I was always taught that, as a business, you shouldn’t leave bags of money sitting there onthe side of the road.

So why is it that my phone calls to an HVAC guy and a plumber went unreturned this week?  I guess I’m too small fry to deal with?  (The latter’s ad actually said “no job too small.”)

I want to give these people money, but they can’t be bothered to return a simple phone call? Crazy.

The plumber already lost his chance — I fixed the problem myself with $10 and a trip to Home Depot. So nyah!

I shipped a DVD this past week via the US Postal Service. It turned out to be cheaper to use their first class mail option than their media mail option. It was cheaper to use the option that took half the time. How messed up is the Post Office, exactly? I’m not complaining. It was a good deal for me. But shouldn’t they charge more for packages that they promise to deliver faster?

I can’t be sure if this is just South Carolina, or the entire South, but I did notice this:

Every commercial on TV is for Wal-Mart.  Sure, at first it seems like a random food commercial or eyeglass commercial or HDTV set commercial or pharmacy commercial or food store commercial — but it always ends at “At Wal-Mart!”

And, yes, there was one less than five minutes from where I stayed.  Handy.

Also, the local news is wildly different from the NYC news we get up here.  NYC News starts with political corruption before moving onto unsolved mysteries, brutal murders, and car crash theater.  South Carolina news begins with tips on supporting your roof in case of hurricane, moves on to a local fender bender, then talks about what’s going on to help tourists spend money locally.  It’s all rather laid back, by comparison, though the anchors don’t sport Southern accents.  I guess they’re all aiming at larger market jobs or something?

“Barney” isn’t such a bad thing.

But I don’t want to hear, “The more we get together, the happier we’ll be” one more time.  Damned dinosaur has no clue how much people really stink.

And, really, is Barney any worse than the wisemouth sidekick character employed by Disney in every one of their animated movies of the 90s?

I spent the last week with family on vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  I took away a number of lessons from this, many of which I might share here in the days and weeks ahead.

But let me start with the biggest, coming from a guy in Northern New Jersey who ought to have really known this already: It is unfair to judge a state strictly by the interstate highway that traverses it.

North Carolina is NOT merely J.R.’s outlet on Exit 97 and Ava Gardner’s home town. South Carolina is not merely fireworks and pork products. And Virginia should not be picked on for having a town named Skippers.

Delaware, though, does deserve to be picked on for milking the most dollar per mile out of its interstate highway in tolls.
More to come. . .

 
Random Thoughts:
 
* It had to happen: The most interesting songs on the “Guitar  Hero: Van Halen” set list are the Not By Van Halen Songs:  “Stacey’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne, “Dope Nose” by Weezer, and  Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life.”  The latter has some great  guitar bits that would be fun to play.
 
 
* Amusing: Rolling Stone has a Shepard Fairey cover of Obama this  month, because the magazine world clings to Obama for every last copy  they can sell while they can before their entire industry sinks into  its own quicksand.  It seems that despite Fairey’s protestations that  he’s an artist and not a copyright infringer, Rolling Stone is very  careful to credit the photographer for the cover: “Illustration by  Shepard Fairey Based on a photograph by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP  Images”  That can’t help his “Hope” poster case, can it?
 
 
* Twitter is still suffering from Denial of Service Attacks.  I’d like,  once again, to declare my innocence.  They can Fail Whale all they  like while they keep my account suspended for no good reason. Feh.
 

Forget the iPhone –

– let’s bring back the Handspring Visor!

I had the modem at the time, too.

I just ran across these while cleaning out an old box from the back of the closet tonight.  Ah, good times.

You know what the Handspring Visor had that the iPhone still doesn’t? A wonderful keyboard that the Visor plugged into.  Very compact, very nice to use.

* Overlapr.com tells you Twitter which friends of yours overlap with another friend.

* Here’s the story of the girl who grew up with two hearts.  Eventually, the back-up heart failed and was removed, but it gave the primary heart enough time to strengthen itself.

* First review of “Wii Sports Resort” I’ve seen so far. Mind you, I wasn’t looking very hard, but this is hopeful.  I haven’t played too many video games lately, but I’d love to give this one a spin.

