new rant (amazon, kroger)

 A week ago, I wrote about Amazon and the three departments for groceries.
Then I went to a Kroger and tried to buy bread and juice.
I used a special card which didn't appear to go through,

and the helpful grocery guy erased the whole thing.
Well skipping to the end, I ended up paying twice (double)

for the transaction.
It was confusing at the store...so I didn't ask for my money back.
If you've seen a kroger receipt you might agree, but maybe not.

Well it's a new month. I promised myself to use "Amazon" even though Kroger has better food generally.
I cannot defend that statement either.
Their avocados...hard, and they never ripen right.

Their amazon-brand mayonnaise...insubstantial. (I don't know how to explain that better either.)
This whole entry is snark-bait, and I'll rewrite it soon, but it's what I'm feeling right now.

"AI" (so, not amazon) says I'll get a discount from "Amazon Fresh."

OK, I'll try it.
Amazon-prime was confusing last time, requiring six trucks for a small order.
But they were cheaper! (I think.)
"Fresh" will require a fee and a tip (I think)

Slight update: a regulatory fee and a Tip were required with "Fresh," this time.

Last time, with "Prime", there did not seem to be any fees or tips.

The cheese I ordered is very hard to slice, 

and I'm not sure if my old slicer was just dirty or getting dull, so

I ordered another slicer.
Kroger had the original for $14 and change, total.
This one was $10 and change.
I have not mastered cheese slicing....I try to hold the biggie chunk, ripping across the side, and coming perilously close to slicing my thumb.
Half the time, the cheese slice does diving gymnastics to my floor.

-----

Salad-greens (mostly, iceberg and romaine) are very insubstantial, so when I can afford it, I buy filler.

Bananas, tomatoes, balogna, and the occasional avocado.

The first order is real expensive because of all those fillers. I'm mostly out of money for the rest of the month! Next time, no balogna. After that, no tomatoes.
I swear, salads don't save money at all.
These short snippets don't really explain why I'm buying salads and not Stouffers' lasagna...it's not really for my health.

I learned from school that girls love to tattle.

Well fine:

It doesn't take two days to deliver from their supermarket! I must have pissed off someone.

Thanks to the tattler. 

(What was it, me dissing avocados?)

https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonfresh/comments/rxo31c/delivery_an_entire_day_late/ (wut?)

I tell you what happened, i wiped some drops of water from the phone screen.
The screen changed to cancelled delivery!
O-shit, did I do that?
Three minutes later it changed into "Delayed"

I might just use "Prime" from now on.

---

They sent cabbage instead of lettuce...maybe lettuce was out, and cabbage looks similar.

"It isn't similar," my stomach will spew.

You'll maybe recall, god-knows-when, that I wrote about having the bright idea of cooking cabbage.
My stomach wasn't fooled. (it wasn't fooled for at least a week)

Not it (I'm still looking, but this is real good anyway, substituting)

https://orphanrocks.blogspot.com/2024/12/mi-fabrica-es-no-divertida.html

(Link)

remember the antifa and the radical left? Trump destroying Democrats? You hear about them every day now. 
Weeellll, an old blog entry and my Fallout game want to bring up this link, which is too long, so skip to the part at the end.

https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/three-percenters

This next train is too convoluted, a twisty turny route, so it's mostly for me to remember

(link)

The problem (mostly for me) is, how to quote a repost of a video of a guy who said a couple sentences about my train of thought.
I'd need a textual quote or reference, and that entails writing another blog.
It's a bookmark, nothing more.

The train follows a thought about officially endorsing an idea. But that's too vague; The US officially endorsed an idea long ago, and now, who knows.

substrate

 It's damn near impossible to get a decent definition for "substrate",

so this little teeny blog entry will prolly say nothing and go nowhere.

It's the circuit board with no traces (electrical paths) and no components glued on.
But my definition sounds so elementary, so third-grade-ish.

I (being very unsure of myself generally) question my definition.
Beeesides...
You've got "Multi-layer" Printed circuit boards, 

metal and non-conductive material sandwiched tightly together.

So what is "Substrate"?
OK nevermind, for now.
I could paste a hundred definitions, each more convoluted than the last,

and it would not become clearer.

