Daynotes on a budget

I'm told with some assurances that the help functions in the next version of office will be far less annoying.  I don't think so.  That damned dog will, at the very least, do something stupid.  But at least he'll give you the option.  (yes, I'm kidding - Microsoft's still got problems with their programmers and their sex issues, donchaknow.  Most of them are neutered.  That's the price you pay to program.  Or didn't you know about that?

Nuff silly foolishness.  I'm still steaming over that poor excuse of a nice restaurant on top of the Radisson Hotel in St. Paul.  If they're going to charge what they do for a plate of food, for crying out loud, made it decent, get the order right, don't give us every excuse known to mankind (including the ever-popular "I just completely forgot about you folks").  If you're going to charge over $15 a plate for a dinner, you had best have PROFESSIONAL wait staff doing that work.  If you're going to charge over $20, you'd best have DAMN GOOD PROFESSIONAL wait staff.  And by that, I don't mean kids working their way through schools.  Certainly, there are good waitpersons out there, and I've been happily served by many of them.  And I've gladly tipped.  With two small children, I feel the duty to tip well over 15% - we usually do between 20 and 30%.  But when you've got BAD food, BAD service, and more excuses than Firestone's got problem tires, you really need to re-evaluate your entire operation.

I can honestly say that I've been to the Radisson before, in the evenings, and gotten good service, and decent (not spectacular) food.  The Radisson's current chef seems to think that if it's weird, it's certainly to be added to the menu just for fun and profit.  What is it with food these days?  Is it that people lack so much skill in the way of plain old cooking that they've got to go out and get "Steak Tartar, under a Lysol vinaigrette, seasoned with rosemary, sage, saffron, and habanera peppers, with a side of curried mash potatoes with cheese and broccoli stems, and grilled mixed vegetables, and shit soup."  I'm thinking it's because we've gotten to be decent cooks at home, most of us, that the chefs are going "All right - pick the meat from column A, three major seasonings from column B, cooking method from column C, the sauce from Column D, and pray the critic out front can't read or write."  Sheesh.  So AVOID THE CAROUSEL RESTAURANT AFTER DARK, FOLKS.  Oh, if you absolutely have to, go and get the desserts.  But skip the damned food.  It's crap.

Well.  After that little disquisition, I should probably note here what I did today.  I got a free education (free as in I don't get paid for it because I'm not officially employed yet) in Structured Software Testing Methodology.  I'm not sure yet that all of the concepts have solidified, but boy, I've got a whole heck of a lot to learn.  And I've been incredibly lucky in my previous career - I've made a number of decisions in my life which have, honestly, been pretty big - and I've undertaken them with very little in the way of thought for the consequences.  Good grief, I've been lucky.

The one thing I can pretty much say without equivocation is that Microsoft lacks a Software Quality Assurance group.  While they may have people who do that sort of thing, I can assure you they're just not being listened to.  The reason I say this is because (as I've learned it) Software Quality Assurance has two purposes - making sure the software does what it's supposed to do and it's fit for purpose.  Now, admittedly, most of Microsoft's software DOES do what's intended, and only rarely blows up.  But as to fit to purpose, look at Word, for crying out loud.  Talk about blasted software bloat...

Okay, I'm calm now.  My daughter came home from that "screw 'em" Karate place last night with her white belt.  She was thrilled, and I was too - however, I was also somewhat disappointed.  This is the outfit that wants to charge $1185 or so for her next 18 months of Karate.  Way too much, if you ask me - the entire family can join the YMCA for what her Karate place wants.

Just to top it all off, they're saying that in the area we live right now (southern portion of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area - southern Burnsville, specifically), we're experiencing 6% humidity.  That's like wringing out a dishrag almost completely dry.  Very dry air.  I feel like an alligator.

Now that my mind has somewhat recovered from yesterday's exercise in forced comprehension, I'm going to spend part of today writing up some of the documentation we covered yesterday in the material.  I'm also going to be sending some e-mails...  Wheeee-hooo.

