140 West Copper Street

I listen with interest to the segments on Morning Edition regarding the issues we consumers are now facing with the gas prices rising. Many perspectives and situations have been presented.

We have retired and moved to rural Arizona from Southern California, but when formerly in CA, I bought a 1988 Ford Festiva for $700 in 2002. I parked my Lexus SC400 (13 mpg city/26 mpg HWY) for all but highway trips and found that I saved $700 in gas in about 8 months. I still drive that car here in town.

We moved to AZ and acquired a second fuel efficient car, a ’79 Subaru Brat in 2007. My better half, Jim, retired from Ford Motor Company white collar technical job, is meticulous about running condition and emissions, and each of us now commutes 12 blocks to our retirement jobs.

Jim is in charge of fixing and maintaining all the vehicles for the small town where we live. (He complains he should be sitting on the front porch as a retiree. I point out that most boys don’t get to drive firetrucks, police cars or backhoes on a daily basis just to test how well they run. (The neighbors are now used t seeing emergency vehicles parked in front of our house for 5 minutes at a time – gotta make those Kodak moments). And that most boys have to go to the hobby store and get a box made by Revell when they want to build a fire truck. They don’t get to go to the impound lot and pick out a vehicle confiscated from a Coyote (those guys have top of the line vehicles, fairly new, extra cab with all the amenities) and just get to have them painted red, then have light bars, sirens, water tanks, etc put on them.)

We each use ¼ tank of gas a month, which we find a reasonable cost even now. I haven’t calculated the Subaru, but I drove the Festiva 263.1 miles on the last tank. I refueled yesterday at almost $4/gallon. I took 6.04 gallons to the tune of $24.09. This is approximately 43.54 miles to the gallon. Neither of these cars, however, will drive us over our surrounding mountains.

The Lexus now lives under a car cover. Although we could live with 26 mpg to travel over the mountains on either side, since we try to accumulate needs and do one big trip per month, my last town trip in the Lexus left the trunk filled, the back seat filled, the passenger seat filled, and shopping bag on my lap for the return. I had to cross Home Depot off the list before I even got there.

It did however have an AC issue that resulted in the entire system being upgraded to R-134 from R-12. (Means, if you need a charge, you pay for the whole R-134 system what you would have had to pay for the R-12 ounce.)

Let’s not even talk about driving with the dog in a sport coupe (Ruby is a new family member since we moved to AZ.)

Hence the recent acquisition of our 2003 Ford Escape.

The resilient offspring of the alliance between Ford and Mazda, it incorporates Japanese quality with the utility we need and has better city mileage and equal on highway to the Lexus, with the reliability to get us over the mountains to civilization like the Lexus could.

After some cosmetic rehabilitation to Lexus is done, it will be offered for sale. For a road traveler who enjoys orgasmic handling at high speeds, it will be a superb car.

It just no longer fits our life style.

We talk with friends in town who commute and we shudder to hear of the $1000 per month fuel expenditures. My job status is changing and I am surely pushed towards reinventing a local job and going into business training people on their new computers bought due to the new Wi-Fi service from our USDA grant.

But we are better off than most, we own our home and have no debt. Just utilities and FUEL.

Well, not an hour after I sent this first email (See below), I got a phone call from a man stating he was the president of 1-800-dentist.

He tried to tell me they serviced people who didn’t have dentists.

I said I was upset that his service made it look like we had to go over 50 miles for a dentist, when the ones covered by Jim’s insurance were 20 miles away.

And that the service didn’t say other dentists might be available, just that there were no dentists in our range.

In fact, I had to change our zip code twice to fakes to even get a listing, which still did not include dentists closest to us in either Gold Canyon or Globe.

I originally had thought this was legitimate service to look up dentists close to where I live.

Apparently not.

It was very creepy to get a phone call so soon after sending my email.

Please forward this one as well to every one you know.

Eileen Bertie www.140copper.net

—– Original Message —–
From: Eileen To: Eileen At Home
Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2007 10:38 AM
Subject: Beware of1-800-Dentist Beware of 1-800 dentist.

Jim lost his dentist’s number, who is a good dentist, and very affordable.

I went to 1-800-dentist to try to find her, and they were unable to locate her and wanted to send him to several other dentists.

