The difference between "refurbished" and "pre-owned"

Don Quixote is tilting at windmills again...

Okay, so here's the deal. Awhile back, I bought an XM Satellite radio. It was a good deal, and there was a $50 rebate.

Now this was a refurbished radio. Let me state that clearly and up front, but when I checked the fine print for the rebate, it didn't indicate word one about "refurbished" models. Pre-owned models weren't eligible, but the last time I checked, when something was sent back to the manufacturer and repaired, while it can't be sold as new, they do have to indicate it was refurbished.

Refurbished and pre-owned are two different things in my book.

Here's the best way I can describe it. I bought a radio new. It was DOA, so I have to send it back to get it repaired. It's easier for them to send me a new model, so they send me a new one, keep the defective one and ship me a new model. They fix the broken one and proceed to sell it, but it's not new. It's refurbished. That doesn't mean someone else owned it. The manufacturer had a defective unit replaced and are selling it again.

That's refurbished. Pre-owned is something different. Pre-owned means it's in working condition. It's fine. Might have a dent in the fender, but it still works. I either sell it to you or to someone else, who turns around and re-sells it. That's pre-owned. It was in good working condition and they're selling it again because they can't use it or they're trying to turn a profit or something like that.

I feel I'm getting screwed here out of my $50. This unit was sold refurbished. I know it's not "new", but you cannot tell me that a refurbished unit can be considered "pre-owned". It doesn't work that way.

Mind you, I've still got to call the company I bought it from because the battery in the radio can't hold a charge of more than 30 minutes off the base. I don't care if it's new, used, refurbished or whatever, that's just wrong.

I ain't happy, kids. I'm being bent over and reamed...

Miracles do occur occasionally

Yes, I am having a salad for dinner.

A nice Greek salad which I added a lovely lite raspberry kiwi vinaigrette.

Ate it all, too, 'cept for the eggs...and the pit they forgot to remove from one of the olives...

Laughter is the best medicine...

It's a good thing I live alone.
If someone else were with me, after this evening they'd have me locked away somewhere.

I haven't laughed this hard in...sheesh...I can't remember when.

Beerfest is more than likely not the kind of movie most readers of this blog would enjoy, but let me tell you, it was, by far, one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

Hearing Cloris Leachman say "If you can drink ram piss, fuck, you can drink anything" had me laughing so long and so hard, tears were flowing. I had to pause the movie for a good five minutes to regain my composure, text my best friend saying that I was laughing so hard I couldn't stop crying, wait for the phone call explaining the text, and then telling my best friend that we have to watch this together sometime before I could start the movie again.

Of course, I had to go back and hear Ms. Leachman...a venerable actress (and whenever I see her, I still say "Blucher" and go "neigh"...hardcore Mel Brooks fans will understand that one) talk about drinking ram's piss and stroke a smoked sausage in a sexually suggestive manner...well...I lost it all over again.

The Late Night Friday Flick is back, and it was kicked off again with a good one. Beerfest was damn good.

Oh, man...ram's piss...I can't stop laughing.

The last post on the Andre Rieu concert

...for 2007, at the very least.

And it's less a word and more a picture.

Me, at the concert, all dressed up.



The author does not guarantee he won't talk about Andre Rieu again, but this (should) be the last blog about a most excellent concert. Emphasis on "should".

A musical interlude

The following are lyrics to one of the songs performed last week during the Andre Rieu concert. It's a piece from the play Elisabeth, more popular with European audiences from what I've been able to gather, although I could be mistaken. I'm sharing it here because, besides being beautiful, I hope it's words touch your heart in some way...

I Belong to Me

I will not be well bred,
Obedient and well behaved,
I will not be steady,
And ready to be enslaved,
I don't want to be your property,
Cuz I belong to me,

When I walk the tightrope,
Don't stop me, Just let me try,
I want to take chances,
Find out what it takes to fly,
I don't care at all if you agree,
I belong to me,

If you try to range me on your own array,
You force me to leave you alone,
If you try to change me,
I'll just break away,
To be what I am on my own,

I'm freezing, I'm burning,
You can't put me on the shelf,
I'm growing, I'm learning,
To be even more myself,
I know it's not easy to be free,
But I belong to me,

I hate to be burdened,
With duties and ancient lies,
Can't stand to be touched,
By the looks of a thousand eyes,
I flee from the crowd in agony,
I just belong to me,

If you want to find me don't hold me so tight,
Don't break me and don't take me on,
If you try to hold me,
I'm ready to fight,
I'll shake off my chains and be gone!

