What A Great Day
The heat index today was 110°. The Gulf is already at 85°, which is not exactly “refreshing”, and the jellyfish [Portuguese Man-of-Wars] decided to back off for a bit.
My cell phone turned into a LEGO, a small plastic brick, insisting I could only call 911, and everyone who called me got directed to voice-mail [except that I hate voice-mail and don’t ever set it up, which better than my Mother, who has voice-mail set up, but never checks it].
This was supposed to be a good day, as I finally have health insurance again, after paying the premiums since 1965, but the Republicans want to steal the Social Security Trust Fund, and the Democrats have no spine, so I have no idea how long I will get to keep it.
My letter carrier deserves some sort of award for bringing the ton of junk mail that has shown up in the last month as a result of this birthday. There should be some way of composting all of this paper, but too much of it needs to be shredded because it contains information that would make identity theft easy. We need an official do-not-mail list. Be warned, that in addition to the health insurance vultures wanting to sell you “Medi-gap” insurance, others want to sell you a pre-paid funeral. The truly pathetic stuff is from the “financial advisors” who think that you need their “estate planning” services.
Given some of the stupid and mildly dangerous things I have done in my life, living this long is a major accomplishment. I realistically shouldn’t have made it to 30, so I shouldn’t really complain, but I will anyway. I’m an official “old guy” and complaining is a well established right of “old guys”.
8 comments
Well happy birthday! As to the latter post: Did you not making the list have anything do with your past employer?
Thank you, Rook.
No, I don’t get it: I was in intelligence like Cecil; my family name is Prussian like Clausewitz, and I speak Russian like Glinka – I guess I was over-qualified. I been hearing that for years. 😈
Happy (belated) Birthday Bryan (from another grumpy old sod, but I think we have both well earned the right to be so!) 😉 😀
You are having a heatwave, and we’ve just had the coldest May on record (we even had snow here early in May! I’ve never heard of that before). We had one morning where it was -4C, and the windchill was another -10C! And of course, I had to leave @ 8 for a 9Am appointment!! Was bloody coooooold!
I’m always told I’m *over qualified* (which is code for either “We’ll have to pay you too much” or more often “You’ll have my job in 6 Months” or “You’ll make me look stupid and I’ll lose my job”!) All of which are very short-sighted ideas from very insecure & stupid people I wouldn’t want to work for anyway! Anyone who can’t see the advantages to them of having me is someone too stupid for me to work with. Been there… yadda!
Meeeah! 😈
Ahem! So… Happy Birthday anyway! 😆
I’m working on the grumpy old sod bit myself, but still have a few years to go before that (I’m older than I look, but the AARP isn’t yet sending me the daily tome begging me to join — but they shall shortly). Congratulations on reaching the age of maturity(*).
– Badtux the Immature Penguin
(*) For some definition of “maturity” that may or may not include actual acting like a grownup 😈
There is a do not mail list, so here’s your birthday surprise.
http://www.dma.org. The service is made available by the Direct Marketers Association (iirc) and it works! No more credit card offers, etc. You may get the local fast food coupon mail but you won’t get much junk mail
You know Kryten, I think about those “over-qualified” conversations every time a politician talks about “training” as a solution to unemployment. It is just a convenient excuse. Corporations are requiring a four-year degree to hire people to unload trucks, so I doubt that training will solve anything.
Badtux, beware the double-nickel, that’s when it starts.
I wrote some of the software that was initially used to create the Direct Marketing Association data base, specifically the routines used to convert it into forms for mini and microcomputer platforms, Amy [I’m really an ancient in computer terms] and the problem is that the program is voluntary. The mailer has to get the exclusion data base from the DMA and run it against their mailing data base. I want something with “teeth” to bite those that won’t go along.
I got on the list about 5 years ago and about 4-5 weeks after I registered there was no junk mail in my box except the local mailer about once every 6 weeks or so. I occasionally get a subscription solicitation from publications I have received in the past but that’s about it and a welcome change from the 8 or more credit card offers I was receiving every week.
That’s neet that you wrote their software.
I would certainly hope that what I did has been rewritten several times since, as they would have surely moved everything to a much newer system.
The local mailer is not a member of the DMA, so it doesn’t help.