Moo! The Musings of a Plaid Cow

Dear Money Magazine,

Thank you for the kind renewal letter you sent in the mail (and the many that you have sent before it). Unfortunately, I must have received the wrong insert letter because the envelope claimed “Respond now for a great deal on your renewal” and the insert letter offered me a subscription at 8% off the cover price.

This “great deal” is 400% of the price I have renewed at before, so I don’t see myself taking advantage of this great deal. I suspect that I will receive the real great deal offer when you are trying to woo me back in 6 months or so. Please just send your best and final offer in the next mailing so that I can stop opening the renewal notices.

Sincerely,

Here’s a new method to get spam posted: post it as a compliment. Like this one:

> Hey there would you mind stating which blog platform you’re using? I’m going to start my own blog in the near future but I’m having a tough time choosing between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your design seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for something unique. P.S Apologies for being off-topic but I had to ask!

Or this one

> I really like your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you make this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you? Plz answer back as I’m looking to design my own blog and would like to find out where u got this from. thank you

If you really want to know, check the links at the bottom of the page.

> If you’ve got a leaky faucet, that drip-drip-drip sound can drive you insane—especially at nighttime. Here’s an easy way to keep it quiet.

You mean, besides fixing it?

_Response to the [LifeHacker][0] post on [Quiet a Leaky Faucet with String][1]._
[0]: http://lifehacker.com/
[1]: http://lifehacker.com/5729961/quiet-faucet-drip-with-a-string

According to Matt’s review, [Axe Shock Shower Gel](http://www.amazon.com/Axe-Shock-Shower-Glacier-Menthol/dp/B0017TYD6A/) (Glacier Water + Deep Sea Mint + Menthol): This feels like putting icy hot on your balls.

Sounds like something I gotta try.

With all of the hubub about when life begins (at conception or birth), I was shocked to read the information supplied to me by MetLife about when life begins. (Regardless of what financial planners might say, I pay ~$16 per year for life insurance on my kids, in case something horrible happens. Trying to figure out how to pay for a funeral of any kind would be about the last thing on my mind.)

Anyway, according to MetLife, for insurance purposes, life begins at 14 days. If something happens any sooner than that, you probably weren’t that attached to them anyway.

I knew when I created the original script, there would be times when I needed to see the raw output (rather than just the count). This turned out to be every time the count turned out to be a number I didn’t expect. So I updated the script to v1.1 and added a “Show Details…” button. (To keep from having to duplicate the command, I also re-factored the generation of the command slightly.)

tell application "Finder"
  set cmd to "ls " & (quoted form of (POSIX path of (insertion location as string))) & ¬
    " | sed 's/\\(.*\\)\\..*/\\1/' | sed 's/\\(.*\\)\\.[^.]*/\\1/' | uniq"
  set n to (do shell script (cmd & " | wc -l"))
  set theResult to display dialog "Ignoring extensions, there are " & (n as integer) & ¬
    " unique file names in the curent folder." buttons {"Show Details…", "OK"} default button 2 ¬
    with title "Count Files v1.1 (Plaid Cow Solutions)"
  if (button returned of theResult) is not "OK" then
    tell application "TextEdit"
      activate
      set theDoc to make new document
      set the text of theDoc to (do shell script cmd)
    end tell
  end if
end tell

When downloading TV episodes and the subtitle files that go with them, it is useful to know if all of the filenames match (with the exception of the extension, of course). This script does just that:

tell application "Finder"
  set cmd to "ls " & (quoted form of (POSIX path of (insertion location as string))) & ¬
    " | sed 's/\\(.*\\)\\..*/\\1/' | sed 's/\\(.*\\)\\.[^.]*/\\1/' | uniq | wc -l"
  set n to (do shell script cmd)
  display dialog "Ignoring extensions, there are " & (n as integer) & ¬
    " unique file names in the curent folder." buttons {"OK"} default button 1 ¬
    with title "Count Files v1.0 (Plaid Cow Solutions)"
end tell

What is the point of a little black book? To write in to remember? Or to write in to forget?

Like the story of Misty Reed. Written down so it is not haunting my memory any more. At least not that one. Perhaps there are more to be written so they will not haunt my dreams.

To write to forget is so refreshing. Revealing. Writing for me and not someone else. Maybe writing to forget is what I need to make it though.

I got a card in the mail the other day saying that if I had 10 transactions in my checking account and if I signed up in time, I would receive $25 cash deposited to my account. To receive the offer I could either call, click or visit. Since they have some of the most unfriendly visiting hours, I decided to click. I think that was a mistake. After looking around the website, while both logged in and not, I finally decided to try the chat with an agent.

After about 20 minutes of waiting (after “Melissa” said she was ready to help me), I finally got the real answer:

> Okay – there is no real link but I can take your account number and send it to the appropriate party.

If there is no way for me to sign up on-line, why are you sending me there to sign up???

> Your pants are lying to you. An Esquire investigation found that different clothing stores have greatly varying definitions of waistline size. Old Navy was the worst offender. Their “36 inch” pants measured actually at 41 inches. At the GAP, 36 inches actually means 39.

Maybe this helps explain why I have worn the same size pants for many years now.

_Response to the [Consumerist][0] post on [Old Navy 36″ Pants Actually 41″][1]._
[0]: http://consumerist.com/
[1]: http://consumerist.com/2010/09/old-navy-36-pants-actually-41.html