I found out that dentists PAY to list. It masquerades as a public service.

Please forward this everyone you know, so that they don’t use this service, and do searches on the internet instead.

Eileen Bertie
www.140copper.net

It’s that time of year.  We are Back to the Past.

The Arizona Renaissance Festival and Artisan Marketplace is up and running and once again, is the greatest place to go to pretend to work.

I say pretend, because after 20+ years of management in the auto industry, to get to go and just be an employee that does a good job and is recognized as such, is more like a vacation than actually working.

I got ding’d on a job application, because I forgot to list it as a past employer because it didn’t feel like work.

Last year, after several weeks of working, Jim commented that it was interesting as I never came home in tears from the Festival.

Of course, I wasn’t making $75,000 a year, like I was in the “get your brains beat out” business of the automotive world.  And life was just fine, because of that.

This year, it’s like stepping into a pair of old shoes, and things go smoothly.

This is the week of the School Days.    Yesterday was Middle School and tomorrow will be the Junior and Senior High Schoolers.

Here my rant begins.

What are parents thinking, not teaching their kids how to be money smart? Or how to be polite to vendors and shopkeepers?

First example:

Girl gives me $20 for a $4 slice of pizza.  I say, “out of $20, and 16 pounds your change my lady…  And (counting out the bills, explicitly) five ten, fifteen and twenty pounds are your change.”

She screams, “You are cheating me!  I was supposed to get $16 back and you are trying to give me 20!”

I told her to get her teacher and come back.    I saw her excitedly talking to her teacher, who saw me looking at her, and gave every impression of looking like she wanted the earth to swallow her, and took the young lady away.

But I was really appalled at how many kids had no idea about counting change, and got confused – what are math classes doing these days?

Then, I must rant on how many kids would just throw money on the counter (and then have to go chasing when the wind blew it away, and wanted to blame me for not picking it up fast enough, (although my back was turned and I was getting their pizza.)

I told them until they saw their money in my hand, their money was their problem not mine, so they needed to hang onto it.  I started counseling kids not to let their money loose, only to put it into the hand of a vendor, and they all would look at me like I was nuts.

So what are parents or schools teaching kids about handling money?

Expecting fast services, but giving a handful of crumpled bills, like little raisins of dollars.   Complaining they want their pizza NOW and getting an attitude when I tell them that if they opened up their dollars, it would be faster.

Parents, get a clue.

Teach your kids that just because someone is on the other side of the counter, they aren’t a lower class citizen.

Open your cash and count it out to the seller, rather than a wadded up clump of money.

Teach your kids how correctly counting back cash works. (“I give you a $4 slice of pizza for your $20, so 1=5, ten, fifteen and twenty is your change.)  Don’t expect me to deal with your screaming kid, because she thinks I am trying to cheat her by slipping $20 change as stated above to her instead of $16.  I was trying to count $16 to her properly.  In fact, you have more serious issues if your kid thinks that $20 change is cheating if she thinks she needs $16 back.  Especially when she got the $16 she was entitled to in the first place, and didn’t bother to either count with me or count herself. 

Tell your kids they can’t order us about like we were their slaves.  If they don’t like the pizza they get, and it is a normal slice, they get their money back and can go somewhere else.  If the slice is cold or uncooked, we will replace it.  If they want to count the pepperonis and see if there are more on another slice, too bad.  We will not show them 4 slices and let them choose.

The kids need to speak up.  I had a kid yesterday that I finally had to hand a marker and napkin to, because he was unable to express the answer to “cheese or pepperoni?” verbally.  And I didn’t read lips well enough to tell.  I tried the ASL I knew, and hand spelling and he looked at me like I was nuts, and shook his head and whispered softer at me.

So few of the kids I saw yesterday could handle the basic things my parents taught me outside of school regarding money transactions.   And these were kids from all over the valley.

Parents, so many of you should be ashamed.  We look at your kids and wonder, “how can they not know how to handle this situation?”

Well, tonight was the Town Council Meeting and we went to support CDBG grants for housing rehabilitation for elderly and low income.

As any political meeting goes, it was rather like herding cats or wrangling jello.  But we got through the CDBG part and tiptoed out.

