Moo! The Musings of a Plaid Cow

After work on Friday I went to the [Home Depot][2] and found it to be nearly devoid of people. Maybe I just went too early in the afternoon, but I would have expected a few more shoppers. Maybe if they had anything that I was looking for in stock, I would have spent some money there. Things like:

* Jumbo, Almond plastic receptacle plates. (They had them in white and Ivory.)
* Flexible inner wall drilling kit. (The one they had on the shelf was missing half the pieces.)
* Florescent utility lights for T-8 bulbs. (I bought some a while back from about $8, but now they are $10 and only support T-12. I may spring the $20 for the improved cold weather ballast, but I’m not ready to do that just yet.)

I did notice that there were a good number of people asking me if I needed help—more than I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe the service is improving.

_Response to the [Consumerist][0] post on [Home Depot Provides Surprisingly Decent Service][1]._
[0]: http://consumerist.com/
[1]: http://consumerist.com/5166255/home-depot-provides-surprisingly-decent-service
[2]: http://www.homedepot.com/

According to a sound bite on the Food Network the other day, Louisville, KY (my hometown) is has the highest per capita consumption of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup of any city in the nation. [Someone else][1] had noted this a while back, but the forum provided few answers as to why this is the case.

I don’t have any answers to this either, but I can report that chicken noodle was the only kind of soup I had growing up. It also makes sense that other warmer cities wouldn’t eat soup as much, and that colder cites would be more into heartier stews. But these are just random guesses.

[1]: http://www.historyandissues.org/louisville/viewtopic.php?t=496

After reading about the good work that [vietnam Veterans of America][1] does, I started to look into a making household goods donation. So I put all of my information in to sign up to create an account and tried to [schedule a pickup][2]. This is when I found out the VVA does not have any offices anywhere near me. So I sent a note through their contact us button:

> Is it possible to add a map of available pickup sites so that your database will not be littered with people who signed up to schedule a pick only to find out there is not an outlet in the area? Thanks

I just want to know if I will be able to use your service after I spend all of the time signing up for it. I got an e-mail back the next day:

> I am sorry we do not have donation pickup service in your zip code area.
> Please call (866) 577-8387 or (913) 342-8545 in your local state.

Yes. I already realized that. That’s why I asked a different question.

[1]: http://www.vva.org/
[2]: http://www.scheduleapickup.com/

[Unclutterer][1] is the site that I hoped [LifeHacker][2] would be. It has a lot of good stuff.

[1]: http://unclutterer.com/
[2]: http://lifehacker.com/

[bw3][], now just Buffalo Wild Wings, hasn’t been the same since they lost their Weck. (That’s what what the third W in bw3’s stood for–but I will assume you already knew that.) And now, they have started putting up offensive billboards for their take-out.

I guess I can deal with the on printed “How to silence a backseat driver”. Personally I would try talking to the person in the backseat first and pushing them out of the moving car second, before stopping to buy them a sack of wings to shove in their maw to keep them quiet. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t even find it funny.

But is is loads better than “Hot and Ready. If only marriage were like that.” Is is supposed to be funny? Offensive to women? Or just completely in bad taste? Not getting enough hot and ready at home? You should come over and screw my electric pencil sharpener. I’ll even throw some hot sauce on for free.

[bw3]: http://bw3.com/

The good news, according to [this article][1], is that the major cell phone companies have gotten together and will be standardizing on a single phone charger design. The bad news is that they won’t be switching until 2012. And that they settled on micro-USB—the one with the port that you can’t tell up from down without looking at it.

It’s about time. (Actually, it’s about 10-15 years too late.)

[1]: http://unclutterer.com/2009/02/19/universal-cell-phone-charger-by-2012/

At quarter til six this evening, my company sent out a broadcast email to let people know:

1. The page that links to the timecard system login looks different.
2. A link to this page was recently added to the company portal.

with the most important message being, since it was repeated twice

> These changes will not impact timecard processing; you will continue using the same timecard process with no action required.

What I want to know is how much time was wasted in generating a three page Word document letting people know this? And, if you thought that people should know, why not send it out at the beginning of the day–before 95% of the workers have already filled out their time card and left?

[Quiznos][] is kind of like [Panera][], but much colder.

[Quiznos][] is kind of like [Penn Station][], but they don’t serve fries.

[Quiznos][] is kind of like [Subway][], but much more expensive.

[Quiznos][] is kind of like other restaurants, but I’m likely to go back to them.

[Quiznos]: http://www.quiznos.com/
[Panera]: http://www.panerabread.com/
[Penn Station]:http://www.penn-station.com/
[Subway]: http://www.subway.com/

While driving past the liquore store earlier, I found the sign out front interesting:

`Liquor Depot`
`Drive Thru Now Open`
`We Cash Pay-Govt Checks`

Which leaves me a couple of questions:

1. Why should a liquor store need a drive thru window?
2. Is it really a good idea to have a liquor store cashing paychecks?

One way to judge how popular an application is on OSX is whether [Apple](http://apple.com/) goes out of their way to let you know there are problems it when they release new software. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a technote regarding the Safari 4 Beta: [Mail may unexpectedly quit with Safari 4 Public Beta and GrowlMail installed](http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2626). It kept me from deleting the beta any earlier than I did.