Happy Birthday, Sebastian

Well, my little red-haired baby boy is two years old now. The party was on Saturday, and I think it's safe to say that it went very well.

His birthday last year was a somewhat bloody affair; three different children fell off our swing and were hurt. The grilling did not go smoothly, and tempers ran a bit high. Not so this year.

I started the fire early; people were supposed to arrive at 1PM, and Teri had told me that she wanted to have the food ready when people came in, so I started the fire a little past noon. I knew that this was going to be a challenge for me and my Weber, because I had to cook 36 hamburgers and an unknown number of hot dogs, and I can only fit 16 burgers at a time on the Weber at most.

Last year I'd built a really big fire in the grill, but it had still gone out too quickly and Teri had had to finish some of the cooking on her gas grill. This year I decided to add charwood to the fire on an ongoing basis. Since chunk charwood doesn't have any petroleum distillates (it's just kiln-fired wood), you can add it to hot coals and keep on cooking the whole time.

I've tried that trick a few times before (I don't often get to cook for that many people, unfortunately), and it's a bit, well, tricky; usually by the time I add the wood the existing coals are too cool to ignite the new wood. So this time I decided to add wood early and often.

It worked like a charm. Every five minutes or so I shoved chunks of wood down the holes beneath the handles on the sides of the grill; after I took each set of burgers off the grill I picked up the grill with my spatula (it's extremely strong) and dumped more charwood on from the bag (which I held under my left arm). Of course I also frequently added small chunks of smoking wood.

Everything was cooked nicely, and on time.

Apart from that my mother brought some pilaf (nobody cooks pilaf like my mother - I wish I had more of her talent for cooking), and some vegetable quiche. Teri's mother brought a vat of chili. And we had a large sheet marble cake from Wright's Dairy with a chocolate pudding filling and whipped cream frosting. We totally forgot to break out the ice cream, but nobody noticed.

Sebastian got a lot of cool presents, and was actually quite good about helping with the unwrapping, for a two-year-old. One present did scare him badly: a talking barbecue grill. We had expected him to love it, because he's always talking about "Mommy grill" and "Daddy grill" when he's in the back yard (as I mentioned, we're a mixed marriage: she prefers gas, while my allegience is to charwood). But this grill is large, animatronic, and it scared the wits out of my baby boy.

His real birthday was on Sunday of course; that is, that's his actual birthday. It was a good day too, and he had lots of fun playing.

He's doing so well! The doctor gave him a checkup this morning: he weighs 32.5 pounds and is 34.5 inches tall. She says he's perfect. If you saw him, you'd have an awfully hard time believing that he's only two years old.

Okay, enough. I'll post more soon about politics and a change to this journal.

Happy Birthday, Sebastian

Well, my little red-haired baby boy is two years old now. The party was on Saturday, and I think it's safe to say that it went very well.

His birthday last year was a somewhat bloody affair; three different children fell off our swing and were hurt. The grilling did not go smoothly, and tempers ran a bit high. Not so this year.

I started the fire early; people were supposed to arrive at 1PM, and Teri had told me that she wanted to have the food ready when people came in, so I started the fire a little past noon. I knew that this was going to be a challenge for me and my Weber, because I had to cook 36 hamburgers and an unknown number of hot dogs, and I can only fit 16 burgers at a time on the Weber at most.

Last year I'd built a really big fire in the grill, but it had still gone out too quickly and Teri had had to finish some of the cooking on her gas grill. This year I decided to add charwood to the fire on an ongoing basis. Since chunk charwood doesn't have any petroleum distillates (it's just kiln-fired wood), you can add it to hot coals and keep on cooking the whole time.

I've tried that trick a few times before (I don't often get to cook for that many people, unfortunately), and it's a bit, well, tricky; usually by the time I add the wood the existing coals are too cool to ignite the new wood. So this time I decided to add wood early and often.

It worked like a charm. Every five minutes or so I shoved chunks of wood down the holes beneath the handles on the sides of the grill; after I took each set of burgers off the grill I picked up the grill with my spatula (it's extremely strong) and dumped more charwood on from the bag (which I held under my left arm). Of course I also frequently added small chunks of smoking wood.

