| By admin,on July 5th,2011 Google! Hear me Well! If you want to continue to be the number one search engine in the world,STOP REDIRECTING US TO ADVERTISING! When I search,I want to see the link I am going to,not your advertising. Should you continue in this endeavor,I will find a search engine that DOES NOT redirect to advertising and begin using it! STICK TO YOUR ROOTS! As it stands,I am going to use an ad blocker software to try and circumvent this aggravation,but if that breaks my surfing,I am removing Google from my preferred search engine! By admin,on April 19th,2011 So,I just bought a new car and got my first payment coupon in the mail today. My dealership told me and showed me on the agreement where I could include additional principal on my monthly payments to get out from under this loan faster. Well,when the coupon arrived,there was absolutely no where on the coupon to pay additional principal with the monthly payment. I called customer service and got some Indian or Pakistani named “Edward”. I guess they think that having an English name will make us understand them better. According to Edward,there is no way to include additional principal on the monthly coupon and there is no way to include additional principal on the web site. The ONLY way to make additional principal payments is to call them and schedule a payment. OK,so Capital One is making us talk to someone to make an additional payment. Well,it turns out that you HAVE to make the monthly payment either on the web or through the mail or they will charge you $14.95 to make the monthly payment EVEN if you are going to include additional principal! What a total CF! You must make 2 different transactions to do your monthly payment and make an additional principal payment! I must conclude that those barbarians they show in their cutesie advertisements are really the top level management at Capital One. They certainly seem to have the same rape and pillage mentality as the barbarians. If there was EVER a company or industry in need of government regulation,Capital One and the financial services industry are the two top candidates! Hey all you politicians in Washington!! How about getting your collective brain trust together and see if you can manage to craft and pass a bill that will require financial services companies to include on ALL FORMS of payment acceptance the option to list and add to your regular payment additional monies that are specifically designated to reduce principal! Firms like Capital One seem to be in the business of making it as difficult as possible for consumers to pay off their loans as quickly as possible and seem to make it as easy as possible for consumers to easily mess up and become more and more indebted to Capital One! By admin,on January 10th,2011 A few days ago I found out some items I did not know that when I put the pieces together looks amazingly like a conspiracy to defraud the computing public. It seems that Windows 7 Home Premium has certain code disabled in it that causes the computer to not map drives properly to enterprise class servers from Microsoft. The interesting thing is that for the sum of $89.99 you can input a activation key into Windows 7 to unlock said code and turn your Home Premium into Windows 7 Professional. That part does not surprise me since this is Microsoft after all. What I find surprising is that Dell is offering high end ($1399 and up) workstations that are specifically designated to be business class machines where one would expect the buyer to connect to Enterprise Class Microsoft servers with only Windows 7 Home Premium installed on them! This way they can advertise a lower price and then extort the extra $89.99 from you to be able to connect to your Enterprise Class Servers! Perhaps this is merely my thoughts on what should be correct,but if you are selling a machine that is specified as one where you are expected to connect to an Enterprise class server,you should at a minimum offer an operating system as standard that is capable of connecting to the server without having to pay more money! It is not clear if this is Dell trying to advertise lower prices,if this is Microsoft just trying to squeeze more money out of the computing public,or if this is some sort of conspiracy between the two! In any event,the computing public should stand up and say “We are mad as HELL about this and we are not going to take this any more”. Nothing like a good grass roots revolt against giant companies to get their attention! We should stop buying Dell products and Windows 7 OS until Microsoft and Dell change their way of doing business here! By admin,on December 20th,2010 Just was on Facebook and saw a post on a cousin’s wall. Clicked the link and was taken to some strange site that purported to be doing a survey. Near the end of the survey,I was asked for my birth date. Now,that had nothing to do with the survey questions that had been asked–RED FLAG #1. Every Survey I have ever taken in the past,if it was trying to gather demographic data on the survey respondents,asked you to indicate which of several ranges that your age would fall into. Not a single one EVER asked specifically for my exact date of birth–RED FLAG #2. Now,for years web sites have been able to read the history of what sites you have visited for as long as your browser would store that information. Recently,it has come to light that many more sites are obtaining this information and using it to target their marketing efforts to you. So what is an Internet Surfer to do? To start with,clear your site history–not your password cache–EVERY TIME BEFORE you begin surfing. If you are going to a site you have never gone to before,clear you history again to give away the least amount of information possible! Next,clear your personal data from your browser. If you WANT to enter this data into a site,then type it in by hand. This way,YOU are in control of the data you allow to become public. NEVER give name,address,and birth date to any site where you are not 100% certain of who owns the site and what your data is going to be used for. This much data is enough to steal your identity! Folks,when