My vote is for “just annoying”… fund managers are a bunch of wankers.
Continue reading IRA’s: Smart Investing or Just Annoying?
Category Archives: Rant
Retro-Rant: Pregnant Youth
[One of things that SharpMT has helped me do is stockpile Rants – that way when I’m busy, I can dip into the pile and pull one out… over the last few months I’ve been keeping a pretty steady stream of posts, but over the past week I’ve been swamped so I thought I’d dip into the pile. Of course, that’s when I realize that some of those posts don’t age all that well so I went ahead and deleted those, but this one seems to have aged OK. In fact, it was first written in July of ’04, but it still looks pretty damned applicable.]
Simple question: when did it become socially acceptable to get pregnant as a single girl? Like a kid that’s still in high school? I want to know when it happened so that I can do two things: first I need to stop it from becoming acceptable and then I need to beat the person responsible with a fish billy.
Continue reading Retro-Rant: Pregnant Youth
Tiger and Apple
[insert whatever “yay it’s Tiger Day!” obligatory post here, if you want to, but I can sum it up another way]
I hate you, Apple.
Continue reading Tiger and Apple
Poke Her? I Hardly Know Her!
Given the recent popularity of poker – Texas Hold’em or otherwise – I have to say that the run just continues to astound me. You see, I grew up around cards – for the two of you that have actually read Memoirs of an Italian Geek I can confirm that the bit about how I learned how to count with “ace two three” and stopped at eleven because I knew “jack” wasn’t a number is a true story. In fact, I learned how to add by playing black jack with one grandfather and I later learned ratios by talking about craps with my other grandfather [betting the 6 and 8 typically pay 6:5 which isn’t all that common in math class].
All this poker awareness this has led to a few observations in my poker abilities and other such skills.
Continue reading Poke Her? I Hardly Know Her!
Employee of the Month
MSNBC: The woman, identified only as Lori in Wednesday’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram, said she recently phoned authorities after coming home to find her daughters fighting. She told the dispatcher that her 12-year-old had kicked a hole in the door.
A 911 dispatcher was reprimanded for responding to a mother’s plea for help with an unruly child by saying: “OK. Do you want us to come over to shoot her?”
And he’s getting backlash over it, because “Lori” was offended. “Lori” should be mortified that she complained about this. Unless she came home and found a chunk of skin dripping from one of her kid’s bloody mouth or her errant daughter cut herself while kicking a door, why in the hell would she be calling 911? Parental advice??? She should get a Talking To, for having tied up an operator for this…
I swear, having kids should be regulated as a privledge and not a right.
Ow.
The Ol’ Switcheroo
MSNBC: Two days after the end of the legislative session, state lawmakers are discovering something few were aware of: They voted to make English the official language of West Virginia.
Hah!
Warning: Blogging Coma
Just a warning that this site might go quiet for a while, what with my moving and all… I can’t even begin to think what impact work will have on this week, as well. I’ll be lurking around, but no promises…
Think about all of that time you won’t be wasting coming here! *smirk*
Best Buy Pissed Me Off
Shocking that a retail establishment can spark a Rant, right? Hah, yeah, sure. This past weekend I popped into Best Buy to pick up a second Xbox controller and some banana plugs for some audio speaker wire. The game controller was on sale for $25, which is a good price, and since I have “official” speaker jack outlets in my new place, I needed the plugs. I was pretty much left to myself while shopping – which is good! – but the check out process was rather …irksome, to say the least.
Continue reading Best Buy Pissed Me Off
Ahhhhh.
One down and one hundred sixty-one to go.
And yes, I did a Snoopy-Happy-Dance-Of-Joy when Tino made that grab at first base… so good to see him back home again.
At least it’s something to distract me from the ring ceremony that’s slated for the the opening day at Fenway.
Fu Fu!
CSS Sucks Bollocks
Over the past week I’ve spent hours trying to re-create my current blog layout using CSS, instead of the nested HTML tables that I currently use. In theory, it would make for a cleaner layout, especially if I wanted to make any changes, but I would have to change every posted page first. On top of that, the simple truth is that I can’t figure out how to get a fixed-sized, two column layout: a fixed right column width and an “expand to fit” left column. The closest I came to it was using percentages, but those look extremely ugly on smaller resolutions/screens, and that’s made me reject the entire project. I simply refuse to change all of my markup text and lose some existing functionality, in the process of it all.
Totally disappointed by this, you know – I mean, it just sucks.
Scary…
I was watching 1984 last night on cable… I dunno why I can’t pass that movie by – everytime I see it pop up in the program guide, I can’t seem to scroll past it. While driving into work today, I had a thought run through my head. When I looked at it, I tried to shove it in a drawer or something, but it kept re-appearing in a new and brighter colour every few minutes:
The same people that will be legally able to buy alcohol for the first this year weren’t even alive when the Macintosh-1984 commercial was aired for the first [and only] time.
*sob*
“Imma Put The Man On You”
Seattle Duck: Arriving there… and meeting Gene: First off, I got lost. Lived here 8 years, worked not 3 blocks from the place, still had no clue where it was. Drove around for 20 minutes until I finally figured it out ? “THAT is the restaurant everyone?s been yappin? about? You?re kidding right?”
I can’t believe I never got around to writing about my two visits to Dixie’s last year. Or the fact that The Man left a burnt stripe of skin across my cheek and down my throat, when I’ve never had happen before… and I didn’t take time to chew the cornbread that Gene had put the sauce on. Anyway, the ‘Duck tells it better than I could: I would require physical gestures and sound effects that are un-blogable.
Best BBQ in WA, in my opinion, and a required stop for any out of town visitors.
Red Sox vs. Apple
I was sitting on a bench at Redmond Town Center last night and I saw a most disturbing thing… a Red Sox fan. Now, now, relax – there’s a reason for me point it out. In fact, I think it helped me realize something about why I currently dislike both Red Sox fans and Apple fans…
Continue reading Red Sox vs. Apple
Post Dated Request
MSNBC: Cardinal’s plea: Don’t read ‘The Da Vinci Code’ – Novel’s success is proof of ‘anti-Catholic’ prejudice, he says
Isn’t there a half life for protesting stuff like this? I mean, The Da Vinci Code has been out for a while. In fact, the main character was featured in Angels and Demons which is a loosely tied prequel. It’s certainly been out long enough to have a special “media” edition (that includes pictures of the artwork/places involved throughout the novel) and been optioned out to be a movie… the only media form missing is paperback, which I think is a smart move: the hardcover editions are still selling and it won’t dilute the sales of the special edition.
Honestly, when I first saw the article, I figure the Cardinal was after press or something – there’s no other reason to be bothering with this book by this point: it’s mainstream already. Someone should check the postmark on the complain… maybe it got shoved in a drawer by mistake or something.