This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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They Just Find Us

As we were driving home from an event at Amy’s school and approaching home Amy suddenly yelled “Dog!”. There was a dog darting around on the street near the local grocery store. We hadn’t seen it yet, only Amy had. But we stopped and Amy jumped out of the car. A few minutes later she had caught the loose dog (who was quite friendly). It had a tag. It was named “Nicky”. The tag had phone numbers. But all of our cell phones were dead. (Yeah, we need to be better at plugging them in to charge.) So Brandy called from a cell phone, but only got voice mail.

So Nicky came home for a little bit. Roscoe stayed down stairs and was not happy about this development at all. Almost as soon as we got the phones plugged in, the owner called us. A few minutes later they met us at the corner near our house and took Nicky back. Appearantly Nicky had wandered a little further from home than usual, but they often just let Nicky out to just wander around the neighborhood on his own. I’m not sure that is all that wise ever, let alone for a black dog at night who apperantly doesn’t mind running back and forth across streets with a decent amount of traffic.

But in any case, at least this time Nicky is home safe.

And we only had an extra dog for a few minutes.

That’s Some Coffee

Most mornings when I get to work one of the first things I do is stop at the little coffee shop thing on the first floor for a 20oz White Chocolate Mocha. Today was not an exception. I usually pay by scanning my id card, which just automatically deducts the amount from my next paycheck.

Today as I was about to scan the card, the woman who makes the coffee put her hand out and stopped me as an alarmed noise came out of her mouth. I looked up. She had rung up my coffee and the amount had come up as $18344.20.

I am glad she stopped me from having that automatically deducted from my pay in exchange for a coffee. That would have been a slightly expensive drink.

She fixed it, I scanned my card, took my coffee and went on my way. And now it is time for work.

Keyboards

Don’t you hate it when you spill coffee on your keyboard and a bunch of the keys get all sticky and hard to push?

Don’t you hate it more when you do that to two separate keyboards within the space of a week?

Yeah, that sucks.

Nothing Much

I’m having trouble thinking what I should say tonight. Work is busy of late. Lots going on. At home we had a breakfast for parents of 7th graders at the school this morning. Brandy is frustrated with how they have been doing a few things lately. As I speak we’re all in our separate parts of the house doing our things. It is a quiet night so far. And there we are.

Late Curmudgeon

For those of you who may be wondering, this week’s podcast was indeed recorded on Sunday. It hasn’t been released yet due to some technical difficulties preventing me from uploading it to the webserver where I keep my site (including the podcasts).

Related problems actually had the whole site down for about 14 hours earlier today, but it is obviously back up now. The podcast will follow as soon as my ability to move files around is restored.

Window Shopping at TJ Maxx

Brandy and Amy were on the way to TJ Maxx to look at school backbacks for Amy (her old one had a hole in it)… They had looked at Target, they were going to TJ Maxx next… Amy was hungry so they stopped at one of the mall food places. While they were there eating whatever it was they bought, a few hundred feet away a car crashed through the section of the TJ Maxx where they would have been shopping if they hadn’t stopped for food.

Car Slams Into TJ Maxx Store In Bellevue
(AP & KIRO)

Bellevue police said one person is being treated for minor injuries after a car crashed into the front of a T.J. Maxx store in the Factoria area of Bellevue.

A teen was injured after getting struck by a clothes rack when the car plowed into the store.

According to Bellevue Fire, a woman in her 40s was driving the car and was allegedly in competition with another driver for the parking spot and hit the accelerator instead of the brake, sending her car forward.

Amy and Brandy came home at that point rather than continuing to shop for the backpack.

Time is not Enough

Sometimes, things take a lot longer than you wish, and other times you have a lot less time than you wish. Most of the time both are true. And that kinda sucks.

Music Widget Thingy

In my continuing quest to fill this website with junk nobody wants to see that makes it look all out of kilter, I’ve added a last.fm music widget which tracks the last few songs I’ve listened to on iTunes at home (or on my iPod, although those don’t show up until I get home and sync). You can see the widget on the right under the AbulReading section and above the blogroll. I’ve only had it there a few minutes, but so far I’m not too thrilled with it. It is much more obtrusive than the Google reader thing, and much less customizable. I’ll leave it there for the moment, but I may pull it off again after a few days if I find it too obnoxious.

No Means No

Just had a call on my cell. I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it go to voice mail. I have transcribed the full text of the message. The first word starts in the middle, so it is obvious the automated system had already said a sentence or two while my recorded “Please leave a message” thing was playing, so I missed the beginning.

From 877-778-2578 at 00:09 UTC on 2007 Sep 25:

… As you are on the DirecTV do not call list we are not able to contact you for these exciting offers. The reason I’m calling you today is to give you an opportunity to change your selections. If you allow us to remove you from the DirecTV do not call list please be assured that we will not share your information with anyone else. Please call 1-877-778-2578 to remove your account from the DirecTV do not call list. You will then be eligible to receive exciting offers in the future. If you prefer to remain on DirecTV’s do not call list we completely respect your decision and your privacy and no action is required. Thank you for being a loyal DirecTV customer.

Excuse me??? I’m on your do not call list, so you are calling me to ask me to please take you off your do not call list? So you can call me about crap I don’t want? Excuse me? EXCUSE ME? I already told you not to call me. Assholes.

We were already planning to switch away from DirecTV as soon as either of our two DirecTivos die since they are no longer manufactured and you can only get them on the secondary market for way over what was the market price when they were still being made… all since DirecTV decided they wanted to push their own second rate DVRs instead of real Tivos.

Anyway, this call just makes me not have any regrets on that planned move. It may even end up accelerating it. (Although I don’t see us switching until early next year unless our existing hardware does die.)

What a crock.

More Internet comments on unwanted calls from this phone number here including at least a couple comments suggesting that it might not really be DirecTV. Dunno. Very annoyed regardless.

Rearranging

I think I am going to rearrange the furniture in my home office. It has been the way it is for quite a few months. Time for a change. You might be able to see these efforts on the camera. But then again, it has a fairly tight field of view. I wish I had a fisheye lens for it, but I don’t. Also, and perhaps more importantly, I’ll probably have to shut off the computer at some point to move it, which of course will turn off the webcam.

And of course it will be incredibly boring. A few minutes of me moving furniture. If I even end up doing it right now. That dragging thing is still going on, so I may be just as likely to just lie down and not do anything.