you take some time to think about what information you are providing on the Internet and who you might be providing it to,you REALLY should begin to get a sick feeling in your stomach,because the vast majority of us freely give away too much information in this manner! Have a Merry Christmas! and a Happy New Year! Do not let the new year start off on a sour note because you gave away too much information. By admin,on December 16th,2010 So I saw a video of this guy walking through the Casino in a thermal winter riding coverall and with his motorcycle helmet on during lunch today and this is supposed to be the guy who ripped off over a million dollars in chips from the casino. After hearing about how tight the security is in these casinos and how the entire floor is under surveillance 24 x 7 x 365,I just want someone to tell me how this guy can walk–dressed like this–all the way in and out of the Casino without EVER being challenged by ANYONE! Hello folks! My opinion of the effectiveness and professionalism of the casino security people–at least at the Bellagio–has dropped considerably after seeing that video on the news! Folks,you REALLY screwed the pooch on this one! By admin,on December 16th,2010 Today I heard on the news that filmmaker Michael Moore has contributed,I think,$20,000 to bail out the founder of Wikileaks from a London jail. Michael,since you seem to dislike America–the country that allows you to make the type of films you do about how much you dislike the country and,apparently,everyone in business in it–so much,why don’t you pick one of the other several hundred countries in the world that you think you might like better and simply move there for good! I know very little about this guy who founded Wikileaks,but I know that his reckless release of the documents that he has posted so far has endangered the lives of many people around the world. It appears that I have more respect for human life than he does since I could not live with myself knowing that my actions put the lives of other people in danger,or worse yet got them killed. Even if these people are engaged in activities that he believes are immoral,the act of putting their lives in danger also by default puts the lives of their,usually innocent,families in danger as well. I imagine that Julian Assange and Michael Moore believe that this is acceptable “collateral damage”for the greater good of exposing the covert operations of governments around the world. Hmmmm. This sounds strangely like the corrupt practices that Assange,and by association YOU Michael Moore,are so dead set against. I guess that neither one of you have ever heard the old adage that two wrongs does not make a right. If not,you have now! Do I agree with everything that my government–The USA–does? NO! I also do not agree with everything that ANY government in the world does,they ALL do things like this as part of their daily business. Am I going to publish stolen documents from said Governments on a web site to expose their wrongdoings? HELL NO! Is the world perfect? Not at all! Will the world be perfect any time soon? Not in anyone’s lifetime that I can foresee. You see the problem here is actually Human Nature. As near as I can tell,there are always going to be people in this world who think they can bring about change through the use of intimidation,terror,death,torture,or oppression. Since these people refuse to play by the rules of society,society must break its own rules to deal with this type of person or group. You and Mr. Assange want to put a stop to these activities because you think simply asking these groups or people will be enough to cause them to stop. I find it totally incredulous that you can be so insanely wrong in that thought process! History–and current events–has shown over time that the only way to stop these type of threats is to deal with them on their own terms. You simply must bring to bear an overwhelming amount of force to cause these people or groups to cease their activities. As wrong as it seems,the lessons of history are quite clear in this matter. On a closing note Mr. Moore,I wonder if you have ever considered where your career as a filmmaker would be if you lived in some other country and attempted to do what you do here? Mr. Assange,have you considered what actions some other country might take to put an end to your publishing of their secret communications and documents. I have to say that there is a very gook likelihood that the life span of each of you would be significantly shorter had you chosen to criticize and embarrass some other country in the ways that each of you has done to the United States of America! Gentlemen,do not discount or take lightly my last statement,because I am sure that with a minimum of brain power devoted to considering my statement you should easily reach the same conclusion that I just did. By admin,on December 9th,2010 So,last night I go to the web site for the planet green channel to try and leave a comment expressing my displeasure and confusion over shows like “cake boss”appearing on planet green. I spent 15 minutes trying to find where I could leave a comment. Finally,I found a single 4 letter word (“here”,not whatever else you might have been thinking!) that claimed to be the hyperlink to the comment area. Clicking on that link,the site NEVER came up! Discovery Networks,it is bad enough to start putting reruns of shows not even related to what you purport the purpose of the channel to be on “Planet Green”. You REALLY should insure that your very well camouflaged link to leaving comments actually works! Back to my comment about “Planet Green”. I tuned into your channel on the promise that it would be about renewable energy,sustainable living,recycling,and becoming better stewards of our little blue ball. For the first year,I was encouraged that most of the programming was directly related to the stated purpose. Now,however,the “Planet Green”channel seems to be a dumping ground for reruns of shows from all your other networks whether they are actually related to the network purpose or not. So my message to you is this. I no longer tune into the Planet Green