Category: Thoughts and Comments

This being political season and all, I hear a lot these days about “elites” and “elitism”. Apparently, to the media and to the majority of the American public, being “elite” is a bad thing.

That’s not how I was brought up to think.

My whole life, to be “elite” was something to strive for. On both sides of my family, every single person wanted to be a member of the elite. My father is one of five children, all born in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Every one of those five children went to college. 3 of them served as officers in the military. All of them learned to speak at least one additional language. And they were raised by a single mother in a very small house, who lived only on social security and what she made baby sitting.

On my mother’s side, both of her parents were college educated – in fact, my grandparents dated in college. My grandfather was a teacher, and later, the superintendent of the local high school. sportfogadas stratégiák My mother is one of 4 children – all of whom also went to college. 3 of the 4 majored in music (my mother, a nursing major, was the only exception).

I grew up as a military brat. But as you can probably guess from the background outlined in the previous two paragraphs, the value of learning was instilled into me at an early age. I watched only a little television as a child; instead, I was read to. I didn’t get to watch TV on my own until long after I learned how to read.

In my family, the pursuit of education and knowledge in general was considered a prime pursuit of life. My parents valued academics above sports (this was made easy since, with the exception of my brother for a few years, we all sucked at sports). Grades were important. Knowledge was important. Reading was important. My parents were members of several book clubs, and we passed books around all the time. By the time I was twelve years old, I was reading the same books my parents did.

My sister and I have had a gentle rivalry over the years: who can get the most degrees? I have a bachelor’s and an MBA. She has a bachelor’s and a M.S. But she keeps threatening to go back and get a doctorate. My mother returned to college at the age of 50, to finish two years later with another bachelors’ degree. My father got an MBA and a Masters in Petroleum Engineering at the same time, while I was in the second and third grade.

And we were not – and are not – “rich”. In my direct family, I’ve probably gotten the closest to that status, but even my double-income-no-kids household is only upper middle class at best. mobile gaminator At times during my childhood, living on my parent’s Army income… well, we were never poor…. but when we got our first color television in 1972? That was quite an event. The entire family went down to Sears to pick it up.

When I got into Northwestern, my parents were proud – but very concerned about how in the world they were going to pay for it. So, I worked three jobs throughout college and maxed out on my student loans. All of which I paid back in full, by the way. tippmix mobil eredmények I never gave a thought to not going; that was simply not an option.

Look up at the quote in the header of this web site. Consider that I am writing this post on a chair in the middle of my personal 3,000 volume library. You can see where all of this led. To a lifetime of pursuing knowledge, a fascination with the written word, an avid interest in history and science.

In short: Elitism.

My parents left the small town they grew up in and swore they would never return to it. And except for visits, they never did. I lived in two small towns for periods while I was growing up: four months in Giddings, Texas, and 3 years in Hodgenville, Kentucky. I swore I would never live in a small town ever again. And I never have.

Elitism. Yet again.

So let me state for the record: I do not have “small town” values. In fact, I reject them. Heartily. And enthusiastically. I can’t stand “small town values”. In my experience, most people in small towns are provincial know-nothings who would like nothing better than to drag everyone else down to their level.

Who do I respect? Who do I look up to? People who are smarter than me. People who are more educated than I am. People who know more than I do. People who are experts. People who have a burning passion to learn everything they can about whatever subject it is that drives them.

Elites.

I try as hard as I can, to this very day, to expand my vocabulary, my knowledge, my experience. And I know that as long as I live, I will never be able to read all the books I want to read. I’ll never have enough time to absorb and learn all the things I want to learn. I’ll never be able to go back to college enough times to earn as many degrees as I want.

I want to be a scientist, an author, and a teacher. I want to become a fan of the opera. I want to hear classical music live at least once a week. I want to travel the world and visit art museums and historical places.

I want to be elite. I want to be better than I am. I want to be the best that I possibly can be, and then try to be better still.

Every time I hear some talking head on TV say “elitist” with disdain, my stomach churns with anger (and by the way, doesn’t anyone who is a talking head on TV qualify as “elite” themselves?). Why are we teaching the public and the next generations that to be “elite” is a bad thing? I want some politician to stand up and say, “You’re damn right I’m elite. Isn’t that what you want in a leader?”

Elites! Stand up and be counted. Let the whole world know you’re better than you were, and you want everyone else to be better than you are. Because that, after all, is what “elitism” should really mean.

