Aisle 10 . Net » ranting

I hate Bill Engvall

emjaydee — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:22:35 +0000

Do you think Bill Engvall realizes how annoying those “commercials” on TBS are? for the 3rd time this week, I was watching something on TBS (This time it was Family Guy) and right in the middle of the scene, you hear this ass start laughing, and all of a sudden bill engvall is “pausing” the show and telling you to watch his crap show. It is the most annoying commercial I have ever seen. It not only makes me never want to see his lame show (well…I never did want to see it) but also not watch TBS either.

knight rider

emjaydee — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:03:10 +0000

I am both saddened and appalled by the news that knight rider is coming back to TV.

sans David Hasselhoff (except for a guest appearance)
sans William Daniels (voice of kitt….aka Mr Feeny)
sans the firebird.

I love the nice rice rocket spoiler on the back…oh wait…dual gay spoilers! I wonder how the plastic ground effects on the car will handle gun fire. It doesnt look like a molecular bonded shell to me.

And look at the interior. This is the lamest interior ever. I think they took the normal mustang, and just swapped out the steering wheel for a slightly more gay one.

how can you have a knight rider show with none of the cast?

better yet, how can they call the car in the new show “KITT”?

ohhh……lucky for them the number two and the number three both begin with the letter “t”. The new “car” is a Knight Industries Three Thousand…not one of those old outdated two thousands.

No wonder David Hasselhoff was all drunk and wasted in that video on youtube.

god…..a mustang….what a load of crap.

Read about it here

things I am sick of hearing about

emjaydee — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:05:02 +0000

1. The iPhone
2. Harry Potter
3. Ron Paul
4. The iPod
5. everything else

opie and anthony got suspended

emjaydee — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:53:59 +0000

This completely kills my drive home from work and most of my drive into work. Opie & Anthony Suspended from XM Radio 30 days? and not even best of’s? This just days after getting my car back from the shop. …

why oh why google

emjaydee — Tue, 01 May 2007 19:44:32 +0000

I cant describe how dissapointed I am with google for changing the name of their personalized homepage product to “iGoogle”.

thats so iGay

the iPod as a flight data recorder

emjaydee — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:11:22 +0000

what a horrible horrible horrible idea this is. Why would anyone want to use an iPod as a black box for an airplane. What exactly is the advantage? oh, sorry, we couldn’t log any of the flight information because I just downloaded the entire Van Halen discography and ran out of space”. Is there really a need for portable flight data recorders? are you ever waiting in traffic and say “shit! i wish I had all the data from yesterdays flight with me so I could listen to it”. I really hope that “real” black boxes dont use cheap commodity hard drives with absolutely no shock resistance built into them.

Then again, i guess since everything in the aeronautics industry is overpriced, the iPod would probably fit in nicely.

god i hate iPods. Actually, I hate stupid looking red planes too

Valentines Day

emjaydee — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:45:38 +0000

I decided to get flowers delivered to Aimees work for valentines day (I know, real original). I saw some that looked interesting on teleflora.com, and ended up ordering the below “arrangement” to be delivered by an “authorized teleflora florist” near her work.

This is what I ordered:

And…..

This is what she got:

What the hell? they didn’t even call me to say they were out, or whatever their reasoning is. They just decided that even though I paid for one thing, they would just deliver whatever they felt like. What is the point of the website then? why not just have one item and call it the “whatever the hell we feel like throwing together bouquet”

landlord from hell

emjaydee — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 14:49:58 +0000

I decided over the weekend I can't take my landlord any more. So when my lease is up in december, we are high tailing it out of there. For those that don't know, I live in medford in a fairly nice 2 family. It is owned by an old italian couple that live on the 1st floor. I am on the 2nd floor.

The big problem is that the italian couple doesn't "get it". When you decide you want to rent out property, there are some sacrifices you have to make, especially when you live in the same building as the property you are renting out. It may not always be dead quiet. You are going to know other people live in the same building. That is just how it works.

Since moving in last december, this is the list of complaints my landlord has brought to my attention:

Doing laundry too much – The apartment came with a washer and dryer…located in the cellar. The dryer has a bad pulley in it and squeaked like crazy. Understandibly annoying to have to listen to, but you cant really hear it from upstairs, and it being noisy is a differant problem than doing laundry too much. My father helped me place all the pulleys and belts in the dryer and it has been as good as new. Also, even if we are doing laundry too much, I pay for the electricty and gas, so it is none of their concern.
The dryer creates lint - both before and after every load of laundry going through the dryer, both aimee and I check the lint trap and empty it out. Not onto the floor, into a trash barrel. I come home one day and old man rings the door bell and asks me to go into the cellar so he can give me a good talkin' to. There is lint all over the ground, and I had been noticing it magically appear on the ground every once in a while. Not like a couple little pieces, but like a massive piece, like if you were to take the lint trap right after washing a bunch of brand new towels, and just peel it off onto the ground. I know I didn't do it, and I know aimee didn't do it, which leaves either old man or his wife. He starts yelling about how he cant open the window to let some air in because it will blow "all the lint" under the furnace. I tell him he put the lint there and then an argument ensued. He then complained that I dont empty the waste basket I put down there often enough. It just has lint and like a detergent bottle in it. It had just become close to full that week and the detergent bottle was thrown in. Oddly enough after I called him out on checking our laundry, the lint miraculously never appeared on the ground again. By the way, my way of fixing the problem after he yelled at me was to go and replace the waste basket with a much bigger one, and then vacuum that whole part of the cellar.
blowing a circuit – Normally when you move into a place, you have easy…or at least some form of access to the breaker panel so that in the event you blow a circuit, you can go and reset it. Not in this place. It is an old house with old wiring and barely any outlets. Maybe 1, occasionally 2 per room. And more than 1 one is on a circuit. In winter, since some of the old windows, and actually most of the new cheap replacement windows were drafty, I got that plastic stuff that you can put over the windows with tape, and then you use a hair dryer to shrink wrap it onto the windows to get a tight fit. Apparantly using the dryer for the 15 minutes that I was using it was enough to blow the circuit (with the TV and 2 computers, a DVR, a receiver…etc). That was when I discovered it was all on the same circuit, and that I didn't have a fuse box anywhere. So I call old guy, he meets me downstairs, where he complains about the "last tenant never had that problem" and how he "doesn't know what we are doing up there". Keep in mind he has a real thick italian accent. It is real hard to understand what he is even saying. I had said to him I was putting up that window plastic with the hair dryer, told him the whole story, and his response was that whole thing about the last tenant never having that problem. then he ranted about that for a couple minutes then turned the circuit back on. The fuse box is on his part of the cellar, which is like a finished area all closed off, kind of like a parlor or something with a couch, TV, little kitchen, and a fire place. He is down there all day watching TV to avoid his wife.
The rent check – they have an insane italian last name, and we spelled it wrong a couple times. He explained how the bank wont take the check if it is spelled wrong (sure…the bank refuses to take checks if there is annnnything wrong at all..) He then gave us a business card of his so that it "wont happen again". We are so afraid of doing anything wrong, I dont think there has been one month that the rent check wasn't under their door by 8am the day it was due..if not a couple days before. I can only imagine what would happen if we were any later.
The trash barrel smells – This may come as a suprise, but trash barrels hold trash. Despite your best efforts, every once in a while something not fun will leak out of the trash bag into the barrel. When it is hot out, trash barrels smells. This is the way it works. My one trash barrel is alongside the side of the house, where he told me to put it. Then he complains to me that it smells and that it is right under their bedroom window. He told me to put it there, but then I had to go and wash the barrel to make him happy. Apparantly that is not ok, but spreading cow manure all over his yard is fine. I come how from work on a hot day, and it reaks of cow shit. The front yard is full of flowers and plants, the side of the house is all plants, and the back yard has a big garden. All covered in shit. But god forbid my trash barrel smells like trash
Ice cream on the stairs – Aimee threw out an ice cream container that still had some ice cream in it. It melted, and then leaked out of the trash bag when I brought it outside. I didn't see that it had melted, but then, since it was in the winter and cold, froze onto the stairs and walk way. There was a drop every couple of feet. he made me go wash it off in the middle of the night.
drum set – Since there is not a prayer in hell of me being able to play my real drum set, I have an electronic drum set that I have setup in the extra bedroom. All you can hear is a light tapping sound when I use it. Trying to be careful, when I set it up, I got the think rubber floor tiles like you would find in a gym, and then put a thick carpet on top of that, and then set the drum set up on top. i figured maybe it would help deaden whatever sound you could hear. I had been afraid to really use it since the guy is a psycho, and as a rule, for the most part after 7pm is quiet time. Aimee and I decided on 7 just to be good since the psycho old people are…old people. We don' do laundry after 7 either. So this saturday at like 1pm I figured I would play the electronic drum set for a while. Maybe 5 minutes into it at the most, the door bell rings. Old guy starts yelling at me. He tells me "you have to think about what you are doing" and "if you want to do what you want, then go buy your own house". After he says that over and over again a bunch of times, he then says that his wife noticed in the trash a couple weeks ago a box for a grill, and wanted to know if we had one. I explained to him that it is a george forman grill, and that it is electric, and made to be used indoors. He then gets unhappy and wants to see it. I show it to him. It is about the same size as one of those circular charcoal grills, except it is a george foreman grill, and can be taken off the stand if you want to use it indoors so you can put it on the counter. Despite that fact, he goes on that you cant use it indoors because of the smoke. It creates the same amount of smoke as if I used the damn stove. Actually, the stove is probably worse because it is a gas stove and at the very least creates carbon monoxide. Then he repeats the "you have to think" line. Then he starts walking down stairs. I was hoping he wouldnt notice the fish tank, because he would probably get all upset about that as well. So instead I drop kicked him in the back of the knees and he fell down the stairs. Then I laughed.