Channel because of your screwed up programming! I still do look at the schedule on my TV to see what programming is coming up in case something I want to watch is actually going to be running. If you keep dumping other programming on this channel,I will soon give up and leave the channel altogether! It is not like there is not enough content in the world that is actually related to the stated purpose of the channel to fill up the programming schedule,it seems that Discovery Networks has gotten fat and lazy and simply believes that viewers will look at whatever you put on these channels. You cannot be more wrong on that point! Real viewers such as myself simply will not tolerate not having the programming we expect on the channels we want to watch. The key here is “want to watch”. I,and I am sure others will do the same,speak with my remote control and my money. I will quit watching your channels unless you give me new,non- recycled,content to pay for and I will watch ONLY if the provided content is in line with the stated purpose of the channel. On a final note,kill the overlay promotions and advertisements for other shows in the middle of the content of your shows! the viewing public pays enough for the precious little content we actually get on TV shows today,we really are not interested in having you disrupt that with your promotional overlays! These practices cause me to turn off the TV and stop watching as well. I know you are going to claim you are not responsible for all this. I am here to tell you that we,the viewing public,are simply not going to sit here and take whatever crap the content providers want to dish out. WE PAY FOR THIS SERVICE! So WE will decide with our money and out tuning in–or tuning out as the case may be–what we will watch,or not. I really do not care WHO the final arbiter of the amount of content vs commercials,promotional content,or whatever else you want to call it is,I want the industry to know that the viewing public has had enough of being force fed by this nameless and faceless entity and we are going to make our displeasure known by not watching and not subscribing to the channels that continue these unwanted practices. More than 33% of all shows is not content related to the show! It is time to learn to live within your means. I am not willing to watch ANY show that has less than 80% actual content that is part of the show. You people are getting money from ME–through my TV provider–for the ability to watch your channels. You are also getting money from the sponsors through commercial revenue. So,it would seem that you–my TV provider included here–are getting money both coming and going for me to watch your–less than stellar–content. By admin,on November 19th,2010 So now it is supposed to be OK–not necessarily legal,but OK–for illegal aliens to enter and take up residence in the USA and we are supposed to accept them into our schools,we are supposed to pay for their health care,we are supposed to feed them using our taxpayer supported food stamp program,and we are supposed to give them state issued Drivers Licenses! What a total Crock! This lawyer seems to be forgetting that first and foremost the person is in our country illegally. I could care less if we have to shut down taxi services,close convenience stores,reduce the number of fast food joints that are open,have to pay more for our masonry work,and the hundreds of other jobs that illegal aliens flock to. Am I opposed to immigration,NO. Am I opposed to illegal immigration,Oh HELL Yes! The United States has had laws on the books pretty much since it’s inception to define how foreign nationals are to apply for and secure permission to enter and/or stay in our country. Funny thing is,this process is less expensive and a whole lot less dangerous than merely crossing over the border or being smuggled here by human traffickers. The process just takes considerably more time–like everything associated with government does! From all the associations and groups who are formed–and continue to be formed–to advocate for the illegal aliens,one would get the impression that these people believe that they are not subject to our laws. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Were someone from the USA to illegally enter THEIR country–does not matter which country we are talking about here,this is an equal opportunity reverse illegal immigration statement–they would most certainly face arrest and trial,probably some prison time,and at the end of it all they would be deported. Now,for multiple infractions of the illegal entry laws of these countries,you would most likely face a significant increase in prison time on each additional infraction. You would receive pretty much no health care,you would not be able to attend any of their schools,you certainly would not be able to have any form of official state ID–other than a prison ID–issued to you. So where do these illegal aliens get off expecting the USA to do all these things for them! If we pass laws–with significant and increasingly severe penalties for the illegal aliens AND for any citizen or group who aids and abets them–and impose these penalties to the fullest extent allowed by our laws when we catch someone breaking them,we may stand a chance of providing enough negative reinforcement to slow or even stop illegal immigration! If you are caught breaking our laws more than once,then you should be forever banned from attaining legal citizen status in the USA. Take away the jobs,take away the automatic citizenship for babies born to mothers here illegally,take away the health care,take away the education,take away the state sponsored IDs,and make life in the USA for illegal aliens as difficult and as costly as possible,then we may be able to dissuade some of them from coming here. Again,let the immigrants come to America as they always have,but let them come with the intent to immigrate legally,with the intent to learn OUR language,with the intent to become an American citizen,with the intent to secure a legal job and pay their fair share of taxes just like all other American Citizens! This is how immigration worked–and worked well