Wrapping Up Loose Ends
Paulina Garces
I missed Paulina’s commercials yesterday. I had school in the morning and then I had my first Writing Clinic session. The commercials from last week were repeats so that was a loss for me.
I did see Paulina today. She had a new commercial, infomercial actually, for a local car dealership. I almost did not recognize her since she was wearing long pants. I thought she looked very nice in the infomercial but I thought her air time was less than what it should have been.
The only problem with watching an infomercial is that it is a thirty minute long commercial so there are no commercial breaks where you can duck into the kitchen and make your lunch. Today, I fixed myself one of my favorite lunches, melted brie cheese on French bread.
In the end, I was happy. I watched the infomercial as I ate my lunch.
The Writing Clinic
Yesterday was the first session of the Writing Clinic. The Writing Clinic is my project at school to help students become better writers. It did not get off to a great start; only two students showed up.
The two students who did participate seemed to have benefited from the time. I was able to show both of them how to write more effective sentences. I showed one of the students an approach that would let him overcome his tendency to write run-on sentences.
I hope that I will have a better turn out in two weeks when the topic will be “Selecting a Topic and Planning a Paper.”
Finding a Cell Phone Battery
The battery in my Nokia cell phone died on Friday night sometime. I tried charging but it would not hold the charge. I went to my local AT&T Wireless store to see if they had a battery. I purchased the phone at the store about two and a half years ago.
The sales clerk said they didn’t have the battery in stock. This was not what I wanted to hear from her.
I asked her what I should do with my AT&T Nokia cell phone if the battery would not hold a charge and how was I going to use it.
She wanted to test it. She tested it and confirmed it would not take a charge, just as I told her. She said the store would be getting a shipment of supplies on Monday.
That was not good solution because she couldn’t say whether or not the shipment would include my battery. She had no answer to my questions. Finally, someone else suggested that she call around to other AT&T Wireless stores to see if they had a battery.
She did make her calls and finally found a T-Mobile store that carried my battery.
After an overnight full charge of the battery, the phone works fine now.
California Sales Tax Increase
We are going to have a sale tax increase that will take affect on Wednesday. The increase, on a general basis for the entire state, is only 1%. This will raise over USD$16 billion in three years. It will go towards balancing our state’s budget.
I don’t think anyone is really happy about the increase. But, it is necessary.
We lucky Californians who live in Los Angeles County will get to pay an additional ½% sales tax increase. This increase will last for forty years so I won’t have to pay all that much. The increase is supposed to pay for mass transit improvements.
Most of the planned or proposed improvements will never get built. One of the proposals is to connect a freeway directly to Los Angeles International Airport. This would allow travelers to take a light rail car ride to the airport and avoid a lot of traffic.
That sounds really very sensible and logical, something our politicians have trouble grasping as a useful concept.
Our spineless and pathetically weak local politicians will probably kill the connection because it might adversely affect the airport shuttle business. When the freeway was originally designed thirty years ago, it was designed to be connected to and end at the Airport. I think the same thing will happen again.
So why is this all that important?
It allows me an opportunity to rant about our politicians and how pathetic they are. It also allows me an opportunity to point how this sales tax increase is not going to work. People will put off making major purchases. People will drive to the neighboring counties to make their major purchases like automobiles.
Anyway, I saw the other side effect of the tax increase. People were making the big purchases before the tax increase takes effect. Best Buy, a big box retailer of electronics and computers, is next to the AT&T Wireless store. The parking lot was crowded with cars as people were hauling out big screen televisions and computers.
Iranian Blog Viewers
I am troubled, well maybe troubled is too harsh a word, by the growing number of Iranians who are visiting the blog. I am assuming that most of the viewers are male since they go to one of the two or three most popular pages; the pages with lots of photos of young women in bikinis. These visitors are not just stopping by and quickly moving on. They are staying and looking and looking for fifteen minutes, twenty minutes or more. I don’t call that casual or accidental viewing.
I don’t think that this behavior is consistent with being a good Muslim or at least how I understand the Iranian view of relations between men and women.
I thought about removing the temptation by taking those pages down. Then, I realized that in doing so I would be censoring free speech and expression of ideas. This is something that we Americans tend to hold very dear. That would be very wrong.
Besides, how can a Westerner like me have any sympathy for a religion that says it is permissible to beat your wife? How can I have any sympathy for a religion that allows “honor killings” and intentionally limits the potential of women or deny women a decent education?
I will let the images stay up unless some lawyer threatens me to take them down. The rest of the world can enjoy the fruits of my limited labor and support the models and actresses’ careers.
I was going to be a bit more emphatic in my language but decided to tone things down a bit.
That was my weekend. I hope you all had good weekends also.
