Happy Birthday to Dad! It sounds like he's celebrating his day in style - he went to the dentist.

[Now THERE'S a party idea.]

Met with a representative from Empire Carpets last night. She came out to THE HOUSE and measured the bedrooms and dragged out the samples to examine. We're only carpeting three bedrooms and the master closet - how big can that be?

It's 1710 square feet, that's how big. Yikes. And at $45 per square yard, it's . . . $8,500?!?! Errr, I don't think so.

Oh, that was just her *initial* price. So she called her boss and they agreed to $45/sq yd. Wow - what a bargain.

Perhaps it was my glazed eyes, but I believe she sensed a "No Sale" in her future. So she asked a good question: "What price range were you looking for?" Ahhh . . . she and boss managed to come in at the mid-range: $29/sq yd or $5,500.

But still - that's expensive, especially for plain, boring, off-white berber carpet. So Home Depot will be getting a call - they have a large selection available for $18-20/sq yd. and I know several people who have ordered from them with no problems.

[Sorry Empire.]

Junk E-mail. I probably get at least two dozen spam-mails a day, just at work. Most of them follow a similar pattern: sent from "Chuck" or "Dory" or "Customer Service", subject line is either some sort of nonsense or a series of completely unrelated words, usually in lower case. So I normally spend a few minutes each morning doing a mass deletion of the unread in-box droppings that have accumulated over night.

Earlier this week, I read a column by Lileks about said spam mails and he noted that some of them have several lines of text at the bottom of the message that actually mean something. I mean other than the "orDEr yur V1agrM heaR" stuff. Apparently these spam operators determined that having a few lines of non-gibberish somewhere in their message allows their missives to escape various firewalls and anti-spam programs. So they steal lines from classic literature at random.

This morning I decided to see if it was true. I noticed a message from: "quincy majmundar" . OK, not exactly a close personal friend, but he/she wanted a response from me - the subject line read: "Lj Please explain the specific M.edICAL reason for 0rdering this M.edICATI0N"

Here is the rest of the message:

besyfer sangfugler rcsmith scharnhorststrasse newint

And then at the bottom:

'Why,surely.'Tis there,up along to your right-you can just see it through them trees.You go up the hill and along the road to the right,and then take the new road through the building estate.'Tis the last house-at the very end.'
'Thank you.'
Automatically Vera pressed the trigger

[Agatha Christie must be turning over in her grave knowing that her works are being used to sell VAnLIUvM, XAcNAxX, and PRe0ZAC.]

Speaking of birthdays, a few belated wishes to David, Ian, Conner, Jennifer and Jon. Hopefully all of you enjoyed yourselves immensely!

[And many more.]

Quote du jour:

"A birthday is a big event in everybody's life. It should be a holiday - with pay."

-- Michael Darling

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