Second guessing.

I don't think I've made any secret that owning bunnies is about the height of lunacy. You can wake up on morning and everything is fine, and within hours things can drastically change.

So, on Friday when one of our oldest bunnies lost the use of his front arms in the space of 6 hours - I knew the outcome wouldn't be good. Making things harder though, is that it isn't uncommon for bunnies to turn dramatically better.

It is basically a coin toss. If they are still eating...half your battle is won.

And ... this is where we were at. Throw in a little narcotic pain killers, and you've just made things a very difficult situation. You have a pet who is essentially comfortable.

A few years back your choices were relatively simple. Now, with accessibility to advanced medicine it makes figuring out if you've reached the point where quality of life is irreversible so much harder. And it just sucks.

Because of those damn pain killers I will always wonder if I kept him comfortable longer he could have miraculously gotten better.

Make your own caption.

I don't know why.. but there is just something that rubs me the wrong way about Apple sitting right next to a Tiffany's.



Shouldn't they be putting those iPhones right inside those little blue boxes?

Holy Crap!

This site made my little green photography monster completely trip a fuse.

Hat tip Dean's World.

Christmas...... already?

Correct me if I'm wrong. It is still July. Right? I didn't fall asleep for 3 months and loose some time? Although.. that would really be fantastic. You know.. the insomnia and all.

Yesterday, I got my first Christmas Catalog. WTF?

Makes me shudder. You can't imagine the mountain of mail I get normally.

During Christmas...well fuck. It drives you to insanity, and I'm sure my postal service will sue me for undue stress for having to carry all my mail. I don't even know how I get on all these mailing lists.

So... when did they start trying to get you to buy Christmas stuff in July? Really.. when?

Update - Oh.. you just have to go see the high quality classy stuff they are selling.

Dog bowl shaped like a toilet. Nice.

Cute... or Creepy?

Who is buying this crap?

No one.. that's who!

Alright.. I've had it. Is it too much to ask to get some f-ing grapes? That aren't in a bag? I live in California for gods sake. Aren't we all about the grape? It's the middle of f-ing summer. Some cherries not in a bag would be nice too. But I'm not trying to be greedy.



As a matter of a fact.. you can't get anything with the colors green, or any shade of red that doesn't look like it's been in a hailstorm. Look at these limes.



And thanks a f-ing lot hippies for making it impossible to get any fucking corn. All summer long I've tried and tried to get corn. Most of it you open up, and its 3/4's undeveloped cornstalk.

Thankfully my ethanol powered car is right out front. Oh wait.. not so much. And who's bright idea was it to make a fuel that could be taken out with one La Nina year?

Look at these size of this corn next to my cell phone case. My cell phone is 4 inches long BTW.



I don't know why farmers are even trucking this stuff in. I see customer after customer go to buy something in the produce isle and just walk away.

I understand the middle part of the country has been screwed with rain.. but I should be able to get something from my own f-ing state. Like grapes. We've had like - 180 days of sunshine this year.

Anyone want to make bets on how soon the Farm Aid concerts pop up?

It's not that hard people!

Is it just me, or has everyone suddenly forgotten the rules on how to 4 way stop? I mean... not just a few people. Everyone.

This is the scenario. Person reaches the stop sign about 10 feet before I do. Then lingers until I stop. Because I'm usually to the right of them, they just wait watching me - waiting for me to go. WTF? It isn't like we were close to stopping at the same time. I finally have to wave them on, because who knows if they are going to get a hair up their ass and just bolt through the intersection.

Seems like everyone has forgotten the whole "whoever gets to the stop sign first - has priority" system.

This is just another example of how everyone is conspiring to be in my way. I just know it.

What next? Hell freezing over.. because I'd love that.

Alright.. so you know I was super excited today - when it rained!

Someone told me it was the first time it rained in here in July since they have been keeping records. But, I'm too lazy to fact check it. And mostly because I don't care. Did I mention it rained?

Well.. mostly. It was sort of heavy fog style rain. But the ground was wet, and that all I care about.

Yeah.. it's the simple things that make me happy.

5 things that might be interesting about me.

Or.... maybe not.

1. I once used to be quite the beach bum. One night I just had to shave my legs, and since it's pretty much always cold at the beach at night - I wound up shaving all the goosebumps off my legs.

