Category Archives: General - Page 2

Not actually an engine problem

Posted by on November 6, 2007 Comments Off

Thank goodness for the FAQ at TDiClub. Last week-ish the glowplug light in my 2003 VW Golf TDi started flashing but performance didn’t seem to be effected at all and the car was starting fine and everything seemed kosher so I figured it could wait to get taken care of. Last night on the way home I had a fairly close call in traffic (Funny how bad traffic during rush hour on the first night of Daylight Savings Time almost always is) and noticed something odd while staring at my rear-view mirror hoping that the person behind me was going to miss: I didn’t see a reflection of my brake lights on the other car.

After getting home safely with the garage door closed I was able to verify that except for the roof light the brake lights were totally DOA. Went inside and checked the TDiClub FAQ and sure enough there was entry (8.d. third item down) Brake lights!

The irritating thing? Why was there no helpful police people to tell me my brake lights weren’t functional all week long until I was on the three and a half block drive up to the auto parts store? Thankfully they believed me when I said I was literally on my way up the street to get new bulbs (and followed me just to make sure). Gr.

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I’m sure they meant well

Posted by on September 27, 2007 Comments Off

I just got a telemarketing call from the organization that calls itself “Americans for Balanced Energy Choices”, asking me if I would like to join their organization for free and they won’t even ever ask for any donations. I don’t know if I’m the only one, and I certainly hope I’m not, but anytime a “non-profit” organization calls and is not looking donations or some sort of financial transaction all sorts of red flags go up.

So I asked the polite man to repeat the name of the organization and did a quick google search and ran across their website. Don’t bother going if you haven’t clicked that link yet it doesn’t have any actual useful information about who they are and what they want to do with my name on their little “member” list. Skimming content while asking the polite man who funds the organization made his answer pretty obvious even while he was saying it: The Power, Oil, and Coal companies. I did find it even more interesting that when pressed he didn’t have any names of any of these companies. Nor did he or his supervisor have any information about where they had gotten my contact information or why I had been selected to be a “member” of their organization.

Unfortunately they were blocking their inbound number so I couldn’t do a reverse lookup.

I apologized to the polite man for telling him that he could tell his overseers to go fuck themselves.

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When the system mostly works

Posted by on September 20, 2007 Comments Off

I just got off the phone with a very nice person from the Wells Fargo Fraud department who wanted to ask me some questions about some apparantly suspicious charges that were trying to come through on my checking account. Apparantly some nefarious person was attempting to buy software from Germany!

Oops, that was me.

And I had been becoming increasingly frustrated with the purchase attempt since I was pretty sure that I had been doing everything exactly correctly but for some reason the charges kept getting declined.

On the one hand I actually am kind of happy that they are being proactive enough that not only where they stopping the charge but they even called me within four minutes of my attempting to do the transaction. That’s near-realtime monitoring in action folks, and now that I’ve had a nice conversation with the guy I submitted the exact same information and it went through with no problems.

OTOH – So what if I was trying to buy software on the internet through a company that exists in Germany? I did an identical transaction with this company a little over two years ago, and a similar transaction with another company every two years for the past 6 (Grisoft, makers of AVG Anti-Virus, my currently mostly preferred AV suite). There is a point where I should be able to use my own funds in a global market without my financial institution being an irritating obstruction. That is alleviated somewhat by getting a fast response from the instituion in question by a real person who then made it not a problem but I wonder really how much I should be satisfied by that.

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Not to be confused with SOSO

Posted by on September 13, 2007 Comments Off

It occured to me while talking with Jennifer today about plans for things this weekend that for the first time in my life I have OSO-law’s that are more than theoretical. You know, family of your SO’s OSO.

Surreal.

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They Might Be in Minneapolis

Posted by on August 31, 2007 Comments Off

They Might Be Giants are touring in support of their new, very good, album “The Else” and will be in Minneapolis on September 19th at First Ave. (Which is a Monday and the TBA opening act starts at 9PM so likely to be a pretty late night)

Anyone want to go?

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Billing oddity

Posted by on August 21, 2007 Comments Off

I learned something today about my electric bill: The State Taxes are computed on the subtotal and the City Fee rather than just the subtotal. I actually called Xcel Energy to ask about it because there was an apparent extra $0.25 in the State Tax line item and after getting hung up on the first time got someone helpful who figured it out.

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My horn

Posted by on August 4, 2007 Comments Off

While I’m on the topic, I should mention the details about my horn.

A few years ago after searching for a few months I came across a used four valve front bell American Euphonium that was in decent shape (Lots of scratches, some dents, lacquer is very worn but largely intact) for a remarkably good price. The sound isn’t as good as the Yamaha YEP-321S I played in college but for less than $500 it is certainly good enough. Nicely wide though just a touch breathy.

Anyway, this morning I finally ran down the serial number (237531) and bell markings and I’ve found out that it is a F.A. Reynolds Contempora BR-06 4-Valve Baritone manufactured in 1967 in Abiline, TX.

I’m actually wondering a bit if some of the breathy sound may be from the mouthpiece I’m using right now, which is a Bach 6 1/2 AL. It’s a lot more like the Bach 12C that I remember playing on in high school than the shallow mouthpiece that came with it. I need to do some more research about the topic.

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…and then he said, “We could start a Klezmer band”…

Posted by on August 4, 2007 3 comments

While we didn’t get to any actual gaming this last session, Shaun mentioned that he had acquired a clarinet and was was re-learning to play it after having a sort of relevatory moment at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. So I mentioned that I had acquired a euphonium a few years ago but had been horrible about actually getting it out and playing it very often (though I am proud to say it comes out at least once every six months, which is better than nothing) and Mark mentioned that he hadn’t played his trumpet in quite awhile.

So we can blame him when he also said something like, “We could start a klezmer band…” and so we are. I ordered a copy of “Easy Klezmer Music” while we were talking.

I’ve had a couple of chances to play my horn since then and I’m both stunned at how much I’ve forgotten and also at how easily some of it is coming back. It’s really nice to have that old brass smell around the house.

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Little white lies

Posted by on July 25, 2007 Comments Off

See if you can spot the inaccuracy in the following statement:

A pleasantly flavored ready-to-use barium sulfate suspension USP for use as an aid for computed tomography of the gastrointestinal tract.

Though it would be worse if I didn’t like artificial banana flavoring.

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WTF: “Nation’s Nightmare”?

Posted by on June 27, 2007 4 comments

I’m not going to link directly to it, but if you go to the WCCO website you should be able to pretty easily find quite possibly the most stupid headline I have ever seen in my life: “Paris Release From Jail and A Nation’s Nightmare Over”.

Uh, “Nation’s Nightmare”? Seriously? They aren’t kidding? Good thing their journalistic priorities are straight.

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