Everything was cooked nicely, and on time.

Apart from that my mother brought some pilaf (nobody cooks pilaf like my mother - I wish I had more of her talent for cooking), and some vegetable quiche. Teri's mother brought a vat of chili. And we had a large sheet marble cake from Wright's Dairy with a chocolate pudding filling and whipped cream frosting. We totally forgot to break out the ice cream, but nobody noticed.

Sebastian got a lot of cool presents, and was actually quite good about helping with the unwrapping, for a two-year-old. One present did scare him badly: a talking barbecue grill. We had expected him to love it, because he's always talking about "Mommy grill" and "Daddy grill" when he's in the back yard (as I mentioned, we're a mixed marriage: she prefers gas, while my allegience is to charwood). But this grill is large, animatronic, and it scared the wits out of my baby boy.

His real birthday was on Sunday of course; that is, that's his actual birthday. It was a good day too, and he had lots of fun playing.

He's doing so well! The doctor gave him a checkup this morning: he weighs 32.5 pounds and is 34.5 inches tall. She says he's perfect. If you saw him, you'd have an awfully hard time believing that he's only two years old.

Okay, enough. I'll post more soon about politics and a change to this journal.

McAfee Sucks, Part II

It's been three days now, and still no word from McAfee about my terrible virus problem. And SpamKiller is clearly not working right - messages are coming through that I know should be filtered out (because I created the filters).

Last night I started to try to contact a tech on live chat again, but when I started up there were 21 people ahead of me. Which from past experience meant that I might have been able to get some totally useless advice by 2:30AM. I really needed sleep, so I went to bed instead.

I've tried a few other free online scans, by the way, and while all of them have indicated and supposedly cleaned several virus infections, none of them has actually worked.

Did I mention that all the infected files are in McAfee's SpamKiller? And that I didn't really have this problem until I installed SpamKiller? Or at least, I didn't notice it until then.

McAfee Sucks, Part II

It's been three days now, and still no word from McAfee about my terrible virus problem. And SpamKiller is clearly not working right - messages are coming through that I know should be filtered out (because I created the filters).

Last night I started to try to contact a tech on live chat again, but when I started up there were 21 people ahead of me. Which from past experience meant that I might have been able to get some totally useless advice by 2:30AM. I really needed sleep, so I went to bed instead.

I've tried a few other free online scans, by the way, and while all of them have indicated and supposedly cleaned several virus infections, none of them has actually worked.

Did I mention that all the infected files are in McAfee's SpamKiller? And that I didn't really have this problem until I installed SpamKiller? Or at least, I didn't notice it until then.

Discover how hard it is to leave

Like many people in this lousy Bush economy, Teri and I had run up a pretty large credit card debt - not for luxuries, but for things like food and heating oil. That's a path that usually leads to bankruptcy and homelessness.

But our circumstances changed quite drastically for the better recently, and as a result we were able to make a long-awaited phone call on Sunday.

A little background: Teri used to have a credit card (I don't remember what brand). There was a moderately hefty amount on it; not enough to wipe us out, but more than we could pay from a single paycheck. About a year ago she transferred the balance to a new Discover card, since we'd received an offer in the mail for a 0% interest rate on the transferred balance. At the same time we put my name on the new card as well.

We should have checked the fine print. Somewhere along the way we were late on a payment, which was easy to do because it seemed as if the bills were sent out closer and closer to the due date; this is a big part of the credit card trap. By making it virtually impossible to pay on time they can really rack up those interest charges! And the second time we were late, we discovered the other half of the trap: the contract we'd signed allowed them to raise our interest rate to 28%, which we only discovered by noticing that more than 75% of our minimum payment was going to pay interest.

So basically we were paying more and more each month while getting deeper and deeper into debt. Likewise, we had to charge things like groceries and diapers, because with today's housing prices there simply wasn't enough money left over from my paycheck for those things. I got used to eating less (and I've lost weight as a result), but Sebastian has to be properly fed. Likewise, I had to have gas for my car in order to go to work.

