Tag: Stupid people

I am unauthorized

I got this yesterday, but just got around to reading it.

Thank you for contacting us. We consider feedback from our customers to be very important. We are currently experiencing higher than normal email communications from our customers and our response to you may be delayed. We’ll reply as soon as possible and we appreciate your patience in the meantime.

That’s not the best part. This is:

This email message and its contents are copyrighted and are proprietary products of American Airlines, Inc. Any unauthorized use, reproduction, or transfer of this message or its contents, in any medium, is strictly prohibited.

The email message is copyrighted. Um, okay. I guess this is an unauthorized reproduction. What are they going to do, steal 16 hours of my bachelor party? Oh, wait . . .

I also like how they attach a name to the autoreply, as if some CSR actually read my submission and responded personally. How touching.

John Scalzi on marketing

Whatever: How (And How Not) To Market To Me When I’m in Blogger Mode

I think I’ve linked to John Scalzi’s blog before.  He’s a science fiction writer and a blogger and I’m sure some other things, too.  This particular post is about two different marketing pitches, and why one’s bad and one’s good.  The basic idea of his post is that mass marketing, even when it’s trying to be slick (Or maybe especially if it’s trying to be slick), comes off as being intrusive and doesn’t work.  At least not on smart people like us.  But if you take a minute to show that you know a little about the person you’re marketing to, and then offer something worthwhile, people will listen.

I understand that companies want to sell their products.  I don’t fault them for wanting to make a buck.  But intrusive marketing drives me up the wall.  My blog doesn’t have a following like Scalzi’s (yet), so I’m not on anyone’s radar (Except for a few F’ing spammers).  But if I get to that point, I’ll probably react a lot like he did.

By the way, sending me free stuff is always encouraged.  If you send me free stuff, I promise to review it on the site.  I don’t promise that anyone will read it, and I don’t promise to review it positively, but I promise to review it honestly.

Ken Lay – not Jesus

Whatever: When Ministers Say Goddamned Stupid Things

John Scalzi has a little response to Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson, who compared Ken Lay to Martin Luther King, Jr, and to Jesus. This is worse than PTI comparing Jonathan Papelbon to Mariano Rivera.

By the way, if you’re a fan of science fiction, or even if you aren’t, check out Scalzi’s books. I’ve enjoyed them. His blog’s not bad, either.

Dont call kids fat. Wait until heart disease does it for you

Experts debate labeling children obese – Yahoo! News

There’s a ridiculous bit of debate on whether we should tell kids that they are “overweight” or “obese”, or whether we should use other words so the kids don’t feel bad. The real problem here is that they still use BMI to determine overweight. BMI is a ridiculous, meaningless number. Let’s say I’m in perfect shape. I eat healthy foods and exercise regularly. Then I decide to bulk up a bit, and I hit the gym and gain ten pounds of muscle. According to my BMI, I am now less healthy.

It’s ridiculous. Kids are fat. They eat terribly, and don’t exercise enough. And we want to worry about hurting their feelings?

On the Internet!

I just ordered some hanging plant pots from some strange store I found on Google. I need a new one because I have a hanging plant that has outgrown its pot. None of this is very interesting. However, I just got the shipping confirmation email (Edit: It was UPS that sent this email, not Novosel.), and it includes this at the bottom:

Click here to track if UPS has received your shipment or visit http://www.ups.com/WebTracking/track?loc=en_US on the Internet.

Now, I don’t know about you, but “on the Internet” is the LAST place I’d look for www.ups.com. The absolute last place.

Edit: These guys are the fastest online seller I’ve ever seen. I placed an order at 9:40AM yesterday. The UPS woman showed up at 10:50AM today. For $4.83 in shipping. If you ever need garden supplies, check out Novosel Enterprises.

Please, wont someone think of the stupid adult men

WAWS FOX30 Online – Jacksonville – Man Robbed by Teen Girls, Thought He was Meeting MySpace Friend

With everyone flipping out over MySpace, and how dangerous it is for young people – apparently no parent in America is willing to tell his or her 14-year-old daughter that she shouldn’t go meet some “great guy” she met online in a dark alley in the middle of a strange city at 1am – it will be interesting to see how we also protect the adults from the children.  To summarize the article, an adult male of unspecified age meets 18-year-old “Natalia” on MySpace.  He goes to meet her at her place.  He instead meets a 14- and 15-year-old girl, who rob him at gunpoint.

First tip that the person you’ve met online might not be who they say they are?  She says her name is “Natalia”.  No one is actually named Natalia.  No one.

Link via BoingBoing.