It Is Not Rocket Science To Keep A Shelf Stocked

I got the Aquapod 12 gallon aquarium with the 70 watt HQI light today. UPS delivered it. And they did not break it!

I hereby award UPS a blue ribbon for being special, and not kicking the box too hard.

In other news, PUBLIX WAS OUT OF SIERRA NEVADA PALE ALE! Now this is not that uncommon. I keep telling the meat head manager that the store should stock more beer when the supply runs out. People are buying it. The store should stock it. It makes perfect business sense. But not to this guy ---------------------------->
Last time I brought this to the attention of manager Special Ed he did not understand. I tried to make it simple, get more of the beer in the pretty green box and I will buy it. And other people are buying it too, because when I went to the store today they were OUT. But last time there were two six packs (three before I bought one). So there.

But enough about Special Ed. He tries hard. So he gets a gold star for effort, and for being so special. I think he even rides the special short County Bus to work.

I still have no place to put the 12 gallon cube aquarium. I will find a place however. Some day. Who knows when. Could be any time. But I have to modify it slightly, so this is not a problem. I have time to make my modifications, without rushing.

Tracking Fun

My aquarium shipped! Hooray. I still have no place to put it. But it is not here yet.

But this is the 21st Century - not the stone age! And this means....UPS ONLINE PACKAGE TRACKING! So where is the aquarium at right now? Lets check!

Location	Date			Local Time	Description
ANAHEIM, CA, US	10/31/2007			8:40 P.M.	ORIGIN SCAN
	10/31/2007			8:31 P.M.	FORWARDED TO THE FACILITY IN THE DESTINATION CITY
US	10/31/2007			8:19 P.M.	BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

When it does get here it will just remain in the shipping box - after I check for damage of course. I may set it up with just tap water in it to check for any leaks and / or other malfunctions. And I may want to modify it slightly. I like to tinker with things.

Daily tracking updates will be posted till I get my stuff, which should be on or before November 6.

And in other news - Halloween is over. Now normally we would get a break before the "Holiday Season" begins. I remember when the "Holiday Season" did not really start till AFTER Thanksgiving.

Those days are over. Left behind in the stone age. This is the 21st Century. The information age. We do not have time to wait around for things! Hell if I could download take-out food I would.

So when did "The Holidays" start on November 1? The ads for this season's Christmas movies are already out. Fred Claus is in theaters on the 9th. Got to get that money now before people spend it on other crap! And in the next few days all the other Christmas ads will be out. Malls will drag out all those darn decorations. Festive music will be playing everywhere. And so on. All this will happen in the next few days.

OPEN LETTER TO SEARS:

Halloween is over. So please pull your Craftsman "Happy Halloween" ad where a bunch of tools form a skeleton. We want Christmas ads! So lets get on the ball. Tell marketing to stop smoking the pot and get with the program already.

And now for something GROSS! Miller Chill - a "chelada style" light beer brewed with a hint of lime and salt.

Chelada style beer? What the crap is that? I have never heard of it. So I Googled it. And I found out that this style of beer is really NOT a style of beer - it is a mixed drink. About as much of a "style" of beer as the Irish Car Bomb.

HOW TO MAKE AN IRISH CAR BOMB

1/2 pint of Guinness or other stout

1/2 shot of Bailey's Irish Creme and 1/2 shot of Jameson Irish Whiskey in the same shot glass

Take the shot glass with the Bailey's and Jameson and drop it into the 1/2 pint of stout, then CHUG IT. Do not put the glass down till the shot glass hits your nose.

Clearly not a "beer style". So anyway in Mexico at some point someone decided to mix hot sauce with beer. Think of a "Bloody Mary" only use beer instead of vodka. In Spanish this is called "cerveza preparada " or "prepared beer". One form of prepared beer involves lime juice.

So there Miller Brewing Company! You are NOT producing any "style" of beer. You are producing a wimpy version of a mixed drink. But then again - most people will not care. They will drunk your swill and think it is "beer". I however will keep drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or Sam Adams. Without any lime juice or salt. Cause that is how I roll.

One more thing. I have a wild hair up my ass to make a pumpkin pie without using anything from a can. This means using a real actual pumpkin! Not some crap in a can. Well I will have to use evaporated milk from a can. But I want to use a real pumpkin. A pie pumpkin. They are smaller than the Halloween pumpkins - and sweeter.

And no, I have no idea there these wild hairs come from. They just get up there somehow.

Got More Stuff

EXCITING NEWS! I ordered the Aquapod 12 gallon HQI aquarium. The Aquapod is an "all in one" design, with a false back that includes an overflow and space to put filter media.

The HQI part means it comes with no top and a 70 watt metal halide lamp with a color temperature of 14,000 kelvins. The higher the color temperature, the cooler the light is. This means more blue. 10,000 kelvins is considered to be perfectly white. I think. So lower than 10,000 means more yellow / red and higher means more blue. 14,000 kelvins will simulate water at a depth of 10 to 15 feet. Perfect for a lot of stuff. 12 gallons with 70 watts of light means almost 6 watts per gallon - plenty of light for some fancy stuff. Like corals. When I set it up, most likely it will be saltwater. What the hell.

The tank has no canopy. It is an open design. I may get a glass lid for it to slow down evaporation. Or keep it open. Halide lights generate a lot of heat, but with no cover the heat will not be trapped.

Photos of the thing will be posted as soon as it arrives. I already know that a few modifications are needed. It will be fun to design the modifications.

So now I feel a little better about the death of the cell phone. I have insurance on the thing (I forgot that I had it) so I will be making a claim. The replacement phone I want will cost $150 after all the discounts and stuff. But I will try to get that lowered by making an insurance claim.