We tiptoed right down the block to My Friends Tavern for a beer.

Beer is so expensive in the stores that we only buy Keystone, which is generic Coors.  We love Miller Lite, but it is  ten dollars more for a case than the Keystone, so the occasional bottle is a treat.

We were sipping our beer and chatting with Molly, our bartender, and one of the gentlemen at the bar got up and walked over and it was our neighbor, Rocky.

He reached to shake my hand as he said, “I saw that write up you did about my dog you posted on the board at the market.”

Now, my tears started to well up.   It was a bad day for me, my dad went in the hospital for congestive heart failure, and possibilities of death were weighing heavily on me.   And for those of you who don’t know, Rocky’s dog Buzzy was killed while we were away over Thanksgiving.  I was barely able to keep the tears back.

I had done a memorial page, and printed it and posted it on the market bulletin board, all about not feeding poultry bones to dogs and how this fine puppy died a slow miserable death.

Buzz was Ruby’s boyfriend, and when he ran loose, we let him the yard and enclosed him with Ruby to keep him out of the dogcatcher’s domain.  They spent many hours playing, as you can see at the web page.

We chatted with Rocky, and he also thanked me for the pictures of Buzzy I had printed and left under his wipers when he was working on repairs for a neighbor.   He said he found them, and has them framed on his TV next to the pictures of his sons.

He shook our hands again and thanked us for the pictures and the article, and went back to his barstool.

Rocky picked up his napkin from under his beer and wiped his eyes.  I went to the ladies room and used toilet paper to wipe my eyes and blow my nose.  My heart still breaks for Buzzy.

We took a day trip today down through Kearny to Tucson, peeked through the fence at the Boneyard at Davis -Monthan AFB at some of the old planes. Then we drove up the west road through Florence to come home.

We made a beer- and pit-stop on the spur of the moment at the River Bottom in Florence, “By the Banks of the Mighty Gila River, where the water is so clear you can see the bottom.”

It’s a mile or two up the road towards Superior from the prisons and jails.

We ordered us each a Miller Lite, and noticed a young woman sobbing at the end of the bar, asking the bartender to use the phone. He asked where she wanted to call, and she said, “Superior, I need to get someone from Superior to come and pick me up.”

He said the bar phone only called Florence, so and one of the guys playing pool gave her his cell phone to use, and when no one seemed to answer for her, Jim interrupted and said, “we are going to Superior, we can give you a ride when we are done with our beers.”

Her name was Erica, and she was happy to wait while we finished our beers and Jim talked with Jaime the bartender.

A young African American man walked into the bar, wearing plaid flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt. He asked how to get to Phoenix, it turned out he had just been released from prison and literally booted out the door. He said he’d been in for a couple years, and cleaned up the drug habit he’d been locked up for.

But he had no money, so had found a homeless shelter in Phoenix that would take him in, he just had to get there. He had no money going into prison, so had none when he got out.

He had been farmed out from Chicago - when he was convicted, the Chicago prisons were too full, so they contracted space in Florence and shipped him there. He didn’t even have small change in his pocket.

The bartender gave him a soda, even though he had no money to pay for it.

The other people in the bar debated the young man’s options. Casa Grand, Apache Junction - each 30 miles away but in different directions, might have a bus to Phoenix, but no one knew for sure.

We left and headed for home, with Erica in the back seat. She was carrying heeled sandals, that she said had blistered her feet.

We asked how she got to the bar and why her feet were blistered, and she too was just released from jail, after being picked up on Christmas Eve for a warrant on a ticket.

She had walked in the cold to the bar, which was the first stop after leaving the prison complex. Even though her court date earlier that morning had been in the Superior court house, procedure required her to be taken back to Florence and her release papers processed and she was booted out at the end of the day, again with nothing she hadn’t had when she was arrested.

The bartender had talked about how disgraceful the release process at the prison was, that just the other week, he had an 80 year old plus man show up at ten PM.

The man had spent 63 days in jail after throwing a shoe at his brother’s window during an argument. He waited 63 days for a preliminary hearing, and then the judge just cut him loose with no penalty.

The bartended ended up driving him home to Globe at midnight that night.

