Gambling on it
Spent an interesting quarter of an hour looking through my site logs. Seems that a lot of people are coming here from gambling sites. Something like a quarter of my page views and almost three-quarters of my hits are from sites like http://www.theebest.com/poker-games.html, or http://www.hebei-gelatin.com/texas-hold-em.html. What I find really amusing though are domains like homesbysellers.com that you would think would be real-estate oriented. But yet they have a poker page.
Of course, as I browse some of these sites, I realize from the phrasing and boilerplate text that many of them are certainly owned by the same entity.
Still, thanks for the links and the traffic; it’s pushing my hit count up, and that makes me more visible.
More: Kelo v City of New London
Now it’s getting really bad. WorldNetDaily reports that since New London won the case, they’re now expecting back rent from the losing parties, to the tune of $57,000 for the case’s namesake, Susette Kelo. “I’d leave here broke,” Kelo said. “I wouldn’t have a home or any money to get one. I could probably get a large-size refrigerator box and live under the bridge.”
USAToday weighs in with an editorial as well.
The other catch is that the city is saying the purchase offers from 2001 still stand—at 2001 prices, without being adjusted for market increases over the last 4 years!
I wonder what Connecticut state law says about property owners paying utilities? Could Kelo et al sue the city for the costs of maintaining the city’s property? New London is saying that the losing parties have been living on city-owned property for the last 4 years. I think that’s a dangerous precedent to push. If that’s the case, and they’ve made no attempt to collect rent for 4 years, it could be argued that they’ve abandoned any claim to the property. At any rate, I think the “former” owners, or “renters” deserve to be reimbursed by they city for all the work they’ve done in the last 4 years to maintain city-owned property. And what about utilities? How was that addressed in the lease agreement? Surely the city signed a lease agreement with their renters. Didn’t they?
A Day in My Life
I never intended this to be a diary. Of course, I never intended this to languish the way it has. It’s been up since March of this year, and I’ve only made 58 posts. That works out to something like a post every 2.6 days. Now, if I were really posting that often, it’d be great, but I’m not. In fact, this is my first post this month. So it goes. Perhaps, though, this post might help explain my dismal rate of communication here.
Recall that I’ve got 6 kids living with me all the time, ages 9, 7, 6, 5, 3, and 1. During the summer, my 15-year-old son lives with us as well.
One day this week, I found myself with no rides, so I was home all day. Much needed to be done around the house, including the mowing. My son Matt has a favorite meal that we try to have at least once each time he’s up here. We also try to have our big meal at noon. We find it’s easier for us, as my wife and I have more energy at that point in the day.
This particular day, as I was getting in to the shower, my wife informed me that we needed a couple of ingredients for the meal. The kids were getting up late, and wanted waffles, so she was working on that. When I got out of the shower, she informed me that the new waffle iron, that we had gotten from Wal-Mart just two weeks prior, and had used only once, was not working, and the kids really wanted waffles. By this point, once I got back from the store with the new waffle iron, and the stuff for dinner, it would be 1130. That would be too late to start the waffles and still have the peachy chicken (Matt’s favorite meal) for dinner. We decided to have waffles for brunch, then peachy chicken for supper.
Matt and I headed to Wal-Mart to take care of the new waffle iron, and get what we needed for supper. It did indeed take us until 1130 to get what we needed and get home. Once we got home, my wife started the waffles (the batter had been made earlier when she discovered the dead waffle iron).
While she was making waffles, I asked my wife if the cable was back up. We were finally getting our Adelphia cable buried, over 8 months after it was first installed. To be fair to Adelphia, it was installed in January, when the ground is a little hard. But it had taken them quite a while, and more than several phone calls, to get someone out to bury the cable. The tech (from a landscaping company) had to but the cable to get it through her gadget, so we had no cable for part of the morning (yes, I went through withdrawal!).
At any rate, my wife told me that she hadn’t checked on the cable, and had not realized the girl was gone until my wife looked in the driveway and saw that her truck was gone. I proceeded to check things out, and no, the cable wasn’t back up yet. I rebooted both the modem and the firewall, and still nothing. Sigh. I called Adelphia Tech Support (which is lightyears ahead of Direcway’s support, let me tell you), and the tech said, yep, it looks like there’s a problem. Thanks. When can you fix it? Well, possibly today, but certainly tomorrow (they weren’t sure when they could get a tech out). Great.
In the meantime, we called Invisible Fence. Why? So they could come out and fix the fence that keeps our two hyper dogs somewhat contained. What was wrong with it? The landscaping girl had cut the fence when she was burying the cable. In her defense, my wife gave her a slightly wrong location for the buried fence. But knowing there was a fence, why didn’t she back off and verify the location? (I know, stop thinking…) Invisible Fence can’t come out until the next day, so we have to watch the dogs semi-closely.
We discovered that we were low on milk, and no one had told me when I went to the store, so I didn’t buy any. My wife offered to go out, since she wanted to stop in West Jeff and check on some friends. Just about the time she left, the Adelphia cable tech showed up, and I went to talk to him. We took about fifteen minutes checking things out, and he ended up replacing both of the connections the lawn girl made, and that fixed things.
As I’m coming back inside form seeing the cable guy off, my wife walks in with the friends daughters, who wanted to visit our kids, but no milk. I ask her where the milk is. “Back at the store.†Why? “I forgot my wallet.â€
Just another day in my life.