What's acceptable?

Happy Halloween! Tonight is a night of ghosts and goblins and candy and walking and seeing neighbors you otherwise tend to ignore. This is a time for kids, young and old to dress up as a favorite character, popular icon, or, for the older kids to walk around in street clothes (no costume at all) and prey on the kindness of strangers for the next day's sugar rush.

That's all in good fun mostly. It's fun to watch the kids who get spooked at the more elaborately decorated houses. It's fun to hear the kids laughing (and the parents and younger siblings yelling "wait for us!") It's fun to see the kids faces light up as they run away from the houses proclaiming and displaying their winnings.

It's not so fun to think of how much we're fueling the dentistry industry, but that's another story :-)

In my neighborhood there are only a few houses that really get all decked out for the holiday. A couple have smoke machines, spooky music, a few ghouls stuck around the yard, etc. We added a makeshift cemetery display and a few jack-o-lanterns this year as well as a few window clings in the bay window. There is a house a couple of streets over though that the kids call the "spooky house." These folks literally have thousands of dollars invested in Halloween decorations. Over 50 life-sized mannequins/props, fog, music -- the whole works! They put up their display several weeks before the "big day" and even have a guestbook for people to sign. It draws quite a crowd each night. It's all done in good, but scary, taste.

From the news on TV and the radio, and the papers, and the Web, not everyone has the same idea of what's in good taste though. Mock lynchings. Columbine-style costumes. A Ronco Rotisserie grill with a bloody baby doll spinning round! COME ON PEOPLE!

I'm sure that if you talked to your grandparent -- or any grandparent -- they'd have a TON of stories to tell you about how things are so much different than when they were growing up. I'm starting to feel like an old fogey now, though. How long has it taken, how many generations, to breed out the common sense gene, the respect gene, the gene that tells your brain when too much is too much from our society?

I understand that each of us individually goes from being completely reliant on our parents, to showing that we can survive without them. From knowing nothing, to knowing it all. All this by the time we reach teenager-hood. (I am soooo looking forward to that. NOT!). Most of us though, I think, I hope, turn the corner and come back to reality. Back to common sense. Back to a respectful individual. Not so for all of us though. Apparently there are those out there that lost their map and forgot to turn the corner. And then they had kids.

There are so many people out there that just don't get it. I'm not saying that I have parenting down pat -- I don't think that's possible -- but I think it's important to instill a certain set of values and judgements into our children. Society, peers and age in general will erode a lot of what we teach them over time, so maybe I'm over teaching now so that they still end up with something left when they hit puberty. Maybe I'm too old fashioned and need to just let it go. But I can't. I can't imagine a nation where there are no morals. No consideration for others. No respect for others. Wait -- I don't have to imagine. I see it thrown in my face everyday in the news. (Let's not talk about whether the news is portraying reality or someone's vision of reality right now.) Is that what our country would be like if our social morays "(the ethics that prevail by means of the unwritten code of social contract at any point in a given civilization)" continue to erode? I shutter to think of that time.

How do we decide what's acceptable? Who decided the 7 dirty words you're not allowed to broadcast? Who decides what local decency standards are? Who decides what words end up in the dictionary (They'll argue that they they are included due to popular use and that they don't condone or endorse their use, but rather make them available for people to understand the language better -- but simply by inclusion, it's lent a certain legitimacy. Remember all the controversy over the word "ain't?")

I'm torn here, because I very much believe in people's right to believe what they want to believe. I'm not trying to take that away from them. Nor their free speech to express those beliefs. I just wish that they would have some respect for others that maybe have a little more traditional sense of values.

People develop. Families develop. Nations develop. Let's hope that each is developing in a positive direction.

Scent-sational

I don't want to offend anyone. I take a shower everyday. I practice good hygiene. But this morning I realized that I may be offending people in a different way...

I counted the number of scents that I apply to my body every day.

