No, I’m not a AAA customer, and no I’m not a drinker, but I do have to say that AAA and Budweiser have gotten together to do a good thing on St. Patrick’s Day here in Savannah.

It seems they have teamed up and implemented a program called Tow to Go. The gist of the program is that if you are partying downtown for St. Patrick’s Day and you happen to be drinking, you can call for a free ride home– and they’ll tow your car home as well.

That. Is. Excellent.

Now, if the city could somehow increase the penalty for drunk driving for the period extending 24 hours in either direction of St. Patrick’s Day, I would be even more pleased. I’m thinking a mandatory 30-day impound, a fine equal to 10 times your annual vehicle registration, and about 2,000 hours of community service.

It’s time we put an end to drunk driving, and it’s time that drunk drivers are severely punished.

That is all.

I get a ton of spam. No surprise– I have a catchall account for my domain, and you can pretty much make up any address and I’ll get it.

Most of it is caught by my email client, but one came across today that just cracked me up. Here’s a screenshot:

Dude, my car is on fire? Thanks for the email. I appreciate it.

Hah!

What a sad day.

Back in July of 2002, Jaime and I had an idea to start a website called America’s Debate. We needed a host and I was clueless, so I reached into the hat and pulled out Burton Hosting.

Over the years, I established a relationship with Matthew at Burton. We had each other on our instant messengers, and chatted regularly about hosting and non-hosting related subjects. We were online friends.

Well, today Burton Hosting, to the best of my knowledge, is no more. Their site is down, and it took my sites with it.

Luckily, I have good backups and data loss was minimal, but still– when you do business with a company for over six years and they just disappear off the face of the planet, it is odd.

Anyway, we had a few stumbling blocks over the years, but Matthew was always reassuring and capable. The rough patches are by far outweighed by the years of mostly-smooth sailing.

A couple of years ago, Burton went downhill. Sharply downhill. Their forum disappeared. Matthew rarely signed in. Support tickets were ignored. The servers were blacklisted because they were apparently friendly to spammers. The service, in general, degraded to the point where it was non-existant.

At Christmas time, our email died. I submitted tickets that were instantly closed because Burton’s servers flagged their own servers as a source of spam. Their phone numbers were disconnected. Their email addresses bounced. Matthew’s SMS was no longer active. Hell, I even sent them a fax. Yes, a fax. In 2008. Anyway, Matthew’s personal email address finally got through. We had no mail for a few days until he got his butt in gear. His response to my many forms of contact was that he had thought he had fixed the problem.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that Burton’s ticket system was down, as was their billing system. My hunch is that they were bombarded by concerned customers, trying to get support and refunds, and so they intentionally shut it down.

Today, around 11:30 AM, Burton went dark. Nothing. No warning at all, besides the degrading service.

I scrambled to sign up with a new host, and then scrambled to move over my sites. I’m still not done, and this is a much-needed break after working for about 14 hours straight.

So anyway, thanks Burton Hosting for six and a half mostly-good years. It’s a shame you went out the way you did. But with they way things trailed off, I can’t say that Burton Hosting didn’t deserve it.

I hope that those who are impacted by Burton’s shutdown have good backups. If not, they should contact GNAX.net to see about paying a ransom for their data. They quoted me $60 plus shipping, but I know that would rise when they realized I had about 20 gigs of data. I passed. I can live without six hours of forum posts from the middle of the night, and a couple of months of blog posts.

That is all.

The news desk. The satellite desk. The political desk. And the new one I just heard– the inauguration desk.

Note to MSNBC: I don’t care where the hell you sit when you read the news.

That is all.

Screw you, Fedex. You suck, and you ruined Christmas!

I dropped five packages off at your Savannah Airport facility on Friday, December 19. I asked if the packages would arrive by Christmas, and was told they would. I told the clerk that I would gladly pay for the next level of shipping if it was necessary, and was told it was not– my packages would be there on the 23rd, the 24th at the latest. I’ve done it exactly the same way for going on a decade, and I have never had a problem. Well, this year, FedEx, you ruined Christmas.

When my packages first appeared in the FedEx system, they had a delivery date of the 23rd. The 23rd came and went, and all my dates were bumped up to the 24th. On the 24th, two of my packages were delivered, one 27 miles from Chicago, and one 52 miles from Chicago. My other three packages were not delivered.

Late in the evening on the 24th, my other three packages had their delivery date moved up to the 25th.

The 25th came, and the delivery date for my remaining three packages was moved up to the 26th, and then it disappeared– no estimated delivery date. I called FedEx to ask why my delivery date disappeared. I was told that my packages were delayed due to “bad weather,” unlikely considering I had packages 27 miles from Chicago, and 54 miles from Chicago in the same time period and shipped at the same time. My family reported clear highways, clear side streets, and delivery trucks in the area.

Even though I remained polite and civil, the FedEx agent on the phone didn’t want to hear how my packages not arriving was an extreme disappointment, and hung up on me mid-sentence. The next agent with whom I spoke was not only sympathetic that my gifts hadn’t arrived, but also sympathetic with the frustration generated when the first agent added insult to injury.

I was told that the station had been contacted, and that I would be contacted with the status of my packages. I was told that the earliest my packages would arrive would be today, Monday, December 29. It turns out that FedEx doesn’t deliver the day after holidays– in this case December 26– even though my delivery date was listed as the 26th.