2. My mom is only slightly less than 15 years older than I am.

3. I used to live with a narcoleptic psychoanalyst. I'd often come home from work to find him sleeping in his car in the driveway. Somehow he always managed to drive home before he fell asleep.

4. I grew up welfare poor.

5. My full name is in the credits of the Lord of the Rings video game.

Why can't XM get this right yet?

I'm sure a lot of people read this blog and think I'm an incorrigible harpie.

But - I can't be that bad when a customer support rep actually thanks me for being nice. Right?

Especially when I start out a conversation with the following.

Support rep - gives me a standard XM customer support greeting.

Me- " I just want you to know - I'm going to yell at you. I want you to know that it's not you. It's the company, but I want to give you a choice to either listen to me or transfer me to a manager".

Support rep - Giggles then says "I get yelled at all day, and I've never had anyone so nicely warn me". When we were done with the call she thanked me again for being so nice. Which I didn't really think I was being.

Now the problem. This morning I hop into the car to run an errand, and find out XM is dead. I'm immediately pissed, because I thought XM and I had covered this problem in August. Oh yeah.. we did. Look here at this blog entry.

"All I want from them is to link our credit card to this radio so when the trial period is over - 3 months or 12 months, whatever- they will start charging us. Did I mention how long we have been customers with the same credit card number on file? Oh yeah.. I covered that.

Apparently... customer service can not do this until a few weeks before our trial period expires. So I have to call them back. But how the F am I going to know when that is, because they are sending me notices every two weeks. By this time my husband is talking to them, due to my accelerating sarcasm. I'm not nasty... and I do laugh while I am telling him to tell them - that if our service gets cut off, I am going to call them back and completely wig out. She claims she stuck this in the notes.. I'm sure it just says difficult. "

Now, I realise it was my responsibility to call back. Because I have nothing better to do than check every week trying figure out if I'm in that 3 week window in which I need to call customer support to have them link my credit card. I'm just sitting around eating bon bons. My life isn't complicated and busy.

I just don't understand why a new technology company doesn't just make it so when I manage my account from their website - I can tell them to continue a service after the trial period is up. It's just a button!

Or for that matter, when I specifically call customer support and tell them I want them to automatically start billing me after my trial is up.

Listen XM... you can see we have a history together. Look at your database. And why after paying them for 4 years am I still having to call customer support for issues that could be managed by their website anyway?

Will work for food.

This weekend Mr S. and I were driving though a parking lot, and encountered a homeless man who had one of those "will work for food" signs.

So, I turned to Mr S., and say "you know, sometimes I want to take them up on their offer - but if they aren't working now chances are they wouldn't do a good job, and it would just wind up driving me nuts".

Mr S. replies " if he wanted to work for food, you'd think he would be at the Home Depot".

Which was super funny, because he's right. Undocumented laborers have found a way to work for food. It's called hanging out at the Home Depot and getting day labor jobs.

Building for the future.

In the early days of my career, it was pretty common for me to work in a computer lab. I always sort of loved the lab. It gave you sort of this futuristic feeling. Giant rows of computer servers sitting on elevated air-conditioned floors. Everything was so clean and uncluttered. The computer cabling was all tucked away under the floor. And if you needed to work on the cabling you had these suction cup devices that allowed you to pull out one of the floor tiles so you could access them.

I always thought it would be great to have a similar system for your home, but aside from hiding the cables that ran from your televisions and lamps, it wasn't that logical to have in a residence. But, these days, it would be nice if companies started thinking of ways to accommodate our new world full of power cords, and cable systems.

Most weeks it feels like a giant effort to keep your house from looking like this.



It isn't enough you have to put into an massive effort to keep cabling tucked away from view. But in our case, you have to make it so when things break you don't have to rewire everything. And there are no easy solutions to that problem despite an arsenal of different types wire-ties. But I digress.

Add to that - the ginormous stash of extra cables you have to keep around. Everyone wants to have unique cable type. Which is deeply annoying. Everything from television video cables to cell phones to chargers of every kind imaginable. You can't imagine how much effort it takes to keep all this stuff organised. Or for that matter to find which cable you need in the box 'o' cables that is almost mandatory these days.

So - this weekend was devoted to getting rid of obsolete hardware and organising our cable stash. Basically it was just a huge effort to stop our house from starting to look like hacker Johns basement.

Listen technology companies - we want to buy your stuff. We'd just like to have a nice living environment too. Don't you understand how much it sucks for the average consumer to need a million different types of cables because you can't play nice with other technology companies and develop some universal cable/power system?

