Tag: Annoyances

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For the first time in a very long while…

I’m actively considering downgrading from an Apple update.

IOS 26 is pretty on my phone. It’s also pretty on my watch. But it’s very annoying.

Notifications half the time don’t show up on either my watch or my phone. Sometimes on one but not on the other, and sometimes on both. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.

I’ve checked and rechecked the settings and all the troubleshooting steps I can think of, and those suggested by Apple. Even turning off the “New” features doesn’t help.

How they could fuck up something that worked so well, is beyond me. I mean phone calls, and messages from known contacts not ringing? REALLY? That’s kind of basic stuff.

Thing is, it’s not any glaring “This is IT,” issue. It’s death by a thousand cuts. It’s little things.

For example, when starting a workout on my watch. In IOS18 I’d hit the action button on my ultra, that would take me to a list of workouts I’d done in the past. It was logically sorted by most frequent. I could tap the workout I was going to do and be off.

Now, hitting the action button takes me to the last workout I did. FULL SCREEN, No list, with a “Play” button.

If I want to select something else, I’ve got to roll the crown to see other selections.

They added an un-necessary complication to the process. The previous way was clean, direct, and simple.

It’s a minor thing, but it’s annoying. Then on the phone side you’ve got live activities which is fine and maybe even useful. But if you open the fitness app even after you’ve completed a workout and stopped it using the watch, there’s a screen showing the summary of that completed workout with a green check in the upper right hand corner.

Okay, but what I wanted out of the fitness app was something completely different, and now I’m forced to press the green checkmark to get to the underlying data screens in the fitness app.

Again another unnecessary step.

The whole of the OS is filled with extra, unnecessary steps that make working with my phone like answering 50 questions at a damn gas pump.

I just want gas! Take my money and turn on the fucking pump!

I’m not having a battery drain issue with my phone as so many others are, Because I’m not using it. Really, I’ve noticed I’m going to my computer for even the slightest bit of information.

Maybe this is just settling in stuff. Maybe I’ll get used to it. But I don’t need an interrogation from a device that is supposed to be my assistant, every time I interact with it.

Maybe this is just the age we live in.

Even researching the roll back process is annoying. I entered a search on how to roll back then found an article from Macobserver, fine. I tapped on the link, then Macobserver wanted age verification. WHAT? Then they wanted me to click on a check box the proved I was human. Then cloudflare pops up with a “Verifying” dialog and I still hadn’t gotten to the fucking article.

Why does everything have to be so complicated? I bailed on their page and made a different selection. Even then I was pounded with cookie notifications, an AI chat box to help answer my question, a Google login prompt, and some EU notification. ALL OF WHICH prevented me from reading a text article related to the question I asked. I couldn’t even see the title of the article to verify if it was what I actually wanted.

I bailed on that page, and went to the next listing in line. Finally! There was an article describing the process without all the bullshit!

Maybe I’m just cross.

Then again, maybe I’m just sick of bullshit at every turn of my existence.

It looks like downgrading from IOS 26, while possible, has a rather high risk of fucking up my phone, and data. I’ll have to reach a much higher level of annoyance before I undertake that project.

It’s got me thinking though.

I’m convinced that dumping the web hosting and this blog entirely, is in fact the right thing for me to do. It’s become such a headache I’m not interested anymore.

Between endless demands from the EU regulators to verify the owner and contact information on every single web domain, and them telling me that they’re implementing new rules to protect the delicate sensibilities of their members. I’m over it.

Gee Thanks Obama! You fucking moron! Turning over the domain registration to the EU was a fucking brilliant idea!

Well, the internet was a good idea, while it lasted…

I wonder if I can still get a print version of Encyclopedia Britannica? Why yes… it’s 2K on Amazon.

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You know, I’ve been too nice, too respectful, and put up with more than my share of absolute shit!

I guess I was, and still am, in a “Mood“.

For the past 12 weeks the old guy next door has been working in his yard. That’s fine, it makes him happy, more power to him.

When he started, he’d be playing music, and if I listened real carefully I could hear snippets of the tunes. We all have our windows open and honestly it didn’t bother me. Just background noise nothing to it.

