Club on the Club

My dad and I went to the Brewers game on Friday compliments of ABF. I haven't been to a Brewer's game in like forever. I think I went the first year the new stadium was open but that's the only time I've been to Miller Park for a game so far. The Club on the Club area that we had our tickets for was first class. It's new at Miller Park this year. I've never been in one of those luxury boxes which is what I originally thought we were going to be in. This was similar to that only there was no glass. It's all open. It's more like an outdoor cafe overlooking a ball field. In addition to the usual ballgame food (brats, nachos, burgers, etc.) they had tons of other good food...a couple of buffet tables full. The food and 2 drinks were free and after that you paid for just the drinks. Two drinks were plenty for me but ABF had a tab going even if it wasn't. We have a new rep now so maybe we'll get to do this more often. I'm really hoping so.
Friday at the game they gave away bobble heads of Cecil Cooper. The Brewers are giving away bobble heads of the 1982 Brewers team as a promotion this year. The box it came in says there are 13 all together but I think that means 13 players. I think it's really 26 total because each player will have a bobble head with both a home and an away uniform. My dad and I both got away uniforms on our Coopers. This is picture I took of mine.

I just found this on the Brewer's web site:

All fans in attendance will receive a collectible 5 inch Brewers bobble head doll, featuring former Brewers player Cecil Cooper. 5,000 of the dolls will feature Cooper in the powder blue uniform, and the rest of the dolls will showcase the pinstripe uniform. This is the second in a series of 13 collectible bobbles featuring former Brewers players from the 1982 team.

No wonder I saw that guy on the way out looking for a trade if only 5000 out of the 50,000 or so they had were the powder blue uniform. I'm sort of glad I didn't make that trade. It would be cool if I could collect all of these but that probably won't happen. The Brewer's in '82 will be something I'll never forget. I was 9 and it was the first time in my life I was learning to follow baseball and to top it all off the Brewers went to the series that year. I can still remember all the regular players and their position on the field but the batting lineup is a little foggy now after 25 years.

American Idol

Before this season I never watched this show for more than a combined total of 5 minutes. I heard a lot about it of course but never watched it. This year I started watching right near the beginning when all of the delusional folks are trying out for a chance to go to Hollywood. Those try-out shows are hilarious. I can't sing to save my life but at least I know it. After Hollywood I watched a couple of the episodes where the women competed and then I tuned in for the eliminations too. I'm a guy after all so there's no reason for me to care about the episodes where guys compete. Now that they're eliminating only 1 per week I just don't have the patience to sit through watching it. I'll maybe start watching it again when it gets to be the final 3 or 4. Melinda Doolittle is going to win this thing for sure if you ask me. Sanjaya finally went down last week. Lots of pre-teen girls probably ran off their rooms crying. That guy was strange. I was afraid for a while the world might end up with another Michael Jackson type. I remember when Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire on the set of a Pepsi commercial and it was the biggest news item at the top of all local the broadcasts. I think I was in 5th grade. Anyway I'm relieved Sanjaya's gone from the competition.


I don't know if it's been like this in other seasons but there were some real attractive women in the top 24. Alaina Alexander I thought was uber cute. She didn't sing that well when compared with the others so I wasn't surprised to see her go. She could barely get started singing after she got eliminated she was breaking down big time. When I first started watching the show this year that struck me as odd that they did that to people. They tell them they're out and then barely a moment later shove a mic into their hands and expect them to sing again. Alaina might've fared better with a commercial break inbetween or something.

Easter Sunday

Today when I arrived at our family gathering for Easter my niece was so excited to show me the eggs she found that she accidentally dumped the tray they were in and they broke open on the kitchen floor. It turns out the eggs weren't hard boiled enough. The insides were semi-solid. We had to clean them up off the kitchen floor and throw them out. She didn't seem that disappointed. I think there were only 4 of them in the tray so it wasn't too terrible of a mess.

My mom made a cake for our dessert unlike I have ever seen before. It was a layer cake and it had chocolate and vanilla sections in a checkerboard pattern. She said she probably wouldn't make it again because it was a lot of work. She seemed pretty sure it wasn't going to be very good but it tasted OK to me. It was less moist than most cakes but we had ice cream with it so it balanced out fine.