Stupid neighbor wars.

I've completely figured out why the older you get, the more you want to move to the country.

While maybe its nice to have a slower pace. I'm guessing the main reason is, you just want more space between you and your neighbors.

It's really stupid what causes neighbors to get all territorial. For instance.. I just want to be able to park my cars on the street in front of my house. I have just enough room on my property to do so. If its trash day - like today. I'd really like to be able to put my cans out so the trash truck can access them easily.

My neighbor however, who almost always has 5 cars - feels our house is an extension of their property. So, they park in front of our house about 70% of the time. When they could actually fit all their cars on their side of the street.

I'm not sure who isn't aware neighbors get all crotchety about this kind of thing.

Even when I have a million contractors at my house, I'll walk over and ask if the neighbor minds if we park in front of their house for a few hours. Just to let them know we aren't making a habit of using their space. Its just a nice thing to do.

Sometimes I think I'm the only one who makes an effort not to piss off the neighbors.

Well... maybe that is a little bit too extreme. The neighbor with the dog has been making a very nice effort to not piss us off lately. Which I really appreciate. Even thought I still would have liked him to have made the effort before I got annoyed in the first place.

It doesn't even take that much extra effort to prevent a neighbor problem before it happens. Most of the time they feel happy you considered their feelings.

Stay tuned for the other reasons this neighbor is driving me nuts.

Forgotten.

Coldstone creams Baskin Robbins?

I have to admit - ice cream was the last thing on my mind this afternoon.

We were busy getting supplies for the project of the day. Mr S. and I were discusing how the check-out times at stores never seem to be proportionate to the number of items you buy. Buying fewer things almost never seems to get you out of a store quicker.

When we got to the car, I noticed that a Baskin Robbins store had a big "out of business" sign in front of it. This surprised me since this store had been active the whole time we lived in this city. But it got me to to thinking. Had Cold Stone Creamery finally caused a tipping point for Baskin Robbins?

So when I got home, I started poking around the Internet to see if other stores were closing. The first thing I found interesting was... Baskin Robbins stops giving franchise growth after the year 2005. That is never good. Right?


Source baskinrobbins.com.

The other thing that was pretty interesting is that epinions.com has reviews for both Baskin Robbins and Cold Stone Creamery.

By far the biggest complaint against Cold Stone is the price. Even so, it seems like Cold Stone is causing enough competition to start putting Baskin Robbins franchises out of business. Even worse - Baskin Robbins has tried to undergo a face lift that will probably spell doom for a lot of franchises.

The Arizona Republic.
"Franchisees foot most of the remodeling bill, paying $50,000 to $100,000 or more to upgrade their stores, said John Carlson, Baskin-Robbins' director of franchise services for the Southwest. The company assists with advertising and also kicks in some cash, he added."

That's a lot of ice cream.

Oddly enough, when Cold Stone first came to my city - I refused to go for months and months. My theory was "ice cream is ice cream - you can't do that much to improve it". Over time I relented. But mainly because it got annoying dealing with teenage staff who would rather talk on the phone or to the other workers in the store, than serve customers. The lines may be longer at Cold Stone, but the time it takes to get in and out is about the same.

I've never been back to Baskin Robbins since. Just goes to show that when customers have a choice...maybe business isn't as good as you thought it was.

A little bit of security everyone needs.

The crazy things companies do.

I'm actually not sure how to start this post. On one hand - I want to congratulate a company for fulfilling the warranty plan on a product I purchased.

On the flip side, I'm not sure I can tell you what company it is.

What I'm going to tell you next is a system fraught with potential abuse. You never know who will pick up a post and start spreading it.

This is what happened:

A several weeks ago my monitor went limp. See how the monitor on the right is able to be pointed upward? The one on the left had lost its ability to do anything but point down giving the illusion it might actually topple forward.



Something in this mechanism gave out.



This is probably an easy fix. But I'm not going to do it, because it might void my warranty. And - if it isn't easy to fix, I've just hosed myself.

Since the monitor is still under warranty, I wanted it fixed. It's only two years old, and it's still a pretty fantastic monitor.

So, Mr S. calls the big box electronic store and explains the problem. Customer support seemed to indicate it wasn't common for this to happen, but agree to send a new monitor. Usually people are upset their pixels are screwed up. All my pixels are perfect.

