Technically Speaking

If you read my Thursday blog, you will note that my dad was pretty sick coming home from California on Wednesday. Well, Thursday morning he went to the ER at the University of Utah. He was in the ER for about 10 hours; I guess it was a busy day.

(My mom heard an announcement on the PA system that said something like: “Incoming Level 1 Trauma. This is not a drill.” Now, if you are the patient, this is not something you want to hear. I mean, you don’t want to be coming to the ER, and hear that your problem is something that is so severe that they actually drill for it.)

So after work, I went up to visit them at the hospital. One of the hospital workers heard they had recently been to Sea World, and he started to tell us the following story:

Apparently, according to him, there was this guy who snuck into Sea World after hours, and stripped to his birthday suit and jumped into the whale tank. He died of hypothermia, and the next day, during a show (in front of hundreds of families with children) one of the whales brought the man’s body to the surface of the pool with its nose.

My mom started to laugh and told this worker that this had to be an urban legend. After all, if some guy died at Sea World and the whale brought up his body during a show, don’t you think this would have made the news?

So today I decided to check out the story.

It turns out that it is (mostly) true. Here’s what really happened.

A 27-year-old Miami resident named Daniel was seen before park closing loitering around a whale holding tank. He apparently hid somewhere in the park when the park closed, and changed into his bathing suit and jumped into one of the whale pools. (The whale pools water temperature is kept near 50 degrees Fahrenheit.) He apparently died of hypothermia, and had scrapes on his body indicating that he may have been dragged around the tank like one of the whale’s toys. At 7:30 AM the next morning, park security saw the body of the man (now without his bathing suit), draped over the body of the whale, just behind its dorsal fin. This was discovered before the park opened, and the body was never “brought out of the water during a show in front of hundreds of families with children.”

The whale in question, named Tillikum, has never been a show whale; it is a whale that is used for breeding. However, Tillikum was involved in the death of a whale handler at SeaLand Park in Victoria, B.C. in the early 90s.

Anyway, having set the record straight, I thought you would be interested in this mostly-true “whale of a story.”

I’m sorry it has been a while since I posted. We’ll start today with a great sample of how NOT do to technical writing brought to my attention by Peggy. If you click the image, a page will open where you can view a scanned copy of the flashlight’s label. I didn’t change anything. That’s how it was on the packaging. Peggy can vouch for that.

As for everythything else, things are going well. Primary was good on Sunday. It was my first Sunday where I witheld stickers for less-than-stellar behavior. I think they realized that I’m serious about this. This coming Sunday, some of the kids will have earned a prize, so this is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. We’ll see how excited they are about earning prizes once they SEE the prizes…

For Valentine’s Day, Christina and I went and babysat for some friends who have a new baby, and let them get out for a couple of hours. They went and saw Phantom of the Opera and went to dinner. We had a really fun time watching their little girl.

The day after V-day is our anniversary. Two years!! Two WONDERFUL years. We went to dinner together. We are planning on celebrating this weekend by getting away for a couple of days.

Work is going well. Yesterday I got really organized with my projects. I’m keeping track of each project’s status in individual project folders in my drawer. I’m not so good at remembering the specifics of where each project is at, so this will help me be really organized and on top of each project (I hope!)

Ok. That is all. For now. I’ll do better next, week, I promise.

We need a new groundhog. Last week, on Groundhog day, the famous groundhog saw his shadow, thus predicting six more weeks of winter weather.

Can we get a new groundhog? I’m interested in an early spring. I’m interested in budding leaves, songbirds, and the smell of fresh spring rain.

I’m not so interested in another month and a half of winter weather. I’m not so fond of scraping the windows on the car in the morning. It makes me miss the train. I’m not so fond of sitting out for long periods of time in sub-freezing weather waiting for the train that I missed because of the frozen windshield.

I’m ready to open the windows and let in the fresh breeze. I’m ready to roll down the car windows while I drive. I’m ready for Spring!!