Just as the 25th came, the 25th went, and so did Christmas. My gifts did not arrive.

On the 26th– the date where FedEx did not deliver, or so I was told– one of my packages was delivered. Its destination was in the Wrigleyville area of Chicago. I received a call from a FedEx agent on that afternoon to tell me that my packages were not lost, were delayed due to the weather, and that FedEx would be delivering them on the 29th. I hadn’t realized that one of my packages had arrived earlier that day, or I would have mentioned that FedEx delivered a package on a day I was told that there would be no deliveries.

On the evening of the 28th, the two outstanding packages were updated with a delivery date of the 29th, a full ten days after I had shipped them. They were both listed as “On FedEx vehicle for delivery.”

On the 29th, one of the two outstanding packages was delivered, 28 miles outside Chicago.

The other package, also listed as “On FedEx vehicle for delivery,” was not delivered. The tracking page stated that there had been a “Delivery exception, No attempt made, delivery scheduled for next business day.”

What exactly does that mean? Did my numerous calls to FedEx not accomplish anything? When the station was contacted, did they not take any steps to expedite the delivery of my much-overdue package?

Now, you may be thinking that this is no big deal. So what, the packages are a little late. Deal with it.

Well, here is part of the contents of the package:

Click to enlarge. What you see are the Christmas Cookies that Jaime and I bake every year. 14 varieties. $150+ for ingredients. An entire weekend of baking– six hours on Friday, twelve hours on Saturday, and twelve hours on Sunday, bringing the total time invested in baking to 30 hours– EACH.

Sixty hours of effort total between the both of us to carefully bake cookies for our families and friends since, even though we couldn’t be there for the holidays, at least a special gift from us– something we made– could.

And as of right now, the evening of Monday, December 29th, the package has not arrived. Jaime just called FedEx and filed a claim so we can get a refund on the shipping, and hopefully recoup some of the ingredient money. Our time– our gift to our families– was wasted. A total loss.

If the cookies arrive tomorrow, they are likely inedible. It will have been eleven days after we shipped them. And even if they do arrive tomorrow, the Christmas-day distribution chain won’t be in place to distribute our cookies to family members across Northern Illinois and Indiana.

What is the likelihood that my brother will drive 89 miles to pickup a $7 plate of cookies? What is the likelihood that I can convince someone to drive another $7 plate of cookies 55 miles to Indiana? Very, very slim.

Sure, there are some gifts in the package that are not perishable. I would love to tell you what they are, but alas they are Christmas gifts and their recipients have yet to open them. As a matter of fact, Jaime and I haven’t even opened our gifts yet. We use webcams to video conference with our family– on Christmas eve– to open our gifts. That way, we can see the reactions as the gifts are opened. Not this year, though. Six or seven years of tradition, broken.

So, FedEx, congratulations on having hauled my Christmas gifts, to this point, a total distance of 820.63 miles in a mere 238hrs 54mins 53secs, an average speed of 3.43mph. Congratulations on taking 11 days to deliver a package. Congratulations on pushing the delivery date of my Christmas gifts a full five days past Christmas.

Screw you, Fedex. You suck and you ruined Christmas!

So I just gave a quick read to the Obama / Blagojevich report, which can be found at The Smoking Gun. To me, something seems fishy.

Relevant quotation:

Mr. Emanuel had one or two telephone calls with Governor Blagojevich. Those conversations occurred between November 6 and November 8, 2008. Soon after he decided to accept the President-Elect’s offer to serve as Chief of Staff in the White House, Mr. Emanuel placed a call to the Governor to give him a heads up that he was taking the Chief of Staff’s position in the White House, and to advise him that he would be resigning his seat in the House of Representatives. They spoke about Mr. Emanuel’s House seat, when he would be resigning and potential candidates to replace him. He also had a brief discussion with the Governor about the Senate seat and the merits of various people whom the Governor might consider.

Question 1. Was it one call, or was it two? In the age of the cell phone, pulling up calling records takes just a few moments.

Question 2. Why, in preparation of a report destined for intense scrutiny and on behalf of the president elect, did Greg Craig not ask Mr. Emanuel for a copy of his telephone records in order to ensure that report cited the precise number of conversations between he and the Governor?

Question 3. If it was one conversation, why did Greg Craig, in his second sentence, state “Those conversations” and not a more ambiguous “the conversation(s)”?

Question 4. Were the conversations on November 6, November 7, or November 8? I mean, technically, if they occurred “between November 6 and November 8,” then the only possibility is that the conversations occurred on November 7.

Question 5. When did Mr. Emanuel contact the Governor to give him the “heads up” regarding his acceptance of the Chief of Staff position. Is that covered in the “between November 6 and November 8,” or is that on a different date?

Question 6. The last sentence I cited is written in an ambiguous-enough fashion to separate it from the calls between November 6 and November 8. Why not list the exact date of the call?

I know my questions seem superficial and possibly even partisan or petty, but I grew up surrounded by Chicago politics. I know when the machine is operating at full speed, as it is right now.

I have a feeling we have not heard the end of this.

