I'm trying something new.

The BeFrugal website contacted me about becoming an advertising affiliate, and through that site I learned about Commission Junction. The registration process took a few minutes, and now I'm about to ad an advertising widget to my blog. I have Google Ads, but they're really not very targeted. I guess they key in on select words and stick up links, which I've never completely trusted, either on my site or anyone else's. I always figured it was worth having, even though hardly anyone visits my blogs. It can't hurt.

And so, it can't hurt to put in an advertising widget for something specific, and through BeFrugal and Commission Junction, I can choose what business I want to feature. I selected Entirely Pets, which is a website I patronize. They have a really good price on Pill Pockets, which are instrumental to getting my cat Remy to take his heart medicine without a fight. Remy's littermate died of a heart attack. Poor Quinn had a terrible time with all the meds he had to take after his first attack. Not only that, but we had to take him to a lot of different vets for tests, and at one of those locations he picked up a respiratory infection which he then passed to all the other cats in the household. Just about the time we though he was going to recover fully, he had another attack.

Anyway, between the heart meds and the respiratory meds, Quinn was taking pills around the clock. It broke our hearts that he would look sad and try to hide from us to avoid the pills.

A few months after Quinn died, Remy's heart murmur was diagnosed. He only takes one quarter of a very small pill every day, and at first we hid it in Pounce Hairball Treats. That can be a little messy, and I didn't necessarily like to give him a hairball treat every day.

Finally, we found Pill Pockets. A half a pocket easily hides his tiny pill, so a bag of 45 can last for almost three months. I say almost because we also use them as treats for everyone, and sometimes I'll break up an allergy pill into pieces and hide them in pockets for Trickster, when he's having a bad day.

Still, it's kind of pricey at the stores. They are anywhere from $7.99 to $10.99 a bag locally. When we were first getting them, I didn't realize they had expiration dates and a local (chain) store sold me two expired bags! When I opened the first bag, I knew there was something wrong, because they were dry and crumbly. Then I saw the date stamp. I still had the receipt and took them back to the store. They had two more expired bags on the shelf, so I felt it was easy to prove I had just purchased them and wasn't trying to pull something. They still didn't want to give me a refund! I finally convinced the manager to give me my money back, but I will never shop there again.

Entirely Pets has always shipped my product well in advance of the expiration date. It only takes few days to get an order filled. I'm on their mailing list, so I regularly get offers for free shipping over $25. I buy six bags at a time and they're about $5 each, so I easily meet the minimum. I've been really pleased with their service and the quality of the product I receive, so that's why I picked their company for my first affiliate ad.

Entirely Pets did not ask me to do this. I'll get credit for every click through on the ad in my sidebar, but that's all. I'm just happy to have the opportunity to help someone else save a few bucks and to help a business that does a good job.

Cox HSI is hijacking websites to make money.

I am so mad at Cox Communications, my home ISP, that I could spit nails.

If you've read my blog before, you know I enter a lot of sweepstakes. I visit 50-60 websites per night to fill out entry forms and to learn more about the sponsors. That's not counting my webmail service (not Cox); news and weather sites; entertainment sites and forums.

On a usual night, I might get a couple of "page not found" messages. Sometimes the page will load just fine a minute or two later. Sometimes the URL was posted somewhere incorrectly.

I have noticed, of late, that I was seeing a lot of "Cox Finder" error pages instead of the usual "page not found" pages. I guess I paid more attention tonight because the problem was so frequent and irritating.

The Cox Finder, or as they refer to it the "Enhanced Error Results" page, tells the user that the page cannot be loaded, but wouldn't you like to try one of these other pages instead?

Here's what the Cox website says about "Enhanced Error Results":

Cox is currently providing an enhanced error results service that redirects URL entries in Internet Explorer to relevant alternative results provided by Yahoo! Search Marketing. When no relevant keyword can be extracted to produce a list of alternative sites, a search box is presented to the users so they can conduct the search again. If relevant results are identified, an enhanced results page displays providing a suggested list of alternative sites.

My arguments:

(1) I wasn't searching for terms. I plugged in a URL or clicked on a link.

(2) I primarily use Mozilla Firefox. I only use Internet Explorer when a site doesn't open correctly in Firefox.

