Five Cent Deposit

Nuka Cola Vending Machine from the Fallout video game.
No link because their webpage ate my computer.

Oregon has a bottle deposit law that requires a nickel deposit on almost all bottled drinks. When we were younger and more tightly wound, we would diligently save all of our beer bottles and carry them to the grocery store to get our deposit refunded. A month's worth of beer bottles worked out to almost $5! Woo hoo!

A few years ago I quit participating in this waste of time, but my wife, always concerned about money, persisted. Then one day last summer we are out running some errands together, and one of her errands is to return the cans and bottles rattling around in the back of her car. Now it used to be, when Hank's was still in business, you could count up your cans and bottles, take them to Hank's, tell the bottle boy how many you had and he would write you a ticket you could take to the cashier. He was happy because he didn't have to count the bottles, and I was happy because I didn't have to wait for him to count the bottles. It was one of those all-too-rare win-win situations. But Hank's has gone out of business and now if you want to get your deposit back you have to deal with one of those Robocop anti-vending machines.

So we're driving around and we stop at a grocery store (Freddie's or Safeway, makes no difference, they both work the same way), but half the machines are broken and there are a bunch of people using the ones that aren't. We stop at two more stores, got the anti-vending machine to take some of our cans and bottles, and gave away the rest. We spent like two hours on this debacle and cleared like $2. Never again, I said.

So now I dump a couple of dollars worth of cans and bottles in the recycling bins ever two weeks. Rumor has it that there was a guy coming around before the trash trucks and scarfing up all the returnables, but then one of our idiot neighbors complained (why? and to who?), and that doesn't happen anymore. Of course, it could be that our phantom bottle collector decided it wasn't worth his time or gasoline to pursue this. I mean, the grocery stores have some kind of ridiculously low daily limit like $5 or $10 on the amount you can collect each day, which means you would need to visit a dozen stores every day in order to make enough money to survive, and you would probably burn $20 worth of gas to get to all those stores.

Rumor has it that the state is going to raise the bottle deposit to ten cents, but until they get some kind of efficient system in place for refunding those deposits, trying to collect those deposits is going to be a thankless task. But as long as there are enough people who have nothing better to do with their time than to pick up trash, and who value their time down in the pennies-per-hour range, then the cans and bottles alongside the road will continue to get picked up.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We reorganized our kitchen cupboards over the holiday. Most of our pots and pans were looking pretty raggedy. They all had some kind of non-stick coating that was badly worn. There is a rumor floating about that Teflon is bad for the environment, though we aren't really sure if it's causing any damage, after all it is almost completely chemically inert, but microscopic traces of the stuff are showing up everywhere. So the pans are ugly, and there might be some vague problem with using Teflon coated pans for cooking, so we go looking for some new ceramic coated ones. Costco delivers a set for a hundred bucks, or was it $60? I forget. In any case we have new ones and the only thing to do with the old ones is to dump them in the recycling bin. I mean, if they aren't good enough for us, is it really fair to expect that anyone else would want them? Would Goodwill even accept them?

This is like a cardinal sin. The pans are still perfectly good, and if we were worried about the non-stick coating, I could have ground or burned it off. Of course that is going to send more Teflon into the environment and I would have a bunch of pans that would have to be scrubbed each time they were used.

And dumping them into the recycling should be an acceptable solution. I mean we recycle our aluminum soda cans after just one use. Pans are more durable, in the good old days, they should have lasted forever. But times have changed. How much time do you want to spend scrubbing pots and pans? Me, I scrubbed one once and I didn't mind it, but I can see that doing it on regular basis could get old.

Brave New World

Tried to pick up some 60 watt light bulbs at Hank's this evening. No regular incandescents to be found. This was the closest. Looked at the box, looked on the web, but I couldn't figure out what trick they were using until I picked up this image. Halogen, that's the trick. Now that I have seen it in the picture I can see it on the actual box. $8 for a pack of four. Amazon wants $6.50. I can't even tell if $2 a bulb is expensive or not. The price of light bulbs used to not even register, they were an incidental and cost so little they might as well be free. Of course, a six pack of beer used to cost $1. Now they want $10. Kwiky Mart used to only keep $20 in cash on hand. Now they keep $50.

    Speaking of beer, I've been drinking Stella Artois lately, but tonight I noticed that they have reduced the size of their bottles from 12 ounces to 11. I was suspicious when the 22 ounce bottles started showing up. Now my suspicions are confirmed. The anti-fun people are still trying to put the screws to us, one ounce at a time.

     And Finally is still trying to get their bulb to market. Previous post on the subject.

