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Rants! & Raves! 5.23
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Here it is, Rants! & Raves!, your weekly chance to sound off about the week past. Remember the rules:
1. A Rave! is something that happened during the past week that you’re pleased about and is signified by the word “Rave!” and/or an appropriately peppy emoticon.
2 A Rant! is something that happened during the past week that you’re ticked about and is signified by the word “Rant!” and/or an appropriately grumpy emoticon.
3. You may Rant! about something a person said, did or wrote, but you may not Rant! about generally disliking a person.
Have fun!
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One more diversion
Contratulations to son #2, Stubob!
Congratulations, Stubob.
I take it that the MacBook is a laptop and it avoids Vista as an operating system. True?
Since we just sold our Civic to the youngest son, (who is planning to move out!) we were down to one car. That wasn’t going to work. So on Monday, my sweetie found a deal on a ‘02 Ranger with only 21K miles on it. I test drove it Wednesday morning, and she bought it that afternoon. So I now have a shiny clean truck with power everything - remote locks, windows, mirrors, theft deterrent, stereo, AC, CD player. It also has tinted windows, vent shades, and a nice bed cover.
I test drove it, and then sent my financial manager (the sweetie that keeps my life from turning into a giant hairball) to negotiate a price. (No trade-in, no financing, no games.) Here’s the offer, and a check, take it or leave it. Got it for $7200 drive out. (Sshhh! don’t tell anyone, but I stole this truck!)
This is the nicest truck I’ve ever owned.
The wild thing is that my wife has never liked trucks. She thinks they’re redneck vehicles. But she got such a charge out of making the deal that she’s excited about it, and thinks I look good in the truck. So when I got home that night, we took it for a spin. We even did the redneck thing, and went over to Walmart to buy an air filter for the truck…
I even took my co-worker’s parking spot. You know the guy that always makes fun of me because my “mommy” drives me to work every day? When he gets back from his overseas trip, I’m just going to tell him to call his momma, because my truck is bigger than his truck…
Today, I am thankful for at least two things. First, that I have a wife who is so thrifty and sensible. Second that I have now have a nice truck.
Hey honey, guess what? I won’t have to stuff the Christmas tree in the trunk of the car anymore!
I still can’t believe I have a truck… amazing.
Rave: My five year old seems to have changed his mind about running away and going to California or North Carolina.
Rant: It was going t be fun watching him figure out to get there.
Congrats on your truck, MAKE IT MAN. May it give you long and good service. Congratulations also, to your son, Stu-bob. Enjoy the moment!
Rave: If all goes as planned, Lynn will be back next week!!!!!
Wow, #5 may be the most moving tribute to a truck (and to negotiating skills) that I’ve ever read.
MiM, now you need to go out and find something to haul.
Kbells,
I won’t have to borrow a truck this weekend to take my lathe and stand to the demo. Yay!
StuBob,
Congratulations to your son!
SteveG,
Does this mean I’m a redneck? Perhaps I should write a song…
Rant: Those PC/Mac commercials on TV. I know Macs are good computers and all, but they their representation of PC/Vista is highly inaccurate in those commercials. Besides, when you control only about 3% of the computer market, you’re not going to have as many problems (software issues and the like). We’ve been running Vista on our laptop for over a year and never had a single problem (it was Vista Premium installed, not an upgrade, which might make a difference).
Rave: Those commercials made me so mad we went out and bought a new PC Wed (mildly kidding; our former desktop was old and slow). Set it up last night and it’s working fine. As a matter of fact, this post is being done on it.
Rant: In Stubob’s defense, I remember it being a little hinky before to set up a home network on Windows. I have to do that this morning, and I’m not looking forward to it.
Rave: It’s supposed to be a lot easier if both computers are Vista (the old network was with an XP and a Vista).
Rave: The problem is supposed to be
I have no idea how that last incomplete “rant” appeared. Maybe it’s a Vista problem! The gremlins are typing now!
Low Country Boil (Crayfish, new potatoes, and corn) tomorrow at a friends farm. All the neighbors, church friends, work friends will bring a side dish, musical instruments and singing voices, and stay til early morning. Hay rides for the kids, canoes in the river, fishing in the pond, blacksmithing demonstration, and woodturning demonstration (yes, by yours truly), stargazing with telescopes, and lots of good food and fellowship. Promises to be a great time! Ya’ll come down y’hear?
MiM - After staying till early morning, will most of the people then be getting up for church in the morning?
I just can’t take late nights anymore. But it does sound like a nice time.
Make it Man, I wish I could be there. Is your Ranger red? It sounds like you have mine, except mine is an 01. I would hate to have to sell mine for $7200. It’s a six cylinder and uses less gas than the Merc, so I drive it a lot. You’ll love it.