Google's front Page says "Glass substrates" are coming....

yedda-bleh-bleh-bleh (drilling glass is hard)

as an Audience member whispering while the sales rep is speaking (strictly a no-no)
I wonder what the hell "organic" substrate" is anyway.
Dead-corpses stuck together? nono.
"Plastic"?

freaking overused word "Organic" (whut? O, I'll shut up now)

The salesmanship changes drastically and the technicalese, depending upon your googling technique.

Organic materials in manufactured products,

or

Organic materials in *electronics*

Suddenly we're all postgraduate physicists

Fucket, *I* will surmise and guess and seek out.

Yeah!!

Now...(ahem) what changed? 

That was rhetorical mostly, because this is no book nor sales brochure.

Now all's I gotta do is drop a biggie wrench into this, "Organic substrate"

WE all know that upper-crust military computer chips insist upon "ceramic"
and cheap-ass regular-type radio-shack chips are "Plastic", substitute your own word here.
HEAT is mostly the reason.
It's been this way FOREVER.

Anyway.....

---------

I'm not knocking my door, but

 1/16 plywood sheet, honeycombed paper interior, another sheet.
*How* do you replace that?

Over the years, former people have installed chain locks into the really flimsy door, which must've fallen off, so they tried it again.
And again.

When stuff is cheap, you're careful with it, I get that. Part of my rant on faucets was about that.
(when stuff is expensive it could still be flimsy, but that's a rant for reddit or amazon)

reinvention time (very labor intensive)

The door should hang on the same hinges and other than a screwdriver and a fancy sander....
Um... 

That convenient-looking picture above, you'd have to destroy thresholds and the existing frame, then plaster the hell out of the cracks and spaces around the new frame.
No biggie for a $$$professional$$$ door-type-person, but still.
On the other hand, my threshold is really bad (really bad), um, 

My raised foundation doesn't actually NEED a threshold, just a larger door, hmm

Maybe by some ^%$# miracle and more hot days, 

the frame will cease to be swollen, 

and with some scotch tape, the door could still work.
It's more of a privacy-barrier anyway.

---

---

Random thoughts really late at night that don't rate a blog entry:

FISH TEA

go google the video if you want...

This rates below coffee made from monkey poop beans (o, you want that too? I'll go look)

https://kopiluwakdirect.com/poop-coffee-kopi-luwak-history/?srsltid=AfmBOor-xjjBOHa22-sgsBizbs9n90JQeuSEJ56KhyDcR89Goffnqik2

"Free Range" for the upper-crust poop eaters

I could rant on about hating "Asparagus" but that just shows how provincial and lowbrow I am;
No poop has ever touched these lips.
Liquified rotten decayed fish, maybe but that's a seasoning.

drudgery

 

My Faucet for the economically-disadvantaged (it was only $200) is basically a hose attached to a sprayer,
Enclosed in a lookalike trendy plastic package.
Looks great, for a while.
Well, now the hose leaks.
Somewhere, in the mess they're about to dump, is a faucet, a standard-issue with no hose that I replaced because I could not reach the sprayer.
So...I'll use a glass to drink water, IDK.

A rant about how transitory kitchen faucets are, how fragile.
If it was a current model, parts might be available.

10 minutes later...

I'll live with the leak? It isn't so bad.
A new faucet on sale looks like this typical review 

I'm not who I was, and I'd pay someone to install the whatever, except he'd hate it and install it wrong, break something and leave. There's the official guy but he only does really big plumbing stuff (IOW I could not afford him)

I forgot tariffs and supply chains,,,,,mostly gone are two handle faucets,
And plumbers for hovels buy the 39.00 brand anyway,
And vendors happily charge an enormous amount for gold-colors.
(uhm)

Pull-out (ditch the soap) vs pull DOWN (plastic-encased hoses)
I'm no plumber but there's tons of flim-flammery here.
But no matter, *will it leak*?
Does it need some &^%$ adapter?
Is it even legal (flow control)?

It must spit holy waters (holy *something*)

mac-n-cheese "meh" model everyone sort of lives with

The logic I'm about to present is highly controversial so,...there.

OK the parts are not replaceable, no matter what they say. IDK-Y.
The biggie companies trash the designs after a few months (and they all look alike)
We don't know (OK *I* don't know) where snobby companies send their assemblage to (the thirdiest-world?) so (in short) there is no reason to buy yet another plastic POS from a household name that went bad in the past.

So.
No-name brands: Which one (can you trust?)

