This and That | Ain't Complicated

What’s on Your Mind?

Yeah, I know.

That’s Facebook’s line.

But they’ve been having issues over there.

So this is my Pay the Community Back post.

Facebook refugee, itching to tell the world what’s on your mind and unable to do so there, you’ve found a place of refuge.

So tell us in the comments below: What is on your mind?!

The Budget

First, I saw it mentioned in the print edition of World Magazine.

Then I saw a Google Alert link to it at the Los Angeles Times.

No, no, no! Not the federal budget. The Budget.

We used to “take” the Budget. I bought Ruby a one-year subscription several years ago. She enjoyed using it to catch up on old friends from Bible School days. Maybe I should teach her how to use Facebook as a less-expensive substitute.

Well, anyway. Here’s a bit from the LA Times piece:

For the Amish, newspapers are in no danger

With online competitors posing no threat, the Budget holds steady, linking communities with news about new silos, tomato blight and neighbors who’ve been kicked by a horse.

[…]

The Budget is not your typical newspaper. Since 1890, it has served as the primary communication link among Amish settlements across the country.

And at a time when papers big and small are struggling amid plummeting circulation and intense online competition, the Budget is holding steady. The vast majority of the paper’s reporters — called scribes — are Amish and Mennonite volunteers, hundreds of men and women who send handwritten dispatches in from rural outposts. Their only payment is a free subscription, worth $42 a year.

I should see if they need a scribe from Yoder, Oregon. Maybe I could pen a weekly report as a handwritten dispatch from our rural outpost. That’d be pretty neat.

“This is news we care about, and it comes fast enough for us.”

That sounds kinda revolutionary these days.

(OK, OK — they do have a Web site: The Budget.) 😯

Boggle 4

Need something constructive for your mind?

Try this:

a reminder of how we play the game here at Ain’t Complicated:

Minimum word length: four letters
No plurals created by adding s
Maximum words per player per day: five
No time limit
Only what you can see

Item 5 means do not use online sources to generate words. This rule applies only for the first two days of the game.

Remember, please: Five words per player per day.

Thanks!

Oh, this is one of the “rolls of the dice” Ruby and Andrew and I played a night or three ago.

Driving in Arizona

No, this isn’t to let you know where I am. Nor is it to post photos taken on an drive through Arizona.

The masked speeder: Photo-radar scofflaw is a beast at the wheel

Speed-camera photos of the man in the monkey and giraffe masks have generated lots of chuckles. But the cops aren’t laughing.

Dave VonTesmar, 47, started getting the $181.50 tickets last year, but it took Department of Public Safety officials several months to realize the same driver was repeatedly triggering speed cameras and refusing to pay the fines. By the time they did, more than 50 of the tickets had become invalid because the deadline for prosecution had passed.

[…]

In Arizona, people who get photo-enforcement tickets in the mail have four options: agree they were driving and pay the fine; say they weren’t driving and send in their driver’s license photo as proof; request a court date and fight the ticket; simply ignore the ticket because law enforcement can’t prove alleged violators received it. The ticket becomes invalid if a violator who ignores it isn’t served in person within three months.

That last provision is extremely interesting (and amazing) to me. So if I’m driving home to Oregon from a visit to Mexico and get in photo speeding ticket while transiting Arizona, I don’t have to pay it…unless they serve me the ticket in person?

And that’s the way their photo radar law is set up?

Well, anyway, the story continues:

VonTesmar, who said he simply drives with the flow of traffic, said that if the DPS does have surveillance photos of him on the road, it proves he’s not a danger to other drivers. If he were, the DPS would have pulled him over, he said.

Because the speed cameras begin snapping photos of drivers going 11 mph or more over the limit, the backlash against them has been fairly constant. Arizonans have used sticky notes, Silly String and even a pickax to sabotage the cameras.

I am very picky about staying within the speed limit. I believe that’s how Christians should drive. So the presence of photo radar cameras doesn’t affect my driving. Even so, something about their use just doesn’t seem right.

Oh. And if you were a law breaker and got a ticket, pay it.

PS: This guy works as a flight attendant for which airline? Southwest? Their stewards tend to be clowns. I think.

Oh…and another thing: To get to the full story, you’ll need to go to

OK, now we’ll see how many hits that title snags!

Just so you don’t get your hopes up, though, this is all I’m going to show you:

You may click on it to read it in full size, if you wish.

So what’s the point of this post?

Why, I want to zero in on some things for you, that’s what! For instance, these three folders:

Mark Roth's emailbox -- a real, clipped screenshot

So much in the Trash — and most of it is spam! 😐

And most of what’s in Hold For Later is also spam. I’m saving it so I can use that info to fine tune the filters at a later date.

And of these five here in the In box, three are spam:

Imagine if all those were true (and not just two of them).

Me? Earning $50 an hour will doing the “pen blog posts” thing?

Me? Being in some Super Duper Important Who’s Who?

Me? Doing talk radio as a host and contacting people with “Talk Radio Invitations”?

🙄 Right.

How gullible do these email marketers spammers take me to be?

Rhetoric aside, even though the above images all appear to be reductions or clippings of the same image, they actually are the same image. Ahhh, the wonders of CSS (cascading style sheets). Maybe sometime I’ll tell you how it’s done.

(I’m anxious to get this finished, posted, and out of the way so I can post five more photos I took here at Luke and LaVay’s place near Madras, Oregon.)