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I took my dad's (now mine) old fiberglass rods in to be serviced today. They're great rods - very whippy (at eight feet and with a fairly small butt, the rod guy thought they were fly rods) and I wanted to treat them to some new guides. Especially since one fell out. 🙂

Technology in guides has advanced pretty far, and the new guides are going to be made of some material known as "alconite." They'll handle braided lines (they're rated for wire!). In order to match the color, and to clean up a bunch of nicks and scrapes and cuts, I've had the gentleman do a full strip of the rod. We'll be able to match the color, and I told him to get as creative as he'd like with the new threads. All of this won't affect the performance. The guides are $8.95 apiece, installed, and a full strip is $20.

Roy McFarland's Custom Rods at Outdoor Sports World: (561) 389-5297. I've gotta call him in about three weeks and give him $150 (two rods). I picked up another card while I was there too - Captain Steve Cox fishes for trout, snook, redfish, and tarpon. He calls himself a "light tackle fishing guide" and he can be reached at (561) 588-0059.

Question: How many people are in your messaging client's block list?

My Answer: One.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

On Monday's CSI: Miami, which I watched last night after fishing in southern Miami, Horatio Caine and his team tracked down a crocodile that had eaten (post-mortem) a little girl. Jeff Corwin guest starred, and identified a tooth found in the girl's arm as an American Crocodile's, not an alligator's as the team had suspected.

Finding a crocodile in Florida seemed a daunting task until Jeff Corwin informed the team of several facts. One of those were that there are about 3,000 American Crocodiles in Florida. Another is that they've all been tagged, and a third is that they all hang out near a nuclear power plant for the warm water. The CSI: Miami team set out on marsh boats to find the crocodile in the swamps, eventually did, and solved the case.

This may make for good TV, but damn is that stuff wrong. I've been in several locations in Florida and have seen crocodiles. We saw crocodile signs yesterday at Black Point and we saw crocodiles themselves last week in Flamingo - 50-100 miles away from each other. Obviously they don't hang out in one place. Each one is tagged? If so, then Florida must know when crocs lay eggs, and implant them at birth. And power plants dumping their warm water onto marsh/swampland? I don't think so!

It's not surprising that a television show lied. It's surprising because it's CSI, and normally their science - though sometimes far-fetched, is usually reasonably accurate. This episode was one of the most unrealistic (and incorrect) to date.

I went with Charlie today to fish near Black Point Park in southern Miami. I rose at 4am (2 hours after I went to bed), and we grabbed some bait down there. Once we arrived at the park, we had a hell of a time finding the proper yak/canoe ramp. Turns out it's just a rocky "beach" in a mangrove forest. Right next to a "beware of crocodiles" sign. 😛

We fished our way out to our destination, stopping along the way to try to entice some shark to take some pinfish we'd caught for that purpose. No luck. We didn't have much luck all day, actually, ending up with a few snapper and a few trillion small barracuda (6" to 15"). Very small barracuda.

The park closes at sunset, so we had to get back in pretty quick at the end. Stupid park. My GPS performed well (Magellan Meridian Marine). I'm going to bed.

Question: What's your favorite thing from the 1980s?

My Answer: It wasn't the hair. It wasn't the slap-on bracelets. The music, well, it was 80s music (that's good and bad). My favorite thing from the 1980s? I'm going to go with Dallas. It's my current ringtone and the reason I began playing trumpet, after all. A close runner-up is "jams." If you know what those are, well, good for you.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Goin' Bonefishin' tomorrow. Here's a bonefish:

Yep. Gonna catch some with Charlie, I think. And if not, maybe some shark or something. Yes, this is Florida fishing! Every time I've gone saltwater fishing I've targeted a different species. Reds, bonefish, tarpon, jacks, snook, trout, barracuda, sharks… they're all here! I haven't even mentioned kings, mackerel, cobia, etc. Now I know what Mike meant when he said he'd be bored if he had to go back to PA to fish.

Question: How many pilgrims came over with Columbus?

My Answer: I'm going to let y'all answer that one…

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

The Republican Party sent me a survey. Some of the questions are posted here:

Do you support President Bush's tax plan recently passed by Congress to create more jobs and improve the economy?

Should small business be encouraged to grow and hire more workers?

Do you support President Bush's initiative to allow private religious and charitable groups to do more to help those in need?

Gee, what an accurate poll. So non-biased! Such even questions! I was tempted to just mark "No" to everything, but the return postage wasn't guaranteed, so into the shredder it went.

