…to reach 200,000 comments on this blog (not counting, of course, the Haloscan comments “lost” in a failed import in January, 2006).
Why! That’s nearly 1/3 the number of SPAM “comments” Askimet has blocked in the last year!
*heh*
Dream Fred08 Ad
THIS is not an official, approved Fred08 ad… but it darned well oughta be. *heh*
What’s not to like?
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A Moving Experience
Nah, not an emotionally moving experience, just a (so far) successful one.
BlueHost just ain’t half bad, folks. The support folks seem to actually be invested in providing… service!?!
Quite a change from what I had grown accustomed to elsewhere.
We’ll see how this all turns out. So far, I seem to have my blog mostly functional (save for those issues noted in the Thursday Thirteen post yesterday) and so have enabled redirect at my domain management service… we’ll see.
Canceling my Fat(head)cow “Sucks Dead Bunnies Through a Straw” account either today or tomorrow. That should put paid to the whole shoddy experience there.
Of course, I fully expect the billing folks I talk to to refer to the “six months’ free service” I supposedly have coming (promised by several “support” folks) for all the hassles Fastcow has caused in the past. But why would I want even “free” service somewhere I’m sure to get more BAD service? It’s like getting a coupon for “All You Can Eat” from a restaurant where one got food poisoning. Who’d want it?
*heh*
Getting Inside the Mind of a Terrorist
I’ve been tardy making note of one of the best posts off-twc this week. Angel, at Woman Honor Thyself–a sometime contributor here at twc, I might note–had a “slap oneself upside the head” mind-boggler earlier this week with, Doozie of the DaY, on Monday. (Go read it. No, really!)
It seems some *cough* “Palestinian” guy thought he could “terrorize” folks at that “international conference on the Mideast conflict” (yeh, scare quotes. What? You thought there really was such a thing as a real “international conference on the Mideast conflict”? Riiiight… And Hillary Clinton is a sweet lil lady who bakes cookies) by threatening to jump off a building if they didn’t force Israel to release some terrorists and eject former IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya’alon from the meeting.
Angel’s response was a bit wordy, but apropos, I think: “GO FOR IT” Hmmm… I’d have thought a simple, “JUMP!” would have done the trick…
Better yet, I’m reminded of what “Dink Chavez”–a character in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six–had to say about getting inside a terrorist’s mind,
“…the best thing about the inside of a terrorist’s mind was a 185-grain 10mm hollow-point bullet entering at high speed.”
Or, as a bumper sticker I saw (just today, as a matter of fact) said, “Marine Sniper: You Can Run, You Just Die Tired.”
Yeh, how to respond to a “terrorist’s threat” to jump off a building if his demands aren’t met? ANgel had three words, but may I suggest three different words, addressed to a different party?
“Take the shot.”
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Multi-culti
I may make this a third world county feature. Who knows?
Anywho, here’s a multi-cultural post for you, a blast from the past rerun of a long-ago Precision Guided Humor Assignment:
See a suspect? Maneuver to get the wind on ’em. (Scent The stench of rotting camel–or other–dung may be your first clue apart from the fact that the guy looks like an Ay-rab.)
Step 1.) Does the goober smell worse than–well, Goober? If so, he’s either a Loony Left Moonbat or a Islamofascist murdering savage SOB. Bag ‘im either way.
Step 2.) When you perform a “cranial echo test”–whack ‘im on the head with an ax handle) does a “thunk” or no sound at all procede from his pie hole? If a “thunk” then it’s a Loony Left Moonbat and good for catfish feed or for bait for wild boar. If no sound at all issues, then there’s nothing inside (sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum, you know) and you have a splodydope. Remove any useful explosives and see uses for Loony Left Moonbat, above. If the critter attempts to bite the axe handle, it’s an osama and should be doused with gasoline and burned (after removing any useful explosives for later use fishing or blowing stumps).
Do bury any remains of an osama in pig manure and turn the compost frequently. Use this compost to kill kudzu.
There. Wasn’t that all warm and fuzzy, multi-culti?
(Oh, and before someone charges me with dehumanizing or demonizing Loony Left Moonbats or terrorists, please note that Loony Left Moonbats and terrorists have beat me to the punch and either dehumanized or demonized themselves before I could get in on the act. I’m just calling the cards that are already dealt.)
