Wal-Mart Thieving Milk Scam

My one reader may remember last week, or the week before when I said I would not set foot inside that corrupt bastion of bad behavior that calls itself Krogers, due to chronic, over and over again price mistakes that I really think should have some Kroger employee sometime somewhere charged with theft just like Kroger's would with a shoplifter.

I've mentioned before that while Wal-Mart sometimes makes mistakes, with Wal-Mart it can go either way, their favor or mine, unlike Krogers where it is always in their favor. Which is what makes Krogers' pricing mistakes seem like purposeful thievery.

Now back to Wal-Mart. For months now Wal-Mart has been selling milk at $1.98 a gallon. Last week on the way back from Southlake I knew I neeed a gallon, so I stopped at the North Richland Hills Wal-Mart Supercenter, took the 2 mile walk to the back where the milk is, saw the BIG "GALLON MILK $1.98" sign.

Walked the 2 miles back to the self-checkouts. Quickly scanned the milk and it rang up as $2.00. I think to myself, how stupid, but 2 cents was not worth fussing about. That and I was in a hurry.

Now, today I was in Chinatown in Arlington. On the way back from that I went to the Tandoor Indian Restaurant (again) for their lunch buffet. After on the way back here I remembered I needed milk again.

So, I stop at my neighborhood Eastchase Wal-Mart Supercent, run in, well, more accurately I walked quickly in, made the 2 mile journey to the back of the store, saw the $1.98 sign I'm used to see. Grabbed my milk and quickly made the 2 mile trek back to the front of the store.

Scanned the milk and you can see the result in the picture of the receipt above. Again, $2.00

So, almost a week after the first incident, at a different store, and now again today, Wal-Mart got 2 cents more than I thought I was going to be paying them. Now, if Wal-Mart is running this Milk Scam system wide that could add up to a lot of pennies.

I suspect Wal-Mart employs psychologists, just like Microsoft does, to try and figure out how much pain they can inflict before their customers react. The research probably showed something like only 1 in 3,459 customers was even going to notice the mistake and that only 1 in 55,493 of those who do notice would take the time to wait in the Customer Service line to complain. The research probably also showed that something like 1 in 433,356 of those who notice the mistake will blog about it and at that time they'd have to label the blogger a crackpot.

America's First Dog Bo Is A Texan

President Obama finally got around to making good on yet one more of his campaign promises, this one being the one he made to his little girls that they could have a pet dog if they moved to the White House.

It has to be a special type dog due to one of the girls being allergic. A Portuguese Water Dog met those criteria.

The First Dog is named Bo. Bo used to be named Amigo's New Hope when he went to his first adopted home. But those adopters did not work out. Bo was not homeless for long before Senator Edward Kennedy bought him to give to the Obama girls.

Who I guess re-named him Bo. Bo Obama has a nice ring to it.

Bo is a native Texan, born in Boyd at Amigo Portuguese Water Dogs. Boyd is a small town about 30 miles northwest of Fort Worth.

So, it did not take Texas very long to get another native son back in the White House.

Bo sure is a cute dog. He reminds me of my nephew, Max.

Volunteer To Help Me At The Prairie Fest

The 4th Annual Fort Worth Prairie Fest is happening in less than 2 weeks, on April 25. Volunteers are needed to help me set up the Festival.

You probably could use some good fresh air and exercise. And you've been wanting to do something different with some different fun people. This is your chance.

Volunteers are needed on April 24 (the day before the festival) from Noon til Dark for pre-festival set-up. And on April 25 (festival day) to help from 7 am til 9:30 am.

If you can help, please call Prairie Fest Headquarters at 817.731.2787 or email Debora Young to let it be known what day and time you can help out.

It is a Happy Wet Easter in Texas

I am very sad to say I got not a one invite to have ham anywhere on this drippy Easter Sunday in Texas. I wonder if Zorro's Buffet has ham today?

On Friday I blogged about Good Friday and my bafflement at the whole Jesus died for your sins thing. And then was miraculously back living again shortly thereafter. All part of his Dad's plan to save the souls of the earthbound humans.