Over time, the volume has increased. Over the past 4-5 weeks it’s gotten to the point that he’s turning it up so he can hear it over his gas powered leaf blower. As an aside he cranks the damn leaf blower up and uses it in his “mostly dirt” back yard. So those of us around him spend all our time fucking dusting our houses.

It’s like painting the San Francisco bridge. I no sooner get the house clean and then “Burrrrrrrrrrrrrr Burrrrr Blaat Burrr” & I’ve got a dust storm blowing through the house again.

But he’s not the only one. The Mexicans up at the top of the canyon almost every weekend blast mariachi music nightly until 10:30. They only stop because if they’re blasting it after that, someone calls the cops and they get another ticket.

The old guy across the street smokes his rancid pot that wafts all over the neighborhood while playing some of the worst recordings and/or worst rock bands of the 60’s & 70’s, also at deafening volume.

Typically, I can’t sit in my own living room and watch a movie anymore. Forget a film where the actors are British, often their character’s accents are unintelligible if there’s a lot of background sounds, either from the soundtrack or from the external Cacophony provided by my ever so courteous neighbors.

Honestly, I’ve given up trying to enjoy anything because no matter when I sit down to watch something, within minutes there’s “Aie yi yiaaaa” or some really shitty “B” side track from Deep Purple.

I guess yesterday, I reached a breaking point.

Normally I keep my TV and music volume pretty damn low. I don’t think it’s polite for me to disrupt other peoples lives. I don’t run my yard tools until typically about 10 in the morning.

I try very hard to keep my shit from interfering with other people’s shit. I don’t cause trouble, I don’t tell people to turn their shit down, or call the cops. I thought I was just being a decent human being and eventually these people turn their shit off or down and I’m fine.

But you know what? The more you don’t say shit, the worse people behave. The more inconsiderate they become. Nobody cares, that you’re not fucking up their evening. They never think that they’re fucking up someone else’s evening, day, afternoon, or whatever.

They just assume their music, or drunken shouting, echoing down the canyon is something everybody wants to hear.

Guess what? It’s not!

So, right on cue yesterday, I’d made myself lunch, turned on the TV to watch a football game, and… Music from the guy’s back yard so loud it was like it was coming from my TV in my living room. To top it off, the fucking leaf blower too, kicking up dust blowing straight into my house.

FUCK!!!!

Okay, so I’m not going to be able to watch the game. Fine, I’ll do other shit that needs to get done. But I’m going to play some music…

From every set of speakers in the house. And I’m going to play it loud enough that I can run the vacuum and do anything else I need to do. This house is going to rock like Studio 54 on a Saturday night.

And the playlist? Ohhh That’s easy! A collection of very angry fight songs that are not censored. This is a playlist that I put together to help keep me going after Jerry died. The songs are angry, full of rage, and pretty much expressed what I was feeling at the time. They’re dark, and some are downright hostile.

Watch, some prissy fuck will call the cops and accuse me of “Hate Speech”.

They’re kind of fitting after the last week. Two people butchered. Democrats telling us to calm down and tone down the rhetoric. Trans fucks celebrating death, others whining about losing their jobs because they were stupid enough to go on TikTok a video their gleeful hatred of Charlie Kirk and anyone else they disagree with. Then trying to hide behind the 1st amendment when their employers cut them loose. Oh boo hoo.

Yet more people saying Stephen King shouldn’t be canceled for his hateful spew, followed by a pussy assed “Apology”.

Nancy Pelosi raising funds to pay for the California redistricting to deprive all of us of representation. Office Depot libtards refusing to print a poster of Charlie Kirk that had no message other than his name, DOB and Date he died. After it was paid for! (Those “loads their mothers should’ve swallowed”, have since been fired.) California democrats refusing an invitation from the GOP to attend a Kirk vigil “Because he was fascist” thereby continuing to spew vomitous vitriol against a man that simply debated university students. 

BUT at the same damn time they’re telling right leaning people or conservatives that we’re wrong for being righteously angry Kirk was shot & killed by some brainwashed maladjusted queer kid poisoned with years of leftist bullshit.

