Gmail Web Clips are context-sensitive (kinda funny)

I was taking a quick look at the Spam folder in my Gmail account this morning, and noticed something funny. The Web Clips at the top of the window showed a link to a recipe involving Spam.


I would suspect context-sensitive Web Clips (like AdSense), but according to the Gmail Help Center answer to the question, What is 'Web Clips'?:

Clips of your favorite RSS and Atom feeds are displayed randomly, and aren't targeted to the contents of your mail.

So, the help page is either giving wrong information, or it's just a funny coincidence! I'm betting on the former (help page wrong), based on this additional 'coincidence':

Pharmaceutical ads for 7-year-olds.. only on ABC Family*!

Is it just me, or does it seem wrong to advertise pharmaceuticals during TV-Y7 shows? Are they really trying to market to 7-year-olds?

My son was watching Power Rangers SPD this morning on ABC Family channel, and I noticed a commerical for some kind of depression drug.

At least it wasn't a genital herpes or erectile dysfunction drug commercial, but it still seemed out of place among the video game, toy, and junk food commercials.

(* = probably not *ONLY* on ABC Family)

Not for use with antibacterial soap

Why do some soap dispensers say "Not for use with antibacterial soap"? What happens if you use antibacterial soap in them?

Some companies I'm avoiding due to excessive amounts of spam

Some companies I'm avoiding due to excessive amounts of spam:

Costume Express, Storybook Heirlooms, Birthday Express (These 3 seem related. Not sure how I got on their list, but repeated attempts to be removed have been futile)

Another one is Freeze Media (www.freeze.com). I downloaded a "free" screensaver, trying to find a fun one for my kids. I should have read their privacy policy, though, because on closer inspection, they explicitly say that they will share your info with whoever they happen to have any business relationship with at any given time. Hey, at least they HAVE a privacy policy, and are honest about it. I'll give them a little credit for that.

Anyway, I received ridiculous amounts of spam from them and/or their affiliated companies, and could not make it stop. I don't have the spam laying around anymore, but I remember looking for any way to make it stop, and could either find no unsubscription info, or it did not work when I tried it. I also couldn't figure out why I was getting mail from them in the first place, but today they sent me an email that explained to me that I downloaded their "Living 3D Dolphins" screensaver on 01/22/2005. So, 9.5 months later, I finally know how I got on their lists, and can avoid dealing with them in the future (and hopefully help others to avoid them as well).

I'll probably add comments to this post in the future, as additional identifyable companies spam me and won't stop. Most spam does not fall in these categories, but at least we can try to avoid this type of spam by avoiding the companies.

Election: How NOT to get my vote

Election day is tomorrow, and I feel I must express how annoyed I've been with this campaign. In the Virginia gubernatorial (goobernotorious?) race, Jerry Kilgore has been spouting nothing but negativity, and has been autodialing my home phone numerous times with recorded messages (twice just yesterday, in fact).

I took another look at the TV commercials last night from Killgore and Tim Kaine.. Kaine talked about how he felt on issues, what he wants to do, etc. Killgore's ad was hardly recognizable as an ad for Killgore -- there were about 3 seconds at the beginning where he said he approved the ad -- then the rest was just a "NOT Kaine" ad, bashing Kaine on issues such as raising the gas tax (trying to play on the current hype about high gas prices, when really the taxes have not been the cause of the drastic price hikes we've seen in the past year), raising real estate taxes (during a period of unprecedented housing growth.. something's got to pay for widening EVERY road), and other tax-related issues.

Based on that ad alone, I would not think "I should vote for Killgore!", but rather, "I should not vote for Kaine". If there was a third-party candidate, Killgore's ad would tell me to vote for them... oh, cool, there actually is one: Russ Potts (I) I'll have to read up on him.

I consider myself a libertarian these days (little 'L'), believing mainly in small government and the personal responsibility and freeedom that goes with that. I used to be a card-carrying Libertarian, but their candidates seem to always be TOO RADICAL, with plans like:

On day one as president, I'll abolish the income tax and cancel welfare, social security, medicare, medicaid, etc. On day two, I'll legalize drugs and abortions. On day three, I'll open the U.S. borders to free immigration, and bring ALL of our troops back from other countries.

