Pat's Place

The Cardholder Services people called me on two lines at once again. I held cell phone up to speakerphone and the reps started talking to each other. As soon as one of them observed that the lines were crossed, I shouted "They're crossed because you people called me on two lines at the same time. Take me off your damned list." Obviously, they both hung up immediately.

Last night Mark asked me to make him a PB&J sandwich. The peanut butter was too hard coming out of the fridge, so I put it in the microwave to soften it up. I hadn't noticed remnant flecks of the foil seal on the jar's rim, so in went the whole jar. After a few seconds, and and then milliseconds after a couple of flashes, the entire inside of the oven was blazing blue/white plasma. Luckily I was right next to the oven and able to shut it off within 1/2 second. Very exciting! The oven seems no worse for the wear, as it brought a liter of cold water to boiling in a nominal 9 minutes.

Know anybody who has trouble reading a computer screen because of vision problems? I found a virtual magnifying glass that looks easy to use.

http://magnifier.sourceforge.net/

Dear Google,

While traveling through Boston Logan airport, I had the pleasure of using internet service that you sponsored. Free internet in the airport--what a concept! Thanks, I appreciate you thinking of the holiday travelers!

--Pat

[I usually reserve "Paging Customer Service" posts for poor customer service, but sometimes somebody exceeds my expectations and merits mention. This one is a happy post!]

Spam is one of the scourges of email as we currently know it. I use a spam filter, SpamAssassin, which prevents 1500-2000 spams per day from entering my mail system. However, sometimes things sneak by and end up in one of my mailboxes. This happens to me just a few times each week, and I could ignore it easily enough when I see it happen.

The people of Maine have decided by a mere majority that two individuals of the same gender cannot be married in their state. This same result has so far happened in every state that has passed legislation to permit and recognize same-sex marriage. The tyranny of the majority is alive and well.

Mark came back to his new car, parked in Fields Corner, and found that one of the doors had been badly keyed. This apparently is Dorchester's way of telling people they can't have something too nice or too new. Or it's a way that people mark their territory when pissing on it just won't do. Either way, I have to wonder what the hell is wrong with people who do this. Are their lives so shitty they feel like they have to bring others down? And how is this Mark's fault?

A real ion spaceship engine, not found in your father's space probe. Holy cow! Article at canada.com.

One of the moments I've feared has happened. The director's cut of a movie I'd like to purchase, Terminator: Salvation, is going to be made available on Blu-Ray only. I can't imagine that there's any content that requires Blue-Ray to enjoy, therefore I am attributing this decision to darker ulterior motives at Warner Brothers.

Well, it seems that this website has been visited by Pakistani spammers. These are the people who leave irrelevant comments with links to their own sites, in the hopes of tricking people into visiting them.

Well you Pakistani spammers, I'm on to you. Unfortunately for you, I've got comment moderation turned on, so you won't see anything you try posting until I approve it...and I'm not that generous.