I found this using Google's image search. (What did people ever do before Google?) My mom's cake looked almost exactly like this only I don't think it was quite as high. I wonder if a checkerboard cake is like some sort of pinnacle of cake making. At one end of the spectrum are simple microwave cakes and at the other are checkerboard cakes. If this is the case I've never endeavored beyond the microwave cake. To my recollection I've only made one cake in my entire life, and it was a microwave cake. I was 18 and I made it for my girlfriend for her 19th birthday.

New Videos Widget

I'm trying out the new videos widget over on the right side of my blog page. I don't have much control over the specific videos that show up but I can enter search terms in the configuration settings and it will fill out videos from YouTube and Google videos that match those terms. Until I can figure out how to tweek this new videos widget I just have some trials videos over there. Maybe I'll change it around once a while or maybe I'll get rid of it altogether I'm not sure yet. I'm not sure I like the fact that I can't control which videos are over there. It would be better if I had more control. Maybe I just haven't figured it all out yet.

Interesting Parallel

Yesterday before I left for Target to get some batteries and cat litter it occurred to me that battery sizes and bra cup sizes correspond with each other almost exactly. Other than the fact that there aren't B or A batteries...at least that I know of...it's pretty much exactly parallel. AAA batteries are even smaller than AA. I don't know why this has never occurred to me before but now that I thought of it, it seems very obvious.

I found some pictures on the Internet and put them together to illustrate. I might not be right on with with regard to the models but probably close. I found out that it's not as easy as you'd think to find clean examples of models of varying sizes. It was an interesting venture nonetheless.

???

Am I Smarter than a 5th Grader?

Now that 2 months has gone by since I went to Florida I've finally gotten through all of the nearly 200 photos I took and sorted them out and cropped them and all of that business. I took this picture of alligators on that safari ride at the Animal Kingdom but the thing is, is that now I'm not even sure these are alligators. They might be crocodiles. I'm 34 and I'm not certain of the difference just by looking at one. I bet a 5th grader could tell me. I think it has something to do with the snout but otherwise I think they're pretty much the same thing. I'm 95% sure these are alligators.
http://www.fox.com/areyousmarter/

Florida 2007

Two months ago when it was snowing and cold in Wisconsin I got to go on a trip to Florida. The company I work for is in its' 25th year, so to celebrate the anniversary and to reward the dedicated employees that have made it possible, the company paid for everyone and a guest to fly out to Florida and spend Friday to Monday at Disney World (official site). We stayed at the Contemporary Resort and we had our meal plans paid for and everything. It was pretty much all expenses paid. I don't think I even spent $20 the whole weekend. It worked out real nice because you could get just about anywhere either using the monorail which went right through the middle of our building or by taking a bus. There aren't really many other places the company could have taken us where that would've been the case. We had park hopper passes for the whole weekend so we could visit all the major parks...Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom, and MGM Studios along with Downtown Disney. The highlight for me was Animal Kingdom. It's like a big zoo but it has a lot of animals that our zoo here doesn't. I took the vast majority of my photos there. Plus it has a safari ride and a roller coaster.

The accommodations at the resort were more than I expected. It was much more than your average hotel that's for sure. They had a flat panel monitor with a laptop type keyboard right in the room. It had a Disney intranet setup where you could look up park hours and get directions and details about attractions and the parks and things like that. Plus you could access the Internet from it besides which was real nice. The bed was super comfortable. Now I'm thinking about a new mattress for here at home like that one I slept on there.

These photos are from the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom from Friday night. After we got in Friday we walked from the resort over to get something to eat. Shortly after that they had these fireworks. I think they had them every night at 7:00.

Rhinoceros

Anteater

?????

Sunday night our whole group gathered together for dinner at the Ohana. One of our co-founders is retired and lives in Florida and she and her husband were able to join us which was real cool. I took this picture of the grill at the Ohana.

The Dentist

I haven't been to the dentist in a while. I've been thinking about making an appointment just to get it over with. I'm sure I'll get lectured about flossing. I floss pretty routinely but sometimes I lose my way and I get more irregular with it. Either way since it has been around a year and half since I've been to a dentist I'm sure that I have a fair amount of plaque buildup that should really be taken care of.