As a Georgian who votes in every election, I would like to offer the following suggestion to those in the media who have been featuring our Senatorial runoff election between Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democrat challenger Jim Martin:

Shut the hell up and mind your own business.

I am entirely sick of hearing about our Senate race in the national media.

A few reminders for those in the media:

• The Senators from Georgia represent Georgia– not the whole country, and not a political party. Repeat after me: the people of Georgia need to cast their ballots for the candidate who best represents their interest within the State of Georgia.
• Georgia is only a major player in determining the balance of power in the Senate as a result of the Republican party’s massive failure, both in the last election and in their governance over the last 8 years.
• The 17th Amendment upset the representational checks and balances built into the Constitution, and the balance of power has been severely out-of-balance ever since. The States have no official representation before the federal government. None. At all. It is their own fault for ratifying the 17th amendment. The Senate was meant to represent the States’ interest, and the House meant to represent the people’s interest. The 17th amendment needs to be repealed.

And by the way, I am as conservative as they come, and I mean conservative in the truest, non-religious, non-social, constitutional meaning of conservative. I believe in a very powerful federal government that does very few things very well.

As a true conservative, I am extremely disappointed in Saxby Chambliss, and am even more disappointed that I have no choice except to vote for Jim Martin. The reasons I will vote in opposition of Saxby Chambliss are fourfold:

1. Saxby voted for the bailout. Not only did he vote for the bailout, but his staff was not even aware and in fact denied that the bailout was passed as an amendment to a mental health parity bill. If my senator and his staff are not aware of even the most basic construct of massive legislation, the only determination I can make is that they are incompetent.
2. Saxby Chambliss, during a hearing regarding the deadly Imperial Sugar refinery explosion that ripped through Savannah– killing thirteen of my fellow Georgians and shaking my house 9 miles away– chose to attack a whistleblower instead of attempting to represent the interests of the citizens of Savannah.
3. Saxby is currently ignoring a subpoena by an admittedly partisan Savannah attorney, and is asserting constitutional protection to avoid testifying as to why he took the actions listed in number 2 above.
4. Saxby Chambliss accepts campaign contributions from the sugar lobby.

While I do plan on casting my vote for Jim Martin, please do not construe it as supporting him. I am voting in opposition to Saxby Chambliss, and in favor of my fellow citizens of Savannah.

Senate balance be damned.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog (and I’m looking your way, Jaim), you know that I like to call out companies that I think are particularly bad and, on occasion, commend companies that are particularly good. Well today, I want to tell you about a company that, through its actions, has demonstrated apparent stupidity.

The company is Kohl’s, the department-type store.

From time to time, I order from Kohl’s. The only items I ever order from them are clearance items because, frankly, clearance items are just as good as full-priced items.

So, I was checking my messages just a little bit ago, and Kohl’s was nice enough to tele-solicit me. I don’t recall every giving them permission to call me at home regarding anything except my orders (of which I currently have none outstanding), but I guess that when you do business with any company you agree to a voluminous amount of fine print. I’m assuming their justification for calling me was in there somewhere.

But that’s not the point. The point is that they called me and offered me some special deal on my next in-store purchase. In-store purchase.

Now, I never shop at an actual Kohl’s store for one simple reason: There are NONE even remotely close to here. The two nearest stores to Savannah are 85 miles and 93 miles away, both in South Carolina.

So why would Kohl’s– knowing my address and that there are ZERO stores within two hours of here– call me with a deal for in-store purchases? My determination is stupidity. Do they really think I’m going to waste 8 gallons of gas ($24) to save $20 on my next purchase? They must.

Anyway, I hate Kohl’s for another completely separate reason that I won’t detail in my normal fashion in the interest of brevity. Simply put, I was given a $50 gift card. Kohl’s, at the time, did not accept gift cards for online orders. I wasn’t about to spend 4 hours driving to Kohl’s, so I held on to it, hoping they would either open a local store or begin accepting gift cards online. Well, they didn’t open any stores (even though Target opened two), but they did start accepting gift cards. The problem? Well, beyond the fact that they shadily began deducting monthly fees from my gift card, my card was issued before they accepted them online, so I couldn’t use it. I contacted them asking for an even exchange on my card for a new one that could be used online. They refused. So, that’s $50 free dollars that Kohl’s received. I hope they enjoyed my Christmas gift, because I sure didn’t.

Anyway, that’s my take on Kohl’s. If anyone from Kohl’s reads this, your policies, marketing, and customer service suck.

That is all.

Time for another update on the garden. Let’s start with an image:

That is pretty much the type of harvest we’re getting about twice per week. We’re getting a ton of peppers. We have been drying them and storing them in jars, and will grind them to powders to use as a spice when the season is over.

Everything is going quite well. The weather is starting to cool off a bit, so the plants are experiencing their first relief from the heat in quite some time. They are responding with new growth and new blooms.

The garden has been attacked by squash bugs. These nasty bugs sit on the peppers and puncture them so they can feed. The only way I’ve read to get rid of them is to use some really, really nasty chemicals that I’m really not interested in using, so I have come up with my own method.