This type of candidate will never actually be elected (although I do tend to vote for them out of principle, to avoid supporting the Democrat or Republican candidates.. lesser of 3 evils.. plus it allows me to complain about whoever actually GETS elected, because I didn't vote for them!).

So, lately I've generally voted Republican, at least when third-party candidates were not available. I will NOT be voting for Jerry Killgore, though, because of his mud-slinging and auto-dialing campaign. I'd rather vote for the Democrat, or possibly the Independent (Russ Potts).

Oh yeah, now that I've read some more on the Russ Potts website, I remember when Potts was trying to be included in debates a couple months ago. Killgore was against allowing/inviting Potts to a televised debate, while Kaine and Potts participated in at least 10 other debates which Killgore refused to attend.

All the more reason NOT TO VOTE FOR KILLGORE. He might have had my vote by default, if he had just been a good sport and played fairly.

Profound Canon Powershot S50 support advice

Canon's support site has terrible navigation and session management, but at least their support instructions are funny! This is from the Canon PowerShot S50 support section. Unfortunately, I can't link to it, because they require you to establish a session, and post a form, just to retrieve basic product help. Way to go, idiots!

What to do when the camera does not turn on
Please check the following things when the camera does not turn on.
Possible causes and how to handle them
1. The camera is not on
Turn on the camera. (Operation procedure varies between camera models. Please refer to the camera user guide supplied with your camera.)

Oh, so the reason the camera won't turn on is because it's not on? And the solution is to turn it on? Thank you, Canon support, I hadn't tried that yet!

There were a few other tips on that page as well, but I couldn't stop laughing about the first one, and then struggled to figure out how to link to the page, so I haven't gotten around to reading them yet. I hope the other suggestions are equally amusing, or better yet, USEFUL.

Counterproductive ads

Every day I hear ads on the radio that make me change the station. It makes me laugh when I think about how a company paid the radio station some money to repeatedly air an ad, which is so abnoxious to me that the company, the radio station, and all of the station's other advertisers lose a listener (and I would assume many others) every time the ad airs.

So, by playing these ads, not only will I never buy anything from the company, but I'm either switching to competing radio stations (until they play this type of ad), or listen to a CD. Now, the competing radio stations are probably not really competitors, since Clear Channel probably owns all of them, but when I listen to a CD it certainly doesn't help any of these companies.

Ads that grate on my nerves and make me want to go postal:
Shaw's Jewelers - painfully annoying singing, same singer and basically the same song for *at least* 7 years now, and I've been switching the station every single time I hear the first note for all of those years. When I have to buy jewelry someday, I will go anywhere except for this place, because they've been trying to torture me for so long.

Adelphia high-speed internet - abnoxious, infectious music.. some kind of wind instrument is the prominent and annoying sound. All it takes is one note from that instrument to make me switch the station. What's worse is that they're trying to torture me, but their service is something that's confined to particular geographic areas, which do not include my house. So I couldn't use their service even if I didn't hate them for their annoying ads.

Those are the two that have been pissing me off the most in the past week, since I started thinking about the phenomenon they cause (me changing station) and the repercussions that causes for the stations and their other advertisers. Of course there are always annoying ads everywhere, but certain ones just really get to me.

Safeway and Wind Energy

As I was getting gas last night at the new Safeway Fuel gas station in Bristow, VA, I noticed a sign posted saying that Safeway Fuel stations run on 100% Wind-generated electricity. How odd, I thought, for a petroleum dispenser to run off natural energy sources. Sounds good in theory, though. Seems like it's a good idea to use renewable, natural energy sources whenever possible, so I went ahead and checked out the website that was posted on the sign.

I wondered how they could get electricity from a different place than every other home, business, etc. around. It's not like there are any huge windmills in the vicinity, and it wouldn't be feasible to run a direct electric line from wherever they DO have huge windmills to this little gas station. According to the Safeway Green Power FAQ, they pay for the wind energy facilities to deliver an amount of electricity to the electricity grid (the power delivery grid that everyone is connected to), equal to the amount of electricity used by all of the Safeway Fuel stations, corporate offices, and San Francisco Stores.