11 days, 20 hours, 48 minutes, 25 seconds

Very funny. So funny that I'll type it here in case the link goes dead.

A man from Charlotte, North Carolina, having purchased a case of very expensive cigars, insured them against, among other things, fire. Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile, the man filed a claim against the insurance company, stating that the cigars were lost "in a series of small fires."

The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The man sued - and won.

In delivering the ruling the judge, agreeing that the claim was frivolous, stated nevertheless that the man held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure against fire, without defining what it considered to be an "unacceptable fire," and was obliged to pay the claim. Rather than endure a costly appeal process the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid the man $15,000 for the rare cigars he lost in "the fires."

After he cashed the cheque, however, the company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.

Now that's what I call justice!

Question: Where do you hide your porn?

My Answer: If Playboy counts, then I don't hide it at all - it's front and center in my den just above the Maxim row of mags. And, well, that's about the only naked women in my apartment. Photographs of them, anyway.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

And so our anemic offense costs us a game once again. Six points off of three turnovers. A dropped interception at the end, some soft play, and some lame penalties. That's all she wrote.

It was a good game, and the Steelers defense really played well. The offense was horrible. Tommy was cautious - and on-target most of the day - but the line couldn't hold back the rush and the receivers couldn't get open as they have in the past (probably because extra men were on the line to try to protect Tommy).

I've gotta give it to Jerome Bettis, though. That 2-point conversion and the touchdown before it was the bomb, baby! Exciting stuff in Denver today. And hey, Joey Porter didn't get shot this time!

2-4. Bah.

Who in the hell opens messages that look like this? This is a screenshot of the subject column of my spam folder. If people didn't open spam - and worse yet - buy products advertised in spam - I wouldn't need a spam folder.

That having been said, I may not need a spam folder for long. SpamSieve's accuracy continues to climb - it's up to 99.5% right now. The stats:

1363     Good Messages
6164     Spam Messages (4.5:1)
  34     False Positives
   5     False Negatives
99.5%    Correct

On September 26 my stats were 655/2317/25/3/99.1%. Perhaps I'll set SpamSieve to simply delete the messages it determines to be spam. It's simply disgusting to check my email in the morning and have 130 spams waiting.

Question: Should the penny be "end of lifed?"

My Answer: Yes. I think all transactions should be rounded to the nearest nickel (0, 1, 2 round down, 3, 4, 5 round up). And hey, if you want an 18-cent piece, read this. (Update: the article no longer works, but it stated that an 18-cent piece would be the most useful coin we could have. There's a similar article here now.)

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I'm on the phone with MCI again. This is the 48th time I've had to call about my $158.89. The 48th Fucking Time. Why the fuck MCI can't get their act together and just fix this is beyond me. Today alone I've been transferred to four different departments. I spoke with a supervisor who said "I've been here five years and handled stuff bigger than this, and there's nothing we can do." One woman asked me to fax something - a thing I've faxed three times now - because "it was lost or you sent it to the wrong department." This, of course, after being promised a refund check twice (the link above dates the second as August 20).

Part of my jobs (yes, all of them) is to make the customer happy. To do what I can, even if it's not done often - to make them happy. MCI has had 48 opportunities to make me happy by saying "I apologize sincerely, and even though it's not something we can normally do, I think you've presented enough evidence that I'm simply going to issue you a refund." I've given away free copies of my software to customers, issued refunds against our stated "no refunds" policy, and more. Customer "service" is a complete misnomer these days.

I love my TiVo. I love my kayak. I love certain other products (I'm typing on one now). These products are made by companies that mold me into a loyal customer. They'll bend the rules to cut me some slack now and then, because they realize that long-term profitability means making customers happy. I've got a fairly strong loyalty to each of these companies. I dislike MCI more strongly than I am loyal to the makers of the products I've mentioned combined.

MCI simply does not understand the power of word of mouth advertising, or they simply consider themselves too big to care. MCI does not empower its employees - at any level of the command chain - to simply "service" a customer. MCI, in a word, "sucks." This is a company that - as soon as this can be resolved - will never ever see my business again. They're lumped in with Verizon as the only two companies that have compelled me to speak against them whenever I hear their name. As soon as I can cancel my service (and as much as I like the "Neighborhood" package I have now), I will do so.

5 months this has taken. 3 faxes. 48 calls! 2 promised checks. I will never use MCI again.