First, for the mature bugs, I use scissors. I simply cut the adult squash bugs right in half. They stink when you cut them, kind of like a mix between cucumbers and a gallon of latex paint. It’s nasty. For the nymphs (baby squash bugs, they’re bright orange), I knock them off the peppers/leaves and into a dish of water mixed with a small amount of automatic dishwasher detergent. They stop moving almost instantly. I check the garden three or four times per day, scanning for bugs, and manually killing them. It has worked pretty well so far, and the population is dwindling. I haven’t seen a mature squash bug in about a week, although the number of the nymphs has risen.

I’m starting to put together a mental plan for wintering the plants, although I have at least two to three months before our first frost. The plan includes using plastic, PVC, and a southern exposure spot in the yard that is conveniently sheltered between a fence and our furnace.

Anyway, that’s it for now. More to come later!

So I stopped at the gas station today. I parked in front of the pump and headed in to pay.

I stood in line and waited my turn. As I stood there, I watched some guy turn in a scratch-off lottery ticket, apparently having just won a free ticket. He turned it in, and the lady behind the counter asked, “another of the same?” and he confirmed.

So I do my business and leave. I get in my car, start it up, throw it in reverse, and start slowly backing away from the pumps.

This guy from inside the store comes up to my window, and I know what’s about to happen. He’s about to ask me for money. And sure enough, the pitch starts. “Excuse me sir, I’m homeless. Do you have a dollar?”

Well, I didn’t have a dollar. I never, ever carry cash. You want to mug me, fine. Have my credit/debit card. I’m on the hook for $50 maximum, and I guarantee it will be canceled before you get an opportunity to use it.

But beyond that, the bigger pictures is that this guy had just spent money on a lottery ticket. That means he had money to buy a lottery ticket. That means that he, as a supposed homeless person, chose to purchase a scratch-off lottery ticket instead of putting the money towards housing or, likely just as much in need, food.

I told him I don’t carry cash, and continued backing away.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, I look in my rear view mirror. What do I see?

That same guy– the homeless guy, the guy with no money, the guy who had been gambling– got into a work van, fired it up, and began backing away.

And that is why I never give money to beggars and homeless people. Every time I have done so, I have been ripped off. There are two separate instances I recall that have caused me to stop giving money to beggars.

The first time, a friend and I were leaving a bookstore. A guy came up and said he was a couple dollars short for a bus ticket. The bus station was across the street. We, high school students at the time, scrape together the remains of our leftover lunch money, minimum-wages, and spare change, and give this guy a few bucks total. He crosses the street headed towards the bus station. He approached the door. He took a left. He approached the next door. He went in. He came out with a bottle in a bag. It was a liquor store.

The next time, I was getting on a highway just outside of Chicago on my way home from work. As I waited at a red light, I looked to my left and saw a guy sitting on the side of the road with a “WILL WORK FOR FOOD” sign. I had brought a lunch that day, but felt like having something hot so I had a perfectly intact brown bag lunch. Sandwich, chips, soda, etc. A full lunch. I roll down my window and hold out the bag. “Hey man, I didn’t eat my lunch today. Would you like it?” The response, “NO.” I say, “But your sign says ‘WILL WORK FOR FOOD’ and I’m trying to give you food. You don’t even have to do any work.” He says, “I don’t want it.” My light turns green, and I pull away. Obviously, he didn’t want food, and his desire to work was also highly suspect. My bet? “WILL WORK FOR FOOD” is beggar-eeze for “GOT ANY CHANGE?”

OK, last story. My favorite of the bunch. It doesn’t have to do with someone directly asking me for money or food or anything like that, but it is still hilarious. I was headed to the highway here in Savannah. I get stuck at a red light in front of a gas station. I look over and I see a homeless guy sitting next to the ice machine with the standard “WILL WORK FOR FOOD” sign. I tilt my vision upward to one of the signs in the window of the gas station, right above the homeless guy’s head. The sign reads “HELP WANTED.” I laughed my head off.

That is all.

For those of you who are Pink Floyd fans, Rick Wright died today at age 65 of an unspecified cancer.

Wright was an amazing keyboard player, not because of his technical prowess, but because of his perfect intuition as a supporting member of a truly great rock band. It seemed as though Rick knew exactly what notes to play and what tone to use. He knew the role of a keyboard player in a rock band was to provide support, and he did a damn fine job at providing that support.

I never got to see the entire Pink Floyd in its 1969-1983 incarnation, but I did get to see them in the post-Roger era. It was July 12, 1994, during the Division Bell tour. I saw them at Soldier Field in Chicago. It was a great show in a great setting. Rick’s piano playing was simply amazing.

Rick Wright’s music will play long into the future.

Just about 10 minutes ago, I had MSNBC on in the background. The incredibly talented and wonderful Contessa Brewer (/sarcasm) had two guests on to talk about the election.

Some guy– Doug was his name– was one of the two guests. She introduces him and I missed his last name or his supposed credentials.

Doug goes on to wish Barack Obama a happy birthday, and then says something like “…but he’s pretty young so I don’t even know if he graduated from high school.”

OK, fine. Typical partisan crap from a typical partisan hack.

Contessa blows past it and continues on with the topic of discussion– the Republican side of Congress trying to get Pelosi or Bush to call Congress back into session to try to work out some sort of “solution” to high energy prices. She bounces back to Doug.

Doug says, and I quote, “The American people don’t want to hear partisan politics.”

