Best in the state!

Where did we go this morning? Well, I’m glad you asked.

We drove down to Little Rock for the 2012 Arkansas Press Association Editorial Awards presentation at the downtown Double Tree hotel.

Competing in the Larger Daily Division, which includes the Democrat-Gazette – the largest newspaper in the state – Maria won first place in the News/Political Column section. This is her second state-level first place award, the first being a few years back in Hoosier State Press Association competition when she worked at the Crawfordsville Journal-Review.

I can’t tell you how proud I am of her.

The Jonesboro Sun staff won a total of five first-place awards, plus Sun reporter Waylon Harris won the 2012 Outstanding Young Journalist Award for the state of Arkansas.

Three years later, one of my 2009 rally shots makes the cover

I was really pissed off when the BMW MOA Owners News editors didn’t use a single one of the scores of images I shot as a volunteer photographer at the 2009 national rally in Johnson City, Tenn.

I worked in a similar capacity the previous year at the rally in Gillette, Wyo. and several of my shots turned up in the rally wrap-up issue for 2008.

To make it worse, I was suffering from a very nasty case of plantar fasciitis at Johnson City that made standing and walking painful. (Happily, my chiropractor hooked me up with custom designed orthotics later that summer that cured my condition overnight.)

I got a message earlier this week from Indianapolis BMW Club friend Jim Stocking saying that one of my photos was on the cover of the July Owners News.

I pulled my copy out of the post office box today, studied the cover and was delighted to see one of my 2009 rally shots finally saw print – a nice portrait of Jim and his dog down in the bottom right corner of the cover. And Jim’s face is the most recognizable of all of those on the cover.

Now I feel vindicated.

But I’m done being an official rally photographer. I’m going for the fun this year.

Hot day, cool gas price

My car thermometer was reading 102° at 12:51 p.m. Now, two hours later, the temperature is up to 104°. Good day to stay in the air conditioning. The dogs seem happy to be inside.

I had to drive to Walnut Ridge this morning to retrieve a couple of Maria’s quilts from a consignment shop because we need to photograph them. Ordinarily I would go by motorcycle, but I wasn’t in the mood to sweat.

I found myself behind this pickup truck-trailer rig hauling a hobby horse, a barbecue smoker and a guy. I think there may be a law against a passenger riding in a trailer like this, but nobody seemed to care.

The big surprise came when I got back to Jonesboro and topped off my gas tank at Sam’s Club.

Regular gas was selling for $2.86 a gallon. I haven’t seen gas that cheap in a long time. And I thought I was getting a great deal six days ago when I paid $2.97 a gallon. That explains the why the Sam’s Club pumps were swamped with customers.

ArkansasGasPrices.com says the Jonesboro Sam’s Club has the cheapest gas in the whole freaking state!

But then I’m old enough to remember when gas was 33 cents a gallon and had lead in it.

How Chief Justice John Roberts sabotaged Obama and Obamacare

This is spot-on analysis.

"Before you look to do harm to Chief Justice Roberts or his family, it’s important that you think carefully about the meaning – the true nature — of his ruling on Obama-care. The Left will shout that they won, that Obama-care was upheld and all the rest. Let them.

"It will be a short-lived celebration.

"Here’s what really occurred — payback. Yes, payback for Obama’s numerous, ill-advised and childish insults directed toward SCOTUS."

 Read the whole thing:  http://whitehouse12.com/2012/06/28/chief-justice-roberts-is-a-genius/

Buying from Amazon.com is way easier than communicating with them

I got an email yesterday afternoon from “Dustin M.” at Amazon.com telling me:

“It's come to our attention that your Profile name contains a URL. This is against our guidelines and I'm writing to request that you remove it from your Profile.
I'll check back in 7 days to verify that this has been removed. If it hasn't, we'll change your Profile name to "A Customer" and remove your Customer Reviews. I'm sorry for any concerns this may cause but we want to provide you with the opportunity to make these changes to your account.”

That’s a serious threat because my 130+ customer reviews are the basis for my membership in the Amazon.com Vine program where I get free stuff to review.

I followed the instructions and attempted to edit the URL out of the signature line in my profile, but repeatedly got an error message every time I tried to save the changes. It appears to be a problem with Amazon’s software.

I called customer service this morning and talked to some kid who, after learning that I also have a seller account with Amazon, passed me over to Seller Customer Service. But the Seller Customer Service guy ascertained that the issue concerns my buyer account profile, not my seller account profile, and passed me back to the buyer side where a young woman attempted to make the appropriate edits in my buyer profile and encountered the same problem I had. She put me on hold and, after several minutes, the connection was dropped.

Fuck.

So I took another run at it this afternoon, using the “chat” customer service feature.