Oddly enough, about a month ago, he had no problem ringing my door bell to ask me to help him with his remote control. It was a universal remote and the batteries died so it forgot the code to use for his TV. So apparantly inconveinancing me is fine.

In any event, when december comes around, we are moving out. I am hoping there is some way I could pull off getting a condo, because renting sucks. It is too bad that with a condo you still have all those pesky neighbors.

proof of identity

emjaydee — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 02:59:11 +0000

If I remember correctly, to get a drivers license in Massachusetts, you need to bring money, your social security card, and your birth certificate. To get a passport, which is what I am in the process of slowly applying for, you need your license and the "long form" of your birth certificate.

So I go to the Saugus town hall this morning to get mine, and they dont ask for any ID. Just my name and my birth date. According to what Bill at work told me, your birth certificate is public record, so anyone can ask for it. I am not sure I believe that, but what I am confused about is what the actual point of all these IDs are.

The social security card is useless. It is a business card sized piece of card stock printed on a regular printer, and then the social security number is typed on it. That is beyond easy to forge these days if you wanted to. People blindly tell their social security number to anyone/anything that asks.

the birth certificate is a joke. If you dig through someones trash, overhear a phone conversation, are behind them in line at the bank..anything these days, you can overhear what their birth date is.

The drivers license can easily be obtained from the RMV just by printing up a social security card and going to the town hall to get the birth certificate.

And now the passport, which is like the premier form of ID these days is then close to just as easy to get. You have the drivers license now, you have the birth certificate, the birth certificate has your parents birth place, on it. How much harder could it be to social engineer both of your parents social security numbers?

I am sure I am oversimplifying things a bunch, but what a waste of time. I don't really even need a passport, but I am fairly confident that if I dont waste the $90 or so on it now, when september comes around I will be sitting in a dirty prison cell in conzumel mexico wishing I had one.

Technorati Tags: passport, drivers license, identity theft, forgery, social engineering

TV volume

emjaydee — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:47:06 +0000

Why is it that more often than not, when I am watching some movie on TV, the volume is all over the place. The dialogue is always way too low, so then I raise the volume to hear it, and when a commercial comes, the commercials blast through the speakers. Any music in the movies are always way too high as low. Does anyone attempt to equalize the volume?

I remember back in high school, when I was doing stuff for the schools public TV channel, the way I was taught to do production work was to start the recording tape with 30 seconds of black, then 30 seconds of color bars with 30 seconds of an audio tone. The point of the color bars and audio tone was to allow whoever/whatever was playing the tape to calibrate the color and audio. You raise the volume on whatever is playing it until it is at the appropriate level. Then, you dont have all these problems. Am I completely missing some reason for why all these TV stations cant do it? or are they all just insanely lazy? and what about the music in the movies? why are they a ton louder than the dialog in the same movie? does anyone listen to their work before releasing it?

vote Mike for president.

Technorati Tags: TV, audio, movies, dumbasses

everyone is so damn sue happy

emjaydee — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 22:02:33 +0000

As I have said before, I really hate the iPod for numerous reasons. Justified or not. But this is just stupid

Apple sued over iPod Nano replacement feesIf you buy a product that is a piece of shit, or can’t hold up to normal everyday use. That is your fault for buying it. Trying to sue the manufacturer over it is just hiding the fact that either you can’t take care of your own belongings, or that you made a horrible buying decision. My mp3 player had plenty of abuse and never had a scratch on it. That is irrelevant though. If I went and found some discount radio shack brand mp3 player for $10 and it fell apart after a week, that is my fault for buying it. Not the manufacturer for suckering me into purchasing their shoddy product. I doubt it said anywhere on the box for the iPod Nano “this thing never will get scratched!” or “still looks new after years of abuse!”

so just shut up and accept the fact you bought a piece of crap. Be happy that Apple is only charging you $25 to replace it. Even if it does scratch easy, go buy one of those stupid iPod cases and call it a day.

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, lawsuits, law, nano, crap, mp3

screw the ipod and peter towshend. Get good headphones

emjaydee — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 21:17:05 +0000

One of the stories that is all the rage today is how Peter Townshend is speaking out about how there is going to be a hearing loss epidemic because of “the iPod”.

Some might think it is a bit coincidental that all this buzz is coming out right around the same time that the who is annoucing their big “reunion tour”..which is funny by itself since they have a “reunion” almost every year. but that is a side note.