Well thank you Doug, you genius, you spreader of wisdom, you enlightener. You hit the nail on the head. We don’t want partisan politics. We want discussions about the issues that attack viewpoints and not people. We want honest and legitimate dialogs offering all sides of an issue so we can make more-informed decisions. And Doug, we don’t want partisan hack scumbags like you making purely partisan attacks against candidates (who we may or may not support), and then in the same segment telling us we don’t want to hear partisan politics.

At least Contessa Brewer, whom I despise, pointed out, as the interview wrapped up, that she was going to invite the other guy (pro-Obama/anti-McCain) in on McCain’s birthday so he could tear him apart, just as Doug did to Obama.

And in 25 days, John McCain will turn 72. My suggestion for someone looking to insert partisan politics into it could include references to casket shopping, cryogenic freezing, possibly 4:00PM dinner times at Denny’s, 8:00PM bedtimes, dementia, senility, Alzheimer’s, skin cancer, and quite possibly drug-addicted thieving mistresses who take precedence over and subsequently replace a sick wife.

We do quite a bit of our grocery shopping at Kroger. They have this thing called the Scan Right Guarantee. Basically, if the price of an item, once scanned, is different than the price marked on the shelf, you get the item for free.

I have been taking full advantage of this lately.

A few weeks back, I realized I had been charged double on a fresh pack of bratwurst buns. The package was marked at $2.99 with “Kroger Card” savings making the final price $1.50. It seemed like a fair deal, so I bought it. Once I returned home, I realized I had been charged the original price, twice what I was willing to pay for the item.

So I kept the receipt around and waited until I finished the buns in order to bring them back for a refund. Unfortunately, my brother ate the last bun and threw the bag away, not knowing I needed it to get a price adjustment.

Since that day, I have decided to nitpick every single price on every single item I purchase at Kroger. If I am going to have to monitor my grocery prices like a hawk to ensure I am charged the price shown on the shelf, I’m going to take full advantage of any benefits that this requirement placed on me carries with it. If it does not scan right, I get it free. I don’t care if the shelf says $1.00 and I’m charged $0.50. If it scans wrong– high or low– it’s free.

Last week, I got a free pound of asparagus, $3.00 value. Today, I just got a free pound of strawberries, a $2.50 value.

Today’s free strawberries ticked me off, though. The big sign in front of the produce section says “California Strawberries, $1.98/lb”. OK, fair deal. Jaime loves strawberries. I’ll get her some. I get to the area where I scan and I bag my groceries and I scan the strawberries last, knowing Kroger’s prices are most often wrong on produce. They scan at $2.99.

OK, so it’s a wrong scan. I’m overcharged by $1.01. I politely tell the employee, he goes and checks the sign while I wait, and comes back to tell me the price was $2.50 on the sign. I went and got the sign, and brought it back to him. He and the manager point out that the sign says it is for a sale on Friday. OK, fine. Why put the sale dates in tiny, tiny print (about 1/10th the size of the prices and about 1/4th the size of the description on the sign) and then proceed to put the sign right in front of the produce? Oh yeah, I get it– you’re trying to confuse me into buying the strawberries at full price based on a glance at the sign and not a thorough reading of the relative fine print. Shady, Kroger, shady.

I tell the guy I don’t want them and then I realize– wait a second, I was charged $2.99, the sale price was $1.98, and the shelf price was $2.50. I was still charged wrong. I tell the guy as much and he says, “that’s the price for different strawberries.” So, again I walk over to the produce to read the sign. One sign: $2.50. One display of strawberries, two brands but all the same size. No differentiation between the two packages at all. These things are all supposed to be the same price because they are to be sold as the same product; Kroger just happened to get stock from two different sources.

I went back to the guy, who was talking to the manager, and said, “The shelf says $2.50. The Scan-Right Guarantee says I get them for free, even with the misleading sign.”

He says, “Take them.” So I did.

As a service to anyone who shops at Kroger or any other store with a similar scanning policy, I recommend you grab a piece of paper and write down the cost of each of your items. It takes two seconds per item. I find that about 10% of items scan incorrectly, concentrated mostly on produce. On today’s purchase, I saved 25%, a huge savings.

Hello gardeners and hot pepper fans. It’s time for the sixth update for the 2008 garden season.

When I posted Garden Update #5, we had just about completed the final transplant for most of the peppers, going from cell packs to styrofoam cups to 7-inch pots, and finally landing in assorted 5 to 7 gallon pots.

It has been about six weeks since then, and everything is going very well. Vigorous growth continues on most of the plants, bacterial spot has been kept mostly at bay, and insect pests are almost non-existent.

And man oh man have we already harvested a ton of peppers! We’ve given them to three of our neighbors, the owner of a local restaurant where we eat, and all of Jaime’s coworkers. We had a hot pepper taste test with my my nieces and nephew (age 8,9,10– and they all loved the peppers, the hotter the better). We’ve cooked a ton of hot food, and we’ve made some tabasco-style hot sauce (only 10x hotter).

Time for the photos.

First up, my makeshift drying station. Yeah, yeah, it’s a card table and a black trash bag. But hey, it’s going to be 101 today. It seems like a good time as any to start drying the paprika peppers, and the other peppers we harvested over the weekend. Since we harvested these a few days ago, I can’t send them out to friends because they would be rotten by the time they arrived. I can’t stand to let my peppers rot in the kitchen, so time to dry.

