08:58 – It was 33.3F (~ 1C) when I took Colin out this morning.
Walmart may be serious about taking on Amazon. I ordered 18 jars of Bertolli alfredo sauce at 9:51 a.m. yesterday. I got a ship notification from Walmart at 2:29 p.m. yesterday, saying the order would arrive Wednesday.
I checked several other food items that we use routinely. Obviously, Amazon isn’t seriously competing in this market. Walmart’s prices were reasonable, a bit more than Costco or Sams charges. Amazon’s prices on these same items were at least twice and often three times as much. Get real.
Interesting article in the paper this morning. Sanity still prevails sometimes. A man in Elizabeth City, down near the coast, shot and killed his wife of 53 years. The DA was surprised that the grand jury declined to prosecute him, so he’s been freed.
As it turns out, his wife suffered from Alzheimer’s and was about to be moved to a care facility. Even the best of Alzheimer’s facilities are hell holes, and he obviously recognized that the woman he loved was gone and didn’t want her body to continue suffering. He must have known when he shot her that he’d probably spend the rest of his life in prison, but he obviously loved her enough that he was willing to pay that price. Obviously, the grand jury realized the situation and concluded that he was no threat to others and that no crime had been committed by any rational definition. Good for them.
* * * * *
Remember the old days when articles in the computer press would debate whether we’d ever see the “Sub-$1000 laptop”?
How about the sub-$100 lappy:
http://www.frys.com/product/8573369
And since that is just a glorified tablet, dell will be offering a nice little lappy at $130 next week. It’s normal price is $200.
Once again technology has outrun politics. NO NEED for subsidized pcs or lappys for anyone anymore.
n
Speaking of FLASHLIGHTS, I became frightened reading the latest Dane & Bones adventure, Xibalba. They were exploring a cave in Guatemala that was so big, their FLASHLIGHTS couldn’t reach the other side. Not wanting to fall into that same situation, I ordered a 100mW green laser from biglasers.com Now when I’m exploring some deep, dark cenote, I can use my laser to detect the bottom. I may also use it to point out stars to casual passers-by while night flying my drone.
An awful solution to an awful problem. I’m not sure any of the other “solutions” are any less awful.
I had enough exposure to severe Alzheimer’s patients when my mom was in the nursing home to know that I’ll never question whatever steps family decides to take. It’s the most horrible disease I can imagine. It would be bad enough if the patients’ minds were completely gone; it’s even worse because they have occasional lucid periods lasting anything from a few seconds to a few minutes where they know exactly what’s happening to them. More than once, I saw a patient suddenly become briefly lucid and literally begin screaming.
Fortunately, neither of my parents suffered dementia. Both were mentally sharp right up to the end. Barbara’s parents both suffered minor dementia towards the end, but nothing approaching full-blown Alzheimer’s.
“…his wife suffered from Alzheimer’s …”
I lost my mother to Alzheimer’s last year, after over a decade of decline. I have decided for myself that I will arrange an exit on my own terms if I should ever receive that diagnosis, and I sincerely hope someone will love me enough to arrange it for me if I am no longer able to.
That man committed no crime, by any reasonable definition of the term, and that he had to do what he did is more than punishment enough. It is regrettable that his case will have received a nolle prosequi rather than a verdict of not guilty, and that his actions will go down as a firearm homicide in the statistics, rather than euthanasia or assisted suicide.
“More than once, I saw a patient suddenly become briefly lucid and literally begin screaming.”
Yes, and you would scream too, as would I. I cannot fathom that we all can agree to spare an animal unnecessary suffering, but humans are often condemned to a living nightmare. Where is the dignity or humanity in that?
I’m very sorry for your loss.
Oh my, stumbled into a flat earther on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yBjy3b_hIw
my goodness this guy is obtuse.
n
He also seems to think the moon is not a solid object, and is only about 100 miles away.
HowTF does a guy with that level of misunderstanding even use a computer?
And speaking of obtuse, here’s some more willful ignorance, that ‘ain’t gonna end well.’
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/when-race-is-your-only-definition-everything-is-a-race-issue/
Mr. nick beat me to it with that post just now; amazingly stupid and willfully obtuse people.
