Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

I’m having a tough time getting back into the rhythm of daily writing. As I’ve mentioned before, November is not the best time for me to start any kind of involved personal project.

Today was a particularly aggravating day with no chance to enjoy the unseasonably mild weather. All week, AT&T repair trucks have been working in the alley behind the house, mostly blocking our garage. It has been a real inconvenience, plus I hate to open the garage when strangers of any variety are around. The work day started early and ended late. In between, we were missing several people due to illness or minor emergencies. When I finally got home, it was to the news that one of our neighbors had his home broken into.

I know I have complained about the jagoffs in my neighborhood quite often. The neighbor whose home was broken into is not one of them. He is a very nice older gentleman who certainly did not deserve the headache. Thankfully he was not home at the time, and the only saving grace is that the scumbag criminals did not hurt his dog. Not physically, anyway. I hope she was not too traumatized by the invasion.

I put part of the blame on another neighbor who is definitely one of the jagoffs. His constant yard sales (so many as to be in violation of city ordinances, but of course since it’s not a “real” crime nothing has been done) bring around unknowns and undesirables as well as legitimate neighborhood bargain seekers. I would not be surprised if some of the unknowns were also casing out the area for easy marks.

I’ve always bought into the conventional wisdom that having a dog is a deterrent to break-ins. Now I’m not so sure. I do know that when the Rottweilers bark and growl at unknowns or unfriendlies, I won’t be making an effort to stop them any longer. This is one time that I plan to use the stereotype of killer Rottweilers for good — our good. I truly hate that I feel I have to do that.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’11: 4 of 30)

I never did find out where May went. Now June is just minutes away from being gone as well.

I want to say I’ll be back to blog on a regular basis soon, but I wanted to say that at the end of May as well. We’ll see what happens after the holiday weekend.

I’m hoping that one good side effect of a bad economy is that people (as in some of the inconsiderate jagoffs in the neighborhood) are spending less money on fireworks. The resident cats and dogs are not too bad with fireworks, but it gets old really fast since the dogs think we are having the shortest war ever and feel they have to defend the home front. As Axe would say, “if there is not a war going on, then why are things exploding?”

I am looking forward to possibly photographing some fireworks, though. I’ve been waiting to use what I learned in the night photography class I took earlier this year. I haven’t used my DSLR all month, and if I took even five other photos with my point ‘n’ shoot or phone, I’d be surprised. I’m off to take some time to review those techniques!

I’ve mentioned before that sometimes I live under a rock. This rock was a happy place, where rebates arrived as normal paper checks that had to be cashed or deposited within 90 days and all would be right with the world. Although it has apparently been a trend for some time, last month was the first time I ever received a prepaid debit card instead of a check for a rebate.

I’m not liking it. These prepaid debit cards are almost as annoying as gift cards, and have few of the same protections that gift cards have under the law. Gift cards don’t have expiration dates or maintenance fees, but debit cards do.
Continue reading

The 2010 EAA Fly-in (not sure when the name changed to AirVenture) wraps up this weekend. The 2010 Sturgis motorcycle rally starts on August 9. I have not been to either event in years.

I’ve accepted that I’ll probably never learn to fly, but I’ll still always love watching airplanes of all types, especially the vintage warbirds. Oshkosh is only about three hours away.

This year, the Scorpions, one of my favorite bands through the years, is playing at the Buffalo Chip campground in Sturgis. It’s their farewell tour. I know there’s always the chance that their “retirement” is like so many other music and sports retirements: one of many. There’s always the chance that it’s a real one.

I should pay more attention to the words that I’ve said to others so many times: Do it now. It’s only money and life is too short. Please. Remind me of those words the next time I say something about wanting to go somewhere or do something, and lean on me a little to actually do something about it.

Thanks. I’ll owe you.

(NaBloPoMo | July ’10: 30 of 31)

We all know the wheels of justice turn slowly. Sometimes I wonder if they are really just spinning out and going nowhere.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I’ve been following two court cases for the last year. One was that of Mary Wild and the show dog heat stroke deaths which resulted in a shockingly lenient sentence for Ms. Wild including no jail time, far from the eight years in jail plus $8,000 in fines that could have been imposed.

The other was that of Lora Hunt, who could have been sentenced to five years in jail for reckless homicide in the death of Anita Zaffke. Ms. Hunt is the nail polish killer, who, because she was painting her fingernails while she drove, rear-ended and killed Ms. Zaffke, who was stopped at the light on her motorcycle.

