Tis the season to put funny Christmas hats on your cats! This one was pretty insulted by the whole affair, and then his arch enemy came by to make fun of him.

Warning: Don’t try this at home. Unless you have tons of band-aids as I do.

We use our computers for everything these days. The typical hard drive has bank statements, home budgets, IRS 1040s, credit card information, stored emails and instant messages not to mention photos of you wearing an aluminum foil hat and holding a jar of green olives that we won’t even talk about.

Many people of the dolt type think simply erasing a piece of data actually erases it. Some think formatting the hard drive is the sure fire way to eliminating the data. Fools! Why there are unerase and unformat programs out there that can pull your bank account out of a hard drive faster than Bush can attack a middle eastern country!

Some people think erasing the hard drive and then writing over it with the words “Bill and Hill in 2008″ will totally destroy all data.

The truth is there are people who buy old computers cheaply at thrift stores, and actually sift through trash piles and dumps seeking old hard drives. Then using sophisticated forensic software they can undelete, unformat, and even pull data from between Bill and Hill’s teeth and then order a truck load of merchandise from QVC using your credit card! And then, selling those photos of you and the left handed weasel on the Internet!

If you really, really want to destroy all data on your hard drive, follow Some Cranky Guy’s Five Step Hard Disk Data Removal Procedure:

1. Never, ever, give your old computer to your ex-wife.

2. Never give away or sell your computer with a hard drive inside it. Remove it. This can be accomplished very easily with a screw driver, a tourniquet and a short trip to the local emergency room.

3. Format your hard drive. Then erase every program individually. Then format it again. Then use a special program to write data over the entire hard drive in accordance with the US Department of Defense memo DoD 52203.22.M.

4. Coat your hard drive with garlic, duct tape three mackerels to it and bury it exactly 51 inches deep in your back yard for exactly three full moons.

5. Then employ a special data eliminator device as shown in the photograph below. Click to enlarge.

If you follow these five simple steps, you can be relatively assured that most of the data on your hard drive is unrecoverable.

Peace out people.

SCG

Circuit City in Pembroke Pines. In fact, the one at 11810 Pines Boulevard, Pembroke Pines, FL 33026. Picture this, it is 10 AM on Saturday, the day after Black Friday. I’m standing in line with items to purchase. Guess what? About a half dozen Circuit City employees are wandering about the floor, but on perhaps one of the busiest weekends of the year, the management has one lone cashier. Yes. One freaking cashier. And, no clear line. People were coming at the cashier like a Marty Feldman Rorschach test. There was no discernible line at all.

I piled my items on the floor and left, vocalizing loudly my reasons for doing so.

Later on I did some research, and apparently Circuit City isn’t doing that well. (Duh, go figure!) Back in March of this year they fired 3,400 workers for the simple fact that they earned too much money. No other reason. They took their most senior, most trained and experienced and dedicated long term sales staff, and fired their asses. And then immediately hired lower paid replacements. Just to keep their profit line going. I am a firm believer in capitalism, but not this type of evil crap. No more CC for me.

Of course, after my blow up at CompUSA earlier this year, that leaves just Best Buy for my brick and mortar shopping experience. I have complaints about them, but I will say this – they ALWAYS have more than one cashier, and they have a beautiful line system that directs the next available customer to the next available cashier.

With just one brick and mortar electronics store left, I guess I’m going to have to try to be more tolerant of ineptness and incompetence. Or do more shopping online!

Peace out people.

SCG

We started our shopping experience early. I think it was about 10 AM. We hit Arcadia, Florida on Route 70. The downtown area was packed with shoppers. Or at least, as packed as my wife and I will ever accept. Arcadia has recovered from Hurricane Wilma, and the historic section has dozens of antique stores that offer a wide variety of items, and at fair prices too.

We saw many wonderful gift possibilities in the quaint little stores with very friendly people. This item I was seriously considering until my wife smacked me in the back of the head.

Who could resist this? I mean, it says “Florida” all over it!

Then I found this!

Milkglass! I think it belongs to the

depression area type of collectibles.

I just happen to know someone who

collects these, and doesn’t have

this one!

Success!! My Black Friday Shopping

Experience is concluded!

Whoa! Glad I shopped in Arcadia!

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Then we did what any normal Christmas shopper would do on the busiest shopping day of the year – we visited a cemetery. The photos below are thumbnails, and you can click on them to see the large image.