Quick: what’s the % of blacks on the Patriots? More than whites, I guarantee you. And super players of both races on the team, as was amply demonstrated last night by BOTH teams.
There is just no reasoning with these people anymore. They live in a different fucking dimension and all too frequently pop into this one where they make weird and funny noises.
Most of them WILL reoffend:
“Criminal Who Had LIFE-SENTENCE Commuted By Obama ARRESTED AGAIN For SAME CRIMES!”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/02/criminal-life-sentence-commuted-obama-arrested-crimes/
Took a year for the guy to get busted with a POUND of cocaine. In other words, he went right back to work dealing.
n
“In other words, he
went right backcontinued to work dealing.”FIFY
Once again technology has outrun politics. NO NEED for subsidized pcs or lappys for anyone anymore.
Over the past five years, Intel has not improved the Core series CPUs to a degree that most people would notice. The upgrade cycle is now forced through maintenance costs vs. buying new, especially with RAM as DDR2 costs more than DDR3 which costs more than DDR4 …
And at $130 you get the hardware, and MS windows, and profit for both companies. MS must value the os somewhere around $5 for that to work….
n
I personally value MS Winblows in negative numbers, involving all kinds of hidden and future costs to me. Not worth it at all.
I can run the two or three Windows apps that wife needs (allegedly) on Linux using Crossover, nary a problem. And as I’ve said before, this machine now boots up in less than five seconds. Apps open in about two seconds. (SSD, of course, contributes to the speed).
My Grandmother worked as the head nurse at a halfway house for disabled persons until she was forced to retire. She said that she would not go through any form of dementia. After she passed we found her stash in the freezer: A bottle of Valium and a bottle of Beam. The Alzheimer’s got to her before she could act. 🙁
That disease is rough on everyone involved.
And at $130 you get the hardware, and MS windows, and profit for both companies. MS must value the os somewhere around $5 for that to work….
IIRC, at screen sizes of 8 inches or less, the Windows 10 license is free. I believe there is a catch, however, where the OS functionality is similar to the old WinRT ARM tablets.
Microslop ought to pay us for using Windows 10.
It would have to be substantial, too.
That disease is rough on everyone involved
Yep. I don’t ever want to go through that.
My grandfather went through it although the most I heard were stories about mishaps. Complaining about a strange women in his bed (wife of 60 years), wandering in the neighborhood at night in his underwear. I went for a visit when they were still mostly living on their own and they did not recognize me or my wife. Got out a picture album they had and started going through the pictures and it helped. Last visit I made because it just confused them.
Had a lady come in once a day to fix them two meals, clean house, do laundry, etc. Turned out the lady had been stealing and selling my grandmothers crochet pieces. These were big elaborate pieces with very fine thread. Had one that I had been given, about 4 foot square, appraised at $2,000 (I still have it). That sold about 50 such pieces before we caught on to her scheme. Police refused to press charges because the pieces had not been appraised before they were sold and thus had no value.
Personally saw this adventure of dementia (Alzheimers is a subset of dementia and can only be accurately diagnosed with a brain autopsy) with my aunt. A slow removal of the person from the body. At time coherent, most of the time in never never land. Not a gradual decline. In the matter of days her memory and brain power would plummet. Did this for 10 years. At the end she was a shell that I wanted to put a pillow over her face to end it. She said when she watched her father go through the disease that she never wanted to live that way. Well it happened and there was nothing we could do.
My mother had the same affliction but did not get as bad before she died of other health issues. I would call her on the phone and she would tell me things she had told me before. Just before her death she was repeating things in the same call.
My grandfather went through it although the most I heard were stories about mishaps. Complaining about a strange women in his bed (wife of 60 years), wandering in the neighborhood at night in his underwear. I went for a visit when they were still mostly living on their own and they did not recognize me or my wife. Got out a picture album they had and started going through the pictures and it helped. Last visit I made because it just confused them.
Oh, shit. I just repeated myself. I am doomed. Same story, same time, same place tomorrow.
Somebody swing by Mr. Ray’s place and show him a picture album or sumthin. He’s a goner, for sure.
I feel I can make some jokes because my family has gone through the mill on this shit, too.
