A Crummy Commercial

Hearing that Mike Ditka died the first thing I was reminded of was this:  I am still living in the Chicago area, so 1993 or before, watching the NBC NFL either pre-game or post-game show.  Ditka is one of the guys behind the desk - this might have been his first broadcast.  He is chewing gum.  I suppose they wouldn't let him smoke ?  Anyway the host "throws" it over to Mike for a comment and there is dead silence.  A couple of heart beats later Ditka says something like: "I almost swallowed my gum !"  What a dope ! I tried looking on Youtube but didn't find any videos - probably just as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Ditka Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I went in to Mann's Store on Thursday.  I noticed that they had the new sale flyer displayed.  But none were left, Thursday is the new Wednesday !  Any Mann's shopper in the winter soon learns that the cupboards are often bare the afternoon of the 2nd day after the truck delivery.  I was informed that the flyer was online at the same old stand: https://www.mannsgrocery.com/WeeklyAd/Index/ Here's the first "new" Mann's sale flyer: kind of a cram job at the bottom but OK Four Color !!  I didn't see a PDF downloadable version but it's fairly easy to download the two JPG files from the page source.  The two picture files are much smaller than the previous PDF file of the sale flyer, so that's a win overall.  The sale now runs from Wednesday to Tuesday, previously it was 6 days, Monday to Saturday. The last Mann's sale flyer I saw was from the week of September 7-12, 2026, roughly a month ago.  The weird thing is that as a consumer I buy less IF I d...

I never knew that Tommy Lee Jones has been selling canned coffee (Boss) in Japan for decades !: source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk7oj6_qj3I   source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8xRT_UlyTM Seeing that Tommy Lee Jones frozen face I couldn't help but think of Buster Keaton (here with one of his dogs): I guess the moral is: never smile, ever ! and you will be a success even if you work with scene stealing dogs. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was pleased to get some kit inquiries recently, I had several promises of "checks in the mail".  The first one arrived yesterday.  When I went to create a mailing label I was shocked: The price on this 4 oz parcel sent USPS Ground Advantage to the southeast US from the Island was $8.24 !  On October 3rd the rate was $5.58.  8.24 / 5.58 = 1.48 or roughly a 50 percent increase.  How will anyone on Ebay be able to sell a postpaid item for less than $10 ? A Bing search revealed this: The six percent lie: it's more like 48 percent for kit parcels   My kit customer only paid $6 for shipping so that's $2.24 out of my pocket to send this order :( I've raised shipping to $9 per order immediately (1.5 times the old $6 rate).  The new USPS rate is supposed to be temporary but I suspect it will be made permanent in 2027 :( http://wb9kzy.com/shiphand.htm The $90 bribe windfall mentioned yesterday will cover any shipping shortfall in orders that were mailed befor...

An email from Discover informed me of this: $90 bribe rebate from Social Security.  Big dealo - an office visit to the local clinic is $269.  If these are truly refunds they should have been delivered sooner, right ?  I also got $23 cash back from a CC card today, another big whoop.  Does anyone really care enough about $90 to change a vote or go and vote rather than stay home ? Anyway, back to regularly scheduled blogging: I thought these nutrition labels from whole wheat bread were interesting: Brownberry 100% Whole Wheat Bimbo 100% Whole Wheat . I don't think this was 100% whole wheat though I can't get any of these anymore.  Pepperidge Farms honey wheat bread now seems to be available at Mann's - I guess it will continue in the future with the new distributor ? : this is even worse, a full teaspoon of sugar in each slice Basically a fair bit of sugar is added to bread.  2 grams per slice is 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar.  So depending on the loaf, ...

In wins: both the Packers and the Brewers won on Sunday.  First the Packers beat a winless team by 3 points.  The Buccaneers had an undrafted, 2nd string rookie QB and actually played pretty well: The Brewers walked off the hottest team in MLB: : I hope both the Brewers and the Packers can make their way to championships this season ! Also, I (not being that bright) never noticed that the open roof on Miller Park (now American Family Field) resembles the pie shaped wedge of a baseball field: And that the baseball field roof and the Calatrava "wings" kinda recall each other, they both fold and move: Someday I gotta get down there and see them in person. Anyway, a good victory Monday for Wisconsin. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Sorry, I won't bother to watch this sloppy AI video: As an old QA IC test engineer, one thing I know is that the SN7400 had 14 pins (7 on each side of a DIP package), six must have seemed reasonable to the AI and the sloppy human initiator. Brewers win the the first game with the Padres on Saturday: A couple of homers by the Brewers, just enough to win, no style points in MLB. A timer for the playoffs: Usually I use my Morse Dial Timer so I can mute the radio but noticed in the first Brewers Padres playoff game, the commercial breaks have lengthened for the network commercials away from the usual 2:15 to 2:45 ?  2 minutes isn't long enough and 3 minutes is too long.  This built-in Windows 11 timer can be set for hours/minutes/seconds so will try that in game 2.  Here is the online doc for the timer: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/how-to-use-alarms-and-timers-in-the-clock-app-in-windows Tony Romo and CBS part ways: Maybe Tony will "pick-up a coupla CBS bu...