The Diary of A Simple Man

I feel good about today.

Sebastian and I both need bed sheets, so we went to Ann & Hope - or tried to. It turns out that after about 180 years, they've finally gone out of business. So we took a look at Bed Bath & Beyond. The selection had gone way down; there used to be a lot of options there, but now there are only four or five brands. And the prices were insane, as they always are there.

So I did a little research, and found a bedding store in Attleboro with a very high rating and good reviews. We went over there after work. It was a small, old place, and they only had one brand of sheets - but they were just about perfect for us. And the prices were amazing, about 1/10 of what Bed Bath & Beyond charge. I got Sebastian a complete set of bed linens, and they ordered a black set of linens for me. I'm also tempted to look into getting a headboard from them. It's nice to know that there are still places like that surviving in the world!

Then we went home, and I made something that I've never made before: American chop suey. I know it's a very easy recipe, so I can't claim that it's any great accomplishment. But still, it tasted damn good and Sebastian ate three bowls.

I'm going to add it to my recipe file. I kind of winged it, since I discovered in the middle that I was missing a few ingredients. But it came out tasting just right. Again, not a surprise; I'm an experienced enough cook that I know when I can wing it and get away with it. But even so, it's nice when everything comes out just right without any measuring.

We put the air conditioners in yesterday, so now it's nice and dry and comfortable in my room. It feels good to lie down and know that I got some things done today that I'm pleased with.

Recently I heard about what sounded like a great deal: a refurbished Pixel 1 for $199. So I ordered one. The company selling them was called Woot.

My current phone is a discontinued South Korean model. It's usable, but limited and VERY slippery. There's no cover that will fit it.

When the phone arrived, I tried to peel the plastic film off the screen. To my surprise, the screen itself wasn't fully attached; it was entirely detached from the lower left corner, and I could literally see inside the phone. It had clearly been dropped, hard, on that corner. There was visible damage inside. The phone worked, apparently, but had clearly been "refurbished" in the shoddiest way imaginable.

On further investigation, the screen turned out to be detached from the entire lower half of the phone. I did some research, and found that Woot had been acquired some time ago by Amazon. It seems that Amazon uses Woot to sell garbage that they can't or won't sell on Amazon itself.

And this phone was literally garbage. So I contacted Woot and told them I'd be returning it for a full refund. They sent me a prepaid return label, and I shipped it back.

The thing is, I still want a new phone. I won't buy a used or refurbished phone, and I'll certainly never buy anything from Woot again. I don't want to spend what it will cost to buy a new new phone - not directly from a manufacturer, anyway. But there are new-in-box older model phones available on eBay.

Here's what I'm considering:

A Pixel (1) XL - an excellent camera, but will only get Android updates for another year at most. And the manufacturer, Google, is a company I no longer like or trust. 

An Essential phone. Titanium and ceramic, and not manufactured by Google. It has virtually no bezel, but that's a negative; my current phone has a tiny bezel, and it's actually a drawback. My palm isn't that fat, but it still tends to bulge around the edge enough to cause the screen to get confused or fail to respond. I never had that problem with a normal cellphone, by the way.

Last is an older OnePlus phone. I don't know much about that.

A couple of days ago the closing song "Still Alive" from Portal popped up on my main Pandora station. I liked it so much that I looked into buying the game. Best Buy didn't carry it, according to their website. Game Stop did, and had it available as an instant digital download - for $20, plus a mandatory $3 surcharge for being able to download it again (if it got erased) for 18 months from the date of purchase.

So I went directly to Valve, the company that makes Portal, and downloaded it for $9.99. Game Stop are crooks!

So much to catch up on, but I'm too tired - I'll probably miss some of it.

• Sebastian and I finished the seventh book in the Great Brain series. There's one more, but it wasn't written by John D. Fitzgerald; I suspect it will be a letdown. But the seventh book was a perfect bittersweet ending to the series. Sebastian found it a bit embarrassing, but all in all he loved it and the whole series. I hope the library has the eighth book in stock somewhere!