Pete Townshend a complete tool for a variety of reasons which I will conveinantly list for you:

He has been playing the guitar since what, the early 60s? so after over 35 years of being in and around loud music, live performances and god knows what else, he came to the conclusion that his hearing loss is because of “the headphones I used in the recording studio”

He decided that he played a crucial role in “inventing and refining a type of music that makes its principal components deaf” how full of yourself do you need to be? guess what, music was going along on its own road long before the who existed, and if they never did exist I would be willing to bet whatever people were listening to today would be played just as loud, and it would probably be the same music all together.

he is yet another moron who refers to anything that plays music as “an iPod“. When I still had my mp3 player, I had a Rio Karma, so I guess I shouldn’t be worrying about anything, because it wasn’t an iPod, and even though the music coming out of my computer and into my headphones can get plenty loud, I still don’t have to worry. It’s not an iPod.

Deep within the crap he is preaching is a grain of truth. Headphones obviously can cause hearing loss. I don’t need any research to prove that. I also know that large amplifier stacks blasting music into your face during countless tours can cause hearing loss as well.

The real problem that around now, and yes, the infamous iPod is partially responsible for this (as is basically any piece of handheld personal audio equipment) is the use of “earbud” style headphones. Sony and every other headphone manufacturer has been making them for years. For the record, the earbuds that come with the iPod are actually pretty crappy audio wise (and color wise, and in every other way)

The reason why earbud style headphones are a problem is because the driver in the headphones is partially in your ear. But they do nothing at all to block out any surrounding ambient noise, so in order to hear the music (or drown out your co-workers) you crank up the volume. That loud volume, combined with the driver being in your ear, equals to some really loud localized sounds hitting your ear for prolonged periods of time, which…causes hearing damage. I read all this in an article last month. It was from a reuters story, and actually has some research behind it, as opposed to some lame guitarist wildly making claims.

The easy solution is to buy good headphones. The fancy overpriced noise cancelling headphones that companies like Bose are making do a real good job of blocking out ambient noise, and so does the less expensive, but still plenty of money “in-ear” headphones that companies like Shure, Etymotic, and to a lesser extent even companies like Sony. These are basically earplugs with headphones built into them. The sound is great, and it blocks out everything around you just like a pair of regular ear plugs would. Obviously if you really like listening to insanely loud music, either way your going to damage your hearing but for the regular average joe, you’ll be much better off, get superior sound quality to crappy ear-bud style headphones, and above all, be able to tune out everything going on in that harse cruel world around you.

The gist of my whole story is that Pete Townshend is a tool, the iPod sucks, the iPods headphones suck, go buy a decent pair of headphones, and you’ll be just fine.

Also, I have hearing damage. I also listen to music often, but I am willing to bet that the hearing damage was from when I took a “charge” from my fathers impact hammer, which is basically a bullet, and smashed it with a hammer in our not-yet-completed cellar. The cellar makes a great place to echo loud sounds. I would put the blame on that, not my headphones.

Or maybe I just got hearing damage from listening to The Who. Thankfully I don’t make a habit out of that one.

Now go read the real article, its much better than anything Petey boy has to say

Technorati Tags: hearing loss, Pete Townshend, music, iPod, mp3, headphones, earbud, Shure, Etymotic, Sony

I never liked coldplay anyway

emjaydee — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 19:48:36 +0000

aside from their “clocks” song, which I liked only because it was easy as hell to play on the drums…even though most of their music is. One good reason to not buy their new CD, or any CD from Capitol Records for that matter, is that your legally not allowed to listen to it.

It is actually sad that Coldplay, and whatever other artists are under Capitol Records probably have no say, and probably don’t even know how Capitol Records is alienating their fans, and basically driving them away…at least from bothering to pay for the overpriced CD’s in the first place.

On the good side, I can’t think of one band that has come out with a CD in the past 2 years that I really would want to even download for free. So it really isn’t a problem for me until some artist comes around that actually tries to not suck.

Technorati Tags: Capitol Records, Coldplay, music, DRM

on street parking

emjaydee — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 21:05:13 +0000

I grew up in saugus, ma, which is pretty suburban. I lived on a quiet little side street with plenty of driveway and on street parking. Now I live in Medford, and am getting used to the glamour associated with on street only parking, and better yet, one side of the street only parking during “snow emergencies”

Luckily the street I live on now isn’t too busy, so there are plenty of spots…even when you can only park on one side of street. Except for one small problem. I am surrounded by assholes. My neighbors on both sides, usually going maybe 3 houses down, including my landlord which lives below me all park in the middle of both spots in front of the houses. Normally you can easily fit at least 2 cars in front of the average sized house. But instead of doing the nice, polite thing to do, they all park in the middle, so only one car (theirs) can fit in front of the house. Sure, I could see this being justified if they were holding the other spot for a roommate or a loved one, but no….they never move except when they leave for the day. They are just being complete assholes.

Now, as stupid as I think it is, apparantly there is some unspoken rule that if you put an object in the spot on the street your car was parked, like say….a chair, a trash barrel, a baby….anything like that. You “claimed” that spot, and noone else will touch it. It seems like a load of crap to me, mostly because most people would just move the object and take the spot anyway, but…after being told by both Aimee and my landlord (who at the same time has his truck parked in the middle of the front of our house…and he NEVER drives it) I put a trash barrel in place of where my car was parked the other day. I figured I would give it the ‘ol college try.

I get home later that day, and not really much to my suprise, the people next door, where I had parked my car, and later “saved” with a barrel put the barrel on the sidewalk, and then parked their stupid piece of shit forest green (like everything from ford) ford explorer in the middle of both spots. In my mind, that right their is an act of war.

I can see moving the barrel and taking the spot, although it is still an asshole thing to do. I can even see parking in the middle of both spots to save it for someone else you live with. But these fuckheads arn’t saving the spot for anyone. I have never seen another car aside from my car, and their stupid ford explorer parked in front of their house. They only have one car. They are a bunch of spanish guys that pile in and out of the explorer like it is a clown car.

So, yesterday, after they left for the big top or something, I parked my car in one of the spots in front of their house when I came home, and later aimees friend parked in the other spot while she was over. When Aimees friend left later on, within minutes that green ford explorer was parked in front of their house. Which, again is fine. But this morning, when I leave for work, I notice they had already left for the day, and saved their spot with a chair. Now this is where the line gets drawn. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t disregard the stupid “spot saving” rule, and then do it yourself while you are gone, and you can’t park in the middle of both spots for no good reason.

So, now, I am going to take up both spots whenever I get a chance, and if I get home before them, I don’t care if miraculously the entire street is empty, I am taking the spot they saved with the chair. Sure I might get shot or stabbed, but at least on principle, I tought them a lesson.

So, in the event this is the last thing I write before a bunch of spanish people do some thuggish gang banging in their snazzy ford explorer. I am going to have a nice little web cam pointed at the spot, where they may either:

stab me

shoot me

slash my tires

key my car

all of the above

At least I will have it recorded. Or maybe if I see one of the fuckheads outside, I can have a nice little talk with them instead. I guess we will just have to see what happens

How much would you be willing to spend to save a pets life? (Cont…)

emjaydee — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:55:07 +0000

A while back I read a post on Free Money Finance about how much people are willing to spend to save their pets life.

The author, obviously had a difference in opinion about how much to spend on a pet, and didn’t agree with my comments. Read the last paragraph of this post to see his response to my comment

Read the post I made on that a while back where he completely missed the point I was trying to make.

