Nobrainer’s Think Tank

It’s John Edwards! He’s just announced he is running for president of one of the two Americas.

Excuse me while I choke myself with a umbilical cord.

The news on Christmas morning was that legendary musician James Brown had passed away. When my brother and dad were talking about it, I broke into Dana Carvey-as-Tom Brokaw-on-SNL mode. “James Brown, today, outlived by Gerald Ford.” (It would be funnier if you had heard it.)

It turns out that Gerald didn’t win by much. He passed away yesterday at the age of 93. Reports say that he was neither eaten by wolves, chopped into bits by the propellor of a plane, nor delicious. Tom Brokaw, however, may be senselessly gay.

Two of the best ways are teamwork and cheating.

Yesterday I focused on two websites that exist somewhere between bad and god-awful. Meanwhile, Google Maps, a site I’ve complained about before — you may remember the confounding sets of directions pictured below — has added a valuable feature: multi-point directions. Multi-point directions are of course great if you are journeying to or through multiple locations. They are also valuable when the mapping service in question doesn’t give you the directions you want. With multi-point capabilities, you can, more or less, define the route you want to take and have the directions and maps you want; as opposed to the directions and maps they want to give you.

Moreover, they have done multi-point directions better than Yahoo! Maps beta. If you use multiple points, Yahoo! just gives you the time and distance for the entire trip. Google was smart enough to break that down by leg of the journey. Good move.

It’s definitely a step in the right direction for the Google folks. Hopefully they continue to implement my suggestions from the previous post.

PS: The directions that Google just gave me for going home are different than either of the two above. But this time they’re the directions I wanted.

Buh-LOWS!

Someone please explain to me the logic of removing a fully functional web-based TV listing and replacing it with a slow, bloated, piece of web2.0 beta crap!

Life was so easy before. I went to the Yahoo! TV grid and I was presented with a quick-loading grid of what was on.

Now I go to Yahoo! TV listings and get a horrific semi-functional mess. The “grid” loads in sections of about 10 channels. But the sub-grids only load as I scroll down the page. That means that every time I scroll down, I’m greeted by a little animated bar letting me know that the next grid is loading.

Scroll. Wait. Scroll. Wait. Scroll. Wait. Scroll. Wait. Scroll. Wait.

It’s time consuming. It’s annoying. It looks bad because all the little sub-grids are disjointed and floating in their own little worlds. Sports are in no way differentiated from non-sports. And half the time a full sub-grid won’t even load.

Yahoo, what the hell were you thinking?

But that’s a whole lot in this case.

Here’s why I suck. I bought an item with a mail-in rebate, diligently followed all the directions, and chose the “no-wait rebate by check”. The No-wait rebate guarantees that the check will be mailed in 3-5 days instead of 8-10 weeks, for the cost of 10% of the rebate. Actually I didn’t follow all the directions; I didn’t make a copy of all the forms for my records. See, I knew that OnRebate would take every opportunity available to screw me, yet I didn’t bother to hold onto my evidence. I SUCK.

Here’s why OnRebate.com sucks. They screw you any way they can. That is sort of their job, but I hate them anyway. I checked the status of my rebate, which I found was approved on 12/8. I could swear that the first time I checked my rebate, it said I was set up for the no-wait one. However it hadn’t totally been 3-5 business days, so I let it slide. After I checked back a few times, I wasn’t set up for the no-wait rebate anymore. That seemed strange, so I used their website as they let me, and chose “change pay type.” I did that, or so I thought, and went on my way.

Each time I checked back, however, my pay type changed back to the 8-10 week kind. So I called ‘em up, told the system I wanted “operator,” waited for 7 minutes (they didn’t even have music until right before the guy picked up) and asked what the deal was.

Here’s what I learned in a nutshell, their computer said one thing and one thing only and it absolutely cannot be changed whatsoever.

They:

• have a confusing, misleading website that doesn’t work like it should.
• keep no actual records of what you send in.
• won’t listen to you even if you do have copies of what you sent in.
• do whatever they want

You are entirely at their mercy. At least it looks like I will get my rebate eventually.

As best I can remember, when I was initially registering for my rebate, I chose the regular payment before deciding to change over to the no-wait rebate. Apparently, their systems absolutely cannot correct for this. So, in the future, if you must deal with these people, be ready and beware.