1. No matter how fast (or slow) I’m driving, the guy in front of me must drive 5 MPH slower.
2. No Matter how fast (or slow) I’m driving, the guy behind me must drive 5 MPH faster.
3. Any time there is a passing lane, there must be somebody in it, just in front of me, matching speed with the person I’d desperately love to pass

I don’t know if most people don’t know this or if they just don’t care, but the reason they call it a passing lane is because it is there so you have room to pass the person who is driving at a snail’s pace in front of you. There are actually places on earth where driving for miles and miles in the passing lane will get you a citation.

I sincerely wish the police at this end of the internet would enforce such a law.

The second-youngest of the outside dogs is either a sadistic genius or just a lucky idiot. She has this habit of barking at NOTHING and running after it with such enthusiasm that she gets 4 of the five outside dogs (the oldest dog no longer cares about much of anything) and the inside dog barking their heads off … usually right outside the bedroom window while the baby is trying to take a nap.

Rather than setting myself up to fail again by promising to post one item in this category every day for the next three and a half months, I’m just going to promise to get the list finished . . . eventually. It may not be 100 days. It may be 10 years or it may be two weeks, depending on inspiration and opportunity. More than likely, it’ll be somewhere in between those two time frames. But … no promises.

People like lists and people, in general, gravitate toward negatively phrased articles. That last might be because people are generally pessimistic or it might be because people are looking for negative posts to argue with.

In any case, the category, “100 things that piss me off” has been added to this blog in the interest of giving people what they seem to want. It will eventually contain exactly what the title might make you expect to find.

Enjoy.

Early last week her older sister was watching a tape that her grandfather made when the oldest daughter was about 18 (or so) months old and Daughter Number Three was but a twinkle in her father’s eye. The bedroom’s current resident got a look at how it was kept way back then and inspiration hit. She spent several days going through that room picking stuff up off the floor and throwing out the junk. That room now looks better than it has in months, with one little problem: the electronic spaghetti under the desk. The wires going from the keyboard and mouse to the mini tower under the desk are a real problem. Because of the distance involved, it’s too easy to disconnect the mouse from the keyboard just in the course of using the mouse. The keyboard frequently gets unplugged because its cord gets tangled up in your feed when you try to get up from the desk.

I think the solution is going to be this wireless keyboard and mouse. The keyboard has extra buttons that control multimedia functions so you can increase or decrease the volume or swith tracks on your background music without switching out of whatever application you’re running. The mouse has a couple of extra buttons that can be programmed for common tasks as well.

The wireless keyboard and mouse set that I found on sale just now has one feature that didn’t come with the cheaper set I got myself a few years ago: a wrist rest. Given that I type with my two middle fingers these days, a wrist rest isn’t really anything I’d ever need, but the girls who use the computer in back are both fairly accomplished touch-typists and they would probably appreciate that little feature.

The websites sent to me were

http://www.world-jobs-news.com/finance/?t202id=79524&t202kw=work%20for%20google

and

http://googlecash-secret2.info/?t202id=4695&t202kw=

The websites both talk about being able to make anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 to $9,000 a month by posting links on Google.

My gut reaction was that Google has spider programs to gather links and if you go to google.com and manually add a link to their search engine there is no payment involved. Never mind the fact that the big G talks a lot about how paid links are a Bad Thing™ and they provide a link to a form where the general public can report paid links.

This got me curious enough to examine both sites a little closer. Here’s a partial list of what I found.

1) Both the pages are geared to look like blog entries, but there is no way to contact the author OR any of the people posting those glowing comments. There is also no way to post a comment of your own; the one that has what LOOKS like a “Post your comment” button actually just has TEXT that says “Post a comment”… clicking it does nothing.

2) Both pages show pictures of the checks these people have received. THE SAME CHECK appears on BOTH pages. Two different people both got the same check? I don’t think so.

3) One page shows two different check pictures. If you look at the numbers along the bottom of the checks, then compare them to your own checks, the first number should be a routing number for that bank. The second number should be a check number (and match the check number at the top of the check) and the third number is the account number. These checks have two different routing numbers (meaning they’re from two different banks - and I’m guessing neither is a valid routing number), and the check number doesn’t match what’s at the top of the check on either picture. Plus, why would the guy block out his name on
one check, but not the other?

4) One page tells you it costs $1.87 while the other says $1.95. NEITHER page mentions that filling out the form they’re talking about means you agree to a $69/month charge. I can’t honestly say what else is hidden in that Terms Of Service agreement; I stopped reading when I found the hidden $69 charge.

These people have too much to hide for my tastes. If it was a legitimate deal then there’d be a way to contact the page author with your questions, in my opinion.