He made another post about it today, and I think further misunderstands the way things are for pet owners who actually treat their pets as anything more than a car purchase.

Pet insurance doesn’t work anywhere near the same as health insurance for people work. All the pet insurance companies I have come across drop you as a customer when your pet reaches a certain age, with my dog I think it was around 8yrs old. Also, the insurance benefits long run out before any form of a major problem is taken care of.

The one thing he is right about is that there are plenty of reasons to think over before you get a pet. If you can’t take on the responsibility, or just toss a pet to the curb as soon as a problem comes up, then no, you (or him) should not have a pet.

Technorati Tags: Free Money Finance, pet, Pet insurance

A massive mesh network

emjaydee — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 15:20:48 +0000

Since I obviously have a major say in the business decisions of companies like Clear Channel. I decided that since all their billboards are usually around normal building height, and almost all of them have power to light up the stupid signs at night, they should install WiFi routers, or any preferrably a better high speed wireless technology in all the signs. They could make a massive mesh network out of property they already own or lease, They could probably throw a couple cell phone repeaters in there as well, but for all I know they might be too low.

From the 30 seconds of research I did, Clear Channel alone ownes over 775,000 billboards nationwide. If I spent more time writing this I could probably mention how many other companies owne, but I figured this was enough information for someone to steal my idea.

In the end my only goal is for comcast to actually have some competition in the broadband internet access market so the market will force them to lower theirridiculously outrageus prices on their over-exaggerated bandwidth claims

Technorati Tags: Clear Channel, billboards, WiFi, routers, wireless, mesh network, repeaters, comcast

used stuff sucks

emjaydee — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 14:22:59 +0000

I had to get up at around 5:30 this morning to spend until 8am scrubbing the inside of the refrigerator in my new apartment with a crappy sponge that pretended to be a brillo pad and a spray bottle of “formula 409″ which might actually have just been water with a shitty scent. Used stuff sucks. So does cleaning….and waking up.

However the new commute to work is awesome. It takes me around 10 minutes in traffic to get to work, and it used to take over an hour.

when did beta become cool?

emjaydee — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 02:31:04 +0000

Why is it that the new rage is to produce a service, either for free or for profit, release it to the public, and then call it “beta” for years to come?

I think Google pioneered this stupid idea, since every service they provide prominently displays its “beta” status, yet GMail has existed for how long now? same with Google Groups, and Froogle. Flickr is next in line as well, and they have no excuse. In my opinion, you’re product is no longer in “beta” as soon as you start requesting people pay for your product.

And then the herd follows and now everything is beta. Microsoft does it now with their Anti-Anti-Spyware package, and I am sure any day good ‘ol innovative Steve Jobs is going to release his new “iBeta” program, which will do nothing except redraw your screen white and put a gay little pressure sensitive rotary dial on your screen.

This site is beta too. Which is why I still don’t have a spell checker on here

How much to spend on a pet

emjaydee — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 20:21:21 +0000

(12:17:45) me: weee, i made it into someone elses blog post

(12:20:38) Darren: nice!

(12:20:39) Darren: who?

(12:22:37) me: this blog I subscribe to the feed of. Its called “Free Money Finance” this guy posts all this stuff on saving money/investing and such

(12:23:24) me: like a week ago or so, he posted an entry asking how much money people are willing to spend to save a pets life

(12:25:34) me:

http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2005/11/comments_how_mu.html

(12:25:55) me: so the guy posted a recap today about all the comments he got (one of which was mine)

(12:26:10) me: i think he actually ended his post by calling me an idiot

(12:26:19) me: not in those exact words

(12:27:07) me: however, I did win the prize for spending the most money on a pet

(12:28:18) Darren: “prize”?

(12:28:31) me: yeah, the “prize” being a massive amount of debt

(12:28:33) Darren: he sounds fairly unsympathetic

(12:28:56) me: haha, the thing is, I think he completely missed the point I was trying to make (as poorly written as it was)

(12:29:28) me: I know kids and pets arnt the same. I was trying to say that if you dont want to be responsible about it, you shouldn’t have a pet or a kid

(12:29:54) me: who says flat out before even having a pet (or any living thing for that matter) “the most I will spend is $2000″

(12:30:08) Darren: from his opening sentense, i got the impression he was going to interperet the comments in light of his own opinion, i.e., you can’t compare kids to pets

(12:30:21) me: so what happens, when you drop that last $1, you say “well spot…tough shit…get into the trash compactor”

(12:30:34) Darren: his view is also very narrowminded

(12:31:01) me: usually everyone he writes, and everyone that comments on his blog are a bunch of cheap stingy bastards

(12:31:05) Darren: i wonder how much he would spend on keeping a pet alive if his kids had grown up with the pet and were too young to understand that animals get sick and die

(12:31:10) me: which oddly enough, is the name of another blog I subscribe to

(12:31:19) Darren: would his daughter’s happiness be worth $15000 to him?

(12:31:20) me: thats a good point as well

(12:32:07) me: in my mind it would be worth it

(12:32:56) me: think about this, most of the comments he posted said they would spend at 2000-$3000 on their pet

(12:33:08) me: the average life expectancy of a dog for example, is like 7-15 years

(12:33:31) me: mine, lived 12, 12 years of cable TV costs more than $7,200

(12:33:44) me: so i bet everyone on their is willing to spend more on TV than on a pet

(12:34:17) Darren: if your pet lives for 15 years and you are only willing to spend $2000 on it (max life, min cost) then you’re only spending $133 yer *year* on the thing

(12:34:18) me: hence my last sentance in that comment I posted. you cant get that kind of return on anything else

(12:34:29) Darren: that’s not even enough to feed a small dog for more than a few months

(12:34:39) Darren: i don’t think people really thought through their answers…

(12:34:45) me: i was hoping that those figures were for “emergency costs”

(12:34:58) me: like if your dog had to go to the hospital, and the doctor gives you the price quote

(12:35:10) me: you know, when you, your wife and your kids (who are crying) are standing around

(12:35:20) me: and then you go….$5000? nope, just kill him

(12:35:24) Darren: which goes back to my original thing

(12:35:24) me: hahaha

(12:35:45) Darren: how do you tell your daughter that if the doctor was just *this* much cheaper, fido would be coming home with them?

(12:36:34) me: what is worse, is that its not a matter of you not being able to get the money, its that you have it, but the line item in your budget called “fido” only allows you to spend up to $2000

(12:36:56) me: then the kid can go home thinking that she has a maximum amount as well

(12:36:59) me: haha

(12:37:09) Darren: heh

(12:37:27) Darren: on the other hand, everyone has a limit to what they can/will spend

(12:37:45) Darren: if the doctor had told you, up front, that it would cost $15000 what would have done?

(12:37:49) me: yeah, everyone does, but I dont think you can really know what the limit is until you need the money

(12:37:53) Darren: what if he said $30000?

