Today is *NOT* Thanksgiving!

 Posted by at 11:59  Down with, principles, rants
Jan 012014
 

You read right folks, today is not Thanksgiving, it is Black Friday Eve.  If you haven’t, read Ralph’s post from yesterday, he explains things well.   So is this the first step to abolishing Turkey Day?  I was driving around the other day trying to get the last of the stuff for Thanksgiving, I mean Black Friday Eve, and all I saw was Christmas stuff and Black Friday sales.

It was Monday of this week and Wal-Mart had already discounted what little Thanksgiving stuff (napkins, plates and the like) they had.  I didn’t see one “Happy Thanksgiving” banner or anything that didn’t have to do with the mighty and all powerful Black Friday.  Commercials on the TV are toting the virtues of black Friday and opening up stores at midnight, if they even are closed for Thanksgivng Black Friday Eve.

I have to say this MUST be the beginning of the end.  Soon the turkey tradition will be gone, replaced with Black Friday specials at Burger King, Chick-Fil-A and Sizzler (just 3 places that I saw who were open on Black Friday Eve.)  We will soon grab a whopper and go home to not watch football games, but whole hour long blocks of commercials sponsored by Toys-R-Us and Wal-Mart.

Amazon.com will probably join in and offer Black Friday Eve promotions that start at 10 AM  on the Thursday that used to be Thanksgiving.  Like Ralph said yesterday, there is no differentiation between holiday’s anymore.  I try very hard to keep Christmas separate from everything else.  I fight tooth and nail in order to keep Christmas from invading until after Thanksgiving.

It still trickles in not long after the Halloween decorations go down.  I am accepting this little by little but I will be damned if that tree is up and decorated before the turkey carcass is cooled.  But there are deals and presents available sometime around election day.  Bah.  Humbug.  Even the bell ringers were out on that Monday BEFORE Thanksgiving, er Black Friday Eve.

POMPANO BEACH, FL - OCTOBER 08: Wal-Mart empl...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I for one will not be participating in Black Friday festivities this year.  Despite the lack of money to participate, I have lost the desire to brave the cold and crowds for a few good deals that are mostly gone by the time I get there.  On the news last Saturday, there were already people camping out at Best Buy.  What a load of, well, this is still supposed to be a PG-13 blog so I had better save that line.  You get the gist of it.  Plus, if you want a secret, MOST of the deals you can get on Black Friday are also available online.  Many you can get at Amazon for nearly the same price right now.

Speaking of Amazon, if you like this blog and would like to help Ralph, Bob and myself spread some Christmas cheer, please link to Amazon with our affiliate link over there in the right sidebar.  It will take you to Amazon.com where you can shop to your hearts content and not pay anymore than you normally would.  We just get a small portion for sending you there.  Enough commercial.

Are you planning on hitting the sales this Black Friday or even this Black Friday Eve?  Are you giving up?  Are you going to attempt to hang onto tradition and have THANKSGIVING?!?!?  I am.  I would like to hear your plans down in the comments.

for now, I have to check some ads and try to figure out what to get people for Christmas.  I did just get an email about quality fake ids…

Have a good one,

-Justin

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Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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How things have changed…

 Posted by at 11:58  Plain 'ol Cantankerous, principles, rants, Reflections
Jan 012014
 
English: Modern bronze statue of Julius Caesar...

English: Modern bronze statue of Julius Caesar, Rimini, Italy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I am really excited to have a guest post here on Cantankerous Old Coots.  It seems so long since there has been any activity from my fingers that hasn’t included building a site for an actual paying customer that this really does seem like Ralph Carlson blog part 2.  But, Ralph is in Rome trying to walk in the footsteps of Caesar and hopefully miss out on the end of that story.  Ralph has traveled a lot over the past couple of years, this is his second time to Italy, and he spent Christmas in Buenos Aries.  One of these days he is just going to stay somewhere and we will get vague tweets and requests for ransom money.

 

 

But I digress.  Again.  Where is this whole blogging thing going?  I am not sure I hate the world enough to be as cantankerous as I need to be.  Living in my little bubble of ignorance is great, but not as far as a good rant is concerned.  Sure Bob keeps me abreast of the Gestapo tactics that the government of the good old USA is adopting, and the Stalinistic tactics of the NSA, but I feel that it is more Bob’s purview to write on those things.  I am too busy getting ready to build a bunker in the mountains.