1) bath gel -- I usually just use scented soap for my whole body, but I happened to find a scent while on vacation this summer and my wife got me some bath gel and hand soap last week. Bath and Body Works.

2) face soap -- Well, not really face soap, but scented body soap I use on my face. Usually Irish Spring or the equivalent.

3) shampoo -- Nothing really fragrant here, but they all have some in there. Costco brand currently. My hair doesn't seem to care.

4) deodorant -- Gotta use it. Nothing overpowering, but it's there. Arrid XX Dry.

5) cologne -- A staple, but not too much. Mary Kay Domain from when my wife used to sell it.

6) shaving cream -- not every day, but several times a week. I tried an electric razor several years ago, but felt that the manual blade (Gillette Fusion currently)worked better.

7) laundry detergent -- Tide. Nothing added.

8) fabric softener -- Tide Simple Pleasures Vanilla and Lavender for sheets and towels and Downy Clean Breeze for clothes.

9) body oils -- We all have them. It's more an issue of how they change the smell of the other scents as opposed to their scents themselves.

10) animals -- We happen to have cats.

11) hand soap at work -- Industrial blend. Not too smelly, but it's there.

12) environment -- Scents in the air around.

13) foods -- the smell on my clothes and my mouth (or the Listerine strips or gum I use to eradicate that smell.)

Other than the occasional whiff of the bath gel, I don't smell any of this stuff after I put it on.

I've had a few people comment that they like my cologne and (this is funny to me) someone comment that they liked my fabric softener. No one has commented that I smell too strongly, good or bad, so maybe it's nothing, but I was surprised when I actually counted this morning.

Puppet Master!

This guy is great with the strings!

Everything AND the [kitchen] Synch

Google released a little gem the other day for all of you with money to invest and those who just like to pretend you have money to invest. If you use iGoogle, they've now got a Google Finance Tab you can add to your collection. Big deal, right. They released something similar several months ago that had a bunch of Google Gadgets aggregated onto one tab that they shared... Well, this one is DIFFERENT! Not only does this gadget set have a bunch of cool financial gadgets (a gadget for your Portfolio, Top Movers, Sector Summary, and stock quote), but they talk! OK , not out loud, but to each other! Each of several specific gadgets will actually change when you change one of the others. Confused? Don't be.

If you look up a stock quote for IBM in the Stock Quote gadget, not only do you get the stock price on that gadget, but you also get Related Companies in another gadget, Company Sector/Industry reports, Company Overview and Mini Charts -- FOR IBM!

This is the only time I've seen something like this in gadget form. With this release, Google is making the function available to other developers to use inter-gadget communication as well. Can't wait to see what the community comes up with to showcase this cool feature!

See the full Google Finance blog post for more details.

Make a funny face

I swear I've seen these guys before. I think I passed some of them on the street the other day!

Time Flies...

I found this set of interesting pics the other day. I almost used them on my desktop. Still might. Four Seasons In Each Picture. Very well done.

Check out the LinkInn site for other really cool photo sets as well.

Hijacked again!

I'm not sure what's doing it, but I've experienced a number of occasions when going to my blog, that I'm redirected to http:// earn-your-degree dot com. I assure you it's not me doing it. Usually if I go to http://aworlddiscovered.blogspot.com/ again, it's fine. It's always this site that it goes to, but I have no idea why.

Sorry about any inconvenience...

Surprise...

I have a gadget / widget / mini-app on my iGoogle homepage that shows the geographic location of visitors to my blog. It's provided as an RSS feed from Blogflux. I check it periodically. Today I was surprised to see visitors from "Mountain View, California, United States." Ummmm. I know that sounds familiar for some reason. Let me think. Hmmm... Oh yeah! GOOGLE!

Digging a bit deeper, I saw that it was in fact visitors from Google.com. Pretty cool for a neophyte like me.

