Patrick’s Rants

I hate stupid songs. Irreplaceable, by Beyonce is stupid. She’s kicking out her boyfriend or whatever and sings,

standing in the front yard, telling me
how I’m such a fool, talking ’bout
how I’ll never ever find a man like you

you got me twisted

you must not know ’bout me
you must not know ’bout me
I could have another you in a minute
matter fact, he’ll be here in a minute (baby)

Ok. Here’s the stupid part. If he’s such a dog and such a lowlife and not worth being in a relationship with why is the same kind of guy already on his way over? Hurry up and leave, loser, your replacement loser is on his way over. Who’s the loser here?

Man sues 1-800-Flowers for ruining his marriage by revealing affair. Ok. This has got to be one of the stupider stories today. It goes something like this: woman files for divorce, man decides to see someone else and sends her flowers and a teddy bear, man reconciles with estranged wife, estranged wife receives thank you card from 1-800-Flowers, reconciled wife boots his ass to the curb - again.

Here’s where it gets stupid. His estranged wife is now asking for more alimony, more child support, etc. Man sues 1-800-Flowers.

First of all, his wife filed for divorce. She filed for divorce, meaning she didn’t to be married to him anymore. Can she be surprised that he sought the company of another woman? No. If she is, she’s stupid. Men aren’t that nebulous, really.

Second, why in the hell did he give his home address to 1-800-Flowers? If he was getting divorced, he needed his own place. Stupid, times two. IF he was expecting to get back together with his soon-to-be ex-wife, then he should have kept it in his pants. Period. I’ll repeat it for the cheap seats, I know sometimes you can’t hear me up there. If you are separated from your wife and you expect to be getting back together with her, keep it zipped up.

Third, she booted him out and expected him to remain faithful? I mean, she basically said, “you’re outta here” and she’s faulting him for what he did after she said, “see ya”. I hope he has a decent lawyer - then again, he’s suing 1-800-Flowers for a standard business practice.

Fourth, he’s suing 1-800-Flowers for a standard business practice. It goes something like this:

Wife: “What the heck are these charges?”
Flowers: “Yes ma’am, here is the receipt.”

In this day and age of identity theft and credit card fraud it would seem that 1-800-Flowers did the right thing by verifying charges. That’s what I would expect them to do if I questioned a charge.

Wife: “Oh no he dient!”

So. If there is any justice in the world here is what will happen: they end up on Judge Joe Brown, who’ll tell them to TCB - Take Care of Business - and dismiss the case.

Of course, justice is hard to find so he’ll just have to sue himself for negligent stupidity and tie up his assets for the judgment.

I wonder if this will warrant a new category… this email is for term life insurance.

Subject: Cold hand of Death approaching?

I’m researching hot swap drive trays… I found a site called “The Tray Man” through Google. I like to use this browser called “Firefox” and use this thing called a “mouse” to right click on links so I can open them in this novel thing called a “tab”. That way I can be looking at many different items in multiple tabs. It means I can navigate a site the way I want to. It also means that I can save multiple pages as “bookmarks” and I can open the pages all at once if I want to.

Well “The Tray Man” has a Javascript feature that “disables” right click with a popup box that states:

“Protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. No part of this site may be duplicated. Thank you. The Tray Man”

Go ahead try right clicking on this page. Too bad. I probably won’t buy from these guys since there’s an assumption of guilt cause I know how to use my “mouse”. And yes, I’m being really condescending and yes it is my opinion that this behavior is really stupid. I mean, do you really have people trying to “steal” images of hard drive trays that they can get from the manufacturer?

Jake had a post once upon a time (I can’t find it now, though) about some bozo rifling through his car while it sat in his driveway. I recently had the same thing happen. My wife heard a car door close and the motion detector light came on the other night. She tried to look out the window to see what was going on. We have cars all around so a door closing is not terribly noteworthy. This time my insurance cards were taken out of the folder they were in, three CDs were taken from my center console and the hood was popped. Luckily only one CD was an original, the other two were copies of CDs that I legally own. Interestingly enough, having CDs without a valid ownership right under copyright law probably carries a stiffer fine than finding out that I left my car door unlocked.

How do you make a cost effective backup and disaster recovery system? By doing shared backups.

I can’t help it. It’s like a puss filled wound. You know what’s underneath the slightly spongy scab, but there is a morbid fascination with peeling it back, squeezing just a little to see whether it really is as disgusting as you think it is: greenish-yellow fluid with the consistency of really runny oatmeal. That’s how it is for me and Arul Casmael and his cult. I can’t help it really.

As you will recall, he stated on MySpace,

“I used to work a corporate job, but then I got laid off and realised there are more important things in life than pleasing the monster of the system.”

At the time I merely noted that the story isn’t that “simple”, but as I think about it I have to wonder if he really doesn’t want to please the corporate monster.

I mean, he kept his car, his crappy mobile home and all his other corporate products. If you want to stop supporting the corporate monster you have to give up your car, your house, your clothes, move into the woods and go naked. If you keep your house and your car and your clothes and shop in stores you will continue to use gasoline from the corporate monster, electricity from the corporate monster, water from the corporate monster, etc. To truly get away from anything corporate, you must shun everything, buy a couple of goats that your neighbors pay you to bring around for weed removal, ride a horse and live in a tent made from buffalo skins and hemp twine. Hopefully you didn’t shoot the buffalo with a (corporate) manufactured gun. You must get all your energy from plants, you can’t buy a wind generator or solar panels - they are all made by corporations. So good luck with all that….

PS - I just found out that he moved to Phoenix (or at least claims to have posting on a corporately owned server using a computer manufactured by a corporation). It must be so he can get away from all the corporations.

I used to read a certain blog on a regular basis. I could visit and find an array of writing, photography and art. The writer is an accomplished artist and a talented writer. Like any blog, including mine, it’s had its ebbs and flows but even through the many changes over the last year I have enjoyed visiting and reading. I logged in recently to check out the latest updates to find that it’s closed.

Normally I wouldn’t bother taking note, but I feel a sense of sadness at the passing. A kindred blogger whose site I stumbled upon completely by accident is now gone. One whom I would probably never meet, but who made me smile, laugh and nod my head in agreement just the same. The pool of light in this sometimes dark medium of the internet has been turned off.

I can only hope that this means that the demons the writer had been wrestling with have been tamed; that the creative expressions have done their cleansing and that life is now the calm after the storm for the writer. And that the artistic expressions continue even though I am no longer able to enjoy them. No need to mention names in this anonymous medium, but you know who you are if you still visit, I wish you peace.

Today’s story is an almost verbatim copy of The Cat Came Back with the exception of it being almost a month later in the year. This time the danged cat took off the last week of June.

MyFICO sponsors a forum with many knowledgeable contributors. A great starting place for those with bad credit wanting to get it cleaned up is Credit Scoring 101