The man’s grown daughters brought the bartender $100 cash in an envelope the next day. They had been frantic, as no one had known where to find the old man after the police had taken him away. They were afraid he was dead, or worse.

We chatted with Erica on the way home and dropped her off at her mom’s house.

But while we were on the road from Florence, heading to the 60, we passed at leasts seven or eight other people walking along the side of the road, in sneakers, T shirts or whatever.

What quirk of fate had us hit that establishment just as a girl at the end of her rope was there? Just when she needed us?
What is the County thinking, with their jails with some of the highest recidivism rates, putting people out to fend for themselves after dark with no clothing suitable for the weather, and no money, in a town with no taxis, no public transportation, not even Greyhound bus service?

Erica was lucky, being locked up only ten days or so.

She doesn’t know if she still has a job at the Marble Plant, she wasn’t allowed to make a call to let them know why she couldn’t show up for work. At least she has a family to take her back in.

But people locked up for years, sent out with no preparation for life outside, what are they supposed to do?

I think now I will avoid MSI stuff.  When Jim was in the hospital after his heart attack, I figured that building a big monster PC would be good therapy for him, so I went and bought a motherboard and CPU for him to upgrade.

Well, since his heart surgeon was across the street, almost from Fry’s in Woodland Hills, we ended up getting enough stuff for a whole new machine. Unfortunately, Jim got the motherboard from (in?) hell.  Here’s the latest after two years:

Life was good. Everything was great, the system was killer and flawless until January 2005.Then I started having problems with boot errors and failing video.  It would get very slow, lock up and crash.  ATI tech support thought because of the garbage on the screen, the cause may be their card and exchanged it on an RMA, but the problem continued with very sluggish and unreliable operation.

Thinking I had a heat issue, I chased out all the heat sinks and possible causes. I cleaned the CPU and fans and even added external fans to the open case.  I cleared the CMOS, updated the BIOS, reloaded XP software, exchanged the video card, swapped out memory, removed hard drives, keyboards and mice.  Nothing seemed to help.A year passed by attempting to diagnose this Monster of a machine, blaming myself for not being able to correct this thing that I had created.

Guided by your online tech support, I updated the BIOS manually, even though “The Live Monitor” was active automatically and had the latest and greatest BIOS. Per your tech support team instruction I cleared the CMOS again.  That’s when it all fell apart.In July of 2006 Frankenputer died.

By the one green light and 3 red lights on the “D-Bracket”, I knew the keyboard controller had failed to initialize preventing further booting.  I could no longer get anything other than a black screen. MSI Tech support issued RMA RR06029484 on August 9, 2006. I paid $18 shipping and insurance to have the board was returned via UPS because it would not POST (Power On Self Test). 

The very same board was returned 3 weeks later with a BIOS flash, assembled into its original configuration and it exhibited the identical symptom, would not BOOT. I called MSI Tech support. MSI Tech support issued RMA RR06033737 on September 19, 2006. This time I used USPS for only $6.50 insured with return receipt requested.  A different board arrived October 6, 2006. Your Tech Support Team opted to replace my PT880 Neo LSR with a 865PE Neo2-V with the understanding that I would have to reload Windows from scratch because of a different chipset.Upon assembly of the new board, I discovered that not only would it not boot, it would power up  as soon as it was plugged in, without touching the start switch. 

I called MSI Tech support.   MSI Tech Support told me that the board could not self power up and that I had to have something shorting the motherboard out to cause this problem. Being prepared for a lengthy conversation we worked through some diagnostics over the phone. This new board would not BOOT.I traded every component into my back-up computer, an ECS Elitegroup Computer L4S8A2 running a 2.4GHz Intel chip. Everything worked as expected. I replaced the mouse and power supply with a 500W direct shipped from Geeks.com. Now everything has been tested and or replaced.

I explained what I had done.  We worked through some diagnostics over the phone.  No luck.MSI Tech support issued RMA RR06037333 on October 24, 2006.

When the new replacement warranty returned unstable non-functional board arrived, I let it rest for 2 weeks before I even opened the box. I was getting to where I could read their trouble codes on the packing slip.  They had flashed the BIOS. Finally I assembled the bare system out of the case using whatever, knowing this thing wasn’t going to run either. It didn’t, so I called MSI Tech support.