Then I began to feel a little deja view. I think I mentioned a visitor from Copywrite.com had stopped by shorty after I posted CD cover shots of Hannah Montana in my Life Lessons post. I started to feel a little guilty of something. Of what I'm not sure. I guess I have a little bit of insecurity and paranoia.

I'm sure that they were just checking out all the positive press I'm giving them. When I talk about all the great information that they've made available to the world. All the good that they're doing. All the cool stuff available at the Google Store that I'd be happy to show off to all my techno-geeky friends and the rest of the world.

Ah, whatever. I'm glad for the visitors. Makes me feel more worthy of something... I guess...

Know anyone else that might have an interest in something that you're reading here? Let 'em know. There's an email icon at the bottom of each post.

5*2+2/6

The other day my family and I went to our local Build A Bear Workshop so that my youngest could take advantage of a birthday coupon he had received. While there there was a contest to win Hannah Montana / Mylie Cyrus tickets. My oldest filled out her entry form while my youngest went perusing the accessories.

When I went to check on her, I took a look at what she was filling out. The normal stuff -- name, address, phone, birth date, etc. But I saw something on there that caught my eye. For those Canadian residents who want to try to win tickets, they had to answer a math problem. My daughter said, it was easy dad. I don't remember the exact problem, but, excusing the order of operations which they hadn't discussed in class yet, I'm sure she got it right.

That was the first time that I had seen anything about that though. Are they just trying to prove how smart the Canadians are? Or how uneducated? Or maybe it was just a psychological game played on us Americans to make us think that we were the ones too simple-minded to be able to answer the question. It didn't say, 5th graders and above must answer this math problem. It said Canadian residents.

So...

Google to the rescue. What the heck was all this about?

A quick search showed that I was not the only one to ponder this peculiar tactic. According to a Wired Magazine article (an excellent magazine by the way), it's actually required by Canadian Law. Who knew?! Those Canadians sure are a funny group of folk, eh? :-)

Mystery solved.

Amazon Search box

One more thing... I added an Amazon search box on the bottom right side of the page. If you're gonna get something from Amazon anyway, why not go through here and throw me a few pennies in commission on the way out? :-)

Thanks!

Did you find what you're looking for?

When I was growing up, one of my pastors had a player piano. When the family would go over to his house for some occasion, I'd often get to play the rolls for a while. The Entertainer and the William Tell Overture were among my favorites, but another was the Theme from Mahogany. I never saw the movie, and really have no interest, but for some reason at that point in my life, I liked that song. I found a Jennifer Lopez version of it the other day that brought back memories.

The first few verses go:

Do you know where you're going to?
Do you like the things that life is showing you?
Where are you going to?
Do you know?

Do you get what you're hoping for?
When you look behind you there's no open door
What are you hoping for?
Do you know?

I thought of this song as I was perusing my blog stats the other day. Several of the analytics that I have embedded on my site allow me to capture referrers (where you came from) including search terms. This isn't a big brother thing at all, but I am interested.

The last time I looked, I had a lot of people that apparently were looking for something else when they say I wrote about playing voyeur with Google's StreetView. Sorry guys. I had the occasional hit on topics from our summer vacation (Panda bears, Unicorns, Blue Ghost lights, Carousels and whistles among others).

Then there was the article about Hannah Montana. That drew a little crown when published, but died fairly quickly (as opposed to the fervor over the $2000+ price people are paying to see her in concert this summer.)

Lately, it seems that the Moutain Dew commercial post seems to be getting a lot of interest.

Just thought I'd share.

Sports Technology

I've already admitted to being a sports-avoider, but when caught at my dad's the other day, I decided to watch a few minutes of a football game. Don't ask me who was playing, or if it was college or pro. That kinda thing must not be genetic.

Anyway, I am an avid fan of technology -- enough so that I actually read an article about how they put those yellow lines on the screen for the first down markers. It had been a while (I think this is the one I saw, and it's dated 2001) since I read the article, but it was interesting enough that I remembered it... This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to high-tech in sports whether you're talking about all of the data mining of the player and team stats, marketing campaigns, stadiums, etc. I suppose I might be interested in all of that one day... or not. Sorry Dad. We'll have to bond on something else...

