Week 21: Why Memorial Day?

I only get one day off from work this week.  And why is that, you may ask?  Because this coming Monday is Memorial Day.  A day to celebrate all the military veterans who gave their lives.  I’m a veteran, but I’m still alive.  That pretty much means I have to work extra.  What a prize for being a veteran, huh?

Some vets have Monday off.  I’m sure most people working in an office have the day off.  It’s also the official start of summer.  Hooray.  I’m not much for summer.  It’s always too hot and people are really dumb during summer.  Ok yes, people are really dumb all the time, but sometimes they’re especially dumb during summer.  And if I go somewhere during somewhere and park my car outside, when I come back it’s always like driving around an oven.

So what do I do with just one day off?  I’ll sit home not happy about going in to work tomorrow night, but something else needs to be done.  I watched some videos on YouTube.  I still need to watch the movie called Warcraft.  I also decided to watch some videos about the video game Warcraft.  Part of me would like to play it!  I’ve played it years ago and I guess it was fun.  You can be a panda in the game now!  Who doesn’t want to be a panda?

I think about it, but I’d have to download a lot of stuff to my PC and there’s no way I’d be able to play Warcraft during my one day off.  Maybe I’ll want to play next week?  I don’t know.  Who can say?  Maybe I’ll be frustrated at work tomorrow night and not even make it to next week? 

Well since I only have one night off, I don’t want to waste it writing a blog, so I’ll make this one short and sweet and go back to watching my videos and playing video games.  Maybe I’ll be in a better mood next week when I’m looking forward to both holiday and overtime pay? 

Until then, keep asking Why.

Week 20: Why the DMV?

This week I had to register my car.  That means a lovely trip to the DMV, or Department of Motor Vehicles.  I don’t think anyone ever wants to go there.  It’s one of those places you just don’t want to be, and yet if you have to go, you end up there waiting for hours sometimes. 

         My car registration isn’t really due until June 1, but why wait?  If something comes up next weekend and I’m not able to make it to the DMV, then I would end up driving with expired license plates and that’s not good.  I support the police, but really don’t want to be pulled over by an officer because of expired plates.

Before I can go and register my car I need to have it “smogged”.  That means I have to take it somewhere and have someone check the emissions and make sure everything is in order.  That’s not so bad.  I went to the same place I always go that is just around the corner from where  I live.  A very nice Asian guy checked my emissions and once my car passed, gave me a nice certificate that says the car passed.  That cost me $20.  Yes, I could have found a coupon somewhere, but I was angry enough about what I was going to have to pay at the DMV and didn’t care about a couple more dollars.

So what was I going to have to pay?  Well my car registration fee was $33.  Sounds low, right?  Very nice!  Ah, but wait!  The government isn’t finished with me and my car after the $33.  I see a few more charges added to my total:

$114 Government SVCS tax.

What the hell is that?  Is that a “service” tax?  What damned service is the government doing for me besides trying to take all my money and give it to some millionaire politician?  And it doesn’t end there!

$28 SUPL Government SVCS tax.

So not only do I have to pay a service tax for the government, I also have to pay a supplemental service tax?  Is that what SUPL means?  So I’m being taxed for “service” if that’s even what SVCS means, and then I’m being taxed again for it?  What the hell kind of bullshit is this?  And no, that’s not the end either!

$1 Technology fee VR.

Technology fee?  Why am I paying a technology fee, let alone for VR?  Especially if VR stands for Virtual Reality!  That’s the only VR I know!  What virtual reality am I being allowed to use for this registration?  I don’t even know what this means?  Actually I guess altogether this means I owe the state $176 to drive my car for another year.  You’d think it’s over there, wouldn’t you?  But no, it isn’t.

After my pleasant “smogging” experience, I drive over to the lovely DMV.  There is nowhere to park.  The entire lot in front of the DMV is not only full, there are still other cars driving around looking for somewhere to park, but there are no empty spots!  How the hell am I supposed to register my car if I can’t even park?

I’ll pause here and address the people who asked me “Why didn’t you just do this online or through the mail?”  Because I don’t want my new tags mailed to me and lost by the post office!  I want them in my hand if I’m going to pay $176 for them!  (That’s not my final total though, as you’ll see!)

I have to park across the street and cross at a stoplight at a very busy intersection.  I hate having to walk across a street like that!  But if I go in and use one of the machines, I can get this over with quickly.

There are DMV machines other places, but I want to use one where if I want to complain about something, I have people right there to complain to.  I get to the DMV entrance and there is a line out the door.  I’m really glad I’m using a machine and don’t have to get in the line out the door!  If I did want to complain now, I would have to wait in the long line, so unless the machine takes a finger off or something, I won’t complain.