As my china rattled, and the whole neighborhood heard my music. Raw, angry, unashamed, and disruptive. It occurred to me that I’m still really PISSED OFF. About a lot of things!

Absolutely nothing that’s happened in the past 6 years to me personally, and the country in general, is acceptable. But those of us on the right, or more conservative types have been told we’re the worst scum for disagreeing of asking questions.

This is me reaching my fucking breaking point! I and others like me have been silent for too long.

It’s time for us to get loud.

By the way, Apple HomePods have got some range of volume. I think I’ll be putting the Mini’s out on the decks when I’m working from here on out. Since it appears the object of the game is to annoy the neighborhood… I’ll play by their rules.

Linkin Park, Korn, NIN, and peppered in I’ll throw in some death metal. Maybe I’ll find some tolerable white supremacist shit just to really piss off the pussy democrats that live all around me.

Let one of them try to give me the least bit of shit.

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I Tried.

So yesterday afternoon, I decided I really needed to get the heck out of the house.

I thought to myself it’s not going to be too cold, so I packed my tent, some water, my little JetBoil so I could have coffee in the morning, Really BAD coffee, the instant was very past it’s expiration date. I packed a small container of leftover chicken & rice for dinner and a bagel for breakfast. Tossed the sleeping bag in the pack, assorted dog treats, a little food for the dog and his collapsable bowls.

A simple overnight camping trip. No fire. It would have been nice to have a campfire but that’s out of the question in Southern California mountains this time of year.

I had my battery powered lantern, my headlamp, a few other items, and my old faithful handheld HAM Radio. It was in case of emergency, and allowed me to check the weather forecast if I saw clouds rolling in.

I purposely left my damn cellphone, sitting on its charger. I forgot to take my actual “Big Boy” camera! D’OH! Oh well…

Hiked about an hour up the mountain didn’t get as far as I wanted to because a certain someone had to stop every 4 feet to sniff every blade of grass. (Looking at you, dog!)

Got the tent set up near a nice rock outcropping that was almost perfect chair height. I had dinner, drank a little bourbon, and watched the sun go down.

It was blissful, silent, and except for the dog wondering what the hell we were doing, restful. Eventually he just accepted that we were fine, he had food and water, knew where I was, and settled down.

The evening was beautiful, just what I needed. Not quite idyllic, I’d have preferred a babbling brook too, but one makes do.

Around 8 or so, with a very confused dog, I zipped the door of the tent shut and  crawled into the sleeping bag. I don’t think the dog got much sleep.

He was on guard watching the view through the screen of the tent door and I’m not sure he liked the mesh of the tent roof. Next time perhaps I’ll set up with the rain fly so he doesn’t feel so exposed. I was just about asleep. 

My watch buzzed. A text message… “Please call me when you get a chance.” Okay whatever. I rolled over and went to sleep.

My mistake was not putting the damn watch in airplane mode right then and there.

Another message buzzed. This one from a person connected to the person who sent the first message. “I gave X your contact information. Nothing important, we haven’t talked in a very long time. How are you? Touch base when you have a chance.”

“Okay… I’ll get right on that, when I get around to it.”

As I was falling asleep again, I thought to myself, “I haven’t heard from either of these people in well over a year. They do know it’s Labor Day weekend don’t they? What the actual fuck is going on?” I drifted off deciding I’d handle it on Tuesday.

I had enough food, water, and dog treats to last well into Monday if I wanted.

It was a nice spot, a very small valley cutout in the “V” between two mountain peaks. This was not a proper campsite if rain was in the forecast but aside from the “Chair” rock outcropping it was pretty smooth and mostly level.

I could see the sky and stars, crickets were chirping, and I could hear a pair of owls talking to each other from trees on either side of the valley. I told my watch I was going to sleep. It went dark and would be silent until I told it I was awake. Aside from the dog shifting around and giving a nervous bark once during the night, I slept pretty soundly.

Dawn was glorious and I felt at peace. I made coffee, walking around my little campsite in my boxers and boots. No-one was around so who’d care? The dog has seen much worse!

He and I played “Fetch the Treat” in the cool morning air. I had my bagel with a bit of peanut butter and jelly, and thought about camping one more night.