As to the weather around here, it's beautiful.  Crisp, but not painfully so (that would be about ten degrees below on the Fahrenheit scale), and clear.  It's pretty nice, but we all know what's coming after that.  And I've really got to do something about my audio situation here - I've got three, or four, complete sets of speakers for PCs.  The one I'm currently using is "Tangent" and they look cool, but quality-wise, they suck.  The last two mornings, I've gotten up to get the kids going in the morning and there's a machine-gun-like sputtering coming out of the speakers - it sounds like an intermittent static burst or something.  So now I turn off the speakers before bed.

And I've really got to do something about my sound selections.  Right now, when I get mail, I get the "We just got a letter" song from Blue's Clues.  My son loves it - I'm a little less thrilled about it. 

More later, when I have some points to make (one hopes).  But first - I've never really caught on to E-Bay.  I just don't get the frenzy.  I have friends who live and die by the thing, and I think I even encountered a weird circle (my wife has friend - friend has mother - mother is selling/trading some of her collectables on e-bay - I worked with woman who bought collectables from eastern Iowa - where wife's friend's mother lived).  But I just don't get it.  Right now I'm really lusting after a PC laptop.  I don't "NEED" it in the sense that I shall drop dead if not having one, but I'd really be able to put one to good use.  I was looking last night, and found two - one at $50, and one at $52.50.  I thought "hmmmm.  Let's see what happens."  Sure enough, today they're at the same price - just add $200.  Oh well.  Back to lusting.  I hear it's cheaper than buying.

Later: Well, I've got to admit, I think I've discovered the stupid award of the week winner this week.  Perhaps I should make it a weekly award?  Last week, Me.  This week, my apartment complex management...  Let me explain.  When Mrs. D and I moved in here some eight years, several months ago, there were a number of facilities which we really enjoyed.  Gas grills, on-site.  Playground.  Hot tub, pool, etc.  There were others we didn't really use too often, like the party rooms and car wash, and then there were facilities, such as the tanning room. 

About two years after we moved in the apartment complex decided that the Gas grills they had were dangerous.  So (conveniently on a day before we'd planned for the first time to use those grills), they removed the gas elements and made them Charcoal.  We were told by the management that this was because the insurance on the complex was getting more expensive, and this was one way to reduce it.  So, charcoal.  They installed new grills, and later removed all the grills (that was after some fool, with full benefit of the grills on-site, decided to grill on his own wooden deck/balcony, outside his apartment, attached to a wooden building - burned the middle portion of the building, made that building completely uninhabitable for six months while they rebuilt it, and of the 50+ units in that building, something like three had renter's insurance - sorry, I live in a place where they let others come in, I believe in expecting the others to do grandly stupid things - like barbecue on their decks).

This summer, they plowed under the little playground out back, because A) it was too expensive to maintain, and B) it was an insurance liability.  AND the winner, this week...  The building I'm in has two laundry rooms.  The one we normally use is right next to the "tanning room" with a tanning bed.  Both rooms have sliding glass doors in them for a view to the north - we can see literally from Eden Prairie to downtown Minneapolis, some of Downtown St. Paul, and all the way over to Farmington and Hastings.  

Anyway.  Apparently there was a problem with people peeping in on the tanners as they tanned, through those sliding glass doors.  They installed vertical blinds.  Apparently it didn't help.  The building started an escalating plan to keep people off the deck.  First, they simply put screws into the sliding glass frame to keep the windows "bolted" closed.  Nice idea, except for one thing - there's no bloody ventilation in that room, and when it's 90 degrees outside, no central cooling in the building, and you've got ten dryers (two electric, eight gas) running full time, you can bet even 90 degree outside air is cooler than what's inside.  So, the screws were removed somehow (wasn't me, that's for sure - my electric screwdriver died a sad and pathetic death a couple months back from non-use).  

Then, they replaced the screws with bigger screws, I think.  Didn't last long.  Then, someone decided to screw a hunk of 2 x 4 into the track.  Didn't last long.  Then, someone screwed a hunk of metal square tubing into the track - that's still there, people just lift the door into another track (there are four).  SO, now they've gone and built a wall down the middle of the balcony.  All this to avoid buying a roll of opaquing contact paper - any decent bath/kitchen store will have a roll of material which is see-through, but will blur to the point of uselessness, the image behind it.  Apply that to the inside of the glass - heck, even to just the bottom portion of the glass - and you're done.  $40, tops, for that solution.  Wanna guess how much the wall cost them?  I don't get it.  At all.  But then again, I'm no peeping tom, either.  Desperation is pretty sad, isn't it?  

