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Sunday, December 26, 2010

There is no war on Christmas

Seriously, there isn't.

That's because Christmas has never really been about Christ. It started as a minor holiday. For early Christians, the big deal was Christ's resurrection, not his birth. The birthday was no more important than any random Saints days on the calendar. It was celebrated around the time of the Winter Solstice for a number of reasons, none of them having to do with anyone thinking this was the actual birthday of Jesus. It was mostly about the Winter Solstice and people celebrating that already so it made a convenient for Christians to have a holiday they could celebrate around that time too.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

RV is now fixed?

So MacFIL has come and gone. He and Mr. Mac spent yesterday replacing things on The Behemoth. Now we have to try her out on a veyr short, local trip. We're thinking of going to Del Valle next weekend as MacMadame had a Tri Clinic there on Saturday and an Open Water Swim on Sunday, both there.

Will The Behemoth make it one piece? Stay tuned!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Family visits

MacFIL is finally making it up our way. I think Mr. Mac has a day full of RV repairs set up for him. I like my idea better: come to my triathlon on the Wine Country and go out to dinner after. Doesn't that sound like more fun that sweating over a hot RV trying to figure out why the engine keeps turning off while we're driving?

We're not scheduled to do any family stuff until this Fall after that. My mom is coming up in Sept and I'm going to San Diego in October. Then, Nov. is my Ironman and I'm hoping some of my relatives will show up for it so I have people to cheer me on. Thanksgiving is right after so we're thinking we'll stay south and head to SD for Thanksgiving or maybe we can talk some people into going to the Grand Canyon for a Thanksgiving away from home instead.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Hate a Local Business Week

My company has a program, "Love a Local Business". I love this program because it let's me recognized comapnies that have gone out of their way to give me good services. Too bad that this week, it seems like all my local and no-so-local businesses all seem out to screw me.

First, we have Julian Roberts, Tax Accountant and Lawyer. DO NOT USE THIS MAN. I gave him my receipts to do my taxes back in the first week of Dec. It's almost 3 months later and HE STILL HASN'T FINISHED MY TAXES. Not only that, but every time I call the office, no one has any idea who I am, they promise to find to find out what's going on and call me back and they never do. So then I have to call again. Plus, the bookkeeper they farmed my stuff out to keeps finding "one more thing" to do. I swear she's dragging this job out on purpose so she can bill more. In the meantime, the Franchise Tax Board is garnishing both my and Mr. Mac's paychecks even though we clearly don't owe them money but they can get away with it because we haven't filed.

Then, to tied us over until we get this tax stuff straightened out, I sold some of my stock. I selected the option to have a check mailed to me. I ALWAYS check this option. It's free and the least work. But every time, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney does not send me a check but deposits the money into my account. So I sold the stock Thurs. morning and it's already Monday and I don't have my check. I will have to call tomorrow and make them send me a check. And I won't get my money until more than a week after I sold my stock even though they had the money pretty much immediately.

Next, is AT&T uVerse. I set up to record the Olympics. I had no indication that they would not record. But twice now, I've come home to find that nothing is recording. Last Monday it was because of conflicts, but we canceled some stuff and checked and it was supposed to record and nothing else is recording. So it just didn't record. (This also happened to 4CCs. Just didn't record.) What kind of a dumb-ass system doesn't tell about potential conflicts in your recordings and allow you to manage them so what yo want to get recorded gets recorded?

And let's not talk about their sucky network that doesn't allow shows to playback without stuttering and which takes 10 minutes to load a page sometimes.

It's not just businesses. Everything else is going wrong too. I lost my Garmin multisport computer -- just $280 down the drain, that's all. And yesterday I did a really big workout and my bike computer didn't record it properly so I don't have any idea how I did.

I wonder what else can go wrong this week.