My mistake was taking my watch out of “sleep”. I was considering hiking further up the valley and spending another night nearer the Pacific Crest Trail. That would mean a strenuous climb if I went straight up, or perhaps there was a way around that was less of a sheer climb. 

The watch has topographical mapping and I thought I’d take a look for another path.

More text messages, emails, and a phone call transcription from the person that texted me last night. The call was at 8:23am. The transcription was typical soft pedaling when someone is going to ask you for something but they don’t want to just come out with it.

I rolled my eyes and again thought, “Tuesday. I’ll deal with whatever this is, on Tuesday.”

I strike camp. There’s a path that looks like it changes elevation more gradually. The dog and I were walking happily in a rocky gully at the east end of the valley. There were some of the biggest pieces of actinolite I’ve ever seen, and large pieces of maybe calcite strewn around among the big chunks of granite.

We’d covered maybe another mile and the climb was getting steeper. The gully was narrowing, getting more rugged, I was looking at the Topo map searching for a possible path that could get us out of the gully without having to climb up 30 foot mostly smooth rock faces.

I didn’t have any rope or climbing gear and being alone, didn’t want to risk a fall. Even the dog was looking at me like, “Well, what do we do now?” He’s a very good climber and for him to look back at me probably means I’m not going to free climb a rock face.

Another voicemail transcript from the same person. The time stamp is 9:21. This one is more insistent.

“For FUCKS SAKE!” I muttered, making a mental note to shut down this kind of shit being forwarded to my watch. 

Another text message timestamped 9:23. It too is more insistent.

Maybe my real mental note should be, “Bring a fucking map, or the old Garmin GPS instead of wearing a smart watch while camping. Maybe I’ll just drop the hammer, and spend money I don’t have, on a decent Timex or that sweet Omega I’ve been jonesing for.”

Although, if I’ve got the Garmin I’ll know what time it is, if I’m curious. For that matter the HAM rig has a clock in it too.

The dog & I backtrack a bit, then find another path that veers off away from the gully and keeps moving up. I’ve got my eye on this sweet smooth spot that might afford a spectacular view toward the West. I doubt I’ll be able to see the ocean but the view itself should be commanding.

We hike a while longer, then stop to rest under one of the few trees. The pup is thirsty, I fill his little water dish and check our bearing while he’s resting in the shade. The hike is steeper than the Topo on the watch screen led me to believe it would be.

It’s a nice challenge and in all this has been a cheap adventure. I’m enjoying myself, I’m even thinking of stripping and doing part of the hike nude. Again, no-one around and the dog wouldn’t care.

BUZZZ! Another fucking voicemail transcript from the same person. The text of the voicemail appears more insistent than the previous two. Now it’s commanding instead of “call when you get a chance.”

BUZZZ! Another text message asking me to call, from the person who gave little Miss Insistent my number.

FUUUUUUCCCKKKK!

Can’t a man have some peace and quiet?

These are people Jerry used to work with. Little Miss Insistent is a business owner and like all female business owners, or female bosses, for that matter will not say what they fucking mean.

Instead they say something indirect and then get pissed when a man doesn’t read between the lines and JUMP to do whatever the fuck they are demanding without actually using demanding words.

After all if they used demanding words, they’d be rude. Instead they prefer to annoy the shit out of you.

Standing there, an unknown number of miles from where I want to be, I realize that I’m not going to have any peace until I call these women back. My phone is at least 3 hours hike down this fucking mountain and they’ve managed to piss me off.

So much for having some mental break time on a holiday weekend!

I decide, “Fuck IT! I’m heading back home, back to the noise of weekend projects, chainsaws, and cars blaring rap music as they drive to the meth dealers house up the block.”

The peaceful mood I was working on is gone.

I’m thankful that I had most of one night. I guess that’s all I fucking deserve or can expect.

On the way back down the mountain it occurs to me that this right here is one of the reasons I hate working for women. I don’t even work for these people but fuck if they’re not behaving like I owe them something.

