Worst Winter in 30 Years!

My mom sent us an ice scraper from the icy lands of Cleveland and sure enough, we needed it here in the almost-always-balmy land of Florida. Thanks mom!

True Story

I went into the Publix rest room for a bit of private business. I was in there for all of five minutes, and the motion sensor light switch decided that the room was empty and turned the light off.

Great. Luckily I have a cell phone.

There was only one stall - the handicapped stall. So I stood up, washed my hands in the dark while still in the stall (I really like that about handicapped stalls - all stalls should have their own sink!), and then came out of the stall.

The light still did not come on until I was practically on top of the door. This here is a motion sensor that needs some adjusting, folks.

Also, they store a plethora of raincoats in this public bathroom for some reason. Perhaps in case of extreme potty emergencies - Florida is a retiree's paradise, after all.

I respectfully decline

"Hey Mike, when you're finished helping that customer, could you take care of the spider outside by the front door?"

No, Thank You

I would not shop here.

Sadly, I'll bet the local restaurants we dine in...
Do shop here.

Ducks!

You wouldn't guess this was a view from the parking lot of a Home Depot.

I don't love the dank, humid heat of Florida, but I do enjoy things like this - a retention pond populated with ducks and other birdy critters.

More green is not always good

There's been road construction on my way to work over the past few months - there were some small sinkholes (Florida = swamp) that were filled in, which promptly collapsed again and were clumsily patched, then the entire road surface, curb and sidewalk were replaced along a 100 foot long stretch of road.

Great!

What's not great is for some reason, the builders saw fit to put a 1-foot-wide strip of grass between the curb and the sidewalk, which does nothing but look shabby and require constant maintenance. (Requires, not 'receives')


I'm not expecting marble tile or anything, but would another 12 inches of sidewalk been so difficult to accomplish? Hell you can even paint the cement green if you like. Astroturf, anything - but why add another 100 feet that need mowing or edging?

I Shit You Not (LOL)

This pic was taken in a central Florida Best Buy bathroom. Yes, really.

Reason #283

Just in case you think I need another reason to dislike Florida:
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This mofo's body was two or three inches long, before you even start measuring the legs... And he he has a little friend, too!

Freeway Snaps #2

I spend about 36 hours a month commuting, and come across all sorts of interesting things on the I-75 in central Florida.

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4 Letter Words

Damp is a good word for Florida. So's dank. The whole place is a freakin swamp, thank-you-very-much.

(Isn't so's. just such a vulgar word in print?)

This said, it's not surprising that I often have condensation on my car windows in the mornings. Sometimes I even take the time to dry my windows with a paper towel before driving off to work - - not that it helps.

Within 60 seconds, the condensation is back - since the temperature and humidity are just so, just so I can't see out of my windows and have to roll them down before a left or right turn, and sometimes even before changing lanes on the freeway. Now that I have power windows, this process is slightly less aggravating.

You'd think that rolling down the windows would wipe the condensation clear, but it doesn't - the glass has to have room to slide without too much friction, since friction would tax the motors. Rolling windows down will clean part of the window, but inevitably not the part you need, to use your mirrors.

The truly irritating part (whenever I see or type the word truly, I think back to English class, when we were learning business letter formats and the correct spelling of truly) is that car-makers have not created a solution to this. They could put those little metal heating strands (found only in rear windows, it seems) in all the windows - that would solve it. But no. They could find another way to heat and so clear the window, but no.

So how about this? On the outside you affix a low-profile, long and narrow rubber squeegee that sits on the door at the base of and running the length of each window. When you roll the window down, it is cleanly and gently squeegeed of water, bugs, and other debris. The outflow would be a carefully calculated angle to prevent the gunk from ending up inside the car! Yow!

The auto-squeegee is the perfect EtchCo product! All we need is a good name! Ideas?


*Also, if this product already exists, please tell me what it's called and where to buy it. Thank you.

Waste of a memory stick

My sister and her hubby are on their way back to Cleveland. They enjoyed Florida, but only managed to take 1 picture while they were here. They have a digital camera, so they really have no excuse.

I told her I'd find her some pics online of the attractions they visited - I wonder if there are digital collections for just such lazy people - did you visit Orlando? Buy the Orlando Pics Pack, 500 photos for just $9.99. They could superimpose you in front of a few choice pics, for an additional fee.

Florida - Realizations

My sister and Brother-in-Law are visiting from Cleveland, Ohio. During their drive from Ohio to Florida, they've come to realize that:

A) Florida is still largely empty
B) There are far more cows and horses than orange trees.
C) Far more evergreen trees than palm trees

D) Sonic rocks!
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Sunshine State, My Ass

My sister is arriving today, visiting Florida from Ohio. She was dismayed to discover that it will rain, storm, and otherwise enmoisten the state for her entire visit. Welcome to my world.

Spot the Fake # 2

I'm dealing with maps a lot lately. I'm still new to Florida, so the perversity of the locales just gets me. Surely there is no actual place named Yeehaw Junction. Surely.

Can you spot the fake Florida town name in the list below?

Bokeelia
Chokoloskee
DeFuniak Springs
Gotha
Homosassa
Hypoluxo
Lake Panasoffkee
Myakka City
Okahumpka
Okeechobee
Olustee
Opa Locka
Punta Gorda
Thonotosassa
Tuskawilla
Umatilla
Weeki Wachee
Wuzzle Springs
Yeehaw Junction

Eeep!

