Rants

Its Finished

Got done reading book #11, Valediction, this evening, thereby completing my quest to read every one of Robert Parker’s Spenser novels. I’ve got all 34 books on a shelf and maybe in a couple years I’ll read them through in order, instead of randomly like this time. It was never required, but it might make some of the references fit together better.

This book didn’t have any crime buster secrets, but it did have one of Spenser’s Laws of Dining:

In high restaurants the food never lives up to the view.

The second to last book I read, A Savage Place, did have a Dick Tracy Crime-Stopper reference:

I had a full file of Dick Tracy crime-stoppers at home, but none of them that I could remember covered this. What would Allan Pinkerton do? What would I tell the Bel-Air Patrol if they put the arm on me here in the bushes? My palms felt a little sweaty. I squinted a little to blur things and took a quick peek. They were still at it. Private eye was one thing, Peeping Tom was another. I headed for the car.

Seeing as no specific rule is mentioned it didn’t make the cut.

In case you missed it the FRS didn’t lose to the Indians in game seven of the ALCS, like I expected, so they are on to the World Series (or more appropriately the MLB Championship Series.) They now get the privilege of playing the Colorado Rockies of the National League who have won 20 of their last 21 games and swept through both of their playoffs series. I hope Mark is right in that if the Rockies ever lose one, they’ll collapse and not win another until next year some time and that the FRS can win the first game on Wednesday to start that slide.

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Hoodwinked

Which according to dictionary.com means – To take in by deceptive means; deceive.

The movie was listed over in my Netflix rental queue in the sidebar for about a week before it came my way. While it sat there, why didn’t one of you warn me that “Hoodwinked” was a stupid movie? Nobody has seen it yet? Or were you fooled into watching it and because you suffered through it felt I should too? We only made it 7 minutes in before we hit the eject button.

The animation looked liked a Nickelodeon show, so maybe the kiddies liked it, but we felt it off putting. Mostly though the cops talked too fast so we never got a hold on what was happening. Back in the envelope it went. My only regret is, because of the baseball playoffs, it sat on the coffee table a long time just wasting movie rental opportunities.

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Isn’t That Special?

At work there are 4 of us in the “Car Guys” group. We each subscribe to a car magazine and then pass it around among us. Thank goodness the magazine people don’t have a RIAA like group looking out after them, we’d be in trouble.

Today the latest Motor Trend was sitting on my desk. You couldn’t see the cover because of the card stock overwrap announcing your chance to get two subscriptions for the price of one, your renewal and a gift subscription for someone, just in time for the holidays.

The tear out card has the current subscribers name already on it, it served as the mailing label, so all you have to do is fill out the blanks for your friend and send it back, just check the box marked bill me later. To the left of the address area is the text reading, “Yes, I accept! Extend my subscription for 1 year (12 issues) at the preferred subscriber rate of only $20 and enter my 1-year gift subscription to the person listed above – that’s two subscriptions for the price of one!”

Sounds great, until you realized that you can subscribe to Motor Trend for $10 a year from a bunch of places, including the Motor Trend site itself…

I wonder what their non-preferred rate is?

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The Speed Of Light Is Much Faster Than The Speed Of Sound

LightI know the post season starts tomorrow, but tonight it just seems so over, there is no baseball game on the radio. Practically every night for the last six months I’ve sat in front of my PC and wasted several hours mucking about and listening to the FRS on WEEI and I miss it already.

Now the playoffs begin, with all the games on TV and I’ll feel compelled to watch, even though I will more than likely cringe at listening to the monkeys in the booth fill every second of air with truly inane stats and statements. I would much rather listen to the radio announcers call the game and watch the TV pictures, but that is impossible to take because of the time difference. There is a 5 or so second delay between the TV pictures and the radio sound (I have no clue as to what the reason for this delay is) and it made me crazy the one time I tried it.

Oooooh, I wonder if you had TIVO and hit pause until the radio sound caught up to the TV, then restarted the video?

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Lovers Lane

Lovers LaneGnorm went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods with us today (some peektures) It was another beautiful fall day, almost a carbon copy of yesterday; cool, crisp with the very definition of blue sky overhead. It was great to get out and take a hike. Because we got a late (for us) start we had to share the woods with dog walkers, runners (Hi Anne) and horseback riders. We probably saw 10 people! Donna and I took Gnorm down our favorite trail, but it just made him sad because his new girlfriend from yesterday wasn’t with him.