StuBob, congratulations on son #2. Now, I suppose comes college. Purdue is a great school, and it’s in-state for you. Remember, nothing good comes out of Bloomington.
Aw, Make It Man, I hate we moved away–that would have been tons of fun. I’ve had to explain a low country boil three times since moving here in August!!
NJL– Yes. It runs Mac OS X Leopard, which is allegedly not as good as its predecessor, but has been fine for me. No one I’ve spoken to has been happy with Vista. Apparently, it has factory-installed spyware or some such thing. TJ is exactly right about the commercials. I think we’re just not in the target demographic, if you get my drift.
Chas–You’re right about Bloomington, although they have a nice airport. WillieHorton will be going to Purdue, majoring in Professional Flight.
OK, one more
TomBob got his visa and tickets, so he’ll be going to Australia for 6 months (or so) to work with an old church-planting friend.
Big days in the StuBob house! PattiSue is ready for it to calm down a bit.
#1 Justus 331,
Don’t let the facts get in the way of your rave conclusion which is based on nothing more than your personal erroneous assumptions which as as far from fact as one can get.
The fact is that oil companies are not pigs as you insanely think. They lose 2-3 cents on every gallon of gasoline they produce for you gripe about. Yep. they lose money on the gasoline they have spent trillions of their dollars to sell to you at a loss. They do make 25 to 30 cents per gallon on every gallon of diesel they make - but you don’t buy diesel unless you are a trucker. Also the profit margins for oil companies is 8.5% of sales. Yes they make 8.5 cents for every dollar they sell. Microsoft makes 30 cents for every dollar they sell and Google makes 50 cents. Your bank makes 18 cents and your drug company makes 14 cents. It is Microsoft and Google the are the pigs. They certainly aren’t providing you a staple at a loss to them are they?
So maybe you will think in more sane ways going forward rather than listening and believing those who are ideologues swilling slop and who will lie to you to make you look idiotic - at lest to those that know the facts.
Just think how you would feel if you bought several million gallons of diesel every year and you knew the oil companies were taking it on the chin for gasoline users (actually being noble and good Samaritans toward the little guy even though they still get called pif=gs by them) and sticking it to you big time instead?
Actually the oil companies are the good guys in white hats but theere are some ungrateful Christian bloggers who are the piggies.
Rave: Many years ago, ‘92, hubby bought a blue Ranger. We used it a lot and it traveled back and forth across the country pulling a trailer of our belongings. Eventually, number one son needed a rig so we gave it to him and it moved to Seattle. He loved it but gave it back when he was through so we gave it to number two son. It moved to Arizona. When he and wife were done with it, he gave it to son number three. When he prepared to go to Qatar, he gave it back. Now the kids and I have a truck to go camping with this summer. Just so everybody knows, daughter was not left out. She got the Subaru. When she was done with it in Florida, she gave it back and now it is in Canada with hubby and son number one. I guess we have older cars. The kids have newer cars. Works for me.
Chas,
Nope, the Ranger XLT is silver. You can see it here:
http://www.woodworking.org/photo/albums/userpics/15324/WoodHauler.jpg
My wife thinks her magnetic Bulldog decal looks good on it. She even suggested putting a Bulldog plate on the front! ….talk about redneck!
Cameron,
Too bad y’all can’t come down (or up?), we’d love to have ya!
Well I posted an answer to Chas and Cameron, but the forum ate my post. We’ll see if it will show up later.
Oh, and Karen…
I don’t stay up late at these things anymore either. I don’t know how my friends do it.
I figgered out how to set up a wireless network yesterday. I even figured out how to set up the security for it. And the boss has a brand new laptop that was custom built. Time will tell how fast it is with our design application…
I’m installing printer drivers for it now.
Rave: Actually, I’m not sure if this is a rant or rave, but I have no doubt I’m not part of the Mac demographic (nor do I want to be; that punk Mac kid probably lost a ton of lunch money back in the day
)! It reminds me of two of the commercials during the Super Bowl: Coke featured Bob Doyle and James Carville; Pepsi featured Justin Timberlake. Most folks in one demo did not know the other, I suppose.
Rant: Interesting about the pre-installed spyware, Stubob: one of the first things I did last night was download and install a very good (and free!) anti-virus program called Avast (this is highly recommended; Consumer Reports gives it good ratings, it updates daily, and you never have to pay a thing for it! Go to www.avast.com ). After the program installed, I had to restart and asked it to do a boot scan as well. It found a Trojan horse midway through the scan (located in a Win32 subdirectory, no less). I remarked to Cameron at how quickly the computer had picked up such a creature, but after your comment, it seems that this may have simply been something pre-existing on the computer.
