Category: Rant
I am Ahh-nuld
Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his bid for the California governorship, is going to strengthen his candidacy and mitigate his lack of experience by surrounding himself with smart, knowledgeable, experienced people – exactly the strategy that Dubya used, in his successful presidential bid. Fair ’nuff.
The question *I* have is, why can’t we elect a smart person that surrounds himself with smart, knowledgeable, experienced people??? Is there a little known election rule that says a candidate can’t have more than a certain amount of IQ points distributed amongst himself and his advisors?? Why do we have to elect idiots?
End of an era…
*sigh* I just found out some really depressing news last week – apparently my old company, Sapient, is going to close down their San Francisco office. From peaking out at over 400 people in three different buildings when I left in early 2000 (it went even higher from what I understand), the office has dwindled down to nothing.
Definitely the end of an era.
Why MCI can kiss my ass
When I switched my long distance service to MCI a couple of months back, they told me that calls to both land lines and cell phones in Japan were the same rate of 14¢/minute. I asked this question very explicitly because I know that most companies charge a surcharge for calls to foreign cell phones. I asked the question about four times in various forms and each time they were very clear on their answer.
In any case I got my long distance bill this month and sure enough, as I was promised, all the calls to Japan (all of them calls to a mobile) were 14¢/minute. However, I was confused that after accruing international long distance fees of $120, I somehow had a bill that totalled $350! Now clearly there was no way that my local toll + domestic long distance + taxes/fees was enough to make up that much of a difference. Looking more closely at my bill, I noticed the vast majority of that difference was in an "international mobile surcharge". Speaking with customer service, it was explained to me that MCI charges you the standard country rate on the itemized part of the bill then (essentially) hides an additional per minute charge (19¢/minute in this case) in the international mobile surcharge – this makes my calls to Japanese cell phones 33¢/minute, not the 14¢/minute I was promised.
I’m not sure which I dislike more, getting charged up the ass without knowing it, or being totally and blatantly lied to.
Further, the ease at which they reversed the charges makes me believe that this is a common problem they deal with and they basically count on people not noticing these additional hidden charges.
I switched my service back to AT&T. They don’t have the best rates in every single category, but far and away, across the board they have the best deals. I have signed up for the "AT&T Anywhere International Plan" which supposedly will give me a phenomenal 12¢/minutes to both cell phones and land lines in Japan for calls that I make from my calling card ($19.95 minimum usage). These guys were very up front about the surcharges that they charged so hopefully this deal actually pans out – it certainly can’t be any worse than what I just switched from tho…
Why I hate Hotmail IV
My continuing tirade against Hotmail redux
Got this letter from a long lost friend:
Tried to send the link to the CIAC's website to everyone I know (I've gotten too much of this crap lately), and hotmail told me I have sent too many messages in the last 24 hours, so it won't let me send anymore (it cut off the last 20 or so people on my list)...
Why to we willingly let them do this to us?
I-5 Wasteland
I find it very amusing that for all the diversity that you find in San Francisco and LA, the only radio that you get in the wasteland of I-5 between the two is country, Christian rock and Spanish music.
Silly Scientologists
I just recently got the most nonsensical, preposterous, absurd and just plain silly flyer in the mail. For those of you that don’t know, Scientology is one of those borderline-cults created by L. Ron Hubbard, who realized that he could make more money by selling his science fiction stories as a religion than as just stories.
If you don’t believe me that these people are whack-jobs, take a look at the back of the flyer that I got (click on the image on the right to see the actual page). This thing is ridiculous on so many levels that I am not going to make any comments and let you read it for yourself. That first paragraph especially, just cracks me up!
Click me for detail
Dianetics Auditing Success
"I was ill for months in the hospital. I was under intensive care for weeks with a bleeding ulcer infection and kidney failure. My heart stopped three times and I died three times. I also was unconscious for over a week, and I basically did not want to live. The doctors were going to give up on me and stop the treatment. The nurses did not expect me to live.
