dreamshark

The decrepit old kitchen drawers look the same on the outside, but now they all have beautiful new bamboo organizer trays inside, expandable for perfect fit! Yes, that is what I spent my week doing. It’s not like we retirees don’t keep busy.

My favorite Costco item, which tragically disappeared from their shelves 2 or 3 years ago. Hallelujah!

What used to be the southwest corner of my backyard

... but I finally managed to complete the rental car reservation for our imminent Florida Keys vacations. I rented from Enterprise through the Chase Travel Portal using my CSP, (the only credit card that provides primary CDW/LDW rental insurance). I was hoping I could find what I wanted through Chase, but it took me several passes through their search engine to master the intricacies. Turns out there's a class of vehicle called "Compact SUV" that sounds like just what we want. Priced like a compact, but apparently shaped like a little minivan: higher off the ground for easy entry/exit and easy to load. Anyway, that's my hope. At $497 for 6 days it was slightly more expensive than a Nissan Versa, but not by much. And I was able to pay for it with Ultimate Rewards points, which is another plus.

What I learned along the way.

The price of the exact same rental varies MASSIVELY from portal to portal and rental agency to rental agency. The prices turned up by Costco Travel were jaw-droppingly high, more than twice the cost of the other search engines I tried. Their lowest offering was a Nissan Versa for $1175!!! The portals offered by private loyalty programs were the best (Delta and Chase).
When searching for a car, don't specify the size of the car. You never know exactly how they are going to classify (or price) individual vehicles and you just might miss the best deal.
Searching for one-way rentals is always possible, but full of pitfalls. On Delta Cars you can't specify the drop-off location until the second search screen. On Chase you can specify it whenever you want, but sometimes the "different dropoff" just disappears between searches.
Be sure to sort the results in order of price, not the stupid default (which is usually something like "Recommended," which apparently means "most expensive"). It took me 3 passes through the Chase portal to figure this out, and then I found exactly what I was looking for (Enterprise, which was much cheaper than the competition, floated to the top with just the type of vehicle I wanted).
Kayak is incomprehensible. I guess it is just a comparison engine, not one that actually completes a rental for you? It kept shifting me off to different places, like Expedia (which immediately tried to upsell me) and some squikky outfit that wouldn't tell me the name of the rental company until I agreed to rent from them (really??? What if it is Hertz?). After each dead-end I had to back up and reenter my rather complicated search criteria. I gave up and went back to search engines that remembered at least some of it.
Be sure to check the cancellation policy. Most of the recommendations from Kayak were non-refundable.
Double and triple-check the pickup and dropoff locations before confirming. I almost rented a car with a dropoff at some military base because I accidentally selected "Key West" instead of "Key West International Airport" from the dropdown list. Yikes!

I guess the secret to a good night’s sleep is absolute exhaustion and 5 nights of sleep deprivation. Doesn’t seem like the secret to a healthy lifestyle. But this is without question the best night of sleep my know-it-all Watch has ever recorded.

Our scary trip to The Keys is coming up in TWO WEEKS and I am still dithering about car rental. Haven't rented a car for years, and I don't think I have ever done a 1-way rental. We are flying into Miami, driving down the Keys over a period of 5 days, then turning in the car in Key West and flying home from there.

I know enough NOT to rent from Hertz (who have developed a reputation for having their patrons arrested for car theft whenever their computer system loses track of where a car is, which happens fairly often). I have lots of credit cards and frequent flyer memberships, some of which offer good deals on various car rentals. Maybe Delta Stays has something? Chase Travel Portal?

Let me know if you have any tips.

Shortly after we returned from vacation (Apr 1) Richard picked up a 90-day prescription for his diabetes medicine, refilled his pillbox, and promptly misplaced the bottle in the post-vacation chaos. 10 days later when he tried to refill his pillbox he couldn't find the bottle. We've looked everywhere. This is the first time either of us has misplaced a bottle of maintenance meds and we don't know quite what to do.

This is complicated by the fact that he was in the middle of getting his dosage increased, so he had two prescriptions on file from two different doctors but still doesn't have any pills on hand. He's talked to the pharmacy, which gave him a few extra pills while they "tried to contact the doctor" but it is not 100% clear which doctor. They claim "the doctor" is not replying despite repeated attempts.

Since it is now effectively impossible to talk to your doctor in person without a 2-3 month lead time, I've been sending MyChart messages. The nurses who respond to these messages seem confused by the complexity of the situation and are assuming that we weren't able to fill the 2nd prescription, which is not the problem.

The problem is that he had the pills and LOST THEM. I'm not sure how that situation is supposed to be addressed. Do we really need another prescription? An early refill? A refill that we pay for out of pocket (since I doubt insurance will pay for lost meds)?

Has anybody here ever been in this situation?

;tldr. iPhone has a feature called Live Captions that enables conversation with the hearing-impaired (or in loud venues where everyone is hearing impaired)

I've been having confabs with my lovely elderly neighbors (i.e., older than I am) about the Parking Pad Project, which have been hindered somewhat by Bill's severe hearing loss. He doesn't like to keep asking people to repeat things, and ends up missing important details. I thought there must be a solution to this problem on my overly complicated iPhone, and there is! It was hard to find, but once I set it up it's surprisingly easy to use.