So, somebody–go fire the groundhog and find us one that will tell us what we really want to hear: spring is on its way.

Maybe John Kerry would like the job. He seems willing to change his position with the public sentiment…

<ducking flying tomatoes and running for the train>

Regular readers (should that be singular?) will remember that it was one short week ago when I almost burned down the house by starting the microwave on fire.

When the microwave first broke, I wanted to keep the broken microwave because it has a timer on it that still worked. I thought, “We can just put the old microwave on top of the fridge and we can use the timer on it.”

Hello!?! That is an ENORMOUS kitchen timer. That idea wore itself out in about two seconds.
Yesterday we finally realized that it was time to buy a new microwave. We really liked the one we had before, and wouldn’t mind having the same one again. (I mean, it wasn’t the microwave’s fault that I started a fire in it!) We had received the first one as a wedding gift from my Auntie Violet, and it came from Target.

Onto Target.com we went, looking for the replacement microwave. We found it on their site for just under fifty dollars. (It only has a 2-star rating, but I really don’t expect a < $50 dollar microwave to last more than a couple of years...) We decided that I would go pick it up at Target on the way home from work.

When I got to Target, I found the microwave on the shelf. Right beneath the display model was the regular price of $47.77 — specifically for the model that had the black finish. I found the box up on a higher shelf, but the price was for the model that had the white finish. The price on that tag was $59.99. The model numbers were identical except for the last letter: B for the black one and W for the white one.

That wasn’t that big of a deal, because I wanted the black one anyway. But it made me wonder. So I carried the microwave over to the price scanner which showed $59.99. I sat there and wondered what I should do. I knew that if I were in the checkout line the computer would show the higher price, and I hate being in the checkout line behind somebody who is arguing with the sales clerk about the price of one of the items. So I decided to go to the help phone and get assistance before I got to the checkout counter. (If you were in the Midvale Super Target yesterday, you owe me a big thanks–because you might have been right behind me in line!)

The customer service clerk came over and I showed her the price on the shelf, and the price on the scanner. She said that there must be some mistake, and that the comptuer must be right, but since the price was wrong on the shelf, she would make sure I paid the lower price. She brought the price card with us, and we went up to the register.

In the end, I paid $49.77, which I was happy with. However, before leaving the store, I decided to go tell the customer service counter that there had been a problem. I mean, hey, in Macey’s grocery store, if the price in the computer doesn’t match the price on the shelf, I get five dollars off my total purchase (or something like that).

So I walked up to the customer service counter and explained what had happened. The clerk there looked at me with a very blank expression, kind of like a “What do you want me to do about it” expression. I said, “Well, I’m telling you this because I don’t want somebody else to think they are getting a microwave for 47 dollars, and then end up paying 60 dollars for it.

She said, “The price in the computer is the price that is accurate.”

I responded, “Well, that’s not what was on the shelf, and that’s not what was on Target.com.”

“Our in-store prices are not the same as the prices on-line.”

“Well, this one was, because regardless of anything else, this is the price that was on the shelf for the exact model number microwave that I bought.”

“Okay. We’ll take care of it.”

I wondered how. She hadn’t even looked at the receipt or the microwave in my cart. “Do you want the model number or something?”

“No. They’ll take care of it.”

What I wanted to say (but didn’t) was, “You aren’t really that interested in solving this problem, are you?”

So I took the microwave home and removed the old microwave from its stand in the kitchen.

You might think that if you bought the exact same microwave to replace the one you owned previously, that it would fit in the same spot as the old one. If you thought that, you’d actually be wrong. The cord on the new microwave is shorter than the old one (by about three inches), so the cord doesn’t reach back behind the fridge to the only plug on that whole wall. So until I can arrange something different, the new microwave is sitting on the kitchen counter (the only four squre feet of kitchen counter space that we really have) waiting to find its new home.

Things are often more complicated than you think they ought to be.

Tune in next time for the continuing saga of the burnt/replaced/displaced microwave…