Once I walk inside I realize the DMV doesn’t feel the need to use any air conditioning.  The place is jammed with people, too!  And not just people, unhappy, smelly, people.  It’s hot and stinks.  No one seems to be happy in there.  There is a short line for the DMV machines, but I only have two guys in front of me.  I wait patiently and finally it’s my turn.  I scan my card with all my “charges” on it and the machine now tells me that for the privilege of using the machine, I have to pay $3 more.  So now that I’m being charged a “Technology fee” let’s just pile on more charges for using the technology!

I just want the hell out of there, so I push the “agree” button.  It now asks if I qualify for a “benefit”.  Am I legally blind?  Um…why are they allowing blind people to register vehicles.  The screen on the machine I’m using isn’t in braille, so how would a legally blind person even know to select that?  How stupid is that?  Anyway, moving on…

I’m not blind, or whatever the second thing was, I was just trying to get through this and don’t remember what the second selection was.  The third selection says “Veteran”.  I am a military veteran.  I should push that button!  I’ll get a veteran’s discount!  Finally, some light at the end of the tunnel!  I hesitate, though.  What proof are they going to want that I’m a veteran?  I know the machine isn’t going to just let me push the button and then give me a discount without proof.  Maybe it will tell me to stand in the line out the door?  Maybe I had to have registered with the DMV as a veteran before coming?  I don’t know.  There are other people waiting to use the machine and they want me to finish up and go away!  I want to finish up and go away!  So I passed on the veteran’s discount.  I don’t think that was really fair, though. 

Now the machine confirms that I want to pay $179 to register my car.  There was that split second of “Screw this, I’ll just ride the bus!”  But I know better than that.  I’m not going to ride a bus.  So I shoved my debit card into the machine and paid the $179.  Luckily my registration and license plate tag came out of the machine and I didn’t have to wait in line to complain. 

I hate the DMV.  Why?  Well, I just explained some of why.  At least that’s done for another year.  Until next week, keep asking why.

Week 19: Why Hotdogs?

This week while I was out and about I came across a place called Steamie Weenies.  It was a small place that obviously sold hotdogs.  I might have went inside there when I found the place, but I was with someone else picking up food from another place.  So no weenie for me that day!

But after getting home I decided to look Steamie Weenies up online and see if they had a web page.  Everyone seems to have a web page now a days.  Maybe I could see if they had anything that looked good and might bring me back.  I found their web site with a menu. 

Steamie Weenie

The food looked fantastic!  Now I decided for my second day off I wanted something from Steamie Weenie!  It all looked so yummy and I love hotdogs!  The last really good hotdog I had bought from a restaurant was years ago at Universal Studios in Florida.

That was a long time ago and on vacation.  I wondered if Steamie Weenies would be able to compete with what I had way back then?  Would they have hotdogs just as good?  After my hotdog at Universal Studios I also tried the same kind of hotdog (Chicago Dog) at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World.  In my opinion, it wasn’t as good.  I have a photo of that hotdog too, but I don't know where the hell I put it.

Anyway, let’s get back to Steamie Weenies.  I decided I wanted to eat dinner there for my next day off.  My day off came and being a graveyard worker, I was up and moving at a nice early 3PM.  Yes, that’s early for someone who works graveyard.  I figured it was a nice day and I could run around and go a few places I hadn’t been in a while.  It would be a nice day shopping and then I could stop at Steamie Weenies and get something to bring home and eat while I binge watched Netflix.

Things didn’t quite work out the way I wanted them to.  I stopped at a huge electronic store called Fry’s and found a Playstation 4 game called InFamous Second Son for $10.  Not used either, brand new!  If you aren’t familiar with video games, that’s dirt cheap!  So I bought the game and moved on.  I thought about heading to Steamie Weenies, but realized I was a bit short on cash.  I would have to stop at an ATM or something to grab some money.  Thinking about it, I figured I could actually just buy something at a store and then when checking out with my ATM card, and request some cash back then.  Then I wouldn’t have to go to an ATM.  Problem solved.

So now I'm thinking about some of the pictures I saw of the food at Steamie Weenies online!

Oh, the hotdogs look so good!  I can’t wait!  And then I look at the restaurant’s hours on the web page.  On Saturdays they close at 7PM.  I notice this when I’m standing in a Walmart half way across town from Steemie Weenies at about 6:15 PM.  There’s no way I’ll make it there.  Well, that’s not true, I might be able to make it, but I’m going to walk into the place around 6:50 if not later!  I don’t want to do that!  I don’t want to be the idiot coming in just before closing time!  I don’t think you get the best food then!  Shit.

It’s grocery day anyway.  Maybe I’ll find something to eat for dinner at the grocery store.  Hell, maybe I can even make some hotdogs myself.  Bummer though, I wanted a Steamie Weenie!  I guess that will have to wait until next week now.

So now I find myself at the grocery store staring at the hotdog section and not impressed.  They all seem to look the same.  There are some really expensive hotdogs, but they look the same as the cheap ones to me.  And then I see it.  I can’t believe the store has these!  I NEED THEM!

