Welcome to The Hoosier Illuminati. Macintosh bigot, clothes horse, motorsports fanatic (as long as they turn right), Anglophile.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. --Henry Ward Beecher

The greatest advance in dentistry since I was a kid is…

The dental assistant.  When I was a kid, the dental assistants were old, dowdy fat women with names like Mildred or Myra.  They all wore those hideous old-fashioned nurse’s uniforms with white support hose and orthopedic shoes.  It was the total Nurse Ratched experience. 

Now dental assistants are young, attractive ... dare I say hot? 

I think this is by design, and it’s not just an eye-candy thing.  It’s to keep you quiet.  I can’t whine about what’s going on in my mouth in front of a hot chick.  It simply isn’t done.  No, you have to man up and take it silently, stoically.  You shut up and don’t bother them as they go about their business. 

I must say, I think this is a quality business practice. 

Quick question:

This means KFC is now healthy and I can eat as much of it as I like, right?  ‘Cause I’d really like a little Original Recipe right now. 

Daylight Savings Time

Still sucks.  The clock says 10:15, my body says 11:15. 

Dentistry annoys me.

So I’m having problems with a tooth.  I have two teeth that are interfering with each other somewhat, and one of them has to come out. 

But my dentist can’t do that, I have to go to an oral surgeon. 

So I make an appointment with the oral surgeon, and we decide that yes, the tooth has to come out and that I’ll have to have a temporary tooth made until we decide what to do with the other tooth.  But the oral surgeon can’t do that, I have to go back to my dentist.

So I go back to the dentist and have an impression made of my mouth for the temporary tooth and go back to the oral surgeon.

“But what about the second tooth?  Are you going to move it or extract it?” Well, as it turns out, the oral surgeon can’t make that kind of decision, I have to go to an orthodontist. 

Now, if the orthodontist decides that the second tooth can be moved, he’ll do that.  If it needs to come out?  Back to the oral surgeon, the orthodontist doesn’t pull teeth.  If it needs a bridge?  Go back to the oral surgeon who will prepare the teeth, back to the dentist for another impression, get the bridge and actually install it.  Unless I get an implant, which the oral surgeon can do. 

I’m so confused.  I’ve been trying to get something done about this tooth since the 23rd of September and I just want it all over with. 

Marsh is closing stores

Including one in my stomping grounds that has fallen prey to a new Wal-Mart just down the street.

Cue the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth about how Wal-Mart is responsible for Marsh going down the toilet and how Wal-Mart destroys communities.  Well, spare me, because it simply isn’t true.  The Winchester Marsh store sucked long before Wal-Mart moved in, Wal-Mart presented shoppers with an alternative, and THAT is why Marsh closed.  It really is that simple. 

Look, if you can’t, don’t or won’t compete on price, you have to compete on something else.  In the case of Marsh, that has to be service and product.  When Marsh had a decent fresh meat case I shopped there several times a week on my way home.  Or I tried to anyway, be sure to get there before 6:30 or so because if you don’t the fresh meat case will be closed.  If you did get there before 6:30, the case might be open, but good luck getting anyone to wait on you.  And, as I said, that was WHEN Marsh had a fresh meat case, they took it out about a month ago.  I can get pre-packaged crap at either store, but less expensively at Wal-Mart.  The occasionally futile attempt to purchase decent meat was the sole reason I ever went to Marsh, but I bought quite a bit while I was there.  Now I don’t. 

With a few major exceptions I found the Marsh staff unpleasant and unresponsive.  Their prices on the things I bought were always about 25% higher than the competition.  These things were true before Wal-Mart ever built a grocery in the town I’m talking about. Then Marsh voluntarily removed the one product line that I couldn’t buy at Wal-Mart. 

I don’t like Wal-Mart.  At all.  But here are the options:  Both stores are unpleasant.  Neither store has much in the way of friendly, personal service.  Now both stores have the same merchandise, Marsh having voluntarily crippled itself.  One store forces its employees to wear silly sailor hats, the other forces its employees to wear silly vests.  One store is significantly cheaper.  Where do you go?  There’s no reason NOT to accept the less expensive alternative, as much as I’d like to.  That, my friends, is why Marsh is in the shape it’s in.  Wal-Mart didn’t make Marsh hire unpleasant people (and damn few of them at any one time).  Wal-Mart didn’t make Marsh remove their superior products.  Wal-Mart didn’t make Marsh cause me to stand at the meat counter for ten minutes waiting for someone to notice me.  Marsh did that all on their own. 

Me, now I go Krogering whenever possible and patronize the local independent meat market.  They’re a little (but not much) out of my way.  But I won’t go to Marsh anymore.  They let me know a long time before they locked the doors that they didn’t care about my business. 

