Some Blogging Guy

Wow. I am flabbergasted. We just had our windows and patio door in our home replaced. We had those old fashioned crank awning windows that stopped shutting tightly in 1992. And the handles keep falling off. Pain in my rear. So, we finally upgraded. That meant contacting a contractor in South Florida. As we all know, there are no competent or honest contractors here. I sure have not found one in the last 40 years.

So, I am sitting here shocked and surprised. The company we picked, Florida Home Improvement Associates, did every single thing perfectly. From the salesman to the final inspection, and every step along the way, honest and competent work. Amazing, I did not think it was possible.

Now, if anyone has recommendations for home alarm companies, let me know. We want to go modern, with cellular connections, wireless contacts, smart phone enabled, etc.

Some Blogging Guy

Florida has finally found a way to improve the FCAT scores of students. They have lowered the passing grade for the test. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant! Is it no wonder Florida has some of the best rated schools in the country? Who knew all we had to do was lower the standards on the test until more students passed?

Since I work at a college, this is bad news for me and my team. As it is, the best of Florida’s government schools can barely spell their own name correctly two out of three tries. It isn’t against the law to assign “F”s to students for producing failing work at colleges, so hundreds of them flunk out each year. “What do you mean I flunked? I showed up to class at least half the time!” They yell. Unfortunately, unlike government high schools, college requires more than just showing up to class occasionally. Students are stunned to discover the work required in class and even more stunned by the work required outside of class.  Worse for them, faculty at colleges are not rated on how many students pass their course. They have tenure, so essentially they can’t be fired unless they rape the school’s president’s daughter and their dog on a school night. And even then it is doubtful. They can flunk their entire class just for grins and there is little anyone can do. Tenure protects academic freedom.

But in high school, teachers are rated on how well their students perform on the FCAT and other work. If they get a bunch of retards in their class they have to resort to cheating in order to keep their jobs.  Not so in higher education.

It is shameful that our society allows this to happen. Education is the key to a better life, and a better society. Government schools have been destroying student futures for decades, yet we still support it and still pour more money into a flawed system. Pretty much the definition of stupidity.

Some Blogging Guy

• We bought a couch today. A couch/sleeper. Queen size. City Furniture. I was surprised at how easy and comfortable the shopping experience was. Ken the salesman offered as much help as we asked for and then left us alone to make our selection. I braced myself when we started doing the paperwork, ready for all the add-ons and the sales pressure. Turns out there wasn’t any. Delivery fee. Two other optional “warranties” were explained clearly and we were left to choose what we wanted. Or didn’t want. Talk about a pleasant experience! More salespeople should know about this technique, which is to make the buying process smooth and easy. We will be going back to City Furniture.

• The couch is being delivered tonight! That is fast. My wife and I tried to push the old couch out the front door, but the laws of physics prevented that from happening. So, we dragged it across the house and out the patio door and the patio screen door into the back yard. It is still there. May remain there some time.  My shoulder is shot.

• Pet Peeve. I hate it when stores have fine digital SLR cameras on display, and they remove the lens and leave the internal workings of the fine instrument open to air, dust, and the occasional child’s tongue.

• When we returned home, we saw that we had missed  the Jehovah Witnesses! Bummer! I always love talking to them.  Although for some reason they usually leave my house fairly quickly.

• You know those trashy signs that people illegally attach to telephone poles, stop signs etc.? The ones promising mattresses for four dollars, or to take your underwater home off your hands and give you $10,000 cash, remove your junk car, or teach your dog to belly dance. The mayor of Hollywood Florida has been after them. He had a contest once for residents who brought the most signs to city hall. Now he has robo-calling machines calling the numbers on the signs 5 to 15 times a day. I love it!  But this week a bunch of those signs showed up in my neighborhood, along the interior streets of our community in Pembroke Pines. My wife drove the car this morning as I jumped out and took down every single sign we could find. Not in my neighborhood!

So, how’s your Saturday going?

Some Blogging Guy

I picked up a Burger King Whopper on the way home today. It is Friday, I can splurge. 

Every time I am at a fast food joint I am astounded by the sheer waste and potential destruction to the environment.
No, I am not talking about their french fries, which can sit in a landfill and not look any different for a hundred years, but their sheer waste of materials.
Ever stand in a BK or MAC establishment and watch the burgers slide into place? They sit still for a second and then are picked up and placed in a paper envelope. Then they are placed in a cardboard box. Then the entire burger and it’s little envelope and cardboard house is placed inside a paper sack. The MBA graduate working behind the counter turns and hands it to me, whereupon I remove the Whopper from the bag, the house and the envelope and toss them all away. That cute little cardboard box has a useful working life of perhaps 11 second! Eleven seconds and then it is off to the landfill. Maybe to a recycling plant, but I do not think paper with food stains can be recycled. Not sure.

Why all the paper?

Why not wrap the burger in on piece of payer and then put a sticker on top to hold the paper together. I don’t need a little hut for my burger! I don’t even need a paper sack! Oh, and when you stick napkins in the bag, I really don’t need a hundred. Five will do nicely.

Corporations claim they want to go green. Bullshit. (Unless they are talking about their soggy onion rings.) We did not have all this packaging material when I was a kid. Why do we need it now?

Starbucks is the worse! Yeah, they are all this new age green company yet when I buy a bag of coffee beans, and a couple of cups of coffee, I get a cardboard drink carrier, a paper sack for the beans, and of course, the coffee cup, plastic lid, red stopper and brown sleeve.

Even when I buy just the bag of beans, they put it inside a paper sack. Why? The beans are likely to fight their way out of their original bag and then all that stands between their freedom is the paper sack? The beans are already inside a bag! Why put it in another bigger one????

I blame the corporations first, because they are greedy bastards. If a comet was hurling toward Earth for total annihilation they would come out with Comet Annihilation cups and sacks, and make more money right up to the second the fireball hit. They have no interest in being green unless it somehow gets them money.

But secondly, I blame us. You and me and yeah, you over there! Why do we allow this?

I did try once asking for my whopper to not be placed in a cardboard house. The entire BK crew stared at me like deer in headlights. They could not accommodate me. Against the Burger Kind policy.

I say we plan a flash mob where on one particular day everyone goes into Burger King and demand their Whopper de-housed! No cardboard box! Just wrap it in paper.

Of course, that brings up the obesity problem……as their are 42,000 calories in the Whopper. Hell, breathing the air in the restaurant you can consume a couple of hundred calories.

But that’s a rant for another day.

My burger is cold. Oh well.

Some Blogging Guy