(3) I received these "Enhanced Error Results" instead of valid URLs. In one case, I had a site open but something within the page (an ad or a form) showed the Cox Finder page. I refreshed, and then I got the Cox Finder message for the whole page. Eventually, the page reloaded after multiple tries from the original link.

(4) I received the "Enhanced Error Results" when trying to visit a manufacturer's website. The same website came up as the last search result in a list of about 10 options. Cox says, "The results served are a combination of sponsored links and ‘natural’ search results, depending on what you were looking for –- just the same as if you used any search engine."

As I became more and more frustrated and suspicious of Cox's motives and methods, I did a Google search for the phrase and found a FAQ about "Enhanced Error Results" on the Cox website. I found instructions on how to opt-out. I logged into my account and followed the instructions. Then I logged into a different account and attempted to follow the instructions, and I received a message that I had already opted out.

I continued to have some problems off and on with pages not loading. Then I started seeing the "Enhanced Error Results" again.

Giving Cox the benefit of the doubt, I contacted their 24/7 Live Technical Support via Chat. Here's how it began:

Edward> My name is Edward, welcome to Cox High Speed Internet Online Support.

Auriette> Is there some problem with Cox HSI service in my area tonight?

Edward> I am really sorry for the inconvenience.
Edward> Unfortunately, there is difficulty with the e-mail service for your
area.
Edward> Our technicians are aware of the issue and are currently taking care of
it.

Hmm. Did I say I was having problem with my email? I don't use Cox for email. So I asked if he meant there was a problem with internet connectivity. At that point, he asked for all kinds of account information. Now, if he didn't know where I was, how did he know there was an email service issue in my area?

So then Edward tells me "I have checked your modem signals and are working properly and there is no reported outage for your area."

And then he tries to blame it on my router, saying, "we do not provide technical assistance for connections behind a third party router."

This would be the router that Cox's installer recommended and installed more than five years ago. We've never been connected to the internet without it. I've had techs over the phone tell me to disconnect everything and unplug it and turn it all back on, but never to remove the router and connect the modem directly to the internet, and I had no intention of trying it tonight, because I believe the problem is related to this sudden influx of sales pitches via the "Enhanced Error Results."

So, I ask:

Auriette> I opted out of the "Enhanced Error Results" sales page over two hours
ago. How long does it normally take for the opt-out to take full effect?

Edward> It is immediately. However, sometimes the site does not work.

Ahhh. Sometimes the site doesn't work. Hmmm.

So Edward pastes in a link and says I'll have to change my settings manually in order to "opt out." I cannot, however, copy or paste the link.

Auriette> Please wait while I try that.
Auriette> I'm not able to copy and paste that link or to click on it.
Auriette> Please email to auriette@tmlindsey.com

Edward> Just a moment please.

That is not the end of our chat, but it is the end of the transcript that Edward emailed to me. Here's what really happened:

I ask him to send it to the email address that I use, the email that I had open on my desktop. He sent it to my Cox address. I ask him again to send it to my usual email address and HE LIED TO ME! He said he sent it there, but he sent it again to the Cox address.

AND THEN HE DISCONNECTED.

I was able to click on the link in the transcript and follow the instructions to manually set my DNS settings. I'm not sure what will happen the next time I have to repair my LAN settings after leaving on the firewall for a few minutes.

I am continuing to have problems with my internet connection, though I haven't seen the "Enhanced Error Results" page lately.

Cox needs to understand that they are not the only option for broadband connection. By partnering with Yahoo Search for this "Enhanced Error Results" process, they are playing games with their customers. In trying to earn a few pennies from click throughs, they are going to end up losing steady customers to other ISPs. Their rude, incompetent, lying tech support personnel will only hurt the situation.

I hope they wise up and correct this problem.

UPDATE: 24 hours later, and I haven't gotten a single "page not found" of any variety, and no sign of the Cox Finder "Enhanced Error Results" page. Perhaps my opt-out was finally processed. Maybe they repaired the non-existent problem that was causing the lost connections. I'm still suspicious of the Cox-Yahoo partnership.

Review: The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman

Contains observations that may be considered SPOILERS.

I received an advanced reading copy of “The Left Hand of God” through a giveaway at the Goodreads website. It’s not something I would have picked up on my own. I’m not sure if that small detail colored the way I feel about the novel, but it’s worth mentioning.