I’m not sure how Hosting Matters got such a great reputation

Because I have two HM accounts, and they’re both inaccessible several times a day.  This account is better than my other one, but they’re both crap.  My other account, according to HM’s own server monitor, has been inaccessible FOUR TIMES today.  When I complain about it they just reply that there’s nothing wrong.  Well, dammit, there IS something wrong when I can’t get to my accounts (and no one else can get to them either) FOUR TIMES in a day.  It’s really, really beginning to annoy me, so much so that I’m beginning to look for alternatives.  Yeah, I realize my little blog isn’t Instapundit, but still…

I don’t have this kind of faith

And I don’t even pretend to understand those who do, but I admire them. 

...the Amish community, which buried five of its little girls this week, is collecting money to help the widow and children of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the man who executed their own children before taking his own life. A serene Amish midwife told NBC News on Tuesday that this is normal for them. It’s what Jesus would have them do.

I’ve lived near the Amish most of my life, and I’ve never understood them.  I still don’t, but they’ve always amazed me with the strength of their faith. 

H/T: Peter Robinson at the Corner

I liked Digg a lot better

When they talked tech.  You know, before it turned into a junior high socialists club. 

A highly recommended company

You know, it’s not as if I buy computer bags every day or anything and you don’t either.  But the next time you buy one, take a look at PivotGear.com. 

I knew I’d need a new bag for the (yet to be delivered) MacBook because it’s so much wider than my existing 12” PowerBook, so I looked around and finally decided I needed a Crumpler Considerable Embarrassment.  (Crumpler’s website is an abomination, and the names they hang on their bags a little ... odd ... but they make a quality product.) I found the bag I wanted at PivotGear, and I’d read a couple of reports of people having good luck with them, so I placed my order yesterday at 4:30PM.  I selected standard shipping even though they had overnight available (for $25) and free shipping (which normally means it sits on a shelf until someone gets around to putting it in a box.)

By the time I got home I had an e-mail from PivotGear telling me that the bag had shipped via FedEx, and it’s on the truck to be delivered today.  That’s kickass service by anyone’s standards, and certainly way good enough to get public kudos from me, so the next time you want a good bag try PivotGear.com, they have earned the Hoosier Illuminati Seal of Approval. 

Now if Apple could just get the MacBook to me in the same kind of timeframe…

Enough with the friggin jumping spiders.

OK, so I don’t like spiders anyway.  There you go.  They’re crawly, disgusting little creatures that I could easily do without.

And my office has apparently become home to approximately eight quintillion little jumping spiders.  One spider I can overlook.  Two or three spiders I can overlook.  EVERY FREAKING SURFACE IN MY OFFICE has a damn spider crawling across it, and I’m getting tired of having to brush a spider off of everything I want to use. 

And if that isn’t enough, I killed the spiders’ mothership a little while ago.  The little jumping spiders are bad enough, but this sumbitch was about the size of Paris Hilton’s dog.  ENOUGH with the spiders already. 

Vacation is over.

I took a few days off over Labor Day, I’m rested, refreshed, and I sure would like to have a few more days off. 

It’s time for gallantry

Interesting article in the London Times Online about gallantry, manners and the need for same. 

Yes, let’s have gallantry by the gallon. Don’t be a dreary New Man, worthily eating oatmeal from a healthfood shop and painstakingly dividing up the household chores. He died out years ago from lack of interest. Just not sexy. Men and women may be equal, but they are not the same. Somehow a dash of gallantry shows this. That’s why women like it.

This brings us back to the conversation Alli and I were having recently regarding the coolest photo ever of Cary Grant I posted a few days ago in which she bemoaned the lack of real men.  Gentlemanliness, gallantry, chivalry, whatever you wish to call it seems to be something of a lost art.  It’s not as simple as a lack of style and sophistication, although that’s certainly an important part of what’s lacking, it goes to the very core of what it means today to be a man, and I believe we’re missing it.  As they say, read the whole thing.  It’s a subject that seems to be occupying a good deal of my time lately. 

What’s wrong with the world.

What’s wrong with the world is that we have no one as suave as Cary Grant anymore.  If American men dressed and composed themselves with the elegance and grace of Cary Grant, how many of our problems would cease to exist? 

So what’s changed?

Other than the template?  (Yes, I know it needs work, give me a few days.  It’ll get better.)

Well, HI used to be a group blog.  The group has gone its separate ways, now it’s just me.  HI was very much a right-of-center political blog, and when I blog on politics it still will be for the most part… although you probably won’t be able to tell when I talk about the current administration. 

There will probably be more techtalk now, particularly about my greatest technology love, the Macintosh and all things Apple.  The resident Apple critic is no longer on-board, although he’s welcome to stop by and make his snarky anti-Mac comments if he so pleases.  I’m also a big fan of the TiVo and the Slingbox, and I am hopelessly addicted to my Blackberry. 

So anyway, hang in there with me as I rebuild this thing, refocus my energies on important things and move forward. 

No, we haven’t gone away.

But things are going to be a little different around here. 

Things will be a little messy for a few days, please bear with me while I get things put back together the way I want them.