Today is Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays of the year. May everyone have a safe and happy one. I know I will, as I’m thankful this is the firs tday in a week and a half that I won’t work, let alone work a 10 – 12 hour day. And it was nice to get a full night’s sleep at that.
Enjoy your turkey today, and have a happy holiday!
Anyone have experience trying to close an open credit card account when you’ve long since a) moved from the address, and b) don’t have the card or the account number anymore?
I was reviewing my credit report yesterday and saw an open account from 1999 that I want to have closed. I just have no idea about the account info anymore, including who to call or how to verify I am myself.
Lately I’ve been hearing about a number of web-based tools that replace localized functionality, such as Del.icio.us and web-based news aggregators. Del.icio.us is certainly a winner, and I’ve already started loading my bookmarks in to my account. I’m still searching for any good online RSS newsreaders, so I welcome any suggestions. I’m trying Google’s and Bloglines to see how they turn out.
It’s about two months until the 2005 Santa Con, so now is a good time to place your order for a santa costume.
I do intend to attend this year, provided I can convince any other fun-loving friends of mine to tag along. I promise it will be a good, (mostly) safe time.
It rained. For the past 24 hours the sky was filled with falling droplets. Sometimes heavy, like last night when I went out for dinner. Sometimes not, like during most of the Rutgers football game (where they lost 27-14 to West Virigina).
Hard to believe that in a little under 24 hours we had over 6 inches of rain, far eclipsing the total rainfall for August and September, with each month not even breaking the 1 inch mark.
Now I just have to contend with the rising river out back.
My blog the past few weeks has suffered from a case of neglect, which I will explain away as the result of me being away for significant portions of the past three weeks. Since I’ll be away again at least two of the next three weekends, don’t look for the situation to improve significantly.
I will try to get a coherent writeup posted on my trip down to Charlotte, especially around Patty-Whack and Paula. Although, really, you had to be there.
As New Orleans joins with the neighboring bodies of water, in an unimaginable amount of damage so close to home, gas prices have soared. Local prices on Route 22, through the section that is part of my regular commute, jumped an average of $0.25 between my drive this morning and my return home this evening.
According to the latest statistics, the Gulf area refineries now offline account for 1.8 million barrels of gasonline per day. Given the tight refining capacity, a loss of that magnitude for an extended period of time will have a significant impact to the country. This remains true regardless of the situation in crude oil, which is important to remember with all the talk of oil prices.
This has brought out the speculators in a large way, while “experts” are brought out to tell us how gas prices will continue to go up up up! CNN brings out their own with predicitions of $4.00 per gallon prices not far off.
One item that has escaped the attention of nearly all the media is the waiving of Clean Air Act standards for sulfur and volatile compounds nationwide, in order to ease the refining constraints and ensure that gas continues to be available. At the same time, rules governing mandatory rest periods for truckers have been waived as well, again in an attempt to ensure adequate gas supplies.
My Aunt Helen died early this morning, from cancer that had spread throughout her body.
Technically she was my father’s aunt, not mine, but we all called her by that name. I never even knew her last name until about three or four years ago, when I started sending her postcards from my travels abroad. She was always just “Aunt Helen” to us.
I remember the family trips to visit her and Uncle Kelly, typically in January. My sister and I would grumble about going to visit them, wasting a perfectly good Saturday where we’d otherwise do nothing, only to sit in a room straight out of the 60s for a few hours, uncomfortable as two kids could be. Aunt Helen and Uncle Kelly would each slip us a few dollars when the other wasn’t looking, hushing us up to not mention anything to the other. And so we’d sit, as Aunt Helen’s dentures would clack away and she’d go on in her shrill voice.
It was sad, to hear this morning as I met my parents for brunch. We were on our way to visit her, expecting it to be the last time we would see her alive. To think that she slipped from this world just a few hours ahead of us…
Ahh yes, cosplay. That wonderful activity where high school girls and hentai old men get together to dress up in funky, often revealing, clothing of their favorite anime characters.
As I sit here working yet another weekend, performing triage on applications after their migrations to our new data center, I’ve been humming the lyrics to the god-awful-catchy tune Afternoon Delight. The song’s been stuck in my head like an uninvited house guest ever since I heard it on the radio yesterday morning during my commute to work, and I’m hoping it leaves soon.
If not, I’ll be forced to take drastic action…