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.