Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Perhaps I’m stretching the results of a recent study too far, but I don’t think so.

the digital transition will shift from February 17, 2009 to June 12, 2009. Despite high awareness of the DTV switch, a recent –Consumer Report survey found that among Americans aware of the transition, 63% had major misconceptions about what steps they need to take to prepare

And the bonus to the additional months of ab-so-fucking-lutely annoying commercials is that the pushing back of the transition will provide “relief to consumers” while only burdening the taxpayers. How can you pass up a deal that good!

It’s been a fun morning here in snowy Northern Virginia. I’d like to first give a shout out to the jerk-off driving the white mini-van/suv. Hey jerk-off, way to ignore my presence as oncoming traffic and execute a 2MPH right-turn on red. I realize it’s potentially slick out there, and that’s the reason to accelerate slowly, but it’s also the same fucking reason to not pull out in front of someone who is going full speed and may not be able to slow down enough to prevent colliding directly into your driver’s side door. Also, I saw from my rear view mirror your excellent merge into the 2nd lane just in front of some other poor driver while you were racing down the road at what must have been 9, or maybe even 10 miles-per-hour. But I digress. I need to thank a certain work-related customer service department.

I’ve had the pleasure of wasting a half hour this morning, and a good 20 minutes last week attempting to explain to some customer service people what should be a very simple concept. It seems they’re not clear on the idea that when they provide a customer with a hyperlink, that the link should actually work for the customers. Like fucking rocket science, I know. They’re providing internal links without domain names. For example, the link they should be providing should be something like:

http://selfhelp.idiots.com/login

But they’re giving something like:

http://selfhelp/login

Because I have since learned what the correct link should be, I don’t really need them to fix their stupid problem. I merely took the time to point it out so that they could fix it and avoid having problems with other people.

Last week, as I was explaining this problem, the woman on the phone actually said that she didn’t believe what I was telling her. She honestly didn’t believe that the domain name was required information.

As I found out this morning, she obviously didn’t bother to record my concerns. The problem has been escalated. So now I’ve got an email from some guy saying, and I paraphrase, “well the [shitty] link worked for me, there must be something wrong with your browser or your security settings.”

We’ll see where this ends up.

In case you haven’t been paying attention,

• eftgifts hasn’t given me a refund
• Someone left a glowing comment for them that was copied from elsewhere on the internet
• they didn’t reply to paypal to settle my dispute
• Paypal sided with me
• I didn’t see a dime

And now their precious little website is down. Fucking scamming motherfuckers.

UPDATE 2009-01-27 12:12:00 – The site is back up. I guess they haven’t necessarily cut and run yet.

Some people are calling for the building of major transmission infrastructure between the wind-rich Midwest and… everywhere else. The calls for increased federal power and the spending of other people’s money are allegedly for a really good purpose: the ability to deliver “clean”, “green” wind power from the middle of nowhere to where the people actually live. But there problems with this “plan.”

First, the “plan” is not a plan, therefore it doesn’t have any opponents. However, once the Feds layout details of where the lines will be placed and how the feds will seize power from states and regions, then there will be plenty of opposition. In a word, NIMBY. For example, private developers want to build the 180 mile, $2+ billion dollar NYRI transmission line in New York and the locals are fighting like hell.

Second, allegedly noble purposes aside, there will be a significant side effect. You see, any transmission system that can move new clean power from “coast to coast” can just as well move ol’ dirty bastard power from coast to coast. I mean, if you’re going to have that much transmission capacity going to some middle-of-nowhere place like North Dakota, it’s not going to take long for people who build coal and nuke plants to decide that North Dakota is a great place for coal and nuke plants.

As something of a follow up to my post about being realistically green and the need to sell the movement more intelligently, I have to wonder if the world really needed this:7 Ways to Reduce Your Shampoo Use.

I’ll spare you the effort and tell you that the 7 things could best be summarized with 1 way to reduce your shampoo use:
1.) Use less shampoo!

Now that I’ve dispensed this important advice, you owe me $19.95.

It is at least a little bit ironic that people promoting efficiency waste the energy and effort to produce such stupid lists that are 7 times longer than they need to be.

Goddamn it Steve Jobs. I don’t fucking want the MobileMe Control Panel or fucking Bonjour for Windows. Just stop fucking asking about it! Ok!?