Halloween Is Too Short

Ok, somebody needs to make Halloween last longer. The best damned holiday of the year and the fun only lasts about an hour and a half, maybe two hours at best? That's just wrong!!

It was another good year, I scared the crap out of a bunch of kids, a few teens, even a couple of parents. Nobody cried and nobody fell down the steps in their hurry to run. Best of all, I even had some candy left over for me! A great big "Thank you!" to all the kids that were too scared to come to the porch and get candy, those Snickers bars were tasty!

Now I have to start planning next year's scares, I've already got the idea, I bet the kids will absolutely LOVE a rotting corpse clawing it's way out of a half buried coffin and reaching out to grab them. Now I just need to make it work. Details, details, details. But first, I hear half a bag of Snickers bars calling my name and I've no choice but to heed their call. I'm weak like that.

Even Bigger F YOU!!! to HP

Okay, maybe I was a bit hasty to judge HP in my last blog. So to make up for it, take all the bad stuff I said about them and multiply it times ten, that's about what I really think of them. Today I almost found out just how far I can throw a computer. 

The piece of junk lost it again for no apparent reason. So again I give in and run the recovery discs (3 of them) which took over four and a half hours. Then I had to wait almost that long again for it to mirror all of that data to the recovery partition. This would be the same worthless, waste of hard drive space recovery partition which wouldn't work last time, causing me to waste hours of my time (again).

What douchebag engineer thought up that concept? Then I had to wait yet again until it finished installing everything at which point I could begin set-up, then the never ending list of downloads, installs and updates. Finally, some 12+ hours later I have a computer that works again. Yay me, hoo effing ray.  *yawn*

I would sooo love to shove the overpriced birdhouse straight up the overpaid ass of an HP corporate officer, then make them suffer and wait while a repetitive, ineffective and nonfunctioning "easy repair tool" takes 12 hours to get it back out. I bet none of the smart HP employees use an HP.

The cause of all this frustration and wasted time? The power went out. No surge, no flickers, no rapid off and on, just a simple power failure for a couple of minutes. Even the ancient relic which I built by myself out of old parts was tougher than that. I'm oh so happy to see that technology has advanced so far in the years since. I think HP stands for Heaping Pile because that's about what it is.

Great Big F YOU!!!! To HP

I've added Hewlett-Packard to my list of companies with products I will never buy again. If you are in the market for a computer and someone tries to sell you an HP, specifically a Pavillion a1420n, run. It's been nothing but trouble. The product is inferior, they misrepresented the Operating System version (by three years) and their version of tech support is worthless.

HP are traitors, they eliminated jobs here and outsourced their tech support to India. Instead of reaching someone you can understand and who knows the product, you end up talking to someone whom you must continually ask to repeat themselves and knows nothing about your computer aside from what he's reading from the screen in front of him. I'm sorry but the ability to perform a keyword search and read from a screen is not tech support by any definition I am aware of.

As soon as it was out of the box and running the trouble started. Every time I tried to open a web page or connect to the internet the computer would freeze completely, requiring me to turn it off and restart it. I spent close to an hour and a half on the phone with their "Tech Support" trying to fix the problem. Most of that time was wasted by me asking the poor clueless slob to repeat himself because I couldn't understand him through his heavy Indian accent. I gave up in frustration, then had it fixed myself within a few minutes of hanging up the phone. It was actually pretty simple but the "highly trained" tech couldn't figure it out.

Then came the day when I tried to assign functions to the supposedly programmable hot keys on the keyboard. These are the keys which let you open a program or go to a specific web page with just one push of a button. The option tab which would allow programming of these buttons was nowhere to be found. 

So again I call HP customer service. Once again I am on the phone for over an hour. Once again they couldn't tell me how to get it fixed. At the conclusion of the call I was informed that this was a known issue. Seriously? If it was "known" then why the f*** didn't they say that at the beginning of the call before I waste over an hour of my time? They claimed it was actually Microsoft's fault and there would be a patch released by Microsoft by the end of that month. That was 3 months ago. Can I program those buttons now? No.

Actually I can't do anything now, the computer has been reduced to nothing but an expensive paperweight courtesy of HP tech support. Even killing the computer entirely took them over an hour, I could have done it myself in seconds. It was running when I called them, dead when they were done with it. After talking with two computer techs in my area I learned that most of what I was told to do was absolutely wrong. The error message I was receiving was quite common and could be easily fixed within seconds if you aren't being directed by an incompetent twit.

Bottom line, I have to pay someone to try to save the files I need from my hard drive, losing everything they can't find or copy. Then I have to wipe it and waste an hour and a half while I reinstall the Operating System with the recovery discs, Then I can spend hours updating, downloading and installing. 

