Tag Archive for: Rants

The World Does Not Revolve Around Your 6 Year Old

It’s time for a rant about 6 year olds and their mothers. What really bugs me is how much mothers coddle their young kids. What set off this rant is I was driving through my neighborhood and all the moms are standing at the corner with their kids and putting them on the bus. No, they weren’t just watching them get on the bus, they were walking them on the bus, making sure they were seated, and then talked to the bus driver for literally 5 minutes. Excuse me lady, there are 10 cars behind this bus. The world doesn’t revolve around you and your kid. We all have things to do and you are holding us up. The bus driver does not need to know about what “cute” thing your kid did last night or where you are going for the holidays. In fact, I’m betting the bus driver doesn’t care in the least. The bus driver has a job to do, and when you stop and talk to them for 5 minutes, you are impeding their job. Just because you have nothing better to do doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t.

Since these are young kids, there is a bus stop on every single corner of my street. Add up all those 5 minute conversations and you waste way too much of my life. Be considerate of the long line of cars lining up because you can’t shut your mouth. You also don’t need to wave to your kid until the bus is out of sight. Congratulations, your kid is now going to be teased and beat up the rest of his life because you don’t know when to loosen the slack on his leash. Now, go back in your house, stare at the clock until it’s time for the bus to drop off your precious kid, then go outside and talk to the bus driver again and waste more of my time.

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Local TV Affiliates

One thing I hate about my local CBS affiliate, KMOV, is that about once a month they replace normal prime time programming with their own programming. I can understand doing this during the summer when everything is in reruns, but when they do it when new programming is airing it bugs me. The only time slot I notice the change is on Mondays at 7:00pm. This is the time slot of The Big Bang Theory, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite television shows. Most of the time they replace it with a local cooking show sponsored by one of the big grocery store chains in the St. Louis area. You know what, if I wanted to watch a cooking show, I’d tune into the Food Network. Broadcast the show you are supposed to in that time slot, and don’t move it to 2:30 in the morning. If you want to show that programming so bad, show THAT at 2:30 in the morning. I’ll bet you they’ll have just as many viewers: 3. So please, local affiliates, if the network has new programming on the schedule, air that programming! No one wants to watch crappy local TV specials. We want our regularly scheduled programming.

Bumper Stickers

I hate bumper stickers. I love bumper stickers. What? I’m not making sense? Well, let me explain. I hate bumper stickers because they are ugly, stupid, and tacky. I really don’t care that your kid is an honor roll student. I really don’t care about your political views. Or that Jesus Saves. Stickers that try to be funny or snarky are just as bad. “If you can read this, you’re riding my ass. Back off!” If I can read it, I’m riding your ass because you’re driving like a moron and need to go back to driving school. “I see stupid people.” Oh, so do I. I’m looking at them driving a car with a stupid bumper sticker right now. What might be even worse than bumper stickers are window stickers. Fear this! stickers kill me. The only thing I fear is you procreating. Or how about the ever popular Calvin peeing on . I’ve got an idea. Quick, someone make a Calvin peeing on Calvin peeing on things sticker. I’d buy thousands and carry them around with me and stick them on every car I see with the Calvin sticker. Confederate flags are another pet peeve. Quit lying to yourself. The flag is not a symbol of states rights. In fact, the people who claim that are usually the ones that want the federal government controlling our lives even more (unless it has to do with their guns). The flag is a symbol of the enslaving of an entire race. If you want to symbolize states rights, create a new one.

I love bumper stickers because when I’m driving and see the wonderful pieces of tackiness, I can automatically, with 99.9% accuracy, tell that you are, in fact, a complete moron that I don’t want to waste any part of my life on. It’s basically an early warning system for morons and douche bags. So, in that respect, I am thankful. Every once in a while, bumper stickers are ok. If you’re a high school teenager with a crappy car and you plaster the back of it with your favorite bands, it’s ok. You’re making lemonade out of lemons. I also enjoy seeing an old VW Beetle rocking the “It’s a Jeep thing and you wouldn’t understand” bumper sticker. That’s funny. I might want to hang out with that guy. But probably not. I also sometimes enjoy political stickers. I only enjoy them if they are rocking the sticker of the opponent of my guy and my guy won. When I see people still rocking the McCain/Caribou Barbie sticker I let out a little chuckle. Your guy lost. My guy won.

I guess bumper stickers are a necessary evil. They tell me who the dumb people are without me actually going through the time and pain of talking to them to figure it out myself. I hate bumper stickers, yet I love them.

The Invisibles

I have a few friends that set their IM status to Invisible when they are online. Since IM is my primary means of communication with some of my friends it bugs me a little. The reason that they are invisible is because they are hiding from someone (or multiple people). I know what you might be thinking. Maybe they are hiding from me. Well, I don’t think they are. A lot of times they will IM me when invisible, and if I do IM them, they respond right away. So they are obviously hiding from someone that’s not me.

I think if you are going to go as far as to hide from someone, why have them on your buddy list to begin with? These friends that are invisible aren’t invisible just when they don’t feel like talking to a certain individual. They are invisible most of the time. The least they could do is set their status to away so if the person they don’t want to talk to does IM them, they can just pretend they are not there. That I don’t mind as much. One of the reasons I hate when people are invisible so much is because a lot of times my messages won’t go through because they are invisible. They just bounce back saying offline messaging isn’t available or the message was not sent because the user isn’t online. This happens most if they are using MSN. I also can’t send them files a lot of the time. So, if they are asking for a file and are invisible, it won’t let me send. If you feel the need to hide from certain people all the time, then delete them from your list. It’s that easy. Stop causing problems for the rest of us :)

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Blockbuster Online Problems

This entire week Blockbuster has only been shipping me two movies. I have the three movies out at a time plan yet I’m only having two shipped. Today, I decided to contact customer support to see what is going on. Here is my email:

For a few days now only two DVDs will be out at a time, even though I have DVDs that are available to ship in my queue. I have the 3 at a time plan, so why aren’t 3 shipping?

I think it explains my problem well. I have DVDs available, they are not shipping. Here is the response I got:

I am sorry if we haven’t ship your DVD. I’ve reviewed your account and see that you are waiting for one DVD to be shipped. Here’s an explanation of why this happened. I noticed that your queue mostly contains box/series sets, which if added as a set (with the padlock), they are considered a as a group and treated as a single request when the system searches for available DVDs to ship.

In looking at your queue, this appears to be the case. “X-Files: The Complete First Season” is not shipping due to its availability of disc number disc one. Unfortunately, this prevented anything from being shipped. Based on the way our system searches for movies, we suggest keeping at least 15 “Available” titles in your queue at all times, keeping in mind that each set is considered as “one” during this process. I really hope this information helps, Mike. Please let me know if I can answer any further questions.

Ok, I would understand this answer if two things weren’t a factor:

  • 1. I didn’t have movies that were available to ship that weren’t part of a boxed set at the top of my queue. I do. Why not ship them?
  • 2. They already shipped 2 discs of The X-Files season 3 (the first season that is currently available). Since they’ve already started shipping those discs (last week) why not pick back up with shipping them since I have an empty slot? This makes no sense.

So basically I’m paying for a plan to ship 3 movies and Blockbuster only wants to ship 2. Great job Blockbuster. Maybe it’s time to go back to Netflix.

Update: I have canceled my Blockbuster account. Not just for this reason, but also other reasons (no streaming service, queue page problems, etc) and moved back to Netflix.