I suppose some people use blogs as “news” and even read internet news sites. (I must admit I read the NY Times and BBC headlines online.) But some people are even holding blogs up to journalistic standards that our news media won’t follow. I came to this from reading some unflattering comments about a neighbor. The guy is wound a bit too tight (he’s from Philly) and was “caught” making backroom deals in Portland. Not illegal backroom deals, but ones that we don’t cotton to out here in the west. Well, I know I’m being equally deluded in that comment, but you get the drift.

In any case, the blog post and the subsequent bullying by anonymous sources are around 17,000 words long. And I mean bullying. Than, who is the one under scrutiny, fired off some rather bullyish statements that could be taken as funny but aren’t. And then others got into it, including one guy (male or female I don’t know since they’re ANONYMOUS) who must have had a job writing getting paid by the word. And other thinly hidden Libertarian crap.

Come on people, this is the intarweb. It’s used to host knitting blogs and unsound physics and whatever sorts of pr0n you’d ever want. Come to think of it, maybe wonkism is political pr0n.

So, it turns out Costco isn’t all that pleasant to deal with. My dad is slowing down so my mom wanted to change the membership over to her name instead of his. The people at Costco weren’t all that helpful at first.

Me: My dad is unable to use his membership so much so I’d like to change the membership to my mom’s name.
Costco: WHAT’S THE CARD NUMBER?
Me: Well, I can tell you that my mom’s not on the account.
Costco: Well, GIVE ME THE ACCOUNT NUMBER.
Me: 7111..
Costco (interrupting angrily): THAT’S NOT THE CARD NUMBER, THAT’S THE CREDIT CARD NUMBER.
Me: Hell, how am I supposed to know? Let me read the whole number first. (Keep in mind that I don’t have a Costco credit card, just a membership card and that’s what I was reading off of.)

I finally get her the number.

Costco: YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING WITH THIS ACCOUNT. IT’S TOO LATE, NOW THAT YOUR DAD IS DEAD.
Me: I didn’t say he was dead, I said he’s unable to use the account. He’s 89 years old!

Anyway, you can imagine how much I enjoyed that conversation. What a bunch of maroons.

Work, at the moment, is pleasant because I’m doing virtual weeding. Getting rid of crap from a database that isn’t being used. And going to the gym yesterday was ideal since the wind was blowing the rain sideways.

Got my dad a small dog pencil holder (the dog is sitting like a human and holds the pencil in its front paws) for his birthday. It’s just the kind of thing he likes, fortunately. And I got my mom what she always wants for Mother’s day, lottery scratch tickets. I think the $5 I spent on the tickets paid out $27 this time.

Best of all, I got a ride downtown with my neighbor because she’s going to see Al Franken downtown!

My friend Craig has a computer I gave him. It came from Greg, originally, and after fixing it I was told that I could only give it away for, well, sex. I’m not about to have sex with Craig, so I think I violated that part of the agreement.

In any case, I gave him the computer a while ago and he’s on dial-up. That means he hasn’t updated any of the software and I had to reinstall virus programs, and I had to do it for him. I probably would have been screwing around with my own computer if I wasn’t screwing around with his. This way, however, I got some beer out of the deal since Craig works at the local pub.

I did do some yardwork beforehand, and since the yard debris garbage can was full I didn’t feel so bad about stopping. I suppose I could get a chipper and do some more composting, but that sounds like work, too.

Not that I was expecting much else. Blade was the first movie I bought on DVD and I’ve enjoyed all of the silly trilogy. There was a quote about the first movie from, I think, Michael Dorff and it was, “Sometimes people want to watch a movie where someone kicks a lot of ass.” Or something like that. The comments I heard about Jessica Biel were correct and she is hot, hot, hot in the movie. And all she does is look tough and kill vampires. Having Parker Posey as the main evil vampire doesn’t hurt, either.

So today was “Opening Day” for the boaters in Oregon. I’m not sure what that means except I was in a boat parade. (It helps to know people who own expensive yachts.)

The weather turned out to be rather pleasant today but even now everything seems to be rocking gently back and forth in front of my eyes.

OK, so I sold my old Organic Chemistry text from MIT. It’s a SIX POUND BOOK. How did I first find this out? By checking Amazon.com.