The plot seems fairly standard, combining elements from myth, fairy tales and film. Young boys are bought or kidnapped and brought to a monastery where they are cruelly treated and trained for warfare. The protagonist is Thomas Cale, a boy brought to the Sanctuary as a child and who is now the top student. He witnesses an unexpected and savage event that leads him to escape the Sanctuary, taking with him three others. They make their way to Memphis, major city, where Cale earns both respect and hatred. He falls in love, and that completely changes his outlook and approach to combat. The book concludes with a massive battle between the Redeemers of the Sanctuary and the Materazzi of Memphis.

The story doesn’t end there, because “The Left Hand of God” is, in another commonality, the first in a trilogy.

I must admit that the novel is compelling. I was never inclined to set it down and leave it, which I have done with books on rare occasions. I wanted to know what happened to the characters and what secrets they were hiding. I can’t say that the characters are well developed. We don’t often see into their thoughts, and when we do, it’s as though the door is cracked just a little. We get a glimpse, just enough to let us know that there is much more that remains tantalizingly beyond our view.

The time and place of the story is one of the most frustrating elements. According to the back cover blurb and the publisher’s website, “The Left Hand of God” is set in a “distant, dystopian past.” Many of the locations we visit or hear about bear familiar names: Memphis, the Appalachians, Fatima, Silbury Hill. Even the ones that didn’t sound familiar tend to show up in a web search, although they are not close together. The presence of plate armour suggests that it takes place during the middle ages, though certain aspects seem more akin to the Roman Empire. The characters will make one comment that makes it seem later in history then say something that seems contradictory.

The language includes many unfamiliar terms, some of which appears to be slang. I’m not sure those words are British slang or something that Hoffman made up. The characters know what they mean, so nothing is defined for us. Sometimes the meaning is easily discerned, but at other times I had no idea what I was supposed to be picturing or what the character was trying to say. A couple of times, I was left wondering if I was experiencing a typographical error. When the book says “squits” was it a typo for “squirts?” Hard to say. As I mentioned, the copy I have is an advanced reading copy, specifically an “advance uncorrected proof.” Had the book not been released shortly before I started reading it, I might have felt a duty to record the many typos and mail it in. In the past, I have read ARCs that contained typos and I have found those typos in for-sale copies of the book. I truly wonder if the “uncorrected proofs” are actually used for proofing.

In addition to the typos, I found any number of sentences that were not well constructed. I sometimes had to read over a line several times, trying different inflections and breaks to figure out exactly what Hoffman intended to say. Most of the time, I eventually understood. A couple of times, I just moved on. Those lines just weren’t written clearly, and could have been broken up or rearranged to have them make more sense.

The Redeemers are a religious cult that is very much based on Christianity or perhaps more specifically Catholicism. They worship the Hanged Redeemer, a martyr worshipped as the son of God, and death without redemption means burning for all eternity. Hoffman makes frequent and obvious parallels between the faiths. One of the primary Redeemer characters reveals, at the end of the novel, a prophesy given to him by a vision of the Redeemer’s mother.

It was at that point, at the end, that I came to believe that the novel takes place in a history so long ago that it’s been forgotten, with mankind and all civilization wiped out in the interim and reinvented by a God trying again to get things right.

So just tell me that. Don’t leave me trying to figure out if this is an alternate history or a fantasy world that just seems like Earth. I also would have liked more insight into who was telling the story. The book starts out (and I’m pulling this from the official series website, not the uncorrected proof):

“Listen. The Sanctuary of the Redeemers on Shotover Scarp is named after a damned lie, for there is no redemption that goes on there…”

The first word suggests that someone is telling this story, someone who witnessed the events or who’s passing down the legend. It’s not written in first person, so it can’t be (or shouldn’t be) any of the characters we meet in the book. Sometimes, the narrator is omniscient. He knows what’s going on at the Sanctuary after Cale leaves, he tells us about secret meetings between a Redeemer agent and Kitty the Hare, a perverse businessman who seems to have some sort of physical deformity or mutation. Sometimes the narrator gives us a glimpse into a character’s mind; at other times, we get no insight into what anyone is really thinking.

While I was compelled to finish reading this book, I am not inclined to buy the next two books. I feel no pressing knowledge to know what happens next. So much of the story seems trite, endless set-up for religious and social commentary from the author, which he may reveal by the end or perhaps he’ll just let the readers decide for themselves.

