08:38 – Barbara is taking the day off and driving up to Mt. Airy with a friend. They’re going to spend the day visiting antique stores and doing other girl stuff. They’ll have a nice day for it, with no chance of rain and a forecast high of 84F (29C). Yesterday’s official high was also 84, although it actually touched 90F (32C) here.
Yesterday I had to mail a replacement for a broken Petri dish. As usual, I sent that first-class mail rather than Priority Mail. Sending parcels by first-class mail is less expensive, although it’s limited to packages of no more than 13 ounces and doesn’t offer tracking. But the USPS Click-and-Ship website lets me generate postage labels only for Express Mail and Priority Mail, so for first-class parcels I use regular stamps. The postage for the package I sent yesterday was $2.41 (versus $5.15 for Priority Mail). Five first-class stamps are $2.30, so I had to add a sixth, for a total of $2.76.
I was already on the USPS website to find out how much postage was required, so I decided just to order a roll of lower-denomination stamps. They had rolls of a hundred $0.20 stamps for $20 plus $1.25 shipping, so I decided to order two rolls. I added them to my cart and tried to check out. Everything seemed to be going fine. I entered the CVN for the credit card number I have on file for them and clicked the Submit Order button. It came back to the previous page and displayed a message in red that said I hadn’t entered my telephone number, which was required. Nowhere on that page was a field for telephone number. Geez. I guess I’ll just pick up a roll of $0.20 stamps the next time I’m at the post office.
The taxes are finished, although I won’t mail them until the 15th. I plan to spend some time today cleaning up my lab and making up more solutions for kits.
12:09 – I see that a New York City councilwoman is pushing hard to get a law passed to make it illegal to buy “counterfeit” purses and watches. Not sell them, you understand. Buy them. And the law she proposes has teeth: up to a $1,000 fine and one year in jail. Geez.
So-called “counterfeit” consumer products are not a societal problem. If someone wants to buy a “counterfeit” purse or watch, whose business should that be? Certainly not the government’s. In effect, we have the government police doing the companies’ jobs for them, at public expense. If Louis Vuitton or Coach or Rolex is concerned about people buying and selling “counterfeits” of their products, it should be up to them to do the policing. Let them sue the sellers.
This is a civil matter, not a criminal one, unless the sellers are falsely (and convincingly) claiming to be selling the real product. If a seller offers a fake Coach purse for $100, for example, it’s clear to any reasonable person that this could not possibly be the genuine $1,500 Coach purse. It’s either fake or stolen. On the other hand, if the seller attempts to sell a fake Coach purse for $1,200, a reasonable person might believe it to be genuine. That’s fraud. Let the police concentrate on real crimes like fraud, not pseudo-crimes like violating someone’s copyright. And, before anyone mentions it, I am aware that there are times when fake products can indeed be a societal problem. Criminals regularly sell fake products that do matter–things like pharmaceuticals and aircraft fasteners and automotive brake pads–where lives are actually at stake. But no purchasing manager is going to buy a fake $50 aircraft bolt if the price is suspiciously low. Buyers of this type of item are being defrauded, and the sellers should be prosecuted on that basis, not for copyright violations.
“…Yesterday’s official high was also 84, although it actually touched 90F (32C) here.”
U gotta B kiddin’ me here! Holy crap, U live in the tropics for real!
So riddle me this: Do the young honeys down there walk around all the time half-nekkid during the warm weather? Up here they’re in, for all practical purposes, burkhas for most of the year.
In other nooz from Retroville, the town has so fah identified the remains of three raccoons as rabid, but no contact with humans that they know of. And an alpha male Canadian goose took over a stretch of the bay shore near our house and chased away two other male geese. Our imbecile mutt decided to investigate this shit and got his nose in there; all three geese then ganged up on him and chased his sorry ass outta there. Our two cats were clearly amused.
You can order stamps by mail with a paper form and no shipping. I got one from my carrier and then use the one they put in with each delivered order. For some reason, they’re sent from the Hanes Mall location. The order form has a handful of common items but I’ve handwritten entries like “20 1c stamps” and added that amount to the check – they’ve arrived fine. It takes a day or two for turnaround, but it enables you to prevent leaving the house. 🙂
Also, I don’t know if you’ve ever used your PayPal account for shipping but they allow media mail, first class parcels, etc., all with tracking number barcodes included.