Here’s the transcript with what I was thinking in parentheses:

You are now connected to Tahaj-wayne from Amazon.com.

Me:Can't edit nameline in my buyer profile. I received an email from Amazon.com yesterday advising me that I could not have a URL in the signature line (it's been there for years) and telling me how to edit my profile. I have tried repeatedly, but the changes won't take. I had one of your reps on the phone earlier and she couldn't make it work either.

I was told in yesterday's email that I have 7 days to make the change or lose my 130+ reviews and buyer ID.

I'm trying to comply, but your software won't permit it.

Tahaj-wayne:Hello John, my name is Tahaj-wayne. I'll be happy to help you with this issue today (Call me racist, but the name “Tahaj-wayne doesn’t inspire confidence in me.)

Me:ok

Tahaj-wayne:One moment please while I research on this for you

Me:OK

Tahaj-wayne:Thanks for waiting

Me:Do you have a solution?

Tahaj-wayne:At this time I'm doing some extensive research on this matter (Extensive? Ooooo. Sounds impressive, but we both know it’s bullshit.)

Me:ok

Tahaj-wayne:Please wait a few more minutes. thanks for your patience

Me:waiting

If the option of you editing the URL out of my signature line exists, know that I am perfectly fine with that solution.

Tahaj-wayne:Let me ask

the issue you're encountering is regarded to Associates are "affiliates" ? (WTF?)

Me:Is that a statement or a question? Makes no sense.

Tahaj-wayne:As it regards your buyer profile can you tell me more about it I really want to provide solutions

Me:I thought I laid it out concisely in my first statement. Scroll up to the top and read it again. (Starting to get pissed off here and realizing Tahaj has a reading comprehension problem.)

If I seem a little cranky, it's because I wasted an hour on the phone with Amazon.com customer service earlier today with no resolution to the issue.

Tahaj-wayne:Thanks for waiting

I'm almost through with some research on this issue

Me:ok

Tahaj-wayne:May I ask

Are you a seller on the website (Oh, no. We’re not going there. You can’t foist me off on the seller customer service people.)

Me:Yes, but this concerns my buyer account profile. I've already had a long and fruitless conversation with a guy on the seller side who determined I need to work with someone on the buyer side.

Tahaj-wayne:Thanks for waiting  as it regards you buyer account nameline which is John M. Flora

Is that what you're having the problem with? (Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ! I just told you that!)

Me:Yes. The signature line, which appears beneath my name, contains the URL of my blog. I have tried repeatedly to edit it out, but the changes don't get made. It appears to be a problem with your software because another customer service person tried to make the change and couldn't do it either.

Tahaj-wayne:OK

In this case it appears there's an issue with the website

I'll send some information over to our technical team so that they can do some investigation on this issue

Me:The notification I got about this yesterday warned that I have 7 days to get the URL out of my signature line or I will lose the 130+ product reviews and my ID, which would really be bad, since I'm a participant in the Vine program.

So you can see why I attach a lot of urgency to this problem and want it resolved immediately.

Tahaj-wayne:OK

We'll have our technical team contact you withing the next 24 hours to get this issue resolved

Me:Ok. Thanks.

Are we done here?

Tahaj-wayne:Yes John

Is there anything else you'd like me to assist you with?

Me:No. That's all.

Tahaj-wayne:OK

have a good evening

Bye

Tahaj-wayne from Amazon.com has left the conversation.

To be continued…

Autographed photo of the day

Here’s yet another Ebay purchase – an autographed “To John” photo of Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who played the clueless, self-absorbed Meadow Soprano, daughter of Tony Soprano. She turned 31 on May 15.

Autographed photo of the day

Here’s another Ebay acquisition, an autographed “To John” photo of Marion Ross, who played Marion Cunningham – mother of Richie Cunningham – for 11 seasons (1974-84) on “Happy Days.”

Marion is 83.

Brrrrrr!

Maria is designing patterns for baby quilts on her computer while I work at my desk this morning.

The window air conditioner, which is 3 feet from my left shoulder and running on its lowest setting, makes me uncomfortably cold, so I’m borrowing one of her little quilts to keep the chill away.

Yesterday’s high was 102° and although today’s forecast is for a high of 91°, it’s still warm enough in our upstairs office to need air conditioning.

The prime suspect

This is what I think has been biting me in my sleep - 6 times in the past two months. We sprayed the bedroom with RAID yesterday and found him and four others against the baseboard, dead, this morning.
I've emailed this image to an Arkansas State University entomologist for identification and suggestions on how to exterminate his kind.

Living well really is the best revenge

You almost certainly have seen the video of the 68-year-old bus monitor being driven to tears by verbal abuse from a bunch of middle school sociopaths.
And you probably know there is a web site dedicated to raising money so Karen Klein will know that people care about her and want her to be able to quit that chickenshit $15, 506 a year job.
As of 9 a.m. today, the site has raised $646,047 and the total is rising by about $10,000-15,000 a day.
Go here to check the total and/or add to it.