Anyway, I guess it's pretty funny that these folks have invested I don't know how many hours in what passes for thought with them to miss the painfully obvious - opaque the windows, folks.  It's a whole heck of a lot cheaper.

Of course, the alternative for this is the entire profession of folks that call themselves "Marketing."  Now I'm not aiming at sales people, because they're mostly the legwork for what the pointy heads in Marketing come up with.  It's the nitwits in marketing departments that should, en masse, be driven to the cliff and forced to hop off.  Lord knows it wouldn't be too tough - all we'd have to do is convince about three of them it's a good idea, and they'll begin to do it - then the rest will follow along willy-nilly.

What, you might ask, has incurred my wrath now?  Well, it's pretty funny, if you think about it.  I got a call today from my credit card company.  Actually, someone calling on behalf of my card issuer, trying to sell me a privacy plan.  Yup, they were MARKETING PRIVACY.  They just don't get it, and I'm beginning to thing that Heston might have been right - legalize the right to carry guns, and legalize the right to shoot persons not in certain protected classes - children, parents (unless they've gone into the legal or marketing professions), and just about anyone else.  Am I advocating murder?  Heck no.  I'm just advocating a change in the law which will legalize the process of thinning the herd a bit, to quote Dennis Miller.  We've got too many people here already, let's start by getting rid of the space-wasters.  Marketing and legal seem to be the tops, on my list.  

As I've gotten older, I've begun to understand the difficulties the Palestinians have endured.  Having your neighborhood bulldozed, having houses built on your farms, and all the rest have got to be incredibly frustrating.  Being unable to manage your own affairs in your own country, having to stop and submit to searches and questions, has got to be demeaning and incredibly frustrating.  To be caught between three different religions, as well, has got to be quite often terrifying.

But what happened last night and this morning has me sickened all over again.  Last week there was an episode where I believe a Palestinian father was attempting to shield his twelve-year-old son, who had been shot - the son later died.  That broke my heart.  This morning, it's been smashed all over again.  Four Israeli soldiers took a wrong turn, and crossed some invisible line.  They entered the town of Ramallah.  They were detained by the Palestinian authorities.  Palestinian citizens heard the soldiers were there, and took two of those boys, beat them, stabbed them, and killed them.  

Yes, I understand that those boys were only surrogates for the entire Israeli Armed Forces which the Palestinian people felt had been unreasonably harsh on them (to put it mildly - I don't know that 100 dead is unreasonably harsh - it's more like brutal).  But to beat to death defenseless boys because they took a wrong turn is sheer savagery.  

The Palestinian police force, which had taken custody of those four individuals (last I heard one was still alive, two were killed, and one is still missing), should really fall on their swords for that one.  They aren't a police force that cannot protect the defenseless.  The Palestinian people should at the very least apologize for this senseless murder.  Yes, there've been hundreds, probably thousands, of others.  But you've got to start somewhere.  If you continue down the road with revenge, eventually the entire area will be covered in a thick layer of green glass, and little else.

Of course, if you look at things, in this country we do the same damned thing, only we don't use bullets or knives.  We use lawyers.  When we encounter a situation where we feel that we've been poorly treated, we sue.  We learn, from an early age, that to sit back and 'take it' is not only not right, it's somehow 'un-American' to let someone do unto you without doing unto them.  So we sue.  We glorify the legal profession, which quite often should be the party of last resort, by making it the party of first resort.  We involve lawyers in all manner of transactions and activities on the hope that their presence will protect us from 'opposing counsel' and we all know that if our attorney proves to be less successful, we can always blame the attorney on appeal.  We devote entire television networks to time spent in the courtroom wrangling over everything from murder of another person to who put their shed up on the wrong side of the house.

I think what I want is a simpler world.  And I work with the most complex part of it - computers.  But that's the road I chose.  

