I don’t like to brag…
…but I mastered Mail Merge this morning.
If you don’t know mail merge, it’s the procedure for making data from a spreadsheet bulk print onto labels or envelopes or your latest Ponzi scheme letter. You take a Word file and an Excel spreadsheet and smash them together until labels dribble out.
Uncle B phoned and I told him what I was doing and he was like, “Mail merge? That’s something I did in Wordstar in the Eighties.” And, as far as I can tell, they haven’t made a single improvement.
I’d really hoped I had reached the point in life when I didn’t need to learn stuff any more.
October 17, 2022 — 6:49 pm
Comments: 15
Dead Pool 159:
G_d’s Middle Finger has won the prize with Angela Lansbury. Mr Finger says he worked with her on Murder She Wrote, but I was unable to extract the deets. Perhaps he’ll visit us again in future.
After a long career on stage, film and TV, Lansbury will be remembered for playing a teapot and America’s most prolific serial killer.
Are we ready? Doesn’t matter – duck!
0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody. Plus (Pupster’s Rule) no picking someone who’s only famous for being the oldest person alive.
1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).
2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.
3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.
4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay? Also, make sure you have a correct spelling of your choice somewhere in your comment. These threads get longish and I use search to figure out if we have a winner.
5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.
6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.
7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.
8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.
The winner, if the winner chooses to entrust me with a mailing address, will receive an Official Certificate of Dick Winning and a small original drawing on paper suffused with elephant shit particles. Because I’m fresh out of fairy shit particles.
October 14, 2022 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 62
What are people living on?
I attended a meeting today with several other local ‘heritage’ businesses – a tourist information center, a couple of local museums, that sort of thing. Hoping to pool our resources in, erm, trying times.
For one, we can’t get volunteers. None of us. They just didn’t come back after lockdown. Bless ’em, a couple of our best died (not covid, we’re just a terribly old organization).
But we can’t get paid staff, either. I gather this is a problem in all sectors, up and down the country. It’s like people got a taste of not working during the lockdown and decided they rather liked it.
Surely, though, everyone still has a mortgage and groceries to buy. How are they paying the bills?
That’s the silver lining if we really do have a desperate hard winter – at least we’ll all be able to get paid staff! Pollyanna, that’s me.
Please enjoy this picture of fat kitty that Uncle B took on Sunday. Yes, we still have some things in bloom, though looking decidedly tired. One day, he’s going to forget he shared access to his Google pictures account and hilarity will ensue.
See you back here tomorrow for Dead Pool Round 159.
October 13, 2022 — 4:45 pm
Comments: 13
I have shamed us all
Bot sentinel doesn’t so much measure bots as people who break the Twitter terms of service. And I have scored satisfactory. Folks, I very nearly scored normal!
To be honest, I’m not surprised I register as mild mannered on twitter. I’m more of a scalpel than a hammer. Okay, more of an empty tin of Spam with a super jaggedy edge.
Call a lefty an asshole and you give him a spasm of anger. Gently mock his beliefs in their weakest places and you make him howl until he rage-blocks you. Even better, ask sensible questions politely until he cracks.
It’s a sport.
I was checking up on myself because last night, I really did cop a timeout for a tweet – my second ever. Twitter demanded I delete the offending tweet. Whatever could it be? I wondered.
You know Dylan Roof, the shit-heel who shot up a black church and killed nine people and got the death penalty for it? When Fox reported his appeal to the Supreme Court had been rejected, I tweeted this. And caught a ban for it.
Twitter’s algorithms are so busted.
October 12, 2022 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 9
Today’s word: ambrotype
Today, a man brought in a whole box of wonderful family ambrotypes. This was a cheaper photographic process than the daguerreotype and was later superseded by the tintype.
That helped us date them neatly from some time in the early 1850s to the early 1860s. Not that he didn’t have his documentation together!
One was a very elderly man – possibly a posthumous portrait – meaning I reckon he was born around 1780. He had an old-fashioned cravat to prove it. Spooky.
(Not the example picture, though. That’s an ambrotype of Abe Lincoln. I think we can all agree Abe was a very freaky looking dude).
The man was donating all these family pictures and the meticulous research that went along with them. People do that a lot – give us their family histories. I think they feel they’ve done a duty by handing them over. We’ll get the names in our database and future historians will have access.