The other night I had a dream I went to the dentist and my hygienist was Donna from That 70's Show. She told me I had a cavity in one of my lower teeth along the front and that they were just going to pull the tooth out altogether. It didn't really sound that bad coming from her and I haven't really decided whether this was a nightmare or not. I'd probably say it wasn't because I woke up before any extracting took place.

I haven't really ever broken the visit every 6 months routine until this time around. Unless things have changed they don't have hygienists that look like Hollywood actresses where I get my teeth cleaned. (Donna above, Jackie below). One can only hope....or dream I guess.

Hockey Team Photo

Somewhere there's someone from this photo who can tell us about what happened next. I want to hear that story.

Poop Mustache

Tax Cheat

Turns out I was cheater in 2005. I got a big fat envelope in the mail from the IRS last week that turned out to be a bill with interest added. The letter said they had records of $6300 something in income that I hadn't reported on my 2005 return. I remember when I did my taxes that year that I left some out but I thought since I hadn't heard anything for so long is wasn't anything anyway. I practically forgot about it. I got a 1099-misc with that amount on it a while after I got all the rest of my tax documents that year. I used Turbotax on the web like usual and when I tried to enter this income, it led me down a path of questions that I had no answers for. I think they were questions like what was my company name and what was its' Federal tax ID. I didn't like the look of it and since I couldn't answer the questions I made a note in my records and I just skipped it. I figured they'd come after me later if it was an issue. This income was the second lump sum my employer paid me for creating our website. When I reported that same source of income on my 2004 return, Turbotax didn't ask me all those weird questions. My employer paid me as an outside vendor rather than an employee so it wasn't on my W-2 like normal and my checks for this never had taxes or anything taken out of them. I've used that money mostly for investments since then. Good thing I'm disciplined and I didn't blow it on bags of weed or hookers or something so I won't have any problems paying this bill now. Actually I'm using my return from this year to pay it. What sucks is I was making plans for that money before I got this bill in the mail. I got a few thousand back this year on my return and now I have to pay it right back again.

HSN knives video

This is my all-time favorite video.


I've watched this dozens of times and it never wears out on me. I keep a copy of it on the network drive at work so I can access it whenever I need a good laugh. The first part is the best. O'Dell at the end is a bit anti-climactic.

"Ow!!!! Aoowhhh that hurt. (pause) Oh that hurt big time."

I find my self using that expression "big time" now and then. I catch myself and I think of this video.

I Shouldn't Be Alive

I watch entirely too much TV. This is primarily a wintertime phenomenon. One show I've been watching lately is called "I Shouldn't be Alive". It's on the Discovery Channel.
I think it's been over for about a month now but I saw all of season 3 except for one episode. This show was on as part of what they called, "Survivor Friday" but I didn't really watch any of the other shows.

Here is the description of the show from the Discovery Channel website.

I SHOULDN'T BE ALIVE pushes the limits as survivors of death-defying ordeals relive their experiences at the edge of human endurance — and the moment of truth that kept them alive.

The series examines our most basic instincts while revealing amazing intricacies and profound depths of the human condition. Each one-hour episode explores the very best true stories of survival, focusing on the moral dilemmas, crucial moments, chance events and life-or-death decisions of the survivors. Viewers will feel the power and magnitude of those decisions, and be moved to ask themselves, "What would I have done to survive?"

Some feats of survival come from the world of professional adventurers and extreme sports — men and women who deliberately invite danger — while others find ordinary people caught in terrible ordeals fighting for their lives. But at the heart of each episode, an agonizing moment reveals key choices that must be made to allow the survivors to cheat death and live to tell their story.

Don’t miss I SHOULDN'T BE ALIVE, Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

Despite the name of the show, some of the people in some of the stories aren't alive anymore. I think most of the shows though everybody lives...sometimes a little worse for wear.

1 vs 100

I think I judge my game shows by how much I'd like to be a contestant.

