Another Opinion Among Many

So, you have been granted Power of Attorney over someone’s affairs or named as Executor of an Estate.  Why is it that you think that everybody that you call on the phone will magically know this? Why do you get all excited and in a huff when its pointed out that you will have to send that document to the company that you’re trying to do stuff with? I mean, really! What makes you think that any company would release private information to you without proof that they could do so?

Relax! Don’t let anyone pee in your corn fklakes any more.  Take a moment and give your head a shake.  When you’re politely provided with a reasonable solution for your unreasonable demand, just take the advise and DO IT.  Your stomach will thank you and the antacid companies can relax their production lines a bit.

We know that its likely an emotional time for you.  That is why you’ll always be provided a solution to your problem.  Sorry for your troubles, but remember…we’;ll protect your information just as vigilantly.

I was reviewing a few of the spam comments that Akismet caught but insisted that I read before discarding.  Here are three:

“David”, from IP address sixty-six dot seventy-nine dot one sixty-three dot one eighty-seven wrote -

 I like your stuff, even though i came here by accident!

“Eric”, from IP address seventy-two dot two fourty-nine dot thirt-two dot one eighty-four wrote -

 To all the uninitiated out there - read this and take heed. This is good stuff. Thanks….

“Jessica” from IP address sixty-six dot seventy-nine dot one sixty-three dot one seventy-nine (David’s next door neighbor?) wrote -

 I came here by accident, but like it

Its so nice to know that you’re appreciated! Thanks, random robots! I feel much better knowing that my writing is feeding your souls.  Its been fun, but scram, now.

I have to agree with Eric, though.

I bought a prepaid long distance phone card on Friday, October 5, 2007.  You’ll notice that today is October 31 of the same year.  The card came from a company called Smartel.  I usually buy this type of card when I travel, as I don’t have a cell phone and its the cheapest way to make calls from a payphone, usually.  Normally, I had gotten a $10 card from my local gas station, which would usually net me 15-20 reasonably long calls.

This $5 card got me one 3 minute call! Why? I called the toll free number on the back of the card when the system advised me that my account had no money (and told me to call customer service).  It turns out that my “account” had $4.10 in maintenance fees.  I found out that a domestic call costs me $0.39 if I use the toll free access number (which I did since there was no local access number) and $0.30 per day after the first call was placed, which was explained by the call center rep that it covered the cost of running the call center!  The card did not come with this rate related information attached to it, so I advise that if there’s no fine print, then they’re hiding something!

So, now I have to try and make my call from home, during business hours.   If I’d have only plugged quarters into the payphone…

Here I go reinstalling Windows XP on my other computer for the second time in as many months. I don’t think that this “upgrade” is going to work, but I have to try to get it to pull out of super slug mode and accept the drivers for my printer that had been working fine up until last week. What a pain!

And, its not like an install of Mepis or Linspire, where you have about a 10-15 minute install and your hard drive’s full of goodies. My well-known components will require drivers installed to work properly because the support won’t be there “out of the box”. Oh well. At least its not ‘98 or BeOS.

Update

I’ve not been successful in doing an “upgrade” so a chkdsk and a few corrupted file later, I think that I might have something that’s workable. We’ll see. At least I got the printer/scanner working. That’s a start.

Update

Rebooting causes changes to the video driver to be lost.  Since there’s no easy configuration file to edit, it sure looks like a reinstall of the OS.  Lovely.

So, I’ve had words with my stoner jerk neighbor for the second time in a week. He seems to dislike the neighborhood kids and, since mine live next door, he seems to have the biggest problem with them. We lived side by side for a year without exchanging a word. Now, he’s a grouchy bastard every time he smokes up. I tried to talk to the guy to ask him to just take it easy and not be such a prick when the kids come around our area, but it was no use, as he was too much of a chicken to actually have a conversation. I didn’t think that I’d come across another such gutless mouth off in my life time as one fellow that I met about 6 or 7 years ago. But, they seem to be around here and there.

There’s no use for you to totally “run away” from a verbal communication by going out of your way to avoid eye contact and begin walking away when someone (who you’ve never really even spoken to) wants to discuss something with you in an adult manner. But, “good neighbor” can’t seem to do that, I guess. I think that part of it is because he’s too stoned to coherently put together one word, let alone a whole sentence, but still!

Its frustrating, to say the least. All I want is to actually have one exchange of words that gets the understanding across that, “We don’t ever have to talk again, but please stop giving me dirty looks, you jerk.” I hope that, although he refused to participate in the conversation (making it seem like a monologue), that somewhere in his fried little brain perhaps we can go back to just not talking. The whole thing sucks.

…unless you drive a gas-guzzling 4-wheeled vehicle.  You can’t go through the late night drive through if you have an environmentally friendly bicycle - at least that’s the story tonight at the North Side Fredericton location.  BTW, dude who works there, if you get fired because you’re intolerant, then get another shitty job - you deserve to get canned for such  an irresponsible environmental attitude.

Our poor cat got the scratchies. Yes, we have fleas, or had (the adults, anyhow). I’m not sure where they came from, since she has been an indoor cat all along. One of us must have brought in one some how. Neither here, nor there, our poor feline has been afflicted and its not a nice scene. I tried a flea collar, as that’s what we always used at home. What a waste. I think that the fleas laugh at these things. So, I got some Sergeant’s Flea and Tick spray for cats. One application, according to the directions, and she didn’t have any more fleas hopping off her or hopping back on. So, I hope that this stuff will work. We’ll have to do the apartment, of course. We don’t want any of those tenacious bastards to resurface alive.