Let them sing it for you!

I've tried my hand at poetry and songwriting before, but it's just not a talent that I posses. It usually comes out way too cheesy. So, I let Hallmark put into words the feelings I have. Hey, they get paid to do it, so I'm just helping the economy...

But, until now, I didn't have much hope of getting someone to write a song for me. Now, using this Let them sing it for you site, I can type in words from Hallmark, and let them do the singing. Voila! A new song!

Another use for a hammer

I've been on both sides of the phone with regard to call center operations and customer service centers. I've answered sales calls and made sales calls and I've answered technical support calls. All of this behind the scenes experience does not make me much more lenient on the poor agents that happen to get my call when I need help.

Customer service has been going down hill fast. More and more companies are looking for cheap ways to get the customer off the phone, to stop emailing them, or in general just to leave them alone. "Just go buy our product and leave us alone" is the attitude being put off my a lot of companies -- big and small -- nowadays. It doesn't matter which survey you read, or who you talk to, it just plain ol' sucks!

Yes, there are shining stars out there that truly realize the value of the customer and don't just look at how many hard dollars they are spending on support. Some companies actually view customer service, technical support, etc as a marketing opportunity -- and I'm not even talking about up-selling! I'm talking about using a good customer service experience to build brand loyalty. To build brand trust. To build a force of non-paid sales people who talk about, blog about, and otherwise talk up your product or service to a lot more interested people than those that channel surf or turn the page when they see your ad.

But beware. Those same aggressive free sales people can turn on you if you screw up. Take the woman in this article from the Washington Post. She was probably pretty excited about the service she was receiving from Comcast -- enough to add additional features in the form of phone service. Or, yes, it might have just been about saving money, too, but that doesn't fit my story, as well... :-)

Seems Comcast make another misstep. Perhaps they overextended themselves. Perhaps they weren't paying close enough attention to the staff. Perhaps they really just don't get it. Unfortunately, I don't think that the national attention this article is receiving will make them change much of anything (except maybe to make a more secure area for their executives).

What will it take for companies to wake up and realize that they can't treat customers this way? I'll tell you what it'll take -- US! WE have the power in the form of our hard-earned dollars, in the form of blogs like this, in the form of speech, in the form of e-mail, to tell companies to stop treating us this way! I'm not talking about some spammy "don't buy gas on October 17th" kind of rebellion. I'm talking about a grassroots, personal effort, "power of one" kind of thing. If a company treats you well -- tell them. If they do something wrong -- tell them. You gotta give them a chance to make it right. Sometimes it's more about what they do to correct the issue than that the issue happened that shows you what the company is made of.

All you Dominos, Old Kent Banks, Chryslers, KMarts, McDonalds, etc out there -- are you listening? It's about what you do to rectify the situation that shows people what you're all about! Not rectifying the situation, one that's in your control and duty, shows people even more sometimes... And word spreads fast...

All you CXOs out there... Stand up and look around. Who's providing the face of your company to all of your customers? Call your company's customer service number once a month and see if that's the image you want portrayed. Go into your store occasionally. How are you treated? Would you want to come back and shop some more? Look at your customers. Are they being serviced, or ignored? Buy some of your products. Use them as a customer would. Do they perform as promised? You'd be surprised if you actually took a step down occasionally and lived like the rest of us.

I saw an article recently about a Chrysler exec who, upon sitting in the Sebring for the first time, suddenly realized why its sales were slacking -- the cheap plastic feel! And that from a car that was sold as affordable luxury. Are you overselling your products too? Spare the customer having to use a hammer, and do something...

