respublica

A warning over what should be obvious

Suburban police in Chicago have begun warning residents in their towns about the danger of leaving their cars unlocked and their key fobs inside the cars. One police chief said, " On any given night, I can head out to Oak Brook, Hinsdale, or go up to Lake Fores and drive off with an unlocked Jaguar, BMW, Mercedes or, if I'm lucky, a Maserati."

These are all upscale suburbs where you'd assume the people who live there have some smarts, but it seems they do not. They not only leave their cars unlocked, but they leave the key fob in it. Key fobs are the most recent type of key for cars these days. We have one that came with Dale's car. It doesn't have to be put into a slot on the steering column, in fact there is no slot. You can put it just about anywhere in the car and by pushing a button on the dash, the car starts. One friend of ours told Dale when he got this car, "just leave it in your pocket so you won't be tempted to forget it in the car."

St. Louis has its own issues with car thefts and the local Clayton police often put out notices on Facebook and neighborhood internet pages about car thefts which occurred because the owner left the car open and the key in the cup holder. Again this is an area where you'd think people were smarter than this.

This from a member of a former auto theft task force about the sense of entitlement coming from many whose whose cars were stolen: "People just don’t accept responsibility today. They ask, ‘Why are there not more police around?’ When the real question is, ‘Why didn’t you take your keys with you and not leave them in an unlocked car?"

Mattress unexpected

Here is a new mattress story which does not take place on a highway. "Someone threw a mattress out of a high rise window in Chicago's West Loop, nearly hitting a person on the street Sunday night."  It landed on a sidewalk barely missing a man walking past the building. He called the police who are now trying to figure out who did this.

Those mattresses, I'm telling you. You just never know where they'll show up. But my question is, how do you open a high rise window wide enough to shove a mattress out. Usually they are not meant to be opened for good reason. Also, what got spilled on that mattress which was bad enough to make a person want to get rid of it immediately.

I hope there will be a follow up on this story.

Laundry weirdness

Out of nowhere today came two stories on laundry. One is stranger than the other.

The first advises adding cracked black pepper to your wash to keep your color clothes from fading. The theory is the pepper works as a light sandpaper removing any residual soap from the clothes. I'm not going to try this, you try this.

And there is the non-electric, foot powered, mini washing machine made by Yirego and which won some kind of big award for product design this year. You just have to watch the video on how this works and ask yourself if you'd go to all this trouble. By trouble I mean the things which are not answered. The idea is you can carry this thing anywhere and wash anywhere. You put a few clothes in to the top, add detergent and a couple quarts of water and then press the foot pedal for a couple of minutes and your clothes are done.

However, what I didn't see was how you drain the soapy water if you decided to do this in your living room or kitchen or dorm room or outdoors. Then you have to go and add rinse water I'd assume. It's cute, but it seems like a lot of extra effort for a couple of pieces of clothing. Unless there is a way of draining water into something else which you'd have to empty, I can't see where you would even use this.

There is no last straw

We all know that old expression, "That's the last straw." Well, since environmentalist people began focusing on the problems caused by traditional paper straws, more and more food service people have giving out reusable straws. It's become against the law in some cities to even give out a paper/disposable straw.

But there seems to be a huge market for straws so what to do?  People are constantly walking around with some sort of drink with a straw in it. Even water in the reusable cups. I mean seriously, Americans are always holding a container of liquid. Some smart marketer saw an immediate way to make money off of our desire to be environmentally kind as well as our need for straws.

This came apparent to me in a big way down here in Tampa with the LCMS Convention. So many exhibitors are giving away cups/glasses with re-usable straws. Some vendors even give away just straws. I have some in hard plastic and others in some kind of metal. Frankly I have no use for them, but will take them home anyway.  This is just weird to me.

How do you clean these re-usable straws? A dishwasher will only get the outside, so do we have to fill up a sink with suds and let the straws soak for a time and then rinse really well? You have to do something about cleaning them or germs will take over. And, if you don't want to clean them, you'll be throwing them away which goes against the point of them.

Modern life. Just weird.

Here's a new traffic issue

From Rodger Brand, KMOX's traffic reporter: "OK, here's an odd one: A report of a raccoon with a can stuck on its head near West Outer and Miller roads. Use caution...