And, re: the local weather… watching the local news/weather at suppertime last night, it was pointed out that, while our high was 84 (the first time over 80 since late September), the temp was 16 somewhere in North Dakota.
Yes, most women down here dress for the warm weather.
If you’d had a Border Collie, the geese would be gone. Geese, no matter how large the flock, don’t mess with BCs. One of the women Barbara used to work with in BC rescue trains BCs for airports that use them to keep the runways clear of geese.
I forget if it was Duncan or Malcolm who had a run in with a flock of geese here. They congregate year-round at the pond half a mile or so from our house, and we often see them in our immediate neighborhood. I opened the front door one day and there were half a dozen or so Canada geese in the front yard. I let the dog out off-leash, and he went flying out on the dead run. A couple of the geese stretched their necks out and hissed at him. But as he circled them to herd them they quickly realized that they were facing a Fearsome Predator and they fled immediately. They must have told their buddies, because we haven’t had geese in the yard since then.
The problem with using PayPal for shipping is that they don’t know about Priority Mail Regional Rate, or they didn’t the last time I checked. More than 90% of our shipments are in RR boxes. I did a search one time about this, and found several forum posts complaining about it. One of the posters said he printed postage at the 2-pound PM rate for the RR Box A and the 4-pound rate for the RR Box B (which is the actual dollar amount those boxes cost to send). But the problem is that that’s zone/weight postage, which technically isn’t valid for the RR boxes, even though the dollar amount is the same. I don’t want to risk that.
The problem with using PayPal for shipping is that they don’t know about Priority Mail Regional Rate, or they didn’t the last time I checked.
That may well be. Probably 98% of what I ship using PayPal is from within eBay and I’m fairly sure I remember seeing the Regional Rate box as an option. I just logged into PayPal and looked at Multi-Order shipping – that didn’t show the RR box.
Regardless, I was specifically thinking of you being able to use it for First Class parcels, paying the exact amount and having tracking included. That said, I realize that the FC parcels w/ tracking that I send are also from within the eBay/PayPal system, so YMMV. I didn’t remember that there was much difference between the two.
Thanks. The truth is that it’s no big deal. The only time I ship stuff first-class is for replacements for items damaged in shipping or to replace something that was left out. That happens in less than 1% of the kits we ship, so it’s certainly not a major issue.
“Yes, most women down here dress for the warm weather.”
I see. Pretty much blase for you guys down there and in Oz, I reckon. We see such things up here and the Stones lyric blasts through my head every time, the few times we see such things: “I see the girls go by dressed in their summer clothes; I have to turn my head until my darkness goes…” Yeah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6d8eKvegLI
My opinion of the USPS online ordering options is ungood and Click and Ship’s limitation to Priority and Express hobbles it unnecessarily. There’s one W-S post office east of US 52, it closes at 3pm and they keep talking about closing it entirely, so going to the post office to get stamps requires more advance thinking than I’m willing to give it.
Even though the Stamps by Mail option must be far out of favor (it’s barely mentioned online), it’s actually proved very convenient and efficient for me. I say that with full knowledge that the preceding may be the only sentence posted online where those 2 words are attached to the USPS. To further that thought, I’ve also been very pleased with the online scheduling of pickups for packages. FYI, the Stamps by Mail form is PS Form 3227-A and the most recent one I have has changed a bit – there are now 2 complete and separate forms, one in English and one in Spanish.
Even though the Stamps by Mail option must be far out of favor
From information I have gleaned from a friend that is a mail carrier, the ability to get stamps with no shipping has to do with the type of route.
If you are considered a rural route you can put the money (or a check) in the mailbox with a paper indicating what you want. The carrier will deliver the items at no charge on the next delivery day if the local post office has the material. If you not in a rural route you have to pay for delivery.
Of course that was years ago before the advent of the WEB and the online presence so I could be just sucking wind.
