Well it’s about time this happened.  As the three dedicated readers I have may have noticed, I’ve run low/out of stupid things to complain about.  It’s not that I don’t want to continue writing, it’s just that I’ve found the following problems:

1. I’ve complained about damn near everything I normally complain about
2. Most of the things I complain about, everyone else does as well (Google: First World Problems)
3. I’m not as angry/bitter as I used to be, so the amount of rage I have to put behind my ramblings makes boring posts.

The bad news is that means I’m officially stopping this blog (for now).  This site will continue to run forever as I still get an average of 30 visits a day via search engines, and it’s hosted on a server I do not have to pay for (Employee benefit at my job).  So all my great rants (all 3 of them), and my horrible ramblings (the rest of the site) will be up for as long as I’m employed.

Fun Fact: This blog has been up for just about 3.5 years, and has gotten just shy of 30,000 visits during that time (At the time of this writing)

The good news is I plan to keep writing!  With that I’m announcing my new blog:

www.hahahathud.com

As I realize I don’t have long to live on this planet, and the chances of me writing/publishing a book are pretty damn slim, and there is always a chance I’ll get Alzheimer’s or suffer a stroke, I figure I should write down some of the more amusing points of my life somewhere.

With that I’m launching Ha Ha Ha Thud (.com), as a place where I will relive my past, and point out mistakes I’ve made.  It’ll be a good time for the whole family!

So thanks to everyone for visiting, feel free to poke around at my old articles, and I hope to see you at my new blog.

~Joel The Great

Today I decided to challenge my intestinal tract by having dinner at a local Chinese Buffet (I survived thankfully).  While there I spotted something that amused me.

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I spend a decent part of my day commuting through a rather populated city.  This means while trying to not get killed by all the tailgating, non-blinker using, cut you off even if you’re their mother idiots out there, I get to see all kinds of vehicles.  I get to see new models, old models, ones that have been abused through out life, ones that have been pampered.  And then there are those that people actively decided to change in some way. I’ve covered something like that with cars before.   But this…this is something new!   Read more…

Back story: McDonald’s runs a promotion/contest every so often that is tied in with the board game Monopoly. The food comes with game pieces that could potentially win you cash and fabulous prizes.  But more likely you will win more bad for you food from McDonald’s, or other worthless crap.  Each game piece has a code you can enter online to hopefully win more useless things.

Even though I do know better, I enjoy me some cheap crappy food from time to time and time again. So when there is a chance for me to buy the McCrap and get free McCrap out of it, I jump at the chance like your mom around sailors.  I did this and won a bunch of Coke Rewards points.  End of back story, what’s my point?   Read more…

This is the continuation of this post: Methodist Hospital (Part 1)

I highly recommend you read that long post first, as it contains all the back story and other bits this story might reference to.  Lets continue to Part 2:  Read more…

I normally do not put personal information on my site.  I try to avoid talking about my family, or any other information like that.  Partially because I’m paranoid and I don’t want me or my family easily researched/cyberstalked.  But the absolute absurdness of what happened to me and my Family at Methodist Hospital requires me to share it.    Read more…

I hate the public.  The people. The places.  The percentage of idiots is just astounding.  Alas, I still need to go to public places.  Stores, restaurants, so on and so forth.  Yes I could cut a lot of that out by other means, but I’m lazy and am not going to cook every meal I eat, or grow my own food.

Recently while I was out enjoying a very high quality expensive dinner with my family (read: I was at Denny’s), I was able to witness great, and horrible parenting within the same meal.  It was amazing.  Read more…

Never in my life have I seen a company so mismanage an order, and have little to no information about what’s going on in their business than I have with HP.

As I mentioned HERE, I am one of the unlucky few in limbo with HP and trying to get their discounted Touchpad tablet. I was able to get a successful order through, but it still hasn’t been processed.   This is how they’ve lost me as a customer…  Read more…

This story is about Hewlett Packard (HP) and their TouchPad fire sale, the first part is kind of a summary for those who aren’t aware, then the ironic/retarded twist in my adventure into the fire sale.

To bring you up to speed if you are a none techie person: HP released a Tablet about 2 months ago called the TouchPad.  About two weeks ago they announced they were scuttling their consumer hardware division, specifically the Tablets/Smartphone division.  Last week/weekend, they announced they were going to liquidate the remaining stock of TouchPad’s in a huge fire sale.  The remaining stock of TP’s that normally sold for $400-$600 was now going to be sold at $100-150 (depending on the model).  More on the TouchPad’s history can be found HERE (See #10), and also HERE, and about the Fire Sale HERE

What ensued was a mass geek grab up.  It was as bad as Black Friday, or the release of a next gen console/Apple product. Online stores servers nearly crashed, stock at certain locations went in minutes (Walmart, Target, OfficeDepot, Staples, you name it).

HP’s EPP site sold out almost instantly, as did it’s consumer site.  And HP’s Small Business site had an error.  They listed the Touchpads at the fire sale price, but when you added them to the cart they showed as the original $399+ price.

My wife has said she wanted an ebook reader every now and then, and $100 for an item that can do that and much more was a bargain.  So I attempted to get me one, and that’s where my adventure begins.

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Recently I was dining with some family at a restaurant of their choosing. It was a decent enough Chinese (Asain?) cuisine type establishment.  Friendly wait staff, decent decorations, and a pleasant atmosphere.  Everything was good, until they brought us our drinks.

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