Thanks to Hurricane / Tropical Storm / Tropical Depression Fay, we have now had six days of almost continuous, non-stop rain. Our swimming pool has been level with the back patio for four days now, and water flows out of it and down into the canal behind our house. Today, for the first time, we actually had flooding inside our house – thankfully, only in a small section of the house, and only about half an inch of water.

Everything is wet and muddy, and the outside smells extremely swampy. Of course, living right on the edge of the Everglades, one could make the very sensible argument that that is what it should smell like around here. Regardless, it’s still a unusual smell. The Everglades is actually a slow moving river, not a true “swamp”, and it usually does not smell like this.

Mosquitoes, gnats, dragonflies and “no see ums” are out in force. Just walking my dog for a few minutes results in over a dozen itchy bites. The sidewalks are becoming slippery with moss and algae. I haven’t been able to ride my scooter for a week now; the constant downpour just makes it too unpleasant (not to mention dangerous) to ride around on two wheels.

And yet… despite all that… I spent at least an hour today just gazing outside at the falling rain, and then lying down on the couch in the semi-darkness, just listening to the sound of the rain pounding outside. An occasional friendly rumble of thunder punctuated the sound. The almost spiritual sense of well being was all encompassing. I napped for a few minutes, the gentlest slumber I’ve had in weeks.

The sound of rain has always soothed me, and from conversations, I know I’m not the only one. Why is that? What is it about the sound of rain outside that seems to elicit an almost primeval sense of well being?

I have a theory.

We are, after all, savannah apes. Our ancestral cousins may have owned the forests, but our branch moved out into the open grasslands. Over thousands of generations, we evolved an upright gait, lost most of our body hair, developed legs and feet suited for running, a protruding nose, and many other subtle modifications that suited us for living out in the wide open plains.

This is why, I believe, that the sight and sounds of a meadow or an open field are instantly soothing. Such experiences reach deep into our subconscious, and trigger the part of our brain that reacts instinctively. We like open spaces, places we can run through, places we can see from horizon to horizon. And how does this relate to the sound of rain?

Think about it. Living out on the open savannah, rain would be miserable. No trees to shelter us from the rain. bbc ivermectin No coat of fur to keep the rain off our bare skin. We’d get soaking wet and chilled to the bone. Children and the elderly would become sick. ivermectina concentracion So, of course, we found (or built) shelter. And inside that shelter, we felt safe. We had defeated the rain. And secure inside our shelters, we looked out onto the rainy savannah and felt a great satisfaction.

Millions of years later, that deep sense of satisfaction at having shelter from the rain is so ingrained that it is no longer conscious. ivermectin for dairy cows We instinctively feel comforted by the sound of rain falling outside, without even knowing why. The savannah ape hid under a rock shelf and grinned his monkey grin at the thwarted elements. The 21st century concrete ape has long since forgotten why, but deep down inside, we still feel that sense of all-pervading satisfaction.

So the next time it rains, I’m going to curl up on my couch, listen to the wonderful sound of falling water, and embrace the ancient ape inside. I seek shelter from the storm, and I am comforted mightily by it.

According to Ecto, my favorite blogging application, this is my 50th post since starting this blog almost exactly two years ago. By the standards of popular blogs, that’s pretty pathetic, and barely counts as being a “blog” at all. By my own standards, set inside my head when I started this web site, it’s also pathetic. I assumed that I would post at the very least once a week, and probably more likely two or three times a week. I assumed that I would have about 100 posts a year.

I also figured that I would make a little extra money from advertising. In fact, I have made a total of zero dollars and zero cents. This is due to two factors: One, almost no one reads this blog – other than a few friends and family, I get only a few hundred hits every month. ivexterm prospecto And two, I don’t really put any advertising on this site – the only ads are hidden ones, links within my various reviews. quanox dosis gotas I signed up for the “Amazon Associates” program, and have been meticulous about linking every single mentioned product to a matching page on Amazon. I also download and link images for each previewed product. The total result from two years of doing this? 2 clicks and 0 purchases.

So, if I were to go by metrics alone, then this blog has been a miserable failure and I should give it up immediately: I don’t post very often, no one reads it and it costs me money. But of course I’m going to keep right on writing here, because this is not about either fame nor fortune. customer forums on ivermectin for mange Instead, this is really about narcissism. I like doing this. I like writing here. I like reviewing things. I like seeing my words up there on the big screen. I even like updating my photo every six months or so.