A final note: on the official website for the trilogy I found a map of Cale’s world. I’m not sure if the map or any reference to it was included in the for-sale version. If not, it should have been. It doesn’t offer any particular insight, but it would have been a nice touch. I would also like to have had a guide to pronunciation for unfamiliar names and words and a dictionary of the unfamiliar or slang terms.

“The Left Hand of God” was released in hardcover in June 2010. It’s available for $25.95 from Penguin.com.

Review: The Exile of Sara Stevenson (novel)

I won a copy of "The Exile of Sara Stevenson" on goodreads. I finished it a couple of days ago, and I've been mulling over what I should say about it. I was very intrigued by the blurb that suggested a supernatural element.

I began reading the book during my day at jury duty, and it was a great way to pass the time. The characters are all well-drawn and intriguing. It's written in first-person, and we can tell that the other people populating the story have secrets of their own, but we must discover them along with Sara.

I found the dialogue to be very well written. Almost everyone who appears in the book is Scottish, but they speak in a variety of dialects, and author Darci Hannah does a great job of writing so that I could really hear the characters' voices.

The farther along I got into the book, I found myself wondering when the mysterious time travel element would come into play. It's well over halfway into the book when we get our first inkling of what's going to happen (or what's happening, rather).

When we reach the denouement, I found it a little odd and not entirely satisfying. On the surface, it's the kind of lighthouse story that might be passed along from generation to generation. Maybe there's just a little too much to it. I don't want to say too much and ruin it for anyone.

I enjoy historical romances, some historical non-fiction, and science fiction. I'm not someone who usually enjoys "good literature." Please don't take that the wrong way, Darci! Aside from that little bit of oddness at the end, I really enjoyed the book. I would say that I might have enjoyed it more had the supernatural element not been revealed in the cover blurb; then the events would have been more mysterious and let me "play along" with Sara trying to figure out what's happening. However, that element is part of what interested me in reading the book, and not giving a hint could also disappoint readers who don't like that kind of thing in their fiction.

"Extraordinary Measures" DVD Review

We finally picked up the DVD of "Extraordinary Measures" this weekend and watched it tonight. CAUTION: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!

I am an unabashed Harrison Ford fan, and he did a very good portraying a crotchety and opinionated scientist who forms an uneasy partnership with the father of two children debilitated by the rare condition Pompe's Disease. Both men are seeking a cure for Pompe's for their own reasons; of course the father, John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) is the more driven of the two. He will do whatever it takes to keep his children alive.

Dr. Robert Stonehill is twice-divorced and spends all his time at his university laboratory. He wants things done his way and on his schedule. He doesn't care about the profitability of a drug or how to get it approved by the FDA; he just does the research. He alienates potential investors, then complains loudly when Crowley offers them lucrative terms to get them on board. When the pair's newly formed company is having a hard time financially, he courts a larger biotech company to buy them out. This time, Stonehill talks the talk and walks the walk that the executives want to see. The start-up is absorbed into the larger company, Stonehill and Crowley relocate to the corporate labs, and the two of them butt heads with the hierarchy to get what they want. In Stonehill's case, he just wants to do things his way. For Crowley, it ultimately means leaving his job in order to get his two children -- for whom time is growing short -- into the clinical trials.

It's really hard to follow the timeline of the movie. Everything seems to be happening too fast. As it turns out, the real story evolved over several years. The movie begins on Megan Crowley's 8th birthday, and I believe it is her 9th birthday that we see near the end of the film. That's very significant because research that John Crowley is shown reviewing near the beginning suggests that children with the
disease are not expected to live more than nine years.

I did not fully get a sense of urgency during the film. Some of that could be because I knew the outcome of the story; I had seen video of Megan and Patrick Crowley taken when they visited the set of the movie probably two years ago. I hesitate to accept all the "blame" for the lack of urgency, though, because when I saw "Valkyrie" (the Tom Cruise-starrer that told the story of a plot to kill Hitler), I knew that the group failed and the men involved were executed), and yet I still felt great suspense at each step of the way.

The filmmakers did not focus very much on the home life. In fact, two deleted scenes on the DVD showed the tension between John Crowley and his wife Aileen. Scenes like that would have gone a long way to demonstrate the real-life toll that Crowley's drive for a cure was taking on his family. Megan Crowley was presented as a typical
precocious adolescent, always positive and a real trooper. If she throws a tantrum once in a while (another excised scene available on the DVD), it's okay, because she may not live very much longer. When mom gave in following the tantrum, I would have liked to have seen something in her eyes and demeanor that she's giving in because how can she deny her child the small joy of sparkly sunglasses (even though she'd just learned that her husband took out a second mortgage on their home to fund research).

