Category: Uncategorized

For those of you looking for the perfect ornament for your Christmas Tree/Festivus Pole, may I suggest “Sniper Bear”: 

Or if that’s not your speed, may I suggest this lovely Christmas-themed mug featuring our nation’s 42nd President:

As I type this, there is a package containing $15 in random change on its way to the office of my former dentist, and I cannot wait ’till it gets there.

The dentist, of whom I had been a patient for about four years, is charging me $15 for copies of my records. 

During the four years I had been a patient, I never had a wait time shorter than 35 minutes.  Add to that her staff “forgetting” to get a permanent crown made for me (twice!) and the fact that I moved to the other side of town and you could see why I wanted to change the person who I pay to stick their fingers in my mouth.  Last year, the Civee started going to a dentist a few blocks away from us, suggested I try him out and I figured a clean break from Dentist #1 was necessary.  I called Dentist #1, asked them to send my records to Dentist #2 and thought that was that.  

Until I received a bill for $15, which Dentist #1 claimed was for copying the X-Rays, standard procedure in her office.  It wasn’t the amount, but the fact that she was charging me for this that kicked my stubbornness into high gear.  I am not an anti-dentite.  This is all about the principle.

I sent her a kind letter saying  her office never said they would charge for the records and that I’m legally entitled to a copy of my records free of charge.  She responded saying there’s a state law saying they can charge (nevermind the fact that federal law supersedes state law), and I dismissed her letter until we received a second notice.

At this point, the Civee urged me to pay so this wouldn’t affect our credit history.  I agreed, but would do so in my own manner.  My own manner being the least convenient, but legal way short of sending the money in McDonald’s bucks.  So I went to the bank, asked for $15 in change, packed it up tightly (along with a note asking for a receipt–I resisted the urge to write ‘Keep the change, ya filthy animals’ on the note as well), took it to UPS and sent it off.  While filling out the packing slip, I didn’t list anything under the contents, but under the declared value, I put $15.

So is going through the work of paying a bill in change (not to mention paying the cost of having that change sent) a pointless exercise? Maybe, but it makes me feel a lot better.  Unless one of those coins is a double-die Denver mint penny.  Those things are worth a fortune.

I’ve been a member of AOL since sometime in 1992.  And today, I’m declaring the era of AOL as my primary online identity (e-mail address, etc) over.

To put that in historical perspective:

• Mel Hall was on the Yankees roster.
• The British Bulldog was the WWF Intercontinental Champion.
• Weezer had barely been a band for six months at this point.
• Timothy Dalton was James Bond.

I gave up AOL as my ISP three-plus years ago.  And now, after being fed up with unreliable Web mail service and ads at the bottom of every e-mail, I’m switching to Gmail.  

I’ve had Gmail for a while, but out of some sense of loyalty have always given out my AOL SN first.  Well, no longer.  I’ve set up Gmail to import my AOL e-mail automatically, which it’s done a good job of doing.  And today, Gmail rolled out their themes, which are pretty entertaining.  Plus, it’s free, with no ads in the outgoing e-mail, so I’m going to stick around.

My independence begins now.

Back in fourteen-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and yada yada yada, The Civee and I had the day off.

When I used to work in news, I hated Columbus Day (along with Veterans’ Day and a few others) because banks, government and the post offices were closed, but we had to work.  Most of the times, except for the occasional local celebration, there was nothing else at all going on.  And the one source of an easy news story (the government) wasn’t working, making us dig even harder for something to cover.

Now that I’m on the other side of the equation, I have the day off again.  Growing up, Columbus Day was always the first day off in the school year, and back when I was in school, it was one of the few things in the fall that I looked forward to.  

But things have changed for kids these days.  The Civee and I were out riding our bikes today, and we passed an elementary school, and the kids were getting out of school. On Columbus Day!  

At first I was outraged that kids would have school today. But then, I started thinking…when The Civee and I have kids, it would be nice if there were a day or two when they have school and she and I have the day off.  The kids would already have the whole summer off–so what’s a day or two here and there for mom and dad?  I actually think it’s a great idea–parents need days off apart from their kids.  Adults need days off that kids don’t have.  Do whatever you want with it, just realize that you have the day to yourself, while kids all over are stuck in school.

If it works out this way when our kids are in school, knowing me, I’d rub it in their face.  The little brats deserve it.

Last week, when I was sick, I was trying just about anything I could (short of going to the doctor) to get better. Last year sometime, King Classic told me whenever he was sick, he loaded up on the vitamin C.  Since not much else was working, I decided to take his advice.

We were all out of vitamin C tablets at home, so when the Civee and I went to Whole Foods to get some dinner, I went searching.  There were a few bottles that sold for around $20, which claimed their tablets packed between 100% and 200% of the daily reccomended amount of the vitamin.  Not bad, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to pay $20 for a bunch of vitamins.  On the bottom shelf I spotted a larger-than-the-rest bottle selling for only $7 from 365 (the Whole Foods house brand).  I turned it over to check the dose and was blown away…each tablet packed in a whopping 833% of the reccomended daily value of vitamin C.

