Patrick’s Rants

I was going to upgrade this server with a machine that I have sitting at the house. The new machine is a 933mhz, 128mb RAM machine with dual scsi drives - mirrored. This old one is a 400mhz with 128mb RAM. I was also going to move the drives from this machine to the new machine and increase the hard drive space - not that I’m running out of space or anything, these drives have everything on them.

Unfortunately, when I tried to check my email Sunday morning on my own machine, I got a frozen screen. Nothing moved on the desktop no matter what I tried. I decided to hit the power button to see what happened. The machine didn’t boot at all. I just got a black screen and none of the familiar beeps that one gets when booting up. (more…)

I’m not entirely sure why, but that seems to be my latest focus, “simplify”. The more complex we try to make our lives, the more stress we bring upon ourselves. I’m tired of the stress though.

I recently decided to stop selling securities (mutual funds). Just watching all the commercials on TV tells me that this industry is ready to implode - again. There is industry consolidation and name changes. Look at “Ameriprise”, I’m pretty sure they used to be known as “American Express”. There is a quote that goes something like, “I know it’s time to sell my holdings of (whatever stock) when the shoe shine kid tells me it’s a hot buy.” It’s also time to get out of a business when too many people are getting into it… such as investments or real estate. Not only does it make the business seem more sleazy, but it makes it harder for people to find a decent broker. And when more people are jumping in, more of the public gets burned and the NASD comes up with more rules… and the Broker/Dealer gets stricter on the independent dealers… and I’m just not a salesman. So add all that onto a smallish “book” and it’s not worth the hassle. Simplify.

The Sonic Loser Couple has gotten a little better lately. Try as I might I can’t completely hate them as I used to, although I’m still not sure how these two could be a real couple.

I like a few of the latest. She says, “There isn’t anything that I love more than the Sonic BLT.”

“Honey, I’m your husband. Think about what you are saying. What does a BLT have that I don’t have?”

She sits in thoughtful silence, then answers, “Bacon.”

In another he asks her what he’s thinking - the reply, “How many tater tots can I fit in my mouth without someone saying something.”

Not too bad from the writers.

The Museum Club had a sign that I hope was a mistake:

Ladies night 2 for 1 dinks

Crazy Bill’s latest signs… some of which require careful thought and then just closing your mouth.

How to get
tight pants
off

Buy her a few drinks

So are they calling her “tight pants” or just her clothes?

Friends don’t let friends drink alone

And some other recent ones

Ouch !
KY
Needed to buy gas

Gas prices too high?
Bend over we’ll drive you home

My wife and youngest daughter were walking through Walmart getting the essentials that we need regularly: soap, shampoo, etc. When my daughter asked my wife what else we needed my wife told her toothpaste. My daughter’s response was, “don’t get one of the squeezed up ones.”

Man… it’s not often that I’m so fired up that I have to blog it, but today I am. On Friday I went on a trip, driving a bus to Prescott for a group of band kids. The trip was overnight ending late Saturday night. As luck would have it there was another driver finishing up washing a bus that night at 10pm who saw us park without washing and came over to question us about it. I won’t go over the entire conversation except to note that I was told that I had to clean the bus the same night. As a licensed commercial driver (CDL) I am limited to the number of hours I can work - if caught working more than than 15 hours I lose my license for 180 days. That’s six months. Since I was at 15 hours that day I parked the bus after fueling it up. The other driver that went with me did the same.

My plan was to return the following day - Sunday - bringing my in trouble daughters to help clean. True to my plan I did return on Sunday, girls in tow. While I cleaned the outside of the bus they cleaned inside: sweeping, wiping down the dash and the seats, even the rail that sits above the windows. The girls were a little slow at the sweeping so I ran over it again myself. After the bus was swept twice I mopped the entire bus. I even had the oldest of the two climb into the luggage compartment to chase down errant water bottles. When I reparked the bus I realized that the inside of the windows really needed to be cleaned and we did so.

I left the bus sparkling clean - or so I thought.
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Julianne Moore plays Evelyn Ryan, a mother of ten who does everything in her power to keep a roof over her kids’ heads by entering contests and writing jingles for commercials. Set in the late 1950s through 1960s, this story is based on the true life struggles of Evelyn who manages to stave off hunger, eviction, the milkman’s bill and even foreclosure by writing clever jingles in a pasttime called “contesting” where thousands upon thousands of individuals - mostly women - became poorly paid telecommuters helping to create ads and catchy slogans for national companies before telecommuting was even a term. (more…)

By reading this shirt you have temporarily given me control of your mind.

And I guess that is pretty true.