Basically, it’s not letting corporate America put one over on you or letting yourself sit and stew in your displeasure with a product. If it’s broken, spoiled, stale or doesn’t live up to the hype… SPEAK UP! Be heard. Don’t throw your money away especially in this day and age.

If you’re not happy, tell them. At the very least you should expect an apology for your experience.

And now on with our story… We’ve got some glasses/mugs that are rather tall, pint plus sized. Regular straws aren’t tall enough. In the past we’d bought 10″ tall Diamond brand straws at the local supermarket. They’re remodeling the store and dumping a lot of old products. One of those they ceased carrying was the straws we liked.

I didn’t want to waste the time and effort and put the wear on the car to chase all over the county checking out the ‘where to find our products’ list Diamond had on their web page so I scoured the internet. Did you know tall straws are hard to find? I know it now! Unfortunately Diamond brands do not sell their products from their own web page.

Straws I found were either straight, we wanted the bendy kind, only sold by the carton or outrageously priced. I even found stainless steel straws ,can you imagine what could grow in those if you didn’t clean them carefully?

I wrote to Diamond telling them I couldn’t find their product at the store we’d always bought them at nor could I find them anywhere on the internet. Then I finally stumbled across some slightly shorter, but usable, straws on Amazon, 125 for $2, two freaking dollars! I ordered two bags so we’d have plenty on hand.

Karl Z. a regional sales manager (should that be capitalized?) at Diamond wrote back two weeks later, long after I’d stopped expecting a response. He apologized for the trouble we had finding their product and said if I’d send him my address he would “…see that some of these straws come out to you directly- our compliments.”

I sent him my address and my thanks not really expecting more than a pack or two of their straws (they come 100 to a box) and I wasn’t expecting any immediate action since it had taken weeks to get an initial response out of them.

Sometimes these companies just blow my mind. Anyone need some straws?

I have a couple Hotmail accounts that I’ll check back to back every day. When I log out of one I get dumped to an MSN landing page. In the past and for the most part I ignored the landing page entirely and popped right back into Snotmail. BUT, occasionally, some story would catch my eye. Usually something about breasts or cheerleaders or cheerleader’s breasts or… cars. Whenever I clicked one of those MSN links to read the story it would launch Messenger, Microsoft’s online chat and spam tool. Not ONLY would it launch Messenger it would modify my registry because it thought I WANTED Messenger loading at startup. Wasn’t that NICE of Microsoft?

But now? Now when I get dropped to the MSN page it is greyed out and I get an overlay window keeping me from seeing those marginally interesting news stories at all. This window tells me ‘Congratulation your new Bing Bar is ready to use.’ Aren’t you excited? I’m excited! I didn’t even know I had an OLD Bing Bar but now I’ve got a brand new shiny one all ready and waiting for me to click the button… Then it tells me ‘This software may also download and install some updates automatically.’ and right there, I don’t click. I won’t click. And no, I’m STILL not going to switch to Chrome or Firefox or dump Windows and get Linux. I’m content. Microsoft, by trying to force me to install Bing Bar (whatever the hell that is) is protecting me from launching Messenger and having my registry modified. Aren’t they sweet?

Oh, yeah, around Christmas time they also pushed me to a landing page with presents and holiday greetings for everyone and a happy Bing Ding Bar holiday for all… I still wouldn’t click on it. Nope, not me.

First and most annoying… Your servers were broken. You had technical issues. You KNEW you had technical issues but when I reported that in every group I’d checked that no multipart binary posts were complete you responded by accusing me of illegal activity, with no proof, and refused to further follow up on the ticket. You finally admitted to and fixed the problem eight hours later.

You cripple the speed, and that’s fine, you offered Bright House subscribers this hosting at no charge. It’d just be nice if you actually gave the speed you offered and didn’t half and quarter the already minimal speed at peak hours.

You FURTHER cripple popular and heavy use newsgroups. Seriously, two minutes to pull FIVE headers? Did you think no one would notice that? five thousand headers arrive in another group in 30 seconds, we’re not that dumb!

You won’t add groups you ALREADY offer to this server’s feed. Plus it took you idiots five email exchanges to even understand my request.

When I asked if you had a crossposting limit you replied “Yes.” When I asked what the limit was you acted like you were protecting the codes to launch the missiles. Twice you said you didn’t release that information (yes, I could have trial & errored it but it was more fun to see how anal you guys would get) another two times you simply said it was “A reasonable number.” When I finally got this stupidity escalated to a supervisor his immediate response was “10.” Was it that freaking hard or did all the idiots in tech support not want to admit they didn’t know?

