Preferred Subscriber

I got a call today, below*.

“Hello, Mr. Oliver, this is name forgotten with Popular Science. I have a few questions for you. Are your magazines reaching you on time and in good shape?”

“They are.”

“Good. Are you enjoying your subscription?”

“I am.”

‘Good. The publishers sent out the renewal form with a price of $28, but we would like to offer you the price of $14.95. Since you are a preferred subscriber, and have been with us for some years, we would like to give you a discount. So we can give you this price of $14.95 for four years. No matter how much the subscription goes up to, you will still get this price for four years.”

“I don’t think I want to do that right now.”

“Let me assure me that you will not be billed until your current subscription expires, and that you won’t receive double issues, or anything like that. You keep your current subscription…

“I’m not going to renew right now.”

end of conversation

*Not an actual transcript, but the gist of things.

Within five seconds, I had located, on my floor, one of the many renewal/subscription cards that come in a magazine. It offers the price of $15.95/yr for one year, or $21.95 for 2 years ($10.98/yr).

Apparently, a “preferred subscriber” is someone they think has been subscribing for long enough that they will renew at any price.

Less more

So I was talking to my sister while I was eating dinner tonight, and all of a sudden, I asked this question.

“Why are you challenging that your brain is not less more than mine?”

Isn’t that absolutely clear what I was trying to ask? See if you can’t guess.


As soon as I post pictures of my room, I begin to rearrange it. The desk is now under the window, and the bookshelves have moved slightly. Not sure if I like this arrangement all that well. or not, but it will do for a while. The cord situation is a lot better than it was before, where they all hid out in a huge rat’s nest next to the desk. I can’t live with tangled cords for very long before I decide to straighten them, or rearrange the components so that the cords reach better.


Since I know that the quote is too strange to understand, here’s the background. My sister was complaining that after she came home from her summer job, her brain was all tired out. I claimed that I do more thinking ad brain work than she does. She said that she didn’t think so, and the topic got changed. A few minutes later, I decided to ask why it was that she disagreed, but ended up with the well structured sentence you see above.

Picture Post

[2008 Update: While th is post accurately documents how messy I was at the time, I would like to note that in the intervening years, I have gotten a fair bit cleaner. Not that I’m clutter free by any means, but this post is no longer representative of my living quarters]

I posted a request for pictures over a week ago, and received several requests from Celtic. At long last, here they are.

1 – your bedroom. What’s the real Nathan like?

When taking these pictures, I made no attempt to clean my room, or anything, so this is the real Nathan, as messy as I can sometimes be.

My BedroomThe first thing you see when you walk into my bedroom. At the far right, you can see my dresser, which used to be my grandpa’s. I have the same jean quilt bedspread, and you can see where all the stuff accumulates at the end of the bed. Behind that is the closet, again, quite messy. The models on the shelf are from way back, when I had an interest in them, but that faded after a few years. (I never painted any of them, just assembled them, and as soon as we finally got paint so I could do the next model properly, I got tired of them. The red and black rocket was made and launched once in middle school Tech Ed, and has never been launched since.

My deskThis is my desk, again quite messy. I stole the monitor from the old family computer, which we didn’t use anymore, and experimented with a two monitor setup. It’s interesting, but not really all that great, at least for me. To the left of the desk, I have a TV tray set up so that I have additional desk space, something that is always at a premium when you organize things the way I do. 🙂 To the left, under the window, is my bookcases, with my printer and a lava lamp on top. This is almost all of my books, but most of the shelves are stacked two deep.

Behind my doorThis is the area behind my door, where my bulletin board is. I never got in the habit of using it for temporary things,but have several newspaper clippings tacked to the board, and lots more under my desk, in a tupperware tray/container. Tools also belong behind the door, and you can see the clothes that I have hanging on the wall.

2 – the view out your bedroom window.

my windowmy window

My window looks out into the back yard, which is to the South. The basement is too low to see the river, but you can see the mountains on the other side, which is in Oregon. There’s a hanging fuschia just outside my window, too. In the second picture, you can see the swingset (now a bit rickety) and shed, both off to the right. The garden is just over the crest of the hill over on the left half of the picture.

3 – your favourite thing

Question MarkThis one is harder than it looks. I’m tempted to claim my laptop, or a book, but I’m not sure, and I’m not sure that I like either of those answers, either. So for now, I’ll post this picture.