Actual hotdogs wrapped in bacon!  Oh this looks good!  I can use a hotdog cooker I have at home and cook the bacon wrapped hotdogs and then put my own fixins on them!  Now things are looking up!

And so I did!  For this week I made my own bacon wrapped hotdogs with onions, jalapeños, tomato, and mustard.  They look tasty, don’t they?

So much for this week.  Maybe I’ll make it over to Steamie Weenies next week?  We’ll see.  As a side note, this blog took forever to get written and up because my computer wants to download a bunch of crap for a “feature update”.  When it does something like that, it hogs all the bandwidth and it’s hard to download photos, or actually really do anything online.  I may shut my computer down later just to use the internet with my iPad or watch Netflix, I’ll see how the night goes.  Maybe I’ll just play some video games now that my book has been finished?

Ok, until next week, that’s why hotdogs.  Keep asking why!

Week 18: Why Netflix?

When I was a little kid there were four television networks.  There was NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS.  We watched Sesame Street on PBS and whatever else decided to come on the other networks.  We didn’t get movie channels, and there were always lots of commercials.  It’s no wonder we were always outside playing.

There was no internet at that time and we didn’t have cell phones to drag with us everywhere we went.  We couldn’t go online and if we wanted to look things up you would find an encyclopedia somewhere.  Our libraries still had Dewey decimal system card catalogues to find books with and no one but the librarian understood how to use them.

Eventually there was a new thing called Cable.  If your family was rich enough to pay for cable, you received a few more channels.  Nothing like we have today, we’re talking maybe ten or fifteen channels. My family did eventually decide we wanted cable, but I don’t know how we afforded it.  Anyway, suddenly there were new channels to watch!  A station from Atlanta that showed Atlanta Braves baseball games!  There was also a Chicago station showing Chicago White Sox games!  I grew up watching those two teams play.

We couldn’t afford special networks like HBO (Home Box Office) so we didn’t get to see any of the movies put on there.  I did figure out that I could jam our television between two channels and get a really poor, unwatchable version of HBO.  The picture wasn’t watchable, but the sound came in great!  So I listened to a number of movies when I was a kid.  *chuckle* It was kind of like radio.

Eventually I finished high school and joined the United States Air Force.  I was sent overseas to Italy.  Over there we had one channel, the Armed Forces channel.  You watched what they wanted to show, or you had no television at all.  So it’s no wonder we didn’t watch much television there.  I didn’t much care for their programming.

Now let’s flash forward to much more modern times.  Now we not only have cable companies, we also have satellite companies that have hundreds of channels to choose from.  I pay for one of the satellite hook ups and it’s quite expensive!  I do like having a bunch of movie channels, though.

Now along with the wondrous internet comes another new thing.  Well, not exactly new, but new for me.  Streaming shows.  Some services will allow you to stream shows and movies to your television, or iPad, or even your cell phone!  How neat!  But why pay for a streaming service when I already have a satellite hook up?  I’ll tell you why:

Along came this service called Netflix.  As far as I knew they streamed movies to people who paid for their service.  I get movies on my satellite service, so why add one more bill for myself, right?

Well it turns out Netflix has their own shows.  You can only watch these shows if you pay for Netflix.  I can live without special shows, right?  I’d heard good things, though.  I had heard interesting things.  People have asked me, “Have you been watching Daredevil?”  And I have to answer, “No, I haven’t.  I don’t have Netflix.”

I happened to be talking about this to a family member yesterday.  She’s a lot like I was when I was younger and before we had even finished talking, she had signed up for the free month preview.  It seems Netflix is so confident in the shows they’re putting on their streaming network, they’ll give you a month to start watching them before you have to actually start paying.  And looking into things, they’re not even really expensive.  $9.99 for two devises at the same time with high definition.  Not a bad price as I’m paying around $160 a month for my satellite hook up.  Yes, it’s very expensive for a satellite hook up.

And so my family member and myself decided we would just try Netflix out.  She was stunned just looking at the variety of shows you could choose from.  And you don’t have to wait for something to come on at a certain time, you just choose something and it streams away!

So this morning I started watching the series Daredevil.  Daredevil is a Marvel Comic Book character that I used to read every month when I was in the military.  I liked it because the hero was always beaten down.  He was a blind lawyer and…well, it was a good comic book.

After the first two episodes I was hooked.  There are also other Marvel comic book hero series on Netflix.  The Punisher, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and a lot of others!  I want to see all those without even having to watch the first few episodes now!  I also want to watch the rest of the Daredevil seasons!  I think it’ll be soon time for me to binge watch a few things until I’m caught up!

My newest book is almost finished and ready to put out, so I need something to do to get me motivated to write some more.  I think Netflix will be just the thing!  For now I’ll probably still keep my satellite hook up.  At least for the time being, but I’m also going to sign up for Netflix. So that’s why Netflix.  Because they actually have REALLY good shows for a cheap price, and no commercials!

Until next week, keep asking why.