1 vs 100 beats Deal or No Deal hands down in my book. I can't understand why anyone even watches Deal. It came on TV before 1 vs. 100 and I could never get interested in it. No matter how hard I try I just don't give a crap what's in the case or if the contestant takes the bankers offer or not. It's very uninteresting to me. Now 1 vs 100 on the other hand there are at least questions to hold your interest. It allows you to become more involved and to play along while your watching. It's sort of like Who Wants to be a Millionaire only if you give a wrong answer you lose everything and also you're competing against a "mob" who gets your accumulated winnings if you're wrong while they answer correctly. Plus it's a little bit like Hollywood Squares (but without all the jokes) because they sometimes put famous people in the mob.

I only saw previews for it once but apparently Penn Jillet from Penn and Teller has a new game show called Identity. It looks interesting. I'm gonna check that out in March when it comes back.

Gift Card Money Grab

My last post reminded me of something I read a while back that also involves the government taking money from private businesses. In this instance a state representative here in Wisconsin plans to introduce a bill which would give the unused value of gift cards to the state treasury. In other words if someone gives you a gift card and you don't use it, the money that the retailer would normally take in profit when the card expired would not be retained by the retailer but instead would be forfeited to the state!

The Latest Liberal Money Grab -Jessica McBride

Side note: I'm adding Jessica McBride' s Blog to my links section down the right side of the page. I read her blog regularly along with that Crush Liberalism blog. You can always count on that Crush Liberalism guy to find examples of and expose the liberal slant in the MSM. Not that it's difficult to see or to find....turn on CNN, MSNBC etc., watch for 5 minutes.

Oil Profits

If you listen closely you can hear our forefathers turning in their graves.

I've read the constitution. It's a document that defines the authorities and duties of our three branches of government. I'm certain that there is nothing in there than even implies that any branch of government has the authority to take profits away from corporations and use them as they see fit.

The profits of the oil companies belong to the oil companies and their shareholders NOT the government.

24

Last week 24 premiered. I think this is the best show that's been on TV over the last several years. In terms of hooking you in, it is unmatched. For now Jack's pretty messed up after some time in a Chinese prison. He's back but not quite as sharp as before it would seem. Last week he was ready to call it quits for good until he changed his mind when at the end of the show he watched a nuke explode. I'm pretty sure he should be blinded by this, but since this is fiction he probably won't be. I'd have to see it again but I think you could even see a reflection of the mushroom cloud in his eyes as it happened.

As usual for this show a main character has died already. I'm going to be upset if Chloe gets killed somehow this season. I think she's my favorite character that's still alive. She's not usually in harms way back at CTU headquarters but she could get fired. That seems more likely but there are always surprises. CTU headquarters isn't necessarily safe either as we have seen before.

PJ Harvey

I've spent some time at YouTube recently. This is pretty obviously apparent from my recent posts. A few weeks ago I picked up the PJ Harvey DVD called, "Please Leave Quietly" that covers the Uh Huh Her tour. That DVD is awesome. I've been playing it a lot lately and parts of it over and over. Here's a clip not from the DVD but from Letterman. This clip is sort of YouTube quality and it pales to watching the DVD version of the same song but it's pretty good anyway.

VW Un-Pimped Ads

These ads are awesome.

Get a Mac Ads

These ads are just lame.I think it's supposed to make the Apple look like the cool, easy to use computer while the PC is the nerdy guy with all the problems.I'm waiting for the day the news comes out that the actor that represents the Apple is arrested for possessing marijuana. Just like that actor that was that was in the Dell ads that always said, "Dude. You're gettin a Dell" he'll disappear forever along with these stupid advertisements. Yeah that'll be the day.

The Smoking Gun Archive: Dell Dude Pot Bust

Crack

Crack is bad for you and bad for your neighborhood. Here is more proof.

Space

Whoa! I haven't posted since December 2nd. That's my biggest gap yet I think. This post is here to fill space until my next upcoming post. I have all sorts of post ideas piled up in my head that haven't sat down and written out. I guess I've just been focused on other things lately. For today and for now I'll just post this photo of Arnold and also a photo of Guy Smiley.

Who is Guy Smiley.