For example, when I was in eighth grade, a couple of little shits (sorry, but accuracy counts for more than sensibilities sometimes, and, to quote (or more probably mis-quote) Mark Twain, "...Profanity occasionally provides relief denied even unto prayer.") hid my winter jacket after gym.  Not a huge deal, with the exception that these walking advertisements for birth control (which is a taboo subject in Catholic education) knew that we went right from the shower at the end of second hour to the outside, where we hopped, all sixty-odd of us, onto a bus for the 1/2 mile (or so) ride from the at-the-time Sartell High School to St. Francis.  We were what was called "shared time" kids, as "Franny" had seventh and eighth grade programs.  I understand that in more recent years Franny has dropped the final two years in favor of letting the parents try to get their kids into John XXIII junior high (the only Catholic Junior High School I'm aware of in St. Cloud), or some form of boarding school.  Of course, there's always the Sartell Middle School, which is the old Sartell High School facilities.  They built a new high school just down the road from the old one.

Anyway, these highly intelligent forms of plant life managed to put my coat in a different locker, lock it, and I couldn't find mine.  So, I went home, to catch holy hell for losing my winter coat (new that year), and had to get a new one that night.  What does this all have to do with Friday the 13th?  Well, that all occurred on Wednesday.  On Friday, the coach (John Vinge - didn't think I'd remember that one, did you?) gave me back my coat.

The weirdest part about the whole thing is that the ringleader for the boys in my grade school years was once my best friend.  Jim Kunesh.  When we were in kindergarten and first grade, we were friends.  As we grew up, however, Jim and I grew apart.  WAY apart.  Jim came from a family of EIGHTEEN kids - they were tied with the Ertls, also with eighteen kids, for the biggest families in the parish.  And this is back in the days before "blended families."  These were eighteen children all springing from two parents.  Good lord, people, get a hobby.  Make that "get ANOTHER hobby."  Like Groucho Marx once said, "Lady, I like a good cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while."

Anyway, Mr. James Kunesh, should you be reading this, we should talk some day about what in the hell ever happened between us.  I'm of the general opinion that your parents (both good people, they were/are close friends of my parents - I even went to Mr. Kunesh's funeral when he was hit by a woman driving a van - Mr. Kunesh was an avid bike rider, and that's how he died) just didn't have enough time to give you all good attention; you acted out, and got the attention (being one of the last three or four in line, as I recall - I think there were two kids behind you).  

Ah well.  Childhood.  It's amazing how strongly I'm marked by those events in my childhood.  Betrayal of a childhood friendship engages, in children, at any rate, a vendetta not so unlike those that beget mafia hits.  Fortunately for me in my day, any weaponry heavier than a rock or a stick was hard to come by.  And my school and my parents both frowned on the possibility of physical violence.  Now, I find myself telling my children to stick up for themselves at a much earlier age.  I specifically tell them "you don't start fights, but if someone else does, you finish it.  I'll deal with the authorities, and you can be sure they'll be apologizing when that fight's over."  

Rhiannon didn't quite understand that one until last summer.  There was one child who continually used her as a punching bag.  The teacher in her room is very insistent that the children develop both independence and self-control, and does what she can.  However, she doesn't always step in to stop some little smart-mouth from stepping over the line.  Rhiannon had finally had enough, and one day, when Mr. Mouth came up and started in on her, he added some form of physical assault.  I think he might have pushed her.  

At the end of round one, Rhiannon was sitting on the back of this child, pushing his face into the ground.  When he attempted to get up and call for help, she 'encouraged him to consume a little more grass.'  While I don't think she said anything of the sort, that was what her teacher and I agreed upon later.  I was told about this whole incident when I picked her up, so I stood and talked with her teacher for a while, and the teacher and I both agreed that Mr. Potty Mouth had it coming, and Rhiannon was just the first one to stomp his scrawny little tuckus.  The other children saw our conversation, and were a bit surprised when someone didn't back down to the teacher.  I think it scared them in a way.  

After talking to her teacher for a while and reaching a consensus that Rhiannon was not in trouble for sticking up for herself, and she had not initiated even this fight, though she would have had plenty of reason too, I went over and gave my daughter a huge hug, even though the other kids knew her parents would be told that she'd been fighting.  She was starting to tear up when I told her I was proud of her, and if anyone tried anything else, they should get the same treatment.  I gave her another huge hug, and then, I think, we went out to dinner.  Certainly pissed off the other monkeys in the tribe.  They expected screaming histrionics and some form of threatened punishment.  Oddly enough, I think Mr. Foul Mouth has left the center.  Rhiannon will soon, as well, we hope.