Alphabetology, Numerology

My wife and I have 3 kids -- a family of 5. If you take the first letters of each of our names, they can be arranged sequentially, contiguously in the alphabet (i.e., ABCDE, VWXYZ, etc). This was mostly a coincidence in that we didn't plan it -- except when it came to our youngest's name. Once we discovered that we had four in a row, we had to go for five! When the family caught on we had a little fun in telling them that we were going to use the much less common letter as our son's first name -- and all the rather strange and, um, unpopular names that brought with it.

It wasn't until just a few years ago that we realized that the length of each of our names is also sequential -- 4 letters in one name, 5 in another, 6, 7, and 8 letters in the rest of the family's names. There must be something to that... Just a little bit strange.

Politically Correct Posting

As more and more of our lives are being made available on line for all to see, we must be careful what we volunteer. We are in charge of some of the disclosures. That which we can control, we should control. People lose jobs, spouses, friends, careers, money, and lives over the stuff that they voluntarily post online, whether in blogs like this, via emails (that get forwarded to the "wrong" people), via chats, via MySpace pages, YouTube, Flickr, etc.

I've been "warned" by concerned co-workers that my current employer, like so many others, are using, or contemplating using on-line references for new, and even current employee weeding. You can't hardly pick up a newspaper, "public" magazine, let alone a tech journal without reading an article about employer snooping -- "Did you know that they are?" "What are their rights, what are yours." Those are the headlines that grab your attention.

I've been very careful not to provide enough information for the casual reader of this blog to identify me, my employer, my family, etc. At one level, that's a shame. Blogging is about sharing. It's about letting others share your thoughts, feelings, perspectives, ideas, knowledge. It's about building a community. It's about free press -- exposing the man behind the curtain -- in some cases.

But this is the reality in 2007. We hide behind the Internet's anonymity while trying to expose ourselves (figuratively only in my case I promise!).

In recognition of that juxtaposition, I have censored my true thoughts on the subject.

█ ████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████████ ███████ █ █ ████ █████████ ██ █ █ ███ █ █ █ ████ ██. ████ ███████ ██ █████ █ █ ███ ███ ███████ ████ █ ███ █ ████████ ██ █ ███ ███ ████ █████. ███████ █ █████ ██████ ██ ██ █████. ████ █████████ ██ ████ ███ ███ █████ ███ █ █ █████ ██████████ ███ █████ ████ ██ █ █. ███████ █ █████ █ █ ███████ █████ █████ ██ ███████ █████ ██████ ███ █ ███ █████ ████████ ███.

There! I said it. I'm glad I got that off my back...

Paper Crafts

Every once in a while I get the itch to do something crafty. This past week, I turned to the PaperToys website for some relief. It is my youngest son's birthday next week and we had a Cars party for him. We had the obligatory characters, but I thought I'd play with a few more generic models as well.

At PaperToys, they have all sorts of models you can build out of paper. All provided free of course. Everything from a model of the Empire State Building to a model of the Sphynx to a Stealth Aircraft. They also had some pretty cool cars that I thought I'd try my hands at.

Some of their models are pretty easy (they have a Santa I thought was pretty cool and easy a few years ago), but for some reason, the ones I chose to occupy my time with this time seemed a little harder than I remember. Maybe it's just my aging fingers. A lot of cutting and a little glue later, I had 5 cars that my kids played with for the afternoon before they got crushed -- I suggest printing the templates on card stock so that they last a little longer :-)

Take a look! They've got quite a collection. They do custom work as well if your company's interested in something really unique!

Another Conspiracy?

At one time it was all the rage to link events to September 11th -- either something foretold it's occurrence, or it was a conspiracy to create, mask, or benefit from the event. As time passes, the conspiracy theorists are still active, but most of the really wild speculation (relatively speaking) has died down.

I can't confirm which side of the groupings this falls on, but I have to say it's at least a first. The company I work for is accused of laundering money related to 9/11. True, the company has had a few legal issues in the past. True, a lot of the statements made in the article are valid. True, I can't confirm all of his statements.