Re Counterfeit goods: Frankly, I would apply this to the entire copyright/pirating area as well. Since the owner is not deprived of anything directly, it is not theft, but rather a civil matter. The buyer (or downloader) should not even be subject to civil penalties. In any case, the whole area is none of the government’s business.
Of course, this is why the FTC goes around stealing websites, putting up a frightening banner, and then returning them months or years later when it turns out to have been a mistake.
Sadly, even little Switzerland has its idiotic bureaucrats. We have a guy who comes in from the EU to speak from time to time. Since Switzerland has an open-borders agreement with the EU, this is completely 100% allowed. However, because bureaucrats are, well, bureaucrats we still have to apply for a 1-day work permit. Mind you, they have no choice but to issue the permit, but we still have to apply for it.
Now, it turns out that once a speaking engagement was organized very short-term. So we did our best and applied for the work permit retrospectively. Now *that* was an offense, and the pointy-headed idiot is threatening us with a $5000 fine. Of course, we could have simply *not* applied and he would never have known. So that’s what we get for trying to abide by the system.
OFD wrote:
“So riddle me this: Do the young honeys down there walk around all the time half-nekkid during the warm weather?”
Women seem to dress more discretely nowadays, at least in Oz. There was the bare midriff fashion 15 years ago, now gone. I’m not really sure if I liked it. In the Eighties chicks here walked around almost nekkid.
“Our two cats were clearly cowards.”
There, fixed that for you.
“Yes, most women down here dress for the warm weather.”
They used to do that here too, but they’re more discrete now.
In the Eighties many women wore dresses and skirts with short hems, and loose fitting tops that were wide open, with no bra. Hardly happens now.
Of course, some folks will blame religion for that.
Yeah, I miss some of the more revealing fashions of yesteryear. On the other hand, on a hot summer’s day you’ll see women lying about in the public parks in their bikinis. Or, around the Lake of Lausanne, in the bottom-half of their bikinis. Sadly, I don’t get out that way very often 😉
That’s one of the things I really like about The L Word: lots of nekkid women. Watching the women on that series, I keep saying “I *like* her dress”, which applies even/especially when she’s not wearing anything. Barbara’s taken up saying “I like his dress” when a nekkid man appears.
Interestingly, it appears that Jennifer Beals, one of the lead characters, must have put in her contract that she doesn’t do nude scenes. Which is fine with me. I admire actresses who refuse to do nude scenes for standing up for themselves, but I certainly don’t think anything less of ones who are willing to do nude scenes.
I’ve read that there’s somewhat of a downturn in nudity in the English Garden in Munich because people flock there to stare at the nude women, in some cases very obviously, and to make suggestive comments. That’s contemptible. Discretely admiring an attractive nude or partially clad woman is one thing, leering and making offensive comments is just uncivil.
About a decade ago, two people were murdered up in Hollywood for their Rolex watches. Shortly thereafter, my son was offered a genuine Rolex watch for $25, US, during a shopping visit to Tijuana, MX. I advised him that I did think that a drugged-out parolee could identify the watch as an imitation regardless of not being in Hollywood.
(I do not feel at physical risk wearing my Casio watch.)
…displayed a message in red that said I hadn’t entered my telephone number, which was required. Nowhere on that page was a field for telephone number.
I encountered my favorite computer obstacle along these lines while visiting Washington state. I needed a permit for access to state lands that was available at Walmart’s sporting goods department, handled as part of the system for hunting licenses. I had to fill in all sorts of ID stuff on the computer, including zip-code. It rejected my zip-code, telling me it must be five digits. Well of course I had entered five digits, but the first one was a zero, and the programmers had not allowed for that. I finally gave up and lied about the zip, using one from when I lived in NY.
You would never get that offensive comment thing in Berlin. First of all, nobody cares if someone is nude; secondly, a bunch of guys would gang up and take out the person offending verbally. I have seen teen guys do that to someone who was not minding their own business, but trying to mind somebody else’s.
Staring is a separate issue though. I have never seen anybody noticeably staring at people sunbathing or swimming nude in parks or beaches, but it is not an offense in Germany to pick your nose in public, or to stare mindlessly at someone else. Stepson used to get incensed by people staring when he first arrived, but calmed down as the years went on.
