Why do dryers and refrigerators have handy lights for night time operation but washers and freezers [generally] do not? I always use my washer directly before my dryer, so if I need light to see the dryer then that means I also needed light to see the washer. The freezer doesn’t bother me as much since I don’t use it often, but the same principle applies.

My TV and internet service went dark tonight. I was watching TV at the time so I knew right when it went out, luckily this did not happen during the Superbowl. At least I got through fairly quickly on the phone (which is luckily not VoIP or I would have had to send a letter). I was either the first customer to call or the lucky benefactor of a localized complete outage. BrightHouse can’t see either my cable box or modem. The customer service rep said that if more customers called it will be categorized as an outage and techs will be scrambled no matter what time. If it’s just me I’ll have to wait until the morning.

She then noted that, “So the best case scenario is that someone hit a utility pole or something…” Awkward pause. “Well I mean that wouldn’t be good if someone died, but that would mean it’s an outage and that we’ll fix it tonight.” If I want my internet fixed tonight does that mean I want someone to die?

FYI: This was posted over EV-DO which serves as a great backup for these things. Especially when you’re like me and have thrown out your phone books and need to find the number to report an outage.

Are call volumes at big call centers ever normal? It seems every time I call, no matter the time, certain companies talk about an unusually high call volume. One day I’d love to hear a recording of the truth about how they are understaffed because of budgeting and poor management.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of package tracking. Even Google knows. My post about USPS and their terrible “tracking” service hit a chord and attracted a bunch of other haters.

What I’ve wanted lately is a reverse tracking service of sort. View all of the incoming packages from a given carrier coming to me (based on the address the carrier has on record for me). This is more complicated than the simple tracking options today because there would need to be address authentication, but it would be such a time saver. You could subscribe to one feed and see everything that’s coming. Right now I have like 4-5 different packages somewhere in the queue and it’s a pain to find the number and track any of them individually.

I can’t believe ESPN.com is still putting auto-play video on their homepage. You might as well start using the blink tag or use a really lame animated GIF. Apple has some video ads out there, but you have to hit play first. Same with Google’s video ads. I just want to check a few scores ESPN, not here some video start playing over the music I am already listening to.

I’ve gotten several calls over the past few months from 866-383-0986. I finally stayed on the line a long time and someone came on. It was the same Indian guy who wants my fax number that everyone else was talking about. After refusing my request to put me on their do not call list (which is illegal despite his claims to the contrary) he hung up on me. Calling the number does no good, it doesn’t even ring. Someone else who was annoyed did a little more digging. It’s tied to WHOIS data which isn’t surprising, but calling one-off seems like a lot of work to collect fax numbers.

I filed a complaint with DoNotCall.gov and if you have been called, do the same.

‘A plot to commit murder on an unimaginable scale’ - Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson of Scotland Yard [read more]

What changed on August 10th that made toothpaste and blush tools of death? Airport security is a giant show designed to keep people flying, not to keep people safe. It’s laughable. Just like everything else that gets rushed into place, it looks like the new flight restrictions are here to stay. When will it stop? Crazies can still carry whole water bottles onto subways and busses. They must be stopped.

Sports drinks, toothpaste and rest are completely safe. Despite that fact, airport stores have been forced to pull said contraband to keep us safe (even the stores past security!). The best guess for what explosive would be used is TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide). Listening to the news you would think the ingredients of TATP are Diet Coke and Mentos–too bad it’s actually chemicals like Hydrogen Peroxide, paint thinner and sulfuric acid. If you have the ingredients, TATP is not hard to make, there are directions available all over the place. However it’s hard to make in an airplane lavatory, to be done correctly you need both a heat source and refrigeration. Not to mention a lot of time.

On top of all that, TATP isn’t that great of an explosive to bring something like an airliner down. You need a big hole to kill a plane and that means a lot of TATP. The London bombers had backpacks full and even then weren’t all that successful (half the bombs didn’t even work). According to reports, 10-20 pounds are needed to pack a good punch. Also working against mayhem is that a TATP “bomb” produces very little heat, it’s an entropic explosion. That probably rules out a huge fire, especially since the interior of planes is chocked full of fire-resistant materials. The truth is TATP makes a much better detonator than bomb. That’s actually what “shoebomber” Richard Reid was trying to use it for (PETN was the real explosive), but he couldn’t even manage to set off the super unstable TATP.

All the “security experts” on TV make assembling a liquid explosive bomb powerful enough to take down a wide body jet sound like the easiest thing in the world to do. If that were the case it would have already been done. Use some common sense. It’s probably not impossible, but it’s (thankfully) not easy. In the mean time stop scaring everyone and start double checking people carrying gallons of drain cleaner and paint thinner in their carry-ons.

Last night I slipped into the bizarro world and came upon a replay of Ricky Bobby on Larry King Live. That would be the fictional character Ricky Bobby on the non-fictional news program Larry King Live. Bobby’s buddy Cal Naughton, Jr. came along for the interview as well. King even had a red gas canister to his right to show that CNN “gets” NASCAR. If this doesn’t mark the end of CNN as a news source, I don’t know what will. King introduced Will Ferrell like so:

“Our guests here in Los Angeles, Ricky Bobby, the NASCAR legend, one of the all-time greats, four time winner of the Daytona 500 and Cal Naughton, Jr., also a NASCAR driver”

Then it got really weird when Dale Earnhardt, Jr. called in to vent:

“I got a big old party going on downstairs, didn’t know if you could hear me. Let me just say to Ricky and Cal you guys are lucky I’m not in the studio calling me a loser. You guys are the losers. I know 2-year-olds that drive better than you guys.”

I had to check my facts today just to make sure this really happened. It did. I also checked to see the studio that made Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and surprisingly it wasn’t Warner… It’s sony. Congrats on the hour long free ad on CNN.

West Elm generally has nice stuff that’s easy to assemble. My dining table and chairs are from them and I had no problems. But the narrow-slat bench is impossible to assemble. I have received four different benches, each has exactly 0 holes to screw in the included 20 screws. To their credit, they have paid to ship all the replacement units to and from my house (at considerable expense I’m guessing), but that doesn’t help that the product is defective. A manager was supposed to check the last two units that were sent out, but they must have only checked that all three parts were in the box.

Part of me wants to ask for a refund, the other part wants to continue and see how many individual units they will send out before admitting defeat. We’ll see what they say when I call tomorrow. It’s a running joke between me and the UPS man, he always seems to show up the day after dropping it off to pick it back up. I don’t think he even has to look at the address when he sees the box in his truck.

Everytime I see an ad for Wendy’s new line of “Frescata Sandwiches“, I wonder to myself why these new creations sport square buns. The trademark Wendy’s square hamburgers feature round buns, endless frustration for those of us that like total bun-coverage. But with the Frescata line, there is no reason to have square buns other than to mess with people’s heads. Bah.