Is your voter registration current? Check here.

Eighteen percent of potential voters who think they are registered, are not.

Use this link to find out if your voter registration is current and, if it isn’t, how to get registered.

The only way we’re going to take our country back in November is to get out the conservative vote in big enough numbers to overwhelm the votes of illegal aliens, dead people, and other fraud.

Nose-to-nose with Jack

Jack is tall enough to peer through the glass on the back door, which is why there are nose print smudges all over the glass.

Here he is this morning, rendered in HDR, of course.

Is your computer infected? Better deal with it before July 10.

Here’s a timely warning from one of my favorite blogs, Maggie’s Farm:

A whole pisspot full of computers are going to lose their Internet connection this July 10th.  Let's find out if yours will be one of them.

It's actually kind of a bizarre story.  Your computer connects to the Internet using DNS numbers.  Some bad guys in Estonia ran a fake advertising scheme and infected a shitload of computers around the world with a DNS hijacking program which changed the computer's DNS numbers.  It would still connect with the Internet just fine, albeit occasionally the user might find some new browser window open advertising this or that, which is how the bad guys made their money.

Enter the authorities, who catch the bad guys but then are faced with a problem.  If they had just confiscated their servers, every infected machine on the planet would have immediately lost its Internet connection — and without the owners having the slightest idea why.

Rather than risk global anarchy, the FBI substituted the servers with some rental servers to give people time to clean up their computers, but time is running out and the servers are going to be unplugged this July 10th.  There's already been one court-ordered 'stay' of 3 months, and it doesn't look like there's going to be another.

The reason anti-virus programs don't catch the little rascal is because it's not actually a virus; it's not even a program, just a web file.  The second someone clicked on the original fraudulent ad, the damage was done.  No file was ever downloaded so there wasn't anything for the anti-virus program to analyze and stop.

The official FBI info file is here.

The Tests

To be fairly certain you're not infected, visit this and this page.  If they say you're infected, there will be some instructions to follow.

If you want to be absolutely certain you're not infected, go to Start Menu, Programs, Accessories, open 'Command Prompt'.  Type in:

   ipconfig /all

and hit the Enter key.  Start looking down the list and you'll see 'DNS Servers', with one or two DNS numbers over to the right.

If any DNS number fits into one of these ranges, the machine is infected:

    64.28.176.0 — 64.28.191.255
    67.210.0.0 — 67.210.15.255
    77.67.83.0 — 77.67.83.255
    85.255.112.0 — 85.255.127.255
    93.188.160.0 — 93.188.167.255
    213.109.64.0 — 213.109.79.255

If so, head here for some fix-it tools, and please let us know in the comments which tool you used and on what operating system.

Mac users:  If you use a browser with a Windows emulation program, check the FBI file for how to access your DNS numbers so you can compare them to the above list.  If you're not running emulation, don't worry about it.

Also, if you're using a router, check the router section in the FBI file.  The router has its own DNS numbers that need to be manually checked against the list.

I suppose I should note the historical impact of the event.  While there have been innumerable viruses, worms and trojans over the years that were expected to ignite on a certain date, creating Gawd knows what kind of havoc, almost none of them ever panned out.  This time, however, we're being given a specific date and it's a damn good guess it'll actually happen.

After all, this one's backed up by the FBI.

Happy Jack

I was going to blog a photo of the Sam’s Club gas pump showing regular at $2.97 a gallon today, but I’d rather share this portrait of Jack that I shot about an hour ago.

It’s an HDR composite of 8 images, but blended in such a way as to prove that HDR images don’t have to look freaky.

Jack will be 10 months old on July 1.

And the Friendly Fox is still his favorite toy.

Vegas oddsmaker says Obama will lose. Big.

Las Vegas oddsmaker Wayne Allyn Root predicts that Romney will crush Obama in the November election.

Here’s what he wrote back on May 30 – and that was before Fast & Furious blew up:

Most political predictions are made by biased pollsters, pundits, or prognosticators who are either rooting for Republicans or Democrats. I am neither. I am a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee, and a well-known Vegas oddsmaker with one of the most accurate records of predicting political races.
But as an oddsmaker with a pretty remarkable track record of picking political races, I play no favorites. I simply use common sense to call them as I see them. Back in late December I released my New Years Predictions. I predicted back then- before a single GOP primary had been held, with Romney trailing for months to almost every GOP competitor from Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt- that Romney would easily rout his competition to win the GOP nomination by a landslide. I also predicted that the Presidential race between Obama and Romney would be very close until election day. But that on election day Romney would win by a landslide similar to Reagan-Carter in 1980.

