Announcing it, actually might be a fairly good tactic…since it was election time posturing and “gloom and doom” that started the thing in the first place.

So…it’s official. The “great recession” is over. Y’all get out there and spend money. It is…I gather…your patriotic duty to do so (they announced that too).

And…just in case you need a suggestion… (click).

Me? Get out and spend? Well…I can’t. I’m too busy scraping every spare penny I can together for the mass of taxes and insurance bills that are due at the end of the year.

Y’all be safe!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

The pressure is on to conserve too. Make your home more efficient. Install CFL bulbs. Toss out the inlaws. Shoot out your neighbor’s lights…that kind of thing.

Anyway, my year-long contract with my carrier is up for renewal. No biggie, right?

Turns out I can’t renew my contract at the rate that my carrier is advertising for all other customers. They want to charge me over 10% more per kilowatt/hour than the advertised rate.

Why?

Because I don’t use enough power.

Congratulations! You’re saving energy! Here’s a 10% penalty for your efforts!

Conservation? My fuzzy butt. It’s about money. Always.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer (who’s off to find yet another new middleman to sell me the same power on the same equipment for some random rate structure).

We never gave that outfit our credit card number, they got it from PetCareRx. Apparently they do this with several companies…pizza hut and others.

They say we “knowingly” signed up…we did not. “Well, someone in your household did.”

No. We did not.

Just so I’m clear…No…we did not knowingly sign up for anything and did not authorize this company to charge us anything.

We used a coupon on the PetCareRx site and that apparently signed us up. Others have been signed up by taking a survey. Some are reporting being signed up just for making a purchase on some sites.

We didn’t notice the emails because they look like spam and were from a company we’d never heard of so they got deleted. We didn’t notice the charges because we both use the card and they aren’t very much…when we finally did and I called them they refunded 4 months but are making getting the rest difficult. They are unapologetic. This is apparently our fault.

Anyway…scam scam scam. Any company that “tricks” you into signing up for their service is a bad, bad deal. They are apparently happy doing business this way and since they state it is legal, apparently our AG thinks so too as despite complaints, the practice continues.

I’ve notified PetCareRx.com that we feel that aligning themselves with such a company and providing said company with our information makes their site untrustworthy/dangerous and we won’t be using them again.

Buyer beware.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Then, last week, I got a spam injection. Sounds good, if you like the canned meat stuff…but since I don’t, and I don’t like the spam-spam either…it’s bad.

*queue the monty python music*
“Spam spam spam spam…spam spam spam spam” (etc)

Basically, the old version had a bug that allowed a hacker to insert malicious code to manipulate the site. They did, but never used it. The update to current wordpress version closed the bug/hole but didn’t kill their inserted code…

So last week the hackers triggered the code…which inserted a bunch of hidden links in my post pages and the front page of my website. Users couldn’t see them, but google could, which I guess is the point. The hacker was trying to get his page rankings up.

Thanks to an alert reader I was notified of the problem.

Anyway, I cleared the problem and it came back last night, so I took some time to research the problem further and discoverd I needed to hunt down…and kill…the inserted code.

Done-did…or something like that. That should do the job.

If not, my next step is to totally kill the blog installation and redo it from scratch. That, unfortunately, may delete my users accounts.

I hope to avoid that step.

I guess I’ll know for sure in a couple days!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Businesses just don’t seem to care, ya know? They’re generally nice and cheery, and almost gleefully apologize even whilst doing nothing to correct their problem or error…

And then they wonder…as the customers don’t come back and they slowly go out of business….what they did wrong.

Hi Enterprise Rental Cars! Happy with the ~$300 bucks you scammed me for? Hope so. That’s gonna have to hold you for a while. No more from me…or anybody that values my opinion (there are a few). Thanks for turning what had been a so-far pleasant experience into crap at the very last possible second.

But enough about that. I think I need to ride…I haven’t been on a long one in a while…bad stuff.

Just a few more days…got a few thousand miles to burn. Michigan is the target…probably the long way about.

Twelve hours out of Mackinaw City I stopped in a bar to have a brew…

I wonder where that bar is…

Thousands of miles.

I probably ought to get ready for it…

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Some overly perky 40ish vaguely girlish man was standing next to a 10 foot picture of some overweight celebrity’s ass…the ass mostly not covered by a bikini and sporting digitally enhanced cellulite.

No…I’m not making this up.

“Next up! We’ve got celebritiy bikini pictures! The ones they *don’t* want you to see! Yes, coming up we have celebrity cellulite!”

They were serious. This was a popular “entertainment” news program. We’re talking prime-time, network television here.

Had I been carrying today…I’d have shot the TV then and there.

What is it that we’ve come to?

Food for thought.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

It occurred to me destroying DC was a fatal flaw in their operation.

You want to take over the country? Want to destroy its effectiveness, confuse and demoralize its citizens, and convert them into sheeple that are incapable of achieving, objecting, or fighting back?

Well, if you want to do that…you just leave today’s Washington in place and sit back and let them do your “work” for you.

Just a thought (couldn’t help it…having managed to fight my way through the latest round of taxes).

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Editor Matthew Cardinale says Springston was asked to leave APN last week “because he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News.”

Source.

I’m just…boggled…

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Lobby floor: Marble.

Weather: Rain.

Manager: Wears hard-soled flats.

Result: Falls on his ass. Hurts same.

Follow up: Issues corporate wide email about using umbrella condoms, how to walk on a rug, and imperatives to immediately report wet drips to maintenance.

*facepalm*

Dude…it’s raining. Umbrellas are going to drip. Soles are going to be wet. The marble is going to be slippery.

Email is NOT going to fix the problem.

Of course that’s the world we are in now…it’s always “somebody else’s” fault. I am sorry he got hurt…I don’t wish that on anybody…but is this really some unknown person(s) fault? A person who walked in the same rain you did and then entered the building?

Try this simple solution….Wear some sensible shoes.

Food for thought.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

I putter. Watching some TV. Listening to music. Reading. Writing. Plotting my next project.

Sunday I manage a nap…and for the first time in days, my dreams don’t wake me in a cold sweat, yelling for people to get down…to run…to get away from the laughing drug dealer who, even as he steps over bystanders’ bodies, just won’t run out of bullets.

The wife sits across from me, reading, occasionally looking up at me. We share a look then…a promise…a reaffirmation…that only intimates can make or understand. Nineteen years and my heart still gives a lurch.

The caffeinated kitten, who now (and seemingly rather suddenly) inhabits a big orange cat’s body, bounds in through the gap we left in the patio door for some fresh air…his collar jangling. He prances up and proudly deposits his latest catch at my feet…a large leaf from the front bushes. It joins the growing pile of similiar prizes he’s left me in the last hour.

He gets some praise and a quick skritch behind the ears and he’s off to his next big adventure.

The Maine Coon is upside down, half in and half out of a bag on the kitchen floor…his natural habitat methinks. He snores.

Bills to pay. Back to work tomorrow. Normalcy.

And yet I wonder…is that okay?

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer