Aaaaah... Blogger made some changes to their system and upgraded everything.

I seem to have lost the option of listing multiple posts within the same day with the *oldest* one first. Now, it appears that the newest post will be on top, whether it's on a new day or on the same day as the previous post.

Rats. Time to email their tech support. I want that option back.

Once again, I feel compelled to point out that if you're sitting five feet away from me on a subway train, and I can determine that the singer you're listening to on your headphones is a woman, you're playing the music at a dangerously loud level. Turn it the heck down while you still CAN hear it at lower volumes.

And stop abusing your ears before you end up with a permanent case of tinnitus, like me. In the late 80s, I dated a person whose family friend was in a (pretty darned good) band. So we went to see them perform at various places. The trouble was, most of these venues were tiny little bar/tavern-sized locations, but their sound systems were designed for a place the size of the Spectrum. After a few of these concerts, I noticed my ears were ringing even the next morning and thought, "I should wear earplugs to these shows." I did get earplugs, but too late. The ringing never really went away. And the sad part is, I really didn't attend all that many performances before tinnitus kicked in for keeps; it was maybe five or six concerts before the ringing converted from "it goes away by late the next morning"" to "I'm still waiting for it to stop". Obviously, not everyone will be affected as soon as that, but I can attest that it's possible. Nobody knows that they've drawn the genetic short straw for noise-sensitive ears until *after* the damage is done.

Anyway, it's a pet peeve of mine to see people abusing their ears. Blasting loud music into your ears is the auditory equivalent of staring at the sun: something that's not worth the risk of the injury it a cause.

We have an ice storm warning.

I just called out from work. I learned the hard way in 1994 to STAY INDOORS during ice storms.

Today's weather is Evil with a capital E. If you're experiencing the weather pattern that's passing through the Philly area right now, stay the heck home until Mother Nature stops pitching her tantrum.

Sheesh! We have what amounts to a dusting of snow and ice on the ground, but even *that* is enough to cause a hazard!

PennDOT, in their infinite wisdom (ha ha), opted NOT to salt or plow the southbound left-turn lane that leads to the Park-and-Ride entrance.

When I moved from the cleared center lane to the snow-covered turning lane, I could see I had a red light at the intersection prior to where the actual turn takes place. So I applied the brakes.

And did a slow-motion 180 degree fishtail.

I *do* mean S-L-O-W motion, too, as in, "a person could have walked faster than the car was moving". But it's still creepy to be in a car that's in motion when you don't intend it to be.

Fortunately, the nearest oncoming headlights were about a block away. Thank God that even on Broad Street, the traffic is extremely light prior to 7 AM. Also, thank God I was driving slowly to begin with. That made the difference between having a super-slow-mo unintended turn and an "Oh, *%&$#!!! Hang on for dear life!" moment.

I'm lucky. Though my guardian angel surely has a few new grey hairs, I was none the worse for wear. I just righted the car and went on my way as though nothing unusual had happened. Still, whoever thought that neglecting the turning lane, when South Broad Street was being cleared, needs to be thumped soundly on the noggin with a bag of rock salt. If you see "accident on South Broad Street" on today's traffic report, you'll know that some speed demon attempted to use that left-turn lane, with decidedly worse results than mine.

P.S. OMG, I'm laughing my head off!

The Roomba finished vacuuming and was sitting quietly, charging on its base. After a few minutes, Captain and Stanley decided that now that the Trilobite Monster seemed to be safely asleep and quiet, it was time to give it a closer examination.

Picture two Stripey Critters cautiously circling around a Roomba, sniffing it warily. Now picture one of them, I'm not sure which because I didn't see it, deciding to get a closer look and trying to step on the device.

Whichever kitty did that had the misfortune of standing right ON the big "clean" button that activates the robot. All I knew is suddenly I heard the little electronic happy-music that precedes the Roomba's embarking on a vacuuming mission. The motor whirred to life, and the Roomba started moving.

Captain and Stanley might have set a new Feline Land Speed Record just now, trying to get as far away from the now-awakened Trilobite Monster as their little paws could carry them.

We shut the device off and returned it to its charging base, since it was nowhere near recharged when the cats accidentally activated it. It's been a while since I've laughed this hard. :o) Poor kitties... but maybe they'll let the Trilobite Monster nap undisturbed from now on.

The cats are decidedly NOT elated about the new Roomba. As the whirring silver horseshoe-crab crosses the dining room, Stanley keeps a wary eye on the monster from a safe distance, and Captain breaks cover from his hideaway behind the box.

Presuming all goes well, it'll be set to run while Mark and I are at work and the cats are in the basement. But I want to actually SEE it in action, before we let it run unattended.

I'm doing my best to convince the Kitty Committee that I'm laughing *with* them. ;o) I don't think they're buying it, however.

There's a raffle going on in the cafeteria at work. I got a kick out of the Eagles *baseball* jersey. The sight of a football team's logo on a baseball jersey gave me a few moments of cognitive dissonance, until I figured out why I was having feelings of "What's wrong with this picture?" while looking at it.