Within a year our debt with Discover had quadrupled. It was a completely impossible sum, and I couldn't see any way out of the trap. It put a hell of a stress on us in all sorts of ways.

Jump to yesterday. We now have the money to pay off all our debts, and to be sure of not getting into debt again (as long as we're reasonably responsible, of course). So we write out the check to Discover, and Teri calls them to cancel the card.

They would not take no for an answer. Over and over Teri told the woman on the other end of the line that she wanted to cancel the card. The woman offered a lower rate. Then lower still. And then she started arguing with us!

Teri had told her that if we needed a credit card, we'd get one with a company we trusted: my credit union. She explained that they'd screwed us by raising the rates, and that we wouldn't do business with them again under any circumstances. I put in that having been in their trap and escaped, we were NOT going to go into it again. The woman insisted that since we were going to transfer our balance to a new card, we should just stay with Discover at a lower rate. Teri repeated that we were NOT transferring the balance, we were paying the card off in cash. The woman pretended not to understand her. Teri got fed up and handed the phone to me.

The woman immediately insisted that we were transferring the balance, and that we shouldn't. I explained that we were paying the balance off, not transferring it. And then repeated myself two more times, adding that it wasn't any of her business anyway.

But if we needed a credit card, she said, we should keep our Discover. Why would we continue to do business with a company that had already screwed us, I asked. We had money, we were going to pay off the balance that day, we wanted the card cancelled. Did we have to call our state attorney-general to have some action taken?

At this point the woman got nasty. "You can't cancel the card," she said, "because you're not the primary account holder. You just have your name on the account, that's all."

I handed the phone to Teri, who repeated that she was canceling the card. Over and over. At some point the woman apparently gave up, because she told Teri that if we used the card before final and complete payment was received it would be considered an application to keep the card, and then the Discover agent hung up on her! Quite rudely, too.

We went to Sears and paid the account off. I wonder if the card has been cancelled? Time will tell, I guess. I wouldn't be surprised if we have to go through all this again.

Man, those Discover card bastards are real leaches!

Discover how hard it is to leave

Like many people in this lousy Bush economy, Teri and I had run up a pretty large credit card debt - not for luxuries, but for things like food and heating oil. That's a path that usually leads to bankruptcy and homelessness.

But our circumstances changed quite drastically for the better recently, and as a result we were able to make a long-awaited phone call on Sunday.

A little background: Teri used to have a credit card (I don't remember what brand). There was a moderately hefty amount on it; not enough to wipe us out, but more than we could pay from a single paycheck. About a year ago she transferred the balance to a new Discover card, since we'd received an offer in the mail for a 0% interest rate on the transferred balance. At the same time we put my name on the new card as well.

We should have checked the fine print. Somewhere along the way we were late on a payment, which was easy to do because it seemed as if the bills were sent out closer and closer to the due date; this is a big part of the credit card trap. By making it virtually impossible to pay on time they can really rack up those interest charges! And the second time we were late, we discovered the other half of the trap: the contract we'd signed allowed them to raise our interest rate to 28%, which we only discovered by noticing that more than 75% of our minimum payment was going to pay interest.

So basically we were paying more and more each month while getting deeper and deeper into debt. Likewise, we had to charge things like groceries and diapers, because with today's housing prices there simply wasn't enough money left over from my paycheck for those things. I got used to eating less (and I've lost weight as a result), but Sebastian has to be properly fed. Likewise, I had to have gas for my car in order to go to work.

Within a year our debt with Discover had quadrupled. It was a completely impossible sum, and I couldn't see any way out of the trap. It put a hell of a stress on us in all sorts of ways.

Jump to yesterday. We now have the money to pay off all our debts, and to be sure of not getting into debt again (as long as we're reasonably responsible, of course). So we write out the check to Discover, and Teri calls them to cancel the card.

They would not take no for an answer. Over and over Teri told the woman on the other end of the line that she wanted to cancel the card. The woman offered a lower rate. Then lower still. And then she started arguing with us!