Maybe I’m just easily triggered after years of this kind of shit when I was working. This is the behavior of bosses all over America that fail to plan then tell you at 5:00 on a Friday they need you to work the weekend. They’re not asking… They’re ordering you to flush your plans because they couldn’t plan. 

The capper is always that they’re never going to be in the office over the weekend. They’re going to be out with their friends on their boats, or at Disneyland, or the beach.

They thoughtlessly condemn their employees to a weekend in a cubical farm and come Monday morning they’ll ask how your weekend was. They tend to get pissed when you point out your weekend was spent in the office after you cancelled your plans to be with your friends at Havasu.

After all, the truth is rude. It’s equally rude to point out their hypocrisy. Then women will try to make it better by saying something like, “Well you’re the only one I trust to do this…” 

Which is also bullshit. What they really mean is, “You’re the only one dumb enough, or You’re the only one without family obligations, or You’re the only male in the department  & the mom’s need to be home with their children.” In any of the cases it boils down to since you’re a male, you’re the only one they can fuck over with impunity.

It’s a fucking holiday weekend! I don’t work for you & damn even though I’m retired is it so impossible to believe that I might have plans?

1874043 03400 1280c-1073273447.I swear, I’d love to find a S&M orgy to call them back from.

The slap of leather, groans, and “Ohhhh Daddy Fuck me harder!” Would make a perfect background for me to return the phone call. 

“Hello, how are you?“

“I’m good… ‘OH YEAH! Take my load you whore!’ “

As I’m pumping a load into someone would be perfect!

I can hear that conversation;

“Where on earth are you?“

“Oh, I’m at the annual Labor Day orgy. They’ve got Viagra and Cialis in candy dishes everywhere. I’ve been fucking for 48 hours straight. ‘Yeah man on your knees, suck my cock.’ Uhh, What did you need?” 

I wonder if I should play a porn really loud in the background when I call back? Do you think they’d get the picture? Probably not, no-one has introspection, respect, or common sense, anymore.

Cell phones have absolutely ruined us.

There was a time when you left a message and that was it. No one had expectations of immediate responses. These days, it’s what? An hour before someone is hammering on your phone again?

Who the fuck calls someone on a Sunday, holiday weekend or not, at 8 or 9 am? There are people who might be in a church pew at that exact time. You’re going to interrupt their prayers & worship time?

This whole thing reminds me of a client I dropped. This daffy queen would wait till the day before every damn holiday then call to demand I rework his company website so they’d have new holiday pricing in effect at opening of business the day after the holiday.

It wouldn’t have been quite as annoying if he paid his fucking bill or at least gave me a discount on his services. Hell, I’d have swapped services.

When I finally dropped him, I realized that he didn’t value my service and he didn’t value me as a person. I haven’t missed the annoyance.

The last time I looked at his site, it was a mess. I’m sure he was paying someone a shit ton of money for it too.

Time for me to do something constructive. I’m going to go burn some aggression off with yard work.

Fuck technology and our hyper connected world! I’ve turned off the message forwarding to my damn watch. So If I don’t have my damn phone with me, leave a message! 

I sincerely hope everyone else has a peaceful remainder of their Labor Day.

[For those of you wondering, the photos are from previous walks/hikes, (except the orgy scene,) since I forgot my big boy camera. I thought this post could use some color.]

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Don’t worry my dogs are friendly…

“Don’t worry my dogs are friendly…” Said the guy opening his car door, letting his 2 dogs run off leash at the trail head a week or so ago.

Both dogs ran barking and snapping, directly at me & Jesse (who I had on his leash). One caught my pups jaw with a tooth then went for his throat and legs. The other came at me snarling & trying to bite me. I dropped the leash so Jesse had free motion and I had both hands to defend myself.

Jesse is amazingly fast and agile. He got a piece of his attacker and had blood all over his mouth and face while their owner was yelling & threatening me as though somehow I or my dog were at fault.

Fortunately, there were plenty of witnesses and a sign that clearly said “NO DOGS OFF LEASH”. When the authorities arrived, the witnesses all pointed at the dudes dogs as aggressors giving statements. Jesse & I were sitting on a tall rock. He was still on guard but was a good boy while I rinsed his wounds with water from our hydration pack. I was able to clean, assess, and dress his wounds on the spot. (Put together a dog first aid kit. It pays to be prepared!)

