Patrick’s Rants

If Jack helped you off
your horse
would you
help Jack off
his?

We watched Steve Martin in Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and The Pink Panther over this week.

In Cheaper by the Dozen 2 the Baker family heads back to the lake to spend one last Labor Day together before the family completely disperses. Lake vacations are full of competition with the Murtaughs, a family of eight that manages to outdo the Bakers at nearly every turn. Eugene Levy plays Jimmy Murtaugh, an overachieving childhood friend of Tom Baker, played by Steve Martin. Baker manages to keep his family in the Labor Day Games at the lake although not entirely on his own. The family schemes and plots behind his back to spend time with the Murtaughs - and who wouldn’t want to? Jimmy is showy and clearly successful and he never hesitates remind Tom of that.

In the end, the families have to decide what is more important; taking care of themselves and family or winning the Cup. A great little family movie that manages to take 20 people and not destroy everything around them in the process.

Martin also plays Jaques Clouseau in the remake of The Pink Panther. Instead of starting the movie right away wait for the menu scenes to play through. It is a funny, entertaining cartoon that uses the cartoon characters that I remember from childhood. Other reviewers might compare Martin’s portrayal to that of Peter Sellers, but I thankfully do not have the prejudice of those prior movies.

Clouseau is a bumbler who has managed to never get promoted above officer until he is brought in to take the heat media heat while Chief Insp. Dreyfus, played by Kevin Klein, quietly solves the high profile murder and theft of the infamous Pink Panther diamond. He manages to fumble his way through the clues, zipping around in his “Smart Car” to Pink Panther theme music - a catchy tune with a great underlying beat - and even flying to the US to follow his prime suspect. Clouseau doesn’t have the clout to get first class on the flight and one wonders how many Airplane movies the director watched before sending him to the back of the plane.

Both movies were what one would expect from Martin. If you don’t like him, you probably won’t like these movies. If you do like him grab them up.

In an article boasting a “wonderful tribute” to Chase Bank, I describe the company name as what they do to customers. In another, I describe the Universal Default rules and how Chase Bank charges interest nearly the same as the minimum payment when they up your interest to nearly 30%.

Now I want to tell you a little story. My wife has a Chase Credit Card account. My mother-in-law has at least one Chase card as well as savings and checking accounts that came from the purchased Bank One (my wife is a signer on the accounts).

Both my wife and my mother-in-law experienced the Universal Default having their interest rates skyrocket to nearly 30%. Both my wife and mother-in-law have good, if not excellent, credit ratings.

Because the extremely high interest rates were nearly choking us, my wife called Chase to see about getting her interest rate lowered. She talked to someone who seemed to be fairly knowlegable who indicated that it would be in her best interest to wait until the “new offerings” were available - presumably there were not only going to be better rates, but better accounts over all. My wife decided to wait. When she called back, she was told they would not be offering her any lower rates. She asked to speak to a supervisor and was told that she could not. The “customer service” represenative simply would not allow her to talk to a supervisor. When she asked why not, she was told that she could not talk to a supervisor or get her interest rate lowered because of derogatory credit information received from (I believe) Experian. She couldn’t even talk to a supervisor! My wife was, needless to say, extremely upset.
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I previously posted about my (wife’s) cats. What I haven’t posted is that about five weeks ago the older cat jumped out the window of our second story apartment, jumped to the next building over and climbed down a tree. I only assume this is how he did it because it would be far more difficult to get to the tree from the roof of our building. He could also have convinced some human to help him down or jumped down onto a truck parked close the the building next door. I’m not really sure how he did it but he did.

That was five weeks ago. The Humane Society has no record of him being there. Our kids think that they have seen him running around the neighborhood. A day or so ago I thought I heard him outside and went to look out the door. As soon as the door opened though, whichever cat it was ran off down the alley. This morning, sometime around 4 am, my wife was woken up by meowing outside our window. Thinking it was him, she went downstairs and opened the door quietly and slowly. She called out to him and he came right inside. He has since been growling at the other cat (who didn’t run off), rubbing and loving against all of us humans and stopping by the food dish - water he drinks out of whatever cup he can find.

Kinda reminds me of that song.

There are reclosable bags on just about anything that you might want to buy these days. You can get cheese with reclosable bags, deli meats with their own stay fresh seal, and lots of other food type products.

When I needed more socks my wife purchased a package and brought it home. I didn’t look at it right away, but when I did I noticed that I too came with a resealable bag. I’m not sure, but it could be so that when I take a pair out I can reseal it and the remaining pairs would stay fresh. There are of course other explainations:

1. People continue using the high quality bags to store their socks
2. If you only want to buy one pair, open the bag and leave the rest in the store
3. If you need to return them to the store, they will still be in their “stay fresh” packaging

A man was arrested for sitting in front of a coffee shop using their wireless internet access. The police aren’t sure if he broke any laws¹… although “trespass after warning” might fit if he was physically on private property. The biggest problem with this story is that the coffee shop offered free wireless access to people in the shop without using any methods to limit the access to those in the shop - such as a random password, security keys that changed periodically or other method. The network was just as open to this guy sitting in his truck as it was to someone sipping away at their latté. If they didn’t want him accessing the network they could have made some simple changes to their access point and he would have found a different shop to sit in front of.

1. Don’t let the fact that he is a registered sex offender cloud your judgement - it’s not an issue
2. Original Story

A fireman has the right hose to put out the fire in the bush

Or something like that….
Update 6/23/06

Firemen have the right hose control to take care of the fire in the bush

Let me just drop everything and work on your problem

You looked better on MySpace

I was walking out of the Post Office earlier and this guy was walking in. In his hand a cell phone - set to speaker. I really don’t want to hear you talking on the phone, let alone the other end of your boring conversation. How ’bout just hanging the danged thing up?

While I’m at it, here are the other places I don’t want to hear you on your phone:

When I’m out to dinner

If it’s that important, excuse yourself from the table - keep going til you’re completely out of my sight - and out of hearing range

Driving

I know this one is tough since we all seem to need to talk on the phone - worse is when you are using your speaker phone and stare at the phone as if it’s going to do something Trust me, your phone isn’t that cool all it’s going to do is get you in a wreck - and that’s in front of you.

Standing in line at the Post Office:

So yeah, Jerry what we really need to do is - hang on a sec… yeah gimme a roll of flag stamps… Yeah Jerry, what we need to do… no just the roll of stamps… cash… Jerry, what we need to do…

At the grocery store

Hi mom, yeah I heard about Aunt Gertrudes goiter…. do you mind? I’m on the phone here!

And all that goes triple if you happen to be related to me. (more…)