Now when I attempt to boot I get a “D-Bracket” error light indicating memory failure (1,3,4 red 2 green) Memory Detection Test Failure.  I have swapped the memory into my ECS and it is fully functional.  I didn’t call MSI Tech support.  I went through your online system.MSI Tech support issued RMA CS06040863 online on on November 30, 2006.  Memory test failure.

I think it is time to look at the big picture and see that you (Micro Star International Computer) and I (the consumer) are not resolving the issue of a failed motherboard.
Your tech support has not done anything to help, 6 months later I still do not have an operating machine. You said it was my components that were at fault, yet they perform as expected in another manufacturer’s motherboard, go figure.  You replaced your replacement board then told me it was normal operation, yet it never worked. You sent me a different board then told me it was the wrong board, go figure.  We both are losing time and money over this stupid $80 motherboard.

Here is my suggestion for a resolution.  Issue a call tag for UPS to pick up this failed memory code PT880 LSR which I understand are quite rare.  I’ll return it to you post haste so that you can send it out to someone else.Cut me a check for $100 ($80 + $20 shipping expense) and I’ll go buy a different board from somebody else to use with my components that are not compatible with your boards.  Do this and you will not hear from me again.

I await your response,
Jim Green
www.140copper.net
 
 
   

The vultures are migrating.

The Arboretum had a workshop, “Bye, Bye Buzzards,” which we missed, but doing more research on our Turkey Vultures, “buzzard” is a complete misnomer, as that apparently refers to the genus “Buteo,” for which the records I have seen indicate it exists only across the Atlantic…..  Turkey Vultures are Cathartes aura, a whole different genus indigenous to the new world.

But early settlers had never seen a vulture before, so they called them Buzzards, until they were properly classified.

As you know, we have had much enjoyment watching our Turkey Vultures from the front porch, and we will miss seeing their graceful flights over the area. We used to see two to four, circling over our corner of town, since we are close to the mountains. They’d catch a thermal and glide for hours on end.

I guess we are too far north for them here for the winter, because a week ago Sunday (on the 8th,) we went out on our porch, looked up to the sky and and saw a HUGE kettle of vultures flying overhead.

No, I am not tripping, there are no flocks of vultures, the term for any group of vultures is “kettle,” which is not as strange as a “murder’ of crows.

The vultures circled and circled and circled, and after an hour or so, flew off, almost single file in a serpentine pattern to the Northwest.

I thought that was a little strange, but maybe they were in search of food to feed up on for their journey to their winter quarters.

We will miss seeing these huge birds and look forward to seeing them next summer.

Have you noticed your pet behaving strangely?   Does he or she suddenly find themselves obsessed with lights and shadows in the house?   Does your pet suddenly need to sleep more, and even fall down asleep, suddenly?

Alien mind probes may be the answer. 

Ruby developed a sudden light obsession and during the day, she would get tired and just drop over on her side, sound asleep.   With a big thunk.  Along with sleeping excessively, she lost her appetite for a couple weeks, barely even eating two cups of food a day.  

 We didn’t know what it could be.

Today, I was proofing pictures for a page on kitchen appliances, and lo and behold, I found this picture. This is NOT  trick photography!
 
 

Jim says the glow on Ruby’s face is from the camera’s flash, but I was pointing the camera at the corner unit where the appliance garage is, and the Tupperware shelves that need a cabinet door.   This picture, to me, clearly shows what I could not see with my eyes, but the camera recorded it – Ruby is being mind scanned by space aliens.  She is being probed.

Weather has returned to Superior.

We were at the Town Hall Meeting last night, (at the Senior Center, NOT at Town Hall, go figure,) and I thought there were fluorescent light events reflecting in the windows. Nope, it was lightning. The peculiar horizontal lightning that happens out here. Total, absolute gully washer.

Got home to utterly soaked dog, who was very upset that mama and daddy weren’t there to sit through the storm with her.

Soggy doggy was hyper until we let her run in the back yard for an hour or so. We sat on the tailgate of the truck and watched the clouds in the sky.

Soggy doggy tried to jump in the tailgate with us, and needed some help, as Ruby is not used to jumping up that high.