We see very little of Patrick Crowley, their younger son with Pompe. He seems much weaker than Megan and contributes little to the story. There's not even any discussion about his being weaker, of losing muscle control sooner than Megan, just a few knowing glances between the parents. The third Crowley child is portrayed
as being completely understanding, even selling his toys to raise money for a research fundraiser.

Near the beginning of the film, Crowley makes the decision to leave the pharmaceutical company he works for to partner with Stonefield in a new venture. He discusses with his wife the difficulty if he loses his insurance (health care costs, including home nurse care, are $40,000 a month according to the script). Yet, he makes the move with no further mention of any financial strain for his family. Even the aforementioned deleted scene suggests that the money from the second mortgage went to the company, not to personal expenses. When the film begins, the Crowleys are living in a rather nice looking two-story house in Oregon. Later (after the start-up gets bought out), they are shown living in what looks like a mansion on a cliff. These are not ordinary people concerned about paying hefty medical bills. Is this a Hollywoodization of the story, designed to present the Crowley family in the best possible light? Or did the screenwriters leave out that they are an independently wealthy family who can afford, unlike the average person, to buy a custom treatment for their children's rare disease? (I don't mean to downplay the difference this treatment has made in the lives of other Pompe families.)

In doing a little further research about Stonehill, I found out that he doesn't really exist. The real scientist is Dr. William Canfield. He started his company without Crowley and brought him aboard later. Other scientists who also made contributions to the same area of research weren't mentioned at all and they (or at least their supporters) are a little peeved. Crowley, meanwhile, is still working in the biotech industry and also has a political career (which could explain some of the whitewashing of the story). If you're interested, you can read more here:

http://harrisonfordonline.com/?p=1588
http://harrisonfordonline.com/?p=6992

I found it interesting that Dee Wallace (the mom in "E.T." and "Cujo") played a character who had one or two lines and Alan Ruck (the friend whose dad's car they used in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off) also had a tiny little role. Work's work, I guess, but I felt bad for them.

As we watched the film, my husband kept saying, "Oh this must be where the terrorists attack and try to take over the lab and Stonefield has to stop them. Oh, guess not." He was only partly joking; we have seen too many examples of where a role was changed to be more action-oriented after Harrison Ford was cast. In this one, the most action Harrison sees is running down the sidewalk in a race with the wheelchair-bound Megan.

It's a good enough little film, and for the few people who see it, it will raise awareness of this debilitating condition. It's easy to see, though, why "Extraordinary Measures" did not garner much critical acclaim or popular success.

The only extras on the DVD are the movie trailer (and previews for a few other films), several deleted scenes, and two featurettes - one on the making of the film and the other on John Crowley (who also appears in the film in a small role as a corporate executive).

Why can't I feel strong positive emotions anymore?

For a while, I've been noticing that nothing really excites me anymore. Two years ago, we went to England, and while I was somewhat excited, the worry factors overpowered it. What was going to go wrong? Was my husband going to have a good time? Now that I look back, the first things that come to my mind about the trip were the things that did go wrong. I think of the crying babies that kept us awake all night on the flight over. I remember that I didn't write down the address of one of the B&Bs, so I had to go find an internet café, and Tim decided to wait with the luggage in the underground, so every minute I was gone, I knew that he was worrying and waiting and wondering. Those memories overpower the good memories like seeing Kenneth Branagh in Ivanov and David Tennant in Hamlet, of visiting the Doctor Who exhibit and having lunch in an outdoor market, and walking along the Thames until we found the London Bridge.

Recently, I was in a play, and I arrived for opening night, and I was a little worried about myself because I didn't have that nervous anticipation, the excitement, the little butterflies that usually accompanied an opening night for me. When I arrived at the theatre and saw the buzz of activity, a few patrons waiting in the lobby, I started feeling a little excited, but not THE feelings I used to have when I performed in theatre years ago. This was the biggest role I've done in years. When I did Short Attention Span Theatre and my scene was maybe 8 minutes long, max, I thought I wasn't nervous at all because it was just a tiny part of the evening. This time, I was in lot of scenes and I still didn't have that energy that comes from opening night.