Cindy discovered a creepy new tenant outside her office window recently:

I offered to just open the window and knock the nest to the ground (it was a new one, only about the size of a walnut) but she wouldn't hear of it. I was sent to the store for some long-distance wasp spray and some traps for the patio.

The "27 foot range" spray made it about 20 feet up - coming within about 5 feet of the nest - just couldn't quite reach from the ground. However, there must have been enough chemical smell to ward off Ms. Buggy, since I didn't see her for the rest of the day.

I opened the window and knocked the nest down. Cindy was sure that it was certain death to open the window, which is odd since she grew up in Florida (with its billions of bugs) and I didn't.

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Speaking of the great outdoors - does this stuff grow near any of you?

It's Spanish Moss, which of course isn't moss at all - it's in the same family as the pineapple, who knew?

Anyway, this stuff is growing all over the place here. It does find some uses in arts and crafts and gardening, but it seems like it's missing its true opportunity - organic, biodegradable packing-filler material! No more styrofoam peanuts.

The only thing is, it doesn't have much shape or oomph right off the tree. It would need to be stiffened (which perhaps simple drying could accomplish) and shaped into something more spacey, like cylinders (just wrap em round some curlers while they dry... and maybe a quick spritz of AquaNet).

I wonder if there are any shipping companies interested in becoming more green? I'll bet there are. I smell an EtchCo product!

Sure, there could be a long-lasting negative impact to the environment due to spreading an epiphyte to new areas, but this is all about big business.

Whatever happened to Corey Hart?

I'll wear my blogging hat at night

so I can, so I can

Keep track of the visions in my eyes

I'm gonna start blogging in the evenings, I think.

In the mornings I don't have much to say. For the past couple years, I'd been blogging at work - taking advantage of the mid-morning caffeine and sugar rush. Them glory days is over, mah friends.

Speaking of my friends, you bloggers - thanks! I haven't made any friends yet in Florida, though it's been a good nine months. It helps to have you guys to chat with, in our way.

They've Never Wintered in Ohio. Clearly.

It's 52 degrees here in Central Florida right now... I love it. Cindy had told me that the temp wasn't 95 year round here, but I refused to believe her. I figured it was just part of her ploy to get me to move cross country.

(Like "Free Video Card Tuesdays" at Best Buy. Can't believe I fell for her fiendish lies on that one.)

Of course, all the natives hate this 'cold' weather, (wimps!) but I just keep thinking about how I'll spend the money I'm not blowing on air conditioning.

When it was still innocent and pure

We took some pics of the apartment before we started moving stuff in. The whole place is a huge chaotic mess of boxes right now.
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This is a view from the living room to the kitchen and dining room. Why oh why the kitchen pass-through is such a source of excitement, I have no idea.
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Maybe if we actually did the whole 'Entertain' thing you hear about constantly on HGTV.."Like, ohmygod, that'll be great for when we entertain!"..it would matter, but we're too antisocial.
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I call him Petey Junior

There are two reasons that I like Florida. One of them is the super cute (one might go as far as to say Uber-Cute) little lizards - ranging from 1 inch to 4 inches - that you find everywhere.

They can walk up walls and hang there, relax in the sun and get their nappy on.

As I said, they're everywhere - Including our laundry room. One of the Ultimate Cute baby ones dropped on Cindy yesterday as she was in the laundry room (which is outside on our patio, of all places) and apparently I missed quite the startled yelp.

Doing my own load of laundry today, I met the baby one that surprised Cindy. Aint he just scrumptuous? Cute lil guy.

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New Day, New Thunderstorms

This is the weather report for today in Miami - It's a good thing that I don't depend on electricity for my job. Or work with sensitive equipment that could be easily fried by a power surge. Or be without a job if my laptop were zapped.

Wait a moment - all of those things are true!

We do have surge protectors on every important outlet (would it help to plug a surge protector into a surge protector? Twice the protection, no? No?) but I'd be happier with a few heavy duty UPS units - or even better, enough of them to run my laptop for up to eight hours, (my laptop battery lasts about an hour and half) in case there's an all-day storm. But what are the chances of that?

It happens about twice a week, it turns out.

I have two computers running side by side - My laptop, which I use to do my testing, and a crappy old Win98 box that I use to type out notes and do the actual bug writing with. It's a huge pain and a timewaster to jot everything down on paper, just to type it in again.

To avoid using two keyboards and two mice, I bought a KVM switch which has worked out pretty well. I use a separate monitor, just so I can watch the game as I type the notes - it makes stepping out a bug a lot easier.

I'd like to recommend the KVM switch I bought, the USB/USB (F1DG102U) - I was worried that using a Win98 system as one of the PCs would cause problems, but it's worked great. I've had it a week, and no problems at all. There's this ever so cute little button that you use to switch between PCs (some KVM switches use shortcuts on the keyboard, but I wanted to make sure this software wasn't interfering with the game testing).

The actual switching process takes about 5 seconds, once you hit the button. It seems like forever sometimes, but it's 5 seconds - so it's not designed for very rapidly jumping back and forth. You learn to adjust to the lag time.