This morning's Dallas Morning News had a full page ad on this subject. That's the ad in the picture.

There is a note under a hammer and three spikes. The note says...

Son,
I need you to Build a Bridge, here are all the tools you will need. See you soon.
Love, Dad

P.S. Sorry I had to have you killed in such a brutal, painful way. But it had to be done for the greater good of all the humans I've created.

Okay. I added the P.S. It seemed to fit the theme. Isn't it a tad blasphemous for a newspaper ad to make up words from God in a trite note referencing the murder of Jesus? Oh, I just remembered, the entire Bible consists of mortal men making up words from God.

I was afraid that my Good Friday blogging might stir up some thumping being that I'm sitting on the Buckle of the Bible Belt.

But there were only 2 comments and neither seemed to be from Planet Loony Bin. Although one did make the comment all in capital letters, which is the Internet method of shouting.

Bryce said...

It sounds like God has really got you thinking about His Son.

And then Anonymous shouted...

OH DURANGO, SAD , SO VERY SAD.AH.. BUT THERE IS HOPE, ALWAYS, AND HIS MERCY AND LOVE COVERS IT ALL. TAKE THIS FROM SOMEBODY WHO LOVED FREEDOM TO DO WHATEVER, LITTLE BIT OF AGNOSTICISM, LOGICAL AND SARCASTIC ME. YOU WILL FIND HIM, SINCE HE IS ALWAYS THERE. GOD BLESS AND HAPPY EASTER, HE IS RISEN.

Bryce, God didn't get me thinking about anything. I do my own thinking.

Anonymous, thank you for your Happy Easter wishes.

Morbid Obesity, Only Child Syndrome & the World's Biggest Butt

Who knows why, but this Easter morning people from all over the world are coming to this blog looking for the World's Biggest Butt, Only Child Syndrome help and what to do about Morbid Obesity.

Why does this world-wide search for the World's Biggest Butt go through these repeating cycles? I can understand why those who are at the mercy of an Only Child might search for relief and why people are concerned about Morbid Obesity. But the endless quest to find the World's Biggest Butt?

Actually, I can sort of see a connection between big butts, only child syndrome and morbid obesity. As in I've seen all three in one person, more than once.

Anyway, this morning I got the longest comment ever to this blog. The subject was Morbid Obesity. The commenter was my most frequent commenter, that being Anonymous.

Below is what Anonymous had to say about Morbid Obesity, complete with reference links Anonymous provided...

I agree with you that morbid obesity is a form of mental illness and often-times bad character, including self-loathing, boundary issues, lack of personal responsibility, delusional thinking and usually obsessive-compulsive.

Survey says grossly obese people even over 400 pounds don't view themselves as overweight so that ought to be a tip off right there that there is something horribly wrong with them.

"...Indeed, among adults who met the National Institutes of Health criteria for being obese, only 15 percent realized they were obese, notes Kimberly P. Truesdale of the University of North Carolina. She says that her team's findings, which she reported in San Francisco earlier this month at the Experimental Biology '06 meeting, have important public health implications: "If [obese] people don't identify with being obese, then they're most likely going to ignore messages warning of health risks."..."

Most of them claim it's some kind of thyroid problem, but even people with thyroid difficulties who wish to be healthy can manage it.

It's a lack of self-control and often a method of trying to force other people to give them sympathy and special treatment while themselves lacking empathy for others.

Many morbidly obese are complete power-freaks. Morbidly obese women tend to view all normal weight women as enemies and tend to be bullies and this is true even in childhood.


"...What has struck me is that often the female serial bully is fat, and chooses a slim female target on to whom to project her self-loathing. Envy is a strong motivator for bullies...."

Survey says - most fat people are fat because they are lazy:

Very obese adults almost completely sedentary.

"Morbidly obese adults are sedentary for more than 99 percent of the day, getting only a fraction of the amount of walking that experts recommend for staying healthy, a small study suggests...