Depending on how much they give me for my claim - I will either retain the insurance or tell them to keep the claim offer, convert it to Mexican pennies, and cram it all up their ass. And of course drop all insurance. If all they offer is a measly $10 or $20 then what is the point? What the hell is the $3 or so a month for insurance for? I should at least get $100. At least. Maybe even enough to get the $150 phone for free.

I just love fighting with a company over insurance claims. Something tells me this is going to be a pain in my ass.

So I ordered the tank to make me feel better. I do feel a little better.

But this could be due to the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale I bought today. I have been out of beer for at least 2 weeks. I was just not motivated to get any.

The Tropical Storm will NOT hit Florida. The cone is shifting to the west (towards FL) but it will not hit. I wish it would - Central FL really needs the water. In fact, the storm needs to make landfall and stall out over Central Florida, then move SLOWLY up the coast dumping rain along the way. Atlanta is about out of water, as is Fuzz.


But whatever - it is not going to hit Florida. It will move out to sea, and die once it gets into colder water. After it rains on The Bahamas - it will only be a threat to ships at sea.

Design Flaws

It is time I come clean. I know a chick who owns a Toyota Prius. The hybrid.

So anyway, she goes on some manner of vacation. And she leaves her car parked in the parking garage at her work location. I guess she lives in crack city and did not want to leave the car parked there. Whatever. That is not important.

What IS important is that the 12 volt battery in her car died. This is design flaw number 1. The 12 volt battery is puny. I have seen hearing aides with more battery capacity than the Prius battery had. Remember this is Florida - the retirement state. LOTS of old people here. I think 10% of the residents are veterans of the Civil War. 5% of the population remember George Washington and 1% went to high school with Moses.

The Prius has 2 batteries. One is huge and has 200 volts. This battery runs the car but is useless to start the engine. The 12 volt battery is so small that I wonder what it is even used for. I mean shit - how hard would it be to design the vehicle to use a standard automotive battery? But nooooo - Toyota had to make the Prius to use a little battery that is almost worthless.

Anyway, over the week plus the chick was out out town the battery discharged. I think she left her "smartkey" feature on. Or maybe it was the alarm. Who knows. The point is the battery died.

So I get a call last night. Her battery is dead and since I have a truck it stands to reason I have jumper cables. Well I do! How about that? I got everything in my tool box. Even Kenneth Cole Black. Everything.

Anyhow today I go meet her at her office building to rescue the Prius. I got my truck, I got the jumper cables, and so on. Check check check. Everything in order .

So we get to the car. Now I have already covered the first major design flaw in the Prius. The small battery. Really - the thing MIGHT be 100 amp hours. Maybe. More likely it is only 50 amp hours. It is really small. I have seen D cell batteries with more capacity. So that is design flaw 1.

Design flaw 2 is that when the little 12 volt battery dies - nothing unlocks. Well the drivers side door unlocks. but can you open the back doors? Hell no. There is no manual door lock. No maybe there was a "child lock" thing going on that I did not know about. But whatever was going on - only the drivers door could be opened. Design flaw 2.

Design flaw 3 relates to what is not under the hood. The battery is not under the hood. So I get the hood open and.......where the fuck is the battery? Not under the hood. And with no battery, there is nothing to jump.

NOTE - upon consultation with other Prius owners it turns out there is a hidden 12 volt terminal under the hood that can be used as a jump start point. But I did not know this. So it still counts as a design flaw.

Now I consult the owners manual to find out where the hell the battery is. As it turns out, the battery is in the hatchback. but do you remember design flaw 2? Nothing opens except the drivers door? So how the hell can I get access to the hatchback?

As it turns out there is a manual release - inside the car. So now I have to crawl into the back of the car - from the drivers seat. There is this pull shade thing that is hiding all the crap in the hatchback that has to be removed. Then the back seats have to fold down. Now all the crap has to be removed from the hatchback. And now there is a cover that has to be removed. Then the "luggage rack" has to be removed. And now I can get to the manual release. Design flaw 4 is the mega pain in the ass it is to open the hatchback if the battery dies.

Shit I had a 1989 DODGE Daytona that had a hatchback. I could open the hatchback with the key. No battery needed. HELLO TOYOTA! Why the fuck make things so complicated?

And now there are only two more covers to remove and then I can see the positive and negative terminals for the battery. So I jump the battery. The car starts.

And as soon as I remove my jumper cables - the car dies. As it turns out if the transmission is in neutral the battery will not recharge.

So I tell the chick to put the car in park and restart it. She does. And it starts. Then I remove my jumper cables. And the car runs. So I follow her out of the parking garage. She uses her access card to open the gate and she drives out. I of course am still in the garage. So she puts the car in park and goes back to the gate to open it again. And it will not open.

So I drive around the gate. I have a truck. Fuck the curbs and the landscaping. I can drive over all that shit. So I do.

Anyway there you go. The design flaws in the Toyota Prius. Something so simple had to be made so complicated. Of course it should be noted there is a jump start terminal under the hood, but it is hidden under a cover and that cover can only be removed with the key and I did not know this so I had no way of knowing about it.

I have decided I want the AT&T 8525 as my replacement phone.

It has bluetooth and 802.11 capability and a full keyboard and shit. I can get it for $150 plus a two year contract extension. I was going to extend the contract anyway, so I might as well get a discount on a phone for doing so.

I also want to order this thing.

This is the Aquapod 12 gallon with a 70 watt HQI lighting system. For only $150 plus $30 shipping. Not a bad deal at all. I have no place to put the shit right now, but when a deal like this comes along you do not worry about such things. Just get it. So I may.