I'm here when you need me,
I live and I die with you,
I'll share all your troubles,
I'll laugh and I'll cry with you,
You can blame me and bless me,
But you cannot possess me,
Cuz I belong to me,
To me!

Two hours and fourty minutes of Heaven on Earth

Friday night...
...scratch that.

Saturday Morning. Midnight.

Got home from the Andre Rieu concert about an 45 minutes ago.

Do I even have to tell you it was incredible?




Yes, there were moments when a tear popped into my eye, and My Kid was on my mind a bit, but it was beautiful. Sitting on the aisle in the center, three rows back, the view was amazing. The artists could see me as easily as I could see them (and given my good posture, odds are, they could see me more than anyone else in my section).

He did the standard fare: Strauss Waltzes, a polka or two, O Mio Bambino Caro (with the lovely Carmen Monarca singing...she is beautiful). There were some surprises, a new face or two (including a new soprano from Australia whose name I didn't catch, but whose voice...and figure...one could not ignore), and he did Bolero.

Bolero. I love Bolero! One of my all-time favourite pieces.

Of course, during the whole encore, the Pittsburghers stayed in their seats. I tried to stay standing and dance...yes, I did shake my moneymaker...when they played Marina, but given my height and girth, I didn't want to deprive the poor guy sitting behind me from seeing the stage.

Brahms' Lullabye came too quickly to close the show.

It was a beautiful, magical night. Wonderful. I loved every second of it. Maestro Rieu, thank you for another wonderful concert.

And if any of the ladies in the orchestra happen to read this blog, I was the goofball in the third row dancing...your beauty made the night all the better. :)

P.S. If you'd like to see more pictures, check out my flickr account!

Wake-up Call

Sunday morning. 6:30 AM.

I'm sleeping peacefully. Resting. No intention of getting up for at least another hour, when I hear a screeching outside my bedroom window.

I look outside and one of the local squirrels is sitting there.

(File photo of the offender, currently referred to as "Mooch" or "Hammy".)

He wants me to get up to feed him. I yell out the window to go away and let me sleep.

Next thing I hear is a couple "thuds" downstairs near the back door.

The damage is done. I'm awake. I go downstairs and look...the squirrel is jumping against the screen door!

Sigh.

No sleep for me, and no peanuts for him today.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there...

Things explained

Okay.

Last night's late-night post is what it is.

It's the morning. I had some sleep (but not enough) and I've made a phone call.
Things make a bit more sense now.

Still...it says something to me when you hear a therapist say "I don't trust my nursing staff" and "they don't have the time to do things properly".

Real confidence booster there. Makes me really happy I've entrusted my kid to your care.

Sigh...

Why is it that nurses in a hospital...a hospital...are able to feed My Kid properly, make sure she swallows, but the staff in the nursing home whose job it is to care for her are unable to do the same?

Why is it that, as soon as she gets back there, they say "oh, she's aspirating and we can't feed her and we want to put a tube in her stomach"? Are they that lazy that they can't take five fucking seconds to make sure she swallowed?

She needs help, yes. She doesn't remember how to eat. That's why I've put her in a home, to get her the help because I can't do it ...that's their fucking job.

First thing tomorrow morning, phone calls will be made. Pray for them I'm not as pissed as I am right this second.

I'm going to bed.

C'est la vie

Looks like my friend who said would accompany me to the Andre Rieu concert in two weeks can't make it. Business trips out of town and all that.

So I have an extra ticket. Anyone wanna join me? :-D

UPDATE!

Sorry, folks. The extra ticket's taken. :)

The visual definition of bittersweet

Most of you will understand what I say when I refer to this photo as the visual definition of bittersweet.

They came in the mail the other day.
It just won't be the same this year.
Likely, I'll shed a tear during the performance.
But I'll also smile, because it will be a beautiful thing.

For those of you who don't understand, please don't ask.
I've discussed it enough here before. Nothing more need be said.

Tom Petty did say it best...

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

So all I can do is wait.

Greetings from The Most Livable City in the US

It's the truth. According to The Places Rated Almanac, Pittsburgh PA is, for the second time (and the first city to repeat, I must add) the Most Livable City in the US.

Whoop-de-freaking-doo.

According to this article in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, using a system of nine categories, we beat out such other notable cities as San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and Madison, Wisconsin to reach that valued #1 position.

And so help me Whomever, that's all we'll hear around here for the next year. The host of the local radio station I listen to each morning, I swear, mentioned it at least a half-dozen times in the first half-hour of his show. If someone made a drinking game on the number of times this will be mentioned, you'd likely drop dead from alcohol poisoning.