I hope others will follow their lead, unless there's some negative aspect of this that their information website is neglecting to mention. I didn't find anything negative with a quick google search, though. For now, I'm just happy that they built a gas station closer to my house, which often has the cheapest gas around (especially with a 3 cents/gallon discount with your Safeway card, or a 6 cents/gallon discount with a prior grocery purchase of $50 or more). Not bad.

Republican National Committee census

My wife just got a "Republican Party Census Document" in the mail last week, and I thought something in it was kind of funny. It's a survey, supposedly getting opinions from registered Republicans on all sorts of issues. At the end, though, it says:

Will you join the RNC by making a contribution today?
( ) Yes, I support the RNC and am elcosing my most generous contribution of:
[ ( ) $500 ( ) $250 ( ) $100** ( ) $50 ( ) $25 ( ) Other $____ ]

** A gift in this amount pays to mail 250 more CENSUS DOCUMENTS to registered Republicans.
[...]
( ) Yes, I support the RNC, but am unable to participate at this time. However, I have enclosed $11 to cover the cost of tabulating my survey.

If they're spending $11 to process ~18 simple multiple choice questions (fill in bubbles.. Yes, No, or Undecided), they've got a lot more problems than I can help them with even with a $500 donation. They need to learn to spend their money more wisely, and if I sent them any money, it would only be encouraging them to continue their current unwise spending. No thanks, I think I'll help them out by doing my part to teach them to be more thrifty.

Of course, this may have just been a thinly veiled attempt to solicit contributions, with the survey not really gathering anything particularly enlightening. I did a quick google search to see if I could avoid typing that excerpt from the survey form above, but instead I found some other people's rants about these "census" forms from previous years. It was entertaining to read these:

The T. Rex Essay - The Official GOP CENSUS DOCUMENT

Entia Multiplicanda

Apparently they used to include a 3rd option in the section about making contributions:

( ) No, I favor electing liberal Democrats over the next ten years.

Can you imagine how many of those responses they must have gotten? Multiply that by their $11 processing costs, and it's easy to see why they no longer include that option.

Oh, and this last one is my favorite:

My Nefarious Strategy Keeps Sucking The Republicans Dry! Dry, I Tell Ya! OK, Thirsty, Maybe.

This last one actually went on to describe how sending a small donation to the RNC would actually cause them to LOSE much more than you sent them, because of the additional costs they'd incur by bombarding you with lots of additional Republican propaganda. I love the sheer spitefulness of it!

dumb verizon

Trying to do some long-overdue housecleaning on my hard drives, and keep running across little tidbits that I've saved for one reason or another. From a file I called "dumbverizon.txt", comes a quote from some piece of Verizon DSL literature from a few years ago that I thought was funny:

Due to the sophistication of DSL service Verizon Online does not guarantee that your service will b uninterrupted or error free.

I think it speaks for itself. :)

Tupperware kicks ass!

I think about this every day at work, and keep telling myself I should blog about it. We have some excellent plates and bowls from Tupperware, which we've had for about a year now, I think. These dishes, part of their Open House collection, are made of the same material as some of the Rock ’N Serve storage containers we've been using for several years.

I've heated butter, foods loaded with tomato sauce, cheesy hot dogs (the grease from which has caused permanent damage to some other plates in the past), soups, foods with lots of melted cheese (which has caused permanent damage to other plates as well), etc. No matter what I've heated up in these plates and bowls, they've survived with no signs of damage or wear. They also have no problem with going from one extreme temperature to the other (microwave to freezer, vice versa, etc.) and the outer rims never get too hot to handle. The Tupperware consultants that we've bought from have expressed their durability with various claims, including the ultimate "You can run it over with your car, and it won't break," which supposedly they've sometimes demonstrated. I haven't cared to find out, but it still sounds kinda cool.

Plus, they are extremely easy to clean -- often just requiring a gentle wipe or two with a sponge (or wet paper towel) to clean off anything. With kids around, they're also safer because they're virtually unbreakable. Even without kids, I would want to have these, because I hate it when dishes inevitably get broken eventually. I'd rather not have to worry about it.

