Saturday, June 25, 2011

A Dark Reminder


While on my way to a fishing tournament Friday afternoon (6-24-2011)I had to pull over and take a few pictures of the storm rolling into the city of Cullman Al. For those of you reading this outside the Cullman area, Cullman suffered major tornado damage on April 27th 2011 along with much of the southeast portion of the United States. This ominous looking storm I’m sure got many people’s attention as we are all now very weather aware.

As this storm came through our area there were some power outages reported but fortunately no tornadoes developed. The work is still ongoing to cleanup the entire county after the April storms. Thank God we didn’t get another round of severe damage to add insult to injury yesterday.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Lost My Debit Card!

Well today started out like any regular ole’ day…but it quickly went down hill. I woke up before the clock went off climbed out of bed and dressed for work. Nothing wrong with any of that…feels good to be a little ahead of schedule. Just as I finished putting my shoes on, my son strolls in and sullenly admits to having lost my debit card the night before…my calmness turned to OMG PANIC!

Having had my PayPal account hacked not too long ago I was terrified that I would be broke before we found my card or cancelled it. I quickly asked him the usual questions such as where did you use it and see it last which didn’t help. He had already backtracked looking for it and searched all through the car…no card.

At this point I decided the best thing was to just quit wasting time and call and cancel it. I pulled up my account online and checked first to see if I was broke or not, I was not…whew! Next I found the number to call and went through the many steps you go through in order to speak to a real person. Once I got a real person on the line things began to go a little smoother. She quickly got my information and canceled my card and assured me that my new one would arrive in just a few days.

In our great time of information we can quickly do business over the phone or internet. We can transfer our money from here to there in a matter of seconds, unfortunately so can crooks. If you never had an account hacked or lost a debit or credit card it is a very scary situation. All your hard earned money can be gone in a flash. I may have re-learned a valuable lesson today.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

What the Hell happened to MTV?

Sure I know MTV is still on the air…but why…I couldn’t tell you. MTV is all reality trash now. It used to be the coolest channel on the tube. I can remember watching the very first video played and being completely mesmerized. Now I have trouble finding a video to watch. Only thing you can find is rap or some odd ball version of it.
What happened to the days when your favorite band could be found actually playing music. What I see and hear these days I’m not always sure qualifies as music or as playing. Most of the time it just sounds like a group of guys who are mad at each other. That is if a video is playing on the music channel at all.
When MTV played the first video they grabbed our attention and held it for years. Rock bands that would have never made it past the club stage got thrust into fame and fortune almost overnight. MTV gave the coolest bands such as Bon Jovi and Def Leppard a tremendous stage in which to play on and they took it and ran. They spawned one hit wonders by the hundreds and put faces to all the players we listened to on the radio. So how with all the success of the old format did they get to where they are now?
It just seems a little sad to me that a channel that was so good that I didn’t change it for weeks at a time, I now hardly stop at it at all. Video really didn’t kill the radio star but reality TV did kill the video star. I’m just saying…

Monday, June 20, 2011

Neighbors dog in my trash...now what?

Just the other morning as I walked out my door to go to work I stepped on something laying on my porch. Being dark I reached back in the house and flipped on the light and found that my neighbors dog had gotten into my trash…again. There were coffee grounds, baby diapers and many other wonderful things scattered all over my porch. Well…as you can imagine I was not very happy at the start of my day.

The actual trash bag that the trash had been in was no where to be seen. I quickly looked around the yard and next to where my truck was parked…still no bag. I thought to myself oh well…I’ll find it and clean it up after work. But, as I walked up to the building where my motorcycle was parked there it was…laying in my neighbors yard. Seems the beast had stolen it’s prize and took it home to play with. Ha…my day wasn’t going to be quite as bad as I thought. And also to my delight was the fact that the majority of the trash was not on my porch but in the neighbors yard…which they cleaned up later.

Unfortunately this is an incident that has happened more than once and usually the trash is all in my yard…which I have to clean up. So as a good neighbor what should I do? I could shoot the dog when I catch it on my porch or feed it something that will make it go away for good…but that’s not very neighborly. They already know the animal is causing problems so I am open for suggestions. Does this happen to any of you on a regular basis? If so what do you do and how do you handle this sort of thing? I can’t wait for the feedback on this one. Have a great day…Lowell