no more bedhead

Back in February, we went to the International Motorcycle Show.  It was awesome.  (I got to sit on a 2014 Indian Chief Vintage - totally want!)  While there, we visited all the different manufacturers and many of them had cards to fill out so they could get your contact information, usually in the guise of running a contest of some sort. Triumph Motorcycles was no exception.

I wasn't all that impressed with the Triumph lineup, but the cruisers did catch my eye. Of those, I especially liked the Thunderbird LT. I dutifully filled out my contact card, listing that as the bike that I'd like to test ride.

Last week I got an email from someone at Triumph stating that I had indicated I was interested in a test ride, but hadn't listed a model. I emailed back that I was interested in the Thunderbird LT, and got a follow up email that she would contact "her counterpart" who would arrange for a test ride.

Yesterday morning I got an email from him (the counterpart) who said he had spoken with a salesman at the closest Triumph dealer and that guy would be contacting me. His email went on to say that unfortunately the dealership didn't have any Thunderbird LTs in stock.  About an hour later I got a call from the dealership and was told that they had, just 20 minutes earlier, gotten one on the sales floor. Psyched, I made arrangements to go in on Saturday for a test ride.

Perhaps 10 minutes later, the phone rang again. It was the salesman calling to report that he is not allowed to let people test drive that bike, but he could make me a good deal on one if I still wanted to stop by. Ummmm...yeah.

So, I saved myself $17,000 and I got this crappy Triumph pen from the motorcycle show.

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but finally purchased some Atra razor blades for the old Atra razor I got as a freebie in college (surprised it's not fallen apart with age!).  The Atra is a (gasp!) 2-blade razor.  I've been using the Mach 3 which is a, unsurprisingly, a 3-blade razor.  Believe it or not, the difference between the two is tremendous.  (Not so much the difference between 3 and 4.)  Because I have an entire head to shave (and pumpkin-sized, to boot), I am concerned about the quality of the shave, and the Mach 3 blows Atra out of the water.  But...the blades are at least twice the price.  So, I opted to go back to Atra for at least a little while.

I thought I'd drop that information out on the interwebs, so I tweeted this:


I included a shout-out to Gillette in there just to pass along the frustration at the cost.  A little while later I got this response from Gillette:


Well, now.  Yes, your new ultra-fancy 4-blade razor with extra batteries and gold plating and diamond-encrusted handle may be the new standard in head shaving, but you missed the point. I'm sacrificing the quality shave in favor of the price. 

Let's look at the price, just for kicks.

• Atra Plus - 10 blades - $11.49 - $1.15/blade
• Mach 3 - 5 blades - $12.99 - $2.60/blade
• Fusion - 8 blades - $26.99 - $3.73/blade
• Fusion Pro Glide - 8 blades - $33.99 - $4.25/blade

(prices from drugstore.com - comparable to what I pay locally)

As you can see, instead of sympathizing at my cost issues, Gillette wants me to buy blades that cost almost twice what I was using, and almost 4 times what I switched to.  Of course, they are a business, and their job is to make money, so what else are they going to suggest?  But I was a little ticked.  Although this isn't why I was tweeting this information, what I think Gillette should have done (what I would have done if I was in Gillette customer relations) would be to offer to me:

• Coupon for Mach 3 blades
• Coupon for ProGlide blades
• A ProGlide razor

I don't think any of these are unreasonable, as they put coupons (and razors) in all those "back-to-school" boxes. In fact, that's where I got my Atra razor, my Mach 3 razor, and my Fusion razor. Just sayin'.

And yes, I've tried the 4-blade Fusion.  While it's nice, I don't see a huge difference between that and the Mach 3.  Certainly not worth the price.

Considering how many people live on less than $1/day, the Hot Dog Eating Contest just makes me sick. "Competitive Eating" morally should not be a sport.

Please.

The Advent Conspiracy

Wil Wheaton had a great post yesterday about how he (and I, and I'm sure a lot of progressives) feel about the fallout from the election.

Read it here.

In Season 3 of Project Runway, the judges couldn't decide who would be eliminated from the final challenge, so they sent all 4 designers to Fashion Week. A cheap ploy maybe, but I did like what all four of the designers were doing, and it seemed like a pretty fair solution.