I know I must sound like I'm trying to sell these things, but I really have no affiliation with them other than being a very satisfied customer. The only things that suck about them are the price, and the way they retire their product lines... I can't find anywhere to buy more of these "Open House" bowls and plates, which sucks because I'd like to have more. That's why I had to link to the product info page in the Internet Archive (WayBack Machine) for the plates and bowls. The Rock 'N Serve containers are still for sale, though. If you can find these things second-hand somehow, I'd imagine they'd be just as good, based on the durability I've witnessed. I won't vouch for the durability of any of their other products, although we have had some others that held up pretty well. None of them can compare to the type of plastic they use in these 2 lines of bowls, plates, and containers.

I've put these plates and bowls through the harshest conditions that my dishes ever encounter, and every time, I think to myself "Wow, Tupperware kicks ass!"

Kindergarteners can flush and wash their hands, why can't executives?

This has been boggling my mind for years, now. It's interesting and rather disgusting to see the bathroom behavior of many adults in the workplace. Is flushing the toilet really going to make you late for an important meeting? If the client you're meeting with had a choice, do you think they would rather shake your unwashed hand, or have you arrive in the conference room 30 seconds later? I just don't understand.

Yesterday, as I was leaving the bathroom, I saw 2 unflushed urinals. It took me less than 2 seconds to flush them both, on my way out the door. I suppose that someone else's 1 second must be much more valuable than mine, though. Why should they have to do it? Someone else will definitely do it eventually, right?

Sometimes, even if I'm standing there washing my hands, I still see people not flush and/or not wash their hands. If I was going to be lazy and follow the above-mentioned motto: "Someone else will definitely do it eventually," I would at least make sure nobody was looking!

The reason the title of this post mentions executives is because all kinds of people exhibit this behavior. From maintenance guys, to interns, to all levels of management... My 6-year-old has flushed and washed his hands for years, now. Why can't they?! I've witnessed two different CEO's over the past 7 years (at different companies, not my current employer!) blatantly skip the handwashing, despite the presence of myself and sometimes other people as well. Have they no shame? Are they intentionally trying to show us lowly workers that they are much too important/busy to deal with such petty tasks?

These people are the reason I feel compelled to flush with my foot, and open doors with a paper towel. But mysophobia is a whole can of worms in and of itself, so I'll save that for another day.

Nissan Altima remote/key fob - how to make it not honk!

I bought a 2005 Nissan Altima a few months ago, and although I am happy with it overall, there are some things that really irk me. I finally figured out how to avoid one of them, after all this time.

I like it just fine when I lock my van (2001 Toyota Sienna) with the remote. It gives a gentle 'beep' to let me know that it heard me and locked itself. The Nissan, though, lets out a loud 'HONK' of the horn, which annoys me every single time I lock it (especially late at night or early in the morning).

But, I always lock my vehicles from the outside, with the remote. It's how I always avoid locking my keys in my car. Can't lock them in the car if they're in my hand, outside of the car, when I lock it.

Well, yesterday I accidentally found a workaround for the 'HONK'. All I have to do his push the lock button on the remote while the door is still open. No beep, no honk. Just the quiet click of doors locking. As long as I always still lock it from the outside, with the remote, just before closing the door, I will hopefully still avoid locking my keys in the car.

I hope this proves useful to someone else. I wish I'd known sooner. I'll post some other of my pet peeves about my Nissan Altima soon, in the hopes that someone might have a solution/workaround, or at least to vent/get it out of my system.

Need to start blogging regularly

I keep kicking myself every day for not posting anything on here... I've been meaning to for a couple weeks, at least. Every day I have something that makes me think to myself, "I should blog this," but then I don't. So, today I'm blogging about how I need to start blogging, in the hopes that it will start a trend.

This will probably consist of short and simple daily posts, about things that I like, and things that I don't like.

So, uhh.. stay tuned or something.

baby name poll!

If anyone is actually reading this, please vote in our baby name poll!  This name is for our third and final child, a girl, who will be born on Wednesday, July 27.

http://www.babycenter.com/babypoll/62AF

cool surprise from amazon

I recently preordered the latest Harry Potter book from amazon.com as an early birthday present for my wife.  I paid $17.99 (40% off the cover price) + shipping for guaranteed delivery on the release date (or shipping would be refunded).  It arrived on time as expected, and my wife was very happy about it.  As an added bonus, I got this unexpected email from amazon!:

From: Amazon.com <order-update@amazon.com>
To: [REMOVED]
Date: 16 Jul 2005 22:31:58 -0700
Subject: Your Amazon.com Order for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6)
-------------------------------------

Hello from Amazon.com.