Sigh.

Well, at least I won't have to see this on the local news broadcasts. My satellite TV receiver is dead. Kaput. Ain't workin', jack.

They'll send me a replacement, but it's likely to not reach here until Monday. Quite honestly, I'll be fine with that. It just means this will be an unplugged weekend for me...and if I get truly bored, I'll pop in a DVD. No worries.

Last but by no means least, The Kid is still in the hospital, but at least last night when I went out to visit with her, she was doing a little bit better. She was able to recognize me and talk for a few minutes. She said she wanted to sleep, but then kept opening her eyes every few second to make sure I was still there. I thought it was cute, but decided to let her get some rest, so I kissed her on the forehead and left for the night.

Of satellites, long weekends and night drives...

Oh, where to begin...

* The kid's back in the hospital again. Another UTI. I've been spending the weekend calling family, going out to see her, checking up on her...

It's draining sometimes, but at least they've got her in the hospital, giving her antibiotics and liquids (dehydration accompnies UTIs with her, it seems) and have her under observation. Apparently she's been, unintentionally, making the nurses laugh. She's a tough cookie, that one. She's been asking the nurses if she's going to die and I told them what I told her (when she asked me the same thing): She's too stubborn to die.

Please don't be offended by that statement. The Kid and I have talked, and joked, about death many times. We've both accepted it as an inevitability, and we'd reached a point where we can joke about it. I have to keep joking. If I don't...well..

* Of course, it did make my nice, long, intent-on-relaxing weekend a little more stressful. Didn't do much by way of house cleaning, but I did get the grass cut out back. It needed it...was getting too high.

And for those who also check out my Storm Artists' page and wondered about the tulips in my back yard, yes, they survived and are in full-bloom right now. I've taken a few photos, and when I get a chance, I'll share them, either here or there.

* Finally, since I did mention satellites in the title, you figured I geeked out again. You'd be correct.

I bought a satellite radio. Pioneer has a portable satellite radio called the Inno that not only plays live XM satellite radio, it can also record the songs you're listening to, and play them back later. It's also an MP3 player to play your own MP3s.

Yes, I've been geeking. I'm also hooked on satellite radio.

When Freddy Mercury sang You had your time, you had the power/You've yet to have your finest hour , it was true. Radio still has a long, long way to go...and thankfully, this just goes to prove it.

Video is nice. Video is all well and good, but when it comes to music, when you're watching a video, you're seeing someone else's vision of the music...which might not be what you see. It limits you. It gives you a preconceived notion of what the music should be about instead of what it could be.

I should know. I spent far too many hours, days, months and years watching MTV (back in the day when they actually showed videos), and there are some songs, to this day, when I hear them play, mentally, all I see is the video. Nothing else. It's limited to just that video instead of what it could be.

The variety that satellite radio offers is a beautiful thing. Whether it be songs from a various era (they've stations dedicated to specific decades) to genres (you name it: jazz, "urban", country, reggae, and of course, the ten thousand forms of Rock and Roll), to specialty station (they've got Starbucks' HEAR music station), to talk to...well, you get the picture.

I can take the unit with me. Saturday night, after making sure The Kid was safely tucked in at the hospital, I stopped at a local Starbucks (one of several in the area...what a surprise), and since it was so nice out, sat outside under the stars, sipping my Vanilla Creme and listening to David Gray's The One I Love. Very cool indeed.

Give me my music. I'll let (most) everything else go...there are some things I cannot live without.

Google really does it all

How to get to from New York to Paris via Google Maps.

I recommend checking out #23.

Vienna comes to Toronto in December

Sigh...

If I were a rich man...

Okay, so I'm not Topol, but I can understand his lament.

Andre Rieu is coming to Toronto this December, and he's bringing a taste of Vienna with him. He's taking over the Rogers Centre for a massive concert with his orchestra, guest stars, dancers, an ice rink...

Check out this video from his website. They're showing scenes from the concert he gave last year in Schonbrunn, Vienna. I have this DVD...the concert was incredible.

For those of you unaware, I love Viennese Waltzes. I'll be attending the Andre Rieu concert here next month (a bittersweet affair, to be sure, because My Kid won't be able to attend...no doubt at some point during the show, I'll shed a tear or two), but to be able to attend this concert...with all the pomp, circumstance and elegance...would be incredible.

Ah, if I were a rich man...

Now we're cooking...

I am such a geek.

Recently, I bought a counter-top pizza cooker.