A Ranger brought Jesse his bandanna lost in the fracas, approaching very gently and quietly. He climbed up on the rock with us & Jesse nuzzled him to put the bandanna back on.

“That guy is trying to claim your dog is aggressive and mean,” he said as he retied the bandanna.

“I’m just not seeing it, his dog is pretty chewed up though. He’s demanding you pay the vet bill. Don’t worry, he’s not got a leg to stand on, he’s getting a hefty ticket right now. How’s this fella?” He gave Jesse some ear scritches.

“He’s okay, it think. There’s a cut from a tooth on his jaw, a couple of small punctures on his leg and another puncture near his shoulder towards his neck. They’re minor. I’ve cleaned ’em & hit ’em with antibiotic ointment. I’ll watch him for the next few days. He’ll be at the vet if he’s not healing or I find anything worse when we get home.” 

“Good,” the Ranger said, “Would you like me to hold the leash while you clean up the wound on your leg?” Jesse gave the Ranger a lick, asking for more ear scritches.

I was so worried about my pup, I hadn’t noticed I’d been injured and was bleeding pretty good. I rinsed my wound, & grabbed the human first aid kit from the pack to fix myself up.

The Ranger smiled, “Nice to see someone prepared even if 99% of the time they don’t need to be. You guys walk this trail a lot. I’ve never seen a vehicle, would you like a ride home?”

Folks, there’s a darn good reason to keep your dog on a leash. It’s as much for their safety as it is for others. You have no idea how far from home someone is, or if they, or their dog is old or has bad knees/other health conditions. Keeping control of your dog is super important so everyone can have a nice walk/hike.

That being said, drop the leash if your dog is attacked. They know what to do, and a former street dog like my pup knows how to end it pretty quick. 

Neither of us will have lasting physical damage & we got a ride in a ranger’s truck home. So that’s off our bucket list.

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Boy, there are some websites that seem like they’re working to piss you off!

So, after many years of not having health insurance I finally dropped the hammer, and filled out the application.

I got the card from them. I went on their website to finish the registration and that was annoying but not overly enraging. 

Mind you, I’ll not be taking my BP anytime soon!

I get that there’s all kinds of notices, acknowledgments, agreements, and stuff. But Damn!

On these websites, it’s the little things. They’ll tell you to enter a number, but provide no clue about how that number should be formatted, inevitability your entry is somehow wrong, then you try to fix it and they erase the whole field. Just FYI, I entered the number including the spaces and dashes exactly as they’d printed it on their little card.

It’s those kinds of things that make websites frustrating. 

Another classic is they wanted a phone number. Okay, My computer helpfully pasted the phone number in as (NNN) NNN-NNNN. The website corrected this to NNN-NNN-NNNN. Great! That’s what I’d expect. 

What I didn’t expect was the website, after correcting the number to their preferred format, wouldn’t accept the corrected number, with the changes they’d made. I had to blank out the field and enter number again. This time in their preferred format from the get go.

Sigh…

This is what comes from exclusively automated testing. This is why a human being on the keyboard working with the web page is important. Automation is freaking great to catch regressions, but it rarely catches things like this because of the inherent bias of the preprogramed input dataset.

Anyhoo, I fought through that mess and it’s really obvious that there are different groups working on different parts of the programming. Some parts of the site correct and accept normal deviations. Other parts correct but don’t accept the same normal deviations.

This too is why a real person sits down with the program and looks at not only the function of the programming, but also at how the various parts of the site integrate with each other.

Not that many corporations seem to care about user functionality/experience these days.

Then I spent time with their mobile application. My blood pressure increased! However, it appears I got it linked to the web application properly. At least I’m seeing the same data in both places.

Since I was sitting here with all the health shit already out, I decided to change pharmacies. My local Rite Aid pharmacy will close mid July. There is as yet no information if the building will be sold, and a new pharmacy will open in its place. The rest of the Rite Aid, the retail portion will close mid August. I guess they can’t reveal any information about what’s going to happen to the building until then.