I purchased the domain “jonathanhenderson.com” almost ten years ago now. I had originally wanted “jonhenderson.com“, but a musican by the same name already owned it. I also wanted “jonathanian.com”, as I had always wanted to have a website called “The Jonathanian” – like “The Bostonian” or “The Washingtonian”. However, it turns out there’s a musician whose name is actually “Jonathan Ian“, and he owns that site. Apparently a lot of musicians share my name. So, “jonathanhenderson.com” was what I ended up with.

For years, I just paid to renew the domain name and never did anything with it. I had vague ideas about starting up some sort of reviewing site, but never had the time or the inclination to really do anything about it. In January of 2000, I made a point to stop using “Jon” and always use “Jonathan” for all new contacts I made. Since I took a new job within weeks of that new year, it was easy to do. I had already been going by “Jonathan” at grad school for several years by then (too many “Johns” in the classrooms), and it seemed a natural thing to do. Now, eight years later, only my old friends from Los Angeles – and of course my partner Frank – still call me “Jon” anymore.

So, “jonathanhenderson.com” seemed more real to me as the years went on. In 2004, I finally leased server space with 1and1.com, and moved the domain there. Still, I didn’t do anything with it other than put a few family pictures up there. Early in 2005, I used the domain to host a mini-site about the construction of our swimming pool, including blueprints, photos, and a time-lapse video of the pool itself being built. As of this writing, that site still exists under the “PoolCam” heading in the upper right of this site.

And finally, in 2006, I decided to give blogging a try. My very first post was a short article about how to get MP3s onto the Motorola SLVR cell phone. I posted it as a reply on a few Motorola forums, and got a few responses.

About a month later, I bought a real copy of Movable Type 3.2, installed it on my LInux server, and set about making this site in more or less what it is today. I tried out some of the hosted services for one or two posts, and just didn’t like them. I’m too much of a technology control freak, I guess, to use a completely hosted service. I like to be able to get my hands dirty in HTML whenever I feel like it.

My goal with this site was to review every book I read, every movie I saw, and every TV show of note that I watched. In addition, I would chime in with political views and personal anecdotes when I felt like it. I figured I would write an “article” here every other day or so.

Now, to put this in perspective: I read, on average, two to three books a week. If the only thing I did was just review every book I read, that alone would be three posts a week. Obviously, I’ve never come even close to that. I also usually watch three or four movies a week – many that I’ve seen before, of course, but that wasn’t supposed to count for the purposes of this blog. So there’s another four posts. And then I watch three or four television shows regularly every week (more when American Idol is on the air three times a week, like it is now). Another three posts. Now we’re up to a grand total of 11 or 12 posts a week, and that doesn’t count any “thoughts” I might have. Let’s round it up to 15.

So, I would need to post 15 times a week to this blog (on average) if I were to keep up with my original goal. And let’s add one last note to this. A quick perusal of my blog, and anyone can clearly see that the vast majority of all my posts occur at around 1 or 2am in the morning. That, of course, is because I work full-time, and I write all of these entries late at night. To keep up to my hypothetical schedule, I’d need to stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning, every day of the week.

Ain’t gonna happen.

Instead, I will continue to post here when I feel like it, about whatever I feel like. As time goes on and I get better at this, perhaps my output will increase. Or perhaps it won’t. But whichever way, I’ll have achieved the real goal of this blog: to enjoy myself and to hone my writing skills.

Over the past two years, there have been some posts that I’ve really liked, and a few that I don’t. The worst entry I’ve written yet has to be “Things I Don’t Understand About Getting Old“. Reading it now makes me cringe. I’m not sure what the hell I was trying for with that one; I think I was trying to write a “humor column”, but man did it not work. Honestly, it doesn’t even sound like me when I read it now.

My favorites have been the few personal anecdotes here and there. I very much liked my story about my failed night dive, “An Underwater Scare“. I got lots of comments when I got picked up on Andrew Sullivan’s site one day in regards to my ferrets, which led to “The Wacky Florida Ferret Freak“, another of my better efforts, I think.

And I’ve enjoyed the reviews. Those are why I started this blog in the first place, and what the majority of my posts are all about. Since I work in the technology field, I have an urge to write more gadget and tech reviews, but every time I start one, I seem to find a better one has already been written somewhere else. And there are lots of movie and TV reviews out there as well. So, I will try to concentrate more on reviewing books.