Toothbrush

This is madness. Why on earth does anyone need a toothbrush with an on-board computer? The list price of this Oral-B Triumph toothbrush is $140. Amazon has it for around $95.

I've used electric brushes in the past but I haven't for a long time now. Electric toothbrush I understand. Electric toothbrush with on-board computer? Now that's just plain unnecessary.

Manual toothbrushes have come a long way. They aren't just flat bristles in the shape of a rectangle anymore. I like the Active Angle, the Navigator, and the Wave Colgate brushes. I like the Oral-B CrossAction brush a lot too. Sometimes I have trouble finding them at the store because I always need the compact head with soft bristles style. If I don't use the compact head size I find that there isn't enough room to maneuver. I don't know why all the other sizes are so much more common. I'd guess that everyone else besides me must have smaller teeth or bigger mouths. I think I have bigger teeth. I have all of them that are in the diagram below except for a bicuspid from each quadrant. I had the 4 of them pulled when I was 12 and right before I got my braces.

Saturday Morning Cartunes with Dietrich

Sometimes I wonder what radio DJ's I hear look like. When I hear Dietrich from the Saturday morning 6-9AM slot on WMSE I picture Lieut. Dan from Forrest Gump. I shouldn't be surprised if Dietrich looks nothing like this but I bet he did at one time. At the same time Gary Sinise doesn't sound anything like Dietrich does. I also wonder about Haven from the same time slot on Wednesday mornings. She sounds very much like a former friend of mine from my early college years and I have a hard time getting that out of my head when I hear the radio on Wednesday mornings. It's uncanny. It's like they were separated at birth or something. I'll bet she looks nothing at all like I imagine.

I'll have to go to a radio station event sometime to find out what everybody looks like. I think they have a chili cookoff or something every year. I'm not sure when that is. I think Dietrich said this morning that he might check out the Primus show tonight at the Rave. Maybe I'll go to that and see if I'm able to find a guy that looks like Lieut. Dan but with legs.

Turns out Doogie Howser is gay

That surprises me. It really does. I found out today from a friend that Doogie Howser disclosed that he's gay. According to the news story here he says he's "a very content gay man". Who are we going to hear that from next? That Fred Savage guy from the Wonder Years? My friend also heard a rumor Kirk Hammett from Metallica was gay too. I researched that a little as well but I couldn't find anything. That appears to be hearsay. Not that it matters gay or straight but I hated that Doogie Howser show. Same thing with the Wonder Years. I had a roommate in college that liked both shows and watched them all the time in reruns which were on constantly around the time. It just made me hate them more. They were just such utterly stupid TV shows.

Sick Dog

Jon Carry Banner

"Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." -Sen. John Kerry

My opinion is this. I don't think he intentionally set out to insult our armed forces in Iraq. The words that he said probably didn't come out as planned but I think reflect his true beliefs about A. the intelligence level of a person who chooses to serve in the military in the absence of a draft and B. the reasons they choose to serve in the military. I'm not buying that it was a botched joke. What was the joke supposed to be again? Then he at first refuses to apologize but then laters caves into the pressure and does so. That's revealing in and of itself.


The Soldiers Behind the Banner from the blog of Charlie Sykes

I killed rabbits

I shot them. This was many years ago now. I think I was still living at home at the time. We had problems with them eating the garden or plants or something so we kept a pellet gun handy in case we spotted any of them. My mom gave my dad and I the go ahead to kill them. The first one I killed I shot from about 20 yards straight into the rabbits' ear. It was a good shot I thought. It dropped dead instantly right where it sat. The second rabbit I killed first ran off to the neighbors yard. My dad circled around to scare it back toward me. I think it died a shot or 2 later but it was more of a challenge and involved some tactics and strategy. If I remember correctly one of my shots went into its' ear just like my first one. Now the last rabbit I killed I still feel a little bad about. As I approached I could see that it was a pretty small one. It didn't run or anything. I walked right up to it and shot it at pretty close range. I remember beforehand standing there wondering whether I was going to listen to my conscience or to my mother. This one was just too easy. I chose the latter but after that I didn't want to kill any more rabbits. That was the last thing I ever killed. Since then I've only shot at soda cans in the backyard or at pieces of paper at the range.

