Everyday Stupidities

Greetings, blog addicts and casual cybernauts. I can tell it might be good day: I got to work a little early due to low highway traffic (it's Easter, for Christ's sake! [literally]) and I was just getting my computer set up when one of the supervisors came by to say "Mush, take an hour and a half off the phones." This company has a goofy policy where if the number of techs outnumbers the number of calls, they take some techs off the phone to sit 'n twiddle, or until the other techs who then get swamped by the calls we do have threaten to mutiny. So here I sit, working on my blog. Everyone's favorite red-themed department store chain with the bullseye logo advertised that they have Magnetix sets on sale this weekend, so my bride and I had to rush over there to see if this was true. Indeed, foresooth, yea verily, whoa... And nary a CPSC recall notice to be seen at that moment. (I give it, oh, until 9am today, three hours ago, for those to surface.) So I did what any person who knew that something was going out of style (I've never understood that statement, why would you stock up on something that has fallen out of favor?) would do and bought a 150 piece set for $26. I promise I won't eat them. They also make these itty bitty Magnetix Micros in 30 and 60 piece sets, which would be gym-dandy as desk toys... and ones I could hang from the underside of my metal shelf, thus taking up no extra space. I didn't invest in those but if it's still an option when I can get back to See Spot Save, maybe... maybe... Also, bonus happy befell me when I first arrived at my desk because my brother-in-arms Illiterate had brought in a string of Christmas lights and strung it around the perimeter of my cube (making sure that the plug end was hanging far away from a wall socket so the folks who have commanded we must leave our computers on over the weekend won't think I'm using 0.3 watts of their juice, rendering the power grid unstable). It's a matches-everything-don'it? white string with alternating red-tip/clear-base and clear-tip/blue-base bulbs, 40 of them. Thank you, big guy, and I'll ask my cat if he can cough up a new mouse for you.

Stupidity of the moment: One of my interest is taking photos of advertising art on the sides of old buildings – the ghosts of forgotten deities – a few examples (taken 3 years ago with a 1.3mpx camera) can be found on my old Photo.net page, and I'll have to update that sometime. Man can't win a joust with the windmill of the elements, and I can't criticize the change of human fortune (buildings change hands, businesses change, names come and names go thus there are new layers of paint) too harshly. But I do have one beef. In the section of the county I live in, which was homesteaded in the late 1800's, along with all the usual developments of the time there was a general store built on the main dirt road; photos from the turn of the century show it there just like it sits there now, while most of what had been nearby is gone. Like most 'downtown' building of the pioneer period (see your average Western movie or ghost town) it had a square façade in front of the average 2.5 story sloped-roof building. Over the years it has been many things, and at last look it was a real estate office downstairs and a private residence upstairs. The gripe comes in here: While the industrial buildings downtown have had a historical committee to protect it and seek National Historic Register status, in the ruralities this hasn't been the case (they're just not that organized out here) and while I can forgive the white paint that was put over the façade many years ago to make it look less like a Wild West saloon (what century-old building hasn't had that happen?) the layer of dingy blue-grey paint put over the front and the side where the general store's name had been visible up until a year or five ago aggrivates me. Why didn't someone step up and say "that's part of the area's history, you can't obliviate it"? We have a lack of an active historical committee, apparently. Grrr. You'd think a real estate company would be hyping the history (both when they used it and when they put it up for sale, as it is now with a handmade sign), not destroying it. The picture seen at right isn't that building, but of where some old decaying business or private buildings near the downtown had been removed to make way for a 126-apartment complex. They got some help on the project, as you can see, even if it wasn't helpful help.