Good Karma Boomerang

Today's rant was supposed to be all about our new microwave but in light of today's events I think a change is in order.

Karma is a cool thing when it works in your favor. I will never be confused with a saint,so when I do some good I may need to bank it for later. Lord knows I'll call on those reserves more than I'd like to.

Today was not a withdrawal or a deposit though. Today we more of a dividend or interest payment.
This morning I got off the train near my office and stopped by the grocery store (Harris Teeter, the official work grocery store of Nobody Likes A Jerk). As I went to check out I realized my club card (and my government ID card it was attached to) were missing. So here I am having to pay an extra 20 cents on my yogurt and having to set talk my way into my office, all before my first cup of coffee!

On my way in I texted Mrs. Bloggerman and she said she didn't see it laying around the house. Crap. Hopefully its in my car. If it's on the train I'll never see it again.

On I went with my day and then at about 11am I got an email from somebody at another government agency in town saying that he found my badge on his train seat and he wanted to get it back to me. Are you kidding me?  How lucky is that? It reminds me of finding Jordan's cell phone (last year about this time)...another story about a fellow human (me) going out of my way to do the right thing.

This guy, Brian (pictured...next to me of course!), and I met this afternoon during lunch near his office. He handed back the ID, thumb drive, and Harris Teeter savings card and I handed him a bright orange water bottle I had laying around the office. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

The Best Phone App ever

Is there anything they don't do nowadays? You can use your phone to surf the web at breakneck speed, watch full length movies in High Definition quality, and even (as Scott likes to say) use the tip application to figure out how much to leave after your meal. It’s called the calculator but don't tell him (he thinks he's special!)

For all I know the new models may even do more than the old "bass-o-matic" from SNL. They could slice, dice, chop, and frappe. Of course I forgot the texting, tweeting, and whatever else the next big thing is.

But once your done with your 4G, LOL, Hash tagging, it seems to me that the one thing that's missing from the modern smart phone is the "phone" part. Just because you have a keypad doesn't mean you can't dial 10 numbers, put the phone to your ear and have a conversation. And so help me if I have to sit through another insipid exchange like yesterday.

The "push-to-talk" feature can be very useful but can also be overused. If you're at a dispatch job and need to find a crew quickly, hitting a button and talking to them is amazingly easy, but using that same technology to carry on an entire back and forth conversation while sitting next to me on a crowded train is not only annoying but also stupid. I was especially not amused when you said to the woman on the other end "do you have the number for the jail?". Uh, yeah...No.

See that might be a conversation that you can have quietly on the phone without that little "chirp" in between each sentence. Much the same reason I don't talk to my doctor about that raging case of herpes on speaker phone in a crowded restaurant.

If you're really that desperate to have a conversation, roll down the window and ask the guy in the car next to you, "Pardon me, do you have any grey poupon?"

3 Inches, 2 Cells, and 1 Needle

Three Inches of Snow...maybe more. We got our first snow fall of the season on Saturday and it reminds me of certain absolute truths for the winter season. 1) If I wait till the day after the snow falls to shovel my steps and walkway, I will hurt my hands (or other body part) trying to chip through the ice that has formed underneath. 2) 2/3 of the area residents should be banned from driving for the entire season because they can’t figure out how to turn on their headlights in bad weather and how to clear off the snow from the roof of their car so it doesn’t all fall down on me! 3) If I give Mooks the chance to run off leash in the snow I will fall down trying to chase her. Which of course leads me to my next point...


Two Cell Phones (lost)
Cell phone number two was lost on the above mentioned Saturday jaunt with the dog when she decided to break off the trail we were running on and chase a heard of deer. I’m not sure what in her DNA makes here do this. She’s not going to catch them...she is fast, but they are faster. Besides...what would she do if she actually caught one?? Well while I was chasing her I slipped and it was probably then that I lost the second phone in a 48-hr period of time. The first phone was my work blackberry which was most likely recycled on Thursday morning on my way to the office. While I’m not completely sure of it’s fate, chances are high that it made it into the recycling bin at one of the Metro stations where I got out and dumped my morning papers off. I’m very pissed that I did this but I was surprised at the amount of reporting that has to go on to report missing Federal property. Very detailed and precise (I guess this shouldn’t be looked at as a bad thing...our gov’t actually cares about it’s property....nice). Looks like the next one will be forcibly stapled to my hand. Never fear though...I managed to let the nice folks over at Verizon Wireless have $53 of my money for a new phone. I’m supposed to get $50 back in the mail but I’m not holding my breath.