(12:37:59) Darren: that’s what i wonder

(12:38:03) Darren: and that might be his point

(12:38:18) Darren: if it’s your kid, then the only limit is what you can beg, borrow, or steal

(12:40:31) me: with my dog, the only reason he ended up being put to sleep was because there was nothing else that could be done. If he had made it past that last hurdle, at the way things were going, I think i would have easily hit the $25,000 range, but I couldn’t live with myself with knowing that the only reason he died was because I didn’t want to spend the money on him. Like how can you go and blow money at dunkin donuts or something like that, and be finewith it, but then your pet has a problem and you say no way

Damn good luck

emjaydee — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 17:54:46 +0000

This friday I was over Johns house hanging out, just having a fun ‘ol time. Around 1:30am hits, and I decide its time to go home, so I head out to my car, and the passenger side door (facing the street) is wide open. I go to check out why, and sure enough someone stole a bunch of stuff from my car. They grabbed my two bags, which have close to everything I can think of in them. They didn’t bother with the case of CD’s or the radar detecter a foot from where the bags were.

The first bag was my “laptop backpack” and it had in it my works laptop, my digital camera, my little GPS receiver, the wireless card for my laptop, my glasses, and a little portable hard drive. It sucks enough that all that got stolen, but what sucks even more is that I kept putting off (for some reason) backing up all the stuff I had on that laptop, so now I lost countless hours of stuff, all kinds of important files, just a ton of crap that i’ll never get back.

the other bag had all my papers and stuff in it. like bills, and the paperwork involved with my “reckless driving” case. I had tons papers and bills in there because sometimes I work on that stuff at work, sometimes at home.

Ironically enough, one of the papers in that bag was a supeana to appear in court for the time I was mugged 3 years ago, when they stole…

My laptop bag and my portfolio bag, both containing earlier versions of what was stolen this time.

I figured I would waste some time and call the Saugus Police, but as usual, not wanting to lose their reputation, they were completely useless. Not only did it take them a full 30 minutes to make it to a location probably a mile and a half from the police station, but the loser that arrived didn’t even get out of his car. He just told me “you should have locked your door” He then claimed that in his “10 years working this area, he has never heard of any problems on this street”. That was after I mentioned to him that last year, someone drove down the street smashing windows with a bat or something. Also, John’s next door neighbor had his jeep broken into, they cut open his soft top and stole the stereo. Oh, but no problems at all.

I have a couple ideas of who might have done it, but not really any way of proving it, so as it always works out, I am sure they will get away with it, and too bad for me.

Maybe the kid that stole it will make enough money pawning all my stuff that he overdoses on whatever drugs he used the money for.

why I hate the ipod

emjaydee — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 19:50:11 +0000

Since the beginning of time, I have always had a problem with stupid fads and unwarranted hype, and any other stupid reason why things that shouldn’t be popular make it into the mainstream. Actually, more often then not, I hate things just because they are mainstream. No, by no means am I claiming to be some rebelious young lad, or any of that anti globalization or anti establishment crap.

Its pretty much just the way I am. However, I think in the end, the pointless dislike I have towards certain things actually materialize into real reasons.

I have hated Apple, probably every product to come out under their name, since I was in the 5th grade. I hated how everyone had this massive misconception that if you are doing graphics design, or any form of publishing, if you wern’t using a Mac, you were doing something wrong.

What I hate even more than their fruity computers and stupid designs is the Ipod.

Why do I hate Ipods? many many reasons.

First. I hate how when people (or the media) refer to mp3 players, they have to refer to the Ipod. There are a multitude of other mp3 players that exist that are the same or better than the Ipod. Most of the time they are cheaper, have more disk space, and are often better designed, especially since other companies are coming out with new mp3 players every day, and Apple continues the same design of the Ipod month after month..for a couple years now.

I hate the stupid touch sensive knob. I think it is a horrible design.

I hate how Apple forces you to use ITunes to connect your IPod to the computer. ITunes is overrated (like the IPod) and has a shitty interface. Most other mp3 players just show up as a drive on your computer, and you can drag songs and files back and forth however you want. You can use whatever you want to listen to the songs on the player as well.

I hate how everything Apple makes now starts with an “I” Just like every statement in the entry

I hate the fact that everyone that gets an IPod that I see keeps the junky white earbud headphones that came with it. They know they arn’t any good, but if you actually got a good pair of headphones, you would lose the whole fashion statement of having a classy IPod strapped to you.

I just got bored with this, and since it’s past 5, I am leaving work. Its Friday, and I am happy.

NH State Police

emjaydee — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 20:14:10 +0000

So I think I officially dislike the NH state police more than the MA ones. This saturday I was driving up to UNH with Aimee to watch her sister in some dance recital. I am driving along in the left lane, and there is a decent amount of traffic on the road, then all of a sudden, a cop pops out from next to his car, almost steps into the left lane, and makes big arm gestures for me to pull over.

I slowly pull over, right behind the other cop car that was pulling over everyone else. I would say it was maybe a couple hundred feet away from the first cop. Now the first cop gets into his car and pulls up behind me, comes over, and claims he “clocked me going 103mph 70 yards from his car” then he takes my license and registration, comes back, and gives me a notice saying I have to appear in court on july 18th for “reckless driving”.

1) I was going with the flow of traffic, I seriously doubt the rest of the highway was also going 103
2) if I was in fact going that fast, wouldn’t I need to at some point start weaving from lane to lane? going at that speed, without ever changing lanes would mean at some point I would smash into a car going much slower in front of me.
3) If I was going that fast, how would I be able to pull over casually in such a short distance between the 2 cop cars?
4) The cop was using his radar gun in medium traffic from “70 yards away” how can he even prove the reading he got was even my car?

maybe if I am really lucky, I will lose my license again. Its not like I need it or anything…or that I was doing anything wrong

iPods

emjaydee — Fri, 27 May 2005 19:54:49 +0000

Why are IPods basically considered the industry standard MP3 player now? So many other MP3 players exist that are cheaper, store more songs, are smaller, or all of the above, yet somehow Apple has the world believing that if you don’t have an IPod, your missing out on something big.

Worse yet, last time I checked, if you by an IPod, in order to get anything on to it, you have to use ITunes, which is in my opinion, a horrible media player/organizer. Many of the other MP3 players on the market right now just show up as a drive on your computer, you copy your music or whatever else onto it, and thats it. No funny business, no stupid programs to load, no trendy overpriced MP3 player from a product line that for some reason has to begin with the letter “I”.

I think Steve Jobbs watched the episode of Sesame St that was brought to us by the letter I, and got fixated on it.

If anyone has a good response on what makes the IPod so great, I would like to hear it. What makes it so much better than all the other products out there, and worse yet, why is the IPod so trendy and cool, that despite the fact that they are horrible headphones, both in quality and design, if you own an IPod, you can’t go out and buy a set of good headphones?

Sadly enough, they just came out with a “better” set of headphones, that are more towards the studio earmuff style, and oddly enough, they cleverly named them “iMuffs”

I think I am going to go out and buy an iMac, load iTunes on it, get and iPod, then take some video of how stupid it all looks, import all the video into iMovie, burn it onto a DVD, and then watch it in iDVD.

Collect them all!

Century 21’s class is a poorly run pile of shit…strike that. I am a pile of shit

emjaydee — Wed, 04 May 2005 17:14:10 +0000

That is what I think. I fucking failed the state portion of this waste of money real estate test yet again. I could go on for paragraphs on how the Century 21 run real estate course was a poorly run, disorganized, waste of time, and how the “instructor” Kenny, was yet another example of a “teacher” that hates his job and spends the whole class just waiting for the end of the day. They screwed me over, they didn’t prepare me at for the state portion of the test, and the text book they give you is so general that you spend hours studying information that although is partially interesting to know, is completely irrelevant to the test.