As I review this, I'm still trying to figure out how in the heck I got from Friday the 13th to my daughter the hoodlum.  Oh well.  That's the way my madness runs.  Today is a very busy day.  So far, Jack's had his stitches removed, and I've started laundry.  After that, we've got Karate this afternoon, pick up mom, and get ready for tomorrow's trip to St. Cloud to visit the (grand)parents and others, and celebrate birthdays.  Should be fun.  At least, I hope it is - we're missing the last big Farmer's Market of the season to go.  I will miss that FM stuff, but then again, I've got the Roelsch Farms and the Northern Longhorn Alliance web sites bookmarked - and the NLA does deliveries most of the winter.  Roelsch has entered their down period where they're growing more "product." 

Yes, I eat meat, what of it?  If you're from PETA, tell you what - you start making a new baby, you feed that baby only veggies and whatever from birth to death, and when that child of yours has a child of their own, THAT child should also maintain a meatless diet - once that's done, for a couple generations, you show me how healthy they are.  They may live longer, and they may actually be able to walk upright and lift more than a picket sign, but not much more.  I believe we are a part of the food chain, and part of that food chain consists of animals.  We eat the animals.  That's all there is to it.  'nuff about that.  I must away to launder and such.

Later: Now this surprises me.  Not that Apple's trying rebates - that they're saying "oh, it's not in response to a sales slump."  Of course, if these fools had any clues, they'd drop the prices on their hardware.  Silly me.  No wonder I don't run the company.

I'm also getting very concerned about the whole Mideast situation.  We're facing terrorists who can strike with apparent impunity at our military strength (and this isn't meant in any way to impugn the military.  They've got probably eleventy-six regulations about firing while in a neutral or enemy port).  We've got Madass Hussein's Republican Guards (gee, I wonder if "Dubyah" is worried that his campaign for president might suffer from being linked to the Madasses' troops?) on the move, lord only knows to where or why (not that logic's got a lot to do with it), and most important, we've got Israel faced with a community of persons who declare "Days of Rage".  I'm sorry, but the longer this goes on, the less sympathy I have for some two-bit hoodlum wearing a tablecloth on his head.  Yes, I said that.  A real leader does not lead a mob - a real Leader leads a group, a country, a people, and Leads them in ways that raise the reputation of that people in the eyes of the rest of the world.  Yassir Arafat has shown himself to be greedy, dishonest, and unworthy of trust.  I think that the Israeli people would be best served by saying "oops, sorry."  and pulling out of the talks, pulling back, putting up one hell of a good defense (in the old Vince Lombardi tradition of "the best defense is a good offense"), and wait for the Palestinian leadership to find a true Leader who can give concessions, Lead his (or her) people, and MAKE IT WORK.  I'm frankly disgusted with the whole thing.

And now I see the bodies of our servicemen and women have made it to Ramstein.  I agree with Senator McCain - 'we're gonna find you, and we're gonna cost you whatever benefit you thought you gained.  THEN we're gonna teach you a lesson.  THEN, we're going to get serious."  

Enough.  I keep going on in this vein, I might not make thirty-eight.

Much Later: Well, this is going to be fun.  Last night was the last rush hour for a few weeks where we'll be able to get somewhere.  Our friends in the state legislature (specifically Richard "The Dick" Day from that metropolitan area of Owatonna) decided that we need to try getting along without ramp meters.  I guess I should explain.  

Here, in the Twin Cities metro area, we've got one of the most extensive networks of freeway ramp meters in the US.  We have about four hundred and eighty meters which theoretically restrain freeway traffic.  I've seen more than a few fools blow by the lights like they're not even on.  But they keep the traffic from balling up.  The meters are controlled from a centralized point, so that they can reduce the number of cars per minute entering the freeway if the road's got a crash or whatever on it. 

However, our esteemed legislature, lead by The Dick, decided to shut the damned meters off to see what affect, if any, they have on the freeway traffic.  Apparently, The Dick would rather sit on the freeway where there's a far greater chance of someone clipping his car while doing seventy than sitting in the on-ramp.  Lovely.