Llama # 19, thanks for the comparisons, I’ve been aware of this political nonsense, but didn’t have any figures to cite.
I wish, though, that you didn’t find it necessary to label those that see it differently as “Christian bloggers who are piggies.” Why not just “bloggers who are piggies?” I’ve certainly seen many commentors on other sites that blame the oil companies for their woes, they’re not all Christians. The fact that this is a Christian site doesn’t make it ok to come here and smack Christians.
Hey TJ - what does “hinky” mean ? (#12, rant #2, line 1).
Hinky means something that acts not quite as it should. If my car cranks and takes me where I want to go, but has a slight rattle, or pull to the right, then it’s acting hinky.
that punk Mac kid probably lost a ton of lunch money back in the day
ROFL!
Cameron: Thank you Mrs. TJ
Make it Man - Do you do take out to Arizona?
Ivan,
Wouldn’t that be nice? Then I could bring back some Texas Ebony, and some Mesquite, both favorite turning woods.
??? Confusion. We’re talking new computer now and my computer-guy husband is seriously considering a Mac for the first time, because of Vista.
??? Do we follow StuBob’s advice or TJ’s?
Rave: Glorious day in northern California
Michelle,
Play around with both of the versions in real life, if you can. There are pros and cons to both, and people who own them can demonstrate them the best in person.
The only Vista problems I know are people who upgraded–starting fresh doesn’t seem to a problem once you remove the unnecessary programs (and, apparently, spyware) that comes with it. Vista is a memory hog, and often upgraders don’t have the memory, etc. to make it run smoothly. The “feel” isn’t that much different than XP, so if you don’t like change, there you go.
OtOH, I don’t know anyone who complains about Mac!
Michelle,
Buy a copy of XP professional, do a clean install, and wait for Windows 7.
TJ–
That’s good to hear about Avast. I need virus protection on my (IBM) laptop, and was thinking about Avast.
Once again the ‘Bad Vista and bo0thtched introduction’ is basically a marketing ploy put out by Apple trying to gain market share.
I have had no problem with Vista now in two new laptops. It requires more memory - 1 gig but it runs fine and is completely stable.
IT manger just don’t see a need to upgrade to vista because XP works fine for them don’t require extra memory, even though it isn’t nearly as powerful or stable or secure as Vista. It is just a matter of money in a tight economy.
To convert to Apple for them at this point would cost a fortune because Apples cost way more than Vista or XP machines machines. They would also be slitting their own throats when the boss found out they wasted all that money to convert to apple for no reason.
Some people are easily fooled most of the time. These Apple whack geeks have been with us forever but nothing ever changes in the real business world where Apple has never and will not exist.
#26 KAYVEE,
I have no problem with Christians calling those that deserve it pigs.
I do have a problem with anyone including Christians calling folks pigs when they are not pigs. This especially bothers me since I hold Christians to higher standards to ensure I get them.
The old saying of ‘Go away in May and come back in October’ went into effect last Friday for the stock market.
Enjoy the summer because you won’t enjoy the market this summer
Best thing heard in Llamadom this week. Obama’s idea of Carbon Credits are Slavery Reparations for Whites to buy.
Llama? Are you racist? I’m curious. You seem to bring up skin color a lot.
Rant-The Department of Energy yesterday released a report requested by Ted Stevens back in December. It projects it would take 10 years to get ANWR oil flowing in the pipeline, and crude oil prices ($131 barrel today) would drop by $0.75 a barrel. Do the math.
MegaRave: My son-in-law and his folks saw the Colorado tornado coming, found safety and suffered only a broken window and a power outage due to downed poles on one side of their property—the poles were untouched on the other side. The tornado leveled a farm less than half a mile from their home.
Rave: Only one known fatality as of this morning.
Rave: God is so good and Jesus loves all of us so much that He wants us to know God personally.
Rave: Not a Rant in sight heading into the weekend.
Check to see if Ted Stevens has stock in ADM or DuPont.
Isn’t funny how people are about computers? I worked for a company that had everyone on PC’s except the marketing department who worked on Mac’s. I have never been able to get a Mac to do what I wanted it to do and EVERY time I have ever touched one it has frozen up on me.
Chas and Cameron,
Well my post finally showed up back at #23. Figured it would. I spared y’all the double post.
Chas-you can almost bet he does. Haven’t kept up on how his corruption charges are going.
Rant-(Bloomberg) — Sales of previously owned homes in the US fell in April and the supply of unsold properties reached a record, signaling no let-up in the 27-month housing slump.
Rant: This is supposed to be rants and raves, not conversations with one another!
Rant: having to wade through 48 messages before I post
Rave: I feel better now.