In short, I wouldn’t touch this with a ten foot pole.

The best example I could thin of was when my parents sold the house in Massachusetts and moved to Oklahoma. When I was eight years old, the biggest thing about cross country moving was that we were stick in the car for three days and slept at what seemed like every Howard Johnson’s in the Midwest.

Now that I’m an adult, there were a lot of frightening things about that trip… like being in a car full of five kids for three days, carrying everything you own in the world in the car that you were towing behind the car full of kids, and scariest of all, arriving in a new state with no job and no home - only the permission to stay with a family friend for a few days.

It’s a wonder my dad didn’t develop an ulcer by the age of 40.

As a side note, if you look at these images like you would a stereogram or “magic eye”, you’ll see a three-dimentional image in between these two pictures.

This is what my left eye sees.

This is the view from my right eye.

I suggested to him that he pick up some marker lights to put along side of the driveway so that the boy genius could tell when he was about to drive off the cliff again. I showed him these marker lights that are on sale right now. They have a three-position switch. They can be “off”, “on”, or “flashing”. As soon as I mentioned them I began to have second thoughts about whether I should have opened my mouth. I was instantly besieged with mental images of his driveway lit up from one end to the other with these flashing amber lights and looking more like a major runway than a gravel driveway.

Oh well. If he does go that far overboard, then maybe I can go buy a radio controlled airplain and practice my landings next door.

I’m rather proud of this picture, but I find myself wishing I had a digital camcorder so I could do stuff like this with video. My Canon Powershot G2 has the ability to capture video, but the videos are very limited in size and duration.

This refurbished digital camcorder is on sale this week at buy.com for 50% off. Where my ancient-by-today’s-standards camera is limited to 1 minute video clips, this bad boy can record for up to an hour and at twice the video size and what my camera can do. I am so jealous! I’ve got a program that will add a light saber effect to a video; I just don’t have a way to record a respectably long video.

Of course, if I had that, then I’d be wanting to take out a loan to build a studio for taking and modifying pictures and videos. Oh wait… I already do want to do that. I know people who have put Paypal “donate” buttons on their blogs and actually had them work as intended.

Hrmmm… maybe I’ll go look around at paypal next.

Since removing the cataract means removing the lens itself, the first step in the procedure is to use an ultrasound machine to measure the size and shape of the inside of my eye and select an artificial lens that’s appropriate. This is implanted in place of my original lens.

The only word I can think of to describe the operation is weird. The patient remains awake for the procedure and the eye and the area surrounding it are made numb after being given a series of eye drops to dilate the eye. This is interesting because then they tell you to close your eyes so they don’t dry out while you wait for the doctor and you discover that you CAN’T close that eye. Then the nurse pushes the eyelid down with her finger and it gradually springs back open so she can push it closed again.

When the doctor shows up he puts a clamp in place to hold your eye open and suddenly one is very glad to be numb. Your joy at being numb is increased because the nurse is now keeping your eye moist by occasionally pouring a stream of water into it and you are required to watch this.

Because of the dilation, your vision is now so fuzzy that you can’t see a thing and don’t notice a difference in vision when the old lens is removed and the new one is installed a few minutes later. There is no pain involved, you just feel some pressure, as though the doctor is pushing on your eyelid.

Once the whole thing is done, they tape a plastic patch over that eye and tell you to go see your regular eye doctor the next day for a follow-up.

When you do go in for thr follow-up and he removes the patch, the first thing you notice is that everything that eye sees has an almost blood-red tint to it. The second thing you notice is that, while the vision in that eye is still horrible, you can at least read the top line of the eye chart. The other eye doesn’t see anything but a fuzzy white square, but the “new” eye can actually see a large ‘E’ in the square.

Over the last few days, as the swelling has gone down, the vision in my “new” eye has improved to the point where I can look out the window and see individual blades of grass and I can ride in a car and read street signs. I still can’t drive yet, because the vision in my other eye is atrocious and I can’t wear my glasses at this point.

As strange and uncomfortable as the actual procedure is, I’m really anxious to get the other eye done. I haven’t seen this clearly in decades!

I found this Asus notebook for $499. It features an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz processor and 4 GB of RAM along with a 250 GB hard drive. This beast easily has the computing power of my desktop machine. Given that all she wants is something that will get her online and also have the ability to run something like Microsoft Visual C++, I’d almost argue that this machine would be like killing a beetle with a sledge hammer and that maybe I should keep this one for myself and let her have the laptop that I’m using at the moment.

Of course, one must keep in mind that when you have four daughters and one of them gets something really nice, then you’re guaranteed to hear three shrill voices crying, “No fair!”, so maybe I should just forget the whole thing and let her find her own laptop without any help. Then when the cries of “No fair” start, it can be said that she worked for it and got it on her own and it is fair because every one of them had that option.

