… and Roscoe, Charlie, & Frankie too.
Archive for the 'just-stuff' CategoryPage 2 of 3
After receiving 23 mail-order catalogs in three days, I started hitting the customer service websites, sending a saccharine plea to help me reduce the amount of paper mail I receive, how much I love their products, but prefer to shop online.
This approach got me responses in almost every case, including a few who thanked me for sharing their concern with saving the environment.
It is however, tiring. Hardly any site offers a dedicated mailing list removal form, instead requiring writing to the Customer Service "Contact Us" people or combing their Privacy Policy for removal instructions. Exceptions are Gumps and Brookstone, which each feature the vague subject "Mailing List" as a Contact Us concern; Signals, who goes a step farther and offers "Remove from Postal List" as a subject; Lands' End, whose Privacy Policy has a whole paragraph subtitled "Removing your name from mailing lists", and Eddie Bauer, who will remove you if you write online and ask, even though their site asks you to call them or pay $1 to get on the DMA Do Not Mail list.
But then tonight, the local news introduced me to CatalogChoice.org, a free, non-profit service that has done everything exactly right. Wowie, what a great site. It's concise, cute, has fast ajaxy navigation with slick-but-not-distracting transition efx, and is really really usable.
After getting an account, you just Find Catalogs. I haven't found one yet not listed (tho if you do you can suggest it be added). When you find a catalog to decline, a Lightbox-esque form pops up where you select your name and address matching the catalog's mailing label, and enter your Customer Number, if any. Your profile can hold multiple names and multiple addresses, so I can easily pair either Mike or myself with all variations of our address that appear.
Best of all, they do all the work and notify the companies for you! All your declined catalogs are listed on one page, which is also the page where you report anyone who still sends junk after 10 weeks. Each company's name has a hotlink to their online store, so you can continue to shop at the places you love, but hate their paper waste.
Turns out no matter what version of Firefox you have, their whatsnew page kindly tells you it's the most current. Seems a little lazy to me. At least they don't already have a page waiting for 2.0.0.9.(Well of course they do now.)
See here:
…and so on. You actually don't even need to be on Firefox. Try it!
This is what I'll be saying come Saturday. I don't think I'm buying one (yet). Even if I wanted to, check out these guys. Sheesh. With that kind of competition, why bother. It kills me that I'll be *that guy* asking to play with your new baby, but you should probably expect it for awhile.
I've been a bleeding-edge buyer of a 1st gen Power Mac G4, iPod, 17" PowerBook G4, and MacBook Pro. While they were all insanely great products, I was left insanely jealous when the next rev came out. Given the kind of early-adopters Apple has, the 1st gen products are always just enough to make a splash, but the 2nd gen is when the speed bumps, price drops, capacity increases, bugs get fixes we don't even hear about (see MacBook Pro motherboard revs).
I'm really fine with the speed things change in the computer world. Planned obsolescence is hardly malicious anymore, things can change faster now besides the realities to keeping the marketplace interested. But when it comes to 1st gen iPhone, I'm counting to ten as I sit this one out. :(
An big deadline is approaching for customers of the iTunes Store. This past March, Apple introduced "Complete My Album", which gives you a credit against albums purchased within 180 days of buying an individual track.
But what about singles you bought long ago? Well, Apple set June 26, 2007 as the date "Complete My Album" expires for tracks purchased before December 28, 2006. (FAQ link)
That's less than two weeks away, so go to iTunes and see what you can buy and for how much:
(all affiliate proceeds help us feed our dogs)
But before you get too excited, there are gobs of exceptions. Hidden in the FAQ is one catch 22 where you can be penalized for, get this, having purchased too many individual tracks. Case in point: I spent $7.92 to buy an album from my youth, Use Your Illusion II by Guns N' Roses. I bought all eight tracks of the "partial album only" which Apple was offering, so kudos to them for letting me upgrade now to the full album, right? Nope.
The CMA FAQ says:
…if you previously acquired so many single tracks from the same album that the price would be less than the current price of a single song…, you will not be able to purchase the remaining tracks.
Since "Use Your Illusion II" now costs only $6.99, if I had bought less — only 6 of the 8 tracks — I could have upgraded for $1.05. Instead it will now cost me $14.91 total after I repurchase the full album and with it tracks I already own, in a DRM'd low-res format no less. It's a stoopid policy which punishes individual track purchasing, and worse, it was Apple (or GnR's label) who restricted me from buying the full album in the first place.
I like the convenience of the iTunes Store and all, but if Apple does enough of this, CDs on Amazon are looking pretty good again.
First I find out that puppies have belly buttons, now her baby teeth are disappearing.
It started with a little blood in her water dish. For about a week now, each day has another tooth or two missing. Already new ones are growing in on top — let's hope they aren't as sharp. It doesn't faze her one bit, and we never see the teeth that fall out. She must swallow them, which is too bad, cuz I miss out on puppy tooth fairy action.
At the risk of being "that parent", here are two photos from the Frankie photocast.
Posting these kinds of things reminds me of this Ben Folds Album.
Ran in to our friend (and occasional recording talent) and now TV star Miriam Shor at SXSW last week. She joined John Cameron Mitchell onstage singing "The Origin of Love" at Maggie Mae's downtown Austin, where ASCAP hosted a DVD release party for "Shortbus".
Miriam's voice defines the word "singular". Hear her on our Go-Go Beach demo track "Don't Look The Other Way" and also on "Be Where You Are" from the upcoming Dogs That Wear Hats.
