Getting your VEIP extended

If anyone recently got notice that you have to have your car tested for emissions at your local VEIP (Vehicle Emissions Inspection Program), it is possible to get the inspection deadline extended by about four months for free and you don’t need an excuse.  All you have to do is go to their website and follow the prompts.  My deadline was March 28, 2007, but I knew that with school and everything, it wasn’t going to get done.  After getting it extended, my new deadline is August 1.

Observation

I’ve noticed that when I’m crazy busy with school, I somehow have plenty to blog about.  However, when I have it easy (like I have for the last week), I have absolutely nothing to blog about.  Maybe there’s a correlation.

LMAO

This is hysterical:

Snow

It’s about time, darn it!

Alleged Pledge v2.0

As a follow up to my original post (that was also picked up by Orthonomics), I got the following in the mail today. It came in an envelope with a very nice yellow image in the shape of legal pad paper saying, “Remember our telephone conversation?” At the top of the following letter, it says in big, bold letters, “Sponsor One Shabbos Raffle Pledge Reminder”

Dear Mr. Aishel

Thank you again for your warm response to our Telephone Raffle Campaign on 11/26/2006, with your pledge of $18.00. Your raffle numbers have already been electronically entered into the final drawing to win $3,600.00 in cash, which will IY”H be held in May ‘07.

Sitting at a Shabbos table without food, on a cold Friday night in Jerusalem or Sefad is painful beyond belief. Thanks to your contribution, joy will replace despair, and the warm glow will replace hunger, thereby turning their Shabbos into the day it is meant to be.

However, in order for us to provide Shabbos food to these needy families, we are counting on you, Mr. Aishel, to please redeem your pledge of $18.00.

Thank you in advance for your prompt response and may the merit of this special mitzvah bring upon you good health, happiness and success in every endeavor.

[Signed]

P.S. Please help us defray the expense of additional reminders by sending in your contribution promptly. Your immediate response will enable us to provide more Shabbos food to the needy.

What chutzpah! Not only did I never pledge anything, now they’re trying to make me feel bad by saying that they already entered me? And if they really wanted to defray costs, they’d stop sending bogus mailings requesting pledged money that was never pledged.

Good cop

Like Alanlaz, I was lucky enough to get a good cop to pull me over.  I was driving around a big bend in the road on Boyce Ave. when a cop caught me going 37mph in a 25mph zone.  The second I saw him, I knew I was busted.  But I knew that things were going to be good when he came over to me and said, “Sir, you were going 37 in a 25.  Let me see your licence only, please.”  I’ve never heard of giving a cop only a drivers license, and my hand was halfway to the glove compartment before the fact that he only wanted my drivers license registered in my brain.

When he came back to my car, he issued me a warning.  He even went so far to say that if I frequent that road often, that I should be careful, because the neighbors had been complaining of speeders on that street, so he was there as a response, and that cops would continue to be there in the future.

“Yes sir, and duly noted.”

Nice cop.

Snap!

As you may or may not have noticed, if I have tons of links in a blog post, a little popup window shows up with a preview of that website’s picture.

If you find it annoying, let me know and I’ll disable the feature.  If you want to disable it for yourself, you can do so by clicking on options on the hover window and selecting to disable it (cookies required, yum).  I just like it because I like to have a view of what website I’m looking at without having to commit to clicking it. For more info on this, you can visit Snap Preview’s website, or visit WordPress’ two blog posts about the feature.

Promoting Youth Violence

First, on a happy note, this is my 100th blog post!

But to my main point, Alanlaz had a crazy video a while back about how children become violent because of the way they are raised by their parents.

Today’s Wall Street Journal had a front page article about Iraqi preschool-age who play Cops and Robbers, oops, I mean, Shiites and Sunni’s, with pellet guns, and often come home with bruises.  But the parents don’t seem to care.  They’re proud!  The kids also seem to like to make fake rocket launchers and bombs.  Do we really wonder why so many Muslim’s are violent?

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A year ago, a young gunman walked into Ali Hussein’s living room and drew a weapon. The intruder’s head was wrapped in a scarf, leaving a narrow slit for his eyes. His clothes were all black, the favorite attire of a powerful Shiite Muslim militia. He introduced himself as a commander, shouted the incantation “God is greater” and warned Sunni Muslims not to fight back. With that, he raised his plastic pistol.

The gunman’s name is Hassoni, and he was only 4 years old at the time. The scene unfolded in his father’s house in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, a sprawling Shiite Muslim district stretching toward the eastern edge of the Iraqi capital. “I was happy to see him this way because it means he has courage,” Mr. Hussein, 26, said of his son. Since then, Hassoni’s favorite game has grown more elaborate, migrating from the living room onto the neighboring streets, drawing in other children and increasingly emulating the violent world of the adults.

The Orioles, Jobs, Help with Problems, and Bikkur Cholim

Anyone else see the ad on the top of page 116 of Baltimore’s latest Where What When?  In one half-page ad, there’s a plea for everyone to petition to baseball commissioner Bud Selig to make Mr. Angelos sell the Orioles, a blurb about a service for finding jobs, helping with problems, and getteing better care in a nursing home, and a request for people to do Bikkur Cholim.

Talk about a mix of unrelated ads.

Dallas Food Chain to Accept Mexican Pesos

This story just exemplifies how crazy our country is becoming. By accepting Pesos, the US is now working even more towards the Hispanicizing of America.