That same summer was the time when we got a visit from a policeman at our house. Our back yard has a wood fence around it and bushes but apparently a passerby saw us with the pellet gun and called the police on us. I think we stepped outside the fence to see if a rabbit ran that way when they saw I had it. We found out it's against the law to fire a weapon of any kind within our village. I guess that makes sense but whatever. Who gives a rip about hunting rabbits with a pellet gun? It's not like it was a .22 or something. We checked with all our neighbors and they didn't care. They wanted the rabbits gone as much as we did. They were a real problem that year.

Pumpkins

I should carve a pumpkin this year. I don't think I've done it for a long time.

These are from my archive of dumb pictures I either got in my email or found on the internet.

Google Satellite Image

During the summer I often ride loops on this road that circles a park near where I live. It's technically in the park so there's not much traffic. Most of the traffic is people walking their dogs, or joggers, roller-bladers, and other bikers. It's just under a mile and 3/4 around. I usually do an equal number of loops in each direction starting with counterclockwise loops. It's not completely flat but it doesn't have any gigantic hills either. It's just hilly enough to make it interesting and different depending on which way around your going. I put together this aerial view of it using the satellite map thing on Google maps. I zoomed in as far as it would go and did a bunch of screenshots and then pasted them all together. I'd never seen the park from that perspective before so I thought it was interesting. At first I considered putting together an aerial view like this of my entire route that I go on from my house to this park. I decided against it because at this zoom level it would take forever and it would be one very gigantic image. And what would the point of it be anyway? The park is more interesting than any other part of my route.

Rest Stop

I rented Rest Stop (official site here) last night. I never heard of it before but it looked interesting enough. It was pretty terrible. Much less than I expected and I didn't expect much. I give it only a 1/2 star out of 5 possible. It had music from the Black Keys in it and at least 2 really sick scenes but other than that nothing going for it. In retrospect I'd rather that I still had my $4.50 and used that hour and half of my life for something else. I think this was even worse than High Tension.

Final 2006 Miles

I decided I may as well call it a year. I've already put the glass in my storm door instead of the screen and my furnace is running as of the middle of last week. It seems much too early for that but it was 62 degrees in my house before I flipped the switch on that. So since there's a great likelihood that biking is done for the year I redid my chart with all my cumulative miles from this year and last year. It didn't turn out as terrible as I originally thought it might when I first created the chart in August. If it weren't for my long inactive period from early June to the latter half of July I'd be pretty much in line with 2005. Next year I plan on needing to adjust the table to include numbers above 800. A lot will depend on getting a good start and the weather, but that's my plan right now. My 2005 total was 716 miles and this year it was a mere 434 miles.

Slo-mo Home Depot

This is another great gag I ran into a few weeks ago. Improv Anywhere got about 225 people to shop at Home Depot in Manhattan in slow motion for 5 minutes. Then after a 5 minute break freeze in place completely for 5 minutes. See the entire explanation and videos of it all here.

155 t-shirts at once

I love when people do crazy stuff like this. I saw a different guy a few weeks back with 121 shirts at one time. What's next?

Line Rider

I ran into this line rider thing a week or so ago. I'm not very good at it so far. There was also a link to this example which probably took an pretty good amount of time to create. I think I know what I'm doing during my lunch hours this week.

Smith

The only new show I started watching this fall is cancelled already. I watch The Unit with Dennis Haysbert which is back for its' second season and Smith was on in the time slot after that on Tuesday at 9:00. I didn't have anything better to do the first night it was on so I watched it. It wasn't great. I didn't think I'd even watch it again but I did. The second episode hooked me in completely. It's one of those shows that follows the bad guys in the same way as The Sopranos does. You find yourself in place where your sort of rooting for thieves. I can hardly believe it was so unpopular that they ditched it. I think there were only 3 episodes on altogether. It had Ray Liota in it and Amy Smart from The Butterfly Effect. Even a bad show with Amy Smart in it might be worth watching but it wasn't a bad show. I'm bummed. I like a good story and now I'll never know how it ends. Damn you CBS!

Don't shop at Undergroundtown.com

I got another one. Don't buy anything from Undergroundtown on eBay.

