Groceries Delivered – woo hoo.

Last summer some neighbors told us about this farm subscription that they had, providing them with fresh local produce weekly. We had just begun to hear of the Pittsburgh Slow Food movement from other sources so we were intrigued. This sort of thing is arrangement is called a CSA, about which you can read more here. Mrs. Bob and I are interested in eating organic and healthy foods. We are also interested in supporting local businesses. So this seemed like a natural fit.

In May, we tried to sign up for a CSA subscription with Kretschmann's Farms, but we ended up on their waiting list. It appears they agree to a limited number of subscriptions being left at each drop off point, and that too many people in our neighborhood wanted their services. Dang! In early to mid June I got a flier at work for a local company named Isidore Foods. While not a farm themselves, they are a new small local CSA distributor. They work with several local farms do distribute their goods, directly to consumers, the same way that CSA's do. Sounds like a good next step, so we decided to give them a go.

Last Thursday (6/26) my daughter and I drove to a neighbor's garage, and picked up our first box of fresh vegetables. It's amazing how many vegetables can fit in one box. Oh, and the strawberries….WOW , were they good. They are the one's on the left, and way better than their larger brethren on the right. There are a couple of new veggies in there for us. Mrs. Bob nor I had ever cooked beets before, and she's not overly fond of Zucchini (to say nothing of 6 in a week). But, we have committed to the CSA idea for the summer. Part of the commitment is that you get the vegetables that are in season this week, and you eat those. So, Mrs. Bob tried cooking both the beets and the beet greens. She wasn't overly fond of the greens, but I liked it all.

Week 1: good start! Next week we'll have to find some sort of cart to drag to our drop-off point 5 blocks away. This way we can burn personally stored fuel (really I should have plenty), rather than gas in the retrieval of our fresh veg. There was one item in our box that we couldn't identify. It's the picture with the quarter included for size reference. If you know what it is, please illuminate us. Tastes like garlic, but it is tiny. Maybe it's just tiny garlic.

Dueling movie sob stories

Start with this one: Be Careful What You Wish For

Then come back and read on...

So on Friday the family and I went to see "Kung Fu Panda," and I too was struck by the new pricing. I assume we were at the same theatre former known as Loews. Simplified structure huh? Used to be a movie that started before 5:00 (like ours at 4:50) qualified for the matinee rate. Oh well, one more way to gouge us. Next they will charge us for each piece of checked luggage (no wait that's someone else, and besides, I digress).

Back to the point. The crap is back, and worse than before. Rather than the crappy old slide show advertising with some annoying muzak, the crappy new “slide show” is clearly video, because there is slight movement in the 3-5 seconds that each ad is on the screen. And to make matters worse, each “ad” has its own accompanying 3-5 seconds of muzak. So you get a fade up, established crappy muzak, fade out…over and over and over. Hard to maintain a conversation over that up and down audio onslaught. Sheesh. And then it’s on to the typical sprint and Coke ads before the previews. So I am glad you enjoyed the brief crap hiatus.

But be careful what you whine about, however. It could be worse, as we learned the hard way. On Saturday my wife and I went out to see another movie (that’s two in the past six months for those of you in the audience with kindergarteners counting). This time because of the planned dining experience, we ended up at a movie theatre in Cranberry township. We thought: what’s the big difference. The tickets were even a dollar cheaper than those the previous night but…..

1. The air conditioning was out in the one theatre showing the movie we wanted to watch. It wasn’t too hot a day so we decided to chance it. In reality it wasn’t too bad, just a little muggy.
2. The seats themselves were some of the worst movie seats I have ever sat in. They were just plain worn out. Very uncomfortable. I did my “old man holding his back” walk out of the theatre.
3. We arrived about 5-10 minutes before the scheduled start time, and a slightly better version of the video crap ads were already running, so I thought maybe we’d get on to the movie not too long after the scheduled start time of the movie. A full 35 minutes after the scheduled start time of the movie, it actually started. Maybe 5 minutes of the holdup was previews for other movies, the rest of it was all ads. Aaaaakkkkk. Let me tell you we enjoyed losing that half hour of our lives, paying the sitter for that extra half hour, and all of us, the sitter included getting to sleep that much later…NOT

In the end we’ll pay the extra buck to go back to the first theatre, and apparently put up with the “new crap.” But we don’t go to the movies that much anymore anyway. This is just pushing us further from being interested.

Don't get me started on how much gas we used, and at what cost on that secon movie night.

This is how I know I am done with a season.

It's my e-mail's current usage graph. It' was the day to clear out all of the e-mails, and get ready for a new year! It feels very liberating. Now on to the next thing.

Geeky outlook script

Do you ever get that thing where for some unknown reason you can’t turn off your head and get to sleep? Well, I do. Sometimes when I am there, I sit down at my computer and take care of something on my next actions list. Helps me feel like I have accomplished something, gets it off my mind and allows me to sleep. Sometimes I end up being awake for longer.

I have been known to check my e-mail in the middle of the night (probably not a good idea, really). Sometimes I will respond to e-mails that are waiting, never mind the hour. This in itself is not so bad, except that sometimes people notice that I have been sending e-mails in the middle of the night (note the timestamp on this posting). I have been setting the “send e-mail later” option, so as to not appear like a work-aholic. But I’m human, sometimes I don’t remember.

