Rants

Bigfoot

Back in the wild and wooly days of the internet, 10-15 years ago, I signed up with a cool service, bigfoot, that promised me an email address for life for free. They gave me an address and what ever email was sent to that address, they would forward to any email address I chose. This was a thing of beauty, I gave it out to all my friends and family, it was my address, Brian_the_Red@bigfoot.com. Bigfoot grew and and offered more services, one of which I found really handy was distribution, I could have all the mail I got come to home and work. The internet grew and email grew and it became all about the money. Bigfoot cut back on all their services except the original forwarding. The other stuff was still available, but for a fee. Earlier this year they put a cap on the amount of mail I could get for free each day to 25. This is probably a reasonable amount for personal use. I have probably never gotten 25 pieces of mail on one day that was important to me. The trouble is SPAM. I have been sprinkling the internet with this address for the last 15 years and the SPAM just rolls in. Every day that I exceed the 25 limit, I get a nice little email from bigfoot reminding me I’m missing out on getting some of my mail. It seems like like I was getting one everyday. On some days I know I’m not getting 25 emails even with all the spam. Yesterday I got 2 warnings I was over 25? The end of an era (at least in internet time,) I’m giving up on bigfoot. I sent everybody a change of address and after a while I’ll quit even checking it.

Dust

My wife watches way too much HGTV so she is prone to fits of “redecorating.” Last night she decided that she wanted me to move my CDs out of the living room and put them in the computer room where they would be closer to me. She wanted me to clear off the shelves on one side of the room that were full of books and put my music CDs on them. She wanted the selves in the living room to put her teddy bears on. For now the books reside on the floor in the computer room.

If you don’t use the books for a while it is amazing the amount of dust that gathers on them and the selves they reside on. Dust disposal takes on two forms at my house: 1) When Donna is around, you have to wipe the dust off with a damp washcloth, so it doesn’t fly everywhere. 2) When she is not around I just wipe it off onto the floor (where I could vacuum it up later) I know I read somewhere that dust is mostly dead skin that has sloughed off of you, but what else is it? Really, really small dirt? Tiny meteorites? Insect shit?

Mr. Smart Internet Guy, Huh?

I have been accessing the internet since before there was an Internet Explorer even. Most people I know when they have a question about the Net, email, viruses and computers in general come ask me. I don’t know everything, but I do know where to find the answer to almost everything. So tonight in a brilliant show of just how smart a guy I am, I sent out a change of email address via email to everyone in my address book, nearly 200 folks, and gave the wrong suffix on the email addy. I had dot com instead of dot net. So all 200-ish people got 2 emails from Mr. Smart Guy tonight.

Windshield Wipers II

Why is it that when you finally get some new wiper blades, it stops raining? It is Sunday in South Carolina and because of the archaic blue laws you can’t open stores until after 1:30 in the afternoon. So I can’t get any new windshield wipers until we get back home to Aiken and by then the rain had quit. Oh, well, it is supposed to rain on Wednesday, so I’ll get to use them then.

Windshield Wipers

Why is it that you find out you need new windshield wipers just when you need them the most? Coming back from dinner tonight at the River’s End at the Nantahala Outdoor Center it was raining hard and it was dark and the road was twisty and oncoming traffic and the wipers were more smearing the water than wiping it off. White knuckle drive.

Hotel Curtains

Why is it that hotel/motel curtains don’t close all the way? There is always an annoying gap between the left and right sides. To make matters worse there is usually a nighttime security light just outside that paints a bright streak of light across the bed. Donna & I always carry our own Speakman showerhead with us because of the notoriously light mist available from the water-saver showerheads that everyone is using. We should start to carry a couple of those giant spring clips for curtain securing too.

Damn, It Happened Again!

Had the perfect rant this morning. Told myself I should write it down so I wouldn’t forget. Another faction of my rapidly dwindling grey matter said, “Nah, this one’s so good you will remember it.” Wrong.

Off for a weekend of fun and frolic in the twisties of western NC. See you Sunday.