Dad went from early-onset Alzheimer’s, which started in his late 50s, all through his 60s until he finally went at 71 in 1998. Mom has Pick’s Disease and turned 85 yesterday, another lovely variant of Alzheimer’s and dementia. She also repeats stuff and remembers chit from 70 years ago but not 70 seconds ago. Dad was a boiler and machinery insurance inspector and crawled around all that machinery all the time I was growing up; he’d take me with him sometimes. Both parents grew up in New Bedford when the textile mills were going full-tilt-boogie and spewing shit into the air and water tables. He also got a lungful of nasty shit one time cleaning out his aunt’s attic down there, and then later picked up a nice case of endocarditis, which was the beginning of the long slide down. He would be hallucinating, but every once in a while have a second or two of lucid recognition and then it would be gone. Got in trouble for retaliating against other patients who got in his face, and he was a big boy himself, at 6’3″ and well over 200 pounds. Knocked people down.
Mom is in a facility near my brothers and sister down in Medway, MA, and it’s a pretty decent place in a woodsy surrounding; I visited a couple of months ago and ate her lunch; wasn’t bad at all.
Grandparents and aunts got various forms of cancer and dementia as they hit their 80s; and as I’ve mentioned before, we’ve had three family members over the decades go out via gunshot.
I keep what’s left of my mind as busy as I can and always learning new chit and trying to stay active. I’m in regular contact with siblings and wife and her family, and I do the weekly combat vets group thing most weeks. I’ve had fairly extensive treatment/therapy for PTSD over the last several years and am at what is known as “high-functioning.” Although “severe and chronic.”
What’s amusing is the two Purple Hearts were for very minor scratches and punctures from rocket and mortar shrapnel but they don’t give those out for mental damage. Which, as we know from older relatives suffering with it, is truly pernicious and evil shit. The brain is a miraculous organ, but we barely know what goes on inside it, leaving aside the existence of a soul.
Given a choice of how to go among my family’s most common exits, I’d choose gunshot any day.
My Mom’s mind was sharp right up to her passing. I hope to have inherited that. Besides my good looks.
Given a choice of how to go among my family’s most common exits, I’d choose gunshot any day.
Morphine is much better from my perspective, you just fade away. I knew a guy who tried to commit suicide who “missed” with a .357. The hole in front of his chest was not that big. The hole in his back covered over 1/3rd of his back.
And there is Arseface on the Preacher tv show who tried to follow his hero Curt Cobain and blow his head off with a shotgun. He missed.
http://movieweb.com/preacher-tv-series-trailer-amc-arseface/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Preacher_characters#Arseface
I got to watch my Dad’s father fade away from age 84 to 86. At first it was nighttime issues then it spread quickly to daytime issues. His being stone deaf from age 82 on did not help either.
Yeah, gunshot is tricky; plenty of guys have been shot in the head with rifles or .44 magnums or whatever and lived, a little effed up, but they lived. Other guys have been hit with BBs or .22LR and dropped dead on the spot. You wanna do it right you aim directly at one of your eyes with the barrel leveled and pointing straight back. Not many peeps have the stones to do that.
In my former life as a cop, I saw several suicides over the years; two by gunshot and one by hanging, that I remember pretty vividly. They were all successful.
Morphine sounds good. But of course suicide is a mortal sin.
All I can add is that I’ve been there, done that, cried for the Mom and Dad lost within themselves.
My Dad had an uncanny sense of direction, probably from his B-17 pilot days. One day my Sister got a call from the County Sheriff. Dad had his car stuck in the middle of a corn field, thought he was headed to Ripon WI (he was in Burlington IA where he lived at the time, Mom had died earlier in the year after 2-1/2 years in a Diabetic Coma). Long story short we moved Dad into a care center that handled the progressions of dementia and Alzheimer’s. Of course we took away his keys and car. The care center was a fortuitous find and treated him well to the end. His last month he recognized no one and was a screaming, crying, basket case. He should not have gone that way.