Teri had told her that if we needed a credit card, we'd get one with a company we trusted: my credit union. She explained that they'd screwed us by raising the rates, and that we wouldn't do business with them again under any circumstances. I put in that having been in their trap and escaped, we were NOT going to go into it again. The woman insisted that since we were going to transfer our balance to a new card, we should just stay with Discover at a lower rate. Teri repeated that we were NOT transferring the balance, we were paying the card off in cash. The woman pretended not to understand her. Teri got fed up and handed the phone to me.

The woman immediately insisted that we were transferring the balance, and that we shouldn't. I explained that we were paying the balance off, not transferring it. And then repeated myself two more times, adding that it wasn't any of her business anyway.

But if we needed a credit card, she said, we should keep our Discover. Why would we continue to do business with a company that had already screwed us, I asked. We had money, we were going to pay off the balance that day, we wanted the card cancelled. Did we have to call our state attorney-general to have some action taken?

At this point the woman got nasty. "You can't cancel the card," she said, "because you're not the primary account holder. You just have your name on the account, that's all."

I handed the phone to Teri, who repeated that she was canceling the card. Over and over. At some point the woman apparently gave up, because she told Teri that if we used the card before final and complete payment was received it would be considered an application to keep the card, and then the Discover agent hung up on her! Quite rudely, too.

We went to Sears and paid the account off. I wonder if the card has been cancelled? Time will tell, I guess. I wouldn't be surprised if we have to go through all this again.

Man, those Discover card bastards are real leaches!

A Political Journal?

I buried Quasit, my political persona, a while ago. But I still get outraged about politics. Worse, I still come up with funny ideas for political essays. I just can't help it.

For example, I was watching a news station a couple of nights ago when they ran a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger's trainer. My mouth shot off a punchline before I knew what was happening, and even Teri laughed. So I ran upstairs and wrote it down, tying it to an online AP story:

Schwarzenegger's trainer weighs in From the AP: GRAZ, Austria - In a gym plastered with photographs of his protege, Arnold Schwarzenegger's former trainer described Saturday how the California gubernatorial candidate helped break up neo-Nazi gatherings as a teen-ager. He did it by saying "Okay, meeting adjourned."

Now, I'd given up writing for political sites a long time ago: I'd been badly turned off by the ego of BartCop, and by the way that so many liberals wasted their time attacking each other or trying to "reason" with freeper trolls. To be reasonable and fair-minded is a fine thing, but there are times when you have to cut the bullshit and fight back. The GOP has been eviscerating the Democrats because they fight without quarter or pity, while the Democrats worry about seeming fair and being liked by the press - a press which, ironically, is in the pocket of the GOP.

It's really goddamned frustrating. Liberals need a place where they are able to talk, and plan, and share ideas, without being constantly disrupted by trolling freepers. But sanctimonious jackass moderators always insist on allowing every obvious GOP operative to come in and throw everything into a tizzy - or else they start censoring the hell out of everything they personally dislike. These were common problems on the BartCop forum.

I was also totally frustrated by the refusal of liberals and Democrats to take ANY sort of effective political action. There's a long story behind that which I'll save for another day.

Anyway, I can't help writing political stuff, so I thought I'd look for a forum here on LiveJournal. I found one called "anti_bush" and made a couple of posts.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to hear the same damned self-destructing responses that drove me out of online politics before. My joke about Schwarzenegger, it seemed, was unnecessarily partisan, and didn't relate to Bush. Another "open-minded liberal" remarked that Schwarzenegger had an MBA which could be a big help in dealing with the troubled California economy, and to my amazement they weren't joking.

Somehow, to hear that kind of bullshit remark in a community called "Anti_Bush" was too much for me to take. Mind you, some of the other participants were disagreeing with the trolls, but when I checked the forum in depth it was clear that trolls pretty much had the run of the place. As was the case for every liberal forum I could find on LiveJournal.

I am so tired of this suicidal mania on the part of so many liberals; when the hell are they going to wake up and realize that they're heading straight towards concentration camps, where their open-mindedness will earn them precisely nothing?

