The great cookie fiasco

I have been eating Girl scout cookies ever since my sisters were in girl scouts. My favorite cookie was the Thin Mint, seems like it is the most popular of all the girl scout peddled cookies. Over the years I have watched my favorite cookie box shrink do to rising costs. Every year I have bought several boxes to survive me through the off season, cookies stored in the deep freezer last most of the year, not sure how long they would actually last, all are eaten by the time the cookie season is back and its time to restock.

This year has been a good year, I actually ordered a case of Thin Mints just for myself. Then I discovered the bad news, the companies that make the most popular cookie on the planet went and changed the recipe. To pacify the vegetarians they made the most beloved cookie vegan. There is a reason why milk and eggs were part of the recipe to begin with, it made the cookie good. Now the divine dessert has become artificial treat to appease such a small group.

The cookies still taste somewhat the same to those that only partake of the chocolate minty disk occasionally, but to those that worship the chocolate covered wafer, it leaves an artificial aftertaste.

Customer Service incompetence

Four companies that I had to deal with in the past week all have one thing in common, customer service incompetence. With my cellphone not wanting to function correctly I had to deal with Straight Talk's joke of a customer service center, these mindless drones simply read off a script from the computer screen no matter if you inform them you already performed the task they are wanting you to do, turn the phone off turn it back on, take the Sim card out, replace it, did that work? No I already did this yesterday when I called.

Suddenlink has also failed me, called to have a appointment made for a land line to be installed, no problem, "I have you set for Thursday between 4 - 6pm." No one ever showed, called to find out my account had no appointments scheduled. Also had the problem of when I called through Hangout dialer since my cellphone was acting up the call was being placed somewhere in Texas. This cause the problem of Suddenlink's routing customer service to a area that didn't serve my own area. "Sorry I cannot help you let me transfer you..." over and over again.

Both the postal service and FedEx has grown incompetent. The postal service had kept me on hold for a total of 2.5 hours waiting to resolve a problem of where my package was instead of where it should have been. FedEx is the newest offender, had a package scheduled to be picked up today, they never showed. After calling five times and being hung up by the automated line I finally got through to a live person. He tried to claim they had no information on such a package scheduled. He magically found it then claimed it was scheduled for the 25th and not today the 24th. That's a lie since I had called previously and was guaranteed that someone would be at my house to pick up the package between 6 - 8pm.

Cellphone aggravations

Ordered a new cellphone from straight talk recently to replace my LG Nexus 4 that was having problems charging, seems like the usb connector had a short. Received the new Samsung Galaxy S4 mini in record time and swap service over to it. within 24hrs started noticing service connection problems, it would have a two - four signal bars but would refuse to connect when making a call. Spent three days on the phone with customer service going through the same process of removing battery, removing sim card, turning off and turning back on, airplane mode on and off. Then having to wait a couple days before I had a chance to call a certain department that closed earlier than the rest of the call center. Straight Talk finally decide that the phone was faulty and decided to replace my phone.

Received my box that contained a empty padded envelope and return label, I was to return my defective phone before they would even send my a replacement. As I type this the package is waiting for the FedEx truck to show up to start its journey.

With realizing how difficult it is to contact customer service of straight talk when the phone itself is causing the problems I decided to have a land line phone installed in my house. I haven't had a land line in over a decade, since moving out on my own. It simply seem unimportant to have a land line when I lived alone and was always gone away from the house either at work or visiting friends.

Will continue once something develops.

Judgement Day

People are in the streets pillaging and rioting, there is no bread or milk to be seen on the grocery shelves. Is it the historic winter storm in the northeast? No sorry. People are armoring up their vehicles and barricading themselves in their homes. Twinkies are being consumed before they spoil when those that stockpiled them realize they had expiration dates. Is this the rise of the machines? Maybe. Get in line for your battery pod to power our new masters, Facebook is down. The machines are done collecting data to produce our simulated world so that they can rule the real one. This isn't the happy go lucky world found in the matrix, this world is filled with duck faced girls that are overly tan. There is nothing but reruns of reality shows on all channels. And someone is constantly performing an epic fail.

