rmiles7721

Almost Valentine’s Day…

Valentine’s day is a darned joke.

Up until he late sixties the Catholic Church recognized almost a dozen different Valentine’s Days, named so after Christian martyrs. Our current Valentine’s Day comes from two of them named Valentine and is supposed to be a saints day commemorating Saint Valentine.

During the time of that dirty old man Geoffrey Chaucer the day became associated wit romantic love.

During the 1800s handwritten notes to our ‘valentine’ started giving way to mass produced greeting cards. The commercialization of Valentine’s Day led the way to the further commercialization of holidays. It’s the time to buy greeting cards, red lingerie such as bustiers and tons of flowers.

Not that I am a complete Scrooge about the holidays or anything, but personally I would prefer the wife to just write me a note or something rather than go out an buy junk that will just get stuck in a drawer somewhere.

This year is a bit different though. I start my vacation on Valentine’s Day. Since I don’t know what things are going to be like in June as far as extra money goes, or my work hours, we are celebrating our 20th anniversary a bit early and going to the Bahamas on the 15th. I would have gotten tickets a day earlier but it would have been much more difficult for her to take an extra day off work, not to mention the fact that we had to find childcare for the girls as well.

Going Out

I got an email from a friend the other day. Seems that a few bloggers are getting together for dinner tonight in Atlanta. I lucked out on that one. One of my manager’s is supposed to be off this weekend but he is wanting to go skiing the weekend prior to my vacation with some buddies and wanted to know if I would trade days off with him.

I thought that was a pretty good idea. My weekend off wasn’t supposed to roll around until that weekend four days before I start my vacation and I am pretty sure I would have lost at least one of those days off once my boss looked at the schedules. This way I still go on vacation in three weeks AND get THIS weekend off. Sweet. We even found a babysitter for the girls for tonight, so the wife and I will both get to go. She’s made it to a couple of blogmeets with me but not had the opportunity to just go hang out with them.

Today is the boy’s birthday but I will post about that later today. It’s kind of sad because this is the first time he has never been with us on his birthday. I think I will call him shortly and see if he’s awake. He has a pretty bad cold in addition to being miserable because he has no clothing to speak of. Maybe I can send him some Sports Authority coupons πŸ™‚

Actually he already has received his birthday present. He wanted the Orange Box version of Half-Life 2 and since he lost the password for one of my Steam accounts and can’t seem to get it reset, that was perfect.

Flock

I started my browser up the other morning and realized that Flock had been updated again. I think I am currently running version 1.07. I am really starting to like Flock. I don’t really use the Media bar but it does support all of the Firefox plugins, or the ones I use anyway. It also seems to use less memory than Firefox and while I realize that the memory leaks in Firefox are mostly caused by 3rd party plugins, Flock doesn’t seem to have as many problems with it. It does use more and more memory than FF but I seem to be able to use it at least two or three times longer than Firefox. Pretty big difference, particularly when I am blogging.

I probably use about 10-15 different plugins on a regular basis including toolbars and a popup blocker, as well as a few others that just make it easier for me when I am surfing the web.

No Leads in Brianna Denison's Disappearance

Updated – Brianna Denison’s Body Found!

It’s got to be pretty frustrating for everyone concerned out in Reno right now. Brianna Denison disappeared five days ago and right now they have very little evidence and few leads as to her whereabouts.


Police did say yesterday that they planned to interview about 100 registered sex offenders that live within a mile of the home where she vanished on Sunday as a routine part of the investigation.

Police are also saying that the two attacks late in the year on University of Nevada at Reno students don’t appear to be related to Denison’s disappearance but they are not ruling out the possibility.

 

Zemanta Pixie

Toddler Found Alone With Dead Mom

Stuff like this just makes my heart wrench just thinking about the little kid hanging out with her dead mom for three days.

 

According to Hammett Shanta had been struggling with Nausea and had been to her clinic in St. Paul and to the emergency room as well. They had given her medication for vomiting because she was not able to keep anything down. She had also been on the phone with telling a nurse that she had been throwing up blood.

When the girls was found she was covered with her mother’s blood where she had been lying with her mother sleeping.

Her home phone was out of service and apparently the only other option was her cell phone, which was out of minutes. Don’t people know that cell phones will dial 911 whether you have minutes or not? The cell providers are obligated to put calls through to 911.

 

Breezes Bahamas

So I’ve booked the hotel for next month. I got one of those all-inclusive packages because, well, alcohol can get mighty expensive and it’s included as well. Not that I am a lush or anything, that’s only when I am on vacation.

Oh, wait, that is my vacation. I have permission to be a lush then.

The Breezes is on Cable Beach on the main island rather than Paradise Island but it is also several hundred bucks cheaper than Atlantis or Paradise Island Resorts. Except for the whiners most of the reviews I read have been pretty decent and there are even a couple of video reviews on youtube. It looks more like a resort where old people and middle class people that can’t afford Atlantis stay, so I should fit in quite nicely.

Bon Voyage et al.

Wednesday Hero

Capt. Lyle L. Gordon

Airmen from the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron at an air base in Southwest Asia prepare a C-17 Globemaster III for an airdrop mission Jan. 14 to deliver humanitarian supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero. We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Leave The Reaming To Us…

Well, the Marine caught the Greyhound yesterday morning. He was supposed to ride to Raleigh, NC to the airport and then was going to catch some Z’s at the USO until his flight to Palm Springs, California left this morning. Long flight as he had a two hour layover in Chicago as well. He’s supposed to check in at Twentynine Palms by midnight tonight. There’s a glitch now. NO UNIFORMS, thanks to Greyhound Lines.