Be well and stay happy.
I missed Paulina’s commercials yesterday. I had school in the morning and then I had my first Writing Clinic session. The commercials from last week were repeats so that was a loss for me.
I did see Paulina today. She had a new commercial, infomercial actually, for a local car dealership. I almost did not recognize her since she was wearing long pants. I thought she looked very nice in the infomercial but I thought her air time was less than what it should have been.
The only problem with watching an infomercial is that it is a thirty minute long commercial so there are no commercial breaks where you can duck into the kitchen and make your lunch. Today, I fixed myself one of my favorite lunches, melted brie cheese on French bread.
In the end, I was happy. I watched the infomercial as I ate my lunch.
The Writing Clinic
Yesterday was the first session of the Writing Clinic. The Writing Clinic is my project at school to help students become better writers. It did not get off to a great start; only two students showed up.
The two students who did participate seemed to have benefited from the time. I was able to show both of them how to write more effective sentences. I showed one of the students an approach that would let him overcome his tendency to write run-on sentences.
I hope that I will have a better turn out in two weeks when the topic will be “Selecting a Topic and Planning a Paper.”
Finding a Cell Phone Battery
The battery in my Nokia cell phone died on Friday night sometime. I tried charging but it would not hold the charge. I went to my local AT&T Wireless store to see if they had a battery. I purchased the phone at the store about two and a half years ago.
The sales clerk said they didn’t have the battery in stock. This was not what I wanted to hear from her.
I asked her what I should do with my AT&T Nokia cell phone if the battery would not hold a charge and how was I going to use it.
She wanted to test it. She tested it and confirmed it would not take a charge, just as I told her. She said the store would be getting a shipment of supplies on Monday.
That was not good solution because she couldn’t say whether or not the shipment would include my battery. She had no answer to my questions. Finally, someone else suggested that she call around to other AT&T Wireless stores to see if they had a battery.
She did make her calls and finally found a T-Mobile store that carried my battery.
After an overnight full charge of the battery, the phone works fine now.
California Sales Tax Increase
We are going to have a sale tax increase that will take affect on Wednesday. The increase, on a general basis for the entire state, is only 1%. This will raise over USD$16 billion in three years. It will go towards balancing our state’s budget.
I don’t think anyone is really happy about the increase. But, it is necessary.
We lucky Californians who live in Los Angeles County will get to pay an additional ½% sales tax increase. This increase will last for forty years so I won’t have to pay all that much. The increase is supposed to pay for mass transit improvements.
Most of the planned or proposed improvements will never get built. One of the proposals is to connect a freeway directly to Los Angeles International Airport. This would allow travelers to take a light rail car ride to the airport and avoid a lot of traffic.
That sounds really very sensible and logical, something our politicians have trouble grasping as a useful concept.
Our spineless and pathetically weak local politicians will probably kill the connection because it might adversely affect the airport shuttle business. When the freeway was originally designed thirty years ago, it was designed to be connected to and end at the Airport. I think the same thing will happen again.
So why is this all that important?
It allows me an opportunity to rant about our politicians and how pathetic they are. It also allows me an opportunity to point how this sales tax increase is not going to work. People will put off making major purchases. People will drive to the neighboring counties to make their major purchases like automobiles.
Anyway, I saw the other side effect of the tax increase. People were making the big purchases before the tax increase takes effect. Best Buy, a big box retailer of electronics and computers, is next to the AT&T Wireless store. The parking lot was crowded with cars as people were hauling out big screen televisions and computers.
Iranian Blog Viewers
I am troubled, well maybe troubled is too harsh a word, by the growing number of Iranians who are visiting the blog. I am assuming that most of the viewers are male since they go to one of the two or three most popular pages; the pages with lots of photos of young women in bikinis. These visitors are not just stopping by and quickly moving on. They are staying and looking and looking for fifteen minutes, twenty minutes or more. I don’t call that casual or accidental viewing.
I don’t think that this behavior is consistent with being a good Muslim or at least how I understand the Iranian view of relations between men and women.
I thought about removing the temptation by taking those pages down. Then, I realized that in doing so I would be censoring free speech and expression of ideas. This is something that we Americans tend to hold very dear. That would be very wrong.
Besides, how can a Westerner like me have any sympathy for a religion that says it is permissible to beat your wife? How can I have any sympathy for a religion that allows “honor killings” and intentionally limits the potential of women or deny women a decent education?
I will let the images stay up unless some lawyer threatens me to take them down. The rest of the world can enjoy the fruits of my limited labor and support the models and actresses’ careers.
I was going to be a bit more emphatic in my language but decided to tone things down a bit.
That was my weekend. I hope you all had good weekends also.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 3:19 PM
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