The best part? He knew who every one of those people were and he had documentation to go with them.
People, I am begging you – with my professional hat on – don’t leave all your pictures digital. Print your favorites and write on the back who they are.
RIP Angela Lansbury. G_d’s Middle Finger take the dick. Back here. Friday.
Dead Pool 159.
October 11, 2022 — 7:37 pm
Comments: 10
Pull my finger
Happy Columbus Day, everyone. Or as we usually observe it, the annual Argue with Lefties About Columbus Day, Day.
Indigenous Peoples Day, indeed. Indigenous peoples is such a lumpen, juiceless expression. Who would want to be one of them?
I know from living in Rhode Island that Columbus Day is very much seen as a celebration of Italian immigrants. Good luck getting those guys to back off their special day.
Oddly enough, in countries all over South America, it’s called some variant of Día de la Raza or “Day of the Race” – a celebration of Hispanics arriving in the New World. Our neighbors to the south are much less shy about their European heritage. Or were until recently, anyway.
Oh, yah, you betcha – in predominantly Scandihoovian communities, they celebrate it as Leif Erikson Day, because by golly he got here first.
I think this one is too complicated to cancel, y’all.
October 10, 2022 — 6:06 pm
Comments: 12
D’awww…
Follow the Twitter account @dailystoat.
That’s it. That’s all I wanted to say.
Have a good weekend, all!
October 7, 2022 — 7:17 pm
Comments: 5
What it is to be rich
Oof! I’ve had a beast of a day. I know – I haven’t done a real estate post for a while.
Behold, Plumpton Place, a charming Elizabethan estate on 60 acrres. It’s on the market for the first time in thirty years.
Edward Hudson, founder of Country Life magazine, bought it in 1927 and spent his remaining years working with architect Edwin Lutyens and garden designer Gertrude Jekyll to do it up (those names might not be familiar, but I guarantee you Uncle B read those words and started to drool).
It went through several hands before it was briefly owned by Michael Caine, who sold it to Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Several more hands later and George Harrison tried to buy it but, according to his ex, the owner said “she didn’t want rock’n’roll musicians buying her lovely house and sold it to the local doctor instead.”
Here’s how it works: Hudson bought it for £3,300. Ten years later, 1937, it sold for £9,000. Paige bought it in 1972 for £200,000. Ten years later, it went for £650,000 to a property developer who quickly flipped it for £800,000.
They will now entertain offers in the region of £8,000,000.
October 6, 2022 — 7:12 pm
Comments: 5
Success?
The question mark is because I ain’t so sure. It has a lovely flavor and a beautiful color, but I don’t think it’s going to set. Quinces have lots of pectin and usually don’t have any problem setting firm, but I think I cooked it in too much water. As I boiled it, it just didn’t thicken properly
The internet helpfully suggests I use it for sugar syrup. If I don’t want to boil it again. And I don’t.
Yes, you can see it in color.
October 5, 2022 — 6:52 pm
Comments: 5
A thing I had to do today
Today, as part of a parcel of documents relating to the early history of the local Girl Guides troop (Girl Scouts to you ‘n’ me), we received a small silver bowl that was given as a prize. I was asked to interpret the hallmarks.
So here you go. There are four or five marks on a fully hallmarked bit of British silver.
The Standard Mark identifies it as sterling. This one – the lion passant – means it was assayed in London or other English assay office.
The Town Mark is what it sounds like. The crown is for Sheffield.
Some hallmarks have a Duty Mark, which tells you if duty has been paid. It’s a queen or king’s head. This one doesn’t have it.
Now that we know the town, we can look up the Date Letters for Sheffield. This is a little harder. There are several lowercase G or Q marks. I’m calling this one for 1908 based on the gothic style letter. It fits with the provenance of the object, but there’s a little knob on the corner of the letter worries me a bit.
Finally, the Maker’s Mark. HW in a plain rectangle – I made this out as Henry Wilkinson – a fine Sheffield silversmith. I was chuffed.
But then I noticed the dot between the H and the W, which would make it Henry Wigful. Who at least has the redemptive quality of an amusing last name.
And that’s that. Now the lot goes into a box and the box goes into a cupboard and there it will lie until some future scholar asks some future office weasel what she has on the Girl Guides.
October 4, 2022 — 7:51 pm
Comments: 3