Today was birthday at the folks.  Lovely gifts, sort of.  You see, I've got "Gawain" sitting under my spare desk here, and I was suspecting that I would end up selling it back to someone else in Mrs. D's office for a small loss (I was going to keep the 17" monitor and sell off the 15" I have on my old machine).  Then, my sister, bless her little black heart, got me "Running Linux" and thereby cut the legs out of the very last point of argument I could make regarding my continually postponing my foray into Linux.  I've got the OS on CD, I've got the hardware, and I've even got a book.  Now, God help me, I've got no more excuses.

I took some pictures of the kids playing outside at my folks, and some other stuff today - we'll download those tomorrow and see what comes of it.  Should be fun...  I hope.

Well, now that it's after midnight, and we've got to make 11:00 mass tomorrow so Mrs. D can lead the disorganized chaos that is "Children's Liturgy" I should get my hairy backside into bed.  G'nite.  Monday starts Linux foolishness...

Last Friday, on his site, Dr. Pournelle posted perhaps the most well-reasoned and logical approach I've encountered to the whole Mideast issue.  I'm no genius.  I've thought, since about the age of ten, that our most expedient way to deal with this little hot potato is to turn the entire thing into a glass-covered parking lot (via the application of a number of nuclear weapons of varying megatonnage), and then build a number of oil rigs riding on tank treads not unlike those that power the space shuttle crawler.  Suck the oil out of the sand, and leave the place for future generations.

No, I'm not serious.  I couldn't push the button to kill that many innocent people - there've got to be at least a dozen.  It's the rest of the lunatics that give insanity with weapons a bad name.  I see Dr. Pournelle is stuck in pretty much the same predicament.  But his years of experience, with such issues, and at a far deeper and more personal level of understanding than I could ever hope to achieve, have come up with the same general approaches.  Whether or not the policy wonks, nitwits, and assorted other high-forehead types assembling in Egypt over the next few days can reach a serious and workable solution remains to be seen.  We'll just have to hope someone gets a brain and a sense of reasonableness and compromise.

Well.  Enough of that.  There's a couple of details I should catch up with regarding what's up around here...  Let's go back to Friday, since the weekend started back then...  Friday Morning, I took Jack to the doctor to get his stitches out.  He was more excited about playing with the toys and such.  We hit the doctor's office, and he played for a bit, then we went in.  By the time the stitches came out, he was trying to figure out when they'd start.  It was that easy.  So I dropped him off, and got busy with laundry.

Friday afternoon, after a series of events which don't really move the story along, I ended up hanging out at the Karate center with Jack (who originally was planned to be back at Daycare instead).  Jack and I were sitting in the waiting area with about nine other mothers, watching the kids do Karate.  Jack was talking to this other mother, who had asked him who he was watching.  He said, in youthful innocence, "I'm watching my sister.  I haven't got a brother.  My daddy ate something bad."  As one, nine heads swiveled to look at me in the back row of the waiting room.  I was ready to hang the little ape by his ankles.

So, after class, we picked up Mom, who went through the coupons we had, and she found one for Godfather's, which is a pretty good local pizza chain  I think they still are, but I'll tell you, I've got half a mind to apply for the job of manager for the Burnsville/Burnhaven location.  Clearly, the fellow working Thursday night is pretty much missing the crust, sauce, and toppings for his pizza.  All he's got is cheese.

Let's explain a little more clearly.  I picked up Mrs. D at exactly 5:13 by my watch.  I gave her my cell phone, and after a very brief discussion, we decided on Pizza from Godfather's, since we had a coupon.  We called 411 to get the number, and got connected at 5:19 pm.  After asking if we could hold, we were put on hold.  At 5:26 pm, we were cut off.  We called back, only to discover that we'd mis-heard or mis-remembered the number.  So we called 411 again, and again were connected, this time at 5:28 pm.  At that time, we were asked if we could hold.  My wife said we'd already been cut off once (probably the fault of the cell-phone company - there's a dead spot along Minnesota Highway 13 near the Burnsville High School).  