• Teri and I were doing some shopping today. One of the places we stopped at was the Wal-Mart in Attleboro. It's a "Super" Wal-Mart, with a complete grocery section. We weren't buying groceries, but I was curious so I looked through it a bit - and was stunned. I've been looking for Underwood Deviled Roast Beef spread in supermarkets for over twenty years now. I haven't seen it in New England for decades. I'd resorted to the internet, buying a case of the stuff (two dozen cans) once a year for about $60. But Wal-Mart had them for $1.72 each! I bought ten. Guess what I had for dinner?


• We went to a "Books are Wings" party at the Library on Friday or Saturday. The audience seemed a bit young. But when we were looking through the books (each child gets a free one) I let out a gasp of amazement. They had a copy of Mr. Penny! But we'd already picked out another rare book, and weren't allowed to make a second pick. Still, it's amazing that they'd have such a wonderful book.

So we signed up for Netflix a few days ago. I hadn't realized that we could stream movies to the Wii and my computer! Pretty cool...

Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved this book when I was a boy. It really captured my imagination, and stayed there. Nor was I the only one; I know several others who also loved that book. That's not too surprising; it was very popular in schools when I was young, and there were a lot of copies floating around.
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We got a new bill from Cox on Friday. It's about $65 less than the last one. No one has called us or explained this to us. We're really confused. Is someone at Cox just making up our bill every month?

"This month, let's charge them $200. Then next month $135. After that, in order, $179, $209, and then $196.93 to really confuse them. They'll never question their bill again!"

By coincidence (I presume) we also got a mailing the same day from Verizon. They're offering FIOS service in our area - we think. But it's a bit confusing, because their TV is apparently via DirecTV. They didn't quite spell out if it was FIOS or not (that's the implication I get, though), and there are various tiers of service which don't include a price. I don't like it when an offer isn't clear, and I don't care for low introductory prices that are followed by unspecified increases after the introductory period ends.

Lots to tell about.

My hand still hurts, so I'm taking a regular dose of ibuprofen twice a day. The bruising has faded somewhat.

I still can't put pressure on it in the direction I fell; it hurts too much. I called the urgentcare clinic where I had it x-rayed, and they confirmed that it's not broken. I may call my doctor if it doesn't feel a lot better soon.
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"Have an HP printer set to greyscale to conserve the color cartridges. Color cartridges are still being depleted. Why?"

Because HP's printer software is designed to lie to you. This is pretty much an industry-wide problem; almost all printer companies sell their printers at or below cost, and make their profits by selling grossly overpriced ink cartridges. They deliberately design the printer software to tell you that you're out of ink long before you actually are. Some of them will actually stop the printer from printing, even if it has enough ink!

The printers also have sponges inside which are solely designed to soak up ink and waste it. Every time you clean the printer head(s) (as the software often recommends), it simply squirts a large amount of ink into those sponges.

I have an Epson printer. I hardly ever use it. Because when I do, it tells me that I'm critically low on ink, and tries to force me to buy new ink - from Epson. There's a box to turn off the low ink warning, but it's purely an exercise in frustration; it turns itself back on EVERY TIME! I hate Epson (which is ironic, since I used to be a fan).

Kodak recently started trying honesty with their customers (http://printandprosper.com). Their printers are now more expensive, but the ink is reasonably priced - about $10 per cartridge, I believe. That makes a lot more sense to me. I hate not letting my son print out his pictures because I'm afraid of running out of ink. The whole point of having a printer is to USE it! So when the ink finally runs out of my Epson, I'll be buying a Kodak.

By the way, someone may suggest that you take out the ink cartridges and reinstall them. Unfortunately they have magnetic codes built in which your printer will recognize; it will not reset the cartridge life, and will probably refuse to print altogether!

Petro left a voicemail for us yesterday. They want us to call them to discuss our account. I hope they're not going to try to hit us for a cancellation fee, because our contract expired.

Incidentally, when we cancelled Teri told me to ask them to send us a hard copy confirmation that our account had been cancelled. The operator got annoyed and said "Your account is cancelled. I just cancelled it."

I wonder what they're going to say? I'm not going to be calling them, of course. As far as I'm concerned, I'm done with them. If they want to talk to me, they can call when I'm in. But they're not going to get any more money out of me.

Petro screwed us once, and stole a thousand dollars from us. That's it, as far as I'm concerned.