The first trick with anything Apple is figuring out their terminology. It wasn't Live Speech. It wasn't Dictation (or anything that could be found online by searching on "translate speech to text."). It's Live Captions, ideally combined with the Accessibility Shortcut.

SETUP. Once you know what it's called, it's easy to find instructions on how to enable Live Captions (Settings > Accessibility > (Hearing) Live Captions. Just toggle the slider). But then it's on ALL THE TIME, which you might not want. A better approach is to scroll down to Accessibility>Shortcut and set THAT to Live Captions. That lets you toggle the feature on or off by triple-clicking the side button.

USING IT. This was the part I couldn't find any instructions for, except vague directions to "click Microphone" (where?). I finally realized that when I enabled Live Captions a tiny little black and white icon appeared in the lower left corner of my home screen. Click on THAT and you see the Microphone option. Ohhhh. Click it, and a little window opens, declaring "Listening...." Say something and text appears in the little window. You can expand the window to full screen, which makes it a lot easier to see.

MAKING THE WINDOW GO AWAY
Just swipe right and the window folds up into the little icon again. It's still listening and transcribing, just not in your face. Click the icon and the window opens again at whatever size it was at when you closed it, so I think keeping it at full screen works the best.

Noting that Windows 10 is going out of support this fall, I thought it might be time to buy a newer version of Microsoft Office (I'm on 2010 now). I don't actually want the newest Ofice because Microsoft DROPPED PUBLISHER from its Office Suite last year. I LOVE Publisher! I've been using it for flyers, invitations, cards, and random paste up since Publisher 1.0 in Office 97. The last version that still has Publisher is Office 2021 Pro, only available used. So I ordered an unopened copy from Ebay for about $50, which is how I got my last version of Office.

Well, this time, I got scammed. Shortly before the estimated delivery date I was contacted by the seller who claimed there was some kind of problem with the USPS delivery and that they had re-sent another identical item to cover the loss. This sounded a little sussy, since it wasn't even overdue at this point, but I was out of town and not paying too much attention. I got home and the item had not arrived, but the seller had sent a new USPS tracking number. Which was a real tracking number; gave me a delivery date of April 8 when I entered it on the USPS site. On April 9 the package still wasn't here, but the USPS said it had been delivered. Wait a second. .

Your item was delivered at the front door or porch at 3:14 pm on April 9, 2025 in AGUADA, PR 00602.

Shit, that's in Puerto Rico!

I logged in to Ebay to lodge a complaint and found that the seller had disappeared from the site. My order still appeared in my account, waiting for me to provide feedback. So I clicked the "item not received" button and described the scam in the free text field, not expecting much.

To my utter astonishment, I got a response from Ebay in less than an hour:

We've reviewed your request and resolve the case in your favor. We've issued a refund back to your original payment method. You should receive it within 2-3 business days.

And it wasn't 2-3 business days: the money was back in my Paypal account by late afternoon! Damn, that's a well-oiled machine. I'm not sure if the seller cancelled their own Ebay account after running the scheme a few dozen times, or if Ebay kicked them off, but I kind of expected them to get away with it. Thanks, Ebay!

But still sort of funny. Exactly 40 years and 1 day ago we moved into the house we call Dreampark in the middle of a surprise snowstorm. It was a mess. Thanks, Mother Nature.

I just looked out the front door and guess what! Another April Fools surprise!😳

Finally dealing with the problematic tree that has been breaking up the neighbors’ parking pad for decades. Very stressful 😩

Lightweight rag bond paper with a clear plastic sheet protector hinged on one side. Notch on one corner They appear to have a very specific purpose, but what is it?

Unless you are over 10 years old. In which case it is unimaginably boring.

I was sorting through that shelf full of empty 3-ring binders when I ran across this mysterious Kinko’s box. Inside was a ream of this. Nice quality cream colored texture paper, the kind you might use for stationery or printing a resume. Much too nice for a throwaway cover sheet, but I can’t think what else it could be for. Anybody recognize it? More to the point - can anyone think of a use for it? Matt?

And while we're at it, can anyone use some 3-ring binders? All sizes, from the handy half-inchers to the oversize ones that conference notes and computer manuals used to come in. I use them to save statements from my broker, old Minicon notes and archives, magnetic photo album pages, genealogical records from our old gerbil ranch, that kind of thing. But I do not need this many. Some are used, but some of the narrow ones are brand new (did I buy a bunch of them in bulk at some point?). I hate to throw them in the trash, but I just don't need them all.

I started Severance S1 while visiting Amber, but had no way to watch it at home. Didn't really care - those first 2 or 3 episodes were kind of a slog anyway. But then it popped up FOR FREE on the Roku Channel so I finished it just because I could. Holy cow, does it ever pick up steam in the second half of the season! The last 3 episodes are like a runaway train!

I might have to get a free trial week of Apple TV and binge Season 2.

