Archive for March, 2009

Boater’s World Closing

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Sadly I must report that Boater’s World is going out of business. Some of you may know that Boater’s World was my former employer and many friends and coworkers will be hurt by this turn of events. It’s widely reported that Ritz Camera was forced to sell Boater’s World at auction to liquidators thru the federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. All 129 stores in 27 states are to be closed, liquidated, by June 30th.

The only national chain left is Westmarine. Certainly the demise of Boater’s World will have a negative effect on the boating industry.

Open letter to Bill Gates

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Dear Bill,

Once again I have to thank you for bringing Vista into our lives. Do you remember that little guy on Laugh In, the one on the tricycle? He’d be riding along and then all of a sudden he would fall over or hit a fire hydrant. So funny, just like Vista. I do so enjoy having the operating system lock up and drop network connectivity forcing me to reboot. That’s when I discover that it’s sitting on five famous Microsoft updates and it is going to take an hour to load them, reboot the system … again and finish loading. I love the messages to, “loading 1 of 5 updates.” What updates? Did I ask for updates? Who wrote them? Where did they come from? Do I want them? Do I need them? Are they really from Microsoft or are they some hacker trying to get into my computer. Why has it been sitting there for a half hour with “Shuting down” on the screen and the hard drive light flashing? What is it doing? Will I still have my stuff when it’s done? Will it ever finish? Can I get paid for my lost time waiting for, waiting for … I don’t know, what is this thing?

Fantastic, it’s rebooting. No Wait, it says, “Windows did not shutdown properly.” Now what? Hmmmm, black screen, that can’t be good! Please come back computer, please, please, please.

Wait, there’s more! It now says, “Configuring updates: Stage 1 of 3.” ….. Logins! It got to logins! It says, “Welcome.” Now it says, “Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown.” How can it be unexpected? You did it …. bonehead! “Searching for an answer”, click cancel and get back to work. So I get the wifi reconnected and start working when I get … “Java automated update!” There’s just no end to you clowns, is there?

Now what the hell was I doing an hour ago, before this mess started?