Peace
“CARB releases modifications to proposed oil and gas GHG limits”
http://www.ogj.com/articles/2017/02/carb-releases-modifications-to-proposed-oil-and-gas-ghg-limits.html
“The 13 modifications cover 27 pages and include four additional documents. Specific modifications are included for separator and tank systems, circulation tanks for well-stimulation treatments, vapor collection systems and control devices, reciprocating gas compressors, centrifugal gas compressors, gas-powered pneumatic devices and pumps, liquids unloading at gas wells, well casing vents, and underground gas storage facility monitoring requirements.”
Two things come to mind.
1. This is the tail trying to wag the dog (California trying to force entire USA to limit Climate Change so that they do not become noncompetitive with other states).
2. We can tax ourselves into prosperity !
This is why I am getting so freaked out about this GW, AGW, GHG, CC, …, stuff. The bureaucrats will paperwork us to the poorhouse. And then tax us to death.
Hunting muggers is a rational choice for me.
(Not currently, of course. I have a preteen child. But within the decade I expect to go back to hunting.)
(That’s not even taking into account that I’m married but not happily married. Bleeding out in an alley might be considered by some to be better than continued marriage.)
“…. progressions of dementia and Alzheimer’s. ….”
Let’s drop this, OK? I just rolled 78 a month ago.
And still holding together well enough aren’t you? Able to compose and type (or dictate) a coherent sentence, at any rate.
Unless… unless you aren’t actually CowboySlim but instead a CowboySlimbot, a bot which checks email and forums and puts in appropriate CowboySlim-ish remarks. We can take that as our working hypothesis and leave it to you to prove that you are really a human … if you really are a human, “Slim”.
You wanna do it right you aim directly at one of your eyes with the barrel leveled and pointing straight back. Not many peeps have the stones to do that.
Reminds me of a story long ago. A neurosurgeon I used to do work for was going to come by my office after work. He was late as usual but at least this time he was attending to an unsuccessful suicide. Tried the old gun to the temple. He told me the right way was to place the gun in your mouth aimed up and back. Thanks George.
BTW turned out the women was the wife of a fellow my dad worked with. Was blinded but went on to live many more years.
dkreck, unfortunately, too many people tip their heads back too far.
I was working a plastic and reconstructive surgery convention, and a Dr presented on that very issue. He had a kid with a shotgun, and the kid tilted his head back. Cut a channel thru the center of his face. Dr put him back together…sorta. Didn’t do the kid any favors. You could see in his eye he was gonna try again as soon as he got the chance.
Whatever his problems were, they weren’t made better by only having one eye, one nostril, no jaws or teeth, and horrific frankenstein scars zipping all over his face.
An acquaintance in high school tried the old gun to the temple, but tilted his head. Small caliber pistol took one lobe. Scrambled everything around. Memories were blended and confused. Learned to walk, talk, and sorta play cards again. That’s a TBI you don’t really recover from. He’d had a fight with a girl, and been drinking. Says he didn’t remember any of it.
Just from the cases I know about, it seems surprisingly hard to shoot yourself and die.
n
(and there’s a digression in Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson that addresses that fact for a unit about to go behind enemy lines in WWII, it’s easy to get wrong.)
IIRC, that CowboySlimBot fella posted a nice color pitcher of hisself all duded up and he looked pretty dam spry to me. I wouldn’t care to tangle with him.
No, if you wanna talk to a real life mental case, I’m your boy. Highly functional, but that’s dubious. I might think it’d be fun to partner up with that guy down in the Capital District and hunt bad people.
Bleeding out in an alley preferable to a marriage? Some, probably; mine has its trials and tribulations, like the one earlier this evening, but all is good now. Wife has been kinda out-to-lunch today for various reasons and one of the upshots was she led me to believe my car had been stolen out of our driveway and I was seconds away from dialing 911 when I found out the actual story; she’d taken the dawg out for a walk and left the car in the parking lot and apparently walked home and forgot about it. Also found a lost car key that I thought had been disappeared into a black hole in space, from the other day. Also still too close to the anniversary of her first husband getting killed in a car wreck back in 1992, and having to tell her 7-year-old son at the time.
Plus she didn’t eat anything today and was hauling furniture around between the back porch and studio/shed by herself while I was sorting through tools and organizing them upstairs here. Another day when I suspect she could well check out before I do, which is not a pleasant thought, and we’ve just been rolling in jollity and amusement the last couple of days here, ain’t we?
