Archive for the ‘General’ Category

How have you broken your phone?

Posted in Generalon Jun 16, 2008

Tell me your stories about how you have been separated with a working cell phone. Have you dropped your phone in the toilet? Has it just stopped working over time. Did it get hit by a car, or stolen on the pickpocket bus in Romania? Even if your story is not extremely interesting, drop a note so we can get an idea of what goes wrong with cell phones.

Beating death

Posted in Generalon Jun 6, 2008

I came across this headline today:

Man accused in beating death appears in court

At my first read, I thought it was talking about a man that beat death. I was hoping the article could tell me how to do the same: beat death and live forever. If this man had allegedly beat death, what is he doing in court?

Upon second look, I realized that it was a death by beating that he was accused of. If he had actually beat death, the headline would have read: Man accused of beating death appears in court. What a difference one little word can make.

Wells Fargo, stop calling me

Posted in Generalon May 27, 2008

Dear Wells Fargo,

I really want a bank that just keeps my money safe and accessible. I don’t want you calling me many times selling some soft of subscription package to your many programs. I signed up for the national do-not-call list, which means that I really don’t like being bothered my various offers made by calling me. Just because I bank with you, doesn’t mean that I really want to be bothered by you.

Tonight you called me, hiding the caller identification of the source call. Thats just plain sneaky, and something I wouldn’t expect from a bank that I would like to trust.

If you call me, I will refuse any offer you present. Please stop calling me. I told that last caller not to call me again. If I receive any more phone calls from you that do not directly concern my financial accounts, I will strongly consider moving my funds to a different institution.

July 17, 2008 update:
BOB, in comment 10180, was very nice to describe to me Wells Fargo’s privacy policy. According to his suggestion, I went to their website and found my privacy settings already set to the following:

My Wells Fargo Privacy Settings

My Wells Fargo Privacy Settings

 

So my question now is the following? Were my privacy settings always prohibiting contact? Or were they changed by the Wells Fargo representative who called me last with whom I requested that they no longer call me?

The good news is that I haven’t been called in quite a while. Also, now I know that any calls I may receive in the future are in contradiction to my privacy settings and against Wells Fargo’s privacy policy.

Does anyone know where I can find similar privacy settings on the Discover Card website?

Update July 24 Today I received another phone call which introduced itself as being associated with Wells Fargo. When I asked the guy if he was aware that I had specified in my Wells Fargo privacy settings that I wish not to be contacted, he asked me what privacy settings I was talking about, and then he suggested that my system was incorrect.

Way too much to see

Posted in Generalon Apr 1, 2008

At my place of work I now have two 24-inch monitors side by side connected to my Xeon workstation. I have Windows running on one screen, and Kubuntu running in a VM on the other screen.

At times, I’m a little overwhelmed about what to do with all that screen space. I leave my laptop closed so I don’t blow my mind.

Weather in Fort Collins

Posted in Generalon Mar 7, 2008

One thing I like about the weather in Fort Collins is that the actual current temperatures can actually be higher than the high for the day. Right now, for example, it is 55 degrees, even though Google only said the high was going to be 42.

Tomorrows predicted high is higher than todays predicted high, I wonder if that means that tomorrow will be warmer than it was today, which would be nice because I want to go hiking tomorrow.

Writing a book

Posted in Generalon Feb 28, 2008

If I were to write a book titled something like, “Jacob’s Insights,” or “101 Nonsenses,” or “Less about the turbo confabulator encabulator and more about everything else,” what should I put in it?

My current idea is to make it a collection of various things that I’ve written, some of which from this blog, some of which from other sources. What would be the most interesting things that I could put in the book?

Of course, I don’t think anyone but myself would be interested in owning a copy. However, thanks to on-demand publishing, I can print only the number of books that are wanted.

Blockbuster does something similar to Netflix, where they will rent you DVD movies through the mail. I recently tried their 14 day trial period, and these are my suggestions to make the most of your trial:

  • Sign up for the biggest plan you can get, because after all, this is a free trial. The risk in this though is if you don’t cancel in time, you get charged for the big plan. If you end up liking the service and wanting to continue, you can always switch to a smaller, less expensive plan. (Make sure you switch before your free trial ends)
  • Don’t sign up for your trial late at night. Sign up really early in the morning. The idea is to try and get them to ship you your first set of DVD on the same day that you sign up for the trial. I signed up at 8:30am, and they didn’t ship until the next day. Maybe they never ship on the day you sign up, but if you signed up really early in the morning, you would have the best chances.
  • Check the calendar, and make sure there are no holidays. If there is a holiday in the middle of your trial, you might not be able to fit a whole extra shipment into your trial.
  • Return your DVDs the day after you get them. This might cause a lot of movie watching when you get your whole shipment, but it is a way to maximize the number of free rentals. You could also get creative of other ways to use your rentals without actually spending the immediate time to watch them. :-)
  • Returning DVDs directly to the post office as soon as possible will help make sure that they get in the earliest shipment back. If you put them in your regular mailbox, your mail delivery person gets to drive around with them all day.
  • Signup for your trial early Wednesday or Thursday mornings. I think this allows you the best weekend watching.
  • Cancel your subscription on the 14th day. If you signed up on a Wednesday, make sure you cancel it by Tuesday. When they say 14 trial days, they mean calendar days and not full (24 hour) days. If you signed up Tuesday night, you don’t have until Tuesday night two weeks later to cancel, because they will charge your card Tuesday morning, because it was the 15th day of your trial.
  • If you returned DVDs the business a day or two before the end of your trail, wait until the evening before canceling, to give them every opportunity to send you more DVDs just before you cancel.
  • Manage your queue just right so that your favorite DVD are the last ones to arrive during your trial. This is because they allow you quite a bit of time to return the DVD that they’ve already sent you. For me, they gave me over a month to return the movies they sent me right before I canceled. If you favorite movies are the last to arrive during your trial, then you can watch them over and over.

And remember, if your Blockbuster free trial wasn’t enough for you, you can get a Netflix free trial as well. Or do some Google searching, and you may be able to find even more services like this providing free trials.


Status Updates

'>
Converted all my SSL apps to Google App Engine. I didn't want to have to pay for my own SSL certificate any more, and App Engine allows for SSL sites with valid and recognized certificates (on their appspot.com domain) for free.
Mar 18, 2010
  • Jacob BYU won their first round game! I'm not sure what to do, this has never happened to me before. Mar 18, 2010
  • 20T? I don't know if I can take any more Mar 18, 2010
  • Categories