In Season 4 of Project Runway, the judges couldn't decide who would be eliminated from the final challenge, so they had all the designers create a full line, then had a runoff between the two lower scoring designers to decide who would go to Bryant Park. I had a few choice words about that. In a nutshell, I didn't think Rami's collection was as strong as Chris' (or Jillian's or Christian's), and that he should have been eliminated weeks earlier.

So, Season 5 final challenge is on last night. I figure this should be easy because I've never seen a bigger bunch of "all-over the place" designers. I'm not seeing consistency (except with Jerell, and we'll address that in a minute), I'm not seeing risk-taking, I'm not seeing quality. In fact, Tim and Heidi keep stressing that this is the most talented group of designers they've seen. Hmm...saying it ain't gonna make it so.

The final comes down to Jerell, Leanne, Korto, and Kenley. Kenley??!! Please. She needs to get over herself and realize that Tim is on her side. Totally ignoring his advice keeps landing her in the bottom of the group. Well, they did their runway show and Jerell and Leanne have the top scores. Naturally, one would think that either Korto or Kenley would be out. But in another cop-out, the judges "can't decide" (hint: get rid of Kenley. It's a no-brainer.), so they decide once again that no one is eliminated.

Okay, I figure we're in for a "design-off" between Kenley and Korto. At least there is precedent for it. But no, we're now going to have a four way runoff. Which means that Jerell - who won the challenge and has been pretty consistent is his designs throughout the competition - is now competing again for a spot at Bryant Park. So totally not fair.

Do I care who wins? No. Not with this group. Although I predict that it will be Jerell.

The real winner in all this? The PR producers. They've messed with it enough that I'm talking about it. And isn't that the real goal?

This is my computer on crack...


So, I'm sitting on the porch Tuesday. The window is open. I hear a dull thud from inside the house. I go in and find my computer lying open and flat on the floor. The dog is running circles around the table. I look at the computer and it appears that the screen is shattered. F-ing dog.

Note that I say this now calmly. I was not calm at the time.

I was, in fact, a half hour from leaving the house to deliver web conferencing equipment to a church. A church that that particular evening, did not have access to a computer. I had volunteered to bring mine, so we could get everything set up.

Great.

I did quickly discover that I could plug in an external monitor and the hard drive appeared to be working just fine. That helped for the delivery. One of the things I was delivering was a projector. I could plug that in and see what was happening on the computer.

I called Dell the next morning, and was told that it would cost $350 to fix. While that was about half the price of the computer when I bought it, it didn't seem unreasonable. I had done some research and learned that replacement lcd screens were in the $150-250 range. The Dell deal started to fall apart when "Rock" (I don't know where these technicians in Delhi come up with their "American" names- and yes, he spelled it to me R-o-c-k) said that it would take 8 business days from the time they received it before they would ship it back.

I balked. Rock said that he could "expedite" it (but never 'splained what that meant), and that he talked to his manager, and they could knock $50 off the price. (What is this, Priceline?) And, oh, by the way, have you noticed a problem with your battery? The batteries are only designed to be good for a year, and it could fry your motherboard.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Next day, went down to the local computer store. They had the lcd panel that I needed sitting on a shelf. An hour later, and $270 on my credit card, I was back in business. Sweet. (And they've never heard of a battery frying a motherboard.)

The moral here: don't get a dog.

Is it just a coincidence that former Republican Senator Jesse Helms and Bozo the Clown both died on the same day? Were they in fact....the same person? Arguably.

RIP, Bozo.


Disclaimer: okay, they didn't actually die on the same day. Bozo died 7/3 and bozo died 7/4.

Oddly, an error message popped up when I started up my laptop today:


It was shortly followed by this one:


-1 to Microsoft.

Fun error message generator here.

Rami? Rami?! Rami?!? Oh, please.

I can't believe that the judges picked Rami in the "run-off" to go to Bryant Park and Fashion Week. Chris' pieces were so much better.


Now, I'll grant you that Rami listened to what the judges have been telling him week after week after week - no. more. draping. But the key here is that they had to tell him that over and over again. He's gotten a free pass the whole series. He got lucky in that each week, someone else went off the deep end and got eliminated. Rami is nothing if not consistent. Consistently the same.