After wondering whether that was legal, or even safe, I decided to go for it. As surprising as the 833% was, I was in for an even bigger surprise when I got home.  I opened up the bottle, took out the layers of cotton packed therein, got a nice whiff of something resembling orange, and dropped one of the pills into my hand, and found out these pills are supersized.  The pills are absolutely huge (As you can see by the image, one pill is the size of a stack of six dimes).  It’s a good thing the label says ‘chewable’ because I would not have known what to do with these pills otherwise.  And I have to admit, the taste isn’t that bad.  

Anyway, I am feeling better this week–part of which I’m attributing to the ginormous vitamin C pills.  Will I keep taking them? Probably.  The bottle has 100 pills, so for the next three months, I can feel secure in the fact that I’m in no danger whatsoever of getting scurvy.

Last weekend, The Civee and I left town to attend a wedding.  When we drove back Sunday, the remnants of a hurricane were sweeping through the area, knocking down whole trees (one of which just missed our car as we were driving down a two-lane quasi-country highway), ripping signs off billboards and inconveniencing people everywhere.  

When we got home, things were fine, but after a few minutes, we lost our cable (which also meant no phone or Internet).  We were lucky not to lose power, because I know a lot of people who did.  But it’s weird going a few days with no internet or not being able to fast forward through commercials.

And believe it or not, I actually had a few things to blog about. Now if only I can remember what they were I might get on a posting roll again.

Long time no blog.

Not because stuff hasn’t happened, but I just really haven’t felt the desire to blog.

I got a new grill.

Went canoeing with The Civee. 

Watched the Olympics, and parts of two political conventions (and I’m still on a sleep deficit from the Olympics to this day).  And I’m still watching the Yankees, even if they don’t have a chance for the playoffs this year.

But I’m still around.  Hopefully I’ll start blogging again soon.  The new grill is great. Maybe I’ll write about that sometime soon.

This afternoon, upon returning to to work from my Hour of Me, something was awry- the e-mail server was down.  No one could send or receive e-mails.  If you wanted to talk to a co-worker, you had to call them, or (gasp!) walk to their office.

I have to admit, it was a very productive few hours.  Of course, when the system came back up (with just a half-hour to go in the day), I was slammed with requests to do (whatever) now.

After experiencing an e-mail blackout for a few hours, I wouldn’t mind, maybe once a month, a whole day of not having e-mail.  It would allow me to catch up on all the little things that immediate communication puts a damper on.  Of course, the next day, I’d probably need another catch-up day to go through all the e-mail I missed the day before.

The computer on which I write entries for the Kingdom and do most of my Web surfing is a six-year-old Gateway model running Windows XP.  Only in the past year has it started to like it’s slowing down, and sometime in the next year or so, The Civee and I would like to get a new computer.

As hinted at yesterday, I have tremendous product loyalty.  I’m not stupid, I just follow the brands that are good to me.  Since the early 90s, I’ve had two Gateways of my own, as well as the use of my parents and siblings computers, all Gateways.  And I’ve never had a problem with the machines. 

One of the most enjoyable aspects of getting my current computer was customizing what I wanted in the box, and anxiously awaiting its delivery.

Every now and then, with the prospect of a new computer on the horizon, I’ll go to Gateway’s Web site and play around with the options.   But when I went to the site today, something was different- you couldn’t play around.  Gateway has changed to an indirect sales company. Last year, Gateway was acquired by another computer manufacturer, and I guess this is the first sign of a major change under the new ownership.

The company’s computers are still offered through other outlets (like Costco the Great), but without being able to customize, it’s just not the same.  With the change in ownership, this isn’t really surprising, but rather, disappointing.

Now, I’m actually considering changing brands when it is time to go computer shopping. Does anyone out there have any computer brands they reccomend? 

Two caveats:

I don’t trust HP desktops, mostly because I’ve always found Compaqs useless.

And I’m not sure I trust Dell either, ever since Rivers Cuomo started keeping score:

This morning while riding into work with The Civee, a report came on NPR about this new search engine launched today by former Google employees (while The Civee and I drive in to work everyday, we don’t really listen to NPR that often–or as often as The Civee would like).

We started a discussion about whether another search engine could supplant Google both functionally and culturally.  I argued no, saying that Google was simple, quick and easy to use.  But The Civee chose to take a different approach, calling me out for my “blind loyalty” and saying it was possible for a search engine to be better than Google.

Not wanting to be accused of being closed minded, I tried out the new search engine, called Cuil.  I have to admit I was unimpressed.

First of all, the search results come back in a table format (rather than a list).  With the page title, a paragraph and sometimes an image coming back with the results, I didn’t know what to check out first.  Also, many of the search results were repeated, which was annoying.  Cuil presents itself as the search engine for the next decade. But last time I checked, we’re still in the aughts and people still like lists.

However, rather than a misplaced sense of time, Cuil’s biggest offense is what it leaves out.  After googling, I’m sorry, Cuil-ing (is that even a word) King Tom’s Kingdom, I got 0 results. Cuil claims to have an index of 120 billion Web pages.  I think the Kingdom is a little more prominent than the 120,000,000,001th page on the Web, don’t you think?