Monthly Archive for July, 2008

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My Critique of Boomer Chronicle’s Critique of America’s Top Cities In Which To Live

Published on July 29, 2008 in Baby Boomer. 3 Comments

Just for giggles, I decided to steal from The Boomer Chronicles spin on the AARP Top Ten Places to Live in America:

She put her thoughts in bold (heh, typo originally wrote blod – Blod the Impaler, I’m now blodding… anyhoo…) so I put my thoughts in italic.

1. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Fully 86 percent of residents exercise daily and the city boasts 580 physicians per 100,000 people, compared to the U.S. average of 223. Too darned cold. Too darn liberal. Home of the University of Michigan, fer chrissakes.
2. Honolulu: An impressive 95 percent of residents are covered by health insurance; residents spend more time exercising than almost any other city surveyed. Too darned hot and too expensive. Just another big city filled with Asians.
3. Madison, Wisc.: Residents have low rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Wicked cold in winter. I won’t worship Our Lord and Savior, Brett Favre
4. Santa Fe, N.M.: The city ranked No. 2 in the U.S. in air quality by the American Lung Association; the rates of diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol are among the lowest in the country. Too deserty. Not enough green trees. Too Dry, my tender skin needs the moisture and my boogers get like concrete.
5. Fargo, N.D.: Ranks No. 9 in the nation for regular flossing and brushing [Gee whiz]; it has one of the best air-quality-index scores, and it uses biodiesel fuel to power its transit buses. They made a scary movie about this town. One of the best movies of all time, but winter is forever.
6. Boulder, Colo.: This is one of the nation’s healthiest cities with extremely low rates of smoking and obesity (BMI of 24.94). Too much snow. Snow is OK, it’s the crappy slush that follows.
7. Charlottesville, Va.: Ranks among the top ten cities for family-practice doctors, oncologists and cardiologists, and it ranks fourth among U.S. metropolitan areas in the number of physicians per capita. Too Republican. Too hillbilly.
8. Minneapolis-St. Paul: Residents rank among the top 10 in the country for share of residents who exercise regularly and the state is No. 1 in the nation for the overall quality of its healthcare by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Cute, but boring. I hate hypens
9. San Francisco Bay Area: Residents are among the least likely to be overweight and smoke, plus the city offers free or subsidized health care to uninsured residents. Too much fog. Hills, big friggin’ hills.
10. Naples-Marco Island, Fla.: Residents received very high scores for regular exercise, healthy eating and not smoking; the area has one of the lowest cancer mortality rates in the country. Too humid. Too many plastic people waiting to die

Cooking Light also has a list, but I found Rhea’s first and it was just easier to steal hers.

How I Downloaded a Virus: And You Can too

Published on July 28, 2008 in Technology. 3 Comments

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Then gullible, gullible, gullible. Then awestruck, awestruck, awestruck. Then it struck me: Bill Gates is a Prick. It was revenge of the Gates.

Today, I’m just glad I know enough about navigating around the web to realize I downloaded a virus and apparently got away with it.

Nancy was poking around last evening looking for a pattern to knit a baby blanket. She was searching on the term “free baby blanket knitting pattern” and then visited a bunch of websites.

She came me and said that something popped up on the screen indicating we had a virus.

Yeah! Trojans, and dialers, and bots and rogues and spyware had taken over our computer and threatened to do all the things we computer users read about.

437 infections. Worse than any crack-whore!

Yeah, I freaked a little. But I had this nagging question: since I used another anti-virus and have the Windows firewall disabled, why was XP sending me this?

Since the other anti-virus was quietly just sitting there, I figured better safe than sorry and clicked the “remove” button.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. In hindsight, I realize that downloaded a bunch of crap onto my drive. As it was supposedly cleaning things up, I was poking around and clicked on the help. Look at the URL that popped up.

1. it wasn’t a secure server (no https://)

2. who the hell is xp-protectsoft.com?

3. Holy CRAP – I just downloaded a virus.

Gullible. Gullible. Gullible.

Notice the little official drop down window saying that I was in deep doo-doo.

It was all to instill just another level of panic. It worked.

Luckily, a friend had told me about SuperAntiSpyware.com and I have been running this regularly. I immediately launched it and scanned everything.

We have two drives: one built in, and one external where Nancy puts all her patterns – embroidery and knitting and such.

After 2 hours of scanning over 350,000 files, the anti-spyware had isolated 8 threats from XPProtect (along with some harmless tracking cookies.) Normally when these items are isolated, the program will recommend quarantine.

Not this time. The program recommended “removal.”

I did and then ran the scan again. All clear this morning. I will run it again tonight and probably every night for a few evenings just to make sure there isn’t a trojan horse lingering.

Eventually I became awestruck at the beauty of the whole deal.

  • it was a knitting site, how innocent!
  • who frequents knitting sites? Perhaps the not-so-suspicious web surfers
  • who follows directions perfectly? knitters!
  • who would freak the most if one of the infections was from a porn site? Anybody!
  • who wouldn’t think XP was looking out for their best interest? ME!

Bill Gates is a Prick.

How about another sneaky way? Download an airline ticket and get a virus? It’s being done!

I was more than a little impressed with the ingenuity of it all.

But if you start getting baby blanket knitting spam, you know where it came from.

UPDATE: I am not alone! This malware is being tracked by experts. Yay for them!

Our New $160,000 House – How Cheating Pays Off

Published on July 27, 2008 in Empty Nesters, Entertainment and Holy Shit! Lookit This!. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Whomever said “never trust a young chick showing lots of cleavage at a blackjack table” was wrong. Nancy showed her trust and even invited me to sit at the same blackjack table and enjoy the view game with this young chick dealer.