I might add–for hundreds of years. I see no reason to start making exceptions and changes now. By admin,on October 3rd,2010 So,I posted the routing issue when I first bought the WRT120N. At the time I determined that the issue was something I could live with for various reasons. Now,I have a weather station that is on a separate routed network in my home–it has to be configured this way for the software I am using. I revisited the WRT120N and encountered the same frustrations as before. I called support and spoke to the trained monkey on the other end. She never actually responded to any of my chat session that addressed the issue that there is a possible bus in the firmware. After some period of time,she “offered”me a pay for support option to get their problem fixed. This is great customer service,simply do not respond to the customer’s questions about the possible existence of a bug and try to get the customer to fund the identification and correction of the bug. Well,I have another solution. I am ONLY going to purchase wireless routers from now on that are supported by DD-WRT. I am going to bring these routers home and immediately load DD-WRT on them so I have a known set of WORKING features available to me! If you don’t already know about this,go to The DD-WRT Web Site and check out what is there! I am giving my son the WRT120n to use for target practice since it is not heavy enough to make a good boat anchor. By admin,on October 3rd,2010
So the story begins on Wednesday Sept 29,2010. An icon to do a wireless update appears on my Blackberry Curve 8900. Since I know T-Mobile has control of this,I perform the upgrade over the network. This is where the trouble began. After upgrading,I decided to see if my profiles have survived and make sure all the various ring tones and sounds are triggered for the appropriate Email/call. Mysteriously,none of the sounds will play. So I make the first of 4 calls to T-mobile customer service.
During my first call,I am told to backup my device and then perform a wipe–I will spare you the details. I did such a thing and after a few hours was set back up again–with the tones working. Some time during the next 12 hours,something happened all by itself ans the sounds,once again,quit playing. So I make the second call to T-mobile support and try a different set of things which had the exact same set of results as the first,the tones worked for a while but stopped. On my third call I was walked through yet another process and the same results were obtained yet again. So finally I get to my fourth call where I get some smart ass guy who tells me that there is nothing I can do and that I must “live with it”until they get a software update from RIM. After explaining the following points to him: 1. T-mobile controlled the icon with the update and THEY sent it to my phone.
2. I am paying T-mobile for service and if the phone doesn’t play a tone to tell me when I have an incoming call or Email,I am not receiving the service I am paying for.
3. I am on call and I have several automated processes that send critical messages to my phone to alert me there is a problem and without these tones,I am missing calls and critical Emails.
4. I MUST have this problem that was created by T-Mobile resolved by the end to the call since I have already spend more than 6 hours trying to work with T-mobile to solve the problem. Well,this guy–Jason I think his name was–tells me he is out of options. After several more minutes of explaining just how important my phone is to me as we go into a weekend,I finally demand that he get someone on the phone with me who has the authority to make a decision that will help resolve my situation. After a few minutes of holding,he connects me to the support people at Blackberry and after some discussion,we downgrade my phone back to version 4.6.XXX and with a little more futzing around,the phone is back to working! T-Mobile,have enough corporate responsibility to accept the consequences of having to provide some REAL customer support when you make a mistake and push something to your customers that you haven’t tested and it causes a problem for your customers! Don’t try to hand off shouldering the responsibility of the mistake to your customer base. We did not make the mistake or cause the problem,and therefore we should not have to bear the consequences of the problem! T-Mobile,you came within a split hair of losing me and my whole family as customers because of your “screw the customer”support mentality! Had Blackberry not stepped up and worked with me to downgrade my phone back to the working load,I would be someone else’s mobile customer today! This is your second strike,T-mobile! Unless you change the way your customer service is delivered,on your third strike,I will change to another carrier! You are not the only game in town by a long shot even though you act like you are! I don’t know how you received a #1 ranking on JD Power for customer service,I am guessing that it is for those people who simply won’t read a book to find out how to use their phone. I would imagine that your people are good at those calls. When it comes to a real serious customer service problem like the one I just experienced,your people are just about useless! Keep in mind that ANY company can handle the simple problems like people who can’t work their phones,it is the GREAT companies who can handle the big problems like when they push out a bad software load and they help their customers load a version that works! Finally,in reference to the software load,you have had in your possession version 5.0.0.822 for over a year before you pushed it out to your customer base with errors in it. How can you be so incompetent as to not test something so basic to the load like the ring tones working when you go into the profiles? Every other wireless carrier has been on version 5.X.X.X since last year,so you had to have received your software in a similar time period. I am incredulous that you can hold on to a load for that long and not do enough testing to find such a basic error in the code! Make Some changes to how you do business,T-Mobile! | |
Recent Comments: