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I forget the reason, but I was asked to fill out a survey and I obliged. These days, there’s no lack of opportunity to complete a survey – I’m declining at least once a day, it seems.

After a few questions, I was tired of thinking so much of each topic. Each answer had 10 levels. I forget the wording, but it was something like “Extremely Disagree” to “Extremely Agree”.

That’s too many options.

Surveys don’t need 10 gradations. Does anyone have feelings that nuanced? 3 should suffice, 5 at most. I personally don’t think about most items that much, especially the categories these people were asking. Good/Fair/Poor should be the options.

It’s good that corporate America, maybe even the world, has agreed upon the 5-star rating system. It makes everyone’s life simpler since everyone uses the same process – you know what you’re doing and how everything compares. If I need to start a rating system though, it will have 6 stars – that way my things will look better than everyone else’s.

Grade inflation for product ratings.

And, of course, my surveys will go to 11.

Finally, someone has closed the loophole:

I have always thought it odd that stores required shirts and shoes but not pants. I’m glad at least one store out there does.

I bought a used lawn mower (Hustler Mini Z zero-turn) when we moved into our new house almost two years ago. Hadn’t talked to the seller since then.

Until just recently.

He called me, out of the blue, and asked if I still had the mower. He regretted selling it and wanted to buy it back. And he was willing to pay what I originally paid.

I wasn’t really that attached to the lawn mower, and this guy did seem to be. There was some suspicion that he knew something I didn’t. Maybe it was a collector’s item and he could sell it for double. Should I keep it and prevent him from profiting? Or should I keep it and deny him the joy of using the lawn mower he wants.

I didn’t have a good reason not to sell it, other than a vague suspicion. So I sold it back to him.

My justification was along the lines of this: if he had approached me two years ago with the proposal that I could borrow a zero-turn mower for almost two years at no cost to me, would I have accepted that offer? Sure would have.

It does feel a little different than that offer, but the basic concept is the same.

My wife’s reaction was “But now you’ll have to go buy another mower.”
My response: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

So I got a used Worldlawn Viper ZTR. Sounds fancier than it is. It’s slower than the Mini Z was, but it has a wider mowing deck, so the mowing time should even out.

The tires don’t have a good grip (i.e. they slip on the wet grass rather than moving the mower) so I’ll get some new tires with better traction. My plan is to not only get a different tread, but also get a bigger size so the top speed will increase.

What appliances/tools/machines do you have that you wouldn’t sell back for the same price you originally paid?

The wife and I went to see the reincarnation of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

It was okay.

The main story was still good. The movie was successful in that it conveyed the story. I laughed, I cried, etc.

But it was annoying in some aspects. I had known about the changes to LeFou, and I’m not going to discuss that aspect much – only to say that it was more of a distraction that anything else. I’ll liken deciding to watch this movie to what I heard a number of people say about voting for Trump. They did it in spite of his issues, not because of it, because it’s better than the alternative. Except in this case there were many alternatives and none of them was Hillary, so maybe the analogy breaks down there.

I had 3 main complaints about how the movie was inconsistent. Not necessarily inconsistent with the original movie, but rather inconsistent with itself.

• Claims of Live Action : The big selling point of this movie is that it was a live-action version of the animated classic. Come see the movie you love, but with people doing the acting – it’s not animated! They might not have said those words directly, but that was the feeling that was portrayed.

  Except…

  The Beast was computer-animated, Lumiere and Cogworth were computer-animated, Mrs. Potts and Chip were computer animated, as were the wardrobe lady and the piano guy and the footstool dog and so on.

  It’s hard to accept that a movie is live action when so many of its main characters are not.

  And I didn’t like the CGI, especially with Lumiere. And the Be Our Guest song. And the Beast’s gait. You get the idea – it was distracting.

• Setting and Accents : Was this set in England or France or America? The story says it’s in France, and part of it takes place in Paris. There are some French phrases thrown in for good measure. But only Lumiere attempts to have a French accent. Belle has a decidedly British accent, and the other main characters sound American. Of course, the best choice would be to have everyone with a French accent. But it wouldn’t have bothered me if everyone had a British accent, or American accent. If the movie is consistent, I wouldn’t notice it. But when the acecnts are all over the place, it is a distraction.
• Progressive and Oppresive Villagers : I think I understand the director’s/producer’s intention behind casting people of different races, but again it was inconsistent with the story and was more of a distraction. It was inconsistent because those villagers must have been very progressive not only to allow different races to have prominent roles but also to accept mixed-race marriages. (Although the races were only combinations of blacks and whites – didn’t see many Asians in there.) Since the setting is 18th-century France, it was anachronistic. But let’s give the director the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just trying to promote racial harmony and was using this movie as the vehicle to do so. But then we see these same villagers oppress Belle because she dares to teach a girl to read.

  In the original movie, the “provincial” villagers seemed rather indifferent – they thought Belle was odd but didn’t think much of it, and certainly didn’t teach her a lesson for going against the village’s unwritten rules. But this new adaptation of the movie makes the villagers both more progressive and less progressive. Why couldn’t the director have the villagers be supportive of girls’ education? If this movie was to be the means by which equality and tolerance are promoted, why only with the subject of race and not with gender? Again, inconsistent.

One more thing that bothered me was the choice of fuzzy camera focus during pans. Things went extra fuzzy/blurry when the camera was moving. I assume this was the director’s choice, as I haven’t noticed it in other movies I’ve seen. I disagree with that choice, since it happened a few times and each time it took my mind out of the story because my mind was trying to figure out what went wrong with my eyes. Again, a distraction.

The movie wasn’t bad, overall. It just had a number of things wrong with it. See it if you want. But if you want your kids to see a good movie, just show them the original animated version.

We had a nice spring day last weekend, so we took the family to the local botanical gardens. They are not a scenic as they would be during the summer when more things are in bloom, but it was still good for the kids to get out and about.

Here are photos of the various paths, ranked from best to worst for walking with kids.

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I thought I was safe.

I got the Home Depot credit card so I would be left alone. When the cashiers would ask if I would be paying with a Home Depot credit card, I could answer “Yes” and then I wouldn’t be asked if I would like to get one.

I also have a good answer for when one of their specialists is standing in the main aisle and asks me about my furnace. I don’t have a furnace, so I don’t need it tuned/replaced/fixed/updated/serviced or anything. The house is heated via a combination of hot water and electric baseboard and burning corn. But that’s another topic.

Last week I was buying some routine items from Home Depot and the cashier asked me if I would be paying with a Home Depot credit card. “Yes,” I answered, secure in my immunity from further questioning.

“Would you like to add another authorized user?” she continued.

What is this? Are they never happy?!?!

“No thanks.”

Maybe the Pro Desk cashier doesn’t have to ask upselling-type questions. I’ll try that check-out and see. If they do, then I’ll have to stick to the self check-out lanes.

Today’s post is going to be several thousand words long, assuming I get to convert each photo into the standard word count.

We had our last big snowfall of the season this last weekend, so we took some photographs as it was picturesque.

Our backyard.

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