Summer was always a great time in Berlin, as women there generally have tiny titties, and most do not bother wearing bras at all during the summer. Very nice when accompanied by sleeveless or deep necked shirts.
Wow. I never quite know what to think about Walmart. Their business practices are so inconsistent. But for the first time ever, I got a call from the pharmacy at the Tiny Town Walmart, asking me if I needed a refill on a certain prescription. The fact is that I had 3 more days of that prescription, but was planning to go in and get a refill of everything I use either today or tomorrow. So I told her yes, and could I please order refills for the others while we were at it? No problem.
Now Walmart has been my drug dealer since I returned from Germany over 3 years ago, but never have they called me to see if they should prepare a refill. That is one of the very few sales solicitations that I would actually appreciate.
This go in and refill every month is something I hate with a purple passion. In Germany, I had no trouble getting 6 months of prescription medication at once. Pharmacies were never on the beaten path, and going monthly, as I am required to do here, is just insane in either country. And it is especially egregious here since all the local pharmacies charge for delivery, then the driver expects a tip on top of that.
On the inconsistency front, the Tiny Town Walmart is always completely out of stuff I need, and that includes everything from grocery items to spoons and forks I wanted to buy the last time I was there. I like Arnold Palmers (half iced tea, half lemonade) and Lipton makes the best in a thing they call “Half & Half”. The Tiny Town Walmart has never had that item. Last time I was there, there was no orange juice in large containers, no large brown eggs, and no Andes mints. Now these are really commonly bought items. I guess Tiny Town has never heard of ‘just in time’ inventory practices. Or maybe their philosophy is ‘not quite just in time’. So I have to stop at one of the Muncie Walmarts to buy that stuff and several 12-packs of the Lipton Half & Half when I am there.
No one around here can match Walmart’s prices as a drug dealer, as all but one of my medications are $4 at Walmart for a month’s supply. But being forced to go in once every month is a real PITA, only slightly mollified by today’s sales call.
From information I have gleaned from a friend that is a mail carrier, the ability to get stamps with no shipping has to do with the type of route.
Just to clarify, I should have specified “no shipping charge.” I have heard of people leaving an addressed, unstamped envelope and coins in the box as outgoing mail, as well as buying stamps that way, but the Stamps by Mail process is traditional – send your order in as business reply mail and it comes back (IIRC) as Priority with the only cost being the price of the requested stamps themselves.
I know the Stamps by Phone option has a fee attached – this is the only method I know that allows remote USPS purchases at the same cost as a trip to the physical post office. I’m home with my mom basically 24/7 as a full-time caregiver so I look for normally-needed things I can do from home as often as I can.
On the inconsistency front, the Tiny Town Walmart is always completely out of stuff I need
A couple of years ago, our nearest store was freshened/redesigned. Since then,we’ve experienced the exact same thing. In fact, I’ve half-seriously accused the store managers of keeping a record of my credit card, figuring out what I frequently buy and either stocking those items slowly or discontinuing them altogether. I can think of 12-15 things that I bought either regularly or just once in the last 2-3 years that, upon my next visit, were never to be found again.
No one around here can match Walmart’s prices as a drug dealer, as all but one of my medications are $4 at Walmart for a month’s supply
Do they not offer the 3 months for $10 option for your prescriptions? All of the $4 Wal-Mart prescriptions we get are in 3 month quantities.
“Now Walmart has been my drug dealer…”
I’d be careful about naming my drug dealer in a public family forum, sir. These things are monitored, you know.
“No one around here can match Walmart’s prices as a drug dealer…”
Now there ya go again; what did I tell ya about that?
Tiny Town must be a rockin’ place. Pretty dull in Retroville. Our drug dealers apparently specialize in vast quantities of prescription pills and meth. Sometimes smack. All boring shit. OFD did the exciting stuff back in the day.
Gosh, I’m glad you’re still around. Many of my friends who relished the non-prescription recreational stuff have checked out—some many years ago.