That is about all I can say about it though because in reality I am apparantly just an moron that can’t remember shit. Let’s see how much more money I can drop on trying to better myself before I realize what a waste of time it is.

I spent a couple hours last night…yet another night completly wasted, “brushing up” on the state knowledge for the test. I spent at least a hour trying to figure out this one math problem that apparantly involved “rounded the price to the nearest $1,000″ did it mention it anywhere in the study guide?

what about in the 2 “massachusetts supplements”? nope, not mentioned once.

This whole thing is a stupid fucking guessing game where you have to fill your head with as much useless knowledge as possible, just so you can pass some test run by a private company that the state requires you pay.

Where does that $120 for the test go? or the $65 for each re-take of the test? Plus, everyone that works at the testing centers are a bunch of assholes.

Why the hell is it that everyone that has any form of authority automatical waves around their free pass to be a huge asshole? I hate a real large amount of people, but I would like to think that I am at least not huge dicks to their face.

Now I have to wait until tomorrow to reschedule my next re-take, and if I have to wait more than a week to take the test, I am going nuts. I took the fucking course at Century 21 on FEBRUARY 21st! its fucking May 4th now.

I got a fucking lower grade this time than I did the first time.

If you are ever in the market for a house, ask the sales agent to survey your land based on the US Geological Survey method, or ask him to tell you if, since your house borders a river, if you own from the opposite bank, the middle of the river, 5 feet into the water, or just the bank of the river near your house.

Its really nice to wake up at 6:00am to book it down to Woburn I can get a certified printout from the state that I am a fucking moron.

Here’s $65. Can you print me out another one so I can hang it on my refridgerator?

Just to make things as good as possible, I don’t think I even has enough gas or money to make it home today.

Also, I was so pissed off on the way into work today, that I was speeding along, and when I took the turn onto sleeper street to get to the parking garage in boston, this cop doing traffic duty…further wasting my money, steps into the street a little bit and motions with his hands for me to slow down. I was slow pissed off that without even thinking I just said “shut the fuck up” out loud (at least the windows were up) and kept going.

I think today is going to be a headphones on day. I don’t really feel like talking to anyone, and the first person to come to my desk with a wise crack or a stupid question might get scewered with a piece of metal.

Today will be me, and about 6 hours of Sepultura

The point behind rebates. And why I hate mvelopes.com

emjaydee — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 20:23:37 +0000

I have been hearing a lot of commercials and seeing many ads for the website called mveleopes.com

They claim to be a buch better way of managing your money than all the other financial packages out there like Microsoft Money and Quicken, so me, still trying to get a better hold on why I suck so bad, figured I would give it a try.

So I go to their website, and the first thing you see is “Try Mvelopes Personal FREE” then lower on the page, also in big letters it says “30 day FREE trial. Absolutely no obligation”

now you all know how this is going to end up, but let me tell you my point first. I think the whole way the website is constructed and worded is very deceptive, and their whole business model counts on their “valued customers” laziness.

To me, absolutely no obligation means that after the 30 days, if you want to continue using their product, you have to pay, but in reality, their whole plan works the same ways as rebates do.

Does anyone really think all those rebates Best Buy and CompUSA give out are because they are nice? no…its an advertising trick. Lets say they sell a product with a mail in rebate to 50 people. I bet 30-40 of those people never get around to mailing it in, so what the end up doing is getting you to buy a product under the impressive your getting a good deal, but in the end they are really making a killing off of your own laziness.

And this is the same way mvelopes.com works as well. Sure you get 30 days for free, but….if you don’t call before the 30th day, you automatically get billed for it, so me…being lazy, and not having time to wait on hold for 20 minutes while I should be working, never got a chance to call, and then I noticed the charge on my bank statement 2 days after they charge me, so I immediately call them.

Now keep in mind I havn’t touched their horrible web site since like the 2nd day of my free trial because it was junk. it looked like a 6th grader used the site as his “my first web page” project, and to top it off, despite all their pretty little comparison charts about how much better mvelopes.com is to Microsoft.com and Quicken, their product SUCKED. It didn’t even hold a candle. All their claims about how they manage your budget better and such were pure junk….maybe even a pile of feces. After using the product for 2 days, I immediatly went back to Microsoft Money instead. Money isn’t exactly perfect, but at least it is basically a full featured package. mvelopes.com’s whole plan is to basically give you basic access to your account data, but sort all your income/expenses into a series of “envelopes” they even show them as pretty little envelopes, and each envelope is a differant income/expense category.

Saving for aruba? start a new envelope! its basically managing finances for 2 year olds. Worse yet, they claim nothing else out there can “tell you how much money you have left to use. Instead they just tell you how much you spent” Every couple days I open up money, and I can see exactly how much money I wasted, and exactly how many pennies I have left. Its all a bunch of lies.

So I called and tried getting my money back, and the customer support rep, along with his superviser (his name was Tyler) actually laughed at me when I told them my reasoning on how the website is deceptive.

So… if you are looking for ways to manage your money. Don’t use mvelopes.com, mostly because their product sucks, but also because they could care less about their customers. I called them 2 days after my “subscription” started, and the superviser gave me this bullshit argument about how if he refunded me my money, the company would lose money that they put into my accounts setup and continued operation. Those fuck heads. I hope Tyler gets ass raped when he goes to his car today.

If you want any more proof their product sucks, ironically enough I just lost $120 on a product whos sole purpose was to help me manage/save money.

take that to the bank……ohhhhhhhhhhh

Watch out for falling prices

emjaydee — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:10:21 +0000

I bet you thought this post was going to be about Wal-Mart.

Nope, sorry, you came to the wrong place. Instead its about values. (get the title now?)
Wal-Mart seems to have the whole values idea down pretty good. Me and that dumb smiley face are the best of friends.

Values start getting really shady when it comes to people though. Some will drop you with the first sign of trouble, some will pick on you, some will stick by you. People come in and out of your life on a daily basis. That dude that rung up my order at the 7-Eleven may never be seen again. That guy I cut off on the way to work may die later today. I’ll never know.

But I think above all other values and opinions, the one thing that should always come first is family. Right now mine is pretty messed up. In the scheme of things, like compared to many other families out there, it probably isn’t that bad, but in my opinion it’s hit an all time low.

I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last couple of days, and the amount of things that I regret doing or not doing between my friends and family is mind boggling. I don’t even feel like eating half the time now.

I remember a couple years back, when The John was talking about moving into an apartment in his brothers house, I said something along the lines of “watch out about making deals with the family…it can really fuck things up between you”.

I am not sure how true that held with him, but I know it sure as hell held true for me on numurous occasions, and this most recent one takes the all time cake.

Despite what it may look like sometimes, I don’t like fighting with people, not because I am afraid of getting my ass kicked or something, but I don’t like hurting peoples feelings. I think with my friends I am usually a relatively calm guy. I don’t think I ever really flip out on any of them, but whith my family its completely differant. They are the ones I am supposed to stick by and care about the most, and yet somehow they are also the ones that get to see the special “Family Edition” version of me. This version isn’t Triple C at all…..unless all the C’s were for differant words. I hate acting like that, and I hate the things I end up saying, but unfortunately I am a stubborn person, and on top of that, I expect certain things from people that “know” me.

