February 2009 Archives

Some guy, I think it was in Great Britain, discovered that if he broadcast a particular pitch just outside of his store, it discouraged the teens who liked to loiter there. They could hear it, but older people could not. Older patrons would shop, teens would skedaddle. Before long his son started giving away or selling the tone to teens as a ringtone. They could hear it, but teachers, say, could not. So they could get text messages in class and the teach would not be the wiser.

It's unusual for people over the age of 25 to hear this whine.

I am well over that age. I have not been kind to my ears. Yet, for reasons I do not quite understand, I heard it.

Created by Teenage Mutant Ninja Annoying Sound

Wait'll your dog or cat is near your computer before playing it, if you want to have a little extra fun.

Just two.

1. People who eat at their desks here at my office -- and that includes me -- may want to consider. The guy who empties the trash baskets in the cubicles makes his rounds just before lunch. That means that whatever you toss into your bin will be sitting there for at least a day -- maybe an entire weekend. Word.

2. It has become a pleasure rivaled only by eating chocolate or having sex to talk to a friendly, chipper, and actually helpful customer service representative. If I had a tail, I'd be wagging it.

Heather tagged me on Facebook to do this meme, but I'd rather update mah blog with some stuff, so...

1. What are you wearing right now?
jeans, black sweater over silky green top, black boots, silver/turquoise necklace.

2. What is on your mind right now?
the tastiness of the toffee/chocolate covered macadamia nuts a cow-orker brought back from Hawaii.

3. What was the last thing you watched on TV?
Latest ep of House. Before that, Cash Cab.

4. What was the last thing you ate?
a toffee/chocolate covered macadamia nuts a cow-orker brought back from Hawaii.

5. Who was the last person you were on the phone with?
The boss's boss, along with the boss, and other peeps who report to the boss's boss.

6. Are you a compulsive cleaner?
ohhhhh no. no. I'm not. ... no.

7. Zombies - good, bad, or just misunderstood?
Yeah. 'k. I'll just leave this question alone.

8. What was the last song you listened to?
9 Crimes by Damien Rice

9. Do you have any pets?
Yup!

10. What's your favoritest ice cream?
B&J's Phish Food

Sadly, the catch-term "Obama Bucks" has been done. I don't think,however, that it has been given this application, however:

Create an incentive to help out. For every hour spent doing community service type things, you earn an Obama Buck. Obama Bucks are good in exchange for dismissing misdemeanors, or maybe getting some tax credit or other.

Fighting the urge to scream as I read through a document.

It's "pareto", numnutz, not "parado"!

Hyperbolic, sure. But I'm feeling a little pissy right now.

I refinanced recently for a variety of personal reasons. Of course, as soon as I did that, my name and particulars went zipping 'round the world to all the "business people" who prey on mortgage holders, offering all manner of special services designed to make my life easier. They offered a service where, for a low monthly fee, they could arrange it so I would pay down my mortgage more quickly, paying off principal more rapidly, simply by changing my payment methods. Instead of one big chunk, the bulk of which is applied to interest and some smidgeon of which goes to principal, once a month, if I align my payments with my pay cycles, add a little bit on top of each bit, I would be applying more to the principal. I'd also be taking advantage of extra payments during the months that had extra pay periods in them.

Yowza! Great idea, thought I! I can easily set that up for myself using my free on-line banking bill pay service.

And so I did.

January went off without a hitch, but someone in accounting woke up from their nap when they got the first part of my February payment. I got a nasty gram. I got a phone call from a 'bot telling me there was a problem and to call an 800 number.

I called.

"We don't accept partial payments," intoned the nice lady. "They confuse the system."

Oh. I didn't realize you didn't have computers there. Sorry.

"We have computers. It's just that it's against policy to accept partial payments."

Um. Why?

"Well, it confuses things. The system isn't set up for it. They might misapply your payment."

Define "misapply." Like, you put it into someone else's account? What?

"Well, I can see they did misapply your early January partial. They used it to pay down the principal."

That doesn't sound like misapplication. That is exactly what should happen, in fact. But we're getting to the nut of it. See, the bank will help me be "flexible," if I so choose, by setting up a "flex pay" system for me, where by for a low per-draft fee they will "draft" a charge against my bank account to make the partial payment for me, and then they will apply the partial payment "correctly." That is to say, they will charge me money so they can set things up so I will pay the interest amount as well as the minuscule bit of principle they take out of each payment at the front end. Not only that, but THEY will control the amounts I pay and THEY will suck it out of my account for me.

This is why the banking industry must die. I accepted the interest rate they are charging me, and understand they front loaded it so as to maximize things. They are getting that full amount that they calculated for each of my payments. But now if I choose to reduce my principle faster, they have found a way to leech even more out of me.

They suck.

I received one of those humongous e-mails friends and relatives like to send around, filled with "beautiful, awesome, you will be amazed!" images. Sometimes they have video attachments. Terabytes of e-mails go slogging about on the Intert00bs, even in times when you can more quickly find the item by clicking on a web link than downloading the leviathan messages.

I was looking for the web version of one of these massively ugly e-mails when I discovered "9 most uglies and bizzares animals" (sic) and was struck by the resemblance some of these animals bear to relatives of mine. The uakari pictured at the top of this post stared back at me from the mirror just yesterday morning, and I could swear I saw the fellow over to the right at family gathering last Christmas.

Check out some of the other links at Lucky Clover when you have nothing more interesting to do ... and be sure to copy/paste what you find into a Word document, then e-mail the whole thing to everyone you know!

Is it my imagination, or is the dweeb meant to portray "Verizon" starting to disappear from the Alltel commercials?

Ever since the news broke that Verizon was acquiring Alltel, I've been peeking at those otherwise obnoxious commercials in which four dweebs do stupid things to try to show up a slightly less dweeby dweeb named Chad. The four stupid dweebs wear shirts with colors and labels that represent one of the big cell phone providers -- like the guy with the orange shirt is AT&T (formerly Cingular) and the guy with the yellow shirt is Sprint-Nextel.

Around Christmas they switched from live actors to doofy little animated dolls and the red-shirted Verizon dweeb kind of hung back and did not really join in the gang as they groused about good-hearted Chad. Now they're back to the live actors, and there's no sign of the Verizon dweeb.

I'm betting the little Verizon stalker guy in the gray coveralls who says "Can you hear me now?" will start showing up as Chad's bestest buddy.

Parlor game, that is. Popular at girlie parties like showers, TupperWare© Parties, and so forth. Write down things overheard, then string them together in suggestive or funny ways.

Just now came to me as I was zipping thru a recorded show using the quick advance button on my remote during the commercials. Like these:

1. "Use Viagra" ... "to avoid injury" ... "tonight on NBC" ... "it completely stopped my pain!"
2. "It's a lot better" ... "using the world's perfect peppers" ... "for perfect performance" ... "America runs on Dunkin"
3. "The Uninvited" ... "this guy's a whack job"

I'm easily amused, what can I say?