I will inquire about the 3-month deal, but I have been told in the past that there is no way to get more than a month at a time. I have gone round and round with both the doctor’s office and Walmart, and they say that’s the way it is in the US. After a purchase, I have to wait 21 days to get a refill. I told the doc once that I was not going to go to Walmart every week, because the refill date was different on all my drugs—I just would not take whatever I was out of until they all coordinated. Only then did she do something that gave me an extra month (not covered by my insurance, natch). All I can say is that the insurance company is making a lot off me, because I often end up paying for what should be covered. Fortunately, it is almost always the $4 drugs. I think I pay about $25/mo for what only costs $16/mo were I to pay. That’s probably stupid of me, but I’m new to all this Medicare stuff and probably made mistakes when first signing up.
“Gosh, I’m glad you’re still around. Many of my friends who relished the non-prescription recreational stuff have checked out—some many years ago.”
I am one of a tiny handful still around, among all those I once knew. Most are either dead or in institutions of one kind or another. Of course, from sheer longevity, this is also true of most of my fellow soldiers and cops from those decades gone by, and from my own sheer cussedness. Some days I feel like I’m a hundred years old but I am only about to hit sixty.
Mrs. OFD has to take a small handful of prescription drugs, as does my sister (for epilepsy) but I haven’t had to do that for many, many years now. I take nothing other than the occasional aspirin for minor pain or a Benadryl if my seasonal allergies are really kicking my ass. But I most often go months without taking anything at all. I recognize that this is likely to change as I get older and creakier and more systems start falling apart, but we shall see.
Mrs. OFD is out in Lost Wages this week and reports that it is very weird there, very strange.
Little brother just wrapped up a court case in Bangor, Maine and went home.
MIL is back from Florida.
Princess still at McGill in Montreal.
And OFD sits at home in Retroville, per usual.
All I can say is that the insurance company is making a lot off me, because I often end up paying for what should be covered. Fortunately, it is almost always the $4 drugs. I think I pay about $25/mo for what only costs $16/mo were I to pay. That’s probably stupid of me, but I’m new to all this Medicare stuff
Once again, I wasn’t complete in what I typed. I’m also relatively new to my folks’ Medicare stuff. We use another pharmacy for their name-brand drugs. What we get at Wal-Mart, we just pay cash for so that the price doesn’t count against the total and get us ever closer to the donut hole.. In fact, WM has no record of any insurance (or lack thereof) for either mom or dad, but we do get a 90 day supply for all the pills we get from there.
I have no idea if there’s any difference state to state but we just picked up a new list from Wal-Mart (updated in March) and, out of 4 double-column pages of listed medicines, only 4 don’t show a $10 for 90 days option.
Since someone mentioned geezers above, some of you may be interested in this link I stumbled across while surfing the news during my mom’s recent hospital stay:
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/03/29/prescription-drugs-cost-least-at-costco-and-most-at-cvs-study-shows/
I thank Mrs. OFD for visiting Vegas. I hope she leaves some of your vast fortune here. Maybe it will help get our K-12 school system out of number 50. Thanks for looking out for us Senator Reid! Libtard.
Our “vast fortune” is in the form of what we can see out our south-facing windows, mainly, the Lake. And still being above the grass. I believe Mrs. OFD is staying at Caesar’s on the 20th floor and after a hellish flight across the country the other day, they’re treating her nicely. Believe it or not, the work she does in just a couple of days may do more to help kids out there than anything that asswipe Reid has done in his entire shitty “career.”
Thanks for that link, SVJeff; we are Costco members and will take that into account. Of course the only Costco store up here is thirty miles south but it’s one of their “warehouse” sites so it’s kinda huge. Between that and the new Walmart “super store” they’re building about five miles from here on the Swanton line, I guess we’ll be all set.
You do not, by law, have to be a member of Costco or Sams Club to get prescriptions filled at those establishments.
Interesting; I did not know that. I will so advise Mrs. OFD, the public health/mental health guru forthwith. In a sorta related note, we discovered (through the local newspaper ad we saw) that the local med center has pirated part of Mrs. OFD’s organization’s instructional program and markets it regionally at a cut-rate price. We are investigating….
You do not, by law, have to be a member of Costco or Sams Club to get prescriptions filled at those establishments.
Or to buy tires and batteries or get a pair of glasses. I have no clue why these items are not behind the card either.