1) My opinion should count for something
2) trust
3) respect
4) fairness

When I look, or talk to anyone in my family I don’t see any of those things. What I see instead is a group of strangers that all know each other.

In my high school (and most of yours) we had 2 lunches, basically half the school went to the first lunch, and half went to the 2nd. Every group of kids kind of had their own table, and thats where you always sat. But sometimes your 5th period teacher would be absent, and you would have to go to both lunches, and then things got weird because your friends might not be in that other lunch, so your stuck sitting at a table with a bunch of people that know each other, but don’t know you. They all talk and laugh and make plans and such….and you sit at the end waiting for the bell to ring.

Thats the way I view my family. for the last now 24 years I have been stuck in 2nd lunch when I should be in 1st lunch with all my friends. The people in 2nd lunch don’t know me. They have no reason to trust me, and they would obviously help out their friends before they would even want to look over at the weird kid sitting over at the end of their table.

Now imagine if that whole table is actually your family, and when you sat down, instead of saying hello, you would flip out on them if they made any form of a comment, like your always on edge, just waiting for a fight to start. If one person in my family was to make a joke, I would take it seriously and go into fight mode.

I dont know most of my family from a hole in the wall. If you were to ask me any of their birth dates, the only one I know completely, including year, is my brother. The other 4 people, I don’t even know the month in some cases.

And on the same side, they don’t know much about me either. How sad is it that up until about 2 months ago, I had no idea my father worked down the street from my work. You would think we would have lunch some time or something like that.

When you take into account that up until a few weeks ago, I lived in the same house with all but one of them, this whole thing is pretty sad. Then throw in a stupid fight about money, and now I don’t even want to go back there again. Both my parents are all stressed out about the entire thing, I havn’t really seen either one the way they are right now, the sister I live with, whom I am having the fight with I cant even say a word to, mostly because we are on differant skyscrapers, let alone levels on the way we think. I’ve said things that now that I think about are pretty horrible things to most of them, and I am just not happy with myself. Then to top if all off, every couple of months another member of my extended family gets crossed off the “talking to” list. 2 years ago my mothers whole side of the family, thats 14 people, all basically gave my mother the middle finger, and then to (in my opinion) spite her even more, they go and send my siblings and I birthday cards and such. Now it seems like I am taking on my only little downsizing plan with my fathers side. And everything is over the stupidest reasons.

Then there is my friends. John and Janelle have stuck by me, even though I hadn’t always to them. Ryan, Harold, and Eric all decided to “make amends” oddly enough, shortly after word got out that I had a girlfriend now. Am I supposed to forgive and forget? do I just do like it seems everyone else does and pretend nothing ever happened and try to be friends again? Then, here it is 3/1/2005, and I get an email from Toni saying “I know we don’t talk anymore but I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday”. What am I supposed to say to that? am I even supposed to respond?

I don’t get what these people are even thinking. Did they all just need a vacation from me? I don’t think any of it makes any sense at all. I just don’t get what I am supposed to do at this point. Do I take the boxing gloves off, walk out of the ring, and go have a beer and say “nice fight!” then we are all friends like Rocky and Apollo Creed ended up? Or do I go to Russia and train for the fight of a lifetime? or do I just say “fuck it” and never leave Nashua?

The Anonymous Boy Wonder

emjaydee — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 16:27:28 +0000

I havn’t had much to write about lately, but, just when I though the well had dried up, The Anonymous Boy Wonder steps into existence.

Who is he you ask? read his comment he left on a previous post of mine

I was thinking about it, and although I am not much better for writing a post on my blog at 12:30 or so in the morning, the mysterious boy wonder over here is worse. He is spending the wee hours of his lonely night pleasuring himself while going from random blog to random blog. He really enjoys that “next blog” button on the top of all the blogspot blogs. For example, before he went to mine, he made a stop at http://briansblogger6.blogspot.com/ I guess he didn’t have anything to say to brian, or maybe he just finds me more attractive, because brian was left used and without even as much as a thank you or goodbye. Just like a cheap chinese whore.

So now I am going to play a fun new game called “who is the mysterious boy wonder”

Today everyone gets to know he is coming to us from the scenic Richmond, Michigan area. He most likely has eye problems, because he enjoys complaining on peoples blogs at a shitty low resolution of 1024×768, that means his hand/eye coordination is most likely horrible because at that resolution the icons on his desktop are monsterous. He needs them that big so when he paws at the keyboard and mouse like a monkey, he can still move around.

Maybe tomorrow we will know a little more about the Boy Wonder from Richmond.

Tow Truck Drivers

emjaydee — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 21:43:33 +0000

Yesterday the forces that be tried to ruin my insanely good mood this week, but they failed miserably.

Lately I have been trying to not get really pissed off or stressed out over stuff, and for the most part its been working.

In this case, I left work at around 5:30, and had plans of speeding home, going to the gym for a bit, then hanging out with Aimee later on. So, I hop into my car, and head towards the 93 tunnel. I reach the bridge off of sleeper street, and hear the horrid sound I have heard before of not just a flat tire, but a REAL flat tire that is about to fly off the rim. I ended up pulling over basically in front of the rose wharf hotel place. Now, there is where my typical awesome luck kicks into full gear.

1. I forgot my cell phone at home
2. I dont know anyones phone number off the top of my head except for my house number
3. I dont have AAA anymore
4. My nice full size spare tire was sitting in my garage laughing at me
5. I parked my car in between not 1, but 2 fire hydrants. What kind of parking ticket is that?

So trying to think of what to do, I try to find a payphone, finally find one, and call my house. Everyone in my house is useless for situations like this except for maybe my father, but of course he wasn’t home, so I told my mother to just call a tow truck for me. (that was in between the 50 questions she was asking me even though I was on a payphone).

So I hang up and head towards my car. Also, since when did it cost 50 cents to use a pay phone? assholes!

As I am walking back to my car, I think to myself, there is no way my mother actually called a tow truck, that would be too easy. So I find another payphone, call 411, and when they ask me who I need a number for, I say “A tow truck” they say, “do you know the name of the place?” and I tell them no, i just need a tow truck. They actually managed to give me a number, I call them, and this guy tells me he will show up in like 20 minutes or so. So I wait in my car….

As I am sitting there, this dude that was putting trash on the curb knocks on my window and says this “hey, you have a pretty bad flat!”.

Keep in mind I have my flashers on, and am parked illegally on the side of the road just sitting there. I wanted to say no way! I do! thanks! I thought the insanely loud sound of my tire coming off was just the radio!

Eventually my father pulls up. I guess “call a tow truck” to my mother translates into “call dad” He came from his work, not from my house, so there was no spare tire, or anything useful with him. He asks me why I dont have a spare tire, and if I have a can of “fix-a-flat” or if I wanted him to go buy a can and come back.

I say, Dad, get out of the car and come here. I bring him over to the flat tire, which is half off the rim and say, if you think a can of fix-a-flat is going to fix that, then go for it, but I have a feeling it isnt going to work. So he hangs around for a bit, then takes off, then comes back again and gives me his cell phone so I can use it if I need to. Of course I don’t know anyones numbers, so it doesn’t matter.

