The Top 10 Craft Beers For P*ssies

While I don't think the word 'pussies' is a bad word when used as a synonym for 'wussies', I went ahead and added an asterisk in place of the 'u' to keep the headline safe. From who? No one, it's late and I can't think much.

But this is a good silly article for those regular 'light' beer or domestic drinkers... just check out how it starts:

"So you have found yourself on a date with that hot hipster chick from the office. Lucky you. She insists that the two of you stop by her favorite super-cool beer and wine bar because "Hipsters so don't hang out there." You know you have been tricked the second you walk into the joint and it's nothing but a sea of over-sized cropped lace tops, boat shoes and stupid hats. After a quick glance at the beer menu, you realize there is no Bud Light, Coors Light or any of the other usual suspects and you start to panic. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DRINK?!"

Here's the description of the number 3:


3. Mama's Little Yellow Pils, Oskar Blues - It's little. It's yellow. It's a pilsner. One delicious step up from a Budweiser, one huge step up in class.
Source: Top 10 Craft Beers for Pussies by ChowBella Blog

Half Of America On Facebook

Facebook may be getting closer to taking over America.

According to Edison Research, more than half of all Americans aged 12 or older are now on Facebook. The study showed that 51 percent of these Americans are on the site.

Now where do I click 'Like' on this one? There's no 'Dislike' button yet...

Source: HuffPost.

Life Is Crazy And So Are The Headlines

Been away from the blog so much lately, there's simply too much stuff going on. I have managed to do some more garden/backyard work in some of that time (including a cool re-claim of a bar table/setting) and hopefully will post pictures soon as Spring warms up.

Among other things, I've enrolled in the Pomona Police Citizen's Academy and it's been pretty awesome. It's a great experience to see the inner workings of this city's Police department. Hopefully I can post some more info on that once I've completed the program.

I also have my oldest son getting ready to finish up his senior year in High School. He's been accepted to 2 universities so that's very exciting. I've also managed to snag some Lakers suite tickets once again for this Sunday's game. What better way to go than a suite? Free food and drinks! Woohoo! The only way to go to a Laker game.

Other than that, this crazy world remains that. Here's some nonsense happening in our modern world. Hopefully you've stumbled here with a nice cup of coffee (yes you, the 1 reader, if any).

Head on over to Texas and have a burger at Fat Ho Burgers.

Cocaine found at NASA once AGAIN.

1/3 of Staten Island is on pain pills.

Chinese farmer claims his sheep gave birth to a Sheep-Dog.

I hate to say this, but I must. Whats Black, White and RED all over?
(I know bad joke, but you get it right?)

I'm moving to Russia, here's the World Map Of Average Breast Cup Size.

Verizon DSL, FiOS And A Tip For Windows.

I've had Verizon DSL ever since I've moved out here. It's been great and does what it needs to do for only $23.99 a month. Sometimes, it does feel a bit laggy, especially when the kids visit YouTube.com., but we know how to deal with that and are used to it.

Last week my DSL did not work for 3 days, and it was after the one hour of over an inch rainfall. Naturally, this can cause moisture affecting the connection at the pole.

I decided, let me call Verizon to see if the Pomona/Claremont area has experienced any problems due to the rain. Well, that failed as I got a person from India on the phone. I am trying to ask a simple question for something local, but this person cannot help and they're reading a screen for every thing I say. I know all the procedures for DSL re-setting and explained what I did to them. Instead of getting irritated and call this person names, I said, fine, I'll do what you say again. And naturally, I did and it was the same routine. As she read the thank you and blah blah, she basically said she'll send a tech out... in SIX DAYS!

I told her, look, do you have a number I can call in case it works by then, I have a feeling it will. She gave me a number and I wrote it down. About 3 days later, all was well and the internet was fine. I wanted to wait a few days though, because when it wasn't working, it would seem to work for about 2 minutes then disconnect for hours again.

This morning was the appointment for the tech who was scheduled at 8am. I called their office around 7am to let them know it has been fine for 3 days. They said the tech is out already and to wait for his call. He arrived and called from his van, so I explained it to him and he didn't have to come in.

What a waste of time and money, this is complete bullshit. Not only for the fact that I had to wait six days, but Verizon is actually wasting money when they can have the local office's number on hand to verify a simple problem question that applies to the area.

And my rant now continues into the FiOS upgrade they're trying to force on us. I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but I believe they're 'hiccuping' the old DSL users so that you sort of have to upgrade to FiOS. Just like Microsoft does to old windows users when a new version is released, by constantly 'updating' your old system to a slow crawl.

