So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

Harp · Dec 18, 2020

Zombie_61 said:
Conversely, I'm the guy who refuses to replace my cell phone while it's still working even though it has long outlasted everyone else's because I've used mine far less than they used theirs. I just can't make sense of "retiring" a perfectly good...well, anything.

After all the pay phones were ripped out of LaSalle Street station, dragged kicking and screaming,
I reluctantly succumbed and bought a cell. It was inevitable for personal and professional reasons
but I put it off to the last. Verizon or whatever went belly up, Samsung is the pistol now, a flip number
already aged but quite serviceable and cheap. No camera, nada text, zip all the other silliness.

Zombie_61 · Dec 18, 2020

Harp said:
After all the pay phones were ripped out of LaSalle Street station, dragged kicking and screaming, I reluctantly succumbed and bought a cell. It was inevitable for personal and professional reasons
but I put it off to the last...

It became necessary for me to get a cell phone when my mother and father-in-law reached the ages when health issues were becoming more and more serious and the receptionist at the company I worked for became less and less reliable with regards to giving people their messages in a timely manner. After mom and dad-in-law died my wife insisted I keep my cell phone in case she needed to reach me.

Harp said:
...Verizon or whatever went belly up, Samsung is the pistol now, a flip number already aged but quite serviceable and cheap. No camera, nada text, zip all the other silliness.

Verizon has ditched everything except cell phone service around here, but they haven't gone completely belly up just yet.

LizzieMaine · Dec 18, 2020

Verizon, formerly NYNEX, formerly New York/New England Telephone & Telegraph long ago sold off all the former NET&T local operations to a succession of two-bit companies, who've somehow managed to keep the basic copper-wire network functioning, and I've had the same lines and the same account thru all of it. But that doesn't mean I don't wish they'd never broken up the Bell System -- which, as a closely regulated "natural monopoly," was the most efficient and effective communications network, and the most efficient and effective research and manufacturing operation, that the world has ever known. Better they should have nationalized it than broken it up.

Edward · Dec 18, 2020

Zombie_61 said:
Particularly with regards to the electronics junkies. I've lost count of the number of people I've known who stood in line for hours in order to buy the "newest and bestest" cell phone on the day it was made available, even though their previous/current cell phone was in perfect working order. Or the newest gaming console. Or...you name it. It's appalling. Conversely, I'm the guy who refuses to replace my cell phone while it's still working even though it has long outlasted everyone else's because I've used mine far less than they used theirs. I just can't make sense of "retiring" a perfectly good...well, anything.

I am very much a convert to the mobile phone concept: I have had a mobile since 1999, but only grudgingly had a landline installed at home in 2003 - two years after moving in to the flat - because I couldn't deal without home broadband any longer. I do have a standard phone plugged in, but it gets used very rarely - 100% of my outgoing calls in the last ten years have been to find my misplaced mobile... I hope when we move house in a year or two that I will be able to ditch a landline entirely and just have fibre-optic broadband installed. In the early days when it was all very cheap I used to have a new contract phone every year, then it went to every eigtheen months.... my last contract, about eight years ago, was two years. When it finished, I realised I no longer "needed" to upgrade the tech as it had got to a point where the latest spec was no longer of any advantage to me for what I needed. I went sim only, and saved forty quid a month. Over the first two years, I save £800; I've treated myself to two new phones since then, getting progressively cheaper as the basic spec of a cheaper phone is ever improving. I believe in the last five years I've spent £400 on two handsets, which means on an assumed saving of £400 a year against what I would otherwise have continued to pay I'm up nearer two grand than one, even allowing for that handset expenditure. Course, I'm a heavy user - the phones gets used a lot for web access, Netflix and such while I'm travelling - moreso than it does for actual phonecalls much of the time. It might as well have "Don't Panic" printed in friendly letters on it...

tonyb · Dec 18, 2020

Smartphones are changing the world, for better and for worse, and in ways large and larger.

I do most of my grocery shopping on my phone. I can’t recall the last time I’ve been asked for driving directions, and vice-versa. I send photos of works in progress from my phone to the customers’ phones. I read, and listen to, the news of the day on my phone. I pay my bills on the thing, do my banking with it, etc., etc. The list goes on and on, and it gets progressively longer as time marches on.

Entire business models are dependent on smartphones, and some get left behind because they are too late to the game. (The once mighty and invincible Microsoft was so late to the smartphone that by the time they jumped in there was no place left to land. I know of but one person who ever had a Windowsphone, and she worked for an ad agency promoting the things.)

There are downsides, of course. If you thought television shortened attention spans, hell, it gets blown away in that regard by the smartphone. People use the medium to communicate with others in the same house, and to hell with face-to-face interaction. Their eyes focus on their phones rather than the person sitting across the table from them at the restaurant. Smartphones make shopping for most everything so convenient that commercial districts and shopping malls and such are getting boarded up. And I doubt we’ve seen the worst of it yet.

