FriendsNews

a family and friends online newsletter

FriendsNews - a family and friends online newsletter

First day of school, I mean, work

Feels like the first day back at school after summer vacation, except in this case it’s not even summer yet and I’ll be starting a new job, not school, today.  I hope it lasts longer than the last few jobs!  I have had a string of incredible bad luck over the past decade through no fault of my own, I swear.  :)

I guess it started with that ladder company job in Smyrna where I was hired as the “network administrator.”  That was cool.  People were nice.  Salary was decent.  The company actually made something rather than just pushed papers.  And I was commuting the opposite way of most traffic.  What’s not to like?  But then they shut that plant down and moved everything to Mexico.  Thank you, NAFTA.

Luckily, I had my “fall-back” job of freelance consulting, dba ComputerHelp!, which I did for a couple years, with sub-contract work thrown in here and there to help pay the bills.  Then I got a job at that limestone mining company in downtown Nashville (their plants were all out of state, throughout the southeast and Texas) as an “application support specialist” – “ASS” for short.  That one lasted over four years until some foreign (Belgian) company swooped in and bought them.  Next thing I know (OK, so it was a year later), my “position was eliminated” by a bunch of bean counters in Brussels.  That was a tough year.

Continue reading →

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Holiday World 2013

I rode a rollercoaster for the first time in I don’t know how long.  It was a blast!  The Raven has been voted “most awesome [or whatever] wooden coaster” several times in the past ten years.  The Voyage, now the reigning champ of wooden coasters, was temporarily unavailable.  Surprisingly, it was good therapy for my back.  When the bottom falls out from under you while the lap bar holds you down it is, in effect, a couple seconds of traction.  It helps stretch out the spine.

I was so proud of myself, I tried to post that to my Facebook status – without the “traction” bit – but FB has been weird on my iPhone ever since the last couple of updates, and the post never went through.  Where did it go?  I clicked Send.  Maybe it posted that to someone else’s status and now all his “friends” are asking what the hell he was doing at Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana when he was supposed to be at the Rotary Club fish fry in Manhattan, Kansas or something.

 

Continue reading →

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Not pulled over

Had a very mundane but realistic, if brief, dream the night before last in which I was pulled over by a traffic cop.  Didn’t think much about it until the next morning when I was going down Antioch Pike to a client’s office.  That particular stretch (as you pass the new(er) sports fields) is infamous as a speed trap.  The speed limit is 35, but there’s really no reason you can’t safely go 45 there as long as there are no kids, which there weren’t.

Anyway, I was going about 45 when some bubba coming the other way in a work truck flashed his headlights at me, the universal warning for “speed trap ahead.”  I slowed down to exactly 35 mph and, sure enough, there were two cops, each with his own radar gun, stepping out into traffic and pulling people over.  They were far enough away that I hadn’t noticed them at all.  Thank you, bubba!


Continue reading →

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Most popular sites

I was looking at my recent poll asking people to choose just one site they couldn’t live without.  It made me wonder what the most popular websites are these days.  Of course, someone’s made a list, here:

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/most-popular-websites

The top two answers in my poll are the top two most visited sites in the world.  So I guess that makes me a legitimate pollster?  :)

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Sprint now allows editing how you appear in Caller ID

This is great.  I think I blogged once (here), complaining that I couldn’t change how my name appears on the receiving end’s caller ID.  It showed my legal name, William, but I wanted it to say Bill.  The foreign girl in Sprint customer support clearly did not understand the concept of “nicknames” and she refused to allow me to change it.  Maybe someone at Sprint read my blog post?  Probably not.

Anyway, they now let you do it yourself online.  Just sign in and go to this page, https://mysprint.sprint.com/mysprint/pages/secure/myaccount/landingPage.jsp.  You should see it under About My Devices under your type of phone, looking like this:

Caller ID name is set to [WHATEVER]

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Cinco de Mayo

It’s Cinco de Mayo, so we tried Moe’s Southwest Grill.  After ten minutes with very little movement (the line was so long), we left.  Next we tried Las Palmas, a very good local chain.   Same problem there.  We didn’t even bother standing in line.

Now we’re at Taco Bell.  No lines! … and apparently, no service, either.  After placing our order and sitting down, they forgot about us even though there was no one else here!  Crappy food and crappy service.  Tara texted, “Even McDonald’s would have been better!”

So they comp’d us dessert.  But they couldn’t even get that right.  We chose churros but they brought us cinnamon twists instead.  True, they’re pretty much the same thing, it’s just that we asked for one thing and got something slightly different.

Continue reading →

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Derby results

Florida Derby winner Orb won today’s Kentucky Derby in “the slop.”  But you’ve probably already heard/read about it.  My pick, Revolutionary, finished 3rd.  That was better than my picks have done in other years.  It’s a good thing I didn’t places any bets … as usual.  Gambling almost never works for me.  Even when I play the lottery — not often — I am amazed at how “not even close” I get to having the right numbers.

Golden Soul was second.  Normandy Invasion looked like a winner at the top of the stretch, but faded to fourth.  Rosie Napravnik’s horse Mylute, finished fifth.

That’s it for my sports report.  Watch/read your local news for a real report.