The only strong emotions I feel are the negative ones. When I worry or get stressed, then I start crying, then my chest tightens up. Although now that I'm writing this and thinking about it, those times even come farther apart than they used to.

Except that I don't want the expense, I should probably see a psychiatrist. I am so tired of never feeling good about myself. When something good comes along, I can't fully enjoy it. It's like most of my emotional nerve endings are dead, and the ones that are still alive only transmit negative energy.

What can I do to be happy?

Star Wars Tees for Gals

I'm really exited by the new Her Universe line of clothing for female Star Wars fans! No products are available online yet, but the site says that an online shop is coming soon. I'm not sure that a tee cut and designed for women would work for me, because I'm not a skinny young girl anymore. However, I would like to see more adult shirts featuring female characters like Leia and Padmé. Can't wait to see the line when it's revealed!

Am I too critical?

My mom accuses my husband and I both of being too critical. We do have high expectations, whether it's with customer service or product quality or personal actions. We spend a lot of our time together talking about the stupidity that we see from people on a daily basis.

Would we be happier if we were less critical? If we lowered our expectations on a personal, national and global level?

Maybe.

I can't help but think what a better world this would be if people were able to meet our expectations. It's not that it's impossible. It's just that people don't think or don't care, and they do the minimum necessary in their jobs and in their lives instead of doing the very best that they can and being the best that they can be.

They're satisfied. And I'm critical.

Would you like a free Oreck Vacuum?

I sure would. That's why I've been entering every Oreck giveaway I can find, because I can't afford to buy one right now. The feature I like best about the Oreck Halo is the UV germ-killing light. Using an Oreck makes your house cleaner AND healthier. This post is part of my attempt to win an Oreck vacuum cleaner. Blogger Mom's Focus on Cyberworld is giving away an Oreck Halo via her blog. Click on the link for your chance to win.

Even a man who is pure in heart....

Tim and I went to see "The Wolfman" with Benicio Del Toro for Valentine's Day. We both love the old Universal Horror films, as does Mr. Del Toro, so despite some mixed reviews, we had high hopes for the film. We were not disappointed. We came right home and watched "The Wolf Man" with Lon Chaney (Tim had also watched it on Saturday night) for comparison's sake.

The new film begins with the poem that is oft-repeated in the original film. I was surprised that they made two changes to the poem, but not the one I expected.

The new poem is Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.

The original by screenwriter Curt Siodmak is Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.

I'm not sure what the difference is between "pure in heart" and "pure of heart." I gather that "wolfsbane" is the correct name for the plant.

I expected them to change the last line, or rather to use the last line from one of the subsequent Wolf Man movies. Later films used "when the moon is shining bright" and "when the moon is full and bright" rather than the autumn moon reference.

Moving on, there's really just one major change in the basic story from 1941, and that's who the werewolf is who bites Larry Talbot. They could have stuck with Bela the gypsy and been just fine. What they did works fine, but it wasn't necessary.

The acting is excellent and so is the make-up. Rick Baker, famous for his work on "An American Werewolf in London" and a host of other films, did a great job on the transformation, keeping it faithful while also keeping it fresh. Mr. Baker also makes a brief appearance in the film as one of the villagers hunting the werewolf. Some CGI is also used, of course. You can't get away from that these days, and from what I've heard the studio demanded some changes, including more CGI and more gore (which really could have been scaled back without losing any of the intensity of the scenes).

Joe Johnston directed the film. I have always enjoyed his work, and he did a fine job on this film, setting a creepy mood and depicting the horror that Larry Talbot goes through after he is bitten.

I was sad that more people didn't come to see the film today, but we saw it at kind of an off-cinema in town; the Rave probably had more people, but we're made at them right now. Maybe most people don't want gore on Valentine's Day, either. A father and middle school age child was there, and a family with elementary school age children. Of course the youngest child was scared, or at least that's what he kept saying very loudly. At least the mother took him outside a couple of times. I do not understand what people are thinking to bring a small child to a bloody horror movie.

We'll definitely buy the DVD of "The Wolfman" when it comes out, and I sincerely hope that Mrs. Johnston, Baker and Del Toro will do a commentary with all three present in the studio. I think that would be very interesting and enlightening.

Win a Slanket

Brown Couch Events is giving away a Slanket for Two. It's a Valentine's Day giveaway, so hurry on over.