I'm reminded of our Group of Friends (tm) annual brunch, which we have around Christmas every year in lieu of buying one another gifts. We got together last New Year's Eve at the Rittenhouse Hotel, and got a chuckle out of hearing the resident live musician play "Piano Man" on an acoustic guitar. :o)

What's next? A Phillies hockey jersey? A rendition of "Mr. Tambourine Man" played on a pipe organ? The world's gone topsy-turvy, I tell you!

Holy cow! Barbecued bus, anyone?

As you can seen one of the buses that serves the Fort Washington train station had some technical difficulties. And when I say "technical difficulties", I mean "the rear half of the bus was on fire". (!!!!) This was as close as I could get to it without making it obvious that I was making use of a camera phone. I didn't think the SEPTA supervisors on the scene would be too enthused by my on-the-spot reporting.

Fortunately, from what is being retold among the passengers at the train station, the driver was alone in the bus and he'd been about to start his first run of the day. Passing motorist honked and told the bus driver the vehicle was on fire. The driver exited the bus just as there was a loud BOOM. The first thing that he was asked, upon reporting the problem, was if he'd tried to put the fire out; the answer was a resounding *no*.

If the above sequence of events, as shared among the passengers awaiting the train, is what happened, I don't blame the bus driver. I've seen those travel-sized fire extinguishers carried on buses. I've eaten ice cream cones that are bigger than those things. I think they'd be more useful in assisting a person whose clothes had ignited (God forbid) thanks to an accident or vehicle fire. No way in heck are they designed to put out half-a-bus's worth of flame. That's a job for either Superman or the fire department, depending on which of them arrives first.

I'm glad the only casualty appears to be the bus. I wonder if this will make the news?

For the record...

If I'm standing 6-10 feet away from you on a train platform, and can clearly hear the music emanating from your headphones even over the background noise of a train pulling into the station, you're committing mayhem on your ears. Turn down the freakin' volume while you still have a sense of hearing to preserve.

P.S. And I'd say the same thing even if my fellow passenger's choice of music DIDN'T sound like schlock.

When I rule the world, all people will LEARN TO PROOFREAD!

Gaaah! The seeds of this rant were planted a few weeks ago, when we prepped and sent out a *huge* batch of medical insurance cards for a new customer, which we'll call XYZ Management Services. Soon afterward, we began receiving complaints that the aforementioned cards contained an incorrect customer service phone number on the back.

Therefore, all those cards were reissued, this time bearing the correct customer service number. Seven people dropped everything they were doing to prep yet another giant batch of cards, including adding an insert to the envelope that explained the reason for the replacement card. This insert informed subscribers what the correct phone number should be, and told them to destroy the original card with the wrong information on it.

So there we all were, stuffing cards and inserts into envelopes like mad, trying to get the entire XYZ shipment ready for the mailroom as quickly as humanly possible. Suddenly, we were called to attention by one shout: "Pull the insert!" It turns out that the insert, which was created to explain XYZ's phone number mistake to subscribers, contained a mistake on the corrected phone number...!

Eeeeeyaaah!!! My freaking nerves!

We had to remove the insert with the error from all those envelopes, then wait for the corporate print shop to print Insert Version 2.0, with the information that XYZ Company *really* intended to send. Then we sped through stuffing the corrected inserts into the envelopes with the corrected insurance cards. I couldn't help but notice that the revised inserts were still warm from the printing press.

Like I said: when I rule the world, people will proofread. Someone else provided wrong information, but OUR department was the one to deal with the chaos that resulted.

I need some aspirin.

How's this for a hazard? This is the outbound regional rail boarding platform at SEPTA's Fern Rock Transportation Center. It sleeted/snowed a bit overnight; can you tell?

Passengers need to walk across the coating of frozen granules (too gritty to be snowflakes, IMO) to board trains. Oh, and the two-story-tall stairs leading down to the platform are in the same condition. Remember from several posts ago that this is the station where I avoid touching the railings because of the pigeon droppings that haven't been removed since I started this commute back in October... you can just imagine how delighted I was to walk down the iced-over stairs this morning, without the precaution of holding the railing.

Yo, SEPTA, have you ever heard of salt? How about shovels, or for goodness sakes at least a decent broom?

If someone breaks their freakin' neck out here, well, now you'll know why.

Just some random thoughts on a frosty Friday morning...

Greater Kensington String Band

BWAHAHA! It took me a few times' worth of hearing the beeps of the person across the aisle's cell phone, but suddenly I realized what the signal was. The pattern was three short beeps, two long beeps, and three short beeps. Each time the phone sounded, its owner would flip the device open, read, then text a response.

At first, I thought, "It sounds almost like Morse code for 'SOS', except that the letter O is three dashes, not two."