WRT Stephenson’s trilogy and other writings, I suppose I’ll give him a try again at some point; I got kinda bogged down in the first one, IIRC. Same thing happened recently with a so-far worshipful fat biography of Alexander Hamilton. I’m having better luck getting through the 1,200-page “The Dying Grass,” by William T. Volmann, the latest in his Seven Dreams corpus covering epochs of the North Murkan continent, from the Vikings to the present day.
And this week I’ll bring the paperwork, photos and money to the passport office over in the big city (Saint Albans, pop. 6k) three miles east of here. Just in case we actually end up going to Italy in March or April. I’ve never been to Europe, but the women of the family are infamous globe-trotters. And I don’t believe my siblings have been outta Maffachufetts, other than short jaunts to NH or Road-Eye-Lun (say it fast). Oh, and maybe one or two trips with chillunz to Disney World in Floriduh.
Let’s change to a more happy subject:
FLASHLIGHTS !!
WRT Stephenson, Cryptonomicon is a stand alone book separate from the System of the world books (the baroque cycle), although there is some intersection of family lines, and a character that appears in all of them. I found Crypt0nomicon to be one of my favorite books for years and would sometimes let it fall open and just read a chapter or two. The Baroque cycle, I’ve read thru only once. His earlier work, Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac have some very funny parts, as well as a look at some problem in the world, and an attempt to teach the reader something. Later stuff like Anathem, Reamde, and SevenEves lost some of the charm of the earlier stuff, as his writing style evolved away from the asides and vignettes. He does have a hard time with endings.
Still, one of my favorite living authors.
n
Update on my beloved Pelican 1920 FLASHLIGHT.
The rubber over the end cap switch has torn. I use it dozens of times a day, so I’m not terribly surprised it wore out. The switch still works, it’s just not waterproof anymore.
I’ll be buying a couple of spares.
nick
..or 72-hour survival kits
https://www.unchartedsupplyco.com/products/the-seventy2
…and @nick … maybe a small hunk of bicycle innertube will fix your FLASHLIGHT’s end cap thingy.
Patrick’s latest, on our morally superior foreign policies:
http://buchanan.org/blog/moral-supremacy-mr-putin-126508
We oughta quit bugging the Iranians and stepping up a decent relationship with the Russians and exterminating jihadis together. Also quit bugging the Chicoms.
How about looking into jobs and the economy back here, and the national infrastructure, and the apparently infinite immigration that’s been going on? Oh wait, I forgot; that’s rayciss and islamophobic, etc. And the womyn might have another big march with funny pink hats while their speakers channel the late Sylvia Plath and scream obscenities and filth.
The next wimmenz march is supposed to be “a day without a woman” or sumpin. Most of the comments are along the lines of: if it’s those wimmenz, could we make it a year.
I believe Maxine Waters, Dumbocrat CA, is mentally ill. She looks and talks worse than Coffin Cankles. Absolutely retarded.
And a brief examination of how progs and Normals exist in separate realities nowadays:
https://virginiafreemen.com/2017/02/06/inevitable/
Like he says, there will come an event or incident of some kind that lights the fuse.
“She looks and talks worse than Coffin Cankles. Absolutely retarded.”
Holy chit, hombre; she’s still walking the earth?? Yikes! She was always a wack job moron, for decades now, I guess, and truly represents her constituents, believe me.
Probably has some kinda seniority position in the Congress by now, too. Let me check…nope, doesn’t look like it…just a bunch of subcommittees and the Black Caucus and the Prog Caucus and suchlike, a big fan of Fidel Castro, etc., etc. Idiot.
And for your morning coffee or tea reading material:
https://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/skull-stomping-sacred-cows-reality-isnt-nice-its-a-2×4-to-the-teeth/
Warning: Bad Language Alert
Thought for the day from our local Fort Bend County Herald:
What do Richard Milhous Nixon and William Jefferson Clinton have in common ?
You can spell the word “criminal” using their names.
