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Ike

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Everything posted by Ike

  1. Go with credit cards. *You* do not lose money if someone steals your card, the bank eats it. This is because you do not authorize the charges and thus are not responsible for them. The $50 that you are technically responsible for in the U.S. is not actually collected. The credit card companies monitor transactions and will frequently alert you to phony transactions. That has happened to me a couple of times. It is vital, however, that you check your bill regularly, a couple of times a month, to make sure nothing weird is going on. Credit cards are the ONLY way to go on the Internet. If you use a debit card, any money in that account can be lost and it will be gone. If you run into a shady merchant who doesn't send you your stuff, you contact the credit card company and get your money back. I've done this several times. Just don't wait too long. PayPal is fine if you are using a credit card. DO NOT RELY ON PAYPAL TO GET YOUR MONEY BACK. Read their policies carefully. They will refund you about 10% of your losses for a bad transaction. If you use a creadit card, you get it all back. In addition, you do not immediately debit your bank account with a credit card, as you do with debit cards and bank transfers. You have about a month of 'float' until your bill comes in and you need to pay it. The only real way to get screwed with a credit card is by not paying your bill every month.
  2. Uh, oh. I think your dog has . . . Fleas!
  3. Icck. I don't eat burgers at fast-food chains, with the exception of Five Guys -- I think fairly local to the D.C. area. All they make is burgers and fries. When a fast-food place makes a dozen different kinds of food, you can pretty well bet their burgers are going to stink. Burgers need to be flame broiled, cooked properly, and served fresh. Not going to happen in most chains. Why do you still eat at McD's GoGo? Have you learned nothing?!?!
  4. Happy Birthday Jun! Hope all is well down under!
  5. When I was growing up we would go to a tree farm and cut down our own tree around the beginning of December and keep it outside until Christmas Eve. We would then put it up and it would stay up until Late January. My wife's family would put up their tree at the beginning of December and take it down the first weekend after New Years, so that is what we do. In fact, I'll be taking it down in the next hour or two. We get our tree from a local charity group. We put ours out for recycling. The County in which we live recycles trees put out the first couple of weeks of January. - Ike
  6. Hmmmm, tricky. Not having any emotional attachment, it is easy for me to say that you may be better off finding a good home for current cat and getting new cat(s). As a general rule, you want to get litter mates if you can, and male cats tend to be a bit friendlier than female cats. Not all cats have problems with other cats 'invading' their territory, but it seems like yours have. I would take seriously that your wife does not 'like' the current cat, just as I am sure she takes seriously that you do. I think that should be a consideration, and that you would be better off getting a couple of new cats that get along better. It is hard to tell if the current cat is "happy" or would be more or less happy elsewhere. Perhaps your house has bad associations due to prior cat altercations, and a new place would be better. Perhaps the opposite. It is hard to know. But I think if current cat goes to a good home, she will quite possibly do very well there. Cats are pretty adaptable. But you should also get some benefit from the arrangement, so get cats that you enjoy more. Just some thoughts. - Ike
  7. A very Merry Christmas to all. May you be surrounded by friends and family, eat and drink heartily, give and receive wonderful gifts, and have a safe holiday season.
  8. I think I'll just rehash my ole Christmas avie. Perhaps if I get ambitious I'll do a new one, or perhaps x-masify my .sig. But then again, perhaps not. - Ike
  9. Ozzy Osbourne and Lita Ford - If I close my eyes forever Bing Crosby and David Bowie - Little Drummer Boy [sorry, but it is now officially Christmas Season, so I need all of my replies to be Christmas-themed. ]
  10. Wire clippers clip wire . . . Hammer smashes wire clippers. [Tim's missile was going after a previously-launched missile, which then had faulty wiring. ]
  11. Are they charging people to test their Beta release? I think I'll just pass. - Ike
  12. Uh oh, problems with your missile's guidance system due to . . . Faulty Wiring.
  13. King Diamond - Something Weird Weird Al - Stop Dragging My Car Around
  14. United States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Virginia (The eastern half of the state).
  15. Taking a break from prosecuting child pornographers to take a bite out of Nigerian bank-scammers. So far, 13 arrest warrants issued, 9 subjects arrested, and 4 guilty pleas.
  16. Maybe the lower gas prices are making them giddy? I avoid truck baiting. It violates Ike's Second Rule of Driving: "Be nice to Trucks." The basic rationale being that trucks are big and not all that manueverable. In addition, truckers drive for a living, and unlike cab and limo drivers, they tend to be pretty good drivers. I find that if I am nice to truckers, letting them out in front of me, flashing my lights when they are past me, etc. They invariably say "thank you" with their flashers. Perhaps I don't ask so much from life to make me happy. Most car drivers you are nice to are too stupid to realize it or just cut you off. Ike's First Rule of Driving is: "Don't do anything that would require more than one police car to pull you over." That is one to live by. - Ike
  17. Just make sure that these enterprisning young men are not using . . . Counterfeit bags.
  18. OK, right back at you. Me, my wife, and [not so] little Kevin in the sun room in our new house. And a little closer view of Kevin's deep blue eyes. - Ike
  19. In case you were wondering, "no, we didn't want to see a picture of you naked." - Ike
  20. Heh, we went out to the polls at 6:20 a.m. (they opened at 6:00) and there was a line two blocks long . . . then I noticed a second, far shorter, line. Turns out, people with last names starting with A-M were in the long (2 hour) line and people with N-Z in the short (15 minute) line. By the time we actually voted (~08:15), people with names T-Z could go right in, N-S waited 5 minutes, and A-M waited about an hour and a half. Bizarre that the turnout was so skewed alphabetically! The problem being that the names of registered voters were in 6 books, alphabetically.