Being a guy, and a bachelor guy at that, I love pizza. Since my bachelor-hood started a little over eight months back, I've been buying more frozen dinners and pizza. When you only have to cook for yourself, why go to the effort of making a whole dinner when junk food works just as well.

During the Winter, this isn't a problem. I don't mind using the oven to cook a pizza, but with warmer weather approaching (someday), I won't be using the gas oven as much as I have been.

(For those curious why, it goes back to the days when I was a kid. The house didn't have A/C until I put whole-house in, back in 2000. The oven would heat the house us so much that, to this day, even with the A/C, I can't stand to have the oven on when it's hot out.)

So, after cleaning today, doing laundry, and being generally a domestic god, I figured today was the day to experiment, and play with my new (to borrow a phrase from Rene) boytoy.

Let me tell you, it works like a charm! It cooked the pizza fully in less time than the regular over would've taken, and it was cooked fully. I was amazed...so much so that I had to geek out and record it cooking while talking to a friend on the phone:



(C-Woo, I know this isn't a cookie, but it's as good as I can do at the moment...)

For the record, that was a Garlic Cheese Pizza. Yummy. I can still taste the garlic as I type this.

I've found a new gadget, and I love it. Onestar is full, and he is happy...

Friday the 13th

"Criminals are a cowardly and superstious lot..."

For some reason, when talking about superstitions, that quote pops into my head.
A cookie to the first person who knows where it came from.

So, yeah, it's Friday the 13th. I don't suffer from Triskaidekaphobia (although I did have to Google the word to make sure I spelled it correctly), and I haven't been superstitious of this day since I was a little kid (knock on wood).

But I suppose, deep down, I am a generally superstitious person.

Mind you, I'm nowhere near as bad as I have been, but I've looked, for signs and portents to guide my future. I've been careful not to step on any cracks (for fear of breaking mother's back, as the rhyme goes), walk under ladders or break any mirrors.

But I still have some superstitions that I have to this day. Sure, they might seem silly to the "thinking person", but it's one of those...it ain't broke, I ain't gonna fuck with it kinda deals.

Still, my fascination with Friday the 13th continues, and no, I'm not referring to the movies. Never did watch the Freddy movies...I dislike horror flicks...give me a good, mindless comedy any day of the week. Hell, even give me some of the more intelligent comedies. I'll watch them too.

The Wikipedia has an interesting entry on Friday the 13th. I'd go into some of them here, but I gave you the link. That way, if you wish to see, you can. If not...no biggie.

So, tell me, gentle viewer, do you have any superstitions? Any irrational (or rational) fears about this day? Share if you wish: Just watch out for any black cats that might cross your path.

Living in an offline world

And...we're back.

Yeah, I know. Updates here have been few and far between as of late.
There hasn't been much happening lately.

Winter's decided to stick around a bit longer, and honestly, as much as I love the season, even I am tired of it. I'd love to be able to open the windows at night and have the night sounds fill the room, instead of listening to the creaks and moans of the old house, and hear the furnace kick on occasionally.

I've been wanting to take some pics, but there's no motivation to use the camera. Also, I've been helping some friends out here in real life with some problems and things going on there, so I haven't been online too much.

Real life...what a concept...so foreign to me.

Other than that, not much else to tell. I know y'all hang on my every word (sarcasm mode off), so when something interesting happens, I'll share.

Offline

Religion is a subject I rarely discuss. It's one of those "internal" things I have, and one of the few subjects I will rarely talk about with others.

I was raised Roman Catholic, but I chose, years ago, to move away from the church. Yet, to this day, I still follow some of the traditions, the rituals that were drilled into my head as a youth.

One of them is Good Friday. For those unaware, on Good Friday, it's tradition to abstain from meat and fast between meals. I still do this to this day, but I've also added one small addition: When I'm not at work, I stay offline.

No internet. No computers. Television or Radio are acceptable, but that's about it.

My sacrifice of choice, and lemme tell ya, it's a big one. ;)

I'll likely be offline after I leave work today until late Saturday night.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

The Universe has a sense of humor

Two posts in one day.
Gotta pace myself...

Since this is my blog, it's all about me. You can go to other blogs, other places, and it's all about them. But here, my ego reins supreme, and everything here...it's all about me, baby.

Given that statement, someone who reads this blog must post over at the website Lifehacker. How else would they know to find a video on How to Sew on a Button.

I mean, c'mon.

There is no such thing as coincidence. Someone who reads this blog also knows I check the RSS feed from that site.

Fess up. Admit it. You're stalking me again, aren't you?

Yeah, I knew it. :-D