David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 88

I Hate The Vanguard App

This Is Just To Say

I hate

the Vanguard app

that I must use

to access the retirement

account that

should have had twice my

annual salary

by 35

Forgive me

it is so slow

so poorly designed

and so unresponsive

Aaaaaannnnnnnddddd They Change All The Drivers On My Route Again

Aaaaaannnnnnnddddd they change all the drivers on my route again. I think I complained about this last time, but it happened again and here we are.

Denver changes all the drivers on routes periodically, or at least mine. Not having regular drivers means that drivers don’t know the routes really well, that they can’t pick up efficiency from experience. My route is challenging enough, coming in and out of downtown in high traffic areas. When I ride, high traffic times as well.

New drivers mean drivers who sometimes literally don’t even know where they are going or where the stops are. It means a scheduled driver can’t make it and there sometimes isn’t anyone to fill in, so they just drop a run that day.

It’s just another thing that makes it harder to use mass transit instead of just driving myself into work every day.

Your Moment In Spam

Rarely do I see a spam commentor act against their own interests. I just deleted one with a message:

Build an emergency fund: Often you will must pay for issues

that aren’t in your month-to-month budget, akin to automotive repairs.

The interesting part? It was from a paycheck advance place. Man, someone who builds in an emergency fund like that is less likely to use a paycheck advance place. They aren’t coming to a paycheck advance place in order to build in an emergency fund.

Just seemed weird.

Second Blurb For “Roses are Red, Violets are Stealing Loose Change from my Pockets While I Sleep” – Nancy Stohlman!

It’s time to reveal the second blurb for Roses are Red, Violets are Stealing Loose Change from my Pockets While I Sleep! This one is from Nancy Stohlman, author of The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories:

David S. Atkinson’s imagination is a beast unleashed! The stories in Roses are Red, Violets are Stealing Loose Change from my Pockets While I Sleep are bizarre and hilarious, taking us into a highly peculiar landscape with scenarios that leave me wondering: Where does he come up with this stuff? Narrated with his signature intellectual deadpan (think “straight man”) and featuring labyrinthian titles that unroll all the way to near slapstick, Atkinson leads us from one outlandish situation to the next without flinching, apologizing, or justifying.

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La Croix Tastes Like The Syrup Ran Out On The Machine

I finally tried La Croix. It tastes like the syrup ran out on the machine.

This animated gif actually illustrates my impression pretty well: blank with tiny little flashes of perhaps something.

An Unintended Effect Of My Recent Twin Peaks Binge

You know, the entire reason I waited until my wife was out of town to binge watch the entirety of Twin Peaks was I didn’t think I could get her to watch it and didn’t want to bug her. I’ve hit an unintended effect though: now I’m bugging her to watch it.

Some of it is that I think she’d get into the show if she started watching it. Some of it is that I want to watch the entire thing all over again and this would be a good way to make that happen. So far, she’s only getting bugged. She doesn’t really have an urge to watch so far and says she has too many shows to watch already.

We’ll see where this goes.

Just Be Happy You’re Getting Away With That Tallboy, Dude.

I know alcohol can make people belligerent. Still, I think that dude sprawled in the seat in front of me on the bus yesterday should have just been happy he was getting away with that tallboy. Drinking it even. He wasn’t though.

It was about 5pm. The sun wouldn’t set for another three hours or more. When he sat down, the acrid scent of booze sweat was overpowering. He may have only had one tallboy in his hand, but he’d clearly been drinking a while.

One could tell by the way he started getting really angry and uttering obscenities every time the bus stopped for a few seconds. Given what he was getting away with, you’d think he wouldn’t start berating the driver.

You’d be wrong though.

We ignored him. We all kept an eye on him to make sure he wasn’t doing anything to anybody, but who cared other than that? Who cared about getting cops involved just because the guy was drunk as long as there wasn’t a real problem? A bad attitude wasn’t so much.

He took exception to the guy sitting in front of him. I don’t know what happened, but he seemed to think the guy was messing with him. He kept trying to start something back. This was a bad idea.

I mean, the drunk was perhaps 140 pounds, a skinny guy. Early twenties, maybe. Whatever scrappiness he might have had, his target was probably about 190 and clearly made his living for a good length of time moving heavy objects outdoors. He had what looked like prison tattoos. The drunk was WAY outclassed. His target could have wiped the walls with him had he been completely sober, much less sloppy falling all over the place kind of drunk as he was. If the drunk succeeded in starting something, the drunk would be toast.

Luckily, mad as his target was getting, he still tried to give the guy some berth. He asked the driver if he was going to do something before the target did. The driver told the drunk the next stop was his, which the drunk mistook for his target getting tossed off the bus. He just sat there at the next stop, but quieted a bit at least. He started up again a bit, but not so much that anyone had to say anything to him again.

Again, it would have taken force and/or cops to get him off, and no one really wanted to do that if he wasn’t actually going to take a swing.

All the time he kept sipping that tallboy. I couldn’t get over the fact he wasn’t just thrilled to be getting away with that. People could have made a lot of trouble for him if they wanted to.

Some people.

Facebook Doesn’t Listen

I hate the Facebook story thing. I’m not even sure what it’s for, because I don’t really care. I’m fine with just scrolling my newsfeed and am not sure what they were trying to accomplish with the whole “story” thing. I just know it is annoying.

I’m sure plenty of you have interesting stories. I’m sure of this. What I’m even more sure of is that I don’t need to get notifications that anyone has updated their stories. I’m not tracking anyone’s story anyway.

What I really don’t need is the several times a week reminders that a couple of people have updated their stories after I muted them. I actually watch what these people are doing on Facebook, but I had to mute their stories because Facebook kept popping up notifications about them updating rather than just showing me in my timeline. Of course, Facebook doesn’t listen. Mute apparently has no function. I mute a person’s story each time Facebook gives me a notification about it, yet they still pop something up a few days later. It just keeps happening. I’ve had to unfollow a couple people trying to get it to stop and hope it doesn’t end up with me having to unfriend them just to get it to stop.

I hate garbage notifications, and more and more of my notifications turn out to be garbage while I occasionally don’t get notifications on actual things.

I just don’t get it.

This Is Funnier If You Remember My Post From Yesterday

This is funnier if you remember my post from yesterday.

No explanation for anyone who doesn’t.

Sometimes It’s Just Synchronicity

I know that targeted advertising has made huge technological leaps in recent years. People are always complaining about having visited a store or mentioned something only to open Facebook and see a related ad. I know a good deal of this is actually happening. What with location tracking from cell phones, linking browsers of different devices, voice assistants, and all that kind of thing, of course companies are going to try to use that to target advertising to you. However, it isn’t always the case. Sometimes this effect is just a synchronicity.

For example, my wife and I were talking last night about what to get for dinner. She wanted to go get barbecue from a food truck outside the brewery in our housing complex. I happened to open Facebook right then and saw that a friend had posted about that woman in Indiana who killed her lover with an overdose of heroin and fed him to neighbors at a barbecue.

I think that one was just a synchronicity.