Sentencing was yesterday. And in this case, too, I am saddened and disappointed by another too-lenient sentence. Ms. Hunt received only 18 months of jail time. Not only is this far less than the maximum penalty of five years asked for by the prosecuting attorney, Ms. Hunt is also allowed to leave during the day for work, community service, and counseling. What the hell is that?

Here is a link to news coverage at ChicagoBreakingNews.com: Woman whose nail painting caused fatal crash gets 18 months

I’m also dismayed by some of the public comments on news reports and blog posts about this case. “Ms. Hunt is truly remorseful” and “is also suffering” and “people committing worse crimes on purpose are getting lighter sentences” — these statements may all be true, but none of them are reason not to impose the maximum possible penalty in this case. I truly cannot think of too many things more reckless than painting your freaking fingernails while driving, and if that caused someone’s death, it should be punished with an appropriately long jail term. Then again, these are probably the same people who had no problem with Ms. Wild’s suspended sentence because “it was dogs that died, it was not like she killed people.”

I especially fail to understand the thinking that because we have problems with more serious crimes, lesser ones should not be punished appropriately. I definitely agree that more serious crimes are a problem. I live in a city where three police officers were shot and killed in the last two months, so yes, there are huge problems. Punishing all crimes appropriately should be the issue. And in Ms. Hunt’s case, the maximum penalty allowable would have been most appropriate.

I truly admire Greg Zaffke II and the entire Zaffke family for their grace and class throughout this whole ordeal, and they remain in my thoughts.

(NaBloPoMo | July ’10: 23 of 31)

It was a very nice surprise to see a comment on Wednesday’s Communication Breakdown post from Mark Button, Towerstream’s Manager of Customer Care. While I know that many companies keep a close eye on social media and the blogosphere, and I’ve even had first-hand good experience with this with our (as in my own, and my company’s as well) web hosting company WiredTree, it was still a bit unexpected and very much welcome. Since this blog and my Twitter account are used mostly for personal communications, and neither I nor my company could be considered a large account, it is good to see that we are still considered important enough to reach out to. Thank you, Mark and Towerstream!

I was also surprised to get a very quick response (less than 24 hours) for a kind of nothing question that I’d emailed to Kraft Foods/Nabisco. The answer unfortunately wasn’t what I wanted to hear, as it seems they have no plans to bring back Oreo Double Delight Coffee ‘n’ Cream cookies in the foreseeable future. Boo to that, but applause for the speedy response.

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 23 of 30)

I don’t require my blog readers to register to read or comment, and I removed any visible links for registration or administration at the time I started the blog. So it was definitely a scary thing to receive an email claiming a New User Registration from an email address I did not recognize. I hoped it was just a spammy thing, and not a hacker-y thing. I deleted the new user, changed my administrator password, used phpMyAdmin to make sure there was nothing awry in the database (there wasn’t) and went off in search of more information.

Turns out that I was in very little danger since my WordPress General settings did not set new users to Editor or Administrator. These mystery registrations have been hitting a number of WordPress installations via bots searching for the usual address of the registration page. The WordPress forums address the issue:

Someone registered as a user on my wordpress blog – possible hacker?

If you, too, were visited by this bot:

1. Go to General Settings.
2. Under Membership, uncheck Anyone can register.
3. Under New User Default Role, select Subscriber (Subscribers cannot post to or make edits to your blog).
4. Go to Users and delete the unwanted user.
5. Go to Your Profile and change your password.
6. Go to phpMyAdmin at your host and check the wp-users table to make sure there are no unwanted entries there.

This happened right after returning home from another potentially scary experience. I used to have my hair done at the beauty colleges all the time during high school, college, and right after. I haven’t done that for a very long time, and I’m not even sure why. My worst hair experience was not at the hands of a student, but at a salon with some good recommendations from friends and acquaintances. This was in the early 80s, and I fell victim to an overly curly perm.

I never returned to that particular salon, but I didn’t go back to the beauty college either, until tonight. I went to the beauty college near my house that is affiliated with a salon that I have visited fairly often with good results. I don’t like color surprises, so I usually bring a copy of the formula for my favorite color. I had a bad moment upon learning that even though the salon uses that brand of color, their associated school does not. I almost considered bailing at that point, but the stylist and her instructor showed me how they would get to “my” color and it was pretty convincing, so I stayed.

This story has a happy ending that is not scary at all. The cut is good, the color is great. My stylist was a woman about my age working on a midlife career change. I enjoyed chatting with her. I still have money in my wallet. The total cost was about a third of what I would have paid at the salon. If I’d started doing this sooner, maybe I could have bought the MacBook Pro instead of the cheaper MacBook after all!

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 13 of 30)