I've only been ripped off on by sellers on eBay twice over the last 6 years or so. I've purchased nearly 100 things from almost as many sellers and now it's a pretty safe bet I'm never going to see the Prometheus CD I bought from this guy. I bought it in June for $17.95 with the shipping. I hoped it would come before I left town on vacation but it didn't. I was surprised not to see it in my pile of mail when I got back in July. I emailed the guy and got one response back after my third email. He apologized, claimed things had gotten crazy and that he had, had a lot of spam but said he'd send it out right away. It never came. Things got busy and before I knew it the time passed where I could get my money back through Paypal. I emailed a few more times with no reply. I used the dispute console on eBay to report a non-delivery on a seller at around the 60 day mark. He got back to me on that and apologized again and said he'd send it along with an extra CD for my trouble. Nothing ever came. A couple messages later via this dispute console thing he admitted he didn't even have one to send but would get one in and send it. A dispute only stays open for 90 days after you initiate it and now we're past that and it closed. I've emailed a couple times but it's safe to say I'm never going to hear anything or get my CD. I posted negative feedback a long time ago. It was his first negative feedback ever. I even bought a CD from him before all this and things went fine. I see that recently he's gotten a whole bunch more negative feedback ratings....12 in the last month from others who were also ripped off and angry. Today I emailed him and told him he was going to hell when he dies if he doesn't send me my CD or find Jesus. I hope he does both although the latter is far more important.

Don't shop at Bike n Ski

At the Maywood Earth Ride I was the winner of a pair of cycling gloves from Bike'n Ski. I never won a door prize anywhere before where the odds were so slim so I thought that it was pretty cool no matter what it was. I went to the information desk to pick them up but they only had medium and small sizes. The Maywood volunteer kindly wrote down directions for me to get to the Bike'n Ski shop which was right there in downtown Sheboygan so I could exchange the pair they gave me for a large. This is where the experience goes south. On the drive over I contemplated whether or not this was just a clever scheme to get me in the store. I had dismissed the idea but when I first got there the guy was already helping some other people so if that was their plan it was working so far. I am afterall in the market for a new bike and I've also been considering a new helmet. I browsed the store and eventually found the gloves. They didn't appear to have any large on the rack but I figured I'd wait and see what the guy said. Soon he was free and I explained the situation. He walked over to the same rack as I had and made the same discovery. The first solution was for me to come back when they had some available but I explained that that wouldn't be practical since I don't live in the area. It's probably a good and hour and 15 minute drive one way for me. There were some other gloves on the same rack that were the same brand but a different style. They did have large ones there and so I suggested that since they didn't have the others I would be willing to take one of those and just pay any difference in cash. He said, "No I can't do that. It's a donation and donations don't work that way". Can you believe that? I mean I believe one should be happy with what you have. A gift is a gift, and a prize is a prize, but the fact is it's not at all a prize for me if it doesn't fit me. I'd understand his position if say for example I had won a 19" TV or something and I just didn't like it or have a use for it. Then I came in and said what I would really like to do is exchange for this 27" TV....pay the difference etc. Now that would take balls. But this is entirely different. We're not talking about something that I didn't like or isn't what I wanted. I'm not unhappy winning gloves. I'm not unhappy with the particular brand or style of them but the issue is their size. If you're going to give away something like gloves where the fit of them is a rather critical element at least have all sizes available. At the very least be willing to work something out if the sizes available don't fit the winner. What do they do when they give away a bike? This isn't rocket science. Isn't part of the purpose of being a ride sponsor and donating door prizes to promote the business? That was working until I started talking to the guy that was working there that day. They got the right idea being sponsors and donating door prizes but their customer service sure sucks. Needless to say they lost any business that I might have given them. I left unhappy and not feeling much like a winner at all. I'd advise against shopping there. Buy your bikes and gear where they care about making customers happy.

Maywood 2005

This is from last year. My aunt, who told me about this event in the first place, cut this from one of the papers up there. She had no idea I was actually in the photo. What are the chances? I scanned it and put an arrow pointing at me because you can't really tell which one is me without it since I'm in the distance.