Consumer Thoughts

Wow. I was reading an article about things like the oil spill and other emergencies. The article said that during Katrina, in the FEMA camps, the government or military was allowed to confiscate people’s personal supplies “for redistribution.” That means if you brought 3 days’ worth of food, they could take it all and give it away so everyone had some. I don’t think I’d ever go to a FEMA camp.

I love In Plain Sight, but I’ve been busy and only just got around to watching the season finale. During the show, Mary said she didn’t want to vacation on the beach because of “too many pasty fatsos.”

Hey IPS writers: Anyone – black or white, tall or short, fat or skinny, pale or tanned, disabled or not – has as much right as anyone else to visit the beach. If the appearance of other people is enough to ruin your trip to the beach, then I feel sorry for you, because your day must get ruined a lot.

Signed,
A pale overweight person

I really like the song Tea Party by Kerli, from the new Alice in Wonderland soundtrack (though I haven’t seen the movie yet).

Except for one thing. The song goes, “you didn’t RSVP… that’s okay, that’s okay.”

Really, Kerli. Miss Manners would be ashamed. How could you teach our kids that not RSVPing is in any way okay? Next thing you know, kids will be running around starting food fights and generally showing horrible manners, all because of this one song.

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/satire /mock outrage

After trying a few free iPod Touch weather apps, I’ve decided to stick with Accuweather. The built-in weather app is great but very simple, and doesn’t offer forecasts split by the hour.

The Weather Channel’s official app took way too long to load on start, sticking me with a “retrieving the latest weather data” for what seemed like forever. It took this long to load every time the app ran. Perhaps 30 seconds isn’t really long, but when you just want a quick look before bed, it can feel like ages, especially when other apps are much faster. It seemed like about half the time, the video it offers (while a neat added feature if you like to watch a video forecast) would not load, instead sticking on a “loading movie” screen.

Weatherbug loaded more quickly, but presented a rather stark looking white screen with no indication if it is currently cloudy or raining. Also, each time I changed options (say from current conditions to forecast), it changed the ad displayed, which would be more of a problem if I was on an iPhone on 3G coverage. While the forecasts were broken down nicely, it first takes you to a summary page where you can only see the first 5-6 words of the forecast, which you have to tap on to then see a full page of complete forecasts. This is probably to prevent using too much data on 3G, but it’s annoying too. Like TWC’s app, it offered video forecasts and shots from local outdoor webcams.

Accuweather, my favorite, shows the current condition as a background image, even showing the phase of the moon, and shows the “feels like” temperature prominently. It also offers nice indices of not only UV and air quality, but sinus headaches, dogwalking, stargazing, and much more. The forecast goes up to 15 days instead of just 10. There is a colorful, easily read risk screen that shows the risk of storms, rain, snow, ice, wind, and fog over the next 8 hours. There are 4 tabs for video and each tab features 4 videos to choose from. Forecast offers multiple videos to choose from for the forecast, from local to regional to national to breaking weather info. Lifestyle had places to travel and a story about why some ache when it rains. News had history and weather 101, and the fun tab had bloopers and outtakes, and the wild world of weather.

Of course there are paid versions of these apps with different features and no ads.

The local paper has an article today about a Click-It-or-Ticket blitz that’s coming up, and people in the comments are, as usual, whining about the seat belt laws. They also mention helmet laws.

I think “Really?!” with Seth & Amy on SNL should cover this issue.

I mean, come on. Would they jump out of a plane without a properly-inspected parachute? If any of them work in construction, do they turn down any safety tethers offered to them? (I doubt it because they’d be fired if they did.) You can’t ride a carnival ride without the safety restraints in place. I almost never notice my seat belt, but if yours is that uncomfortable, either adjust it or use one of the products on the market designed to hold it away from your neck. And helmets? So you’re willing to tell me you’d rather live as a quadriplegic, or die, rather than be slightly uncomfortable and look a little uncool? Because if you get hit the chances are very good of that happening if you’re not wearing a helmet.

If you think it’ll never happen to you, you’re a good driver… well, I was a good driver, never had a ticket, when a 17-year-old kid with no license pulled out in front of me and totalled my car, and broke my best friend’s leg in 2 places. And ripped open her arm and her knee. Yes, I do have a scar from a friction burn from my seatbelt because I was wearing a lower-cut shirt that day. You know what? I’m happy to have that scar, because without it my scars would be a lot worse. Mostly it’s hidden under my shirt, but if I was that vain it’d be easy to cover with makeup too. The cost of having a scar on my chest is acceptible when without it the scars could have been from my face hitting the windshield.

Face it, laws change over the years as people learn what makes you safer. They don’t let kids ride in the back of a pickup truck anymore even though I happily did that when I was 10. So quit whining and just buckle up. If you’re badly injured because you weren’t wearing your seat belt, you have no one to blame but yourself. Save yourself a lifetime (or your family a lifetime, if you die) of saying “if only I had buckled up.”

You can go to Wireless Amber alerts to get Amber alerts sent to your cell phone.

I live in Indiana, but close enough to both Michigan and Illinois to make it practical to subscribe to this service for all 3 states. There are 2 problems with this:

1. Amber alerts are usually issued statewide, but that site forces you to pick a zip code, so I had to pick a nearby city in MI and IL and look up the zipcode to subscribe. It simply doesn’t make sense.