Anybody need some nice solid 3-ring binders? All sizes, from ½” to these oversized 3-inchers. Also Franklin Planner paraphernalia in Compact, Classic, and Monarch. The Monarch size takes regular letter sized paper.

How about you, Matt? You like paper archives.

Minnesota appears to be a blue state from a distance, but (as it pretty much always is) the Minnesota State Legislature is as purple as it is possible to be. This year was even closer than usual - with the Minnesota House balanced on a 67/67 knife edge as they recounted the votes in Shakopee. But wait! Turns out one of the clear DFL winners in a different district DID NOT LIVE IN THE DISTRICT HE WAS RUNNING FOR and was disqualified. So now they have to have a special election for that district. (Can they make that cheater pay for it? He wasn't even subtle about the pretense - rented an apartment but didn't even pretend to occupy it. Congratulations, Bozo, you singlehandedly knee-capped your party). Any Democrat could have won in that district, so after they redo the election the DFL should have the majority. But in the meantime... chaos!

Because now we get to the really fun part: that recount in Shakopee. The Democrat won by FOURTEEN VOTES! Yes, Virginia, sometimes your individual vote DOES count. But wait, it gets better! During the recount it was discovered that 20 mail-in ballots had gone missing! No sign of election fraud here, just an oopsie. Looks like somebody accidentally threw them away sometime after the envelopes were counted and the voter names recorded but before the votes were opened and added to the tally. But wait! Because of all the steps you have to go through to validate mail-in votes, they have the voter names and addresses. So they contacted all the voters and had them come in and testify as to who they voted for, proving that counting those 20 votes would not have changed the outcome of the election. This did not satisfy the GOP for some reason, so they are still wrangling over it, but I think a judge has now ruled that the election results stand.

If you've lost track at this point, it is clear that when the dust settles the DFL will have a majority, so by rights the Speaker of the House should be a Democrat. But the House was supposed to convene ... yesterday? and elect a Speaker, and at this precise moment the GOP has the majority. They think that gives them the right to not only elect their own Speaker but to retain the Speakership for the rest of the term even once the new Democrats show up (not sure why - guess it's in the fine print). But only if they have a quorum to convene, and they don't. Because all the Democrats decided to stay home until next week when they should have a majority again.

But... the GOP , happy to invoke the letter of the law when it means they get to control the Speakership on a technicality, decided they don't need to follow that rule about having a quorum and tried to convene anyway. Turns out that when this kind of thing happens the parliamentarian who gets to decide how the rules work is.... the Secretary of State. Who happens to be a Democrat. So the GOP members voted to BAR HIM FROM ENTERING THE CHAMBER! WTF?? I assume they just made that rule up.

This kind of thing is why I really really think that voting by mail when you don't have to is a bad idea. Not because the procedure is rife with fraud, but just because it has so many steps and each step presents the opportunity for mistakes. Usually it doesn't really matter if a few votes get lost. If this election hadn't been so insanely close nobody would ever have noticed that these votes WERE lost. But every now and then it matters A LOT. In this case it mattered so much that nobody is ever going to believe 10 years from now that this happened because it is such a ridiculous confluence of coincidences and bad sportsmanship. And even a little fraud - not in the voting process itself but that guy who was transparently pretending to live someplace where he really didn't.

About a week ago I got a mysterious email inviting me to "Claim Your Settlement Payment" for some old class action lawsuit involving auto parts. Supposedly all I had to do was click the claim button and I would get $100. I of course assumed this was a scam. I don't click on email links.

But the details in the email were sober and specific ("Pursuant to the Court-approved Round 4 Plan of Allocation and Round 5 Plan of Allocation in the matter entitled In Re: Automotive Parts Antitrust Litigation, Lead Case No. 12-md-02311, you are eligible to receive a payment of $100.00.") so I looked it up on the Internet. I found multiple sources insisting that this was a legitimate settlement claim, including the usually angry and skeptical population of reddit. Apparently it's about decades of price-fixing among auto parts suppliers and applies to practically anybody that bought a new car between 2002 and 2018. Well, maybe not any car, but it's a LONG list and both of our vehicles are on it.

As I said, I NEVER click on links in email, but I decided to take a chance. The link went to a 3rd-party processor that did not ask for money or any personal information like bank account numbers. I did have to give them SOME way to pay me, but Paypal was one of them and that's really quite anonymous. So I filled in the very simple form and gave them my Paypal address. A week later, $100 appeared in my account!

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dreamshark

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It’s what’s inside that counts

It’s happening!

It’s back!!

Yikes !!!!

Well, that was even worse than I anticipated.

This…this NEVER happens

Looking for advice on 1-way car rental (or any car rental)

What do you do when you lose a whole bottle of pills?

Secrets of the iPhone - cool hidden feature (PSA)

Scammed on Ebay

Not an April Fools joke

RIP Border Maple

Does anyone know what these are?

War is the funnest card game EVER!

WTF is this??

Yowza! Severance!

Free stuff!

And that's why I vote in person

Amazingly, NOT A SCAM

Genius preschool photographer does it again!

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