Do these stupid assholes not know that I have addictions to feed? HP refuses to reimburse me or replace the computer, claiming it was operator error that damaged it even though it was running when I called but was dead after I followed their instructions. HP had income of 86 billion dollars last year, I think they could afford to honor their warranty and do the right thing by replacing their defective junk. I hope those bastards are in the part of California that breaks off and sinks into the ocean after the next big earthquake.

Screw you HP, you can kiss my ass. I hope you get bought out by Sony you traitorous, junk peddling, worthless sons of bitches. Thus concludes another rant. Thanks for listening (or reading, whatever). I feel better already.

The Lesser of Two Evils

Which is worse, acceptance of circumstances you deplore or harboring deepening resentment toward the person responsible for the aforementioned circumstances? Can the first one exist without directly causing the second?

Acceptance seems like you're selling yourself out, or is it just a necessary compromise to help preserve the greater good? I'm sure there's a line drawn somewhere which differentiates the two but I've no idea where that line is. I sure wish I did though.<

I think resentment has it's own inevitable conclusion especially when it's been accumulating over a fairly long time. That conclusion is usually an ugly one. Sooner or later, out it comes!

I can't decide if acceptance is preferable to resentment, or not. While I know that harboring feelings of resentment will sooner or later come back to bite me in the ass I just can't bring myself to let go and pretend nothing's happened while happily accepting the way things are. Maybe that's a shortcoming of my own which I need to work on.

Some Stuff

Yes!! First I want to say I am happy as happy can be. That frigging stone is gone, I got rid of it this morning. Mostly I'm happy because all you doom and gloomers out there telling me it was going to hurt even worse then my night in the ER were wrong. I didn't feel a thing. Like rolling a marble through a firehose baby, plenty of room to spare! Okay, enough bragging now. I see a doc in a week to get the thing analyzed and find out what my chances are of having to go through that barrel of laughs again.

Next, garden pictures. Yes I've been slacking. Sue me. I think I screwed around and missed a few plants but now that August is almost here I finally got around to putting up some pictures from June. Same deal as usual, making the rounds of the yard with closeups following the wide angle shots. The combination of winter damage and a bunch of nasty storms has left some gaping holes but all in all it's not looking too bad. Most of the damage was to bigger plants and they are starting to come back, they won't be much to look at this year but there's always next year. Grow dammit, grow!

Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, I have now entered into the politics of my little town. I am the Iron Fist of the Borough on the Zoning Appeals Board. Soon I will realize my political aspirations and become Ruler of the World, muahahahahahaha! Scary, no? King Jeff? Hmmm, I don't like that one. Your Lordship? His Royal Highness? I don't like them either. Grand Poobah? Hmmm, this is tough and I haven't even started yet! *sigh* I can already hear the sarcastic comments. Bring it on, I can take it. Just remember that one day I will be your King, or something.

How NOT To Spend Your Morning

Last night was just chock fkn full of excitement, unfortunately it was the kind I could do without. It started a few nights ago, I had awoken at some ridiculous hour by what I thought was just some serious back pain, probably just from sleeping in an odd position. I mean serious pain as in "take your breath away, holy fuck that hurts please make it stop" serious. I got up, moved around, did some stretching and it went away. Problem solved. Or so I thought.

Last night I was having trouble sleeping so I went out for a late night swim, I came back in around 3am or so. Before I could fall asleep the pain came back, even worse than it was a few days ago. This time it didn't go away. I took about 30 minutes worth of it then caved and had the wife drive me to the Emergency Room. I've no idea what was in that IV but it sure did make the pain go away. It also took away my ability to think or to make any sense whatsoever when I attempted to speak, lol. Eventually they gave me a CAT scan, it ended up being a 2.5 millimeter stone causing a blockage resulting in a backup of urine. No wonder I felt like someone had repeatedly kicked me in the kidney.

I finally got home at about 10am and fell into a drug induced and much needed sleep until 5pm when I woke up for dinner. Now I feel totally drained and still groggy, but at least no pain *crosses fingers*. Hopefully I pass the stone, and soon. I do NOT want a repeat of all that.

My Fourth of July

Well, the Fourth has come and gone and I've recovered. Finally. It took a while.

A few too many beers, Cow, chicken and pig piled on the grille. Not a little, I cooked a freaking farm. I ate far too much, figured I may as well go overboard with the food so it matched the drink. I got all wrinkly in the pool, then capped off the evening watching fireworks.

The end result of all this? Lobsterman! Serious sunburn, but I'll survive. All in all it was a very good day