Chicken

    My wife and I are not foodies. For me a nice meal once a month is plenty. I am perfectly content to eat the same thing morning, noon and night for six months until I am totally sick of it. Then I will find something else. For me Kentucky Fried Chicken is gourmet cooking.
    Daring daughter on the other hand likes variety, and especially variety in vegetables. Today we went to the grocery store and Hank's isn't good enough, we have to go to New Seasons. I hate New Seasons. It's all bright and cheerful, full of happy, smiling people, all fussing over food. Christ on a crutch, get me out of here. But she's my daughter so I gritted my teeth and bore it.
     I have to admit their prices on some things are cheaper than Hank's. Not many mind you, especially since there isn't much overlap between Vegan Heaven and Vegan Hell.
    Chicken was the interesting part. We were looking at meat. For a neanderthal like me, grilling is the only method of cooking. I mean I have heard of other methods of cooking, like boiling and frying and baking or roasting, but that generally requires using pots and pans, which isn't a problem so much as having to wash them when you're done, and I hates me some dish washing. So then, grilling. But grilling means good cuts of meat. You can grill cheaper cuts, but you might live to regret it. Cheaper cuts are generally tougher (or so I've been told). If you want to go to the trouble of cooking them in a pot in the kitchen you could probably make them tender and delicious, but I'm not gonna do that. So I want steaks, and New Seasons wants $17 a pound for steaks. Even with my inflation adjusting divide-by-ten rule, that still a dollar seventy a pound, which is more than my standard cut off of a dollar and a half, so no steaks.
    Well, how about some hamburger? Hmmmm, no, oh, but look! We have cute little patties all ready made up, mixed with some kind of weeds and cheese. Okay, we'll get some of those. And how about some chicken?
    They've got cut up chickens and whole chickens and free range chickens and barn raised chickens (whatever that means) and, here's the one that caught my eye, a special on some kind of chicken for $2 a pound. I don't know how much raw chicken usually costs, like I said, I don't cook, but $2 a pound sure looks a heck of a lot better than $17 a pound, so we get one. It costs $12. Whoa! That chicken weighs six pounds, that's as much as a small child. You can buy a fully cooked chicken at Costco for like $5. Of course, Costco chickens don't weigh six pounds. If will be interesting to see how many meals we get out of this monster chicken.

Update: those funny hamburgers turned out to be pretty tasty. Not sure how I feel about that.

Letter to Umpqua Dairy

Flavors

I stopped by Hank's Thriftway in Hillsboro, Oregon this evening and picked up a half gallon of Umpqua ice cream. I intended to get chocolate, but when I got home I discovered that I had mistakenly picked up a carton of Rocky Road. My wife claims she hate's Rocky Road. No big loss, more for me.

 The real reason I am writing is because there has been no Umpqua Lite Chocolate ice cream in the store for years. There are 47 other flavors, from maple-peppermint-blackberry swirl to fuzzy-peaches-and-raspberry delight, none of which interest me. Chocolate is only flavor I really want. Occasionally I will pick up carton of vanilla, and once in a blue moon I will pick up some strawberry. This is not a religious issue. I don't mind if you make and sell other flavors. I have even tried some of them, but they don't really do anything for me. Chocolate is what I want, and you have failed to keep me supplied.

Cheers,

Charles Pergiel
Silicon Forest
www.pergelator.blogspot.com

New Bookstore in Town

Things are in flux in downtown Hillsboro. The coffee shop / antique shop that was on the corner of 2nd and Main has closed up and moved out. A second shoe repair store (!) has opened up next door, and the bookstore next to that has been replaced by another bookstore. I stopped in there yesterday. I thought they had been there a month or two, but the woman at the cash register said they had been there a year. I was shocked. Probably because I am getting old. Whether I like it or not. In any case, the new business seems to have a more, I dunno, with-it? inventory. Seems like they had more stuff that I might be interested in and less useless old stuff that I wouldn't. Found two used science fiction novels and got the pair of them out the door for six and a half bucks. Much better than Powell's. Oops. Am I speaking out of turn? I don't care, Powell's hasn't sent me any money, even though it's been a week and a half since I posted their little search box.

The new bookstore is called Jacobsen's Books, and they have a url, but there isn't anything there yet. However, they are hooked into a book buying website, and that one it working.

Meanwhile, a couple of blocks away, down at Hank's Thriftway grocery, the pharmacy is closing up shop. Walgreens has built a new store a couple of blocks farther East, and they bought Hank's customer list. Isn't that nice? All the pharmacy employees, except the pharmacist, are out of luck.

Beer

We went by Hank's the other day and I noticed their beer display has gotten a little out of hand.

Click on the picture for to embiggen. This is just one side. I tried to fool Autostitch by cropping the edges of the photos so there would be more similar material along the edges of the photos. I was hoping I could get it to go around the end and show both sides of this island, but it did not work. "No matching pictures found" it says.