Apparently his bus broke down in Norcross (about 20 minutes after it left the station). When they got another one there the driver would not allow anyone to get their luggage, claiming that it was too dangerous. He said that Greyhound employees had to do it. When my son got to Raleigh he found that his luggage had not come along for the ride and stayed up all night trying to locate it.

He let us know this morning and my wife has spent something like twelve hours on the phone with no results. Some woman finally told her she would put a ‘tracer’ out for it, not that it does the boy any good. Upon checking in at Twentynine Palms he’s going to have to buy new uniforms. He probably had over a thousand dollars in uniforms, knick knacks and irreplaceable stuff from his mom inside the things. It’s a damn good thing that he decided to leave the X-Box 360 here for me to ship to him.

So far their customer service reps have called my wife “baby” “and honey” and some of them have been downright rude to her. As someone in the customer service industry, this is a no-no. If anyone knows the email address for the CEO for Greyhound, Dave Leach, please email or contact me. I have already tried the obvious ones  so maybe one of those will work. Also, Digg and Fark this if you guys have accounts. Thanks!

Currently the wife is discussing with a woman on the phone about his luggage. She says that the best they can do is send his luggage to Palm Springs. They won’t even send a courier to Twenty Nine Palms if/when they find the luggage. No refunds, no delivery. Fuck them. I have emailed about 40 Greyhound employees so far as well as folks from parent company Laidlaw, Inc and hopefully will get an answer tomorrow.

All I can tell you is unless you want to get ass-fucked, DON’T leave the driving to Greyhound.

Here’s the body of the rude-ass email I am sending to everyone with any vested interest in Greyhound I can find.

“The party that was traveling was my son Marine Pvt Christopher Miles. His bus out of Atlanta broke down in Norcross, GA yesterday morning and when they transferred everyone to a new bus they were not allowed to get their luggage. It was shipped back to Atlanta and no one has seen it since. My wife (contact information above) has spoken with at least ten different people who were no help whatsoever including one that was entirely rude. I expect this to be dealt with in a timely and efficient manner. I can understand things being lost but your customer service is clueless, understaffed and filled with people that don’t even have ‘stock’ answers, much less the real ones.

My son checks into the Marine base at Twentynine Palms, California tonight. If they let him check in at all without a uniform, since they are at an undisclosed location, maybe on a bus, he will be forced to purchase a new set of uniforms. which is quite expensive.

I’ve now been told by a gentleman named Jeff in your Raleigh, NC terminal that the next step is to file a claim. That certainly doesn’t help my son who is going to have to purchase well over a thousand dollars in uniforms, a laptop, camera, various odds and ends and keepsakes from his mother. I do not have the time to drive to the nearest bus station which is 40 minutes away in Atlanta, just to help your employees do the job they should have been doing in the first place.

Please contact my wife or myself at the soonest time that you locate my son’s two sea bags and his large clothing bag. I fully expect reimbursement for the expense incurred as a result of not having proper uniform upon showing up at the Marine camp, as well as a refund or an airline voucher, not a greyhound voucher, as we will not be using your service ever again.

Richard Miles
address and company information removed.”

 

Apparently quite a few people have been having problems with Greyhound. Check out this article from ConsumerAffairs.com (in the extended entry because it is so long)

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Heath Ledger is Dead

Actor Heath Ledger, famous for movies including Brokeback Mountain, has died in a Manhattan apartment according to New York Police. CNN is reporting that he died of a possible drug overdose. Ledger is 28. Police spokesman Paul Browne said that there were pills found in the vicinity of the bed.

In addition to Brokeback Mountain and several other forgettable movies, Ledger is also supposed to be starring as the Joker in the Dark Knight, the Batman sequel.

Damn, I need a Smoke…

I am on the ninth day of the Chantix and yesterday was supposed to be the day that I quit smoking. I did OK I suppose. From the time I got up at 4:30 a.m. until I got home from work last night and went to bed 18 hours later I smoked maybe ten cigarettes. You may think that’s a lot but considering that I generally smoke at least 2-2.5 packs a day just cutting down to ten is like quitting smoking for two of you. πŸ™‚

Yeah, maybe my warped sense of logic is stupid but it is mine.

I feel like cutting the heads off of people and crapping down their throat right now.

Haven’t had a smoke yet and I have been up for about 45 minutes. I made sure not to bring any home last night because I want to try and go as long as possible today. Undoubtedly I will end up smoking at some point but if I can improve or cut yesterday’s in half I will consider that a win.

I think perhaps the Chantix isn’t quite so good if you are/have to deal with depression. A friend of our’s was taking it and had to stop and of course I am crazy as a shithouse rat myself but the last three or four days I have really been a bastard to everyone.

I’ve been trying to be quiet and keep to myself and when it’s really bad I just nap but I don’t have those options at work, which is where the real short bus fuckers reside. I am right on the edge and am really afraid I am going to snap on one of them. Luckily today and tomorrow I am at my best store and if I ask them to leave me alone they pretty much will.

Traded my off days with one of my manager’s who wants to go skiing the weekend prior to my vacation. That puts me working eight days straight this week but I did manage to take this coming weekend off, which is cool. That means I can go meet up with some blogger types Saturday night and have a few beers. You know, like the Bar Social Butterfly does…