Category: Uncategorized

Citibank Premiere Pass

So, I’m sick of Credit Card companies promising one thing and delivering something else! I mean, these new Citibank Premiere Pass credit card commercials are awesome. They are funny, and the product sounds incredible.&nbsp_place_holder; I mean, I get miles on purchases and for the miles I fly… Plus I still get my airline miles as well from the airline. Can’t beat that!

But, alas, it’s a sham! You don’t actually get those miles that you earned flying until you’ve spent that much money on the card. So if you fly to Hong Kong for $1,000 bucks on the card, you get 1000 points for the purchase and like 10,000 for the flight… but you can only use 1,000 of those flight miles. Until you spend another $9,000 (!!!) dollars on the card, those points can’t be used. What a farce! And yet, they really don’t explain that in their commercials…

Oh, by the way, the card also has a $75 dollar annual fee. I mean, is that really necessary since the program pretty much sucks anyways?

Please, someone tell the new Democrats to do something about this. If a company makes a claim, they should have to meet it… REGARDLESS of what their disclosure says! Don’t give me disclosures, give me truthful advertising!

Thanks for allowing me to submit this. I feel better now.

Living in a furnace

I live in Northern California, so the weather is pretty nice year round.&nbsp_place_holder; My thermostat only has heaters in the living area; the bathroom and bedroom have separate baseboard heaters.&nbsp_place_holder; I usually leave those doors closed to save energy (and I don’t really even turn on those heaters as it doesn’t get that cold).&nbsp_place_holder; I have the living area temperature set to 62 or so (inaccurate gauge, mind you; it’s closer to 68).&nbsp_place_holder; This morning, I open the bedroom door to enter my living room to a heat blast.&nbsp_place_holder; It must be 75 or more in here.&nbsp_place_holder; I even turned the gauge down to “LOW” (which is below 50), but there is still hot air coming out of the vents.&nbsp_place_holder; I have to get a programmable format, but of course my thermostat is run off of line voltage, which is trickier and more expensive.&nbsp_place_holder; This all presumes that I don’t pass out from sweating out all the water in my system.

Smart traffic lights

There is a traffic light about 100 yards from my apartment complex.&nbsp_place_holder; Heading to work (east), the traffic light is “smart.” I define “smart” as follows:&nbsp_place_holder; if there are no cars intending to turn left coming from the opposite direction (i.e. west), then our light turns green.&nbsp_place_holder; However, on the way home (heading west), the light becomes “f*ing stupid.”&nbsp_place_holder; The light turns green for the left turn lane heading east (despite the fact that there are no cars intending to turn left).&nbsp_place_holder; I sit there idly wondering why both directions can’t be “smart.”&nbsp_place_holder; I guess that would defy the laws of traffic intelligence (which is a similar oxymoron as military intelligence).

Left turn on red

Here in Iowa, it is legal to make a left turn on red ONLY if you are in the left-most lane of a one-way street, turning into the left-most lane of another one-way street. Turning left on red is never legal when you are in the right-most lane of a two-way street. So you dumbasses at Sixth and High, and the MLK exit off 235 – Cut it out!

getting old

i swear i never got very sore after flag football games until this season.&nbsp_place_holder; there have always been bruises, abrasions, the occasional ruptured achilles tendon & what have you, but generally little (if any) muscle soreness.&nbsp_place_holder; i know i’m not going as hard as i used to when i block…that’s fine…that explains the decrease in bumps and bruises. but i essentially do the same general ‘staying fit’ workouts as i did during past seasons. i would think there shouldn’t be a marked increase in muscle-soreness.&nbsp_place_holder; the only explanation i can think of is i’m getting old.&nbsp_place_holder; and it sucks.&nbsp_place_holder; well worth testing the complaint submission form.&nbsp_place_holder;

2 driving violations

On my way to work, I travel about 10 miles on a strech of highway.&nbsp_place_holder; From 5 am – 9 am and again from 3 pm – 7 pm, the outside lane is designated as a carpool lane.&nbsp_place_holder; Allowed vehicles:&nbsp_place_holder; hybrids, motorcycles, and cars with more than one occupant.&nbsp_place_holder; I’m fine with the first two and would only modify that the 3rd condition to allow for cars with 2 licensed drivers (sorry soccer moms).&nbsp_place_holder;

  1. &nbsp_place_holder; On my way to work (around 11 am), I was travelling along in the outer lane.&nbsp_place_holder; Outside of the commuter hours listed above, this lane should then be assumed to be the fast lane.&nbsp_place_holder; If you are driving slowly, move over to the middle lane or the far right lane.&nbsp_place_holder; You are driving slowly if someone is tailgating you and/or your speed is anywhere near 65 mph.&nbsp_place_holder; I come upon an OLD VW BEETLE putzing along at 60 mph in this outside lane.&nbsp_place_holder; Seriously, folks, buy a clue.

2.&nbsp_place_holder; On my way home (around 6:15 pm), a yellow Lotus passed me in that outer lane during the commuter time.&nbsp_place_holder; There was no way there was a passenger.&nbsp_place_holder; I say fine him $1000 / (fuel economy in mpg).&nbsp_place_holder; This makes violators with gas guzzlers pay more for flaunting the law.

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Bite me, Microsoft

The company I work for recently upgraded Outlook Web Access from “borderline intolerable” to “still pretty bad”. It’s still a piece of junk, light years behind Gmail, but it’s an improvement. Until I tried to save an attachment in Firefox. A coworker sent me this PowerPoint about the mortgage crisis. OWA gives you the option to “View as Web Page”. Cool, I thought. I don’t have to save this file to disk and open it. So I did that. It was too slow. The PowerPoint is 45 pages or something, and the page transition time was getting annoying. So I decided to download it after all. I mean, it’s not like hard drive space is at a premium these days. There’s a little hyperlink that says, “MortgageCrisis.pps(2MB)”. So I clicked it. Firefox will generally handle things like that well – if you click a link to a file type it can’t open itself, it gives you the option to open it with a program you have installed, or save it to disk. That’s fine. Not with the new OWA. It just gives me an error message that this type of attachment has to be saved to disk. This is annoying, but not unexpected. Microsoft has never played well with others. So I right-clicked the file to “Save Link As”. None of this should be shocking to anyone who spends a lot of time online. This is where Microsoft punched me in the face. “Save Link As” attempts to save “attachment.ashx” instead of the PowerPoint. For those who don’t know, .ashx files are idiotic proprietary Microsoft script files for handling HTTP requests. It doesn’t matter if that’s Greek to you. The point here is that, once again, Microsoft has decided that the way everyone transmits data on the internet is wrong, and the way to really serve the needs of internet users is rewrite the rules so that nothing else is compatible. There are agreed-upon standards for transmitting data on the internet. Microsoft repeatedly defies them in order to make competing technologies incompatible with Microsoft products. It’s absolutely unconscionable, and one of the primary reasons I switched to Ubuntu Linux as my home operating system. BTW, “unconscionable” is a totally awesome word. It may be Microsoft’s only redeeming quality that they create so many opportunities for me to use it. Well, only redeeming quality other than Bill Gates’ newfound philanthropy. That’s pretty cool, too.