...The study of 10 men and women found that participants spent an average of 23 hours and 52 minutes sleeping, lying down or sitting each day...."

Kids Who Lack Self-Control More Prone to Obesity Later

"... In two papers published this week in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, scientists found that preschool-age children who had trouble with self-control and the ability to delay gratification gained more weight by the time they were preteens than those who were better at regulating their behavior..."

Google's Feedburner Burns Me

Okay, I have to say, even though someone kindly mailed me a Blogging For Dummies book, and even though I read that entire book, including the chapter about Feeds, I still don't understand the concept.

As in what is the point of burning a feed? And why do people subscribe to a feed? Rather than just going directly to a blog, if you like that blog?

Soon after I started this blog I, to use the vernacular, burned a feed of this blog, using Feedburner. At that point in time Google had not yet acquired Feedburner.

Feedburner had a 'monetize' option. It seemed easy to set up. You could use your Google AdSense code. However, Feedburner had you adding code to your blog layout. This was totally screwed up. It did not add the ads to the Feedburner feed. Instead it messed up the ads in the blog. So, I removed the code from the layout.

Time passed and Google bought Feedburner. I was then told I could manage Feedburner ads from my AdSense account. So, I did so. I enabled ads for feeds. But the ads still did not show up in Feedburner. They showed up in the html code for Feedburner. You could see the space where the ads should appear. But no ads appeared in the feed.

But. The Google ads do appear in other feeds. Like Google's News Reader. Why does Google have both Feedburner and Google News Reader? I can't help but wonder.

Are some Feedburner geeks annoyed at being eaten up by the Google monster and retaliating by messing up the Feedburner code?

Another Feedburner thing that bugs me is the number of subscribers. The number goes up and down, constantly. Yesterday it was 47, today it is 45. 45 subscribers? And that's just with Feedburner. And yet when I look at my AdSense account, like I just did, it shows there were only 6 Feedburner page impressions. So, I've got 45 Feedburner subscribers, but of those 45 only 6 pages were looked at? I don't get it.

Anyway, can anyone enlighten me out of my ignorance regarding this Feedburner conundrum?

Taking a Fort Worth Bus to the Tandy Hills

Today a bus riding aficionado talked me into riding Fort Worth mass transit, in the form of a natural gas-powered bus, for the first time. The destination was Tandy Hills Park to do my usual Saturday mountain hike. The distance, about 4 miles.

The bus arrived right on schedule, the #21 bus, pulled up right at 11;52 am. The bus aficionado gave me his pass to swipe through the ticket machine while he bought another ticket for $1.75. He thought it was a round trip ticket. This turned out to be erroneous, we later learned.

I have been on mass transit buses previously in other locales, that being Seattle and my old home zone of the Skagit Valley. In the Skagit Valley they were called SKAT buses, due to it being Skagit Area Transit. Bus rides in the Skagit Valley were free, back then, paid for by a slight increase to the sales tax.

In Seattle the buses are HUGE, long articulated things, meaning the bus is so long, two halves are connected by an accordion like thing so it can go around corners. The Fort Worth bus was quite small and noisy. I loved how the bus zoomed along, like some sort of ride in a theme park. At the most there were 8 passengers on the bus with me today. My last time on a Seattle bus, last summer, zipping through the Seattle bus tunnel, it was standing room only.

On the way to the Tandy Hills the bus stop exit point was not were I was told it would be. This resulted in about a half mile walk on city streets to get to the park. We hiked around for about an hour, then hurried back to Oakland Street to catch a return bus. Got to the bus stop ahead of when the bus should get there.

15 minutes went by. No bus. Called the bus center. After about 5 minutes on the phone we were told the bus was late and had just left the transit station. That meant it should reach where I was standing in about 5 minutes, which it did.

