All posts by Rick

I'm living in rural Florida (USA) with my wife, son, two cats, and quite a few computers. I actively work in several areas of interest but still find time to manage several websites, execute home improvements, ride the Harleys, and play with cool toys. I'm reasonably fit for an Old Guy, equally comfortable wielding a keyboard, torque wrench, or spatula. I've got a scary-low tolerance for bullshit.

Giveaway of the Day

A friend recently pointed me to Giveaway of the Day, a site that’s giving away – as in free – a licensed commercial software title every day. All you need to do is hit the site, download and install.

So what’s the catch? You need to download and install the title on the day of the offering. In other words, the title that’s available today won’t be available tomorrow. And what you download today you need to install today.

And I’m not sure what happens if you need to re-install at some point in the future, say, when changing machines or something.

I think it’s worth checking out.

Giveaway of the Day

Shave Your Head

I’ve been shaving my head for over a decade now. I remember the day I took the plunge as well as I remember yesterday.

Saturday, June 7, 1997 dawned beautiful. What was to be my last haircut was only a couple of days old. I’d been getting my ‘number one’ every few weeks and frankly, I was getting a little tired of the ritual. I called my style a ‘number one’ because of the clipper attachment used – the shortest one. The only thing that would cut shorter was no attachment at all.

Today would be the day! Nothing beats a professional straight-razor shave so I thought that having a good barber do the deed would be the way to go. I chose a nice old-style barber shop in Princeton, New Jersey. You know the kind – a row of big leather chairs with the swivels and adjustments lined up in front of the mirrored wall. The barbers, each looking as old as the chairs, in animated conversation with their customers as their fingers flew with the scissors. The smell of hair care products filled my nostrils. )I’m not sure what it is, but traditional barber shops have a smell all their own.) I smiled and picked up a magazine as I slid into a chair near the door to wait my turn.

“NEXT!” That would be me. I climbed into one of those leather beauties and faced the barber. He checked out my obviously recent ‘number one’ and looked very puzzled indeed. What did I want him to do?

I told him of my decision and asked for a nice straight-razor shave. And he refused!

Continue reading Shave Your Head

Cheeseburger in Paradise

I had lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise in Woodbridge, NJ today with my wife and son. This is the second time we’ve eaten there and each time both the food and service were impressive.

We had the same appetizers each visit. We remembered them from last time and ordered again: fries because my son likes ’em and the shrimp because we do. We’ve really got to try some of the other selections!

The burgers are delicious. I had the Bleu Cheese burger on my last visit – tangy and tasty. The broccoli I had with it was prepared just the way I like it – just the tops, no stalks, pan-fried and crisp. On our previous visit my wife opted for the pressed burger. The bread is fried and she found it to be a bit oily for her taste toward the end. Our server, Nicole, was attentive without being overbearing.

Today I opted for the burger of the day, the Cajun burger, with Swiss cheese and Cajun seasoning. It wasn’t too spicy, just enough for flavor, quite good (even though I really like the hot stuff). I ordered rice on the side and it was, well, rice. Not a lot to say about rice. My wife enjoyed the shrimp wrap. Erica provided great service, very attentive and conversational.

Oh, my son? He’s a teen, not particularly into variety in his food, and he had the signature Cheeseburger in Paradise – hold the onions – each time. He went back this time without complaint and I’d call that a rave.

We (well, not my teenage son) enjoyed Margaritas and Sangria. But not to excess, driving on Route 1 in Woodbridge is fraught with peril in the best of circumstances!

Oh, one other thing worth mentioning. Every hour on the hour they play their signature song, interrupting whatever’s already on. It was jarring to hear Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company doing Piece Of My Heart preempted by Jimmy Buffett. The nerve!

If you’re near Woodbridge craving a burger, this is worth checking out.

Added July 11, 1:26 PM:
Erica, our server, admitted to having a bit of a cold and by 10 July my wife seemed to be picking it up.

Added July 14, 10:00 AM:
And by July 13 I had signs of getting it, too! The moral of the story is that we should have left or asked for a different table/server.

Dental Work

I’m not myself today.

The remaining two quadrants of root planing were completed this morning. The discomfort, while mild, has been enough to be distracting. I didn’t get much done – I wrote a couple of articles and added some pictures of our new kitten to my gallery. The list of stuff I didn’t do is considerably longer.

I haven’t eaten much so I’m a little hungry. If experience is any guide then tomorrow will see me back on track. After this single-malt I may or may not have another before retiring early.

Grumble, grumble.

Community Bulletin Board

Supermarkets here, and I guess everywhere, have some space set aside where you can place stuff you want others to see. People tack up their business cards, notices of lost pets, stuff for sale and all manner of things.

It’s an amazingly effective tool!

I had an unused TV taking up space in the garage. I muscled the set onto a motorcycle jack and took a picture. I fiddled with PowerPoint for a few minutes to craft my ad. Then my son and I grabbed our helmets and took a little motorcycle tour of a few area supermarkets to post my ads.

We deployed five before wheeling into Stewart’s for a frosty root beer.

By the time we got home there was voice mail. The first caller soon arrived and bought the set. Interestingly enough, the buyer and I turned out to have some mutual friends. It’s a small world.

Today I’ll retrace the ride and collect the dead ads.

Sometimes the real world beats the snot out of online.

The Hidden Costs of Juggling

No one can ignore the fact that fuel costs have risen dramatically in recent years. Gasoline, heating oil, even peripheral stuff that uses petroleum in manufacturing or transport, all has increased costs today. I feel it in the wallet just like everyone else. But I still had a ‘duh’ moment at the checkout register when I picked up a few cans of white gas to fuel my torches.