While they say it'll be $39.99 for a year, it will then bump up to $59.99, more than double what I'm paying now. As a matter of fact, I took my computer to a friend who has FiOS and did some heavy downloading to test it. Yes, it is faster, but it farts along. What I mean, currently I download anywhere between 20K to 125k a second, whereas FiOS can go to 400K or so. But while it's downloading at 400k, it tends to fluctuate, it at one point went down to 19K for a while. Then back to 90k, then 200k, then back to 19k again. It was during the day and perhaps time does matter. My point is, unless I'm downloading gigabytes of stuff a day, it's pointless.

The funny thing was, after the tech left, I decided to do some surfing. It was fine for about 20 minutes, then it started to hang and sometimes lead to connection failures. I almost screamed and said this is going to be a really bad day. I did the following and it's back to normal, in fact, it seems faster! All thanks to the power of Google, not outsourced customer service.


So here's a little tip in case you're ever in my situation, or really, if your internet seems to hang quite a bit for no reason. This error will show if you ever try to 'Repair' your connection:

Windows could not finish repairing the problem because the following operation could not be completed:
Clearing the ARP cache
For assistance, contact the person who manages your network

The Microsoft Windows ARP cache will occasionally become corrupt and need to be cleared. The first symptom you are likely to notice is that connections to web pages will time out and fail. To fix this error, go to Start, Run, type CMD.EXE and then type NETSH and finally type INTERFACE IP DELETE ARPCACHE. You should get an OK prompt.

If you do get an error, you can visit the website I stole this help tip from, as there is another way to do it and this post is already way too long: Tech-Faq's ARP clear

My Drunk Kitchen

1908 - Pomona Winter Scene

It's hard to imagine a scene like this nowadays around here... I'm thinking this is near northeast Pomona and south Claremont more or less. I wonder if that's Pomona College in Claremont way in the back?

(Click to Enlarge)

Chase Your Checking Away

I do my major banking with Chase and have several accounts with them. Not by choice of course, I originally opened my account in 1993 with Household Bank. They were eventually bought out by Home Savings of America, which then became Washington Mutual. And of course, we all know they are now Chase. We have several free checkings that we've kept over the years for ourselves as side accounts. You know, for gas, lunch or extra little things instead of using our main account.

Well, the fees are here now! I had perhaps $30 sitting in my checking and now it's $20. As of 3/7/2011, they are adding a $10 fee. That is of course, UNLESS you meet one of the following criteria:

* At least one single direct deposit of $500 or more,
* A minimum daily balance of $1,500 or more,
* An average balance of $5,000 across all Chase deposit accounts (checking, savings, CDs) and/or investment accounts with Chase Investment Services Corp,
* Pay $25 or more in qualifying account fees (not including this monthly service fee)
While it was nice to have our own side checking accounts, which pay NO interest as it is, it is time to say:
Why? Well, for one, we bailed these mother f*ckers out with OUR money, and this is how they repay the people. And another thing, the hardest hit people who can't meet these requirements are poor people, which is most people (and growing).

and I borrow this quote from PND:

"This was the year America finally took on the power and greed of the Wall Street banks.

And the banks won.

They dodged the bullet of real reform, probably for all time. They bounced back to post huge profits, helped by legal theft from the middle class. They completed their takeover of both political parties – and bought themselves a new Congress even more pliable than the old one. Middle-class America is flattened, devastated and broke. The bankers that caused it all have escaped punishment. They’re raking in huge profits. Oh, and the tax cuts just got extended for high earners, too!"

Luckily, our main checking account will meet the requirement for what I hope will be a long time. We still have savings with them but they seem to be okay for now. We've also taught ourselves to NEVER use an ATM that isn't Chase, unless it's an extreme emergency.

Why? I'll give you the simple math: You pull out $20 at a 7/11 ATM, which charges you $2.50. Then within that period, you will be charged an additional $2.00 at your bank for using a non-Chase ATM. So that $20 you pulled out cost you $24.50, which means you paid 22.50% to get $20.

And you know what? It's only going to get worse.

L.A. City Elections Today

I'm thinking of heading down to L.A. for the after parties, why not? I am wishing Jose Huizar the best of luck. This guy ran a tough campaign and is a friend of my family. We are no longer in District 14, but continue to support him. It's been a crazy campaign against Rudy Martinez, but we'll see how it went tonight. For a list of all the certified candidates, Click Here.

Among other things, I stopped by Pomona's City Clown-cil meeting last night. No comment. ;)

And I attended the M3 Music Festival in Downtown Pomona on Sunday, and that was awesome. Ran into some old L.A. friends there and met Richard Blade. Until the darn clouds rolled in and took the sun away.

Update:Looks like Huizar is taking this one as of right now (11:45pm), he's at 65%. For all the L.A. election results you can go here: City Clerk Election Results

Parents Shouldn't Text