  21. Man, this is what happens when you go from Cable Modem to DSL. Much cheaper though! - Ike
  22. Eiffel 65 - I'm blue - - - - - Diana Ross - I'm Coming Out
  23. The house was built on a small mound a little back from a winding lane. The once-white paint was faded and peeling, leaving gaps where the warped boards showed through. The shutters hung loose and clattered when the wind blew. Panes were broken or missing from many of the windows. The chimney was at an odd angle and the roof was missing several dozen shingles. The young couple saw it as a fixer-upper. A place to raise their three-year-old son. The seller did not bother to mention its history. . . . Built 120 years ago by an aristocratic family that had come over from England. Small marks of good workmanship, though weathered and now old, still showed. The door was solid oak and weather-stained, with small inset windows and a handle that looked large enough for a giant to use. Stories had it that the Vondarks were hard working but curious people. They had built and owned the morgue, and had also built the town's cemetery which many out of towners noticed was strangely large and perhaps out of proportion to this very small New England town. And there were other, more stranger stories about the Vondarks as well... Some said that people had seen strange shadows and heard the most outlandish noises when they came near the House when it was still occupied by the VonDarks. There was one man who was supposedly driven mad after he had gone to deliver a strange, damp, package one night, all that he had supposedly said since that point were insane mutterings about "chaos, claws tentacles, and eyes, too many eyes." Although this was never proved to have occured, people began avoiding the house, until one day, it was suddenly and mysteriously empty. Since that time, the house had lain empty and decaying, that is until the young family had moved in... Starting in the Spring, the young couple worked every weekend on renovating and updating the house. Chimney straightened, roof re-shingled, windows replaced, interior and exterior re-painted. By the Fall, the place had regained its former glory. In late October, the family moved in. There were a few oddities remaining. The stairs going down to a non-existent cellar, the door in the back of the pantry that did not open, and the way the front door squeaked no matter how much the lock and hinges were oiled. But these were minor things to the young family, at least at first . . . However several weeks after they had moved in strange things began to happen, indescrible, yet disturbing noises could be heard from behind where the cellar door should have been, yet this was only the beginning... Over the next week the incidents became more chilling by the day, food in the pantry was found rotted, with huge, bizarre not quite maggots crawling in and out of the gap beneath the locked door, and a strange, alien smell pervaded the pantry and kitchen. On the sunday of that week, the most disturbing and impossible event yet occured, the couple's sons room began to stink of rotting flesh, but that was not all, the walls became covered in dark stains that seemed to form some characters of some odd and alien language that were chaotic and random seeming and yet somehow hinted at an incomprehensible and throughly alien geometry. These eldritch symbols were sickening and disturbing to behold and the family's cat seemed to be in mortal terror of them. However, these horrific events only hinted at what lay in store for the young family.... Carrie could take it no longer. This night the appearance and stench of the fowl house was particularly unbearable. She exclaimed to Micheal that she needed to step outside for a moment. Micheal grunted in acknowledgement, his attention fixed on the t.v. Throwing on a sweater and scarf she grabbed the door handle and tried to turn it. The handle was wrought with rust it seemed and refused to give. Out of frustration Carrie jammed hard on the handle. Hearing a *click* she huffed, threw open the door and then... Shrieked. With great shock she stumbled backwards onto the floor. Micheal immediately jumped up off the couch and while moving quickly to her asked what the matter was. Her eyes moved towards the open door. Onto the figure that stood before her. A dark cloaked figure waited patiently. Micheal looked up at the dark figure in surprise while helping Carrie to her feet and said "Uh, hello?". The figure took a step closer and spoke. "May I come in... To use your phone. My name is... Mather Von Dark." The baby began to cry... The man was huge, fully eight foot tall, with a strange, unplacable accent, yet there was something subtly wrong about him, he somehow seemed to be the wrong shape, but there didn't seem to be any reason for this, he was very thin, but this was no reason for the subtle perversion that his form seemed to possess. However, something was most certainly wrong about his eyes, instead of white, his eyes were a very pale sickly green with huge black pupils. He stooped as he entered the porch, and stood awaiting a reply, after some tense minutes he again asked for access to the telephone, this time the terrified Carrie managed to squeak a response, and went to fetch the phone. She returned, and Mather tore the phone from her grasp, and quickly dialled a very long and complex number. The phone connected instantly, which was strange in itself, but then, those same noises that had been emanating from the cellar, began to be heard on the phone, but louder than ever before... Marther dropped the phone, which began to melt, although the horrific, alien noises did not cease as it melted, and with and unearthly scream he shouted , "YOU HAVE MY CREATURES HERE!" Before leaving the house, leaving only a dank fluid, and a smell of rotting flesh... They watched as he moved down the walk toward a strange vehicle at the end of the front walk. His coat flowed in the breeze and the edges seemed to blend and melt with the un-natural darkness that surrounded the old house. "Carrie, look at his coat..." Micheal gasped " it's not moving in the same way as the trees." They watched this strange giant reach into the back of the car and as he he turned his head to look back at the house on the hill they could see his eyes in the darkness as if they shed a light from deep within ......... Michael and Carrie stood for several long minutes after the apparition disappeared down the winding lane in its odd vehicle. They did not notice that the sounds and smells had disappeared, leaving their house much as it had been when they moved in. With a gasp, Carrie turned and screamed "William!" The young woman ran past her husband to stare at the space on the floor on which her son had been playing just moments earlier. All that was left to show that he had been there were his blocks. As Michael came over and held his shaking wife, they read the letters displayed on the blocks. "H" "O" "M" "E" "C" "O" "M" "I" "N" "G." . . .
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