You can't.

window-shopping darling of the no-name set.
(They make nice web pages)

There's an odd thing with the pricing and the descriptions.
Well, here, you judge:

"Gold" is cheaper and says nothing about plastic (in next pic)

Standard is mostly plastic.
OK, sure (but I really like the gold!!)

calcium carbonate (scale) will eat the thing up anyway.

Insensitive guests (Like kids, old duffers) might grab that delicate gooseneck for whatever reason

(balance, or to test durability) but barring them, You already know it's cheap, and you'll be extra careful.
70*2 (or three) beats $250*2, every couple years.

Since I won't actually be *buying* today, the sword of damocles being what it is,

I might look back on this with regret. I've got another faucet laying on the floor, I might not live here anymore,

and prices could soar...

Relevant to nothing much, the water pressure in this place is much too high lately.
Kind of pisses off pipes.
"Much too high" is subjective, they prolly just open the valve 100%, but....

I will have more maybe later.
Those old movies about people in war desperately waiting for passage to somewhere,

living out of a suitcase, are on my mind. 
I'm playing the "What can I live without?" game.
Diabetic Supplies, "D.M.E. ," meters, chargers, the phone, the electric kettle, *the microwave,*
My beloved TV's
My laundry!

Disjointed rant follows (I'm hungry)

sounds great until you read the ingredients.

"Any old oil we could find" Mayonnaise

Conservative moms bought "Miracle whip" when I was a kid. It wasn't mayonnaise, but apparently conservative kids liked it. Ersatz mayonnaise.

skip to now.

You might wonder why my grocery bills are so high, even though canola oil is cheap (and corn-oil too)
It's because they have to stick soybean oil into everything.
The richer-than-god mayonnaise doesn't, but they substitute expensive oil instead.

I don't trust myself to make my own mayonnaise, so I've acquiesced to the high priced brands.
But a guy can hope that ONE day they'll get a clue.

"No proven link"

2nd rant (waiting for my salad to get here)

I should lay out like some great beached whale and let them eat me?
I honestly do not know why Admiral hates me.

I'll assume it's my router and my Edge browser being prudent, which pisses off powers.
O. My "Hosts" file blocks everything (well done, good and faithful hosts file. 
You're fired)

random 3am title (who cares?)

A magazine article starts with this term.

 It's a word.

It shows the sad state of political affairs, when one side (the solippy people) talk like that, endlessly, and the other side goes for the gut.🤠

Are we juryrigged (jerry-rigged?) enough yet for them? https://www.npr.org/2025/09/20/nx-s1-5545948/what-does-the-cdc-panel-vote-on-childhood-vaccine-changes-mean
I can't spell. I don't have persuasive videos that try to hypnotize you into belief.
They look better.

(random link)

sad puppies and cowboy hats (hats, anyway)

IDK. (But I've got lotsa random thoughts)
Battle hymn.
Ya know, every time I try to make a list or refer to something,
the AI in my head goes,
"That's been Banned" 
"That's forbidden"
"You can't say that"
Jury-jerry-weaponization whatever.

A random 3AM link 

Another link (IDK, it was there so I clicked on it)

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/16/1099034094/what-is-the-great-replacement-theory

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/08/15/racist-buffalo-shooting-payton-gendron/85674941007/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting

Can I interrupt this train to talk about "Pink Salt"??
It's a trendy diet ingredient inside sexy videos.
Pink salt has trace amounts of whatever that, in order to do much good,
You'd have to eat too much salt to collect the precious traces....
Stuff can be true but bloviated all out of proportion....but nevermind, please let the train continue.

This article, long buried, came up on a search, not walled at all.
I doubt people read it much.

Catch-up reading (it's old but has a lot of inside stuff)

"When Ashli Babbit was killed by Capitol Hill police during the January 6 attack, she was promoted as a martyr, with even the former US president Donald Trump calling her parents. “Women make better martyrs in the ‘alt-right’,” Jeppesen said about Babbit’s lingering effect."

Actually this article is more updated, I guess.

Yeahbutt...

People LIKE bloviated speeches, and hats.
And flags, gotta have flags.

I don't know if this is related,
but it's remarkable because it is "North Carolina"

CAmp Lejeune, being in North Carolina, and the two alleged shooters being marines,
Gives this whole thing a creepy feeling.
They knew each other or didn't.
The shootings happened in different states, within a day of each other.
Some other guy has to link this all together, if they ever do, and not spin it off into a political vendetta.