4 – any pets?

dirtWell, once upon a time, at the elementary school carnival, I won a certificate for three free goldfish, as did my sister. So we went to the pet store, and picked one up. As goldfish are prone to do, especially ones that live in tiny bowls, they died. So we buried them. They had names, but I don’t remember them. This is the approximate location of their grave.

5 – tit for tat — YOUR bathroom reading material stash 😛

magazines on toilet tankThis is the reading stash in the downstairs bathroom. It’s a religious magazine. Upstairs, it tends to be an old issue of Good Housekeeping, or some sort of women’s magazine, which occasionally contain articles of interest to me. I’m amazed at how many covers will have a story like “Lose Weight–The Easy Way”, and then the cover picture is of a chocolate cake, with the caption “18 Delicious Deserts, Inside!” I just don’t get that.

Eye of the Tiger

Okay, I have no real explanation for why I decided to title my post that. I guess because I got a piece of dirt in my eye yesterday at work, and didn’t get it out until this morning. It didn’t hurt all that much, but once I got it out, it felt so much better. And the “of the Tiger” part probably comes from hearing that song on “Dancing with the Stars” Wednesday night–our family has taken a liking to it. I saw the first half of the premiere, and the last two or three weeks, but missed a few weeks in the middle. But it’s rather interesting, and fun to watch. The basic premise is that they got 6 celebrities, and 6 professional ballroom dancers, and paired them up, with one couple eliminated each week.


I’ve not been online much at all this week, due to working every day, and having received in the mail my computer games that I ordered. I ordered Sim City 3000 and Railroad Tycoon 3 on eBay, and I really like Tycoon. I haven’t even opened Sim City yet. I like these type of strategy/simulation games. The picture post has also been delayed for the above reasons, although I hope to post it later tonight.

School’s out for summer

The high school, that is. My sister got out today. Next year, she gets to start the adventure that is senior year. But over the summer, my mom, my sister and I share two cars between us, so we may end up do ing some shuttling, depending on what we need to do.


Yesterday and today, I was working on making a plant stand for my parents’ bedroom. They have one now, but it’s all wobbly, so I’m making another, using roughly the same design, but the joints will be tighter, and I’ll use better fasteners. I started with two ten foot 4×4’s, and ripped them down to 3/4″ square strips, which were then cut for length. What with knots in the wood, and all, I had exactly no spare pieces, and actually had to go scrounging for scrap when I made a mistake. I made 3 mistakes, two minor and one that required a design change to fix. I was cutting the dadoes so that the horizontal pieces can interlock with the vertical supports, and I measured out the edge of where I should cut. Then I cut on the wrong side of the line. So one of the ledges will be a bit higher, and I needed two more pieces that were about an inch longer. Luckily, we have lots of scrap laying around, but I don’t think I have enough for many more mistakes. I’m actually all done with the cutting, and now I need to sand off my marks, and any edges, and prepare for assembly. Not bad for two day’s work, considering they haven’t even been full days.


Lately, I’ve been checking in at the support forum of Sitesled, a free webhost that I considered going to after Aloof closed. I think I miss the interaction with users who are just learning HTML, and the way they think you’re a hero, even though all you did is notice that they wrote HERF instead of HREF (a mistake that I’ve made more than once). The last few days, I’ve been helping someone control from the address bar which page is displayed in an IFrame on the main site. I had already written the code to parse the data from the URL, but had to develop the code to change the source of the IFrame based on what I pulled out. Along the way, I learned about changing the contents of DIV’s after the page is loaded, and that has made me want to go over my navbar and work on the insides, and possibly make it so someone could use it. I would also like it to be able to expand and show what is contained in a section, without you having to load the page that they fall under. That would enable people to navigate to any other page on the site, with one link (and a few other clicks). Ideally, it would support as many levels as I want to have. I’ve seem one like this, and I’d like to develop my own. But enough rambling on technical stuff.


Cel, the pictures have been taken for the most part, and will be posted sooner or later. I might try and upload them after work tomorrow. The city of Stevenson provides free wireless Internet access in the downtown area (which is only a few blocks), and it’s a heck of a lot faster than dial-up. It’s a bit spotty, but I’ve found a few places that usually have a good signal.

Speaking of pictures, I took several during a thunderstorm last weekend, and posted them to the Nature photo gallery.

And even though all my regular readers have requested pictures 🙁 , anyone else reading is welcome to post a request.

