Tag: bad luck

Pre-Lit Christmas Tree Lights

On By Michel McDonaldIn Christmas3 Comments

Darrin bought a Christmas tree at Sears in 2007.  We never celebrated Christmas with a tree before that because it was Chips job was to decorate Trees every year at department stores, so he just didn’t like the thought of having to decorate trees anymore.  He didn’t think I would want to so we just never had a tree.  I was so happy that he bought this one because I just love to decorate it every year.  It was a tradition throughout my childhood to have a tree and I never got that as an adult until the last few years.

Unfortunately, when you buy a pre-lit tree, you have complications with the light sets.  This one light set in the front went out last year and I could never figure out how to fix it.  I tried pulling out the fuses and replacing them but that didn’t work.  I tried pulling out every light from the whole set, but that didn’t work.  I was at my wits end with this tree because it wasn’t just this T shape in the front, most of the lights in the back were out too.

I finally found the problem today.  The tree is still up because I didn’t want to take it down until I found the issue, and I did.  Here is the issue.  The first light in each light set has a white plastic … what are those things called?

The white one is a different shape from the green one, so you can’t just put the green one in it’s place; and the bulbs in the white ones are glued in.  I was afraid if I tried to pull the white one out, the bulb would break and cut my fingers.  I did eventually get it out though and was able to take the bulb from a green one and put it in its place and replace the bulb which lit the whole set back up.

I am down to 4 replacement bulbs and there are still at least 3 sets that are out so I’m going to fix them today.  I tried looking for these bulbs to buy a new replacement pack, but nobody has them.  It’s just my bad luck isn’t it?  I did find that they have them at NewEgg, but they are out of stock.  I clicked the “AUTO-NOTIFY” button and left a note saying “I need these in about 11 months LOL” so when they get them in, hopefully I can buy them for $14.99.  I don’t need the set, just the bulbs.  If I can find the replacement bulbs at the hardware store in a little pack of like 10 or 20 then I’ll buy that.  I don’t care how I get the bulbs, I just want them because they don’t last very long; I have already gone through the entire package of replacement bulbs that came with the tree.

So if anyone else has had the same issue, now you know how to fix it.  It’s the white one…

Friendly Spam

On By Michel McDonaldIn Email, SpamLeave a comment

Is there such thing as friendly spam?  I don’t know, all I know is I much prefer spam fried and on bread with mayo.

I get a lot of emails every day advertising something like porn, penis enlargement, weight loss, and from various companies like Pepsi and Dairy Queen and even news emails from newsmax.com.  I don’t care for them, I just immediately delete them, that is if they don’t find themselves in my spam folder.

If it wasn’t bad enough getting those spam emails, I get tons of other spam from people that I know.  Friends send me spam constantly.  I get either petitions or chain letters and they are all guilting me into sending them to 10 or more people.  The petitions say that I have to sign my name at the end of the email then forward it to 10 people and those 10 people sign it and forward it.  First of all, those petitions don’t do any good because they never get to who they are intended to go to and 2nd whoever they are sent to don’t take them seriously.

The chain ones say if you don’t send it out to 10+ people you will have bad luck.  I don’t believe they will give me good or bad luck.  No voodoo priestess enchanted an email to give you good or bad luck OK.  There is no luck with chain letters or chain emails.

The spam I hate, really really hate are religious emails that friends and family send me.  Sometimes that’s all they send me and when I email them they don’t even respond to my emails at all so I start to wonder why I even have them in my address book at all.  Why don’t I just block their emails from coming to me.  I hate religious emails.  It’s like they are shoving their god or Jesus down my throat.  I don’t send gay emails to everyone shoving homosexuality down their throats so what gives them the right to do that to me?

This one person who I met on the greyhound as I was going to visit my aunt in 2000 or something who I gave my email address to sends me nothing but religious emails and yesterday she spammed me with about 10 emails with all of her YouTube videos.  Yeah, I’ve seen them and they aren’t new, I don’t know why she feels the need to share them with me again.  One of them is a video of this guy in his 50’s or 60’s and he’s sleeping with a laptop on his lap and he’s sleeping sitting up but hunched over the computer and she’s laughing and saying MySpace addict.  I didn’t see MySpace up on the screen.  It was just the desktop with icons.  How does that make him a MySpace addict?  It just makes him a laptop addict.  That makes no sense to me so I don’t even respond to it.

Frankly, I’m sick of getting emails from anybody because that’s the only crap they send me.  I think there are 2 people who send me emails with conversation in them who I correspond with and that’s it.  All the rest feel the need to spam me on a daily basis.  I don’t mind the jokes or the puppy/kitty/baby pictures, those I love to see and the jokes and comic strips are really funny.  But don’t shove god/chain/petitions down my throat unless you are prepared to get a 20 page email about homosexuality.

Bad Luck

On By Michel McDonaldIn CyclingLeave a comment

I have the worst luck of anybody in this whole universe.  I don’t know what I ever did, maybe my karma sucks really bad.  I went to ride my bike for a minute or 2 so I could see if the bent tire would be ok and as soon as I opened the back gate then set my bike up with the kickstand so I could close the gate, the kickstand went back in and the bike fell and guess what?  My brand new rear view mirror broke right off.  So now I need a new one.  I’ve had bad luck with crazy glue and plastic.  If I glued it with crazy glue then every time I adjust it, it will fall off.  ARGH!