And for your morning coffee or tea reading material:
https://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/skull-stomping-sacred-cows-reality-isnt-nice-its-a-2×4-to-the-teeth/
Warning: Bad Language Alert
“Another cop friend, “Man, I’ve upped my off-duty EDC to three twenty-round mags for the Glock, and I keep eight loaded mags for the AR in the plate carrier behind my seat. It’s getting weird out there.””
What the *bleep* ? And the cities are issuing body armor to the firemen ? What the heck is going on out there ?
So, I am not the only crazy who carries 200 rounds in my truck for my console gun and the rifle in the back ?
Just from the cases I know about, it seems surprisingly hard to shoot yourself and die.
Breathing helium works well, is easier, and certainly not as messy. A friend of my son did that. Rigged up a system to breath the helium and just quietly perished. The friend has placed a delayed message on Facebook telling people what he had done. When the message posted people called 911 and it was already too late. His mother found out because of the message on Facebook.
As for me, when the dementia hits I am going to stand on the tracks as a speeding train approaches. The bug on the windshield approach. Of course I will be holding a FLASHLIGHT.
Not very nice for the train’s engineer. I heard or read a couple interviews w train engineers who hit suicides, and they were broken up about it.
By then they will have self driving trains I hope.
head phones on, walking away from train seems to be a favorite way amongst Cali teens.
n
@SteveF, it’s gonna suck for someone. No matter what. and the fire and rescue people will spend way too much time searching the right of way for stuff like fingers if the train is moving fast enough, per my father, who’s still bothered by that one.
Not only the train engineer/driver but the crew that has to clean up the mess along the tracks and underneath the train itself. They think very bad thoughts about the thoughtlessness involved and the persons who did that to themselves. And there’s always a chance the train hits you and you get bounced up in the air and off to the side, with merely nasty and deforming and crippling injuries instead of being killed outright. So now your life sucks even worse.
there’s always a chance the train hits you and you get bounced up in the air
OK. Alternate plan. Jump into a vat of molten steel. No mess to clean up, nothing to recover. May affect the carbon balance of the steel slightly.
OK. Alternate plan. Jump into a vat of molten steel. No mess to clean up, nothing to recover. May affect the carbon balance of the steel slightly.
Suicide by cop sounds better every moment.
Suicide by cop? R U serious? Most of them can’t hit the side of a barn if they were snuggling with it point-blank. They get nearly zero for training, maybe one qualification “test” per year, with often badly maintained weapons. Unless it’s one of the tiny minority of cops who take all that stuff seriously and do the training and maintenance on their own time and at their own expense, sort of like some of us IT peeps back in the day, when organizations stopped paying for training. (You should already know every square inch of their IT infrastructure and all the sw involved before you come through their door for the interview.)
The vat of molten steel is good, only extremely painful for a split second, so long as you can find one of those within a reasonable distance and you can get access to it.
I’m thinking maybe half a dozen sticks of dynamite, blasting caps, fuse, etc. way out in the boonies somewhere. Again, not much, if anything, to clean up, no fuss, no muss and whatever does survive is good for organic environment material. Probably faster and with less pain than the vat of molten steel.
Boy, aren’t we a cheery bunch so close to Saint Valentine’s Day!
Whatcha gettin’ your honeys? Mine will be in Denver, so she’ll just get a “Happy Saint Valentine’s Day, hon!” In remembrance of the Christian martyr, of course, not cardboard boxes of chocolate hahts and hothouse roses.
I was just at the local Hannaford’s mahket and noticed a big wide empty space between the courtesy desk and the cashiers/registers. The “express lane” cashier said they’re moving in self-service machines. So more humans outta work pretty soon, looks like.
And still no word on the Fed job, which I’ve been hanging on since last September, and we hear that there is a massive background check backlog with the Feds now, and dozens of VA jobs up here, for example, are also hanging. Maybe they can get robots or remote sys admins in Slovakia and Bangladesh to run the Cisco routers and switches and deal with luser help desk issues (for Microslop desktops and laptops, what else?)
Whatcha gettin’ your honeys? Mine will be in Denver, so she’ll just get a “Happy Saint Valentine’s Day, hon!” In remembrance of the Christian martyr, of course, not cardboard boxes of chocolate hahts and hothouse roses.
