Rants

Horsman Island

Horsman IslandOur friend Jerry Horsman, who we rented the condo from, wanted to take us out on his “boat.” The word boat is in quotes because it is kind of a personal watercraft. What ever you classify it as, it is fast. It is a Sea-Doo Speedster, 220 HP attached to a 16′ fiberglass hull, that really flies (top speed is 55MPH.) We had a lot of fun zipping around the inlets, rivers and shorelines of Hilton Head Island.

We got an unscheduled tour of Horsman Island #2 when Jerry forgot about the fast approaching low tide. We spent a pleasant 2 hours watching the crabs, seagulls and pelicans until the water got up to about 2 feet deep and we could get back underway. It is called Horsman Island #2 because just two weeks ago he pulled the same stunt with his wife in the boat in another location.

Bone Collectors

On our morning walk on the beach we encountered an awful lot of folks bent at the waist digging in and/or poking around the sand. They were picking up shells, gathering the exoskeletons of deceased mollusks. Bone collecting.

Another random beach walking thought: Is it just me or after seeing Jurassic Park III do all pelicans in flight look like pterodactyls or what?

Oowww!

While eating my breakfast cereal this morning I noticed some pain when chewing on the back left. There was also sensitivity to the cold milk.

At 8:30 when the dentist’s office opened for business I gave them a call to see if they could squeeze me in. No problem the receptionist said, come on down. When I got there, I was called right back to the drill and fill office and settled into the chair by Jane the dentist’s assistant. Seems Dr. Boykin is on vacation this week so it was easy to get in, because there were no patients around. Jane took an x-ray and while we waited for it to develop, she took some pictures with this fancy gizmo from Sony. She held my mouth open with one hand and guided the camera into position by watching the monitor. This left no hands free to click on the take picture button on the remote. She handed it to me and told me to click the button when she said so.

When the doctor gets back next week he’ll check it out and make some recommendations. The least of which Jane says will be a crown. Yikes, there goes several hundred dollars. To add insult to financial injury, Jane tells me, “Not to worry, cracked teeth like that are common in men my age and easily fixable.” *my age, sigh*

The Return Of Procrastination Man

I will be on vacation next week and away from the PC so there will be no blogging, but more importantly it is the week I would normally be doing the Master’s Miata Club’s newsletter. That means that I need to do it this week, because I have to mail out the newsletter with the October meeting location before I go away. Because when I get back it will be too late. I should mail it out no later than Friday, which means I had better get busy, but instead I sit here blogging and reading other blogs. I’ll probably go ahead and update the Club’s web page with photos from this weekend’s event while I’m in full delay mode. No sense hurrying when I’ll have all day Thursday to do it. 🙂

Word Scambler Thing

Sitll oeinptarg on the psot-gap ehpuoira.

Ntohnig btroehed me at all tdaoy. Eevn wehn my bsos ddeeicd taht I sulohd go aeahd and snped the day rintceearg a carht for an oictapl cpaotmraor ienstad of sennpidg $100 and buy a new one. Deosn’t he rebmeemr waht my hluory rtae is? The one I mkae wlil look etlaxcy lkie the pchrasued one, but wlil lsat nworhee naer as lnog. Mnie wlil be pretnid on a lewor qliauty flim on our ikenjt ptletor as oposped to the myalr wtih watreoporf ink and pttoirecve flim of the psorislfanoely preducod one.

Wrod Sbmelcrar Tnhig

Oreo Quality Control

My snack for the week was Oreo cookies, Double Delight OREO Coffee and Cream to be exact. My wife packs 5 in a plastic sandwich bag for me to enjoy at my morning break. In each of the last 4 days there has been one cookie in my bag that has had one of the chocolate wafers on upside down, that is a smooth side is showing and the imprinted side is towards the filling. For some reason I don’t remember this little non-conformance occurring with such regularity.

I’m sure in the beginning these defective cookies were destroyed. Then, as with the rest of manufacturing America, cost became more important than quality. Slowly things migrated from throwing them away, to giving them to charities to allowing a certain percentage to make into consumer packages. Now with each passing quarter the total of non-conforming cookies allowed has been increased.

Soon somewhere in the corporate halls of Nabisco a decision will be made to eliminate the embossing of the words OREO and the Nabisco logo altogether. It will be cheaper all around and then it won’t matter at all which way the cookies come together. To keep the identity they will have to spray the likeness of these logos on with some food dye or something.

Oh, and they will call it “New and Improved” too.

Comment Spam

We get annoying phone calls selling us stuff we don’t want. We get regular mail flyers full of stuff we don’t want. We get tons of spam emails for stuff we don’t want.

I got hit with a new one yesterday and until someone comes up with a clever word for this, I’ll call it Comment Spam.

It wasn’t random at all. If you search my rant site for the word cholesterol you get one hit, it’s in the post they left the comment on. Notice that I had accidentally mis-spelled cholesterol. If you search for the correct spelling, there are no hits. in the comment spam they too spell cholesterol wrong, with an “al” on the end. I never get a link or even the name of the supplement, so was this a random act of a random person who stumbled on my site?