At the end of last week, every time I came home from work the internet connection was down. I would have to reboot the modem, and sometimes the router too, a couple/few of times to get it stable. Yesterday it was fine, but today as I prepared to listen to the FRS‘s last game of the season, it just wouldn’t work no matter how many times I rebooted everything. I ended up on the back porch with the laptop and took a ride on the internet on a neighbor’s dime. Someone close by has an unsecured WAP… After on more reboot of everything, including the PC, I now have internet on the desktop. I can connect to my wireless network with the laptop, but I cannot see the desktop nor the internet. Plus I can no longer get the router’s admin panel from the desktop even after resetting the router. Fixing that will be a job for tomorrow after work.

The Emperor got a bath this afternoon and had the royal scary dentures installed. They will add a little spice to some of the October Post Office photos.

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Somebody Has Paid Somebody Off

When I first started dealing with GERD a couple years ago I was prescribed Nexium by he ENT specialist. It was on the non-preferred list of drugs and carried a much higher co-pay ($50 or 25% of cost.) I used it for about three months until my sore throat cleared and then I started using an OTC antacid. Pecid, for maintenance.

This worked good for a while, but the sore throat returned and my GP doctor wrote a prescription for Nexium. After he first month, my insurance administrator company (BCBS of AL) balked, they wanted me to step up to Nexium if this was to be a maintenance drug. I needed to start with a generic or preferred, we went with Protonix off the preferred list for a $25 a month co-pay.

The Protonix has worked out fine for the last year or so. The other day I got a letter in the mail telling me that starting October 1st, Protonix is being bumped to the non-preferred list, meaning a bigger co-pay. Guess what is replacing it on the preferred list? Nexium.

For grins I called my pharmacy to see what these medicines cost. They could only tell me list prices; 40mg Nexium is $180 a month, 40mg Protonix is $150 a month. The generic, omeprazole (AKA Prilosec) in a 20mg dose costs $110 a month and if I needed 40mg that would double to $220. Seems kind of backwards to me, the non-preferred drug is now the cheapest while the generic is he most expensive.

And just is what’s up with the generic, omeprazole, at $110 a month? You can get Prilosec OTC for less than $20 a month at the local drug store….

I know these costs don’t really accurately reflect he price of these drugs because the discounts negotiated by Blue Cross Blue Shield. The pharmacist told me to call BCBS to find out the real cost, but I didn’t feel like dealing with that today (maybe tomorrow.)

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You Can Dance If You Want To, But I Don’t Have To Watch

Because the FRS have the evening off I had nothing better to do than watch a little tube. We started to watch Fever Pitch and made it a whole 34 minutes before shutting it off. Part of the problem was the whole language problem you see, it was not the Drew Barymore / Jimmy Fallon American version, but the original British movie. Maybe if they had American English sub-titles…

From there I started to watch a Law & Order episode that was about 5 minutes in. I had seen it before, but as usual didn’t remember the ending, so I watched it through. Beautiful thing of it is, that in another year or so if I stumble on that episode again, I’ll have forgotten it again, so the ending will be a surprise. Again.

Right after that, TNT segued right into another L & O episode. This one I hadn’t seen, so I watched it for the first time. It started out with a thinly disguised re-hashing of that poor Cubs fan in 2004 who tried to catch a foul ball and was then subsequently blamed for them not making the playoffs. It later turned into a whole corrupt police officer and DNA clearing a wrongly accused murder, yada, yada, yada. Beautiful thing of it is that in another year or so if I stumble on that episode again, I’ll have forgotten it, so the ending will be a surprise. Again.

Two hours of TV was enough, even when it is “good” TV, so I handed the remote to Donna and picked up a book. She started channel checking while I read with one eye and watched the flashing images with my other. She paused on something I didn’t recognize, (The TV listings say it was Supernatural, but I can’t confirm or deny that because I am not familiar with the show.) and I looked up for a second and said that I thought that a couple of the people in it looked familiar. She tired of whatever it was and clicked to the next channel. Two people were salsa dancing? It was Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance? I made a smart aleck crack like, “There’s something I *don’t* want to be familiar with.” She laughed and changed the channel. Wouldn’t you know it but the next channel was PBS and they were showing Live From Lincoln Center : “Mozart Dances” The Mark Morris Dance Group performs… We both looked at each other and thought the same sarcastic thought, only I voiced it, “Now there is something I *want* to be familiar with.”

Next up, was the Weather Channel. There was a meteorologist in a parking lot in San Antonio standing in a dry parking lot waving his hands vaguely stage left telling us how much water used to be there. Riveting. That’s when I left the room.

With apologies to Men Without Hats: We Can’t Dance If We Want To

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