Roses, same as I do twice a month. Just the $9.99 dozen at HEB. I started bringing her roses back when she got breast cancer just so she would feel special. Nothing like amputating a forward facing portion of her body to make a woman feel down.
I was just at the local Hannaford’s mahket and noticed a big wide empty space between the courtesy desk and the cashiers/registers. The “express lane” cashier said they’re moving in self-service machines. So more humans outta work pretty soon, looks like.
Walmart has a love-hate relationship with their self service checkout machines here. There are ten terminals with a full time overseer and a full time technician. The amount of overrides needed for windshield washer fluid and OTC drugs is amazing. They run some variant of Windows XP that seems to crash hourly in high demand times.
“They run some variant of Windows XP…”
Problem identified.
So that Wall-Mutt had to dump at least a couple of cashiers and then hire a fulltime supervisor and tech.
Brilliant!
I prefer not to shop at Walmart … but go there probably a couple times a month. They have a few things that Precious Princess Puny Punk wants that aren’t available elsewhere that I’ve seen, and for the rest, I can get a list of things I need in one store or I can drive 30 miles or more to a bunch of other stores. (The other stores would charge more, too, but my time is much more expensive than the couple dollars.) And Walmart is open 24/7, which is important when we discover a crack in the fish tank at 21:00.
Anyway, I don’t much care for the self-service lanes because they don’t take cash and because of the frequent intervention and override needed, but so often the manned lines need a manager to come handle some oddity, or there’s a clerk with 2″ nails and whose hands consequently are almost useless, or a customer who’s paying by check and screws it up several times in a row, or the customer who argues about the price as scanned. Oh, and it happened only once, but the extra-wide customer whose bottom pulled all of the stuff from the shelves near the register and who got stuck. (I’ll admit, the humor of that situation made up for the aggravation at the delay. And, being me, I discussed the situation with my six-ish daughter, making no effort to keep my voice down.)
That sounds like a fun time you and your daughter had during that incident. Boffo laffs galore.
I try for the cashier lanes that have one or more males ahead of me, because I am almost certain that they wanna GTFO of there as much as I do and are expediting their own transactions accordingly. But sometimes I’m just stuck, because the store only has two lanes open and both of them have female subjects ahead of me with situations as you describe above; waiting until everything is rung up and then writing out the check from scratch after searching for it in the jumbo-sized Chinese puzzle pocketbook; arguing over one of the fifty coupons she suddenly presents; and of course the one who pulls out all her change so as to present the EXACT amount of the total to the cashier, but this also involves that same pocketbook.
Then they stand around, mill around, at the end of the line, fussing over their bags, and chatting, and lingering, and hanging around. And often just leaving their empty carriage in the lane and lumbering away.
Couple of weeks ago I had one of those in front of me; a certain NYC type, very short and nasty and ugly as a bag of pickled assholes. She did all the usual stalling maneuvers and then took her sweet time GTFO of my way when I was leaving. I saw her slowly loading all her chit into her car out in the parking lot ahead of me. Then she was gonna cut me off by returning her empty carriage to the carriage corral, but I cut her off instead, laughing, as the threw up her hands and muttered nasty curses at me as I drove away, with the Ramones cranked up on LittleSteven’s Underground Garage (SiriusXM).
Au contraire. It was educational, not entertaining. I discussed with her how a lot of systems depend on people doing what they need to do and getting out of the way of the next person, and how all it takes is one jerk or idiot to screw things up for a whole lot of people. And the issue of making a mess and not taking responsibility for it. Also discussed, IIRC (it was about three years ago and this is a recurring topic with all of my kids), how most retail stores operate on a very thin profit margin and one person destroying or stealing stuff can wipe out the day’s profit.
The fact that I was internally laughing at the ambulatory elephant seal was just a bonus.
OK. Alternate plan. Jump into a vat of molten steel.
Fast forward *several* years. Mr. Ray runs out his front door on the way to the “vat” since it is almost time. Trips over his riding mower and face plants. “Wuh, where am I? Dory, is that you Dory? Pretty.” Perhaps suicide by cop is looking better.
Suicide by Morphine looks way better than all of these to me. Where is Dr. House when you need him ?
I’m gonna stick with suicide by dynamite or C4.
But of course, suicide is a mortal sin.