So I signed up with Walgreens. Their site kept trying to send me to North Victorville, bypassing 3 locations in Hesperia, and another 2 locations nearer to my house. However, the really convenient location for me is next to the Costco down in Fontana, near the bank, and the grocery store.

I rarely go to Victorville, and NEVER go to North Victorville because it’s not near anything or anyplace I do business.

The Walgreens site (AND Their Application) was equally annoying with clearing fields, rejecting passwords, (because they don’t like dashes or spaces. And when it came time to enter the prescription information they wanted a photo of the RX from the bottle. Trouble is, the text on the photo was unreadable because the bottle is a 90 day supply and their photo controls wouldn’t allow me to focus on the important bits of the label. Their “AI” was apparently looking for an object and didn’t care if the labeling on the object was readable or not.

Again… This is why you have a real person interacting with the application / web site.

I’ll wait for them to call me… Or If I don’t hear anything from them in a few days, I’ll fill out the transfer form on their website since that’s text only.

Then just to top off the list of annoyances, I ran into my neighbor at the gas station and he was asking why a roll of 5 Zyn packages went up $10 between last week and today. The clerk (who’s just above drooling on herself,) said the special had ended. My neighbor wasn’t happy and pointed out that the price behind her for the product was posted $10 less than she’d just tried to charge him.

The mouth breather shrugged her shoulders and called the manager at home. After a lot of “Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, and saying, he can see the old price behind me, then uh huh, uh huh, uh huh,” she hung up. My neighbor said “Well?” As she looked at him with cow eyes highlighting her mental deficiency.

She said, “That’s the old price.”

At this point because I’m a real bastard. I told my neighbor to take a picture of her, the shelf tag behind her, and forward ti to the State of California consumer protection / fraud department.

I explained that California has pretty strict consumer protection laws regarding bait and switch. In California, you must sell a product at the price shown on the shelf, or advertising materials displayed in store. It’s not the consumer’s problem that the store employees didn’t take the advertising down, or couldn’t be bothered to do their job changing the shelf prices.

When I left, she was practically crying because she didn’t know how to make a deduction on the cash register, and he was being adamant. Other people in line were holding up their Zyn boxes and nodding with every point he made. The line was getting longer by the second, the gas pumps were all blocked, and people were starting to get really irritated. Poor dear, she must’ve had a very bad first hour of her shift all alone…

There are times when I really like being Loki!

I was curious, so I came home a looked up, or tried to look up all the new California taxation that went into effect yesterday. Most of the news channels only covered 2 or 3. The Fox website didn’t even mention the increased excise fee on gasoline. They mentioned pet insurance companies being required to explain rate changes, and Air B&B cleaning fees. They didn’t mention minimum wage being jacked up again. Or the minimum wage for hotel workers going up to $20 per hour.

The other TV station web sites were doing puff pieces but not listing all the changes.

I went to a California Tax/Fee watchdog site, (listed four pages down the google search results,) and found that Cannabis, excise taxes had gone up, as had tobacco, gas, Air B&B, The Pet Insurance disclosure, Hotel wages, Minimum wages in select counties, and several others.

Non cigarette tobacco products jumped 54.7%

So the special on Zyn wasn’t over, the State of California had decided to impose another “Sin” tax. They may also have increased the taxes on alcohol. Of course, the mouth breather clerk had neither the intelligence or English fluency to provide a proper answer.

In California, “YOU WILL NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE YOUR RECREATIONAL MATERIALS WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY SACRAMENTO TAXES ON THEM!”

According to Sacramento… “It’s for your own good. Think of the children! We’re trying to make sure you’re healthy.”

And Newsom wonders why companies, and people are leaving. There comes a time when the state steps in and denies personal freedoms enough, that people say, “Fuck this!”

The neighbor just came home. He sent a text saying, “Thank you. He purchased 10 rolls instead of one, and he got them at the old price after dragging the manager of the place in, on her day off.”

Apparently everyone else after him cleaned their entire supply of Zyn out at the old price.

Sometime, I really love being a fucker.

Now I need to take an aspirin. Working with those websites gave me a headache. I am not going to work on the painting and sanding.