Working from top to bottom, left to right:

Hungarian Sweet Paprika (2 rows)
Spicy Mustard Habanero (far right)
Tabasco Pepper
Thai Chili
Long Red Slim Cayenne
Grocery store variety (but homegrown) Scotch Bonnet
Hot Paprika

Once the Paprika peppers are dry, I plan on smoking half of them before grinding, leaving me with hot paprika, sweet paprika, smoked hot paprika, and smoked sweet paprika. Mmmmmmm…!

These next two shots are of the main pepper rows, one from each end:

White Habanero:

Spicy Mustard Habanero:

Caribbean Red Habanero:

I had some shots of the fluorescent purple pepper, but they didn’t turn out too well, as were the pictures of my medusa pepper. I’ll get some new shots soon.

And by the way, if my pepper plants look wet in those pictures, that is because I had just completed my weekly spraying. I’ve made my own special spray that I’m trying out. 2 tablespoons liquid copper as an anti-fungal, 2 tablespoons paraffin oil as a pesticide, and 2 tablespoons fish emulsion as a foliar fertilizer to one gallon of water.

And by the way, if you’re interested in my soil mix, I ended up settling on:

5 gallons potting mix (Miracle Grow or Sta-Green)
1 gallon perilite
2 tablespoons controlled release fertilizer with micro-nutrients
2 tablespoons bone meal (for calcium and phosphorous).

That’s all for now. Update #7 coming in the semi-near future!

A couple of weeks ago, Jaime and I stopped at a dollar store that was in the process of going out of business. They had slashed prices and were now a half-dollar store.

We bought one of the items shown below. They’re sink screen, and we’re using the larger one in our claw foot cast iron bathtub to prevent hair from clogging the drain.

The packaging on this is classic lost-in-translation:

(Click to Enlarge)

HEALTHY LIFE! HAPPY LIFE! will take your health responsibility by the superlative quality

Well thank goodness– I’ve always wanted to take my health responsibility to the superlative quality, and this seems like just the product to do it!

Haha!

Get this.

We bought a brand new car, as you already know if you read my blog. We bought the car down in Jacksonville, mainly because we had a straight-forward salesman (Bobby Mitchell from Hyundai of North Jacksonville) and because the dealership had a huge selection of Elantras.

When we bought the car, we were told to wait a week or two before we headed to the DMV to get our license plate. I waited… uhh… 29 days. My temporary tag was to expire after tomorrow.

I went to the DMV today to get my plate transferred to the new car, and the title information has not yet been sent to the State of Georgia. Fine, no biggie. I suppose I can understand the delay when a Florida dealership is sending tax money (determined by county) and title information to a different state.

So I hand over my Florida temporary tag to the nice lady at the DMV, and she exchanges it for a Georgia temporary tag that is good for 30 days.

Now here’s the funny part.

The Georgia temporary tag is basically made out of the same material as a manilla folder– that card-stock like material that is a quite a bit thicker than normal paper, but not sealed in any form or fashion.

The lady at the DMV says something like, “Now, Georgia law requires that you put this on the back of the car where the license plate belongs, and not in the window. Since it’s made of paper, it will get ruined if it rains. You probably want to go to Kinkos and get it laminated.”

Whaaaaa…?!?! You mean to tell me that either some genius in the state legislature or some bureaucrat, or some combination of both, have mandated temporary tags that absorb water must be displayed on the outside of the car, exposed to the rain…?

Unbelievable. Believable.

Well, I just ate my last Breyers brand ice cream cone. I have no intentions of purchasing their ice cream again at any point in the future.

See, back in 2006, Breyers was acquired by Unilever, the same company that owns Ben & Jerry’s, Klondike bars, and the Fudgsicle and Popsicle brands.

A couple years back I noticed that my favorite Breyers flavor– coffee– had changed. I had been eating it as long as I could remember, and for some reason it seemed different. Unconsciously, I stopped buying it. I didn’t know exactly what was different about it, but to me it seemed as though it was more ice milk than ice cream. The creaminess was gone, and the flavor was off. I figured that they had started whipping more air into the product (I’m not going to call it ice cream), and that accounted for the change in texture and flavor.

Well, the other day, Jaime and I picked up a half gallon of Breyers, which in actuality is 25% less than a half gallon, coming in at 1.5 quarts by volume. I say by volume because they certainly are whipping much, much more air into the product than they used to. It’s pretty obvious– if you put your lips up to a cone and breath in, well… you can breath in. It’s definitely much, much more airy than it has ever been.

She hands me my cone the other day and says, “I had a hard time scooping it. It wouldn’t come out of the scoop like it normally does.” Now, when Jaime says that, I believe her. She worked at Baskin-Robbins for a while when she was in college, and I am absolutely certain she knows how to properly scoop ice cream.

So I scooped up a cone last night, and noticed the same thing. Granted, I’ve never scooped ice cream professionally, but I’m pretty sure I know how to ball up a scoop of ice cream. I’ve got lots of experience. When you scoop Breyers, it just doesn’t form into a nice ball like real ice cream should. It kind of flakes away and shreds up as you scoop, and getting it to take on any shape is virtually impossible.