(Link)
Nigel, formerly Sean DeBevoise, by a name-change

convoy

I have no politically correct words.
I did, but I erased them.
oooooooo

---

yeahbutt (wut?)

 

I never really noticed before,

 how I buy food from AMazon.
I just figured that they were like any other market delivering stuff.

Well, I was totally wrong.

• They have "Prime" food,
• "Fresh" food.
• and "Whole" foods.

Ordering from one is fine, but when you order from another, it gets complicated.
(For example, "Prime" then "Fresh".)

But this could change in a week; I'm only writing what happened to me.

This tiny journal entry is not done.
They either haven't charged me yet, or, something.

I figured (total guessing) that I should not order from different food departments.

Well, for one thing, They start different "carts" for the order.

So I chose "Prime" and hoped that it was the right department to choose.

wedding caterers use less personnel.

---

Regardless of the formula used by USG to calculate COLA increase for social security,

and it's a complicated formula....

Makes me want to go look it up 

2.8

Anyway, my insurance-plan was letting me bask in the glory of $14 extra dollars per month.

No More! 

The $14 dollar gravy-train stops next year.

OTC benefits do not roll over to another benefit-period.
Trips to the doctor have been reduced from 20 to 2.

(They're kidding, right?)

10 Trips vs 1 trip, per year.

There are a huge amount of bombastic commercials upcoming, trying to get me to change.

But all the commercials are vague and extremely pedantic, and no, I don't have "Dual" whatever.

 When it's real serious and time to make a decision, better to call the paid insurance broker who refers you to whatever. 
Unless you really enjoy reading miles of fine print.

"Fine Print"

If you, uh, can trundle yourself across town(s) to see specialists,
You are UNqualified for most discounted plans and people that come to (eg) change lightbulbs.

The plans are there, in gigantic print, but unless the insurance broker has a clue, you might pick the wrong plan, get hauled before a judge, get stuck in a home.....

My current plan "ax² + bx + c = 0 " is ok. 
A competitor offers cheaper drugs but what else is in their fine print, I wouldn't know.

Bloggily-speaking....A doctor I saw briefly didn't have nice things to say about one insurance company I belonged to, but (damn) they seemed cheaper and had WAY more discounted stuff.
I think.

Maybe.
Or I just keep choosing the wrong plans
There's a slick sales page,,,,

If x is $10,000, what is Y (where Y is 0 to X*20%)?

---

Are you smarter than an immigrant?

mmmm, no

Twilight-Zone, Google News

000000000000000000

They sent a posse to examine the swamp. No, that's no allegory.

And I've been told, the insurance approved a settlement.
Another posse was sent, "banishers of swamps"(inc) And they set up many expensive NOISY

machines, all drawing precious electricity,
 which someone decided months ago that I should pay for.

Yeahbutt(?)
Shouldn't the swamp-busters cover the electricity bill, shouldn't the insurance??
And the plumber drilling, with much power?
This isn't over.
The rug wets itself every couple days. I await the next swampy disaster.
The insurance covers the posses and the plumber and the head honcho, but not the rent or the 
Electricity bill.

So I write, nervously and with distractions, about trivia, and these entries might look more disjointed, than usual.

Do you think, with all this commotion, someone will get it into their head to raise the rent?
To cover supply chains, the rotting front door, Obamacare, and Tariffs?

You (anyone) might explain a complicated thing by bringing up a less complicated thing to compare it to.
Here: A less complicated thing, "Risk Premium"

alternatives of similar risk (o....k ?)
Risk Premium
The rent
Shit like what happened affects the rent (omg)

9:20AM

CLUNK!!

oshit

Actually, I want to ponder living in very stark ("stark," right?) conditions while they "remodel" the place.
My uncle went through this exact thing.
Reassuring words being said, they threw out absolutely everything in his hovel.
payChecks, gold-coins, receipts.

Well I have no coins (otg)

but I doubt I'll have access to my computer which might be dumpster-food soon.

I'll (prolly) be in some motel (or would it be a "Home"?)

OMG.

I've gotten very used to climbing into my 24"-high bed.
I've researched heights of beds...18" might be all right.
I have to choose real quick, what I can keep and what they will throw away.