Also, an old issue. A mattress this morning along 141 near Romaine Creek.

Mattresses 66

Ladders 65

Seeing discrimination in everything

This out of Gaithersburg, Maryland is a good example of how weird we've gotten. "At many pools, there’s a whistle blown every hour or so alerting everyone that it’s time for adult swim! But if that’s happening at the pool where you live, it could be breaking federal law." So no more adult swim for 10 minutes each hour out in Gaithersburg. 

It seems, according to a spokesman for the local homeowners association, one man who lives in the neighborhood and happens to be an attorney, pointed out that adult swim was discriminatory and so they changed the rules.  Supposedly adult swim is a violation of the Fair Housing Act in that it discriminates against families whereby some members of a family can swim and others cannot.

We've lost our minds. If I had to guess, this attorney had a kid who got ticked off that he had to get out of the pool for ten minutes.

A question about Memorial Day

Why is this weekend so big on mattress sales?

Regional accent survey

A recent survey done by a travel agency  just published their official ranking of the 50 sexiest – and least sexy – accents in the USA.  Seriously, there is a survey for everything. However St. Louis came in 9th out of 50 which is some interest (and surprise) to us.  Here is what is said about St. Louis accents and why they ended up on this list.

"St. Louis, Missouri has some unique features of its own that make it different than the rest of the Midlands. Native speakers swap the ”ar” sound for “or” (as in “farty” for “forty” and “carn” for “corn”), so get ready to make the joke ‘I Farty-Far’ a lot."

Ok St. Louis area people I need to know if I'm alone in never ever having heard a St. Louisan say, 'farty' for forty. I asked Dale if he'd ever heard anyone here have that hard 'ar' sound and he said he'd never heard anyone with that accent either. This seems to me an urban myth that pops up now and then but isn't real.

 

What to do when there is nothing to do

This was weekend we learned what it was like to not have television, computer and wireless anything. While planting some flowers early Saturday morning, Dale shoved his shovel into our buried cable line. Everything inside the house stopped.  Well, not everything, the washer was still going, but the things we count on went out.

I went around checking things and hoping this was going to be an outage area wide so that the cable people would send someone out. But finally after an hour I realized it was just us. I knew this by going out to the yard and saw where Dale had been digging. The ground was exactly above where the cable line was buried as it was laid from the back of the house to the pole at the edge of the property. I asked him if he'd noticed an orange cord and he said yes. It never occurred to him that this may have been our cable line. He did admit to moving it as his dug, but didn't think he'd actually cut into it.

But he did.  Calling Charter or probably any cable provider is a pain. You get the automated answer which will require pushing one number or other and answering "yes" or No" to a mechanical voice for any number of questions. I gave up the first time since none of the choices met out situation. I tried again later and again was frustrated. Finally I decided to just press 0 when the voice came on and sure enough I got a real person finally.

She set up a time for a service person to come out Sunday morning. So we had all of Saturday and Saturday night to pretty much sit around and try to find things to talk about in a very quiet house. We both found our cellular data almost used up by the time we headed for bed. We've never been in that position before and we both wondered what it would mean if out cellular allotment ran out before the cable guy got here. Would our phone just shut down and be useless?  We did not find out because we managed to squeak by.

I spent some time during the boring Saturday giving some thought to getting one of the Over the Air antennas. They are pretty inexpensive and at least we'd be able to watch local things that night. So I did it. I went out to Best Buy while Dale was out running other errands and bought an over the air antenna. It sounded so easy.

But like all tech things, easy is in the mind of the beholder and in the tv's they own. Turns out we have a TV without a built in tuner which you must have in order to make the over the air antenna work. Who knew? Lots of tv's are being made without them these days. If your TV has a coaxial cable slot, you're good. If not you have to buy some other part to make it work. I will not buy another part. I may just use this over the air antenna on a different tv one of these days.

Technology! Always wanting you to buy one more thing.

House for sale

Take a minute to look at this house for sale in Texas. Especially click through the room by room pictures and you'll have to wonder how anyone could even relax in this house. And, will it even sell. But the thing is, someone really loved this house and the rooms they decorated.