The Twits and Twats golf tournament opening event Friday night was a putting contest followed by a Casino Night. Nancy first invited the folks from NashVegas to come to Le Club Du Golf when she ran the Cocks and Knockers tournament last year. (The tournament is really called the Braves and Squaws, which I find more offensive than Chicks and Dicks or the other names mentioned.)

It was such a big hit, they were invited back.

These folks didn’t show up with plastic game tables and plastic chips. They were the real thang. The guy who runs the company makes the tables for real casinos and his side business is running casino nights for corporate events and such. Real tables, real roulette, real craps, real chips!

nashvillevegas

The people he hires to run the tables are NOT the real thang. They cheat.

Thus our ability to spend our $160,000 winnings on a couple of bird houses and some suet.

I like to play Hold’em online, but never played at a real table with a real dealer and real chips until last year. I had a ball, busted out and loved it.

I did the same thing this year.

Nancy likes to play Blackjack. She sent word that if I needed chips, to just let her know. I blew off the messenger, but two hands, later after a massive all-in bet holding a full house, lost everything. My eights in the hole got beat by Queens in the hole. I am such a gambler!

I moseyed over to her table to announce I was ready to go home, and ended up watching her table. I was still to prideful to accept her generous offer.

After ten minutes, I took a thousand from her stack and sat down and bet it on one hand.

I had 20, dealer had to stand on 17. Winnah.

Let it ride, I got 18 with three cards, dealer busted. Winnah.

Let it ride, I got 17, dealer showing 10. Dealer looks at me, I indicate I was good, (I didn’ t want another card) she looks at next card and gives it to me, making 20. She shows 20 and pays me.

Huh?

Let it ride. Next hand, it takes me four cards to make 16. Oh-uh, not looking good. Dealer busts. Winnah? Really? Again?

Let it ride.

BTW: everybody else is winning also. But sometimes the dealer would look at a “hit” card and put it back in the shoe. Sometimes she would do this twice before giving them their “hit” card to go with their hole cards.

We had a Cheating Dealer! It was wonderful!

Nancy once commented “that’s not the card I wanted,” and dealer replied, “that’s OK, you’re beat anyway.” Nancy wasn’t betting her entire stack on every hand like I was, so the dealer let her lose occasionally.

Near the end of the evening, it was getting harder and harder for the dealer to make us winners. She had returned so many cards to the shoe, and had not shuffled, so the cards were starting to repeat – either very low cards or very high cards.

So we playahs just began trading the cards we needed.

And when the dealer left to cash someone out? Nancy just helped herself to the dealer’s bank and gave us all a bunch of chips.

The items available for “auction” were quite nice. Titan’s tickets, liquor, wine, crystal decanter, luxury bath items, luxury food items, but we had our eyes on the bird houses, suet, and other assorted goodies from Bird, Bath, and Beyond.

We found out Saturday night our bid of $160,000 was the one and only bid for the birds.

Winnah!

I’ll post a picture later of the $160,000 bird house.

Winners never cheat, cheaters never win? One Blackjack table at Le Club Du Golf Casino Night didn’t quit live up to that bromide.

And we loved it!

However the golf gods were watching today, and punished us rather severely.

I Always Find a Reason To Be Irritated!

Published on July 27, 2008 in Blogging. 5 Comments

Here’s a fairly new meme going around.

The Rules

1. List two things that irritate you for a reason (and list the reason!), and two things that irritate you for no apparent reason whatsoever!!
2. Give credit to the person who tagged you.
3. Link your answers to the original blog. (http://www.just-thinkin.net)
4. Tag four new people to participate.


Irritates me for a reason:

1. Waiting more than an hour in a medical professional’s office.

If they weren’t just trying to cram as many patients as possible into a day, they wouldn’t schedule patients so closely together than when a bonafide emergency screws up their schedule it screws up everybody’s schedule.

When it the last time you had a scheduled appointment with a medical professional and you took more than an hour with them in the room?

My suggestion would be that they just give me an appointment for Tuesday from 1-5 p.m., when I get there I can take a number (or not) and be served in order.

Yes, I have walked out on appointments. I have explained why I am leaving to the receptionist.

They don’t care, the docs, don’t know/don’t care.

2. Dumbasses at four way stop signs.

Here’s how it should work: First to arrive and stop is first to proceed. If it’s a tie, yield to the person on the right.

Here’s how it actually works. Driver to might right is stopped. I roll up to stop sign and stop, driver makes eye contact with me and either E. motions me to proceed or F. decides then that it is safe for s/he to proceed.

Therefore, I purposefully Do NOT may eye contact, if they sit there, I go. If they move, I wait. There is no chivalry in driving a**holes, there are laws.

Irritates me for no apparent reason

1. I have a bump on my arm that has been there for a couple years. It looks odd, doesn’t get worse, doesn’t get better. Something is irritating me for no apparent reason.

2. Ragweed. That stuff gets up my nose and just raises hell. WTF is up with that?

Revealed: X Files Star David Duchovny: Natural Male Enhancement on His Son

Published on July 25, 2008 in Baby Boomer. 5 Comments

A bee stung his four year old on the penis.

Duchovny told Letterman last night his reaction was to:

  1. Put a diaper on the naked four year old – Duchovny couldn’t bear to look
  2. Give him a soda – it was as good as a drug, sugar rush and all that
  3. Put in a DVD – to distract his son

Later Duchovny said, he son took great delight in telling people – mostly women – “look how big my penis is.”