thunkgeek.com

I went to Wienerschnitzel (when, exactly, did they drop the Der? No, really, I would like to know.) this afternoon for a quick snack. I know, I know, but we all have a guilty pleasure or two, don’t we? I crave something or other from their menu every few months. Frankly, I am a little surprised they are managing to stay in business. I mean, the “Most wanted wiener” slogan is bad enough, but this?

Could that possibly be intentional double entendre? Are they (or their target audience) that intelligent?

Last November we took advantage of a balance transfer offer from one of Erica’s credit cards. It gave us 2.99% until the balance was paid off, so it made great sense. We wrote a check for several thousand dollars and took it to our credit union with my paycheck and a check from Erica’s mom paying her for letting out her dogs while her mom was at work. A few days later, the balance transfer check and the check from Erica’s mom were returned and marked “Refer to maker.” I talked with the credit union to see if I could get any more info and they didn’t know what had happened. We ended up doing the balance transfer another way, so that worked out ok, but Erica’s mom was really concerned about why her check came back. She contacted her bank and they said it had never tried to clear her account.

Well, 10 months later, with some surprise help from the bookkeeper here at Fibernet, we’ve put together the puzzle. All the checks I deposited that day showed up at Fibernet’s bank. My paycheck was debited normally from Fibernet’s account, but the other two checks were somehow recorded as deposits made by Erica. The mistake was later corrected and the checks were sent back to our Credit Union marked “Refer to Maker.” All I can guess is that the teller who took our checks clipped them all together with my paycheck on top and they all went to Fibernet’s bank instead of going to the banks they were actually drawn from. That “Refer to Maker” stamp was the real issue, of course. If it had been “Incorrectly Routed for Payment” or something else a little more descriptive, then the mistake would have been obvious!

Once again it has been too long since I posted anything here and I will again promise to update more frequently. Today I reconnected with a very old friend who I hadn’t spoken to in about 10 years. I gave her the address of the site so I figured I had to mention her in a post so she’d be mortified when she visited. Mission accomplished.

I think I need to change the look of thunkgeek.com. This old theme is awfully busy, which reflects the design trend at the time of the site’s beginnings. So, I hereby begin the search for a new theme that’ll be a little cleaner and nicer to look at. Out.

Google ad at the top of my gmail junk folder:

Savory Spam Crescents

A tax return is what you send to the government by April 15th of each year. What they send back to you, if you were dumb enough to let them hold your money all year without paying you any interest on it, is called a tax refund. I can’t believe how often I hear the term tax return used to indicate the speaker’s enthusiasm for a fat check they are supposed to get in the mail. I’ve even seen advertisements this year promising to educate you on ways to increase the size of your tax return. Of course, the only way to increase the size of what you send to the government is fill out more forms than you are required to and mail them all to the IRS, which will just increase how much you have to pay to send it. Duh.

Marissa is running around the house wearing a pair of her mother’s earmuffs yelling “19, 19 come in! Over! Can you bead me?”

It’s been unusually cold here the past week or so, on theorder of 20 to 30 degrees colder then normal. In the morning when I get up to go to work it has been at or below zero degrees fahrenheit. Of course in some parts of the country that is completely normal and they have learned to deal with it, but around here it’s something we don’t experience very often. I’ve learned a new way to tell how cold it is without looking at the thermometer: when I walk from the front door to the truck parked along the curb, if the hair in my nostrils freezes with the first breath of air and then crackles when I wiggle my nose, then the temperature is between -5 and +1 degrees. It’s kinda neat.

My favorite humor on TV at the moment comes from Moose A. Moose and Zee from noggin, which is written for 5 year olds. That says something about the state of American comedy writing. Anyway, here’s a great example of the kind of stuff they are doing over at noggin. You have to wait for the punchline:

Moose A. Moose and Zee visit Connie the Cow

When I first saw that I turned to my wife and speculated that noggin must have somebody British giving them material, cause that might as well have been out of a Monty Python sketch. Our kids get better humor on TV than we do.

Google Ads tacked this at the bottom of my site: