Advertising 101

Just a tip: If you’re gonna put up signs advertising something, it pays to tell people what it is you’re selling. That’s probably more important than offering people a “Free Recorded Message.” I can get one of those anywhere.

Seen on Patterson Ave.:

SUPER BOWL!!

Go, Giants! (Rather… Going, Giants!)

Holiday time!

I just checked the calendar. Here I thought it was Washington’s Birthday (commonly and incorrectly called Presidents’ Day) coming up. Silly me.

Wild UPS driver

I mentioned before how fast traffic usually moves on Chippenham Parkway. Today was a fast day, but apparently not fast enough for a local UPS driver. We were all cruising between about 50 and 55, and he blew past us, a good 15 MPH or more over the 45 limit. He changed lanes a lot but never bothered with a signal, of course.

But he picked the wrong lane, and soon a line of us passed him. He got behind me, then stayed on my tail at 45-50 until I finally slowed down and let him pass. With The Boy in the car I wasn’t gonna take chances.

Well, one sort-of chance. I shot a picture over my shoulder.

Here he is, about a car length behind me at 45 MPH. That’s close for a car, let alone a truck!

I couldn’t shoot his face, but I did get the plate, just because.

I’m not a huge fan of UPS — they’ve lost too many packages of mine (delivered down the block and so on), and their tracking system is always several hours behind, but you’d think with guys like this zipping along they’d at least be on time.

Time to attack some spammers

I’ve been getting a lot of "legit" spam lately. By that I mean junk e-mail from companies I have never done business with, offering products I don’t care about, but that are real companies. We’re talking about seminars, audio courses, and the like.

These people give an 800 (or 877) number to call, and an 800 (or 877) number to fax for more info.

I plan to take advantage of them. (I tried the unsubscribe link in the e-mail, but it generates a message "Unable to connect to database server. Please try again later.Host ‘healthcareaudioinfo.com’ is not allowed to connect to this MySQL server."

So here’s the plan: I’m going to fax them a letter telling them, politely, how I feel. Politely, and detailed. And, just to be sure they can read it, I’m going to send it in a large font. Sure, that may add some pages, but I want to be sure they get the message.

And, so they understand why I don’t like this, I’ll include the full text of the CAN-SPAM act (also in large print). And to be extra sure, I’ll include translations in several languages.

This is no problem for me because I’m just cutting and pasting into a Word document that I’ll send via WinFax overnight. (Gosh, I hope I don’t screw up with WinFax and accidentally send it over and over. But it’s been a while since I dusted off my fax-modem.)

Finally, as I can’t receive faxes, I’ll make sure the transmit ID on the ones I send is a working number: That of another spammer. Let them keep one another busy.

If you’re interested, here are the phone and fax numbers of these spammers:

Phone

800-223-8720 (multiple spam)

800-474-1994 (multiple spam)

800-561-5736

800-223-8720

Fax

800-508-2592 (multiple spam)

A mean and nasty post

If you like your blog reading to be all sweetness and light, you should probably skip this post.

I was at a local playground with The Boy, when I noticed someone who looked out of place among the two-to-10 year old set (and their parents). There was one kid who had to be in his teens.

Of course there are plenty of older people there. But this guy was playing on all the playground stuff with the little kids. And not playing nice.

The Boy came up to me complaining that this big kid bumped him. No big deal — he gets bumped all the time. But he got bumped because this jerk was climbing in this castle thing and blocking the slide — he was obviously too big for it.

He went from there to some of the other equipment where he was playing pretty darned rough. He was jumping on one end of the spring-cushioned see-saw, bouncing the kids on the other side pretty high… until they left.

This wasn’t a case of an older kid being a big more bump and tumble than the little ones. This guy had obviously outgrown the playground a few years ago. (My guess is that he was brought there was siblings and was stuck. Still no excuse for being a jerk.)

If there had been a handful of kids there, it would have been one thing. But the place was packed. And he was clearly getting in the way of the little kids and abusing the equipment — certainly people had to keep away from him.

Let’s take a look.

Here he is, squeezed into the tower. Why "squeezed"? You can’t quite see it, but he’s sitting on a bar that goes across the opening. Little kids can easily get under it, but he had a lot of trouble getting down the slide because he was too big for it.

Here he takes  He took one of the bouncy horses that are made for three and four year olds and stands stood on it (he can’t sit), bending it way back and forth. I don’t know if he was with that girl or not — I suspect so. She was trying to get him to stop.

Then he got on one end of the see-saw and started jumping until the other kids on it left.

Finally, why sit on the see-saw when you can jump on it to the point that everyone else leaves because you’re too frakking big?

So if you know this guy, tell him to find a place to play that’s more his size — a bike  path, basketball court, hiking trail, whatever. Or sit on the side like the rest of the big people.

[Note: Post edited following polite requests; three photos removed as overkill.]

Cops out in force

When I first took The Boy to his new school, I was told to watch out when crossing the Willey bridge (part of Chippenham Pkwy.) "It’s a 45 road but it feels like a highway and the cops know that," was how one person put it.