A week goes by, and Mr S. was checking the online status of the monitor when he noticed the trouble ticket had been closed. Causing him to have talk to customer support again.

This is what he found out. The big box electronic store turns these matters over to a third party company who finds an equivalent product. Then sends a replacement. Not that interesting. Right?

Okay - this is the interesting part. When Mr S. asks about an RMA#, the customer support guy tells him they probably won't want our somewhat broken monitor back. He said if there was an RMA slip in the box, we should return it. If there wasn't one - the company has 30 days to request the monitor back. If they don't, we get to keep it. The new monitor was around 600 bucks. Even if they refurb'ed my old monitor they should be able to recoup half that.

Now, while I'm super happy they fixed my problem easily. I'm also generally uncomfortable with anything a company does that makes you more than whole. When you get stuff for free, it just makes things more expensive for everyone.

I'm guessing neither of the companies involved are capable of fixing these types of things and its just easier for them to let the customer keep the faulty item. But hell, it still seems like it is an expensive way to handle a problem.

I'm gonna need a fleet of these!

Bitch inside.

Alright - I haven't had any bunny pictures in a while. And you will love them!

Bunnies who get all territorial and nippish isn't a very interesting story. That's the impression most people have of rabbits. Right?

This is what's interesting - my girl Saffron only gets this way after dark. She is the sweetest thing during the day, and turns mean at night.

All day long she will beg to be picked up. If you even look her - she gets all excited you might come over and rub her. She'll even stalk you until you do. If you take a step in her direction, she'll run in circles in excitement.

Once the sun goes down.... she turns into a different rabbit. Instead of running to the front of the cage like she does in the daytime. She runs to the back of the cage and stakes up battle lines.

In the day time, you can't keep her in her cage. If you leave the door open - she'll just run right out. At night? She refuses to come out. She'll growl, and bite if you try to go in and get her.

To understand how odd this is.. I must remind you of this picture. Sweet right?

This is her trying to bite Mr S.



Notice the feet and toes all wide apart. Normally when she's happy her feet are together like this.

We've never seen anything like it. When you aren't getting bit, it's pretty comical.

Sometime I must let you hear the sound of her growling and whimpering when she does this. It crazily passive aggressive. But funny.

I find the oddest things interesting.

Four story crane? Oh yeah.. now you've got my attention.



Apparently, a company will come out. Pay you a 1000 bucks. Cut these palms out of your yard, and sell them to someone else for 50 grand.

You have to fill in the whole they left. Which sounded like it cost about a grand to do. But you got rid of your nasty old palm tree.

Man.. I wouldn't be able to chop one of those things down fast enough.

This whole thing was a spectacle. You'd think it was a movie premier by the amount of traffic and people stopping to watch.

Yeah - it's a Wednesday.. we don't have much to do. What are you gonna say about it?







You see how giant these are .. right? Those are people's legs at the bottom of the picture.



I'm even going to give the company a plug. Because man.. that's a dirty job.

Most exciting news ever.

People! Listen up. You are never going to believe what happened. Look.



It almost rained. See the drops? You can hardly call it rain.. but it was just enough that it kicked some of the pollen down.

What do you mean - so what? You can't imagine how rare it is to get rain in California in the summer. Plus..it hasn't rained in like 180 days. Okay.. maybe its rained like twice in 180 days.. but just enough to get the ground wet.

You can not believe how relaxing it was today - not having to look at the brown blue sky.

I'm going to take this week to feel sorry for myself.

I have a bunch of product reviews...but I just don't have it in me to write about them. If I don't comment on your blog it isn't because I don't find you funny. I do.

I'm just in a really crappy mood. And not a funny crappy mood.

You see...my insurance company rejected me. This is how my rejection letter went.

50% - your surgeons staff are tards and didn't supply us with any information.

Which really pisses me off, because all they have to do is ask my doctor specific questions. As far as I can tell they haven't even talked to anyone in my GP's office.

The only reason some medical information got sent over is because I met with my doc and had them sent. But apparently my rejection was already in the works.

So I'm also looking for a new surgeon. Which triple sucks. Did I mention I got this guy from a referral?

The surgeons office didn't even call me about the rejection. I got a letter in the mail. But said they knew about it. Their office has only called me once. That was 2 weeks after my first visit to tell me they needed to get my GP's records. Even thought I was positive I signed a release form the day I met with the surgeon.