And then Chris got raked over the coals during the last challenge because he had two dresses that were similar. What the hell?!

In tonight's "run(way)-off", I thought Chris' collection was much better than Rami's. I liked his theme, his overall look, and I even liked the human hair (deliciously weird!). Rami's didn't grab me. Yes, they were an improvement over what he had been doing, but they didn't "wow" me. And Nina and Michael said his were more "saleable" while Chris' were "costumey". Have they ever seen the bizarre shit that comes down the runway from established designers!! They said themselves, in the avant-garde challenge, that your runway designs should be outrageous, and then you pull them back to make them saleable.

How hard would it have been to have all four of them go to Bryant Park, if they liked Rami and Chris's work so much? It's not like they didn't do that before (see Season Three).

I like Chris probably more so because he's a costume designer, he's over the top, he's funny, and he reminds me of some people I knew in college. And Rami's not bad, but...

Still, neither of their collections are as strong as Jillian's, IMHO.

Meh.

I had my first experience where I had to catch myself with regard to my New Year's Resolution the other day.

I have been looking at mp3 players, and I wanted to have a hands on look at a couple of them - the Creative Zen, and the Zune. Circuit City carries both, so off I went. I found the mp3 players and started looking them over, only to discover that the two I wanted to look at would not power on. After standing there for 10 minutes, trying out the others on display, a sales associate finally came over to see what I needed. I explained my dilemma, that I wanted to compare players, but the 2 weren't working. Instead of offering to hook them up to an auxiliary source, he said, "Well, it depends on what you're looking for." Then to add insult to injury, another associate came over, stood behind me, and carried on a conversation with the first one as if I wasn't even there. I walked off, and left the store.

When I caught up to Ellen (at another store), I said, "Oh, I hate Circuit City!" I quickly caught myself and restated it: "I find that the customer service at Circuit City is not very good, and their use of rebates rather than discounts isn't very customer friendly. I prefer to shop elsewhere."

And retail management wonders why people like to shop online.

I'm still looking for an mp3 player, though.

I have had my share of websites that I have set up, or helped set up, and I have always used Network Solutions to check the availability of domain names. I've done that because I trust(ed) NetSol as they were the first registrar of domain names, their customer support has been good, and I believed that I wasn't going to get screwed when I visited their site (except for price, which is why I don't register with them anymore).

Well, it turns out that NetSol is registering the domain names that people have been looking up, thereby denying them the opportunity to register the name somewhere else, at a quarter of the cost, in a process called "front-running". Bastards.

Their "official" line is that they are protecting their "customers" - the people who are looking up the availability of a domain name. In reality they are blackmailing people into using their service. If you look up your domain name on NetSol, then go to GoDaddy to try to register it, it will show as "unavailable", and owned by NetSol. The only way you can get that name is to go back to NetSol and register there. NetSol says they hold the name for 5 days, after which it is released. I'm lucky, in that most of my websites are church sites and the pace of permissions in a church is rather slow, so by the time the request has been approved more than 5 days have passed.

Still, it is an unethical practice, and I will stop recommending Network Solutions to my clients as a possible domain name registrar and web host. Better still, I think I will tell them what NetSol is doing, and let them make up their own minds.

Read more about this here, here and here.

1. They don't use a litter box.


2. They leave poop bombs in the yard.


3. I'm going to have to clean up poop bombs in the yard.


4. They need room to run


5. You can't leave them for the weekend with a big pile of food and know that they'll be fine


6. I'm going to end up taking care of it.


7. We already have 4 kids, 3 cats, and 2 adults crammed into a tiny house


8. I'm going to end up taking care of it.


9. We already had to put a cat on prozac for anxiety disorders, what will this do to her?


10. I'm going to end up taking care of it, I just know it

So the deal is that the dog got dumped by the mother of one of the parents at the school. So the story goes, she took her kid and the dog out in their van, and made the kid open the door and dump the dog out. It made its way to school where it sat in Ellen's room all day. Now it's ours. I'm glad it has a good home, compared to the one it came from, but dammit, I don't want another animal to take care of.

I'm sure that in the long run everything will be fine, and he will be a nice addition to the family, and we'll get all those logistical details worked out, but I don't like change!

