I liked the first movie, up to a point, so what made me think I would love this one. Hope springs eternal I guess, after all I’m a Red Sox fan. Some funny stuff like the first one, some totally stupid stuff too. Nothing makes the word fuck sound so poetic as an Italian/New York accent. And is it just me or does Lisa Kudrow with her hair pulled back look like the prototypical alien – all high cheekbones, sharp chin and big eyes?
The Thumb Drive showed up on Tuesday. You know me, I’ve got some complaints: The old one had a red drive light that worked like the standard one, it was lit when there was activity. This one does the same, but has the added annoyance of flashing once a second to let you know it is, I don’t know, working? Another nice feature is that it came with a couple of different color covers to match your mood or I-Mac color. The fly in that ointment is that to change the cover you have to remove two screws from the back which are hidden underneath the sticker that says, “Warning! Warranty void if removed.”
The Mug arrived the next day, Wednesday. You know me, I’ve got some complaints: It took a whopping ten days to get here. The thumb drive came from California too, and it made it 5 days. The dark green of the outside ring of the logo came in way too light. That is livable, but the big problem is that the Club’s circular logo appears oval when looked at on the mug. They preach what you see is what you get, the photo on the site doesn’t look like an oval, but in real life it sure does. My wife thinks I’m too picky, but I think it is unacceptable. I tweaked the logo by stretching it in the horizontal by 10% and ran a cylinder filter on it in Paint Shop Pro. I test printed it and it looks a lot better. I uploaded the new image and ordered another mug to check the results.
Or they might get the same thought I had about the plot for a new reality based TV show. Of course Thy might not get that idea from this story, Chimps May Have Closer Links to Humans the way it was titled on Yahoo, but the headline I read in the Augusta Chronicle was, “Researchers put chimps in human family.”
Everybody Loves Raymond used to be a must watch on Monday night. This season I just never picked it back up. Tonight I decided to watch the season ender. Robert was getting married and because it was so much TV they couldn’t get it all in 30 minutes. Tonight’s episode ran for a whole 45 minutes. It was painful to watch. It seemed pretty much like they used that extra 15 minutes to show commercials. On top of that there was some fat in the actual show that could have been trimmed.
Still no mug from Cafe Press. No Thumb Drive from Wolverine. both supposedly shipped from California via the USPS. Next time I order I’ll pay extra to go UPS, this way even if it takes a long time at least I can follow along.
According to Yahoo Maps it is 2825.7 miles with an approximate travel time of 43 hours and 28 mins. If that is true why has the mug I ordered from CafePress not arrived yet. They say it was shipped on 5/9 at 8:40 in the morning. That is about 97 1/2 hours ago. Had I known it would have taken this long I would have driven out to get it and I would be back by now with my mug.
I went shopping for my new USB Thumb Drive on the net. I started with the Lockergnome version of a price grabber search and then tried yahoo shopping. At Yahoo I found a good deal on a 128MEG Apacer drive with a neato docking station/extension cord thingie for $49 from here. I placed my order using the info in my Yahoo Wallet and within moments received a confirmation email. So far, so good.
Later that night I got an email informing me that for security reasons they won’t ship to a different address than my billing address. I am informed, in a way that lead me to believe that English was not the author’s original language, that I need to fill out the attached form and fax it back to them. The them in question is a outfit called SuperMediaStore.com not the dvd-rw media .com I thought I bought from. The return email address is supermediastore_annie@linkyo.com, so I type in www.linkyo.com into the address bar of IE and I get a generic “we haven’t been built yet” page from yahoo/Geocities hosting. Now things are not so good, the warm and fuzzy I felt on originally ordering is all but gone, but being a red-blooded American consumer, the low price offered kept me in the game. It was too late to call the phone number in the email, even with the West Coast time difference, so I figured I’d wait until I get to work in the morning and fax the authorization in.
This morning I checked my email before heading off to work and I discovered an email from DVD-RWMedia.Com AKA Selvi@linkyo.com promising me a free pen drive if I bought a 25 pack of DVD-RW discs. Jeez, spammed already, I don’t remember any place to opt in or out of email offers during the checkout process from these folks.
Still intent to go through with the purchase, I went down to the fax machine and loaded up my form. After several rings, I could here the announcement in the background, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and try again.” I check the number on the paper against the number I dialed and they match. Well, that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, I’ve got to find another place to get my drive from.
When I tried to call the number that was listed on the web page for canceling, I got the same “no longer in service” message that I got when faxing. Then I went to Annie’s email and below her name was an 888 number and a different fax number (it probably works.) After listening to the 8 branches of voice mail tree I selected Customer Service and was connected to probably the same person who would have answered any of the selections. Judging by the voice, it was probably Annie Ang, author of the email. After seeing that the order was on hold in her system, she told me, “No problem, I’ll cancel it.”
There was a place that was close to getting my business yesterday, so I hunted them up in the history file and went back. Ordered a 128 MEG drive from a place called Wolverine Data. No fancy docking station, but it does come with a couple of different color covers so I can match it to my wardrobe or mood. 🙂 Like yesterday, I got an almost instant confirmation email. So far, so good.
Today I got an email telling me the drive had shipped.