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.