Tag Archives: Personal Blather

I just got a hefty stack of old photos – mostly historical shots of buildings and such, but there are some absolutely fantastic shots that will make excellent fodder for the Evil Little Webcomic…

It’s already been established that I like messing with phone solicitors. I usually don’t get to indulge this hobby at work, but today was a fun little exception. Today I got a phone call offering a special, one-time-only credit card opportunity.
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Looks like the Ann Arbor CompUSA is part of the slew of store closings. It wasn’t a great store, but it was convenient. On the other hand, there are some decent deals to be had there, and they’re likely to be making deeper markdowns on slower selling things.

I was up late doing some writing last night and I got to thinking about the villain of the piece I’m working on. He’s basically a con artist. The way I see it, there are two major types of con artist: those who exploit greed, and those who take advantage of pity. Both are pretty repulsive, but I think the ones who make their trade off of greed are slightly less evil.

The villain isn’t going to be one of those.
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My house is making odd little sounds as it cools off for the night. There’s the occasional creak and thunk as boards shift slightly, the odd soft “bong” from the air vents as they relax. It’s sort of like being inside an enormous bread pan, listening to the sound it makes when it cools off after being in the oven.

I’ve got a timer / thermostat that helps keep the furnace from running all the time during the winter. It lets the house drop to around 60° when we’re at work or asleep, and it starts warming things back up before we have to get up in the mornings, and before we get back from work. Much easier and more comfortable than turning the temperature up and down manually all the time. Plus, given the way energy prices have climbed in the past few years, it’s also saved us a considerable chunk of change.

As a side effect, it’s spawned an odd phrase that we use on vacation days, or at other times when our actual schedule doesn’t match up with our usual schedule: “Tell the house that we’re home.”

Do you remember that song, “One of these things is not like the others”? Thanks to the Register I’ve got that stuck in my head, mostly because of a news story they just ran where the exact opposite is the case.
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Caught a movie over the weekend. “Ghost Rider.” And, surprisingly, it didn’t suck!
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If these guys ever wind up going out of business, I bet they could sell off their domain name for a hefty chunk of change…

It was a balmy -1° outside this morning. That’s -18.3° centigrade for you wacky metric types. Up from -4°F / -20°C yesterday though, so that’s a nice improvement. It’s always fun when you can sniff the morning air and feel your nose hairs freezing to each other.

Um.. I had somewhere I was going with this, I swear. I guess my brain hasn’t thawed out yet. Time to add coffee and see what happens.

*ring ring*

“Hello?”

“Yes is this [PUBLISHING COMPANY EXECUTIVE]?”

“Uh, yes. How did you get this number?”
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