Mad World

Hill Crest Country Club

I just saw that Hill Crest Country Club in Lower Burrell is having a special membership. I played the club a few weeks ago and it is one of the best courses in the area. I was talking to the pro and they put in a new sprinkler system a few years ago and reseeded the fairways last year and boy did it pay off.

The day I played was very quiet and we played our round in about 3 1/2 hours. With the special they are offering, it looks like a hidden bargin for those of you that are looking to join a golf club or thinking of switching from your current club.

They also have pool and tennis and it looked like a full social calandar too.

Click here to see the Special Offer!

Pissed at your neighbor?

Do you have one of those neighbors that are a pain in the ass? Here is a way that you can tell them every day. The only problem is that you need to either have a bush in the right place, or you need to plant one and it could take a while to get your point, or should I say ass, across!

High Speed Internet My Ass

High Speed Internet my ass. As I sit here at the Marriott Courtyard in Greenville North Carolina, I am waiting for a call back from a tech service person at Golden Tree Communications. I checked in last night and used the internet connection and it seemed to work OK, not super fast, but I was looking at sites in Mexico for some hotel reservations so I assumed that it might have been the hosts that I was going after. This morning the connection was OK in the early morning and around 9:00am or so it went to crap. Ping times were some of the worst that I have seen in a long time:

C:\Documents and Settings>ping my.yahoo.com
Pinging my.yahoo.com [148.87.120.15] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 148.87.120.15: bytes=32 time=3067ms TTL=240
Reply from 148.87.120.15: bytes=32 time=3241ms TTL=240
Reply from 148.87.120.15: bytes=32 time=3173ms TTL=240
Reply from 148.87.120.15: bytes=32 time=3303ms TTL=240

If I am not getting in the 3000+ ms range it times out. Occasionally I get down in the 600 to 700 range, but it does not last long.

Anyway, back to the reason for the posting. In talking to the technical support person, I asked what kind of connection they had? She indicated that they should have 684kbs which is the equivalent of a $29/month DSL line. How can they call that "high speed internet" for a hotel that has a 100 rooms? One ass downloading an .mpeg of Star Wars will chew that up for hours.

I doubt that they have any type of traffic shaping or any type of filtering for Bit Torrent or any of the other type of traffic hogs.

I guess the lesson is that it's high speed internet until the second guest shows up.

How long for that table?

Last night on the way to the Outter Banks for vacation we stopped over for the night in Greenville North Carolina. Pretty good trip and it was around 6:30pm and we were going to get a bite to eat.

The local magazine called Impressions listed a restaurant called Finelli's Cafe that was Italian and that was what we were hungry for after a 5 hour car ride and no lunch. When we pulled into the parking lot, it was rather full and the place was not that large, so I send in my wife to see how long for a table given that our five year old was getting a little restless after the car ride. The young and as we came to find out, "not that bright" hostess said it would be 20 minutes. This was after a couple minute survey of the tables.

We assumed that she knew her restaurant and had looked to see how many people were finishing up. Not the case. After an hour and 20 minutes we ended up getting seated and they only thing that she was able to muster was that a lot of people came in and they had reservations.

Now I would think that she had that part figured out when she did the survey of tables before telling us 20 minutes. I can see an extra 30 minutes, but missing your estimate by an hour is not acceptable.

They food seemed pretty good although we were not as hungry after five beers in the bar waiting for an hour and a half, but I would try it again with a reservation.

A Blast From The Past

This is a little old, but with today being primary day in my state, I thought that I would put this up for everyone to see. I can't believe it has been six years since that debacle of an election.

Got a dog that shits Ho-Ho's all over the yard?

Running to get the paper in your bare feet and step in a shit pile?

Now for the person that has everything, you can hire someone to come to your house and pick up dog shit in the yard.

Since it is only in PA and NJ, I guess that the rest of you are out of luck and will need that pooper scooper.