* Why “Wipeout” wins. Answer: a dearth of slapstick television.

* Remember when the Harry Potter movie series began, and everyone said the same actors couldn’t make all the movies?  It would take too much out of their childhoods, or they’d age faster than the movies could keep up with them, etc?  Ah, we were so naive then.  (No link.  I just felt like pointing that out.)

* It’s just so crazy it might work.  No, not really.  It’s complete and utter madness, but it is hilarious: Convert Central Park into an airport!

Belgian authorities are checking out public profiles of their citizenry to determine who might not be reporting their entire income.  It’s enough to launch an investigation, and perfectly legal.

Think twice before opening our mouth on-line again. You know the IRS will be all over this soon enough.  (”You reviewed that ‘Harry Potter’ book, but I don’t see you paying taxes from Amazon purchases anywhere on your tax return?  AUDIT!”)

Hi all,

I’m over at FriendFeed, scratching the same old itches. . .

Find me here.

I have thoughts I NEED to express, but nobody who cares.

Heck, I likely have that with Twitter, too. So nevermind.

But I do need to say this: Apologies for there being no photo on AugieShoots.com yesterday. That’s the first time it’s happened this year, and it’s a complete Stupid Stupid User mistake on my part. I loaded up yesterday’s image — and today’s — with next month’s date. So the photos are up there now.

Also, I had a roast beef sandwich for lunch.

What, isn’t that what Twitter is for?

For unknown reasons, Twitter has suspended my account for “strange activity.”

I haven’t done anything wrong, I’ve dropped them a line, we’ll see how this turns out.

I imagine I’ll be back eventually.

Sorry things have slowed up here so much again lately.  Here are some links to keep you busy for a while as an apologia:

* Weezer covering Lady Gaga, because it’s what all the cool kids do today.

* Speaking of whom, check out Lady Gaga’s Muppets dress.  Cool!

* How to make a triptych in Lightroom. (OK, I put this one up here as a reminder to myself of something I want to do someday soon.)

* Dance to the Mii Channel theme music. Bonus: he’s a one time MTV reality show contestant.

* So, they cut the original Star Wars movie up into 472 fifteen second clips, and invited the world to take one and make their own version.  The goal is to make a new and complete movie from those bits.  Hilarious?  Insane waste of time?  Bound for failure?  You make the call.

* How to get banned from Sesame Street’s forum.  Funniest geek thing I’ve seen in a long time.

* eBay?  Still dying.

Good news: I’m working on something to revitalize this blog, for at least a couple of weeks. . That debuts on Monday.  In the meantime, some links:

• Quote of the day: “Live and learn, die and forget it all.”

• 100 Best Movie Lines in 200 Seconds

• Movies in 4 Frames.  Boiling it down to the pure essence, eh?

• Every now and then, I think it’d be a swell idea to digitize some of my VHS library that still sits unloved in boxes somewhere.  This Mac tool might make it easier, but it still isn’t going to happen.  Plus, most of the stuff I saved on VHS is now out on DVD. Not all of it, though. . .

• MetaFilter has the links to every episode of the great original British edition of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

• In the same vein as Guitar Hero, now you can be a DJ Hero.  Video of game play at the link.

• There’s a new Super Mario Bros. Wii game coming.  Here’s some video.  Bonus: The voice of Mario.

• Watch every Idol song on YouTube.

• Want to see Adam Lambert performing musical theater?  It starts slow, but does build to a classic deafening Lambert crescendo!
• Nintendo is refusing to allow an Intellivision system game on the DSi.  Now THAT’S a shame.
• Amazing picture of Rockefeller Center in 1933.  The architecture, the lighting, EVERYTHING is so very cool in this pic.
• Todd Klein expertly dissects why Comic Sans sucks. (I normally don’t do comics-related blogging here, but this is a much bigger issue than mere comics.  This is proper fontography!)
• “The Wrath of Khan” performed by the Amazon Kindle and an iPod.
• Drafting a pro golfer to test the usability of “The Happy Gilmore Tee Shot.”  I love the internet.
• Soon, Jeopardy! might have its first Computer Contestant.