Good news!  We've just lowered the price of "Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince" from $17.99 to $16.99.

You don't need to do anything to get the lower price--we are automatically
issuing you a $1.00 refund.  This refund should be processed in the next
few days and will appear as a credit on your next billing statement.  We'll
also send you a follow-up e-mail to confirm the refund once it has been
completed.

Thanks again for shopping at Amazon.com.  We hope you enjoy your book!

My lovely "Checks Unlimited" experience

My family and I moved recently, and I wanted to get new checks with our new address on them.  So, I first checked out my bank's prices for reorder, then looked at a couple of those ads that come in the mail all the time for designer checks, then looked online for a better deal.  

What I ended up going with was checksunlimited.com , where I used a promo to get:
400 checks for $11.00 shipped, with free labels & free custom lettering

When placing the order, I had to enter the normal info about my bank account (routing number, account number, starting check number), then they asked for the exact name and address info that appeared on my existing checks (they do some kind of verification based on this).  Of course, this was my old address.  Later they asked for what to print on the new checks, so I entered my new address. 

 

I had already changed my address with my bank several weeks earlier, so my bank certainly had my new address on file.  However, checksunlimited was verifying the address I was putting on my new checks against the address that was printed on my previous checks.  So they sent me this email.

 

I eventually went to the bank (something I very rarely do) and got someone to sign the verirfication paper.  Next, I tried to fax it to checksunlimited, and expected to get the "RUSH processing" like the verification email said.  Fax machine retried about 10 times, no luck.  I'm not sure if it was not connecting or not sending, but in any case it failed.  Tried again the next day, same results. 

 

I tried calling the support phone number both days, but all I got was a recording stating something like "All of our staff are currently in meetings.  Please try back again in an hour."  An hour later, same message.  An hour later, same message.  The next day, same message, etc...

 

So, I'm going to just pay more right now and get them from my bank.  I've already wasted way more of my time than this checksunlimited promo pricing was worth.  I'm guessing if I ever decide to try them again in the future, I'll probably be considered an existing customer and be ineligible for promos like this one.  Oh well.

 

drpepper.com requires flash

I've been saving up some bottle caps and cut-out pieces of 12-packs of Dr. Pepper products, for their "Win One of 75 Mini Cooper Convertibles" promotion. Why was I saving them up, rather than just entering the codes as I got them? Well, I tried going to enter a code last week but their site was down for maintenance or something.

Today, I went to drpepper.com to enter these codes, and was presented with nothing but a Flash app. For some odd reason I clicked the "Join the Party" link first... I'm thinking it's because I prefer navigating with pulldown menus over clicking on various animated objects.

So, I went through and registered my personal info and created an account, with their flash app that made tabbing from one field to another a chore, and made dropdown menus seem to actually require clicking with the mouse, but got through it all and submitted.

Then I waited, and waited, while some kind of animated "Saving..." type thing kept moving, but eventually (5-10 minutes later) I gave up. I decided to look for an HTML version of the registration form, so I could start over (I never got any confirmation email so I assumed the registration failed).

So, I tried using Firefox and disabled the flash plugin stuff (since Firefox makes that nice and simple to do!), but then drpepper.com just gave me a blank page. I thought maybe my browser was still reporting that I have Flash, even though it was not displaying it, so I viewed the page source. There was a "noflash" link in there, but that page turned out to just be a message saying that they "use flash extensively" and *require* Flash. I also tried with a text-only browser (links), but of course all I got was a blank page again.

So, I went back to drpepper.com in IE again and actually LOOKED at the Flash app. There was a great big image regarding this Mini Cooper promotion on the left side, so I clicked it, and ... this is the best part ... a window popped up with exactly what I was looking for, an HTML version of the registration form and code entry form: http://www.softcoin.com/p/handler?target=general&action=getHome&sid=530

If I wasn't a programmer, I might have just thrown away my codes; in fact, the thought did cross my mind. But, I was happy to find what I wanted, and I entered my codes (all losers of course). I still think they're morons for completely requiring Flash to get to the promotion, while the entire promotion site is all HTML.