Cynthia McKinney

I just sat down and flicked the TV on and they are talking about the McKinney incident on CNN. This lady does not get it -- they spent 5 minutes asking what happened and all she would do was deflect the question and dig up old issues about racial profiling.

Why is she hiding behind race? I think this going to backfire on her.....

From a post on her web site it looks like she is trying to hide behind the constitution. If she would just fess up I think people would get over it.

Automatic Tips

Woke up this morning a little late since I was at the casino until 4:00am last night, but it was a good night – up $250. Anyway, as I make my way to the bathroom to get a drink and take a leak, I grab the bill they put under my door to expedite my checkout at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Spa and Resort.

I glance at the charges and they are a few “extras” that are not normally there. One is a $4 charge for maid tips. I don’t mind; since I don’t usually leave a tip on a one or two night stay, so let it ride.

The next one is a charge for $12 for the bellman. Bellman? Is that a beer that I had from the mini bar? I never saw a bellman. I checked in at around 10:00pm and have a suitcase on wheels, so I dragged it in and to my room. When I was ready to check out I did the same thing.

What a rip-off, some guy that I never saw just put $12 into his pocket. I’ll have to talk to someone on this one.

Indian Casinos

Last night I went to an Indian Casino -- Gila River, in Phoenix Arizona. I was a nice enough place and it was a free shuttle ride from he hotel I was staying at -- the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass. Very nice hotel by he way, no Hyatt resort, but nice pool, décor, and he pool bar staff is great.

Anyway, I get there with two friends and we sit down at a blackjack table since they don't have craps or roulette. Toss they guy a $100 and get some chips. We are betting $10 to $20 and the server comes by and we order two beers between us. Now it is midnight or so, and they are not real busy, so they should be glad to get a few guys willing to drop a few bucks. When the server comes to drop of the beers, she asks for $6.50 for two Budweiser’s.

What the crap is that! I'm not sitting at the penny slot machines and trying to drink for free. We pay the lady and just chalk it up to the F'in Indians. Must still be pissed at the white man for stealing their land. Hey, we gave them some beads, not my fault.

We played a few more hands and again the waitress comes around and not only is she looking for cash for the beers, but she is calling last call? You have to be kidding me, now I need to sit in a crappy casino and not get drunk!

Ends up a bad move for them, I turned my $100 into $350, my buddy turned $60 into $400, and my other friend we are not sure about -- he hit the cash machine more than once, but got $300 at the cage. My guess is that he ended up even.
That should teach the Indians, don't mess with the white man's drinks. If they had gave me free beer and did not call last call I am sure they would have taken me for $500 by the time we left at 4:00am.

Printing from a MAC to a printer connected to a WIndows PC

Last night I tried to print from my MAC to a printer that is attached to my PC across the network. How hard can this be?

My main concern is that I needed to get a driver for the MAC that would support my printer, which is a Canon i560 and was purchased within the past year or two. Off to the Canon web site and there was a driver for the printer, so I downloaded it.

To make sure I was not chasing more than one problem at a time, I connected the printer to the MAC and installed the printer driver. I then added a printer and selected the Canon drivers and then the specific one for the i560 that I just installed. The sample document printed fine.

One step to go, reconnect the printer to the PC and then just add another printer and this time select a network printer and the same i560 driver I just installed.

When adding the network printer, I could only see the drivers that came installed with the operating system and not the one that I just installed. I spent about two hours trying to find the driver and there was even an option to go out and point to the driver file directly, much like Windows. No luck, could just not find it.

Called the Canon support line and they said the driver is not "network" compatible. What does that mean? What has to be different with the driver? I have been doing computers and networks for 20 years -- you take the output from the driver and instead of sending it to a USB attached printer, you send it to a queue on the MAC, send it across the network to a queue on the PC, and then to the printer.

So for now I am stuck with not being able to print, but I have not given up the fight. You can see a thread on the issue here -- MACFIXIT.COM