One Needle (after 12 months without)
Thanks to the dunderhead who I had been working with at the Red Cross I had to take a 12 month hiatus from donating blood. It’s something I do every few weeks because 1) it’s the right thing to do and 2) they have regular Coke and Famous Amos cookies for donors! But partially because of her incompetence and partially because of my travel plans (to a so-called “Malaria-Zone” for less then 10 hours) I had to stop donating for the past 12 months. Well yesterday was my first day back in the big comfy lounge chairs and a needle in my arm. It’s funny, I HATE needles and in fact can’t even watch when they put it in but yet I still love donating...go figure. The extra bonus was that I got to watch the first few episodes of First and Ten on DVD. I can’t wait to schedule my next donation so I can finish Season 1!

Cell Phones, eBay, and Karma

The other day when I got back from work, the dog was watching TV. And while I still haven’t figured out exactly how she managed to work the remote, I noticed she was watching “My Name is Earl”. I can’t say I’ve actually sat down and watched more then a minute or two since the show launched a few years ago, but the basic premise is that this guy wins the lottery and then gets hit by a car and he thinks its Karma getting back at him for being such a “bad” person over the years. So in order to change his cosmic output he sets out to use the lottery winnings to do “good” and make amends for his years of bad deeds.

Well I don’t invest a whole lot of belief in karma but I don’t wholly dismiss it either. Case in point: Monday. On the walk from my car to the train on Monday morning, I noticed something shiny on the curb and picked up a very nice Blackberry that somebody had dropped. Can you image loosing your cell phone? Now take that and multiply it a few times because you’ve lost your e-mail too. I know how naked I would feel if I had lost mine. So instead of just leaving it with the station manager and hoping it found it’s way to the main lost and found, I used my deductive reasoning (the owner’s facebook account) to figure out who’s phone it was and his e-mail address. Later in the day he got back to me to thank me for finding it (of course he was panicked all day) and we set up some time to meet and get it back to him.

Well that same day 2 items I had up on the old eBay (not to be confused with Old Bay seasoning which is much tastier) were finishing up on the selling block and were not getting much interest all week. Well when I checked back a few minutes before the close of the auction each had risen more then three-fold! Karma? Maybe but perhaps people were really interested in my Washington Nationals fleece blanket. Yeah...must have been karma.

Put That Antenna Down – I’m Missing Here!

Why do you people do it? You know who you are. Yes you! Put down that retractable cell phone antenna. It doesn’t actually help your reception. You knew that right? Why do you have such an old phone anyway? What the @$%^%$! Every major carrier gives you the opportunity to upgrade to a new phone ever few years, and most even have a number of free options. Take some damn initiative.

I saw you walking down the street the other day on my way home from work. It doesn’t matter that you ranked high on the cuteness scale...you lost major points with that crappy phone. Somalian warlords (and even Somalian sommelier for that matter) have phones that don’t require you to lift up the antenna so you “can hear me now.” Hell, even my parents have retired those type of cell phones.

Now perhaps if you get a modern phone, you could call that number on the side of your milk carton to report that you’ve seen the person who is missing. Which reminds me...why aren’t the missing kids advertised on milk cartons anymore? Are we just not drinking enough milk to make the advertising by attractive? Or are we so infatuated with those cartoon cows on the box that we demand more. More cows everywhere! I don’t care...put them on the bottom and on the inside of the carton too! Now it seems that notice of the missing kids come as solo flyers or as part of a larger junk mail advertising insert. I saw one last night that completely mystified me.

In 1985 a 15-year old girl went missing from her Florida home. Evidently she is STILL missing today. Wha....wha....what? How is she still missing? Do you think that she really cares? She’s 38-fricken-years old! If she wanted to go home she could have done it years ago. This Notice went so far as to show a computer aged picture of what she might look like today. Just one problem there Potsy. I doubt she kept that crappy 80’s style hair cut. On the bright side she didn’t appear to be a “Flock of Seagulls” fan.