Update January 2017 replaced missing picture.

Sign of the times

Seen at Hank's, our local grocery store this morning.

Update January 2017 replaced missing picture.

Wake Up

I go to the car wash this morning. The car isn't that dirty, but the front wheels accumulate brake dust and they get kind of grungy looking. Next stop is the gas station. I see the attendant cleaning someone else's windshield. Now he's coming over to my car. I am hoping he is only coming to check on the gas, but no. Before I can stop him, he's cleaning my already spotless windshield. Probably leaving soap suds all over the side frames. I just hang my head and cry.

I stop at the grocery store to pick up a couple of things. I get to the checkout and there is only one cashier on duty and there are three or four people in line. Am I not living right or something? These are like the only people in the store and they have all managed to arrive at the checkout line just before me, even though they have probably been there for hours. Okay, I am putting a negative spin on the situation. Still, it's like the grocery store god hates me.

I am prepared to be patient, but the checker is not. She puts in a call and the manager comes trotting up to the front of the store and opens a second check-out line. That's one reason I like Hank's.

The total comes to $20.05. My pockets are empty except for the cash I got from the ATM. I'm getting ready to break a second $20 to cover the nickel when the guy behind me in line offers me a quarter. He has a whole handful of them. So maybe today is going to be alright after all.

Brown Bicycle

Parked, or rather dropped on the ground outside the front door of Hank's was a bicycle. It was noticeable because it was painted brown. Not just the frame, but the entire bike except the tires, (and maybe the seat, I don't recall), and kind of an ugly house brown to boot. Then I noticed the front disk brake and the rear suspension, and I got to wondering. Could this be an expensive bike that somebody painted to hide it's value? Or a stolen bike, painted to disguise it's origins? Neither explanation makes much sense. If it was valuable, why was it lying on the ground? As for being stolen, I've never know a thief to do something like this. Bicycle thieves usually just ride them until they get bored and then ditch them. Or if they are pros stealing expensive bikes, they sell them. Painting doesn't make much sense in either case.

And then there's the way high-tech filters down to the mass market. Disk brakes may be what you get on your run-of-the-mill mountain bike these days.

Girl's Names

I went by Hank's yesterday and Jewly has a new name tag that says Julie. I didn't inquire about the old one, there are too many woman out there who have slightly different spellings of ordinary names. But this was a change, so I asked her, and she told me her supervisor had made the "Jewly" name tag on a whim, but Julie was her real name.

Help

I went out to the local Albertsons grocery store yesterday evening to pick up some charcoal for the grill. I walked up and down durn near every aisle looking for charcoal and I did not find any. I thought about asking someone for help, but I did not want to have an unhelpful conversation. You know the kind, like a: uh, we don't carry charcoal after labor day, or b: uh, I don't know, let me check, or c: Follow me! I know right where it's at! Only when you get there, it isn't, and you get to listen to a profusion of apologies. Of course it could have gone smoothly and I would have had the charcoal and all would have been well, but I wasn't willing to take that risk. I've run into helpless store employees too many times. Now maybe I am just prejudiced against Albertsons, but their employees just look helpless.

Thriftway Grocery Store

So I drove the two miles to Hank's where I knew where the charcoal was and paid the $5 for a ten pound bag.

Alpha Bits Cereal

So why did I go to Albertsons in the first place? They are the only ones in the area who carry Alpha-Bits. The three of us seem to have developed a craving for them, so I bought three boxes. I expect we will tire of them soon enough.

Update November 2015. Replaced missing pictures.

Big Stores & Little Stores

I shop at Hank's Thriftway, which is probably the smallest and most expensive grocery store in Hillsboro, other than 7-11 and some Mexican stores. I like Hank's because it is small, and because I have been going there for as long as I have lived in Hillsboro, which is like twelve years. I am sure their prices are higher than most of the other stores, except for their meat, which generally seems to be cheaper. I recognize most of the people who work there. I cannot remember their names, but I know them by sight. I think the service may be better. There are seldom long lines for anything and oftentimes if I am waiting in line, a cashier will come up to me and offer to check me out at an adjacent register. I really do not know whether their prices are higher than other stores or not. I figure if I am buying food at the grocery store, it is cheaper than buying meals at a restaurant.

I have a parking place I use consistently. It is at the very end of the sidewalk fronting the video store adjacent to Hank's. This works well for me because I visit the video store most every time I go to the grocery store. There are often other spots that are closer, but I like it because I do not have to cross the parking lot, which means I do not have to keep an eye out for cars trying to run me down.

