Friday Hodgepodge

Four Things

1. CVS is infamous for its feet-long receipts, which are full of customer loyalty coupons practically nobody uses. And why is that? Because it's (deliberately?) a hassle to [Inhale here.]: (1) hunt for the ones you might actually use, (2) figure out a good place to keep them, and (3) actually remember to bring them the next time you go to CVS.

But did you know the electronic option for their program is on a par with this for user-unfriendliness? Get the low-down from Scott Adams by scrolling down here and beginning at 37:05. In addition to having laughed aloud at his ... strongly-worded ... appraisal of this questionable practice in an otherwise fine company, it was good to know that someone else finds this equally annoying.

Of course, I get annoyed any time -- save authentication -- I have to give a company's computer information I know they already have: There's no excuse (as Adams indicates) in this day and age for that.

I thank Adams for and wish him great success in pushing back against that irritating practice.

In homage to Mad magazine, perhaps we should label the pot with its name...

2. As we settle in to our new home in Florida, I am making time for some of the old hobbies I used to enjoy waaay back before we left Houston.

My mother, envious of my green thumb and challenging me to a contest, helped me get back into gardening by sending me home from my last visit to Mississippi with a couple of elephant ear bulbs.

Pictured is the plant from the one the kids and I planted about three weeks ago, shown next to a chair for scale. That leaf, the only one so far, was only about the size of my hand Monday. I took the picture yesterday.

My daughter named this plant Humbert. My son will get to name the other, which we will plant once I find a matching pot.

3. Here's a tip for straightening out your garage after you move to the South: Do a little bit at a time right after you wake up each morning.

We'd been here for most of a year now, and, until last month had made little progress on going through the moving boxes in our garage: It simply gets too hot to do this effectively during the day, and the amount of stuff to go through is pretty overwhelming.

But, ahead of a possible visit from Hurricane Dorian, we had to remove missile hazards from the yard and make room for a car in the garage. I had to do something to make room, and it occurred to me to use writing time (4:00-7:00 a.m.) to do so one morning.

So I scheduled my blog post to auto-publish and blocked off the whole morning. Since I wasn't baking to death -- and could think clearly -- I did everything I needed to do in less than forty five minutes.

I realized that I could just do this -- about forty-five minutes' worth of work each morning for a few weeks -- to finally finish that task, and I have been very pleased with the slow, but steady progress.

4. It's a long read that starts with an innocent-enough looking question:

With AC power, aren't both wires of the pair interchangable? Why is one wire called "neutral?" What's all this stuff about "grounding?" Why are three prongs needed? [bold added, format edits.]

What follows is thorough, accessible, and enjoyable to read.

-- CAV