As I walked upstairs with my cone last night, the Breyers had chunks fall off the cone four times. I had to stop, head back to the kitchen, get a paper towel, and clean the floor as I walked. Something was definitely wrong.

I ended up doing some research. At some point, Breyers changed their recipe from the standard ingredients. Instead of being pure, clean ice cream consisting of cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla, Breyers now adds something that they call “tara gum” to their product. Tara Gum, it turns out, is actually a product formulated from Caesalpinia Spinosa, which is some sort of tree or shrub. Either way, tara gum is not cream, it is not sugar, and it is not flavor; it has no business being in ice cream.

I did a search for something like Breyers doesn’t scoop and ended up at this page, a post from a site called A Daily Scoop. The post details the addition of tara gum and the company’s supposed reason for adding tara gum, and has a couple hundred comments from people who have no intentions upon purchasing Breyers again. If you are (were) a Breyer’s fan, it is definitely worth a skim.

Breyers says that the reason they added tara gum is that during shipment, ice cream that dips below the appropriate temperature and then is subsequently refrozen has a poorer texture. They say that they reformulated their recipes due to customer complaints. Well, the logical solution in that situation is to not let a dairy product such as ice cream get to a temperature that does not maintain its state of frozenness. Instead, though, Breyers has added tara gum instead of making sure their products are properly handled during transport. Likewise, my bet is that tara gum is cheaper than cream, and allows them to whip even more air into their product, thereby charging us for more air than cream.

I went over to as site run by Breyers, Ice Cream USA, and read the FAQ. I was always under the impression that FAQ stood for Frequently Asked Questions, but I can only deduce– from the number of comments on A Daily Scoop– that Breyers FAQ is actually Frequently Answered Questions. There is no mention of tara gum in their FAQ, no mention of the change in texture, and no mention of why the ice cream just doesn’t taste like it used to taste. Obviously, this question has been asked of them time and time again, yet it doesn’t make it to their FAQ.

Anyway, I’m not buying Breyers anymore. The flavor is different. The texture is different. It is just not right, at least according to my memory.

So what ice cream can I buy? None.

I can’t buy Ben & Jerrys ice cream because they’re owned by the same company, their products are way overpriced, their ice cream is loaded with too much crap like candy, swirls, and other kid-only ingredients, and I personally just don’t like their founders’ politics.

I can’t buy Häagen-Dazs, and it has nothing to do with their ice cream. A couple of years ago, I signed up for a coupon for a free container of their product. Like most free offers, I signed up using an email address that I could trace back if I were to receive spam on the account. To this day, I still receive email to haagen-dazs at mydomain.com. They obviously sold my email address, or had their mailing list servers compromised. I contacted them and they not only denied that they sold my information or had some sort of a security breach, but they denied they ever even offered a coupon! Yeah, riiiiiiiiiiight– a spammer just happened to make up the email address haagen-dazs. Pfft.

So, I’m planning on buying an ice cream maker. I’m not really interested in one of the makers that require you to freeze a container for hours on end. Those manufacturers of those machines don’t tell you that most residential freezers have to be set as low as possible, and likely can’t even get cold enough to properly freeze ice cream. Likewise, I’m not interested in some sort of salt-and-ice combo just to make some ice cream.

Here’s what I want: Cuisinart ICE-50BC Supreme Ice Cream Maker. Plug it in, add your ingredients, and turn it on. Once it’s soft serve, pop it in the freezer until it’s rock hard (that’s how I like my ice cream).

Either that or I’m going to have The Plush Horse pack some ice cream in dry ice and FedEx it to me.

I haven’t decided. But Breyers is definitely out for me, and if you like your ice cream to actually resemble ice cream, it should be out for you too.

I’ve setup a page with information regarding the 2008 presidential debates between John McCain and Barack Obama. If you’re interested in finding more information about the debates, check it out:

Presidential-Debates-2008.com

The page is still in active development. Here is the current to-do list:

• Fix navigation in IE6. Test(/fix) in IE7.
• Restyle top table on opening page for easier reading.
• Incorporate topics from AmericasDebate.com’s Election 2008 forum.
• Add more comparison links.
• Add to FAQ as necessary.
• Further cross-promote America’s Debate, America’s Debate Radio, and the America’s Debate Chat Room.

You can also access the page by going to Obama-McCain-Debate.com and… uhh… since the Democrats had a hard time picking their candidate, Clinton-McCain-Debate.com. They’ll be forwarded over shortly.

I would really appreciate it if you could link to the site. Here’s some code you can use, or feel free to make your own:

<a href=”http://www.presidential-debates-2008.com” name=”Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information” title=”Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information”>Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information</a>

The link will appear like this:

Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information

And if you just want to link to the site without all the extra text, you can use:

<a href=”http://www.presidential-debates-2008.com” name=”Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information” title=”Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information”>Presidential-Debates-2008.com</a>

…and it will appear like this:

Presidential-Debates-2008.com

Major League Baseball had this promotion wherein if you voted in the All-star game final vote, you would receive MLB.TV for free for seven days. MLB.TV allows you to watch pretty much every game, with the exception of games blocked by blackout restrictions.