25% - Your boobs don't look shitty enough. Yeah.. that's right. Not anything about the size/weight. But you aren't filled with pox sized rashes, and you don't have ginormous tire track divots cut into your shoulders. Which by the way I have always made a special effort to prevent. I've seen those women, and you don't get rid of those.

25% - legitimate medical reasons. Absence of mammogram. Those types of things.

So I'm pretty much just bummed.

Yes... I can be a pain in the ass too.

I must tell you about our trips to the electronics stores. Mainly because it is one of the few times I don't get annoyed shopping. I'm easily distracted, off in my own little world.. and generally excited. So I don't have as much time to focus on other peoples annoying ticks.

Well.. maybe I'm lying a little. I do get annoyed when I go to check-out and the bar code on my curiously strong magnet can't be read. Because duh...curiously strong magnets are circular and bar code readers can't read things that are circular.

Finally after the checker makes it clear I won't be able to buy the item because it won't scan. I frustratingly tell him the price is on the back of the bar code.

Forget being a checker... has this guy never bought anything before? Anyway... I'm getting way off track. Except for checking out - I rarely get annoyed.

Anyway - the trips to the electronic stores drive Mr. S insane. Electronic stores are the one place where I won't try to keep track of Mr S, and he can't keep track of me.

We will be walking down an isle together and he will turn around and I'm just gone. Like an episode of vanished. He will track me down. We will agree to go look at a particular item, and not 10 feet later - it happens again.

So finally we'll agree to meet up in a particular department so he can get his items without stopping every two minutes to find me. That should make things better right? Oh no. It only makes things worse.

For him.

I'm as happy as I can be. Anything with lights, or magnets, or things that glow are among the things that will get me off track. Anything that makes you say "holy shit".

It is a complete freakin nightmare for Mr. S. Because not only am I not in the place we agreed to meet.. but I could be in some random part of the store he would have never thought about looking for me in.

Thank goodness for cell phones. Otherwise Mr S would have gone crazy by now. As it is.. I make him skirt the line.

For my nerdy friends.

What a fun - fun, world we live in.

Okay - now you must listen to my old timey rant.

It used to be the only people who would even think about having a terabyte of disk space was companies like NASA. And it would cost a shit load of money. Easily 100,000 dollars.

Can you believe your average consumer can now walk into Fry's and buy 2 terabytes of disk space for around 1000 bucks. A bit pricey... but still!

Quit store booty.

1. Seam ripper.

See - I follow instructions.

2. Chalk.

3. Black thread.

4. Cutty thing.

Which I will immediately kill because I'll wind up using it on cardboard or pizza or something it shouldn't be used for.

5. Pins that have big heads.

So I can avoid stepping on them.

6. Safety pins.

Because I have a stupid fetish for colored ordinary objects. See?



I don't know why I love these things. But I was super excited when Home Depo had colored drill chucks. Lame.

FYI - I shall never return to the quilt store, because this stuff cost me over 50 bucks. It shouldn't cost that much right?

Are we done with the whole ribbon fad yet?

I thought all these ribbons were to show solidarity for something.

I have to admit, a search in Google for California Advanced Training Solutions leaves me more perplexed than ever.

The assimilation has begun.

Look where I wound up today!



I resisted most impulse buying. Like this item.



Because if there is anything I love - it's things that glow.

And what is this for? A yardstick compass.

Still ruining the planet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm stuck on this right now. I'll get over it eventually. But I find it funny and absurd when the trendy thing is being "green", and the phrase "carbon footprint" is said more often than "hello".

So - this is the great big bag I just got from the Verizon store. The only thing in it? A wireless card. Since the salesman didn't even ask if I wanted a bag or not -I took what he handed to me. Because you know I wanted to blog about it.

I can't be the only one they are handing these ginormous bags to. And come to think of it - I've bought a bunch of stuff at the Verizon store and I've never needed a bag this big.

My other attempts at ruining the earth here.

Today's burning question.

Why is it always so freaking hard to get out of a restaurant? Do I really have to sit there for 15 minutes trying desperately to get my servers attention just to get the check?

It used to be if you moved all the plates to the outside of the table, it was a sign you were ready to leave. Not anymore apparently.

You'd think they would want to turn my table over.

More Customer Support Horror Stories.

Jane Galt: Sony VAIO customer service sucks ass too.

She complains about the same things I did when I made this rant.