So, I guess the dog's okay. The kids are going nuts and everyone wants to play with him and take him out for a walk. I hope that lasts. He's a pretty good dog so far. He likes to play tug-of-war with his rope chew toy, and he is full of energy. He goes, goes, goes, then crashes and sleeps. Then the cycle repeats.


I am resigned to my fate, but I will try to make the best of it. At least he's cute. (And yes, he does open his eyes.)

It's 7/7/7, and there is a big concert series going on today. It's called Live Earth, and it consists of concerts in nine cities on seven continents. The idea is to raise awareness about global warming. I think it is a great thing to do, even if the tv coverage is crap. There has been no major network coverage until tonight, and the "hosts" on Bravo are a couple of freakin' idiots!! The stuff they're showing is just okay. You see a song or two, then the idiots come back on and blabber about stuff. Then the cycle repeats.

Now, before you get all over me, yes, I know it's all available on the intertubes, and presumably better. But, and Ellen may find this hard to believe, I don't have the time today to just sit around in front of the computer. So there. And speaking of freakin' idiots, I don't want to keep sitting here listening to Cameron Diaz lecture me on how she is so "eco-friendly" because she drives a hybrid car and turns the water off when she shaves her legs. Give me a break. Get Darryl Hannah back out here and we can listen to someone who is really making a difference! (She has lived off the power grid for 15 years, and drives a car powered by used french fry oil.)

A couple of things that I should point out, though. LiveEarth.org is the website for the event, and there is a lot of good information there. The one thing I missed that I would have liked to see was the performance from Antarctica. A group of scientists have a "garage band" called Nunatak, and they performed via satellite at Wembley Stadium in London to represent the seventh continent. Hopefully they'll post a video of their performance on their website.

I'm also sick of seeing the same performers and songs over and over again. If I have to watch Keith Urban or Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood one more time I'm going to scream!!

And I never saw Spinal Tap.

OTOH, they can keep playing Madonna performing her new song, "Hey You", which she wrote for this event, over and over again. I think it's a good song, and it shows some initiative on the part of the performer.

This was supposed to be a post talking about how we are all supposed to pull together to stop global warming before it's too late, and what a wonderful idea that President Al Gore had to bring people together (rather than drive them apart as Shrub does). It ended up being another rant. Sorry.

Go make a difference. Do what you can. Every little bit helps.

And remember today is the halfway point for the Millennium Development Goals (links here, here, and here). Goal #7 is Ensure Environmental Sustainability, so LiveEarth dovetails nicely with that. Be Green. It's good for all of us.

(7/8/07 - I found a list on the LiveEarth website of good suggestions of how to make a difference, so I'm passing it along here.)

I got really cheesed off on Friday. I have been listening to WARF in Akron for a long time. They call themselves “Radio Free Ohio” and feature such liberal talking heads as Stephanie Miller, Al Franken, Ed Schultz, and Randi Rhodes. I’m especially partial to Stephanie Miller (where else can you get: Senator - fart joke - Senator - fart joke - Congressman - fart joke - Cindy Sheehan - fart joke...you get the idea). On Friday, I dialed in the station as I always do, only to find a sports show. A quick check of their website revealed that they were changing formats Friday morning, back to all-sports. Bastards. More likely bowing to pressure from that vast right-wing conspiracy.

Of course, I could still listen to Mama on the internet, but the time that she’s on isn’t conducive to my schedule, and sorry, but I don’t want to subscribe to the podcast (only $4.95 a month if purchased a year in advance!). I suppose I’ll survive. I might even become more productive!?!

I hate voice recognition software when calling customer service numbers!!! I can't tell you how much I hate them. I had that experience today when I had to call FederalExpress. Half the time the stupid system didn't recognize my voice, so I ended up e-nunc-i-a-ting everything! And then when it didn't recognize it still, I raised my voice to borderline yelling! I can just imagine a sea of cubicles at an office and everyone on the phone with stupid voice recognitions software. You would look out over the office and hear a chorus of "YES", "NO", "FIND ANOTHER LOCATION", etc. And FedEx isn't the worst one I've experienced. That honor goes to Microsoft. Another on a long checklist I have of "why I hate Microsoft" (but that's another post).

Just tell me which damn button to press.