And a Barrel O' Rum

Shiver me timbers! September 19th in me sights.
Be it International Talk Like Pirate Day already?



Avast ye landlubbers & mateys and take a gander at this mighty fine specimen of me Barrel O' Rum mug from me hearty hangout in Tampa that be ye ol' Hawaiian Village.

Quite a find sh' be many a voyages 'go in the vast sea of junktique.

Yarrrr!!!!

Tiki ABC's & More

I ordered my first "stuffs" from Etsy last week and they came today:



Three nifty little handmade tiki books by Jennifer Menken. Who ever knew tikis could be so athletic? The extra super bonus Tiki Alphabet is also very cool (though I do with it were a bit bigger to make it easier to share with the little ones.) They will go on the shelf with other fine works by Shag, Trader Vic, and The Bum. Jennifer also has some neat tiki paintings available too.

Go check her stuff out at: wildcargo.

Hand Doctor

You know you're seeing the hand doctor when you see art like this on the
wall.

Fry's Math

I had to stop by Fry's this afternoon to pick up some stuff we needed for work next week. This involved video cable with BNC connectors and some little BNC inline splicers to connect several cables together.



I found a pack of 10 inline splices. The only one. However it had been opened and someone had taken 3 of them. I needed them anyway so I asked the guy in the electronics aisle if they'd knock them down a bit since there were only 7 of 10 left. He said they could give me 5% off but I'd have to go back up front to the customer service counter. I asked him why not 30% off since 3 out of 10 is 30% and he said he didn't know but that's what they could do.

So... I went back up front to the customer service counter and started over again. My request for 30% off were met with blank stares and my inquiries as to why they could only do %5 off remained unanswered. Then after we got "manager approval" to do the %5 reduction I was told "the amount is too low and the department will have to do the markdown."

I'm at "The" Customer Service Counter for the whole freaking store and they can't do this markdown? The electronics department has a superpower that "The" Customer Service Counter does not? Wow.

So I had the guy from "The" Customer Service Counter walk me back to the electronics department so I wouldn't be sent back a second time. I figured as long as I was now there I'd go through my whole "3 is 30% of 10" thing again with the manager there and see if he could get it but alas I admitted defeat and took my 5%.

I got $13.19 marked down a whole $0.66.

In Fry's Math: (3/10)*100% = 5%
This could probably be further simplified to (X/Y)*100% = 5% for any values of X and Y.

Fry's might as well have their store run by robots... or maybe even Daleks. They'd spend a little more on 3-in-One but they save tons in labor cost.

That being said, I like Fry's and will go there again. Their lack of Customer Service is not enough to scare me away. It makes me think twice before going there first though.

Yertle

I ran across this little guy on the walkway down by the carillon tower weekend before last. At first I thought it was a nutshell or something.



Nope. It's Yertle.



He's a long way away from where he came in...



This appears to be a "Who you lookin' at?" type of look.

We all left Yertle alone. I hope he made it back safely.

This Guy

I think it's a fireplug gnome.

Bowling '71

My Mom is second from the left. Looks like a varied and dangerous bunch to me. Mostly likely they played at Lenox Square way back when they had a bowling alley, Colonial grocery store, and a Kresge.

Gummy Disaster

Please move to the center of the vehicle and away from the doors

This weekend I made a visit to the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth. In addition to the expected trains, they had, tractors, buses, and other vehicles that complimented the rail system including a Westinghouse C-100 Automated People Mover.



This was pretty cool because I'd never seen one of these cars outside of the Atlanta Airport terminals and you don't ever get to see the outside because you're always inside. The museum says they have #1 and #53. Since there's only one sitting out there right now and I don't see any numbers on it, I don't know which one this is. I'll guess #53 since there's an empty space in front of it. I believe all the C-100's were replaced with the Bombardier CX-100 back in 2001 or so.

As long as we're in that mode, watch this Servotron video for the song People Mover:



Servotron is the best robot band ever. Ever. I dearly miss them almost as much as I do Man or Astro-man? I saw Servotron once at the 40 Watt in Athens. Nothing can compare. Nothing will. Ever.

Not open...

It's only 5:50 though.

Texas Caviar

Posted by request:



Posted by request:

There are thousands of recipes for "Texas Caviar" out there. They're all a little different but seem to revolve somewhat around black-eyed peas. I don't even make it the same way every time but here's my general attack plan:

Texas Caviar

Ingredients:

• 2 15 OZ cans of black-eyed peas
• 1 11 OZ can white shoepeg corn
• 1 11 OZ can yellow shoepeg corn
• 1 can Rotel dice tomatoes with green chilies
• 1/2 onion, (finely chopped)
• 2 cloves of garlic (minced)
• 8 OZ of Italian salad dressing
• cilantro
  
• salt
• pepper

Directions:

Put everything (except cilantro) in a bowl. Add salad dressing. Salt & pepper to taste. Cover and put the bowl in the fridge overnight. Stir every once in a while if you want to let it all marinate. Add some fresh chopped cilantro before serving.

This works great as a bean dip for little tortilla "scoop" chips or just regular tortilla chips. It could also work as a cold side dish I guess but I stick with chips.

Do what you want with it. Add some black beans, or red onions. Perhaps skip the Italian dressing and make your own with vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe some cumin and cayenne pepper. Or do what I do... go to the internet, read 10-20 recipes for it... then just do what you want.