Enter VBA Scripting for Outlook. Say what you like about Outlook, and there’s plenty to say, but the geek in me is enjoying the scripting functionality lately. I wrote my own Outlook script (very little code theft here – except from the help file, which I feel is legit), which checks the time at which I am sending a message and if it’s between midnight and 8:00 am, viola…I get this pop-up: I bet you can figure out what happens when I push each button. Another effective “smart part of the brain” tricking the “dumb part of the brain” tool. Yayy.

(If you are also a geek and want to know how to do this, ask, and I will gladly share the code I wrote)

Who’s got the most…Baggage?

I was thinking the other day about political baggage. You know, we’ve got this primary coming up, here in Pennsylvania. I really like both Hillary and Barack for different reasons. I have been trying to find something that will help me make up my mind, between them. It has occurred to me that with experience comes baggage, and maybe we could do with a little less of that. My mind wandered back to the Clinton Whitehouse years, and a few of the scandals that went on. Now you can’t really paint Hillary with the Monica Lewinsky scandal per say. Some folks will try to take her on for her actions in the wake of that scandal, but I don’t feel vitriolic enough to go there.

Does anyone remember whitewater though? I know nothing really stuck to the Clintons too hard on that one, but both of them were implicated. Surely some of the implications were spun by their opposition. But I would be easily convinced that there was something shady going on there, and that the Clintons have some of it on them as well.

Then the other day I finally got around to watching Fahrenheit 9/11. Talk about your baggage. A dynastic family with WAY too many business interests to possibly run the country without phenomenal conflict of interest. So, though I like some of what Hillary has to say, I wonder whom she is beholden too, and am a little leery.

Plus, I really liked Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech.. I guess I’m leaning his way currently. We’ll see how this ends up.

Air Travel today – another industry in need of better scheduling

I write today from the comfort of an exit row seat on a Northwest Airlines flight to Minneapolis. This is one of the first flights I have taken in quite a while where which wasn’t over 80% capacity. This allowed me to move to the exit row affording me the room between myself and the seat in front of me to use my laptop, as well as putting some space in between me and the screaming baby that was in the row behind my assigned seat. Boy did I feel bad for that mom flying alone trying to comfort her child, obviously acutely aware of the disruption her child’s crying was making. Been there. Overfull flights, cramped seating, crying children. These are pretty standard air travel complaints, hardly worth making.

This is my 5th flight in two weeks, the third of which was delayed. Annoying as that is, it is also not a new complaint. What is interesting is that today’s flight was delayed by 20 minutes, just as last Sunday’s flight was delayed by an hour, due to “mandatory crew rest period.” I am sure this is not a new regulation. I am sure that other flights have been delayed for the same reason. I am also positive that this is a good reason to keep a plane on the ground. FAA mandatory Pilot rest is every bit as important as DOT mandatory Truck Driver rest. There are probably a few other things for which mandated rest would not be a bad idea. But I digress.

What sticks in my craw is that this is a delay that is completely avoidable through more careful scheduling. Someone in the NWA crew scheduling department needs to 1) take a class in Critical Path Management, and 2) build in slightly larger cushions to allow for schedule pinches caused by the inevitable weather delays. I know that money is tight in the airline industry today, for many reasons. However, Northwest will lose customers if it can’t more reliably schedule its flights and crews. I for one will avoid further Northwest flights, assuming I have a reasonable option on another carrier. At present I have three more flights booked before Valentines Day with Northwest. We’ll see if they can redeem themselves at all, and whether this delay will cause either me or my checked luggage to miss the connecting flight out of Minneapolis.

Clever donor ploy or privatizing of the pubic airways?

I am a long-time free-loading listener to WDUQ, the local NPR station. Actually a number of years ago, Mrs Bob and I were members. However, a few years back as we were moving to a new house, money got very tight around our household, and we cut back on a bunch of our charitable giving (along with other more frivolous things like movies, eating out, etc).

WDUQ is in its pledge drive mode again (groan). I know they have to do this to stay afloat. But I can’t stand listening to it, whether I am a member or not. For a long time now, I have listened to Morning Edition on the web, to avoid listening to the pledge drive. If Morning Edition is not available, which it sometimes is not, I listen to WFCR in Amherst MA, WAMC in Albany NY, or KUNI in Cedar Fall IA, all on the web.

We aren’t “flush” now. However, money isn’t as tight as it was. I am thinking that I will probably renew our membership in this valuable non-profit resource. I feel a liberal need to be a charitable donor to this and other worthy causes. It’s got me thinking however:

WDUQ does some of its regular programming stuff, even during the pledge drive: Local News, weather and traffic, and occasional cutaways to morning edition. In these days of secure websites that can be logged into, I see the potential for a value added member benefit. They could play their own content in real time when they would normally play it within the NPR programming. They could cutaway to those things from the pledge drive as they do now, just on the NPR schedule. This way they could offer their members an internet stream that is their regular programming with no pledge drive annoyance. They could pick a donation level that might encourage people to up their donation to access this benefit. I’d do it.

So, is this a good benefit to encourage donations to a non-profit that needs the cash? Or is this the first step towards privatizing part of public radio for the people who can afford it? I’m conflicted.