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Saved a life today

Probably.  You never know about these things.  Anyway, I had forgotten to buy cat food and that is what allowed me to be there in time to save a life.  Taking my daughter to school this morning, I had to turn south on Nolensville Rd because Old Hickory was backed up.  I was running late, and there’d be no way to make up time taking my usual route.

I cut through the Bradford Hills neighborhood –- they’re having a community yard sale this weekend, by the way – and I was careful to keep at or below the speed limit.  I’ve actually seen old ladies out there in the past, writing down license plates of anyone speeding.  I don’t know if that’s admissible in traffic court, but why take a chance?  Besides, if I lived there I’d appreciate people keeping their speed down, for safety.


Continue reading →

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Blog content

I’m as guilty as anyone about trying to add content to my blog just for the sake of content (because search engines look for and rate highly based, at least in part, on how “fresh” your blog’s content is).  But some people whose blog/newsletter I subscribe to have stooped to simply stating the obvious, maybe phrasing it differently, just to have an “interesting” topic of discussion.  I guess it’s no worse than what politicians and the “news” media do, but I don’t want it in my inbox.

As an example, I received an email newsletter this morning talking about blog stats and how they should be read, and how bloggers just don’t appreciate them as they should.  “Did you know,” the article asks (I’m paraphrasing), “you can virtually enter your readers’ minds through a proper reading of your blog stats?”  Like being a medium, I guess?  Their point was that you can see what people are interested in and, accordingly, write more posts in that vein.  No shit.

Continue reading →

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

A week of testing

Took a test yesterday.  Hope I passed!  New job depends on it!  Hope I did better than the previous day’s job-related test.  That one was on Windows 7 and 2008 techie stuff, and I just haven’t kept up with Win 7, not as a tech, especially in regard to its various corporate scenarios.  The test only served to remind me how tired of being a techie I am.   I don’t even want that job.

I should at least (finally) update my home computers from XP and Vista to Windows 7 (or 8 if they’re up to it).  I used Win 7 at my previous job and liked it.  Windows, that is, not the job.  Never could put my finger on why I hated that last job so much.  Oh right, the constant sucking-up, top-down withholding of critical information — if not outright lying — and back-stabbing.  Sure, that happens in any corporation, but that place was the worst.  I’m just glad it’s in my rear view.

Continue reading →

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Birthday card from Grandpa

Elizabeth received a birthday card from Grandpa today with $20 inside!  She said, “I love your dad!  Tell him thank you very much!  Your dad is rich!  I wouldn’t have thought such an old old person would have so much money!”

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Great suction!

In preparation for the much-anticipated Comcast installation (Internet, not TV), I’m doing as they suggested and clearing out a space where I want them to put the cable wall jack.  Once I have that space cleared, I decide to vacuum the area.  It’s almost an instinctive reaction.  You clear out a space that hasn’t seen the light of day in months, you vacuum that spot while it’s exposed.

As part of this “clearing out,” I disconnect the phone plugged in near there, leaving its cord on the floor.  I did at least kick it underneath the desk, but it’s just sitting there on the floor at this point.

So, I’m happily vacuuming away, thinking happy vacuum-related thoughts, when I come upon that loose phone cord.  Instead of picking it up — as a smarter, less lazy person would have done — I try and just vacuum around it.  And, you guessed it, I came too close, and I’ll be darned if that Dyson vacuum cleaner didn’t suck that cord right up, yanking the phone itself off the desk in the process!  Not only that, it snapped the adapter cord at the base of the AC adapter, so now that is completely useless.

Continue reading →

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.

Dad’s 94th birthday, part 3

Old Sacramento

Once Bijou and her people hooked up with Elizabeth and her people, our first stop was a candy store called Candy Heaven.  As Michael noticed, there’s almost nothing but candy stores there.  And they were making money hand over fist.  Michael was, as usual, smarter and more disciplined than I was, limiting his daughter to just $5 worth.  I think Elizabeth cost me $12 in candy before we got out of there.

When Greg and June joined us, they wanted to stop for ice cream.  Elizabeth got one, too.  Like I’ve said, whatever she wanted, she pretty much got on this trip.  Spoiled, I know, but she was actually very well behaved most of the time, and we were on vacation, so I didn’t mind spoiling her a little.

For dinner, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant across the street from some sports bar.  As we ate, I realized the sports bar across the way was the one in which a couple of innocent men were murdered.  I just happened to read about it online while researching things to do in Sacramento.  Being murdered was not on my list.  What happened was some guy accidentally spilled his beer on a girl.  The girl turned out to be a local gangster’s girlfriend.  An argument broke out, the bouncer stepped in, and at some later point two gangsters shot both the beer-spiller and the bouncer, dead.  The story I’d read was about the conviction of the girlfriend, the one who insisted on the shooting.  For spilling a beer!  Psycho b****!

Anyway, I was in the middle of recounting that story, and had just said the words “…the guy spilled his beer …” when Elizabeth next to me dumped her large raspberry fruit tea onto the floor.  She mostly missed Bijou and herself.  Everyone, Greg especially, was amazed at the timing of it all. Continue reading →

If you liked this post, please Subscribe at the top-right.