Real rave: I just finished a big editing job (and a small, pesky one too, that I griped about on another post because it was completely, totally illiterate writing)–but once I get paid, the cash flow will be moving again, after a long dry spell
Rave: with more work for next week . . .
Minor Rant: I still don’t have a roommate, and I hate the part of this where I have to interview people and show them the house
Rave: beautiful weather. It’s up near 90 now, but I’ve gotten most of the way through May without turning on the AC once, and have used the heat only twice (briefly) in the last month. Nice both for temperature and for a break on the utility bills
Rave: a three-day weekend…and probably TWO picnics on Monday (I invited a friend to my church’s, and got invited back in return)
Rave: Lynn will soon be back
RAVE-
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush starts raising money for John McCain’s campaign next week, but the three fundraisers are closed, so there will be no news media cameras photographing the outgoing and incoming Republican party leaders together nor reporters observing their joint appearances.
The White House announced Friday that Bush will be the main attraction at three McCain events next week — in Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Park City, Utah.
Cheryl,
It’s good to know your cash flow is going the right way…
I’ll second the rave about Lynn coming back.
Make It Man,
We’re down that way in the middle of June….
Rant - I’m babysitting my daughter-who-doesn’t-live-at-home-anymore’s pet mouse for the weekend, while she’s camping.
Rave - We have a cat!
Rant–trying to take my kids to the park this week, and while there being subjected to about 60 young teenagers acting completely disgusting. Where were their parents???
Rave–I have the possiblity of starting some work from home, which would really help with our financial situation.
Rant - Business travel. Still recovering from a 6-day, multi-state trip.
Rave - Getting to go to Mississippi for the first time. I had a wonderful time there!
Kimberly, Avast is about as effortless a virus program as there is. The fact that it’s free, pretty nonintrusive (if you leave your speakers on, you’ll get daily greeting when it updates, but that’s about it), etc. makes it worth it. And it found Vista spyware, apparently!
Cameron is right about Vista being a memory (as well as hard drive) hog. This is one reason that upgrades to Vista (if you have XP) aren’t worth it. XP is a fine operating system as is. If you want Vista, get it on a new machine, and make sure the machine has certain specs: a dual core type processor and at least 1 GB (2 preferable) RAM are necessities, for instance. If you check out the reviews on sites like cnet.com, they can also give much useful advice.
Ivan, I saw today that Ligonier is going to have a conference out in Arizona (Scottsdale) at the end of September. Is it worth flying out to AZ for a 2-day conference?
#43 Godlumps,
No, I just comment on the racists on the left and they are quite racist, requiring many comments. The right gave up being racist years ago. We were the ones who freed the slaves you know - Lincoln Lovers and all that. Only the left is bigoted against anyone today.
MiM. It’s a pretty truck. It just needs a Gamecock & Boilermaker decal.
I’ll probably see the Millard Fillmore cartoon again in the Washington Times.
Rant: Friday is a busy day.
Rave: I can still handle it.
WillieHorton chose a good school. I liked Purdue, it was square, like me. One thing it wasn’t is EASY.
Stubob - Whatever did your poor son do to get stuck with the handle, WillieHorton?
Chas,
I laughed at that. I don’t think my Bulldog relatives would ever forgive me for that… Of course we have Gators and Yellowjackets in the family too, and there’s plenty of diversity to keep things lively.
59 Llama- I’ll have to pay closer attention to your comments. I had the opposite impression of you.
Travis,
Where in MS did you have the pleasure of visiting?
Whatever did your poor son do to get stuck with the handle, WillieHorton?
I figured StuBob gave his son that handle b/c he had him under lockdown and was only releasing him on the weekends. Maybe he released him once and he never returned.
Travis, I’ll ask you like someone asked me once (when we were living in MS): Is it still 1958 there?
Oh, I forgot this rant earlier!
Llama is no more than a Walter Mitty. He believes he is many things, but in real life is not much of anything.
For example, he thinks he knows about the economy, but really doesn’t.
While the oil/gas companies might make only 8.5 cents on every dollar, they are the richest, yes richest, companies in the country. Why? They make up their small profit margin with huge sales.
This is kind of like Walmart, a company the Llama loves.
I wonder why he loves Walmart and its style of business, but feels sorry for the oil/gas industry, which does the same thing.
Justus - what the oil/gas companies don’t tell you is that most of the ANWR reserves wouldn’t go to Americans. Why? Free market. As of last year, 7% of the oil/gas in the Alaskan pipeline went the US market. The rest was sold abroad.
Why would it be any different with ANWR? Oil is bought and sold on an open world market.
If you want all of ANWR’s reserves to go to the US market, then you should vote for socialists, because you’ll have to nationalize the companies and the reserve.