2. Michigan either has an abnormally high amount of abducted children, or else they have far less stringent standards for issuing Amber alerts. It seemed like I was getting one every week or two (whereas IN and IL alerts are rare), which is not a problem in itself, but leads to the problem that I was routinely being awoken by Amber alert and alert cancellation messages.

Now, while I could have put my phone on silent or shut it off, but I like to keep it on to get important texts from other people.

A solution I see to this problem is that cell phone carriers should let me choose a setting to hold texts when I’m sleeping (say between midnight and 8am) and then deliver those texts at 8am. (After all, I am not going to run into a missing child when I’m sleeping.) This could be done by whitelisting – hold all incoming texts except for those from certain phone numbers; or by blacklisting – hold only those texts from a specific phone number or shortcode.

Sadly, since this is not an option, I simply unsubscribed from Michigan’s wireless Amber alerts.

I think this would be an ideal feature for Google Voice to have, but that’s another issue entirely – you can’t sign your Google Voice number up for wireless Amber alerts at that site, because they are landline-based and thus not considered a wireless provider.

From the latest Office Playground newsletter:

“I’m writing to you because it has been a while since your last order. We fondly remember that day. You completed your order and we all started cheering. We printed your order, placed it on our velvet red pillow reserved for special customer orders. Quickly, yet carefully, we carried your order out into our distribution center. Our staff looked up, smiled in unison and then broke out in applause.

Your items were picked carefully from their respective locations. Hundreds of potential boxes were considered for your order and we settled on the best possible one to use. I can recall the look and feel of that beautiful corrugated box. I still feel the butterflies in my stomach as the shipping label was placed on the box. We all gathered around as your order was tenderly loaded onto the delivery truck so that it could begin its journey to your door. Man, what a great day that was.”

When they put a video of this up on Youtube, I’ll place another order. (I like the site, but I don’t need anything right now… but I could be persuaded for a video.)

Currently, I use Kaboodle for my wishlists and am mostly* happy. But any time I come across a new wishlist site, I’m tempted to write to the new site and ask them to give me 5 good reasons I should switch from Kaboodle to their site, and write to Kaboodle and ask them for 5 good reasons I shouldn’t switch to the new site. Instead, I have to go through the bother of signing up for the new site, testing it out, and usually discarding it as an option.

*I am mostly happy with the original version. I don’t like the new browser button they’re beta testing. I also sometimes have to resort to using Amazon’s universal wishlist when Kaboodle has blocked a site.

Once, I wrote to a site Kaboodle had blocked adding items from. They said they never asked to be blocked, so Kaboodle must have blocked them. I contacted Kaboodle and asked why the site was blocked and they never replied.

I walked into Wal-Mart yesterday and the two greeters were having an argument about one giving away the last Mart Cart, the motorized scooter. One of the greeters was an elderly lady who walks with a cane and is allowed to sit for her entire shift. This greeter said to the other, “But he didn’t look like there was anything wrong with him!” To which the other greeter replied, “but he said it was for his mother.”

Do you know how many times my friend (who’d had a broken leg after a car accident) and I would be walking around a store, and she’d get tired and sore and I’d have to go back to the front of the store and get her a Mart Cart? I had to leave her where she was because it hurt too much to walk all the way back.

Did I “look” like there was anything wrong with me when my ankle was injured in the same accident and I used one for a couple of weeks? How about the time I dropped the bowling ball on my foot and rode one around?

People, you can’t always tell if someone is disabled by looking at them. My friend can now sometimes walk without a limp, but she’s still often in a lot of pain.

A friend who used to work at our local YMCA and I went to tour our new facility. She suggested I get a membership and maybe even a job in the child care center there. Her friend, the current director, allowed us to go into the child care area and talk to another ex-co-worker, whom I’ll call YMCA Lady. I was mostly listening while Friend and YMCA Lady talked, and YMCA Lady picked up a little girl who looked to be about 1-2 years old.

The little girl began playing with YMCA Lady’s necklace. YMCA Lady shoved her hand away and said, “That’s mine, leave it alone, it’s older than you.” Umm, a. she’s just doing what babies do – explore; b. she’s too young to understand “it’s older than you,” and c. perhaps if you don’t want to risk babies playing with your precious antique necklace, you shouldn’t be wearing it?

YMCA Lady and Friend go back to talking. Meanwhile, a little boy, perhaps 3 or 4, crawls up to me while pushing a firetruck and said, “hi!” I said “Hi!” He said, “Look at this firetruck!” I said, “I see!” Him: “It’s got a ladder!” Me: “That’s a big ladder!” Him: “It’s got lights too!” *showing me lights* Me: “Wow, that’s neat!” Little boy wanders off and continues playing.

Around this time Friend turns to me and I said, “That little guy was just showing me his firetruck.” YMCA Lady: “That’s OUR firetruck.” Uhh, okay lady, it’s not like the kid could hear me, and I’m sure he either knows the toy has to stay or Mommy or Daddy will explain it to him. Jeez.

I am not sure if she would be my boss or not if I got a job there, but I don’t think I could stand to work with her if she’s like that all the time.