Wait what? Facebook is back on? Never mind, go back to watching cute kitties and post obnoxious meme pictures.

Plane Till

Have been absent from blogging for awhile. Since Christmas I have been out working in the shop on my days off. We have been trying to get everything set up and in working order. The big tools that dad brought needed tuning up and rust removed. I have also been working on tool storage to get everything organized and kept in order.

Till still needing couple coats of polyurethane

The plane till was planned to hold only the planes I thought I would use the most. I decided on storing two no. 4's, two no. 5's, a no. 5 1/2, a no. 6, a no. 7, and a no. 40. To keep the weight from being one sided I alternated the planes, the bigger planes near the sides and the smaller planes in the middle. I ended up with a panel 24.5"x23.5" made up of three pieces of pine, they were glued together and reinforced on the back side with two strips spanning the three boards.

Three boards made up the till panel, once glued they were planed smooth.

The top edge was going to be against the wall so I needed to put a fine angle to the top edge. the table saw only went to 45° so it was out, the radial arm saw would do the 62° I need but was limited on the width of board. I have never tried to rip with the RAS before but it was my only option to get a consistent cut. Saw was raised, tilted, and turned to do the rip cut, dad had warned me the risk of ripping on the RAS and to be cautious. Went nice and slow pushing the panel through and left a small area where the saw didn't cut. Quick use of the rasp removed the uncut area.

Wonder if the compound miter saws do something like this?

Milled a few pieces of 7/16" square stock to make the dividers in between the planes. Used a old gift card as shims to give a little wiggle room for the planes. The dividers were attached with brass screws, no glue was used so they can be removed and rearranged.

fitting the planes' dividers

Case was put together, added a couple of shelves above the till and the mounting boards were put in to give the case structure stability before attaching the till.

fitting the panel into the case

 During the most of the construction process Morris loved to come over and "help" once hopping up and laying down onto of the till. Tonight he decided he supervised enough and went to sleep in the new box dad modified for him and added his blankets in.

Morris gave up supervising

Well Christmas is over with

At least for me it is. Due to work schedules my family did celebrated Christmas this past Sunday. My sister, brother in law, niece and my mother all came in from Benton. Dad and step mom came over and we all had a nice late lunch together. We were only missing my other sister, her husband, and two kids.

Sorry for not updating on the renovation of the living room. Everything came together, some needed a little encouragement to fit right but everything is done except for refinishing the wood floors, that was earmarked as a later project.

Having a house full of people was somewhat difficult for me. I discovered my social anxiety has gotten worse, trying to listen to give different people asking or telling me something overwhelmed me. There was a moment I even fled my house to the shop to get away. I love my family and this shouldn't have happened.

Living room renovation, discontinued ceiling tiles

Walls are up and painting is finished. While dad is working on making the window and door facing I went ahead and worked on the ceiling. There is really nothing wrong with the ceiling tiles that are there except from the damage done to them from the panels being pulled from the walls. I liked the fresh clean look of the ceiling tiles that I put up in the kitchen, 12x12 interlocking Styrofoam tiles. They were $29 for a box of 64.

Yesterday I called the hardware store that had them to check to see if they still had them in stock. Found out that they have been discontinued due to the factory shutting down. They only had the pressed cardboard tiles which cost $32 for a box of 32. With Christmas coming up I rather not spend that much on tiles.

This wouldn't have been as much of a big deal if I hadn't already pulled down a third of the ceiling in the living room. Throwing away the tiles that had the damage and paint on them Cheapest option would be to paint the damage areas on the few tiles and make it blend in, replace the tiles I have left and to pull a few tiles from the hallway and replace those in the near future. Another option is to pull the rest of the ceiling and hope I have enough tiles from the hallway to replace all the damaged tiles. Third option is to bite the bullet and spend the money on the more expensive tiles.