2008 May 12 | Los Cuatro Ojos

132 Countries Have Visited LCO In The Last 225 Days… Thank You.

Today LCO posted it’s 20th country with over 100 visitors…

Thank You South Africa!

It’s A Bit Of A Shock To See How Popular We Are In Iceland… Ég elska þig

So far… You nice people have clicked here almost 54.000 times since last September.

I started this thing as a way to vent my spleen .. Glad to see so many people agree about what’s Just Plain Silly.

Cool Stuff, Information, Just Plain Silly, Uncategorized | TheFourEyes May 12, 2008 | Comments (0)

Any Body Wanna Buy A Min Pin?

My buzzard of a brother Eddie talked me into getting the wife a Miniature Pinscher for our anniversary… Naturally… He sold me the dog at a “discount”… Plus the cost of flying the little bugger from FL to AZ.

When he got here he was the cutest little thing … All chocolate with green eyes…

But I’m a Mastiff guy… So I don’t hold much with little dogs… But everyone tells me you need a little dog so that the little dog’s superior hearing can be a trigger for the big dogs… Well… OK says I… Considering the big dogs can sleep through a tornado.

Oh Boy!… She loved him from the moment she set eyes on him… He got cuddled into her shirt and got his own pillow and got to sleep in our bed… IN OUR BED mind you … Not on our bed.

Then, the little shit got older and decided that my wife was his… He took to peeing on my side of the bed. That got him banned (a lot slower than I preferred).. So the little monster retaliated by chewing wires.

Now… My house is Wire Chewers Heaven… There’s more usb, firewire, ethernet and general cable around this place than you can shake a stick at… And lots of it in areas that a little 18 pound puppy can access in secret… Did I mention that the vast majority of that cable is connected to expensive stuff?… And the little monster’s got good taste too! A couple of high end joysticks for Flight Simulator X went bye-bye… several keyboards… 50 foot runs of Cat 5 cable.. camera cables.. speaker wires… The little rat wasn’t even phased when he chewed through the power cable for a big battery back up system!

The kicker came when he (in one day!!) chewed through a whole router bundle and for dessert… Chewed through my personal keyboard cable… My Tactile Pro!

Cage!… Now!… Forever!

Now, whenever the little monster’s in the house… He’s either very closely supervised… or he’s caged.

But…

There’s a new development… It seem the little beast has taken offense with the wind… That’s right… The Wind.

Wind blows… He Barks… Inside… Outside… In the car.

Meaning… He barks all the time. Nonstop.

He barks till he’s hoarse… And then he barks some more… If there’s a leaf moving… He’s barking… And of course the big dogs join right in.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a Min Pin bark… But it’s not a little chihuahua lap dog type yap… It’s a piercing loud “bark”… My house is brick with quad pane windows… And I can hear the little beast just fine when he’s in the yard…

Well… Imagine that piercing bark joined by the thundering “WOOFS” that four big Mastiffs can add… Then picture that from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on a Sunday… Nonstop.

If somebody loves Min Pins and wants a real pretty one… Come get him and I’ll buy the Mrs. something sparkle-y to help her get over the loss.

Please.

Essays, Just Plain Silly, Rants, Uncategorized | TheFourEyes | Comments (0)

“We can’t raise prices fast enough to keep up with the rising cost of our inputs,” Tyson CEO Richard Bond said in a conference call last week. His company’s chicken business posted a whopping $61 million operating loss for the quarter ended March 31.

Added Pilgrim’s Pride CEO Clint Rivers: “As a direct result of these soaring grain costs, a growing number of food companies are shutting down plants and eliminating thousands of jobs in rural America.”

By contrast, profits are soaring at big grain-processing and agricultural fertilizer companies, such as Archer Daniels Midland , Monsanto and Deere.

Kellogg, the nation’s biggest maker of breakfast cereal, is also being hit by the commodities whammy.

Consumers are just beginning to feel the sticker shock at the cash register for some food items, warns Tyson CEO Bond.

“The cost we and other producers in all proteins are currently incurring are only beginning to be passed on to the consumer,” he said. Since October, the average price that Tyson charges for its chicken products is up 12%.

The U.S. Agriculture Department projects retail food prices will increase by 4% to 5% this year, similar to last year’s increase. The cost for a dozen large eggs is up 35% from a year ago, while milk is up 13% and a loaf of white bread is up 16%, government data show.

Take Kraft. While sales jumped 21% in the first quarter, its gross profit margin slipped to 33.6%, down from 35.5% a year ago.

This is after Kraft aggressively raised prices on two-thirds of its vast food portfolio, which includes Mac n’ Cheese, DiGiorno pizza and Ritz crackers. It also slashed merchant-trade spending on its Capri Sun drinks line to help cover higher commodity costs.