Getting back on the bus I swiped my pass. Then the bus aficionado swiped his and was told it was a one-way ticket, that he'd need to buy another ticket or a transfer pass for 75 cents. The bus aficionado somehow thought that $1.75 got him a roundtrip ticket to go 4 miles each way. When it actually cost $3.00 for a roundtrip ticket. This seemed a bit expensive to me, all things considered. I think I paid 50 cents the last time I took a Seattle bus from the north end to downtown, with Seattle buses being free in the downtown zone. When the bus aficionado bought the $1.75 ticket the driver asked if he wanted a transfer pass, to which the bus aficionado, not knowing what a transfer pass was, said no. With a transfer pass, apparently one could do the 4 mile round trip on one ticket. It all seemed way too confusing to me.

So, the bus aficionado asked me if I had 2 bucks. All I had was 2 ten dollar bills. After way too much brouhaha the super smiling sweet lady bus driver said she'd pay for it. And then we were on our way. A short distance later a lady got off the bus with a huge number of bags filled with groceries. The super sweet always smiling lady bus driver helped the lady get her bags off the bus, helping her get mobile on the sidewalk.

Early on in today's bus ride adventure I was thinking I'm liking this. I always do the driving, it was nice to be able to look around. And the ride was fun. But, by the end of the bus ride adventure it seemed like something I would likely not soon repeat. Even though the bus drivers were very nice.

But, it was a good hike around the Tandy Hills. I saw another illusive Celestial and the sky has now returned to total blue from that unfortunate wildfire haze we had going on a couple days ago.

Ride a Seattle bus with me through the Seattle bus tunnel last summer in the YouTube video below (note all the buses in the tunnel, all as crowded as the one I was on, unlike today's bus ride)....

Texas Temporary School Buildings

No, that is not a minimum security prison in the picture. What it is is windowless temporary school buildings at an elementary school I drive by when I go to the Tandy Hills.

Temp Buildings at schools are a blight all over America. I think my old home state of Washington may have had more temp school buildings than I see at Texas schools, but the Washington ones are not as bleak as the Texas ones that I've seen.

These temp buildings cost money, not as much as a permanent building, obviously, but they still cost money. Why is there not some universal design of these things, some well designed modular, easily assembled structure that has windows and does not look so prison-like.

How much would it cost to end this blight on our schools all across America? To replace all the temp eyesores with a temp building that is not an eyesore. Would it cost $1 billion? $5 billion? $10 billion? Would it cost just a small fraction of the bank bailouts? Would it not be a good stimulus investment?

Temporary school buildings have bugged me for years, way before my move to Texas. They seem like a real penny-wise, pound foolish solution to a real problem, that being having enough classroom space.

The Lone Star Telegraph: A New Blog In Town

One of the Tarrant County Underground's highly principled members, dedicated, among many dedications, to overthrowing the Good Ol' Boy Network and Ruling Junta that keeps Fort Worth and Tarrant County from having a truly representative democracy, has started a Blog.

The goal for this new Blog is to hopefully be a venue by which Tarrant County voices might be heard which the powers that be refuse to listen to.

Or if you have been frustrated by the way the Ruling Junta's mouthpiece, i.e. the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has distorted a letter to the editor that you have submitted, or refused to listen to you tell your situation, that you had hoped the paper would act as an advocate for, doing its duty to shine a light on a dark situation, well, maybe this new Blog can be your mouthpiece.

So, if you have any Tarrant County issues that are bugging you and you have been frustrated in your attempts to get help or be listened to, visit the Star Telegraph. The Star Telegraph wants to help fix things that need fixing.

Celestial Sighting in the Tandy Hills?

I'm happy to report that the hazy, smelly wildfire sky has cleared up and Texas is back smelling good and looking purty as the wildflowers brighten the landscape, except in those unfortunate zones where they got toasted black by a raging wildfire.

It was a bit breezy at noon at the Tandy Hills. That strong breeze had blown yesterday's dark haze somewhere other than here.

When I was last at the Tandy Hills I reported on my frustrating inability to find one of the supposedly ubiquitous celestial wildflowers.

Today, I think I may have found one. It sort of looks like the wildflower that Don Young identified as a celestial. I await confirmation.