Aggregate Saturday

Aggregate

Aggregate Saturday:

We are once again bound for car lots, used car salesmen and eventually buyer’s remorse.

Yes we are car-shopping for the long-suffering wife. If you are keeping score at home the LSW’s car blew up three weeks ago. This is week two of the search for the new-to-us vehicle. We can only go on Saturdays, and only in a narrow window.

My prediction? We will have a new-to-us car this year. That is as far as I will go.

I HATE it when I update a piece of software and “they” make a change that makes my life harder.

I just uploaded the latest and greatest Firefox browser. It works fine but they messed with the bookmarks. Now they are on the right:

And it takes an extra click to get to them. Grrrrrrr.

In the big scheme of things it’s small potatoes. I will get used to it. But for now it is impeding progress. Like Dad used to say: It’s a pimple on the ass of progress.

Actually my father used to call ME “a pimple on the ass of progress.” My life with father could have outsold “Shit My dad says.


Today is the day that the USPS collects food. You are supposed to pile non-perishable items by your mailbox and your letter carrier will pick them up and distribute them to the needy. We did this for years. Last year we actually went out and bought stuff, instead of scouring the cupboards for crap we don’t eat. Canned German Potato salad. Where did it even come from? But we spent money on more stuff then we could eat. Piled it out by the tilted mailbox, ravaged by the snowplow.
We will not be doing this donation this year, or ever again. Last year our donation was not picked up. So endeth our charity.

The MG saga, part duex:
It started again yesterday. It wants to stay.
The ride I took yesterday was freezing cold. And it started to rain.
I made two discoveries.
The windshield wipers (there are three-on this little car there are THREE wipers) don’t work.
The heater, which was only a suggestion of heat anyway, is not working. Fan not blowing.
I suspect electrical failure.

See why the little car gets threatened with being sold?

Did I mention the asparagus crop is in? The New York Times Sunday Magazine published TEN recipes. I hope to try at least a few. The one I did try, olive oil, lemon juice and a grill was beyond good.

So with the advent of summer-no classes to teach and consequently no monthly paycheck- I will be putting the yard sale and flea market stuff we have collected and now overflows from a room down the hall up for sale on Ebay.
Some thoughts about that:
If I devoted as much time to Ebay posting as I did to school-IE 10 hours weekly-and I can post an item in ten minutes or so (includes taking pictures, uploading same to a flicker account so I can insert them into the Ebay post for free. Also research for appropriate pricing) I could post 100 items a week. Assume 1/3 of these sell. Optimistic but it has happened.
Average sale price for our items is $10. So we could generate $300 weekly.
EBAY and PayPal grab a %. It costs money to pack the items. Gas to and from USPS.
We may clear $200. I am thinking more like $150 to $100. And we are not counting what it costs to buy the items…
In ten weeks we could clear around $1,000. Maybe. Assuming we have the items to support it.
Sigh.
In my old days as a captain of industry I can remember dinner tabs that large. Of course I wasn’t the one paying.

I understand the need for patient privacy. In general I get the idea of the HIPAA laws. But when I am trying to visit someone in a rehab facility can’t you tell me more than “not here today” ? Good GOD that is unhelpful.

When I was a captain of industry (heh) and we had large dinner tabs two thoughts used to occur to me..

1: How wasteful this is. We would go to the grocery store and feed my family for a month.

2: How wasteful this is. We should go to soup kitchen, eat there and leave what we would have paid at the fancy restaurant as a donation.

Never happened. #1 because it would have been considered payola. #2 Because…because…frankly I don’t have a reason.

Dinners were a big part of how bizness was done. I will detail some that in my forthcoming posts on Thursday-replacing the School Daze posts will be Radio Daze.

And that is that!

The Rant D’Jour is about those lovely, friendly, wonderful, credit card companies.

Phishing is bad enough…but do they have to try and up sell you too…more

-30-

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About James Rising

A recovering radio addict wrestles with the written word.
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