davintosh

Let’s say you’re the President, and you have to pick between two public appearances scheduled for the same day… Which do you choose? One of them is an invitation to speak at the 100th Anniversary Jamboree of the Boy Scouts of America, and the other is to go hang out with Whoopi, Barbara & the girls on The View…

Seems like a no-brainer to me. How many times will a sitting President get the opportunity to take part in the 100th anniversary of an iconic American institution such as the Boy Scouts? And how often will the girls get together to tape The View? A no-brainer to me, and to most other right-thinking Americans, but not so for the current resident of the White House. Faced with that decision, he chose to spend yesterday in New York for a taping of The View. Pardon me while I get my eyes to stop rolling.

With his poll numbers on a continual downward slide these days, you would think he would’ve gone the other way for today’s engagement, trying to maybe win over some of the conservative crowd who see the value of Scouting. But then again on The View he’s guaranteed an adoring left-wing crowd throwing him softball questions & giving him an open platform for pushing his increasingly unpopular agenda. Plus I’m sure he’s far more comfortable with the anything-goes crowd on The View than with the Scouts and their not-quite-politically-correct Oath…

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

Yeah; I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Can’t help but be disappointed though.

Update: Just saw this a short time ago and had to throw it in…

Whatever else happens, Barack Obama will provide The View with some much needed estrogen.

Rush Limbaugh

Crud. My favorite coffee mug broke today. The handle has been a little wobbly for the last few days, but I didn’t worry too much about it, figuring it was only a loose screw or something. But when I tried tightening it yesterday the screw was plenty tight and I couldn’t budge it, so I planned to take a closer look at it today.

But before I got around to it, while I was steaming the creamer for my morning cappuccino, the handle gave way completely, nearly dumping the whole works on the counter!

I bought the mug when the Sportsman’s Warehouse was closing its Sioux Falls store. It wasn’t marked down much, but it was a great design, so I went ahead and got it in spite of my cheapskate nature’s protestations. It’s made of stainless steel inside & out with a closeable plastic lid, but what set it apart from the other mugs is that it has an alternate lid which incorporates a French press, and it has a hidden storage compartment in the base which is big enough for another two cups’ worth of instant coffee! Coolest mug ever!

But now it has no handle and has a hole in the side. The handle design is better than most steel mugs — a threaded boss welded to the outside skin, with the handle held in place by a screw that attached to the boss — but I guess there is just a lot of torque applied to that spot. I contacted the manufacturer, Planetary Design, to see if I can get a replacement mug body without having to buy the whole works (for $30!), but I’m not holding my breath on that possibility. It’s still useable as-is, and I suppose I could just seal up the hole then cobble together using a big hose clamp to attach the handle…

There’s a hilarious article on Cracked.com: Fast Food For Failures. A sampling…

The story behind the McGangBang is actually pretty cool. It’s gotten virtually no attention in the press and has gained popularity over the last few years strictly by word-of-mouth and Internet forums, and it’s still relatively underground. Sure, people have whispered about it and its history has been covered in exhaustive detail, but it hasn’t quite reached the mainstream yet. It’s only a matter of time before someone in a movie or TV show or popular and influential comedy megasite mentions it and then it’ll just blow up. Here’s how it works: You take an ordinary McDouble off the dollar menu…

…then you take an ordinary McChicken off the dollar menu…

…and you shove the McChicken inside the McDouble. Right in between the patties, just wedge that McChicken in there, so you have one tall super sandwich for just a few bucks.

Get an order of fries because we all die in the end anyway.

Yeah, it sounds disgusting, but I feel strangely compelled to try it… Just once can’t hurt that much, can it? The article is fat free, calorie-free, cholesterol-free & guilt-free, but like me, after reading it you may find yourself suppressing your will to live just a little bit.

Reminds me a lot of an old(?) Christian rock & roll song by one of my all-time favorite artists, Randy Stonehill; American Fast Food. Dig the big hair! So ’80’s/’90’s!

Another good article over at AmericanThinker.com; I knew today was Earth Day, and have heard a lot about the connection between the modern-day communists and the whole environmentalist movement, but I had no idea that Earth Day coincided with Grandfather Lenin’s birthday.

Or is it a coincidence?

Since getting a cell phone a few years ago, I’ve received a number of unsolicited text messages. There haven’t been a lot of them, so dealing with them is little more than a minor bother, but because my plan with Verizon doesn’t include unlimited texting each one of them costs me fifteen cents. Again, not a huge deal, but the fact that their spam is costing me money (even a little bit) is more than a little irksome.