Then the tow truck comes. The guy asks me what is wrong, and I say, I have a real bad flat on my back right tire. He gets out and looks and says:

Guy: Do you have a spare?
Me: no, its at my house
Guy: are you sure?
Me: yes
Guy: You definately don’t have one in the car?
Me: no, its definately at my house
Guy: Did you check in the trunk?
Me: I definately do not have a spare in the car

He eventually comes to terms with that, and then tries selling me a used spare tire for $75. I eventually convince me to tow my car, like I originally asked. Then this conversation happens:

Guy: do you have front wheel, or rear wheel drive?
Me: rear wheel
Guy: Are you sure?
(its not like I hesitated, or implied I didn’t know. I know what my car has)
Me: yes, its definately rear wheel
(He then looks under the car for evidence)
Guy: Okay, your definately sure?
Me: yes

he then gets in my car, turns it around in the middle of a3 lane one way road (facing the wrong way) and lines it up with the tow truck. He hooks everything up, talking the whole time to me about people screw him over and claims he caused damaged and blah blah blah.

So then I get in the tow truck, and things get real “fun”. I am not sure if anyone else has experienced this, but I think by nature, Tow Truck drivers are weirdos. They are lonely, and they love to talk, and they are always crazy. This guy was no differant.

Guy: Yeah, everyone is an asshole these days. Everyone is trying to screw you
Me: Yeah, I know what you mean
Guy: like the other day, this lady calls me, she cant start her car. I get there, and it turns out she was parked too close to the curb and couldnt unlock the steering wheel so it would start, so I just jiggled it loose and it started up fine. But I still had to come out, so I told her it came to $40. She flipped out and said I didn’t actually do anything, and that she wasn’t going to pay. I had her keys, so she called the police
Me: that sucks, you still had to come out to make the service call, so you should have gotten paid
Guy: yeah, tell me about it, so this black cop comes over, and this girl is a tall hot blonde, and you know how black guys are with blondes…right? right?
Me: uhhh yeah (I had no idea)
Guy: yeah, those fucking niggers!…..But, I am not racist or anything…I just think whats fair is fair
Me: yeah, I know what you mean..

actually I don’t. I am pretty sure that what you just said makes you the definition of racist. Hey thats your deal and I dont care, but live up to what your saying. Anyway, I just want to get home.

Then he realizes that his conversation sucks, and says to me, “what type of music do you like?” Now, I had already seen that the stereo was on kiss 108, so I figured that was a losing argument, so I just say anything is fine. Then he says “Do you like hard rock?” and I am thinking he is talking about like old people hard rock, like some crap stuff, but say, “sure, anything is fine with me” so he pushes the CD button, and metallica comes on, then he turns the volume up to almost where the speakers start getting distorted, and starts having a blast. He was loving it, kinda rocking out to the music, and would occasionally yell out a lyric or two, especially at the end of a song. Thank god there was no traffic, so the ride wasn’t too long, however, I did think it would be funny if I started rocking out too and started bashing stuff in his truck like it was a drumset. But instead I sat there.
We get back to saugus, I make him pull over at an ATM, and We get to my house. I Then give him $175, bastards! I know it would cost somewhere around there though.

He then said he would take my lug nuts off for me with his shitty battery operated impact gun, and I told him I had my own in the garage. he then started making fun of the tools I have.
He has a BATTERY OPERATED impact gun.

screw him.

I put my spare tire on in minutes, and managed to be done by 7:50. What luck is that?

And I didn’t get angry at all. good old “Triple C”.

License to drive

emjaydee — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 19:59:10 +0000

Remember that movie License To Drive? according to imdb.com, it was put out in 1988, but the jist of it was that some kid just turned 16 or whatever, and was FINALLY able to try to get his license. The second he could take the test, he did, and he failed. But he wanted to be able to drive so bad, especially to impress this chick named Mercedes, that he faked passing just so he could take her out, and so he could drive and being a normal functioning piece of society.

Aside from asking out that Mercedes chick, thats pretty much how things went for me. I turned 16, got my ass down to the RMV the second I could and got my learners permit, I sat through the horror fest that is Drivers Ed, had one to many car rides with Eric “the Human Diet Coke”, than the second I was eligible, I took my test. I wanted it so bad, I wasn’t happy with how long the wait was to take the test near saugus (like in Lynn where they pass you if you figure out how to start the car) so I ended up taking it in Chelsea. The cop was an ass and he made me do everything imaginable. I parallel parked too far away from the curb and he yelled at me and failed me. But what did I do? I called the RMV that date and rescheduled another appointment for the first opening they had….which was back in Chelsea.

I got my license and it was the best thing on earth. I can’t imagine being 23 and having never gotten it. The concept is just so far from my ability to comprehend.

So what is with the growing number of people who just decide not to get one? Don’t you ever say to yourself…man, it sure would be fun if I could leave my house….I really don’t feel like sitting next to Urine Man on the T again.

When I lost my license for 60 days. I wanted to shoot myself. It was torture. From waiting for the bus in the rain, to sitting next to some smelly person on the T. I couldn’t stand it.

So basically, what I am trying to say, is that if you dont have a license once you hit 17, you should be deported to Mexico. Then you can go ride a bike and deliver bananas to people.

The battle of who could care less

emjaydee — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 16:31:36 +0000

I havn’t listened to Ben Fold’s Five since maybe sophomore year of high school, but when I was thinking of a title for this post, it just popped into my head.

It looks like I am in one of my moods today (it must be the PMS) and I am just getting increasingly frustrated with how it always seems to me like its me versus the world.

Its a one on one death match, Ultimate Fighting style, but there is no tapping out.

I really started thinking about this after my award winning christmas day at my aunts house.
Most people already know the story, but my point is this. If you know your right about something, why are you supposed to back down and admit defeat? Christmas day just brought me back to the months before the election where every day was a new battle to justify why I had the viewpoint I did.

Mine wasnt the same as my old best friends, because I didn’t admit defeat, I gout ousted.
Mine wasnt the same as my familys, so I was called Ignorant. So I spent every day up until after the election surrounding myself with everything I could about Bush and Kerry, yet, for every thing I found, there was a blind eye and a deaf ear to see or hear what I had to say. But I was the ignorant one.

I could have just dropped it and left it as it was, but I didn’t like the fact that my family viewed me as being Ignorant because I didn’t agree with them. I didn’t like the fact I lost a friend because of a stupid election. His reasons wern’t even based on reality.

I know what it comes down it is that I am just very opinionated, but I like to think that the opinons I have that I feel are worth fighting for have solid reasons behind them.

So why am I supposed to back down? When am I supposed to just drop things? and I am not just talked about talking to my shithead uncle.

the topics are endless:

1) Macs suck
2) rear-wheel drive vs. front-wheel drive
3) american car reliability vs. foreign (asian) car reliability
4) ipods versus the 5,000,000 other mp3 players
5) whether worn down Bridgestone Blizzak Ws-50’s suck in the rain, or if I was driving “drunk”
6) 6,000,000 other things

I guess I am just venting today. but there, now it is official