I go to the other grocery stores occasionally, usually only because I am on a mission to get some brand of something that only the other grocery store carries. I do not like the other stores. I don't know why that is. A little bit of everything I suppose. No people I recognize, which isn't surprising since I may only go there once a year. The stores are bigger and I have to walk farther to find what I am looking for, often much farther, because I am not familiar with the layout. And there is never a parking spot at the sidewalk in front of the store.

A year or so ago we were in Sherwood looking for a place to eat dinner. We came upon a shopping center that looked it had just been plopped down. Brand new and nothing around it except empty fields. Sometime while we were there I fell into a conversation with a guy who apparently really liked this brand new shopping center. He was glad to see the big chains coming in and opening stores and forcing all the little mom and pop businesses out. I was appalled at this. I believe I concealed my disgust, but I did not continue the conversation.

I have no use for such shopping malls. They do not sell anything I want or need. I hate going to Target, it is like the worst of them all.

TV

My wife and I like to watch crime dramas on TV: CSI, Law & Order, Without a Trace, Cold Case, etc, but the number of ads you have to sit through is annoying, to say the least. So last year I broke down and bought a TiVo. I do not like having to pay the $14 a month subscription fee, but the price of the unit was so far below anything else that could have done the job, that I went ahead and bit the bullet. I brought it home, plugged it in, and programmed it to record all the shows my wife and I like to watch. I came in a couple of days later to watch one of these shows and it was nowhere to be found. It seems that someone else had come in after me and programmed the TiVo to record the shows THEY wanted to watch. Gol durn kids anyway. Daughter did have a legitimate excuse. The one show she really likes is on at the same time as the one show I really like, but she also has a dance class at this time, so she cannot possibly watch her show while I record mine. So I yielded and let the children rule the TiVo.

This fall, as my son John has a surfeit of computer systems, he gallantly allowed me to use one to build a DVR (Digital Video Recorder), for the price of a mere 22" LCD display. The TV tuner card that is an essential component of this project was only $60. It is also known as a "frame grabber" and a few short years ago they were horribly expensive, as in hundreds of dollars. Then there was the remote control from Microsoft and the receiver that plugs into the USB port. That was only $35. Lastly was the cable from the video card to the TV. The video card has an S-Video output, which is very similar to Y/C (Luminance / Chrominance (is Chrominance even a word?)). Unfortunately, I blew out the Y/C input on the TV a while back while fooling around hooking up video cables while the TV was on. Someday I intend to look into it and see if I can find the problem. It is a 36" CRT and weighs close to 200 pounds. If I can fix it where it is, it would save a major moving operation.

Anyway, back to the video signal hookup. I dig through my box of collected audio/video cables and pull out an S-Video cable, which I hook up, but as expected, it does not work. I find many other interesting pieces, including S-Video to component video (RGB), but nothing in the line of S-Video to composite, which was the standard for hooking up VCR's, and which my big CRT also has. I look on the web, but I am not really finding anything until I come across an $8 cable with an S-Video connector on one end and a composite connector on the other.

http://www.buyextras.com/6febuprsmato.html?gclid=CMnfzML92o4CFQEyYQodCTnoSA

This is weird, no conversion circuitry? Just a cable? Well, $8 is no big deal, let's give it a shot. It shows up in the mail a few days later, I plug it in, and lo and behold, it works! This is very strange. Someday I may even find out what is going on here.

So now I have all the pieces in place. Let's give it a whirl. Watching live TV, while not perfect, seems to be acceptable, but watching a recorded show is painful. The picture quality is significantly worse, even unacceptable. Perhaps there is a setting that can change this. I look but the recording format seems to be set to "Best", so maybe that is all it can do. Well this sucks. What am I going to do? Some more research perhaps, or maybe my son the whiz kid can find a crucial piece of information, or maybe I will try Linux. Sadly disappointing.

DVD's

We usually rent DVD's from the little Mom & Pop rental store (Wheels Video) next door to Hank's grocery close in to downtown Hillsboro. We buy a monthly pass for $25. They do not necessarily have the best selection, but it is adequate for us. My oldest son cannot tolerate the boundaries imposed by such a limited selection, so he has a subscription to Netflix. I do not want to have to wait for a movie, so the local rental store suits me better.

My daughter wanted (needed?) a couple of movies that the local store did not have, so my wife went to the local Hollywood Video store to rent them. The week goes by and they need to go back, so I return them to Hollywood Video. Later that night we get a phone call. Seems the movies have been returned to the wrong store, so my wife has to drive to the store on the West Side of Hillsboro, the only Hollywood Video I knew of, and take them to the store on NE 25th, which I did not even know existed. OK, I knew there was a video store there, but I did not know it was Hollywood Video. What kind of crummy outfit is this? Banks have branches, libraries have branches, but Hollywood Video stores are independent of each other? Just one more reason not to deal with big corporations.