If you sell a book through Amazon, you set the price and they give you some compensation for shipping. Somehow they can’t figure out that THEY ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH THE BOOK WEIGHS. So they only give you postage for a 2 pound book. And no money for the padded envelope they expect you to use. If you order something from Amazon yourself, you get charged shipping and handling. Why don’t they give it to you, as an affiliate bookseller? Is it because AMAZON IS EVIL?

Anyway, I didn’t realize that I’d get screwed on shipping. I put the book up for $1.95, to get rid of it. $1.95-Amazon’s cut ($1.28) + Amazon’s allowed shipping ($2.26) – real shipping ($3.52) is a loss of $0.59. It’s worth it to get rid of that huge honking waste of bookshelf space, but IT COULD HAVE GONE IN THE BONFIRE. I guess that’s the price I pay for “recycling” the book.

I broke the new wall plate so I need to make yet another trip to the hardware store.

Oh, my friend Sun asked why I was being so prudish. I can’t believe you’re the same guy who used to go around telling people to ask him if he had four Erlenmayer(sp) flasks in his pocket, or if he was just happy to see them. I suppose I was just trying to be funny. By the way Sun, it’s Erlenmeyer.

OK, had another book go. I figure if I get $20 for a book that was going to be in a bonfire anyway, that’s good. I spend about $5 on shipping and packaging, and I gain another few inches on my bookshelf. I should probably buy more bookshelves but. eh.

So while I was geekily buying another padded envelope to ship out my book, I saw a guy copying a ham radio manual. I chatted with him for a while about the radio. Sort of reminds me of what my co-worker said to me the other day, “How old are you? You live at home with your parents, you’re the treasurer of the ham radio club. Do you ever get <non-naughty word with naughty implications>?

So I returned the stuff I didn’t use to fix the toilet, and I spent a bunch more on an exhaust fan timer for the bathroom and a shower squeegee. Then some flourescent bulbs burnt out and the knob on the medicine cabinet fell off. So tomorrow is another trip to the hardware store. Yeesh, I feel like George Bailey with his broken down house from It’s a Wonderful Life.

Something isn’t quite right, and it may be time to replace the Gateway. Who knows?

In other news, there really isn’t all that much other news. One of my books has escaped the book burning by being sold on Amazon. The rest are still headed that way. Felt weak at the gym, but that may be because lunch was 2 hot dogs for $2.

My father is still under the weather and still has the stomach ‘flu. At least he’s getting out of bed.

To sell a used book on Amazon, you need to undercut other sellers. So, basically, you can make $0.50 on the textbook that you paid $100 for. But Amazon calculates shipping and handling costs beforehand, and that means they barely give you enough for Media Mail rate postage. You still have to find a proper envelope/bag to ship the book in. I want the books that I list as “Nearly New” to arrive looking “Nearly New.” So I have to subtract $1.50 for a padded envelope from the amount I make. So, listing books for less than $1.50 means I lose money. Then, you can’t get Media Mail postage from the automated machines, so you have to go stand in line during normal business hours. And Amazon doesn’t really know what books weigh: the book I just sold was a pound heavier than they said.

OK, so I think this book burning idea is getting better and better.

Going to the gym isn’t making me ready for hoeing (garden hoeing, get your mind out of the gutter) because what I suspect are my gluteal muscles are rather sore. But that was from yesterday’s adventures. Today’s excitement involved plumbing.

Greg’s brother-in-law Earl is a plumber (Aapple plumbing) and I knew I should have called him instead of fixing the toilet, but my dad’s kind of confused and if the toilet near his bed was missing, I don’t know what would happen. What started this was fixing the sink upstairs. Like all our Moen sinks, the cartridge inside needs to be replaced every few years. As long as I was fixing that, I thought I should fix the toilet as well. Replace the valves, I thought. Well, rocking of the toilet was starting to bother me as well, so looked into that. I ended up dismantling the toilet and finding a lot of rust underneath. I think the subfloor needs to be replaced, but that’ll have to be another day.

Of course I found all this out at 5:45PM on a Sunday afternoon. I rushed to the hardware store and bought a bunch of parts, figuring that I could return the parts that I didn’t need, but this was the only chance I’d have to buy parts until the next day. Turns out all I needed were some washers, some nuts, and a new wax seal. And a couple of hours, maybe three. I even had to hacksaw off the old corroded handle.

WHAT EXCITEMENT! (I could tell you about mowing the lawn yesterday, too.)