What have I discovered about myself in keeping this blog? Mainly that I’m a lot more conceited and opinionated than I thought I was. Reading back through these posts, I think I sound much more snobby than I ever imagine myself to be in real life. I seem to talk way too much about cars I have or used to have, material possessions I have or want, etc. I also sound a lot more cynical in writing than I am in real life – or at least, I think I do.

And enough. It’s well past midnight again, and the MacBook Pro has got less than 50% battery left. So let me end this by promising to post more often, but not to the level that makes me insane. And to review more books, but not everything I read. And to comment more on technology, but try to bring something new beyond a “me, too” review. And… maybe to try not to sound so damn smug all the time.

And above all, practice my motto: Embrace Change, Question Authority and Think for Yourself!

This week I returned from a quick business trip to London, England. This was my first time traveling across the Atlantic since “the events of September the 11th”, as the politicians like to say, and it was educational to see how much international travel has changed since the last time I traveled extensively overseas during the late 90’s. I also found it very interesting to see how the British people view Americans and the United States in this still-relatively-new century we’re living in.

In no particular order, then…

Don’t Fly Coach Across Oceans. Coach (also called “Economy”) seats just don’t cut it when you’ve got to sit in one for eight or nine hours. My company has a policy that if a particular leg of your flight is 12 hours or more, then you’re allowed to purchase the next higher class of ticket. But from Miami to London is only nine hours – so it didn’t qualify. At the time I booked the ticket, I didn’t think that much of it. Sure, I like First Class air travel as much as the next guy, but I travel in coach all the time, so what? I had forgotten how long nine hours can be when you can’t lie down, walk, or even turn around when you want to.

I also discovered that my old trick of getting the emergency exit row seat doesn’t work out very well on some of these fancy planes. This was a British Airways 747-400, and as it turns out, the emergency exit seats were much narrower than the normal seats – mainly because, since there was no seat in front of them, the whole personal video screen mechanism is built into the armrest. This also means that you cannot swing up the armrest. It also means that the entire seat is one solid metal block, with no spaces or gaps that you can stick your knees through. بنك payeer مصر It was, in fact, the most uncomfortable seat I have ever had on an airplane – and I am counting the time I flew in the rear cargo area of an Army C-41 transport plane.

The next time, even if I have to pay the difference out of my own pocket, I’ll travel in at least Premium or Business or whatever the airline in question happens to call it.

Beware Of Fat People On Planes. Now, when I say “fat”, I really mean “wide”. I’m not talking about somebody with a big stomach. I’m talking a large, wide person. On my return flight, having learned the lesson of the bad emergency exit row seats, I got a seat in the rear of the plane on the aisle (row 51). I got the aisle seat…. and then Jumbo the Elephant took the seat next to me.

Jumbo was a very large woman of unknown nationality – no one could communicate with her, nor she with them. She was decked out in red and gold, in a sort of combination mumu meets paintsuit type of outfit. It had gold tassels hanging off the sleeves as well.

When Jumbo took the window seat next to me, she was so large that she could not really put her arms down. Her stomach held the tray table in place. And she somehow just sort of oozed over into my seat. There was no question of me having any of the shared armrest. Since she spoke no English (nor French, Spanish, German, Chinese, or Norwegian – the crew tried all of these) there was no way I could think of to communicate with her that I was finding it hard to breath.

As soon as we took off, I found an empty middle seat in the second to the last row. And even though a little girl kept kicking the back of my seat nonstop for the entire flight, it was a pleasure compared to the seat I had just escaped.

Incidentally, when I vacated my initial seat, the woman gave a huge sigh of relief and immediately expanded to take up the entire row. There was actually a popping sound as she swung up the armrest to allow her ample girth to occupy its normal volume.

British Food Really Is Terrible. The last time I traveled in the UK, I was with my old boss Elmer Easton, who is a very well traveled food connoisseur. Luckily for me, he made reservations weeks in advance at restaurants that either he had dined at before, or knew from his contacts served excellent food. These places were often hidden and catered only to a select few. In the years that I worked for Elmer, I got spoiled, thinking fine food was relatively easy to come by. I could not have been more wrong.

Despite my best efforts – and on one evening, even when accompanied by a colleague who used to be a professional chef – I did not have one good meal during the four days I was there. And I tried. I ate at a supposedly well reviewed Greek restaurant (which had the most unusual decor of any place I’ve ever eaten at – check out their website if you don’t believe me), a true steakhouse, and a named chef’s restaurant. All of them served bland, overcooked food. Even my breakfasts were bad. I had to sprinkle pepper liberally on everything just to add some taste.