Working like Crazy

Or should I say work is crazy? Perhaps both are correct.

I had Friday off, but I worked Thursday afternoon, and had plenty to do then. I got there at 3:30, and it wasn’t too busy, but Chris mentioned that it had been all day. I started to count half cases of pop so I knew how many to get from the back room, and then got sidetracked on a courtesy call or three. I went to the back room, and discovered that Dan had just finished counting the pop as well. I’d started first, and we needed quite a bit, so we both worked on it for a while, and then he took off to catch another courtesy call. I took the cart out to the floor, and was filling the second of three displays when I got stuck on another round of courtesy calls, and then Troy, the manager, called over the intercom “Wet cleanup to the end of seven immediately.” It turns out, someone had bumped a display, and four 24-pack longnecks of Budweiser broke all over the floor. Dan did a major part in the cleanup, but I helped quite a bit, too, and helped Bobbie restack the corner of the charcoal display that had also been knocked over. By the time that was cleaned up, I hav been on for over an hour and a half.

I returned to the cart of pop, and finished all three displays, and then went on to the shelf, where the rest of the pop on the cart went. As I rounded the corner to the aisle, I realized that Chris had also decided to do pop, and had filled another cart and was working the pop. So I helped him unload his cart, and pulled a few things off the bottom of my cart that he hadn’t gotten, and then went to the back to unload my cart.

The day got better after that, and I was only on until 8:30, but the first two hours were one of the more tiring I have had in quite a while. At least I wasn’t searching the store for something to do.


And on the topic of work, the way the schedule worked out, I work the last four days of this schedule week, and the first five days of next week, so Saturday is my first of nine days in a row. To be fair, three or four of them are shorter, 5 hour days, but I will still be at work each day. I’ll be glad when I get to the next set of days off.

New Blogging Format

I’ve been spending a bit of time the last few days working on converting my blog over to WordPress, which I’ ve seen several other people using recently. For the first time, I have a server where I can install my own PHP files, finally making this possible. I also learned enough about Apache rewrites so that all the old links to my Blogger blog still work, and will show you the same page that you would have seen. The template should continue to change over the next few days, because most of the ones out there wind up with the sidebar way under the rest of the blog. The one I have now’s okay, but it’s not my favorite, and the sidebar looks strange..

Testing things out

I got all my old Blogger posts imported over here to WordPress, and now I’m looking for a theme that I like. I found several that look nice, but so far, all but the one I am currently using have had problems with formatting, placing the sidebar below the body of the page. The strange thing is that the default template didn’t do this for a while, but then it just started to do it. Oh well, I didn’t expect this to be painless.

I didn’t sleep very well last night, so I was tired, and ended up taking a four hour nap this afternoon. Now, I’m not tired, so I’m still up.


I said that I wasn’t going to blog about work, but some things just beg to be written about. Take Saturday, for example.

I was checking, and a couple came thhrough my line and bought $7.62 in groceries. I thought that they were speaking a foreign language, but wasn’t sure until it came time to pay, when the had a rapid-fire exchange in what sounded like German. She began pulling out money (it was US currency) and got the seven okay. She seemed to be having a bit of trouble with the coins, though. There was more discussion, and she began gesturing at a machine on the till that allows you to purchase lotto tickets with your groceries. More discussion, and then she asked me what the prize was. A bit surprised, I told her what the jackpots for the two main lotteries we sell were, and then it was her turn to be confused. She said “No, the price! What’s the price?”

I relized my mistake, and repeated that it was $7.62. She again tried counting out the coins, taking a minute to look on both sides of a nickel to see what it was worth. She had the proper change, but didn’t seem to have the value of the nickel correct, and tried to give me 32¢, but in the end, she let me pick out the appropriate coins and went on her way, studying her receipt the whole way to the door. A bit frustrating, honestly. Now I see why people from some countries get annoyed when Americans make no effort to learn the language/culture. She obviously had made quite an effort, and even that was annoying.


The high school play is coming up next weekend, on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights. My sister is in the play, and is starting to panic a bit, but she’s always been the really organized type. They’re performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It should be a good production. I’ll have to change my schedule a bit at work, as the only night that I can see it is the last night, and I only get off in enough time to be there about 25 minutes before the show, and I expect it to be standing room only by that time.


I’m still not tired, but in the interest of getting my sleep schedule back in synch, I’m going to head off to bed now.

–Nathan