It's interesting reading (I learned a few things that I later verified on our company site), but I think it's a little like statistics -- you can bend the truth in any way you need to in order to support the position you're trying to put forth. If you can get someone to the the edge, sometimes they'll jump all by themselves. The point of conspiracy theorists is to raise just enough doubt to make you question your own theory of reality -- whether it's 9/11, JFK, the War in the Middle East, the moon walk or anything else.

It's not wrong to propose an alternate view from the norm -- that's how we all grow and learn. It's not wrong to theorize -- just make sure you support your theories with verifiable facts. It's not wrong to be a contrarian -- just be willing to face the criticism.

It's our job to evaluate the facts and to look before we leap.

Did you forget?

I recently read an article in Wired Magazine where the author talked about off-sourcing his memory to Google, et al. He wrote about a study showing younger people were less likely to be able to recall information like a friend's phone number, a relative's birthday etc. When asked, they had to pull out their PDA, look it up online, or otherwise consult an external resource to retrieve the requested information. I've noticed this myself for quite some time. I've said for a long time, it's not what you know, but what you know how to find.

I'm a trivia buff, so I'm constantly cramming my brain cells with useless information, but when it came to remembering my youngest son's birth date, I had to rely on my wife to finally provide me with a mnemonic aid (my favorite TV show at the time was "24"). I can recall my street address from 20 years ago, but I literally have to calculate my age anytime someone asks for it.

In general, I focus on what I need to do right at that moment, and leave the rest to Outlook alerts, lists, and my wife to provide reminders. My like is just too complicated to try to remember it all myself. I'm sure yours is too -- it's a factor of society today.

Every couple of weeks a co-worker will ask if I remember processing a specific request, or responding to an email from so-and-so. Usually I have to go back and look it up. They, on the other hand, can recall some little thing talked about months ago with great clarity. I'm not sure if this has something to do with their mental constructs and faculties that allow them to be part of their specialized profession versus my different specialized profession, or if it's related at all. It frustrates me sometimes that I can't remember something that they're referring to, but I think I'm starting to accept it. If only I could find an always-on, personal storage device that I could keep with me at all times that would track everything I did and provide instant on-demand recall of everything... Guess we'll have to wait a few more years for that advancement...

Truth in Advertising

According to a Diet Mountain Dew ad, Taumata whakatangi hangakoauau o tamatea turi pukakapiki maunga horo nuku pokai whenua kitanatahu is a place in New Zealand.

The Maori name translates into English as "The hilltop where Tamatea with big knees, conqueror of mountains, eater of land, traveller over land and sea, played his flute to his beloved."

Wikipedia claims that the mount is "the longest officially recognized place name in an English-speaking country."

Thumbalizr

I came across a site the other day that I think will come in handy. It's called Thumbalizr and it makes real time thumbs (small pictures) of websites. It gives you six different sizes to download, or you can request a custom size. you can capture just the first screen worth, or the entire page worth of display.

They've got a bookmarklet (a favorite tool set of mine) that allows you to automatically generate the thumbs from any site you're on. I think I'll give it a try to give you a little snapshot of the sites that I mention here.

There are other sites that offer similar services (thumbshots comes to mind), but this one is quick, free and simple.

Quick Quiz

Check the time, and give yourself 5 minutes... How many words can you make from the letters in the word Discovered? Go!

tick tock tick tock

Try this yourself first, but when the time's up read on.

I was gonna do all the letters in A World Discovered, but that just generated too many possibilities.

For one set of answers you can check the subwords tool at DeGraeve. They came up with 193 English words! I need to play Scrabble more often. I'd have to look a bunch of theirs up in a dictionary to know that they mean.

How many did you get? Leave a comment.

Pets Welcome!

