As a matter of fact, I do own a shoe horn.
Recognizing that One Is No Longer a Part of the Target Demographic
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Category: Life
The Things I Remember
Jack, of Jack in the Box restaurant fame? His wife’s name is Cricket.
From some commercial probably 5 years ago, I remember this.
What a waste of brain cells.
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Speaking from Experience
I speak from experience when I say that Ms. Parton states the obvious here:
They let your dream
Just to watch ’em shatter
You’re just a step
On the boss man’s ladder
But you got a dream he’ll never take away
I have been a boss man myself, and I can honestly say, “Who would want that shattered dream that I let you have? Now get a broom and a dustpan and clean it up!”
Did I mention how many years running I got the Boss Man of the Year award? No?
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Well, If You Save Money On Cheap Funeral Arrangements, Maybe
I have to wonder if perhaps the adjective realistic is applied incorrectly in this advertisement:
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Another Day, More World Points
Today’s mail contained 2 Bank of America World Points credit card offers with the same nonprofit group branding:
The only difference is the free gift offered.
The next step, of course, is five credit card offers in a day with no difference whatsoever! Since I’m not interested, perhaps someone who’d steal my identity by stealing my mail or taking advantage of a misdelivery will!
This even beats my last batch of credit card offers.
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Metaphish
A phish disguising itself as a warning about phishing scams. Brilliant!
Although this phising scam warns the recipients that Citizens Bank Money Manager GPS users have been the target of phishing scams containing misspelled words, it obviously does not note that phishing e-mails often contain weird capitalization or lack punctuation, but then again, valid e-mails often contain these problems.
To be really helpful, it would include a tip about checking your status bar (that bottom line of text in some e-mail clients) or the mouseover text (in some e-mail clients) to make sure that the target of the link is the same as the link text, or it would explain that subdomains with legitimate-looking text are irrelevant if the actual domain, that is, the last thing before the .com, is not what it’s supposed to be (such as vbv75.com).
But that would sort of spoil the phishing exercise, wouldn’t it?
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Mail Call
In yesterday’s mail:
The thing is, I have actually only attended one of these schools. Of the others, my wife has contributed money to one and we established a scholarship at the other.
Special thanks to the development departments at the last two for selling my name in vain and to Bank of America for its unsolicited and unwarranted come-ons.
In the mail for BOA the day after tomorrow: three post-paid envelopes containing nothing but the cardmember agreement.
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Zombie Accelerator
You know the phrase “wouldn’t be caught dead in”? Doesn’t that phrase really identify the garment in question as some sort of zombie accelerator? I mean, seriously, if you’re planning your life-after-death, I guess it’s worthwhile to think what sort of outfit will make you faster and all, but I have better ways to spend my time.
Like making long almost-puns that amuse no one but myself.
(This musing based upon this post.)
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Public Service Announcement
The ch sound is not the same in the words lich and lichen.
Do not expose yourself as a former or current roleplaying gamer to respectable members of society by making this mistake!
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Something’s Missing
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When I Was Your Age
Rocket Jones leads me to contemplate:
What will today’s youth tell tomorrow’s youth in When I Was Your Ageisms?
My first shot:
When I was your age, radio came over radio waves.
Ah, I got nothing.
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Anger Is Not Zero Sum
Anger is not zero sum; that is, if everyone is angry, it doesn’t mean that one person is winning and another person is losing. An angry tide raises all boats, and it makes them run in ship-shape fashion.
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Another One Where I Read Them All
It took me two days to review all 414. But I did.
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Yeah, Well I Want A Giant Killer Armored Battle Suit, Too
At least this fellow is taking steps:
Advertising for one.
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Commodore 128 as Nature Intended It
Fellow Milwaukeean (and the only current Milwaukeean between the two of us) Triticale knows I collect old computers, and when he recently changed abodes, he told me I could have his old Commodore 128 that had been in his garage forever. Well, I talked to my brother in Milwaukee about picking it up for me, and he did, and on my most recent trip to Wisconsin I retrieved said machine.
When I first tried to boot it, it failed. So I planned to make it a teach-yourself-electronics project to resuscitate it, but all it took was a new fuse in the power supply. So I didn’t really learn much at all, but it works beautifully.
And darn the luck, the only television with an RF switch attached to it was in the living room. So behold:
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Oh, my. I was so excited, I hooked the Commodore 1571 disk drive up and I’ll be durned if it didn’t work right out of the box. So I dug through my archives of my old disks and found some of the programs I had written in the first Bush presidency. As you might know, the Commodore 128 was my first computer, so Basic 7.0 was my first language. And I wrote a number of programs.
Including Adventurers’ Guild, a program designed to keep track of my D&D group’s equipment and character list. It wasn’t truly data-driven, but it did use the Commodore 128’s graphics to their ability. I mean, high res graphics, brother:
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The main program was just a routing piece that called a subprogram allowing the user to look at the various and sundry keeps, characters, or stockpiled equipment:
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For example, if you wanted to see the roster, it would go into a subprogram for the roster and you could see all characters past and present that played in the campaign:
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For example, here’s my brother’s favorite character as seen when the user has chosen to view all:
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And even when I was a junior in high school, I was building help into my applications. Here’s one of my first help files:
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When the user logged out, the Commodore went into hi-res graphics for a moment, painting an exit door:
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Then it ended turning the screen to default colors and with a final message from the dungeonmaster:
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Hmm, lightning is misspelled. I’ll log a defect on that right away.
I wrote a couple of other things, too, including a DMV quiz program after watching the movie License to Drive over and over as only a kid in the boondocks with only Showtime could.
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The instructions included my address back in the day and welcomed correspondence. Back in those days, that’s how you did it without the Internet and e-mail addresses that worked wherever you connected:
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And the Weird Al Wannabe Quiz:
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Of course, after I released them to the wild of the Commodore CG BBSes, I’d expect they were never downloaded. I know no one ever came across with a shareware donation. I did, however, make some money programming, as the high school baseball team’s manager wanted a program to keep track of stats. At Stellar Soft, we were happy to gather his requirements, deliver a quality program, and support it with new features as requested for the princely sum of like $50:
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I see that in the instructions, I listed it as a division of Triple N Enterprises:
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Considering that Noggle, Noggle, and Neiderriter was our lawnmowing business, I guess I did that for taxing purposes.
Well, that’s my walk down memory lane. What’s my point? I don’t know; I have 20 years of software development experience? Or perhaps to boast once again that I have more Commodores than Michele?
Aw, who cares, I got to post some pictures of an old computer.
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To Coin a Phrase Or Not To Coin a Phrase
Crikey, I thought I was going to coin the word hipnoxious, but someone has beat me to it.
Well, there goes my fame and fortune.
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Going All Althouse
Worked all night, but it won’t last:
Hey, buddy? You missed a spot.
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Rhetorical Question
If pro-life advocates assert that life begins at conception, how come they never include that period when discussing someone’s age?
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Bringing Back Memories, Therapy Sessions
A short video from Summerfest shows people dancing; my goodness, I remember cutting a picnic table or two in my time. My friend Doug and I were unabashed in our appreciation of the music, much to the amusement of passersby and chagrin of those with whom we came. It probably also explains why we were unable to impress women we saw at Summerfest.
Why, I once went to Summerfest alone and danced on a table by myself. That shows the depths of….well, something.
I haven’t been to Summerfest in a decade, but watching the video takes me there again.
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Mention Pretention
You know, I don’t call it Fourth of July; I call it Independence Day as diligently as I call Autumn what others term Fall.
In my own mind, it makes me sound more formal.
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