My stash of fuel had finally run dry. It’s been a while since I bought the stuff retail. Three years according to the database, almost to the day. In 2004 I paid $12 per gallon in 32 ounce cans at an Eastern Mountain Sports store.

I stood next to the display rack stacking a handful of cans into my right arm, mentally multiplying the shelf price of $10.95 per 32 ounce can, when it hit me! The shock was quickly followed by the realization that the increased cost makes perfect sense.

At least they were running some kind of sale. I got a few bucks off and, to my surprise, there was no sales tax either.

So what’s the metric for consumption, the equivalent of miles per gallon, for juggling torches? And in these days when everyone’s going ‘green’ has California outlawed fire juggling, labeling practitioners as horrible, vile polluters?

Data For Sale – Laws and Lies

I buy medications for my Dad. He suffers from some chronic conditions that require a daily drug regimen. For a while I used my usual credit card when I visited his pharmacy, but I stopped. Today these transactions are strictly cash-only.

An odd pattern had developed in the advertising that appeared in my incoming streams. Affecting both snail mail and email, it was almost as though my health had taken a serious turn for the worse. Drugs, facilities and other products related to various diseases, diseases which I do not have, had been increasing in frequency dramatically!

I brought my concerns to the head pharmacist, the management of the company (it’s a chain) and my credit card issuer. Their response was universal. Sharing the data isn’t allowed. [We] do not do it. It is not done. I must be mistaken.

So I took to using cash. And when asked to sign when picking up the medications I use something else – an X, some scribbles or a line – whatever comes out of my hand at the time. If questioned I tell them why.

After quite a while – six months, maybe more – the marketing trailed off. Today the patterns I noticed no longer exist. (I suppose they all figure me for dead, finally succumbed to one disease or another.)

I brought my findings to the pharmacy and credit card issuer and asked again about marketing and data-sharing. Again, each defended their practices. I must be mistaken.

The traffic in my inbox is of little importance. What’s more worrisome is how else the data might be used. I can easily imagine, for example, an insurance company increasing their rates, or maybe denying coverage altogether, because I have a history of purchasing prescription drugs associated with a disease I haven’t reported to them. Legal? Not today. But since when has that stopped anything?

Watch your data trail, dear friends!

On Harley-Davidson

“A Harley Davidson motorcycle is a marvelous, amazing machine. Imagine, you put a motor between your legs. It’s basically an old tractor motor that has been modified and refined and refined and refined nearly to perfection. It’s hooked to a five-speed transmission that you can easily hold in both hands. It sits on two rubber patches that can’t cover much more than 10 square inches of pavement at a time. It will run well over 100 miles per hour. It will leap forward whether the altitude is 0 or 10,000 feet, whether the temperature is 30° or 110°. It will run hour after hour, day after day. It starts every time you hit the button–wet, dry, hot cold–makes no difference. It will carry you and all you need for any length trip (and if that’s not enough, it’ll pull a trailer, too). And, it sounds like no other motorcycle on earth. You can’t help but enjoy just listening to it: when you are at a stop light or when you just cruise for mile after mile at 85 miles per hour.”

“…… you are part of the landscape when you are on a motorcycle, rather than observing the landscape as when in a car.”

Ken Green
July 9, 1999

Boom! Ooooooohhhh… Aaaahhhhh…

Unless you have the proper permit, it’s illegal to transport, possess or use fireworks in the state of New Jersey. But just across the Pennsylvania border there are several retail outlets that will gladly sell them to you. Check out Phantom Fireworks or Sky King Fireworks. Now, the odd thing about this is that, like New Jersey, Pennsylvania outlaws fireworks!

This leads to an interesting situation. Before you can enter the store you need to show identification proving that you are not a Pennsylvania resident. Pennsylvania residents are not allowed inside. Further, you need to affirm that your intent is to immediately remove your purchase from Pennsylvania and that you promise to comply with whatever laws are applicable to you. (No smoking inside, natch, and you have to leave your lighter and/or matches outside, too. Duh.)

New Jersey’s lawmakers, as can be expected, are not thrilled with the situation. The Pennsylvania retailers say, basically, ‘not our problem’.

Independence Day is right around the corner. Celebrate safely. Boom!

Near Miss

It was a nice day for motorcycling. I was riding through Manville, on the main drag, just minding my own business on my way to Costco for a bottle of vitamin E. There was a bit of movement immediately to my right at the curb line, movement that shouldn’t have been occurring. It was the occupied beat-up car I had noticed a moment earlier! The dopey girl was still yacking on her mobile phone as she lurched into traffic. ‘Traffic’, at this particular time, meant ME.

The car behind me hit their brakes – hard, I heard the screech of rubber on pavement. The next traffic light, half a block or so ahead, had opened a nice gap in the oncoming traffic. My escape path!

I jabbed the left handlebar forward. The motorcycle obediently fell off to the left in a hard lean. Simultaneously I dropped to the next lower gear and grabbed some throttle. The sound next to her open window must have shocked the yacker, she fell back some while I surged ahead and moved back into the correct lane. Mishap averted!

Two lights ahead I caught the red. She was behind me but she stopped about three car lengths back, leaving a gap. I turned and glared, shook my head, mouthed “asshole”, turned back to the business at hand. The light went green. I eased off the clutch and continued on my way. I was thankful that my wife or son wasn’t with me. The added weight may have turned success into failure.

Please, don’t drive distracted!