14 in Google for extenze ron jeremy

Dear Beth,

I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to unlink me from your page. I just checked my Google ranking for the search term extenze ron jeremy and I have fallen back from your reported #14 to a disappointing third page listing of #27. I can only assume your recent linking to my site caused this. Having invested an awful lot of time and money to increase my Google ranking I am very upset. If the link to my site is not removed from your site forthwith I will be forced to take legal action.

Sincerely,
Brian the Red

I haven’t gotten the email bounced back by now, so I’m betting that someone or thing got it. After I had a good laugh with my co-workers by reading Beth’s letter and my response, I got to thinking just what might this be about. It isn’t like comment spam where the intent is to spread the google ranking seeds of crabby internet scum sites hither and yon. The only thing I can figure is my little bit of fun played right into her hands. By replying I confirmed that they had a valid email address that they could then resell.

Anybody else heard from Beth Perry lately?

Hey Pull Over

None of these events are recent, but an ambulance sighting tonight made me think of this.

I’m not sure how many other places do this, but when we moved to Aiken, South Carolina it was the first time I’d ever seen it. People pull off the side of the road if a funeral procession of autos passes by. Even on the other side of a 4 lane divided highway. The first few times I encountered this phenomenon I just kept on driving. Boy, did I get some angry looks and an occasional ugly gesture. Sometimes I have stopped, but mostly because I’ve been trapped by cars half pulling over, usually I just keep on driving.

But for what ever reason, these same people are loathe to pull over for an ambulance. If they are traveling in the opposite direction from the ambulance they won’t even slide over in their lane any. If they are traveling in the same direction on a four lane road they might pull over out of the way if it isn’t too inconvenient. I have been passed and nearly rear ended by people who are wondering why I’m slowing down or pulling over.

Go figure.

Thanks For Nothing Microsoft

A little over 2 weeks ago in one of the weekly email newsletters I get I saw an offer for a free CD from Microsoft that included every security update available up until February. Really free. No shipping even. So I signed up. It got here Saturday and I took it as a sign that I really did need to format c: and start over (along with the earlier deleting the question mark extravaganza.)After freshly installing Win2K I went to the Windows Update site and it reported that I needed to run 2 Critical Updates and Service Packs, 19 Windows 2000 Updates and one Driver Update. I didn’t do anything because I wanted to try my new CD. I ran it and whatever it did took like 15 seconds…WTF. I rebooted and went back to the update site, I now needed to run 2 Critical Updates and Service Packs, 18 Windows 2000 Updates and one Driver Update. Wow that was a big help.

Also in the same CD package was a trial version of a firewall and a virus software. I didn’t even investigate further.

Don’t Uninstall Any Question Marks

The other day I noticed that my Radio/TV card was not working. I kept reporting that another device was using something or another. This morning I decided to fix it. I uninstalled the software and while I was at it I uninstalled some other software I wasn’t using anymore. Then I uninstalled the entries in the hardware section using the Control Panel. While I was at it I also uninstalled another couple entries. There was a question mark item there too, so I thought that would be a good thing to get rid of too. Wrong! A couple seconds after I hit next, my mouse cursor went away and the PC kind of locked down. I fumbled around mouseless for a while and figured I should just reboot. As the PC came up I had a 640 x 480 display with only 16 colors. And it proceeded to find nearly every piece of hardware as if had never heard of any of them. I had to reinstall drivers for audio, video and networking to go along with my planned Radio/TV stuff.

Oh well, I’ve been threatening to reformat C: and start over again with a clean install…I guess I’ll start on that right after I get through with this entry.

Painting The Town Garnet Red

I bought a new car in November. They sent me a survey to fill out rating my experience with the purchase. I thought about throwing it out, I now swear that thought is true, but Mazda thinks I filled it out. As a way of thanking me they sent me a bottle of touch-up paint. That was the end of January. About a week later I got a second bottle, it was packaged differently and included a couple of other items, but the main contents was a bottle of touch-up paint. This last Saturday, a familiar envelope arrived in the mail, that’s right, another bottle of touch-up paint. So Sunday I emailed them:

From: “Brian Bogardus” <bogardus@geeforcecable.com>
To: <customerassistance@mazdausa.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 10:35 AM
Subject: Stop it. You are creeping me out.

Dear Mr. Customer Assistance,

November 24, 2003 – Purchase a new 2003 Garnet Red Miata

January 28, 2004 – Receive a bottle touch-up paint as a thank you for filling out a survey I swear I threw in the trash, but must have completed.

February 7, 2004 – Receive a second bottle of touch-up paint inside a miniature steering wheel replica along with some other things, including a letter that welcomes me to the “Emotion of Motion.”

March 27, 2004 – Receive a third bottle of touch-up paint with what looks like the exact same letter as accompanied the first bottle.

Thanks for the first bottle as I already have had a use for it, but stop already, one more bottle and I’ll be able to paint my wife’s Civic Garnet Red to match the Miata. If you feel a further need to thank me for buying your product a $10 gas card or similar would be nice to offset the cost of the required premium fuel.

Sincerely,
Brian Bogardus

Today I got a reply:

From: “CustomerAssistance” <CustomerAssistance@mazdausa.com>
To: “Brian Bogardus” <bogardus@geeforcecable.com>
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 04:33 PM
Subject: Re: Stop it. You are creeping me out. (KMM203077V95587L0KM)

Dear Brian,

Thank you for contacting Mazda North American Operations. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to you.

Thanks for alerting us to the additional, unintentional mailings that you received. I have forwarded your comments to our Marketing contacts to ensure that no further welcome packages are sent.

Again, thank you for contacting Mazda. It has been my pleasure to assist you. Please feel free to reply to this message with any further questions or comments.

Please take a moment to give us your opinion about our e-mail service. Click the link below to complete a brief, online survey.

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?T8SY3YKAT109GH3CPK39V6

Regards,

William Zdan
Specialist, Customer Assistance E-Business

Oh no you don’t, filling out a survey is what got me nto this mess to begin with…