So I'm seriously thinking of starting up a community here called "Killer Liberals". It will be heavily restricted in membership; anyone who says "both parties are bad", or "that's unfair to Bush", or any other such crap will be summarily banned. It will be a place to post information to help liberals fight right-wingers, funny attacks on right-wing figures, etc.

Is it worth the effort? I don't know. I don't know what would be involved, to tell the truth, and I don't want (or need) a huge energy-sink in my life right now. I just want a forum where I can slam Bush, or Lieberman, or Schwarzenegger, or some other GOP/right wing bastard and not have to worry about being irritated by some totally obnoxious caveat from a well-meaning fathead or freeper troll. If other people who feel the same way also join the community, that will just be gravy.

Ah, I don't know. I'm too tired to make the decision right now.

A Political Journal?

I buried Quasit, my political persona, a while ago. But I still get outraged about politics. Worse, I still come up with funny ideas for political essays. I just can't help it.

For example, I was watching a news station a couple of nights ago when they ran a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger's trainer. My mouth shot off a punchline before I knew what was happening, and even Teri laughed. So I ran upstairs and wrote it down, tying it to an online AP story:

Schwarzenegger's trainer weighs in From the AP: GRAZ, Austria - In a gym plastered with photographs of his protege, Arnold Schwarzenegger's former trainer described Saturday how the California gubernatorial candidate helped break up neo-Nazi gatherings as a teen-ager. He did it by saying "Okay, meeting adjourned."

Now, I'd given up writing for political sites a long time ago: I'd been badly turned off by the ego of BartCop, and by the way that so many liberals wasted their time attacking each other or trying to "reason" with freeper trolls. To be reasonable and fair-minded is a fine thing, but there are times when you have to cut the bullshit and fight back. The GOP has been eviscerating the Democrats because they fight without quarter or pity, while the Democrats worry about seeming fair and being liked by the press - a press which, ironically, is in the pocket of the GOP.

It's really goddamned frustrating. Liberals need a place where they are able to talk, and plan, and share ideas, without being constantly disrupted by trolling freepers. But sanctimonious jackass moderators always insist on allowing every obvious GOP operative to come in and throw everything into a tizzy - or else they start censoring the hell out of everything they personally dislike. These were common problems on the BartCop forum.

I was also totally frustrated by the refusal of liberals and Democrats to take ANY sort of effective political action. There's a long story behind that which I'll save for another day.

Anyway, I can't help writing political stuff, so I thought I'd look for a forum here on LiveJournal. I found one called "anti_bush" and made a couple of posts.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to hear the same damned self-destructing responses that drove me out of online politics before. My joke about Schwarzenegger, it seemed, was unnecessarily partisan, and didn't relate to Bush. Another "open-minded liberal" remarked that Schwarzenegger had an MBA which could be a big help in dealing with the troubled California economy, and to my amazement they weren't joking.

Somehow, to hear that kind of bullshit remark in a community called "Anti_Bush" was too much for me to take. Mind you, some of the other participants were disagreeing with the trolls, but when I checked the forum in depth it was clear that trolls pretty much had the run of the place. As was the case for every liberal forum I could find on LiveJournal.

I am so tired of this suicidal mania on the part of so many liberals; when the hell are they going to wake up and realize that they're heading straight towards concentration camps, where their open-mindedness will earn them precisely nothing?

So I'm seriously thinking of starting up a community here called "Killer Liberals". It will be heavily restricted in membership; anyone who says "both parties are bad", or "that's unfair to Bush", or any other such crap will be summarily banned. It will be a place to post information to help liberals fight right-wingers, funny attacks on right-wing figures, etc.

Is it worth the effort? I don't know. I don't know what would be involved, to tell the truth, and I don't want (or need) a huge energy-sink in my life right now. I just want a forum where I can slam Bush, or Lieberman, or Schwarzenegger, or some other GOP/right wing bastard and not have to worry about being irritated by some totally obnoxious caveat from a well-meaning fathead or freeper troll. If other people who feel the same way also join the community, that will just be gravy.

Ah, I don't know. I'm too tired to make the decision right now.