So when we got a person on the phone at 5:32, we were a bit surprised.  My wife gave the order for takeout, and asked how long it would take.  The highly trained pizza order taking telephone technician on the other end of the phone managed to drop the phone into the cradle before he heard the inquiry.  We decided we'd be OK if we delayed a whole 20 minutes to get there.  We dropped by the bank to put money into it, then dashed over to the grocery store to pick up milk and a few other things.  Then we left, and went back to Godfather's.  I dropped Ann off at the door at 5:50 pm and went to find a nearby place to watch and wait.  

and wait.

and wait.

At 6:05 pm, Rhiannon had to go to the bathroom.  Lacking any other alternative, I pulled up by the curb, right behind a new Nissan Altima, and had her hop out to run in and go bathroom, and hurry back.  She ran in, and did her business.  During this time, I noticed one group of eleven people, one group of twelve, and one group of nine, in addition to perhaps another thirty people in couples or threes and fours, enter and exit the place after a very short period of time.  There was also a balding gentleman who left, holding a rather thin pizza bag, and drove off in the new Nissan Altima (I assume new because it lacked official plates, and the sales sticker was still in the back window).  He drove off, only to have his spot filled, merely three minutes later, by a beat-up Geo Metro and a kid hopped out with three empty pizza bags and ran into the restaurant.

At 6:35, my wife came out.  Livid.  She told me they had one person in the kitchen cleaning up.  One person taking orders at the counter (they stopped answering the phone altogether.  The delivery guy was in the kitchen looking for the pizzas he was supposed to deliver (assembled and baked by apparently divine intervention, since there was no one else to do it).  The manager, the fellow in the new Nissan, left with a delivery order, which if he was lucky was probably $30 tops.  This nitwit, by ignoring what was going on in his restaurant, easily lost himself well over $500 worth of business.  Including ours.  We went home, called a couple of other places, and ended up with Little Caeser's for $10 less, provided we go get it. Fine by me.

So, yesterday, we went to St. Cloud, which my daughter asked if it was named because it was always cloudy.  Pretty funny, especially since the place usually has poor weather when we visit.  Figures.  We had a good time rolling around in the leaves, and so forth.  Some gratuitious pictures follow.  Of course, I've got some better-quality pictures of a larger size for desktop backgrounds.  If you're a relative or friend, let me know, and I'll send you some of my favorites.  If you're completely unrelates, there's the picture above that I've got for a windows background, as well.  Pretty picture, if I do say so myself.

And today, after church, we went house-hunting.  We looked inside two different houses, one completely empty, one with people still in it.  Neither one good enough to make me want to plunk down $250 for an inspection, much less thirty years of my life to paying for the place.  The first house was nice, but had some real problems.  The second house was nicer, newer, and had so many nice features that it just breaks your heart to say "no thanks."  It hurt.

The reason we went looking?  Our leading favorite turned up with a "Sold" sign on the front today when we went to church.  It's actually not my favorite, not by a long shot, especially given the fact that we hadn't seen the interior.  But it was close to school, and had some nice features going for it.  Oh well.  I have a feeling that after this process is complete, we'll be disappointed many times over.

And, to top it all off, the fine folks promoting Monday Night Football clearly have been listening to Dennis Miller when it comes to promos.  I saw one today for Monday Night Football which had me chuckling - which is about as good as it gets these days when it comes to ads.  Anyway, the scientists are watching two gorillas.  One says "I don't know what we're going to do.  She's only got a few days of fertility left.  We've tried everything."  Another guy says "Not everything." and puts in an audio tape.  You next hear the opening notes of the Monday Night Football theme.  They show one gorilla walking towards the other, and then the camera cuts back to the observers, who smile, and smile larger.  You hear (oddly enough) chimpanzees shrieking loudly, giving you the impression that Mr. and Mrs. Gorilla are either arguing about the remote, or enjoying some quiet time without the little apes around.  Pretty funny.  

Of course, the Vi-Queens play this evening, against Mrs. D's favorite team, "Da Bearss".  I'm betting against Green's Goofs, not because I can't stand Green, but because I'm expecting that they're going to go in cocky, and the Bears DID give them a heck of a scare during the season opener - they lead for three and a half quarters.  Of course, when it comes to a lead in a game, the only point where a lead matters is when the clock runs out.

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