Today I got a spam from PAYLESS INSIDER.

From: 242-424
PAYLESS INSIDER: Take
20% off during the Easter
Sale @Payless! Use codo
3XXXX thru 4/4. Txt END1
or 866-746-5923 to
Opt-Out. Msg&Data rates
may apply. Not@Shopko

I can remember receiving about a half dozen messages from Payless before, but never did anything with them, fearing that following their opt-out instructions might just make matters worse (with a lot of email-based spam, the opt-out instructions will only serve to confirm to the spammers that your email address is legitimate and make it that much more valuable.) I hadn’t bought anything from Payless for years, and even if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have given them my cell number, nor any hint that I was even remotely interested in their pseudo bargains.

But today my sore back made me grumpy enough to want to do something about this one, so I went to the Payless Shoes website looking for contact information. The Customer Service link lists an email address, so I clicked on it & drafted a short but terse note asking if they were responsible for the unsolicited text messages. I didn’t really expect to hear back from them, but hitting send (forcefully!) made me feel a little better. My back still hurt, but it helped a little anyway.

Much to my surprise, I did get a response about an hour later:

Dear David,

Thank you for contacting Payless ShoeSource.
We apologize that you were inconvenienced by our message. Please rest assured that your comments have been forwarded to our marketing staff.

All of the phone numbers called during this marketing campaign were collected at the time of checkout in our stores. These numbers have not been bought or sold through any outside marketing firms. You may remove your phone number from this database by calling

1-866-746-5923.

Thank you for taking the time to provide us with your feedback.

Tyler
Payless ShoeSource Customer Support Center
1-877-474-6379

Well isn’t that dandy? If what’s said in that note is true, someone other than me gave my number at the time of checkout; sure as heck wasn’t me. That (on top of my still-sore back) ticked me off enough to chance a call to that number, halfway hoping to get a real person just for the chance to vent a little. Un(?)fortunately, calls to that number end up in an automated answering system where one of the options is to have your number removed from their call list. I clicked a few buttons in response to the queries, and the pleasant female voice assured me that my number has been removed. Time will tell. Either way, it’ll be a long, long time before I consider buying anything from them.

Now, time to look for a little something in the medicine drawer — or the bottom of a bottle — to help dull the hurting in my lower back…

It’s a sad day. Mr. Bendo, a Sioux Falls landmark since 1963, fell victim to a drunk driver last night. Some bozo who’d had a few too many tried to take the corner at 12th and Cliff Ave. a little too fast and knocked Mr. Bendo’s right leg out from under him. According to a story posted at ksfy.com, the owner plans to fix the leg and put him back up.

I took a little detour past Buck’s Muffler on my way to work this morning, hoping to get a photo of the carnage, but all I saw was two guys with a hose & a broom cleaning up the mess. I hope they get Mr. Bendo put back together and back in place just as quickly!

Is this guy nuts, or am I just overly risk-averse? Photographer captures amazing images of lions after submerging himself in watering hole for three months

Amazing photos, to be sure — kudos to photographer Greg du Toit — but the aftereffects seem a bit costly to me…

… diagnosed with deadly malaria twice after contracting it through mosquitoes breeding in the pool…

‘The doctors panicked when they noticed that my red blood platelet count was sky high,’ Mr du Toit said.

‘The first real symptom was blood in my urine, which is when I went for blood tests. The blood test confirmed that I had Bilharzia.

‘It’s caused by a type of flatworm which had spent part of its life in water snails and the other part in my liver. It left me weak and in bed for weeks.’

He added: ‘The high red blood platelet count signalled that I was carrying a lot of parasites. This included numerous species of internal worm parasites and a particularly nasty external worm parasite known as Hook Worm.

‘This worm was actually visible under the skin of my foot and would move at night. It became a game to find the worm in my foot each morning.’

After a long stint sick in bed recovering, Mr du Toit was finally given the all clear following courses of powerful antibiotics, pesticides and by spraying liquid nitrogen on the parasites visible under his skin.

To get the “frog’s-eye view”, du Toit apparently just waded into the pond until just his head was above the surface of the water. No flippin’ wonder he picked up so many bugs, being marinated in a cesspool like that! And to top off the exposure to who-knows-what unseen threats, he’s just “a leap away” from the wildlife he photographed.

The lions knew there was something in the water but we think they only recognise humans when they are upright on legs so they took little notice of me and my camera.