Link:

Starting Monday, patrons of the Dallas-based Pizza Patrón chain, which caters heavily to Latinos, will be able to purchase American pizzas with Mexican pesos.

Is that even legal? In terms of taxes and everything, how do they keep track of what gets paid in what currency?

Talking to God

Today, I attended the CJE’s annual Yom Iyun, where the theme was God. After the initial keynote address by Rabbi Kushner, a reform rabbi from San Francisco, the 400+ participants broke up into several groups for talks by other community leaders. I attended a talk by Rabbi Goldberger, of Tiferes Yisrael, about talking to God, and the way we communicate with Him. The audience included people from all sorts of Jewish backgrounds and denominations.

He opened up with three basic questions.

1. Who can daven? Does it have to be someone special? Should it be someone who does the davening for you?
2. Are there specific times that one should daven? Meaning, is it something that should only be done mornings, set times, etc.
3. What should we daven about? Can we/should we only daven about the ‘important stuff’ like world peace or the health of the sick?

Alleged Pledge

Way back in September, SephardiLady had a post about the do’s and don’t of solicitation (in two parts). I’d like to add one more. It only bugged me a little bit, but when it happened the third time, I decided to blog about it.

Recently, we’ve had several phone calls appealing for money for various organizations. They usually ask me to pledge x amount of dollars. I don’t like to do that, so I usually tell them to just send me an envelope with their brochure, and we’ll assess it then. I’m always careful not to make any pledge whatsoever. One day, I come home and my wife asks me, “I didn’t realize we pledged $36 to X organization. I thought I told you we already spent all of our ma’aser money.” I look down at the envelope, and sure enough, its the same organization that I had spoken to a few days earlier. Now that just ticks me off. In one particular case where this happened, I remember specifically telling the person on the phone that my wife deals with ma’aser, so I can’t pledge anything, just send me your envelope.

I think its a huge chutzpah that they then go ahead and make it as if we pledged something. Not only does this make me not want to give them, it probably messes up their financial records because they write in their accounting books that a certain amount of money was pledged, and can use that information to obtain loans. But since I’m now mad at them and not sending them any money, they’re not going to make as much as they forcasted.

Blog Comments

I’ve been having problems recently with people posting comments and the comments being flagged as spam. I’m not sure why this is, but for now, I have enabled a feature where if someone posts a comment, it has to be approved the first time. Every time thereafter, you should be able to post with no problem. So as long as you have a preapproved comment, you should be able to comment. I’ll be in touch with WordPress to figure out why people who have been posting since the beginning are having their comments flagged as spam.

Your comments are important to me, and I apologize for the delay in getting your comments up. I realize that you have a choice in blogs to read, and I hope you come back (I’ve been on an airplane recently, can you tell?).

Anway, please comment to this post so that I can approve you.

Brasserie

Anyone who has known me for a little bit knows that today is a special day.  So to celebrate, we went to the Brasserie.  I’m always amazed at just how quickly the total can go up, but I guess that’s just the nature of the restaurant.  The point of this post is to rant about certain people and talk about the service I experienced at the Brasserie.

First, I don’t care how important you are in the city.  If you must have your phone on, please, just turn it to vibrate.  When you’re trying to have a quiet dinner, it just isn’t fun to have to hear  some crazy song at the loudest possible volume.  Seven times.  And I don’t blame him for having his phone on.  In his capacity, he needs to have his phone on.  But I don’t think there are any phones out there that don’t have a vibrating feature.  So please, just turn it to vibrate.

When we got to the Brasserie, the place was completely empty except for one other couple that against the back windows.  So where did the waiter place us?  At the table right next to them.  I mean, the entire room was empty!  Did he have to put us right there?  Of course we asked him for a more private table, so we were put on the complete opposite side of the room, which was fine by me.   The only other issue I had with the service was regarding my water.  I like to have my glass filled with water.  I drink a lot, and I felt that the waiter should have been more on top of my glass.  Especially considering how empty it was tonight.  At one point, I had to ask him three times to get my water until he finally remembered to actually bring it.  I found that instead of paying even a little attention to my table, he was joking around with the kitchen staff.  I’m not trying to sound like a needy brat, but I do feel that the service could have been a bit better.

Regarding the food, we got an interesting appetizer called medallion of beef, which was three cubes of beef served with fried onions and two pieces of very large corn tortilla’s.  While the beef cubes were very good, I felt that the tortilla’s were awful.  Overall, definitely not worth the $14.95.  For the main course, the only complaint I had was that the ribs had way too much fat on them.  Probably a good 20% of all the meat had fat that had to be removed.  But otherwise, they were awesome.

Pickup line overheard at Starbucks

I was at the newest Starbucks in Baltimore doing some homework when two older adults, aged approximately 75 years old, walked in.  They had apparently never been to Starbucks before because they were wondering about ordering a small or medium coffee, and the cashier kept on explaining that small was tall, medium was grande, and large was vente.  Like three times.

Anyway, the guy finally orders his coffee, when the following conversation takes place:

Cashier (~17 year old girl): “Would you like cream or sugar with your coffee?”
Old man #1: “No thanks. If you want, though, you can stir the coffee with your finger.  That will definitely sweeten it up.”
Cashier: [Half-hearted laughter]
Old man #2:  “Don’t  listen to him, he’s a dirty old man!”

I was sitting in my seat hearing this, and I started laughing out loud, as did the people sitting at the next table over. Regardless of the inappropriateness of his flirting, I thought it was a funny and clever line.