So I voted the maximum number of times, even though their system didn’t tell me when I hit the limit. I counted, though– I voted 50+ times, and 25 was the max. I voted for Jermain Dye, who deserved to win but was bested by some freaking rookie.

Anyway, I received my email for the week-long MLB.TV promotion, and it had a link to click to activate the promotion. I clicked the link, and the page read: The redemption code you provided has already been used. Please verify and try again.

Odd. That was the first time I clicked the link. I tried playing the game, and it wouldn’t work. It was asking me to start a paid subscription.

So, then I thought that maybe the problem was that the email address I used was a disposable-type address (allstarvoting@mydomain.com), but my account was my generic info@mydomain.com. I created a new account for the allstarvoting address, clicked the link again, and tried to play the White Sox game. Nope, no go.

I tracked down the support phone number, buried in the website, and gave them a call. I held for 30 minutes before my call was answered. I knew they were getting slammed over this promotion.

Now, here’s the part that inspired the title. We all have heard the cliché. It’s as American as baseball and apple pie. Well, apparently the MLB needs a reminder of that phrase.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed to find out that MLB has outsourced their customer service, but I would also be lying if I said I was surprised. It’s got to be hard to make ends meet for the MLB. They only make what… $25 minimum for a nosebleed seat at a taxpayer-subsidised stadium? They only charge what… $5 for a bottle of water, $6 for nachos, and $7 for a beer. I can see how they can’t afford to pay minimum-wage Americans to answer their phones, particularly when you consider the notoriously low salaries of the massively underpaid players.

Sarcasm, obviously. My meter is off the charts.

I mean, come on– the people whose organization consists of the American League and the National League certainly can’t be expected to employ Americans in the nation of America.

I ended up getting nowhere in my call, being told that I would have to check every 30 minutes to see if the video started working, or as an alternative I could check back in 24 hours. Good solution.

As the call wrapped up, I asked the guy to whom I was speaking where he was located. He hesitated, and reluctantly stated “the Philippines.”

Yeah. The MLB: As American as baseball and balut pie.

What a shame, what a shame. I’ll never, ever pay for MLB.TV so long as their call center is outside America. Hell, Canada would even be acceptable to me. But the Philippines?

I. Don’t. Think. So.

EDIT: So, my it turns out that my voting numbers were based on “test data” that was not marked as such. Grrr. Oh well, Barrow still sucks.

So I’m stuck being in John Barrow’s “district.” I put it in quotes because Congressman Barrow was originally elected as my representative when his home was actually located in the district. Unfortunately for him (and us), our district was redrawn.

So in 2006, Barrow had the option, from what I understand, of either remaining in his home and running without the benefit of incumbency, or moving in order to remain in the district to which he was elected to represent and take advantage of his incumbency.

Obviously, he chose to turn his back on where he actually resided and instead chose to exploit the power of being an incumbent, even if it meant having to move his home.

Well, he’s running for re-election. He’s obviously worried. Very worried. If early voting in Savannah is any indication, he won’t make it to the general election on the Democratic ticket. He’s losing to Savannahian Regina Thomas by a 2-1 margin in the Democratic primary.

Well, Barrow is currently and repeatedly shooting himself in the foot, and when you shoot yourself in the foot, it hurts.

He has a group of telemarketers– I’m not sure if they’re an outside firm or campaign volunteers– calling the residents of Savannah to convice them to vote for Barrow in the primary. Here’s how his callers appear on my caller ID:

Unknown Name
000-0000

First call, yesterday at 2:45PM. I didn’t answer.

Second call, yesterday at 4:16PM. I answered, and politely informed the caller that I didn’t like the fact that they spoofed caller ID data while calling constituents, and asked that they not call again.

Third call, today at 5:55PM, while I was eating dinner. I answered, “Is the the John Barrow campaign?” The caller was stunned. She said nothing. I asked, “Who is this?” She said, “I’m calling from the campaign to re-elect Congressman John Barrow…” I cut her off.

I informed her that I did not appreciate that they were fraudulently spoofing caller ID data, didn’t appreciate that they called me again after I asked them not to call again, and informed them that legislation has already passed the House outlawing caller ID spoofing with intent to defraud or cause harm (HR251, June 12, 2007, Truth in Caller ID Act of 2007). If the house actually had a recorded vote, my bet is that Barrow voted for the bill, but the ever-transparent and practically-zero-approval-rating Congress did a “voice vote,” where members’ votes are not recorded or available to their constituents.

Was I defrauded or caused harm? Well, it took my time to answer the call again. My dinner got cold. I had to go through the stress of informing my congressman’s campaign that they were being dishonest. Am I nitpicking? You bet. But the fact is that levels of “harm” are not differentiated in the bill. Causing me to, for example, have to pay 1/1,000,000 of a cent extra on my electric bill to charge my cordless phone after Barrow’s three calls is harm, just as much as if he were to come burn my house down. Harm is harm, and the bill fails to differentiate levels of harm.

So, Congressman Barrow, if you want my vote, and if you want to fight the stereotype of dishonest politicians, I recommend that you behave and conduct your campaing in the most honest possible fashion. And that includes making sure that people who work on your behalf are 100% honest as well.

Oh, and by the way, I’m on the do not call list. How nice that Congress exempted them from that law.