In your snottiest tone you’ve told me several times if I want better support, more features and groups I need to subscribe to your paid news service. Yeah, like I’m going to pay for incompetence and bad attitudes, I get that for free. Thanks!

My eleventh (11th!) prescription, Gabapentin, seems to be a bit of a miracle worker. Due to complications from diabetes I suffer from diabetic neuropathy, pain and damage along the nerve channels which can occur anywhere but is particularly troublesome in my feet and hands. I can’t feel the majority of my left foot and about 10% of my right is numb.

I don’t know if you’ve ever suffered from nerve pain but let me try to describe some of it. The worst feels like someone slowly pushing, not stabbing, but forcefully, glacially inserting ice picks into my feet. Usually in two or three places at once but sometimes just one and other times it can be more there was also often a sensation of extreme temperature both hot and cold with the ice pick type pain. There’s also a pins and needles sensation an order of magnitude worse than the worst time your leg ever fell asleep.
I also get, mostly in my fingers, a sensation not unlike the whole fingertip being slowly (slow seems to be a presiding factor in this type of pain) crushed in a bench vise or by a pair of slip-joint pliers.

I started taking Gabapentin three weeks ago and it’s amazing. Almost all of my nerve pain has been suppressed. Instead of fifty to a hundred events a day I only have two or three. There’s been a couple days where I haven’t had more than a few hazy twinges and I still haven’t worked up to the full dosage the doctor wanted me to get to.

Now if the doctor could find something equally as good for the arthritis, joint and back pain I’d be in heaven.

Being a long-haired hippie biker lunatic they didn’t want me touching food for this pot-luck luncheon, yes, that’s right, they charged us an arm and a freaking leg to go to this ’school’ and WE had to provide our own food for a Chris…excuse me, Holiday party. They probably figured I’d bring pot brownies or meth punch or just infect the dip with hippie germs. So I and my fellow classmate Chris who was also too freaky to be trusted with consumables (there’s a whole ‘nother story there!) were tasked with putting together some appropriate Chris… Holiday (damn it!) music for our listening and dining pleasure.

Chris and I sat down one chilly… who am I kidding, it’s Florida, it was probably in the mid-70’s, winter afternoon and using a program who’s name started with N(apster) (SHH!) began downloa… PURCHASING LEGALLY a collection of light, appropriate holiday (ahh, better) music.

We downloa… OBTAINED LEGALLY a dozen or so songs and since it was getting late and Chris didn’t like being anywhere that wasn’t his dining room table (seriously, there’s a whole story there) we decided to just sample the songs by listening to the first minute or so of each to see if the quality was good.

We came across this one song ‘Sainte Nuit’ with no band name and the guy who was singing had an AMAZING, )seriously amazing, this is no freaking joke this guy can SING) voice singing what appeared to be ‘Silent Night’ in French.

They would not and never would believe that it wasn’t done as a joke. Some people have no sense of humor anyhow. Seriously, we didn’t know!

But now? Now this is the coolest CHRISTMAS song I’ve got, even cooler than Bob Rivers doing his parody of Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’, ‘I am Santa Claus’. Even my mom likes ‘Sainte Nuit’!

I have also learned one important rule of using ball-head mounts; “ALWAYS hold the camera when you loosen the ball-head locking mount.” I came close to smashing my new camera on the leg of the tripod. It was frightening.

Wait, what? More than half an ounce more for the same price? Can anyone explain this? It’s obvious they have a machine capable of consistently weighing bags of crackers at 6.6 ounces so why do you get more when you buy smaller yet otherwise identical Baby Goldfish.

It reminds me of a time, many years back, when I was working overnight shifts at 7-11 and noticed that Rold Gold had a new style of pretzels out, Rold Gold - Sport. It advertized “X% LESS Calories than our regular pretzels!” on the bag and had a cute little action sport graphic under their logo. They were also either .50 or .75 more expensive than the regular Rold Gold Pretzels which were right next to them. Being bored and working in a store that often didn’t see three customers after the bar crowd went home to pass out I investigated! For a while I was stumped. The ingredients were the same. All the percentages of this and that were the same… then I saw it. THE BAG WEIGHED LESS. There were less calories in the bag because there was less product in the bag! I thought it was absolutely brilliant scammery. Here’s the same product advertized as a ‘Sport’ version with less calories and they’re just selling you LESS for more! I guess there were enough gullible people out there because we only carried them that one time and I never saw them again. I can’t even find a reference to them on Google now.