He added: ‘It was worth it 100 per cent and I would do it all again, worms and all.’

I wonder if he thought to use something like a drysuit to keep from becoming a large parasite-infested pink raisin. Any bets on whether he finds another pool &

First, a little background:
The door locks on my ‘88 BMW 735i (e32) have been something of an enigma to me; they worked, but they worked differently than other cars I’ve had. Even differently when compared to my ‘84 BMW 528e.

With the early BMW’s, locking the doors generally involves pushing down on the door lock knob before shutting the driver’s door or putting the key in the outside lock and turning it to the right; that locks all four doors, the trunk and the fuel filler door. To unlock them all, insert the key and turn it to the left. And the same trick works using the key in either front door or the trunk lock.

In the late ’80’s, BMW added a new feature known as the Deadbolt; it prevents the door from opening with anything but the key. To deadbolt the car you put the key in the door & turn it one notch farther to the right. I say ‘notch’ but there’s really no notch when you turn the lock; there’s no tactile, audible or visible indication that anything different has happened at all. The doors just appear to be locked. But they will not open unless you use a key to turn the lock, no matter what. Presumably, if I were sitting inside the car and someone turned the key to put the doors into deadlock mode, I’d be stuck in there until someone with a key unlocked the car from the outside. The lock knob will not move. No. Matter. What.

As with most well-intentioned systems like this, when everything is working properly, it works great and is a decent theft-deterrent… But throw two decades of use at a system that really has no prescribed maintenance schedule, and you have the potential for problems. And of course that’s what I’ve been dealing with. Story of my life.

Help! My Door Is Locked, And I Can’t Open It!
(more…)

Have you ever approached an intersection in a car with your turn signal on, conspicuously reducing your speed, and have another motorist wait at the intersection to see if you actually turn before they make a move?

That happened to me on my way to lunch just now, and it kinda makes me laugh… A lady sat at the intersection down the road from work waiting to make her left turn, and didn’t move until she saw my front wheels rounding the corner. Not another car on the road for a quarter mile in either direction, my turn signal was on well ahead of my intended turn (and I know for a fact that it works), I was slowing well ahead of the intersection… Even if I was moving at the normal pace for traffic on that road, she would’ve had plenty of room to get up to speed ahead of me. Yet she sat there like she didn’t believe me.

Makes me wonder how many times I’ve done that same thing.

I just got back from a walk tonight, and am really disgusted with how poorly people cleared their sidewalks. A walk that normally takes me about a half hour instead took 40 minutes, and I feel like I’ve been walking a tightrope the whole time.

We’ve had some weird weather lately — lots of snow followed by above-freezing temps followed by freezing rain followed by more cold, cold temps followed by snow blown around by high winds — and people have just done a crappy job of keeping up with things. Ice, snow that melted to slush, got walked on then refroze, leaving a slippery lumpy mess that’s almost impossible to walk on. Other places look as if only feeble attempts (if any) have been made at clearing the snow that blew in.

We live in the central part of Sioux Falls, and I’m sure many homes are no longer owner-occupied, which makes things worse as renters just don’t tend to things as well as an owner. But a little ice can make things dangerous; I know all too well how easily bones can be broken with a simple fall

The city has pretty specific ordinances regarding the need for keeping the sidewalks cleared…

Sec. 38-76. Duty to remove.

(a) The owner or person in possession of any property abutting on any sidewalk shall keep such sidewalk free from snow and ice and shall remove any snow or ice from the sidewalk within 48 hours after the termination of any snow fall, snow or ice accumulation.

(b) The owner or person in possession of any property abutting upon any sidewalk which ends at an intersection or crosswalk shall maintain the sidewalk free from snow and ice to the edge of the street. Snow and ice deposited on the sidewalk in the street removal process shall be removed within 48 hours of being deposited.

And if the ordinance isn’t followed, the city retains the right to step in and take care of things for the property owner…

Sec. 38-78.1. City may remove.

If the owner or person in possession of property fails to remove the snow or ice from the sidewalks within the time specified, the city may have the snow or ice removed and charge the cost thereof against the abutting property each time the snow or ice is removed.

The trouble is that there is no provision in the ordinances for enforcement. From what I understand, the city only steps in when a complaint is lodged, either by way of a phone call or a message sent through the city’s online complaint form. The trouble is, the form asks for addresses of the properties in violation; I’d be plugging in every other address along the route of my walk.

Ok; I’m done complaining for now. I feel a little better. Just a little.