Even Starbuck’s and the local sandwich shop seemed to have misplaced their shipment of spices. Everything I ate just tasted… I don’t know, boiled. No wonder it was Spain that set out to find a way to get spices from India quicker – the British obviously didn’t care.

Somehow, I’ll have to master the trick of finding all those hidden places that Elmer always knew about. I now understand why they were so carefully guarded… believe me, you’d hide them too if you knew the secret of finding good food in England.

The Dollar Has Gone To Hell. Yes, I knew this intellectually from watching the news, but it’s another thing to experience it in person. Last week, the exchange rate was $2.10 to one British pound. That means, to figure out what something cost in dollars, double it and then throw in a few more dollars. So, my 80 pound taxi ride from the airport was 8. كم سن كريستيانو رونالدو 00. And so on. It’s almost unbelievable how expensive everything is for us Yanks. قوانين لعبة الروليت

And for the British, it’s the reverse. They cannot believe how cheap everything is in America. Several people I spoke to talked about how it was cheaper to buy British products in the United States than it was to buy them right where they were made. I’m sure that somehow the cost of fuel is tied up in this….

We Don’t Know How Good We’ve Got It. My favorite comment of the entire trip came during a taxi drive. Monday morning, I got into a good ‘ol London black cab to go from my hotel to the company I was visiting. During the drive, I began chatting up the taxi driver, who, as it turned out, had vacationed quite a bit in the United States. I asked him what the British people thought about us Yanks in this, The Age of Bush. He said that they didn’t hold it against us, since everyone knows how politicians lie and screw over everyone regardless.

And then, he gave me the winning comments:

“The only thing I don’t like about you Americans is – you don’t know how good you’ve got it.”. As we waited at a stop light, he turned around to me for emphasis. “You have the cheapest gas in the western world, and yet you complain when the price goes up by a few cents. Your grocery stores have every kind of food imaginable, and yet you complain about not having the right kind of nutrition and that your kids are getting too fat. You have the oldest fully functional democracy on the planet, and you gripe and bitch about how your leaders don’t listen to you. And while the rest of the world has been putting up with terrorists for 50 years, you folks get hit once – one time – and you completely loose it and go apeshit.”

He turned around as the light changed. “I’m telling you, you just don’t know how good you got it. I’d give anything to live in America.”

And that’s the thought I returned with, back to the United States of America. So, at least for the moment – I do, in fact, know exactly how good I’ve got it.

It’s great to be home.

I know we live in a technological age. But sometimes…

Earlier this afternoon I was putting together a stand for the patio. During the process, I discovered that for some reason, the bolts used in this stand were metric. Now, personally, I’m fine with the metric system. I wish we had switched over to it during the ’80s like we were supposed to, before Reagan became president and decided that the metric system was Un-American and For Commies Only. But we didn’t. And therefore, I don’t have any metric wrenches. ingyenes online nyerőgépes játékok

So, because I did not want this half-finished stand lying in the garage, I drove over to The Home Depot (I learned several years ago, when working on a branded web site for them, that the company name must always be referred to as “The Home Depot” and never as just “Home Depot”) to get a 10mm wrench. As I scanned the tool aisles at The Home Depot, I discovered something interesting… a single Husky Pro 10mm wrench was $22.99, but an entire set of 10 metric wrenches was $44.99 – less than the cost for two of them. Well, Cynthia Henderson didn’t raise no dummies, so I decided right on the spot to get a set of 10 metric wrenches, so that if I ever encountered a metric problem again, I would be all set.

I paid for the wrenches with my debit card, and drove back home to finish putting together my patio stand. No problem, right?

Except that when I got home and opened the package, I discovered that one wrench was missing… and of course, you guessed it, it was the 10mm wrench which was the only one I actually needed in the first place. So, making sure I had the receipt, I drove all the way back to The Home Depot, and stood in line to exchange my set of wrenches for one with all 10 in the box.

The return cashier seemed flummoxed by my explanation. “There were only nine?” he said, staring at the package. “Yes,” I replied, indicated the empty slot for the missing 10mm tool. “Uh, I have to call somebody”, he said. He then muttered into the phone, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece so that I could not hear what he was saying.

