{"id":197,"date":"2005-12-16T13:32:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-16T13:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/16\/flying-soda-echeck-parking-rant-phone-bill\/"},"modified":"2005-12-16T13:32:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-16T13:32:00","slug":"flying-soda-echeck-parking-rant-phone-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/16\/flying-soda-echeck-parking-rant-phone-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"flying soda, echeck, parking rant, phone bill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, while I was getting into my car, I set my bottle of soda on the roof so that I could check to see if I needed to scrape my windshield or if I could just brush it off.   Instead of putting my soda in the car &#8211; as I should have &#8211; I left it there and reached in to start the engine and get my scraper.    The ice on the roof &#8211; with the vibrations of the engine &#8211; caused my plastic bottle of soda to fly off the roof, hit the ground, slide under the car next to mine and come to a rest in a snowbank.<\/p>\n<p>So, I went around and picked it up &#8211; there was a lot of foam at the top, but the bottle was undamaged.    And on the way to work, I sort of forgot about how shaken up it was and that I should be careful.  I twisted off the cap at my desk and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;nothing happened.  It was fine.  The soda must have settled down somehow during the car ride.   Strangest thing.<\/p>\n<p>Last evening, I went to get my car e-checked since my registration is due in January.   And if I did it in 2005 to avoid the long lines, it would be free instead of the ususal $19.50<\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;m not sure how the line lenght is going to be differnt from year to year &#8211; but free is better than 20 bucks.  There was no line when I pulled up and my car passed.  Took maybe 7 minutes total and I was on the road with my certification in hand.<\/p>\n<p>I had been a little concerned since there had been issues with the cars computer and the oxygen sensor, but they must have been electical ghosts and didn&#8217;t affect the tests.<\/p>\n<p>This morning, I had to pass up a prime parking spot at work since some dufus had backed into their space &#8211; and done a poor job of it.   This is one of the many things that annoy me.  If you&#8217;re going to take the extra time to back into a space &#8211; do it well so that you don&#8217;t mess things up for anyone else.   And frankly &#8211; you&#8217;re not Batman.  You don&#8217;t need to fly screaming out of your parking space to chase down the bad guys.   Get over yourself.<\/p>\n<p>This past week, I&#8217;ve been taking a closer look at my phone bill.   I was concerned about the amount I was paying for my local service and the plan I had wasn&#8217;t really what I needed.   So, I called them up and looked for options.  They couldn&#8217;t offer any savings on intraLATA calls and the unlimited residence service, even with all the extra stuff removed, was still over 20 bucks.  I ended up saving 5 bucks, but I&#8217;ve got no features on my phone.  Hell, if it was any simpler I&#8217;d be using bare copper wires or tin cans and string.  And it&#8217;s still over 20 bucks + all the the federal fees and charges. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m strongly considering giving up on a land line entirely and going the cell phone route. <\/p>\n<p>Now, before you get all up in arms &#8211; keep in mind that my biggest concern with those things has been the people that use them.  I&#8217;d be getting a simple phone with a simple plan and using it primarly from home. <\/p>\n<p>The very notion still makes me queasy, but the merger of SBC and AT&#038;T doesn&#8217;t give me hope for better customer service or reduced prices.<\/p>\n<p>And I guess that&#8217;s it for now.  Have a good weekend and I&#8217;ll get back to work&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img width='1' height='1' src='https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7938355-113474107652117723?l=approximatelyequalto.blogspot.com' alt='' \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, while I was getting into my car, I set my bottle of soda on the roof so that I could check to see if I needed to scrape my windshield or if I could just brush it off. Instead of putting my soda in the car &#8211; as I should have &#8211; I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}