Rants

My least favorite thing in the world happened to me this afternoon, after finishing pumping some gas using the debit card, no paper receipt came out. “Receipt Inside,” said the LEDs. Fuck. What made it really bad was I had bought just $2 worth of gas (enough to make it back to Rader with the loaner car.) I trudge into the store and get in line at number 3.

#1 finished quickly, but #2 was not so lucky. The woman in front of me can’t get her pump to work right using her credit card. The LEDs keep saying, “See Cashier” when she scans it. The kid behind the counter has trouble grasping this. Finally she says just run my card for me in here. The kid says, “I can’t prepay with a credit card. Use the pump.” She tells him the pump says see him. He says again I can’t prepay with a card. Finally, she gives up and storms out in disgust.

My turn. “I need a receipt.” “What pump number?” “I dunno, that one.” “OK, 4.” He starts mashing buttons and gets nothing but error beeps it seems. I say, “I got $2 worth.” More beeps. Kid say, “This says $12.25.” “That ain’t mine. Two bucks.” more buttons, more beeps. The cash draw pops open and the register reads, $5.47. He closes the drawer, more buttons more beeps. My turn to give up, I say, “Forget it.”, and walk out.

Of course I catch hell from the wife because of no receipt and then even more grief when she thinks that I’ve been charged $12.25 for two dollars worth of gas – we’ll see.

Tonight was the big “gala” opening of the Drive By Photo Contest and with it the announcement of the winners. Boo-hoo, I didn’t even get an honorable mention. I think that whoever judged the pictures forgot that it was supposed to be a drive by, in your car or within 5 ft of it. There were only maybe 3 or 4 others beside myself where a car is visible.

OK, I’m really kidding, I could tell that neither of my photographs had a chance. The 1st place winner was actually my favorite photo and the others were not bad at all. Here is the entries page, 1st place was the pumpkins.

On our afternoon walk around the parking lot I glanced back at the bright green car and noticed that the front plate (that says “Rader”) was hanging crookedly. Walked back and noticed that one screw was missing and the other was really loose, so I just took the plate off and threw it in the trunk. This gave me an even better idea for when I return the car. Instead of yesterday’s Wabbit Teeth, maybe I’ll just get a dealer plate from the competing Mazda dealer, Andy Jones, and put it in the holder on the front. 🙂

This past Monday, the local paper started reprinting Gary Larson’s The Far Side cartoons. They gave a reason, something like, in honor of a new The Far Side compilation book’s arrival in stores on some date in the future. (Although it seems I may have dreamed this up as a quick search of the internet reveals nothing about this event.) Gary’s cartoons were almost always very funny stuff, with very few clunkers. With the ratio of funny to not funny so high I cannot for the life of me figure out why every one of this weeks cartoons sucked.

On the trip home from work today as I made a 110 degree left-hand turn off the main road the car sort of hiccupped. The power was way down, it ran rough and the torque curve seemed way out of whack. I continued to drive home as it was running and not making any ugly noises.

My semi-informed guess is the timing belt jumped a notch. The car had it’s timing belt changed 13 days ago and has run beautifully until tonight. My first thought is that the belt wasn’t aligned right when they changed it, but made it run correctly by tweaking timing and now it is not right because the belt is aligned properly. Or the belt was right when they completed the job but something has caused it to jump a tooth now, like the tensioner was not tighten down right.

Of course now I will have to convince the dealer that their service department messed up and they should fix it for free. They after all, must offer some sort of warranty on repairs.

Tacos for supper tonight and as I dumped the h’burger meat into the pan to brown it, I noticed an orange warning label.

“Thoroughly cook meat to 165 degrees. Use a meat thermometer.”

I know why this is there, because if you heat the meat to that temperature it will kill the bacteria living there. Didn’t they used to have Steak Tartar on the menus of restaurants? Is the warning label there to alert the one in 10,000 persons who might have a reaction to these bacteria? Or is it the more worrisome reason that the FDA has relaxed their standards at meat processing plants to such that bacteria that will harm everyone getting through?