"My wife had a very hard time with it and she couldn’t even call to see how I was doing; she had to have someone else call for her. She then received some Dianetics auditing and came to grips with it, at which point she was able to come into my room in the hospital and give me some auditing. She came in every day.
"I soon started becoming more aware of my environment and had a determinism to survive. It made life bright enough to live. Many other people helped me through it using L. Ron Hubbard’s technology. I am now recovered and would not have lived if it weren’t for the technology by L. Ron Hubbard that helped us get through it." – D.H.
Toronto Maple Leaves
It doesn’t happen very often. One doesn’t usually have an experience that totally reshapes the way that they think about something, one that fundamentally alters their view of reality. I have had one such an event in my life. This was the second.
It all started two weeks back, I went to Josh and Hiroko’s place to meet their new baby Sarah when Josh made a comment about my hat.
His observation was an obvious one really, I actually feel a little silly for not noticing it myself… "The plural of leaf," he said, "is not leafs, it’s leaves."
Dumfounded, I stared at him. Of course I knew that he was right, but how could this be? How could a Canadian product not use absolutely correct English? And more importantly, could it be that an American speaks better English than a Canadian??
"No, no no… that’s just crazy talk," I told myself… there is no way that such a thing could possibly be true. For the benefit of the Americans in the audience, let me digress for a second to highlight the three primary reasons why this is the case: (1) Canada’s closer ties to England (apparently Queen Elizabeth is still the ruler of Canada, no joke) makes their English better than ours… apparently, (2) their fine English educational system eschews speaking "American" and thinks that a grade 13 is a good thing and (3) well because Canadians say so… vehemently… In Canada, if you say anything vehemently enough, it becomes true. Especially if it is about the United States.
Determined to find a reasonable explanation for this I dusted off my old dictionary (for the first time since high school probably!). Thumbing through the book, I arrived at the letter L and located the word leaf.
Josh was certainly correct, the plural form of the noun leaf is leaves. However, I then noticed the transitive verb form of the word leaf is leafs. Of course… "to thumb or turn, as the pages of a book or magazine, in a casual or cursory inspection of the contents"
Slowly the pieces began to fall into place in my head. Maple Leafs is not a noun, as I mistakenly thought, but a verb phrase, to describe a tree that reads.
I imagine that the "Maple Leafs" must’ve originally been some sort of literacy program, a way to encourage kids to read with their mascot the book-reading-maple-tree. The popularity of this image, the famous tree "leafing" through a book must’ve been the inspiration for the "Toronto Maple Leafs."
That must be the reason… I will never look at hockey the same way again.
Why haven’t we all figured this out by now?
This is one of those basic rules of the Internet that I feel is worth repeating…
Whenever an email tells you to "forward this letter to everyone in your address book"… in all caps… with lots of exclamation points… it is a hoax. Always.
I don’t care if it is talking about a computer virus, Bill Gates or ways you could die… it is not true. The virus does not exist, Bill Gates will not give you money and you will not die. Please delete these mails.
Why I hate Hotmail III
My continuing tirade against hotmail…
While trying to troubleshoot a problem that someone was having with hotmail I came across this blurb in a message that Microsoft sent to all Hotmail users…
Keep your account size under the 2MB storage limit. Inboxes have a way of filling up fast, so please delete unwanted messages. If you go over the limit, the Hotmail Janitor will randomly delete messages until your account is back under the 2MB limit.
Unbelievable, they are advertising a service that will randomly delete your email… as a good thing… this is what I look for in an email provider.
Friend of the Devil
I first saw this ad in the back of an airline magazine a couple of years back and it truly frightened me… This is definitively the scariest woman I have ever seen in an advertisement – I mean, is this the face that you want greeting you when travelling to a new city?? It is reasons like this, that people are scared of New Yorkers!
And just in case you are still wondering whether or not this woman is a serial killer or possessed by the devil, look at the phone number… 666…
Salim's World 