I had lunch with a friend of mine over the weekend. It had been a while since we had talked so it was nice to catch up on happenings, and rumors, and just spend some time chatting. He's changed quite a bit since last I saw him. He's lost over 100 pounds (intentionally) and has adopted a rigorous exercise plan (just finished a half marathon). This guy is light years ahead of anything I'm working on personally right now. I envy his dedication and persistence. He's even trying to get into the Police Reserve Corps.

His current job has brought him to Michigan several times in the past couple of years, some times for week-long (or longer) stays. He got married several years ago, but states emphatically that their "kids" all have 4 legs and always will. He commented that he wished it was easier to find lodging that accepted pets so that he might be able to bring his "whole" family on a trip with him next time maybe. He couldn't dream of leaving his pooch in a pound.

It can be difficult to find hotels that accept non-human family members. But, once again, I have a site to ease the pain... Pets Welcome is a searchable database of pet-friendly lodging locations. Search by state, city, lodging category (hotel, bed and breakfast, etc), even route! My mother-in-law's site gets a lot of referrals from this site, so I know it's being used. It may not have every city in there, but if you find a location not listed in there, encourage them to get listed -- for FREE!

41 Pounds

I've said before that actually like getting junk mail. There are only a few of days a year that we don't get some form of mail at our house, and most of those are holidays. If you don't have the same need to receive external validation for your existence, there is a new service that might come in handy for you.

According to their site, the average adult receives 41 pounds of junk mail a year. That's each adult. So in a household it could easily reach over 100 pounds in a single year. No wonder my back hurts. I cart all my junk mail and newspapers to my kid's school so they get a few bucks a year from their recycling partner, Paper Retriever.

For $41.00 for five years, you can join 41Pounds. They claim to be able to reduce your junk mail by 80-95% in just a few years. For less than 70 cents a month, you could be saving time, reducing your waste and the waste that goes into generating that waste, and doing your part to take back your mailbox. I heard one of the three brothers who started this being interviewed on the radio the other day. I was very impressed by their knowledge, commitment and ideas. If you want to reduce your unwanted junk mail, give 'em a try.

Be prepared to learn something

On the way to work in the morning, I listen to a local morning show that mixes music and "witty banter" like most morning shows. On the way home I usually listen to a local talk radio station. On the weekend, while driving with the kids, I usually put on Radio Disney for them (though I'm starting to like it too). That was my habit and I liked it.

Then on the way home the other day, I tuned to my talk radio station to find that it had switched formats to a Sports Fan radio station. They'd been broadcasting games on the weekend, and had a sports show occasionally, but I don't remember hearing anything about this ahead of time. I was surprised. And I don't like sports radio...

I occasionally would flip to NPR (National Public Radio) for a little bit when Talk Radio wasn't catching my interest, but after 15 mins or less I'd flip back to Talk. Couldn't do it this time, so when I was done listening to the NPR segment that caught my attention, I had nothing to flip back to. I started to scan... and continued to scan... and scan... and scan. I couldn't find ANYTHING that caught my attention. I fried the whole FM dial. Then I even checked the AM band. Still nothing. I even listed to Radio Disney without the kids in the car to see if that could hold my attention. Nope... So I reverted back to NPR.

I guess I had always considered NPR an old people's radio station. With nothing left to turn to (it'll be a while before I end up with HD Radio and Ford hasn't come trough on my offer to test drive their Sync product yet), I ended up staying with NPR...All week...

I still would rather listen to my Talk Radio guys (I found them the next day on their same station, but as the morning show now instead of the afternoon drive time slot they had been in, but that interferes with my normal morning radio station, so I'm still mixed up). I confess, though, that I have learned a thing or two from NPR over the week. I guess it couldn't hurt too much to expand my brain a little more.

Bring your credit card...

Automotive maintenance is just something that I know I have to trust someone on. I know that there are good shops and bad shops. I look for shops that are used by friends, etc to better my odds. I cram my brain with other stuff and just realize that I might be taken by a bad repair shop. I'm just glad this guy doesn't work around here... Oh, wait! He does!