She sat between us and tried to chew my left earring out.

We did not let her.

Cloudy today and just a drizzle at best. The Weather Channel says we will get more rain over the next few days.

I have been a fan of Tupperware for about a million years or so.

I had my first Tupperware party back in ’81, not long after I moved into the Phoenix, the ancient apartment building at 2726 Girard Avenue in Minneapolis’s fashionable Wedge district.

I will never forget the look of terror in the poor Tupperware lady’s eyes as she looked at the roomful of party-goers. (I found her in the phone book.) Me, three girlfriends, and sixteen guy friends. She had never been to a party with men attending. All her little games were cutesy, baby shower type of stuff.

She actually started to panic, but I told her, let’s just cut to the chase and sell some Tupperware. I mean, I had gone to school with these guys, and knew they were wrapping leftovers in newspaper, I know one that put an aluminum pan of leftover tomato sauce in the fridge and left it long enough to grow a ¼ inch hole in the bottom of the pan.

She sold $2800 of Tupperware that night.

I got a camera and about $200 in free Tupperware, most of which I still use, like my measuring cups (in that brilliant, early 80’s orange. Not the new, fashionable new millennium tangerine). She started marketing to male college grads, and ended up with a new minivan.

Ten years later, I even made out in some lawsuit Polaroid had against Kodak for making an instant image camera, and got a Polaroid One Step as a replacement for the “banned” Kodak camera I got as my hostess prize for the party.

I have had a few Tupperware parties over the years. I have had In-person parties, and on-line parties. They have all done well.

Today was a walk down memory lane. Since we are just getting the kitchen in and ready to fill, we have been bringing in boxes of kitchen stuff (I am not sure if kitchen or books have the most boxes in the trailer.) One of our friends in town once looked at the cabinets we are putting in the kitchen (a steal at $600 from Stardustbuilding.org, but that will be another post, how we did a $10K kitchen for $1000) and commented, “don’t you have too many cabinets?”

If you build it, they will come. Kitchen stuff multiplies to fit the space allocated.

Anyhow, from that first Tupperware party in 1981, I bought two Tupperware cake takers, a round and a rectangular.

The round turns out to be a bowl big enough to brine an 18 pound turkey in the fridge. I use it as a HUGE bowl. I don’t think I have ever taken a cake in it, but it gets used once or twice a year because it is big and deep.

BUT I used the rectangular cake taker a lot. Maybe 5 or six times a year. I used to make a lot of cakes, but lately, it was the useful small Tupperware holder I would slide out full of all the small square and little rectangular containers.

I pulled the round and rectangular out of the box it had been moved in, and unwrapping the rectangular, it had cracked all around the deep, classic sheer lid edge. I tried to fit it onto its base, and it cracked even more. It was just disintegrating under my fingers.

I was mortified. I loved that piece, and had a feeling it would be obsolete. The new cake takers had arched lids, not flat, and I used to pack cupcakes into the lid.

I had to replace a Season Serve several years ago, it was a small size, and it cracked just like the cake taker did. Since Tupperware no longer made the small size, the Tupperware lady got me a full size Season Serve. Brand new. Works the same, just takes up more space in the fridge.

Well, I called in per the instructions on the email. The most difficult thing about the warranty process, is that they will want the mold batch number from the piece you want warranty replacement on. Finding this number for the rep on the phone, required 200x glasses, 150x glasses and a magnifying glass to finally find the teeny tiny digits they hide on the unit. But, apparently jumping through this hoop qualifies you for warranty assistance.

The very professional young lady, Karen, I spoke to (who didn’t seem to be from here….) upon having me read all the teeny tiny numbers to her, regretfully said she could not send me a replacement top as they are obsolete, but could send me a whole new updated unit.

I would have to pay $4.00 for shipping and handling. Well, this was more than fair to me. Rounded lid, so can’t store much stuff upside down, but this is a $39.50 set, so I thought, heck go for it. And thinking about it, my most common 13×9 thing is cornbread, so I will just use it for that.

The old unit, with my confirmation info on it.

God bless Tupperware.

There is no Tupperware lady in town. May be a bit too pricey for Superior, but I wonder if I should sign up, and when the town starts to boom, I could be the gal that gets the minivan?