Understanding history, today I am even more convinced of a resounding Romney victory. 32 years ago at this moment in time, Reagan was losing by 9 points to Carter. Romney is right now running even in polls. So why do most pollsters give Obama the edge?

First, most pollsters are missing one ingredient- common sense. Here is my gut instinct. Not one American who voted for McCain 4 years ago will switch to Obama. Not one in all the land. But many millions of people who voted for an unknown Obama 4 years ago are angry, disillusioned, turned off, or scared about the future. Voters know Obama now- and that is a bad harbinger.

Now to an analysis of the voting blocks that matter in U.S. politics:

*Black voters. Obama has nowhere to go but down among this group. His endorsement of gay marriage has alienated many black church-going Christians. He may get 88% of their vote instead of the 96% he got in 2008. This is not good news for Obama.

*Hispanic voters. Obama has nowhere to go but down among this group. If Romney picks Rubio as his VP running-mate the GOP may pick up an extra 10% to 15% of Hispanic voters (plus lock down Florida). This is not good news for Obama.

*Jewish voters. Obama has been weak in his support of Israel. Many Jewish voters and big donors are angry and disappointed. I predict Obama's Jewish support drops from 78% in 2008 to the low 60s. This is not good news for Obama.

*Youth voters. Obama’s biggest and most enthusiastic believers from 4 years ago have graduated into a job market from hell. Young people are disillusioned, frightened, and broke - a bad combination. The enthusiasm is long gone. Turnout will be much lower among young voters, as will actual voting percentages. This is not good news for Obama.

*Catholic voters. Obama won a majority of Catholics in 2008. That won’t happen again. Out of desperation to please women, Obama went to war with the Catholic Church over contraception. Now he is being sued by the Catholic Church. Majority lost. This is not good news for Obama.

*Small Business owners.Because I ran for Vice President last time around, and I'm a small businessman myself, I know literally thousands of small business owners. At least 40% of them in my circle of friends, fans and supporters voted for Obama 4 years ago to “give someone different a chance.” I warned them that he would pursue a war on capitalism and demonize anyone who owned a business... that he’d support unions over the private sector in a big way... that he'd overwhelm the economy with spending and debt. My friends didn’t listen. Four years later, I can't find one person in my circle of small business owner friends voting for Obama. Not one. This is not good news for Obama.

*Blue collar working class whites. Do I need to say a thing? White working class voters are about as happy with Obama as Boston Red Sox fans feel about the New York Yankees. This is not good news for Obama.

*Suburban moms. The issue isn’t contraception… it’s having a job to pay for contraception. Obama’s economy frightens these moms. They are worried about putting food on the table. They fear for their children’s future. This is not good news for Obama.

*Military Veterans. McCain won this group by 10 points. Romney is winning by 24 points. The more our military vets got to see of Obama, the more they disliked him. This is not good news for Obama.

Add it up. Is there one major group where Obama has gained since 2008? Will anyone in America wake up on election day saying “I didn’t vote for Obama 4 years ago. But he’s done such a fantastic job, I can’t wait to vote for him today.” Does anyone feel that a vote for Obama makes their job more secure?
Forget the polls. My gut instincts as a Vegas oddsmaker and common sense small businessman tell me this will be a historic landslide and a world-class repudiation of Obama’s radical and risky socialist agenda. It's Reagan-Carter all over again.

But I’ll give Obama credit for one thing- he is living proof that familiarity breeds contempt.

Morgan scores again

Morgan’s summer reading program, and especially its celebration of the U.S. Army’s birthday earlier this month, is getting lots of well-deserved publicity.

She’s doing a great job of getting the library noticed.

Absolutely spot-on analysis of the Narcissist In Chief

http://crayfisher.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/obama-the-myth/

Stay ignorant, my friends.

Damn cheap-ass coffee filters!

I decided to forgo my usual mocha cappuccino this morning in favor of a pot of regular coffee.

Despite my effort to carefully arrange the filter in the Mr. Coffee coffee maker, it collapsed and dumped grounds into the carafe. And, no, I do not want a Keurig. I want filters that stay put and don’t fold over.

Summer starts at 6:09 p.m. CDT, so this is the last morning of spring this year. At 9:30 a.m., it’s already 85, heading to a high of 92.

Banishing the beard

I shave off my beard every six or seven years or so, usually because I’ve forgotten what I look like shaven.

This morning, it was because I’ve the skin under my beard has become dry and irritated, so I’m giving it a chance to air out.

Happily, Maria was home long enough to make a photographic record of this rare event.

I think I look a little jowly, but I guess that comes with age. I think I look younger than my dad did at 66 and 11 months.

My face feels funny. I can feel a breeze from the ceiling fan here in my upstairs office.