In Friday’s Seattle Times there was a brief mention of the Polar Bears‘ annual plunge into the chilly waters around Puget Sound. Since I’m a bachelor this week, I figured why the heck not and casually mentioned this to a coworker who offered to come take pictures of the nuttiness my wife would be missing. […]
On alternate years, the Social Security Administration sends me a statement estimating various theoretical payouts should I retire or die. I showed up in their system in 1981, when I made a cool $1,337 working in the local grocery store bakery after school. Like Susan, some of my compensation was under-the-table (the forms required to
A $255 death benefit? Read More »
You may have seen this funny engineering depiction of a home designed for Santa. Here’s what an actual engineer had to say: I checked the drawing for accuracy and noticed the following: There is ADA accessible signage on the roof, but no ADA compliant roof access. 1/4 kip tree stand loading spec seems excessive unless
Engineering plans for Christmas Read More »
A “Joe-Job” is when a spammer sends out thousands of emails, masquerading as someone else. When the (334) emails bounce or (three) people respond, it comes to the lucky joe-jobbee, e.g. me. The deluge of mail headers this morning suggest distributed spammery, so I’m not even going to bother with firing off futile requests to
Last night I got my utility bill and Holy Moly, it’s more than double last month’s thanks to a colder-than-normal month and an increase in utility rates. (Hey, Fed, I found your inflation.) Anyway, there has been a lot of interest in my previous musings on the ongoing cost tradeoffs of gas versus electric dryers.
Gas versus Electric Dryer II Read More »
I always loved receiving holiday newsletters because they present a blog-like view, in Cliff’s Notes-length of what’s been going with a family during the last year. (My mother-in-law is the Jedi Master of these.) Hoping, perhaps naively, others shared this enthusiasm, we’ve put together one of our own for the last decade and a half.
Generic Seasonal Greetings Read More »
We had the (near) perfect plan for kid-sitting so we could attend my company’s holiday party on Friday: we were going to swap turns with another family whose company party was Saturday night. My youngest daughter was acting sluggish Thursday night, a sure sign of imminent malaise. The other family was okay with exposing their
Coughing, sneezing, itching, wheezing Read More »
Maybe they assume I’m sending the half-pound’s worth of items to the Moon instead of Chicago? It’s unlikely I’ll consummate this purchase transaction. Maybe instead I’ll rent a limo for the weekend. Greets to my friends at Amazon! (If only the items were in stock… )
So much for the free shipping… Read More »