Too bad. There goes my excuse to get a really nice dual core notebook.

It seems that there are Bad Guys On Dad’s side of the family as well. Remember Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Apparently, the Sundance Kid’s grandfather had the same last name as my father, including the unusual misspelling from the original German.

Cool, no?

I see a problem coming some time down the road, though. Sooner or later, The Baby is going to wind up in her own room, at which point I’m going to have to install an LCD mount on the foot of her bed and then pick up an extra monitor to use for a nightlight.

What really toasts my cookies is when the inside dog hears the barking and then decides that she’s the home alarm system and has to alert everyone that there is barking happening…usually by barking as loudly as possible right outside the bedroom where the one-year-old is napping.

Anybody want a free idiot dog?

Must be a girl thing.

Our little one-year-old powerhouse got a pair of sandals, a glow worm thingy that turns into a musical night light when squeezed, and a “pounding bench” that has several differently shaped pegs and a small wooden mallet that is used to pound the pegs into their respective holes. The mallet is also going to come in handy for destroying other toys, pieces of furniture, small fingers and toes, and assorted pets, as well.)

She was also given a “rocking puppy”. It’s the same principle as a rocking horse, but it’s smaller and has one other rather obvious difference.

Her second-favorite gift is one of those pre-school toys that has a bunch of plastic knobs and switches that make different animal heads pop up so she can push them back down and start over.

The most popular thing she got on her birthday was something that none of us gave her. On her first birthday, with almost no warning whatsoever, our little LadyBug got and began using the ability to walk all over the house.

After a while the addiction wore off, and the game got uninstalled and put away. Until yesterday…

Daughter Number Two wondered yesterday if it would run on her laptop which has Windows Vista installed on it, so I dug out the CD andshe installed it. I also installed it on my laptop and this afternoon I’ll be re-installing it on my desktop machine. Daughter Number Three is already after me to upgrade the video card in the machine she uses so that it can also handle the game.

In short, here we go again…

The email in question talks about how this person was stung by a bee and they simply put a penny over the wound while they relaxed in their outdoor furniture and the pain was instantly gone and then after 15 minutes there was almost no indication that the person had ever been stung.

I’m not going to get into whether the “cure” talked about actually works. I’ve never tried it and even snopes.com lists it as “undetermined”. What I want to know is what the hell are these people doing to get stung so often?

First the original author claims to have been stung by both a bee and hornet while working in the garden. This person was apparently allergic to bee stings, because this resulted in trips to see TWO doctors - one of whom suggested the penny treatment.

That same evening, the author’s niece was stung by two different bees and also got the penny treatment.

Next, our intrepid gardener is at it again when (s)he gets stung by two more hornets. Again, the penny treatment saves the day.

While our wounded friend is recovering, their friend is stung on the thumb and tapes a penny to the injury.

The friend gets stung again a few days later while cutting the grass. Again, out comes the pocket change to the rescue.

Do these people live in an area infested with killer bees, or do they just like making them angry? Seriously. This email talks about 8 bee or hornet stings in a matter of a couple of days. I’m 45 years old and I have never in my life been stung by a bee or a hornet. I have, in that time, been stung by exactly three wasps. Once was because I accidentally angered them with a lawnmower and the other two were because I was trying to remove a nest from over my front door. All three times, it hurt like crazy for about five minutes and that was the end of it. The poor people in this email can’t seem to go outside without the bees swarming on them and then they have to go see a doctor for it!

Another one that makes my skin crawl is the phrase, “I’m just sayin’”:

If you keep eating like that you're going to weigh 400 pounds. I'm just sayin'.

We know you’re just sayin’; everyone heard you say it.

And my personal favorite is when someone ends a sentence halfway through by saying, “ummm… yeah.”

He had too much to drink and tried to drive home. This other guy pulled out in front of him and... ummm... yeah"

Like I said, I’m sure that this is, like, payback for all the times that we, like, threw in the word “like” in, like, all these places that it, like, didn’t belong. I can’t wait to see what the their kids come up with to drive my kids up the wall… I’m just sayin’.

I was standing there thinking, “Whaaaa! My heart bleeds purple Kool-Aid for you, buddy. I’m struggling to figure out how to keep gas in the car and you’re crying about not being able to go play games in Las Vegas, Boo Hoo.”

I was good, though. I managed to keep my mouth shut… right up until I wrote this.

Other than that, the only thing she has left isn’t exactly classwork. The school is re-doing the library and my daughter, along with several other kids, was given a ceiling tile to paint. The instructions are that she needs to paint the tile with a character or scene from a book in the school library.

So, what do you think of Saphira?