Okay… so it isn’t really all THAT similar but the Goldfish pricing does boggle my brain a bit and it was a good excuse to dredge up an old and amusing memory. Ah well…

D&D: Can I help you?
Me: Large black coffee please.
D&D: How would you like it?
Me: In a cup, please.
D&D: But what do you want in it?
Me: Percocet, vicodin?
D&D: {D’hur}
Me: Coffee, coffee in cup, lid, lid on cup, give cup, take money.
D&D: But HOW do you want it!?
Me: Hot, thanks.
D&D: Cream? Sugar?
Me: Put the damn coffee in a cup and hand it to me!
D&D: Please, how do you take your coffee?
Me: Apparently with violence.
D&D Manager: Large Black Coffee, on the house sir!
Me: Ahh… coffee.

I decided not to be one of the lemmings who’d leave an expensive item hanging out of a metal box on the sidewalk and held onto my package (go ahead, snicker, I’ll wait… done? Good… Onward.)

Drove mom to a store she wanted to do some shopping at and while sitting in the parking lot reading a book on my Kindle (have I mentioned lately I love my Kindle?) I figured I’d let UPS know their drop-box was overflowing. Since the pick-up time listed was 5:00 PM and it was only 8:30 AM things could only get worse. Using the Kindle’s 3G connectivity and basic web browser (have I mentioned lately how much I love my Kindle?) I looked up the UPS phone number and was searching for another drop-box location that hopefully wouldn’t be so full.

After fighting with their automated phone system for several minutes I finally got someone on the phone. I explained what I was calling about, gave the address of the drop-box and the cross street. He then said “Ok, sir, I can transfer you to someone who can help you with your problem.”
Wait, what? Wasn’t that what HE was doing?

After a thankfully short time on hold (my cell minutes are expensive) another gentleman gets on the phone and I explain once again what I’m calling about. He asks me for the address of the drop-box and since I had the page listing local drop-boxes still open on my Kindle I read him the address DIRECTLY OFF THE UPS WEB PAGE. He asked me to give him the address again. I read it to him again including the name of the shopping center it’s in. He then tells me that he cannot find a drop-box at that address and am I SURE (and he poured on the snotty condesending tone) of the location. I’d wasted enough of my air time so I reminded him again I was reading the address off the UPS web site and that I was done trying to be helpful. He mumbled something about needing to speak to a supervisor, I told him to get bent and hung up. Can’t even try to be a good citizen without getting crap from people.

‘Big deal’ you say? I think it is. Many owners, myself included, have said over the last six months or so that even though they didn’t regret getting their Kindles when they did they would have opted for the (less expensive) Special Offers model.

Over the months I’ve kept an eye on the offers that Amazon has made and some of them have been pretty good. $20 Amazon gift cards for $10, that’s “Here you go, $10 free. Have a nice day.” They’ve offered select books in several genres for a $1 as well as discounts on toys, DVDs, 50% off Kindle accessories and even discounts on laptops.

I hadn’t updated my Kindle at all and was still running the original 3.01 firmware it shipped with. It worked and I saw no real reason to update… until I saw I could opt into the Special Offers program. You need to have the latest firmware (3.3 for the Kindle Keyboard) which downloads via wifi when the Kindle is in sleep mode or can be done manually as I did by downloading the proper update file, moving it to the Kindle over the USB cable and then manually starting the update.

Once the update is done which take a while all you need to do is connect wirelessly to Amazon. 3G connectivity, if your Kindle has it, is fine. Wifi is not required to receive the offers. Once you’ve connected the offers will show up at the bottom of your home page (it takes up the space of one book listing) and your screen saver image will also be a special offer.

I’ve already taken advantage of my first Special Offer. I signed up and was approved for an Amazon branded credit card. Upon approval, which took two minutes, they immediately deposited $50 into my Amazon account’s gift card balance. No activating purchase with their card was necessary, no requirement to use the card at any time ever. Apply, get approved, get $50.

You can earn points for using your Amazon branded card anywhere (extra points for shopping at Amazon) which can in turn be used to make purchases at Amazon but with a rather high APR I doubt I’ll use this card very much. But hey, $50! Thanks Amazon!