Rhine vs. Danube . . .
Our last morning together until next Saturday, Jan and I spent most of it talking about our European River Cruise trip.
One thing I wanted to check out was which river, the Rhine or the Danube. They have cruises on both rivers, and both end in Amsterdam. A little Googling told me that they’re both about equal in beautiful castles and neat old cities, but the consensus seems to be that, overall, the Danube is more scenic along the way due to the heavy industrialization along the Rhine. So that’s settled, I guess.
Maybe that’s why they wrote a waltz about the Danube and not the Rhine. I guess The Blue Rhine Waltz just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
I did this from one of the cruise emails we get. Words to live by, I think.
10 Things Not to Do on a Cruise Ship Balcony
A couple of them are kind of obvious, but might be highly entertaining for the neighbors. As long as you don’t fall overboard.
For some reason, Fry’s Electronics does not like my PayPal Debit Card. It works everywhere else, but this is the 2nd visit to Fry’s that it’s been declined. On my side it just says ‘DECLINED’, but on the cashier’s side it says “Incorrect PIN’. But I know the PIN is correct.
In fact when I pulled out the PayPal card and stuck in my Chase card (they both have the same PIN) it immediately went through without my having to reenter the PIN. It took the number from the just Declined PayPal entry.
The reason we stopped at Fry’s on the way to meet Brandi, et al. at King Food was that Jan decided to take our laptop with her so she wouldn’t have to go all week without getting online. But I couldn’t find the mouse that went with it, and Jan doesn’t like to use the Touchpad/Keys that are built in. Of course I found the missing mouse as soon as I got back to the rig.
But before I even got to the credit card problem, I had a very difficult time find a mouse to buy. Or at least one I wanted to buy.
Fry’s had two long shelves of mice . . . mouses?. . . meese, whatever. The first shelf I found was the gaming mice. Did you know you can pay $260 for a mouse? And it has more buttons, dials, lights and sliders than you can imagine. Even the cheapest ‘gaming’ mouse started at $49.95.
And then for some reason, they hid the regular mouse shelf three rows over from the gaming ones. So now I’m looking at a 25ft row of mice, with every possible color and decoration, and ones with graphics for pretty much every TV show and Internet meme you can imagine.
Want a pink Hello Kitty mouse? They’ve got it. How about a Simpson’s mouse? That too. Captain America? Got it, etc. But the big problem was that they were all wireless’.
Now I hate wireless mouses and keyboards with a passion. I have been burned so many times over the years. And it’s not just dead batteries at the most inopportune time. That would be too easy.
No, it’s things like a worker’s keyboard and mouse randomly locking up or putting garbage on the screen multiple times during the day. Usually while they’re trying to finish up the Annual Report late on a Friday afternoon. And this was even after swapping out the keyboard, the mouse, and Bluetooth dongle.
I even temporarily swapped out the computer. All with no luck.
Finally I discovered that the cheap microwave on the other side of the wall in the break room was putting out so much RF interference that it was blanking out nearby Bluetooth signals. Even people a couple of cubicles over realized that the occasional weird garbage on the screen and momentarily freezing of their cursor they were seeing was from the same cause.
So obviously I wanted a wired mouse. But it took me almost 15 minutes to find one. Out of the 25ft row, and probably at least a 100 different mice, they had two wired versions, a Logitech for $9.95 and a Microsoft version for $14.95. And since Bill Gates doesn’t need any more of my money, I grabbed the Logitech one.
After our usual great meal at King Food, I sent my Sweetie on her way with Brandi and her family, and then I’ll pick her up on Friday afternoon.
Love you, Sweetie.
Thought for the Day:
Armageddon won’t be pretty, but it’s not like it’s the end of the world or something.
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