I have seen what apathy does to a blog.  I have seen what furious posting does for this blog.  The worst part?  They are not that much different.  So is blogging dead for me?  No.  Do I need to prioritize better? Yes.  Do I need to keep pumping everything I can into an actual paying job?  Yep.  I have promised before to write more.  I am pretty sure that my writing and a lump of petrified dinosaur crap will get you a wry look and a “Yea, ok.  Good luck with that.” response.

The future?  Keep building websites for money.  Blog when I feel like it.  Hope that Ralph doesn’t end up in some Roman orgy jail.  Think about doing another podcast.  Sleep.  I am not sure anymore.  My kids are out of school and, well, my brain is fried 3 weeks into it.

Back to work on that other site.  That actually pays money.  From this point on to be referred to as Stalag 13, without Hogan.

stalag13

-Later, I hope

-Justin

 

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Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Down with Spam!

 Posted by at 15:46  Down with, rants
Nov 232013
 

This is not a new topic.  This is not even fun.  There are probably ten million posts about the evils of spam and here is another one.  Evey morning for the past week or more I have been bombarded with over 400 of the same message, from the same sender.  And they all are about viagra.

I really have tried to unsubscribe from these but I still end up with a ton of email.  It is easy enough to delete but still, it takes so much time sorting through the crap.  I know each and every one of you out there are sick of it too.  Monty python has a slightly different take on spam:

That is still one of the funniest sketches ever.  Now, onto email.  There are those lists you get on that you may even opt on for that send you so much $#!^ every day they might as well be spam.  And these guys are the ones who say how much they hate spam as much as you do.  Maybe that is why our email list here is so anorexic.

These “bombardment marketers” (hey I coined a new phrase let’s get that out there) give everyone a bad name.  We have been trying to grow our list here at the coots and so far, it is pathetically small.  It is populated only by those who write here at the coots, plus a pity subscribe from Dr. Doolin from website in a weekend.  Even Bob was assimilated er invited to join the coots after his joining of the list.

It leads me to theorize.  There are 2 possibilities when it comes to our email list here.  One: people are so afraid of getting bombarded with Cantankerous Spam that they don’t sign up, or, Two: they found out that we make subscribers write for us.  I suspect number one is the culprit.  Here is the skinny on that though, I have been so disappointed with the lack of signups that I have sent out Zero emails to the list.  People on the list probably have forgotten about it.

Even the bait of a free ebook in what promises to be a fantastic course on how to be Cantankerous has not helped.  But I am going to put it out there again, with our fantastic new sign up pop up and the little sign up form right over there———>

Or below.  We will give you the fabulous ebook that includes the first five lessons from the Coots University as well as exclusive Cantankerousness and future discounts to the full course when it comes about.  Sign up below, I swear you will not receive 50 emails from us a day.  You will be lucky to get one a month.  If I feel like it.  It is hard to lose with a deal like that.

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Maybe I will get some hacker buddies together and figure out some code that will destroy the servers of anyone who sends out spam.  That would be worth an email sign up or two I am sure.

Have a Great weekend.  Halloween is Sunday, go dress up as something scary and frighten the children.  Then come back and tell me about it!

-Jusitn

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Don’t look now, it’s Podcast #8!

 Posted by at 09:16  Coots Lessons, Podcast, rants
Oct 252013
 
saino

Image by razvan.orendovici via Flickr

Ha!  I am back with a new podcast, dusted off and back from the grave.  I bet you were thinking there would be no more of my ramblings, or some of you hoping it.  Or you could be one of the 7 listeners that actually sticks it out to the end without turning it off or wanting to stick a gun in your mouth.

At any rate here is a new podcast, just begging for you to listen to a lot of begging.  And I am not really sure what this picture has to do with anything in this post, but the plugin has some strange ideas of things to accompany a post.

[powerpress]

Thanks for listening, don’t forget to stay Cantankerous!

-Justin.

PS. I was serious about the feedback, topic ideas and ramblings.  Go and look now at your heart and contribute.


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Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Today a Video

 Posted by at 04:47  rants
Sep 212013
 

Today you don’t get a rant.

One thing and another and I just didn’t manage to get my thinking to congeal around a post today.  Still, Wednesday is my post day and so for a fallback I prepared a video.  All things considered, by the time I got the editing done, I might as well have written a post.  Still, with each one thing and another, I am getting more familiar with my new video production software.  Today is more of a whine than a rant but if you like the blog, then give us a heads up about what is working and what isn’t.

If you have never left a comment, then just say hello down below.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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