10/23/2013

Twitter Schmitter

Ha!  I deleted my Twitter account before it was a thing!

Problem is, I can never seem to get on the leading edge of trends that are profitable!

10/18/2013

Blogger now has the "B" to itself

I am glad Bing.com changed their uncial to the folded cardboard with a hovering hawk in the middle.  Now I won't click Bing when I want Blogspot.


















10/13/2013

I am the one who is unreasonable?


  • Cover your mouth when you sneeze. Especially in the produce section.
  • I don't object to your chewing gum.  I object to your doing it with your mouth open.
  • You swing your car to the left, then hit your brakes and veer off into a right turn.  It's like signalling, in a way.  But you could try using your turn signal -- you know, those blinky light things.
  • Yes, I know I am going too slow for you.  That's because this is an off ramp!  There's a 30 MPH curve coming up in less than an eighth of a mile.  Oh, I see you didn't want to exit here!  Bye!
  • If you pick something up in the store and then decide not to buy it, put it back where you got it. Don't just put it up on a random shelf.  Especially if it's perishable!  Or give it to the checkout clerk -- really, they would rather you did.  
  • When you ask me the price and I tell you the price, I am not open to giving you a wholesale price unless you want to talk wholesale quantities.  I don't dicker.  The more you try, the more the price is going to go up.  Where do you think you are, Casablanca?
  • Spray painting other people's property is not art.  It is not Urban Art.  It is not Street Art.  It is vandalism.
  • Politicians:  Leave me the hell alone.  
  • No I don't want to hear about your Libertarian candidate.  
  • No I don't want to hear about your fad diet.
  • No I don't want to hear about how your friend knew somebody who beat cancer with fad diet.
  • If you ask me about work I'm just going to say, "It's work. If it was Fun, they wouldn't call it Work."
  • No I don't want to hear about your TV show.
  • No I don't want to hear about your [some sport that involves pushing an object over or through a thing] team. 
  • Rest assured that if your retired buddy emailed you a Really Funny Thing, I have already seen it on tumblr a few weeks ago.  
  • I only say I want to accept  the things I cannot change.  I never said I would like  them. 

10/10/2013

Speaking of annoying things

You weren't? 

Oh.  I will, anyway. 

One annoying thing is that my industrial vendors' web sites are still all gaga over social media.  Somebody in a Dilbert-style world steps out of a manager meeting and says, "Our competition is on FaceTweet!  We need some of that FaceTweet social stuff too!  Get to work on that, Snodgrass!  I want to see World Wide Wickets on FaceTweet by end of month!  While you're at it, see if you can get some of our product videos on SelfTube!  Then use that new electronic mail thing to send it to all our prospects, you hear me?"

But, alas!  The annoyance, it grows.  As the earth ages, and hopes darken, the sources of annoyance, like evening shadows, only grow.

Perfectly nice e-commerce sites that already contain all I require now have annoying (disturbingly annoying) floating boxes letting me know that a live person is online to chat if I have any questions.  Holy weeping Madonna... Even the UPS online shipping that I have been using for many years now has the annoying floating box of chat-invitation.  Just get out of my way already!  Stop! Don't follow my cursor down the screen!  That's annoying

Let me clue you in, Chat Invite Box Site Designer:  had I wanted to talk to a live person, I could have gone to a "store" or even picked up a "phone" or used a "link" on your "site" go send an email through your "contacts"!  Please just let me relish the anonymity and privacy of wandering through your e-commerce areas unmolested.  Please. 

Please?

I know they are not listening.



10/08/2013

Live, from New York, it's . . .

Chevy Chase's 70th birthday.  The alumnus of the original Saturday Night Live cast has reached his three score and ten. 

Now if he tumbles off the stage, he stays down and moans, "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!"

10/07/2013

Sequester, Shutdown, Default, Etc.

I try not to listen to the "financial report" on any news broadcasts.  All my life, the formula for these reports has been the same: false claims of causality.

"Stocks opened higher on a strong jobs report issued by the Labor Department..."

"Stocks closed lower on more bad news about Syria from the State Department..."

I've just never believed their causal links.  If stocks have been trending higher, it is likely because the dollar is weaker OR the corporations are building equity.  I don't think John Kerry's latest pronouncement affects the investment strategies of computerized trading algorithms. 

Anyway that's just [ignorant] me.  File that under Crowndot's [non-] qualifications as a financial analyst. 

What I really wanted to talk about is that I do not see the connection between a failure by Congress to raise the debt ceiling, and TEOTWAWKI. 

I've been hearing a journalistic beating of the jungle drums to the effect that we need to raise (or entirely do away with) the debt ceiling or it will in fact be The End Of The World As We Know It.  For reals. 

As in: Armageddon, Doomsday, Zompocalypse, and the Return of Disco, all rolled into one. 

Won't happen. 

Some banks in China may experience the appearance of wet streaks down some blue serge slacks for a few days, but they will get over it. 

Some upper levels of federal bureaucracy may sense a sudden fluctuation in the Force.  They will have to get over it too. 

What WILL happen?  Hey, I've already established my credentials, so I'll come right out and say it:  I don't really know. 

What I hope will happen is that some people -- ahem Democrats ahem -- will begin to face the reality that real cuts in spending must happen.  That's only The End Of The World As THEY Know It. 



10/02/2013

Map updates?

The digital information providers have done a pretty good job with flat maps.  Zoomable, up-to-date, streets or topography or satellite.  And there's always Wikipedia et al. to find out about odd countries. 

But I miss having a globe.  For one thing, Alaska and Hawaii are a lot bigger on the globe than they usually look squeezed into corners of a U.S. map.  But I'm pretty sure our last globe still shows a huge green Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  What the world needs is a computer peripheral touch-screen hemisphere globe that updates its maps as required, and would be fast-spinnable and stoppable -- "Ooh, I landed in the Indian Ocean."  Double-tap it, and the location would come up on your computer screen, all zoomable, etc.

Some day when I have nothing else to do, I need to find out how many countries have come into existence during my lifetime, and how many are still in existence.  This one, for instance.  And probably a ton of former colonies. 


10/01/2013

Hope 'n' Exchange

It's October First 2013!  The roll out of Obamacare is complete!  Right?




Covered California is the California version of the Obamacare "exchange" site. 

It has said "coming soon" for a long time.  It still says "coming soon".