An exercise in giving thanks
[heh]
[Speaking to self: Self, read yesterday’s post. OK, now you can write this one. 🙂 ]
Wednesday, I recieved the motherboard I was waiting on. Put it away, cos, well, family was here, it was The Anniversary and the next day was Thanksgiving. Very “righteously” avoided even looking at it on Thanksgiving Day.
This morning, opened it up, put all tools, etc., out, arranged everything and began the process of installing the new board.
It was not the board I ordered and paid for. It was not at all the board advertised, promised for delivery or confirmed as being shipped. The company I ordered from stiffed me by shipping me an inferior product.
Not an explosion, but a very, very fast burn…
Later, more calmly, after being stiffed multiple times by a disfunctional voicemail/phone system at the other end of the pipe, I sent an email detailing the need the company had to make me whole, in order to demonstrate good faith.
Hours went by… more attempts to penetrate the impregnable defenses of a disfunctional voicemail/phone system.
Nearly twelve hours later, an email. Their remedy? They’re sending me an RMA#. I am to ship the inferior product that I did not order back to them. The company makes NO representation in the email concerning either replacing the inferior product with the product they advertised, which I ordered and paid for and they said they had shipped OR any reference to a refund!
Now, am I thankful for this lil difficulty (and admittedly, it is a small difficulty)?
Well, yes. And here’s why. I responded to the “RMA” email by detailing a few of the ethical and legal lapses in the company’s behavior. I very truthfully pointed out that should the company NOT make every effort to make me whole that I would bring their illegal bait and switch behavior to the attention of the federal fraud folks (http://www.ftc.gov/sentinel/ 😉 and two States’ Attorneys General, as well as complaints to Yahoo (since it was a “Yahoo Store”).
Why take such a hard line?
Well, while it’s no big deal for such companies to cheat me on such a small scale, unless a few folks (metaphorically) rap them upside the head with a brick bat for such behavior, they can mulitiply it hundreds or thousands of times, defrauding–harming–hundreds or thousands of other people.
So, I am grateful for the opportunity to climb on my swaybacked white horse, don my flowerpot helmet and take up my mop-handle in poor imitation of Don Quixote in hopes that this lil inconvenience for me may not be so readily perpetrated upon others, who may very well not find it a small inconcenience, but a heavier burden.
BTW, if you want to drop by the business that stiffed me and just let them know you’ll be spreading the word that you give credence to my opinion (based on my experience with them) that they are unethical, unreliable and altogether despicable, here’s their site and email:
One more dishonest place to avoid doing business with, IMO.
Update [11/30/04] Spent an hour on the phone with a “manager” at Justdeals.com having the distinct pleasure of lecturing him on the moral. ethical and legal failings of his firm. Finally wringed from him the “concession” that he would refund the transaction on our credit card (as though he could avoid doing so: by this time, our next step was calling the credit card company to report their fraud and have the CC company get the charge reversed, which they would certainly do [heh]–and he very well knew it by the time he made the “concession”.) By this time, he was also offering to avert complaints to the California Attorney General’s office and the FCC as well, so he told me to simply keep the product we had not ordered (as though he had the ability to demand a return of something we had not ordered! [heh]).
[sigh] Some people are really dense. (Of course, there was also the language barrier… 🙂 I had both those “offers” in my pocket to begin with!
Well, eventually (when it’s convenient for me to be near a UPS dropoff) they’ll get their inferior product back. IF the refund is posted to our account by Thursday.
Warn folks you know: in my opinion doing business with this company means you don’t necessarily have any kind of chance of getting what you pay for and getting any kind of good faith behavior out of them after the sale is a chancy thing at best.
But when you get right down to it, having the distinct pleasure of exercising my “prophetic gift” (speaking forth hard truths, clearly, unequivocally, unreservedly) was nearly worth the inconvenience of doing so while burdened with a (temporarily) deaf “phone ear”… (Laid up today with a frequently painful stopped up left ear… sometimes clears temporarily only to plug up again… drainage? wax? If it goes on, I’ll have it seen to [sigh]).
But man! The guy had to deal with me while I was nursing a case of deaf phone ear… Personally, I bet he’d rather have had to deal with a bear with a toothache. [heh… heh]