I tried to put myself in his place. I imagined that, perhaps, a mob of wrench thieves was running amuck. These fiendish ruffians would purchase a package of wrenches, remove a single wrench from the package while cackling with glee, and then return the package to get their cash back. What a horrible plot!

Not wanting to have The Home Depot suspect me of being a tool thief, I spoke up again. “You know, I just want to exchange it for exactly the same thing”, I interjected. “I just want the missing wrench, and as you can see, I bought this less than an hour ago”. I waved the receipt to emphasize my point, hoping he would notice the time stamp.

He finished muttering into the phone, looked me up and down, and decided that apparently I was not a member of the Wrench Ripoff Ring. “Well… I have to give you a refund”, he said.

“That’s not necessary, I just want to make a straight exchange”, I smiled.

“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t do that. I can only do refunds”.

“OK”. I pursed my lips and said nothing more.

He scanned my receipt, then frowned. “You paid with a debit card”, he said accusingly. “I can’t issue a credit for a debit”.

Instantly, I flashed back to years of accounting and finance classes in grad school, where I spent untold hours calculating columns labeled “Credit” and “Debit”, for amounts both large and small. I suddenly had an image of my first accounting professor, lecturing about how Credits must always equal Debits. Should I educate this fellow, this diamond in the rough working at The Home Depot’s return counter? Should I tell him that, in fact, the only way he can refund my Debit is to issue a Credit? Should I do my part to spread knowledge and education throughout greater Broward County? I quickly decided the answer was a resounding “No”.

“Um,” I said instead.

“I’ll have to give you cash. With tax, that comes to $47.54”. He muttered that I was taking all of his cash, but then dolefully counted out the exact amount, including the change – two quarters and four pennies.

“You are just getting the same thing, right?” he said as handed me a Refund Receipt, showing I had been issued cash for my wrench return. I nodded in the affirmative, afraid to say anything more out loud for fear of confusing the issue further. I clutched my $47.54 (that’s Forty Seven Dollars and Fifty-Four Cents, remember) and walked back to the tool aisle.

I found another package of the metric wrenches, and counted carefully through the bomb-proof plastic to make sure that there were, in fact, 10 wrenches. I also checked carefully to make sure that the all-important 10mm wrench was there.

I stood in line to pay for the replacement wrenches at the cashier one over from my friend the Refund Dude. The woman rang up my wrenches. “That will be $47.55, sir”, she said with a smile. I frowned, and placed my cash on the counter. “Well, I have $47.54”, I said, pointing.

She looked at me with concern. “I’m sorry sir, but you need another penny”, she said, apparently thinking that I was not very bright, and perhaps needed help counting my change. “I know that”, I said accusingly, “but he only gave me $47.54 for the same wrenches. He owes me a penny!” I stabbed a finger at the hapless refund cashier, who was already helping another customer.

Refund Boy turns around, his eyes glazed. Smiling Cashier points at me. “Did you give him a refund for some wrenches?” she asks. He nods, and points at the wrenches I am buying, then turns back to his customer. I show Smiling Cashier my previous receipt, with the Credit Receipt. “Hmmm”, she says. “I guess the different computers calculated tax differently, huh?”

I thought to myself, “That’s the stupidest thing that I ever…” And then it occurred to me, that after working in the software business for over 25 years, nothing really surprises me anymore. So I nodded. “Yup, I guess so”, I said. I prepared to leave. She gently put her hand on my bag of wrenches. “Sir, I still need that penny”, she said with concern.

I stared at her. She stared at me. Refund Boy turned around slightly, obviously not wanting to get involved. The people behind me in line were starting to shift from one foot to another. I sighed… this is 21st century America, after all. “OK”, I said.

But of course, I didn’t have a penny. Or a dollar. The only thing I had in my wallet was a twenty dollar bill. Solemnly, I handed her the twenty, which she snatched from my hand and happily tapped into the cash register. “Your change is $19.99” she said with excitement, and counted out my change.

I drove home, dumped 99 cents into my change jar, and finished putting together my patio stand with my new 10mm wrench.

Years ago, I could walk into a hardware store, say “I need to exchange this”, pick up another one off the shelf, and walk out with a smile. gaminator trükkök In fact, when I used to work at Osco Drug in 1981, this was exactly how we handled exchanges. But now, in 2007, things are so much more efficient.

At least I’m all set for metric wrenches now. If you need a patio stand assembled, I’m your man.