I was extra careful for the first few weeks going either way on the bridge, but I realized that I was "that guy" going 45 or 50 when everyone else was hitting 55 or more. So I began keeping up with traffic instead. Hitting 65 on that stretch seemed about average many mornings.

Today, though, I noticed immediately when getting toward the bridge that the traffic was behaving oddly. There was a lot more bunching of cars, especially in the left lane. When that kind of pattern emerges it’s almost always because of a cop. (The guy in front doing 65 sees the cop and hits the brakes. Idiot tailgators do the same, and suddenly everyone’s in a wolf pack.)

Sure enough, motorcycle cop on the other side with someone pulled over. Oh! Also an unmarked car with him. (Hmm… and I noticed an unmarked Camaroish cop car in one of the school zones I drive through, too.)

Normally when you see a cop has someone pulled over it’s safe to maintain your normal speed — he’s not going to suddenly drop what he’s doing to chase you unless you’re hitting triple digits. But the cars weren’t speeding up when they passed the cop.

"Speed traps," I thought immediately. There are probably more cops ahead. Bingo; cop in the median. And a quarter mile beyond him, another. Wow.

On the way back over the bridge (going no more than about 48) there were no cops on the side, but I saw three Henrico County cars zip past going the other way. No sirens or anything, just patrolling or whatever. But I had never seen so many of them buzzing around.

Finally, as I neared my house I saw another Henrico County cop on the side of the road, radar at the ready. At this point I was still in speed trap mode, of course. Can’t be too careful when the cops are hunting to meet their quotas!

Auto mechanics

So yesterday the dreaded Check Engine light came on as I drove home from the Children’s Museum. The CEL, of course, can mean anything from "You didn’t put the gas cap on tightly enough" to "A tiny, $600 sensor crammed in an inaccessible spot has failed."

This is bad for a couple of reasons. Obviously I’m in no mood to shell out $600 to fix anything, and further, I don’t have a good mechanic around here yet. Luckily, though, I have this neat device called a CarChip that I received from the manufacturer a few years ago.

It was marketed as a way to keep track of a car’s usage. (Parents of new drivers, take note.) It plugs into your car’s ODBII connector (an easy to find thing under the steering wheel) and records things like speed, acceleration, engine speed, etc. You can then plug it into your PC and get fancy graphs and such. I often fantasize about getting a speeding ticket and using the CarChip as evidence I was going the limit.

Anyway.

One of the other things the CarChip can do is record any diagnostic codes the engine throws out — i.e., that "Check Engine" can become something more meaningful. So I did this. The problem code was P0401. Then I hit the tubes of the Internets and Googled "Toyota CEL P0401."

Presto — tons of links and help. The problem is most likely one of four things:

A) An inexpensive and easy-to-reach part needs to be replaced;
B) A different easy-to-reach part need to be cleaned;
C) A $150 easy-to-reach part needs to be replaced; or
D) A $400 hard-to-reach part needs to be replaced by a mechanic at $65 per hour

The good news is that my other symptoms — the engine occasionally revs while on the highway — make it most likely that it’s A. But we’ll see. I reset the Check Engine light (another thing the CarChip can do) and took The Boy to school this morning. It didn’t come back on. If it does, I’ll have an idea what to do.

Of course, now I have to find an auto parts store around here….

Here, gone, here, gone

The site was working fine last night. This morning it was gone. Then it was back. Then gone. Now (hopefully) back. WTF?

Craigslist Richmond

Craigslist has always been a great resource — The Wife found her job through it, and for a freelance writer it’s a godsend. There’s also the humor value; "For Sale: Women’s Size 22 running outfit, hardly used" and whatnot.

And little can beat the "casual encounters" for sheer head-slapping shock value. (As I write this, the top post in the "W4M" section is titled, "ruttish, raunchy guys welcome to enter my heaven." [shiver] Even better are ones with photos.

One woman, who apparently lives at 642 Clearlake Road (Google map), writes, "the first guy smart enough to find me and call me from my driveway can do whatever he wants with me." Of course, the fact that she doesn’t do a very good job hiding her address and phone number in the post makes her rather easy

to find.

Another describes herself as "I am a size 8, medium build, nice rack, all my teeth…" It says something about your neighborhood — or your dating habits — if you feel the need to include "all my teeth" in your description.

The men aren’t much better. One writes

I really do not have anything planned this New Years, sort of got bored with the going out ordeal so will most likely watch football and other TV unless you or you and a friend have nothing better to do and would like to play some board games where we can institute some nudity and possibly sexual favors.

And then adds

Been awhile since I played any board games and unfortunately I really do not have any….

Another gentleman writes, "IVE NEVER BEEN WITH TWO GIRLS AT ONCE.. IM LOOKING FOR TWO SEXY MAMIS THAT WANT TO USE ME FOR THERE PERSONAL NEEDS… "

I wonder if he got any mail, "I need you to do some laundry, vacuum the hallway, wash the dishes — and no, these aren’t metaphors."

Then there’s the good ol’ rants and raves. The current popular discussion, "Favorite Synonym For The Word Anus." [sigh]