Harp · Dec 21, 2020

Notre Dame busts against Clemson

Seems the Irish always get big game blown outitis.

I personally attribute this collegiate pigskin slaughter to the Theology Department.
Stricter adherence to the Magesterium and a bit more Nihil Obstat around the theologians
therein would definitely improve things pigskin. The Holy Cross order sometimes acts way
too Jesuitical, a little truth in advertising is overdue.

MisterCairo · Dec 22, 2020

Tweens and teens who have my last name.

Harp · Dec 22, 2020

NPR just announced a cheating scandal at West Point; apparently involving a large ring of cadets,
seventy accused of chicanery over a distance learning course; four cadets have resigned,
one exonerated or found non guilty for evidentiary lack, which leaves sixty-five Kaydets docked.
These presumed guilty are being routed through academic assistance instead of compulsory expulsion.

Boiled down to the brass tacks it smacks. The cadet honor code is similar to the Felony Murder Doctrine
inasmuch as it levels the case, unmercifully so, to such extent that when exceptioned on tenuous
grounds or frankly specious reason such as gender, racial variables found within the offense equation,
rise is given to speculation. As Emerson remarked, "for every thing given, some thing is taken."

Punitive exactitude sets the bar high.
Adherence to any other lesser standard cheapens the honor code immeasurably.

Trenchfriend · Dec 22, 2020

What is the average price of a McChicken sandwich in the US?

LizzieMaine · Dec 22, 2020

A buck twenty nine here. It used to be on the dollar menu, but I guess the price of beaks and feet went up. (I once lived a whole winter on those things.)

Harp · Dec 22, 2020

LizzieMaine said:
A buck twenty nine here. It used to be on the dollar menu, but I guess...

Sorry Charlie canned tuna; or a sardine slam-drain can, squirt ketchup inside, shake and viola.
Crackers, mustard, vino, and the New York Times food section.

LizzieMaine · Dec 22, 2020

Oh yes, I did canned tuna that winter the oil prices went way up, but I got tired of fighting the cat off.

Trenchfriend · Dec 22, 2020

@LizzieMaine
Thanks for the inspiration!
I'm not a classic thunfish fan, but grabbed one storebrand can in my regular supermarket, some minutes ago and ate it for dinner. This thun-in-oil version was better than expected. But they got some other versions, too.

Turnip · Dec 22, 2020

LizzieMaine said:
Oh yes, I did canned tuna that winter the oil prices went way up, but I got tired of fighting the cat off.

Haha, i remember well I could eat Tuna only one handed, the other was required to hold the tom away...

But he had some kind of weird preferences in a matter of food anyway, he loved also Gouda cheese and Pilsener beer as a teenager...

...though grew 18 years old.

Trenchfriend · Dec 22, 2020

Another thing, I like to talk about, before I would forget it. You all know, that I love good old barsoap.

Irish Spring topic, the classic barsoap, NOT the shower gel!

We still have an equivalent (only shower gel) in Germany, from duschdas, called :

xWiesenfrisch_780x450-1.jpg.pagespeed.ic.RhfBhpKdlc.jpg

BUT!
I'm very interested, how strong your Irish Spring barsoap actually smells, I mean only the classic version!
How strong smelling would you rate it?
Let's say rate from 1 to 5, when 3=mediocre, 4=stronger and 5=unusal strong.

Tiki Tom · Dec 22, 2020

Well, I haven’t used Irish Spring bar soap in decades. But my mom often purchased it when I was a teen. Oddly enough, I distinctly remember the (more or less pleasant) smell. So I will give it a “4”.

Turnip · Dec 22, 2020

Go buy some Savon Du Midi bar soap, widely available in Bio-markets, or Molinard bar soap, inexpensive and decently smelling.

ChrisB · Dec 22, 2020

I would give Irish Spring a 5, we used to use it as squirrel repellant.

Harp · Dec 23, 2020

LizzieMaine said:
Oh yes, I did canned tuna that winter the oil prices....

Can tuna oil can be used to grease the M16 rifle, or a Sorry Charlie AK-47 or SKS.
Ditto sardine oil. A smart shopper tip.

Zombie_61 · Dec 23, 2020

Trenchfriend said:
What is the average price of a McChicken sandwich in the US?

LizzieMaine said:
A buck twenty nine here. It used to be on the dollar menu, but I guess the price of beaks and feet went up. (I once lived a whole winter on those things.)

Had to look it up 'cause it's been years since we've eaten anything from the House of Ronald. In this part of California a McChicken sandwich by itself is $2.09 and the Combo Meal (which isn't listed online) with fries and a beverage is probably about $9 as long as you don't SUPERSIZE the meal.

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