Then, a memory from eons ago surfaced: two dashes is the way to render the letter M in Morse code. Once upon a time, in Hell-imentary school, my friends and I thought we might converse in class via Morse code. But we couldn't manage to signal each other without also annoying the teacher with the noise, so the experiment lasted only one day... but I digress.

Anyway, the moment I remembered the meaning of two dashes in Morse code, I realized that "... _ _ ..." means, "SMS". So the phone was actually saying "SMS" whenever it received an SMS. :o) Clever! I got a chuckle out of that.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm a nerd. So sue me. ;o)

Only in South Philly!

When the sleigh is in the shop, Santa rides the Zamboni. Here's the proof! :o)

Finally, I think the saga of the cell phone is just about over. The *second* replacement arrived on Wednesday. (The first replacement was the NON-camera model of this phone, plus it wasn't quite working right -- it wouldn't write to the memory card.)

This time, the replacement phone is the CORRECT model AND it's writing to the storage card just fine. So why do I say the saga is "just about" over? For two reasons.

1. The good news is that this phone came with the upgrade pre-installed (Yay!) The bad news is that I now have to make a few tweaks to get some of my pre-upgrade stuff to behave properly. I'll do that over the long weekend, if all goes well.

2. In the box that I had to use to return the SECOND replacement phone to Verizon, there was a return form to fill out, to ID this device as having come from me. Unfortunately, the box for the FIRST replacement phone contained no such form. I wouldn't have even known the return form existed, if I hadn't had to send back another phone. So I'll have to talk to Verizon yet again, to ensure that they do, in fact, acknowledged that the first returned device came from me.

Eeeeee. There's never a dull freaking moment around here, what can I say?

In other news, today is my first day of flying solo with my job. Renee's maternity leave begins today. Fortunately, there's only ONE enormous shipment of medical cards that hasn't arrived yet. And we wouldn't even have THAT if the dodos who produced the original shipment had a clue how to proofread. This is Round Two for this particular mega-shipment. The first one, all 4000+ cards of it, came in fouled up; they had the subscriber's name where the ID number should be, and vice versa. (Think "NAME: 12345" and "ID NUMBER: John Doe".)

They should have caught that blatant error the first time they created a test card, and it should have been corrected before we ever set eyes on a card. Snafus like that make me nuts. And these pinheads who can't proofread their way out of a paper bag still have jobs in IT, while I got downsized. GRRRRR...

Oh, well. At least we had both Renee AND me for the vast majority of the Humongous Avalanche of Cards. That saved a lot of time.

We get out early today. :o) I love holidays.

YA KNOW...

Did I break a freakin' MIRROR on Wednesday or something?

The good news: I did, in fact, get *a* working phone from Verizon.

The bad news: They screwed up and sent me the model WITHOUT a camera. The original phone I had was the one WITH a camera.

Is it a bad sign that I have Verizon's 800 number for tech support, as well as the three menu options I need to enter to get the kind of support I need, memorized?

I called them back. They'll send me yet another replacement phone, WITH a camera this time.

At least this time, I actually HAVE a telephone that I can use while I'm awaiting the arrival of the next one. So I'll only be annoyed instead of seriously POed.

Gaah. Yet another example of the weakest link in the technology chain not being the silicone-based components, but CARBON-based ones. It was a human error that caused whatever bug made my upgrade fail. It was another human error that I never got a freaking door tag notifying me that there was an attempt to deliver the parcel. And now it's a human error that sent me the wrong kind of telephone. Hey, I realize that nobody's perfect, but do I have to deal with the mistakes of every person on the planet, all at the same time? Good thing I'm already nuts, because the past few days would've driven me crazy for sure.

I'm not only nuts, but I'm half asleep. Rather than doze off right on the keyboard, I'm going to sign off now.

HOO-freaking-RAY, the phone is here! I'm posting from it now.

Thank God *that's* resolved.

What a week! It appears that neither high-tech nor low-tech wants to cooperate with me.

Obviously, the saga of my original cell phone's demise is the trouble I've had with high-tech. But even the lowest of low-tech, a piece of paper with information written on it, has failed me when I needed it.

FedEx DID attempt to deliver my replacement phone yesterday, but no one was at home to receive it. When this happens, they're SUPPOSED to leave a door tag to notify the residents that they tried to deliver a package.

Did they leave a tag on YOUR door? That's how they left a tag on MY door. Apparently, we're supposed to psychically GUESS when the delivery person has paid us a visit. Like I said, even low-tech has its failure points, and apparently I've discovered where one of those points is. The written note actually has to EXIST, and you actually have to have it in your possession, before you're able to read it.

Long story short: I called Verizon to enquire after their shipment, got the tracking number from them, and found out that FedEx has the phone at their local facility. We'll be picking it up this afternoon. Thank God. The sooner this aggravation is done with, the better I'll feel.

I came home from the Phantoms game tonight to find that the replacement cell phone has not arrived yet.



I hope it gets here tomorrow. If I have to wait until Monday for an item that should have been sent overnight, there's going to be Hades to pay.