Waiting for Results

For seven years, when I worked as a TV news producer, I didn't really wait for results. Sure, we had the ratings four times a year, but our station did well as a whole, and when I had a newscast for a while, the ratings usually seemed to go up. I never felt like I could take full responsibility for the increase, but I felt good about it. Still, my focus was not on what would give the 'cast strong ratings, it was on reporting the news well, on giving people information they could use, accurately and without bias.

Now, I'm in public relations, a field where I'm constantly waiting for results. You throw a party or put on a show, and it's not just about how well it's done, it's about how many people come, how much money is spent, and what's being said about it. I chose to move into this field, and I enjoy a lot of what I do. Sometimes I feel good about my results, at least until someone tells me that it should have been better.

When I feel badly about the results, I feel that I have let everyone around me down.

So, basically, I've lost the good feeling I had at the end of a newsday, where the work was its own reward, and I think that's affected my mental and physical health.

I can't go back to the news. I didn't think I burned any bridges when I left, but apparently I did. My new career in public relations is the only one I have, for better or worse. All I can do is my best, even if it's not always good enough.

Would you like to check out my current projects?
FPRA Pensacola 2010 Toolbox: PR Power Tools
Pensacola Little Theatre

How does what you do affect your overall well-being?

Don't buy Acer for Customer Service

My Acer Aspire was part of the massive recall for a potentially hazardous wiring problem. The company did not notify me. I contacted them and arranged to ship it back. Despite this not being my fault, they used FedEx Ground, instead of overnight, thus taking my laptop out of service for a week.

The company sent me three pages of generic shipping and repair information that was poorly organized. The company failed to verify my preferred shipping address and sent it to my home instead of my work. I couldn't be home because I was at work. I tried to get the address changed, but the company representative didn't understand the terms of their contract, wasting more valuable time. I couldn't pick it up from FedEx because the nearest Ground distribution center is two hours drive away.

Lucky, FedEx has terrific customer service and was able to get it re-routed to me.

Then I opened the box to find my computer bouncing around in inadequate packaging. They had my original manufacturer's box, but apparently that was too much trouble for them to repack it in and they threw it away. After a number of complaints to corporate management, the sales rep called me back, said I'd simply failed to understand the instructions sent to me, and the laptop was packed loosely and that they intentionally packed it so that it would bounce around.

Two weeks ago, I would have encouraged anyone to buy an Acer computer. It seems to have very good battery life, and I hadn't had any problems with it. Now, I would discourage the purchase of an Acer product, because they don't offer good customer support when things go wrong, even if it's their own shoddy workmanship that caused the problem in the first place.

I re-wrote their repair information sheet for them, too. I wanted them to see how their convoluted instruction sheet could be made simpler. They have not responded, which only reinforces that they really don't care about making things easier for their customers. They just want to blame them when it's their communications strategy that's at fault.

No luck at the movies.

On Sunday, January 31, I tried to go see the new Harrison Ford film, Extraordinary Measures. We got to the box office window at the Rave Pensacola on Bayou only to be told that the projector was having problems and the showing had been cancelled. We saw Sherlock Holmes instead, which we both enjoyed and the fairly full house was surprisingly well-behaved, aside from the young woman who sat beside me and seemed intent on carrying on a conversation with her date throughout the film. She kept it down after I made a snarky comment about it.

On Sunday, February 7, we tried again to see Extraordinary Measures. The Bayou Rave only had one screening, at 11am and we'd missed it, so we went to the other Rave on "W" Street. That location has become quite rundown! We were the only one in the theatre for about 15 minutes. Then an old couple came in. Then with just a couple of minutes to go until the movie theatre, the trouble group came in. Mom, Dad, their pre-schooler, and the grandparents. They were all talking in normal tones of voice, like they were at home, but one had hopes that things would settle down once the movie started. No luck. The child talked constantly, loudly, in a clear high-pitched voice that was impossible to tune out. Mom shushed him frequently, but the child has not been taught at home to be quiet or to behave. Grandma was talking to the child, still in normal tones, as well as repeating everything to Grandpa. So, we left and got our money back.

Why are people so inconsiderate as to bring an undisciplined child to a movie that is clearly over his/her head? Why do they think it's appropriate to speak in normal tones of voice?

I'm really disappointed. I haven't missed a Harrison Ford film in the theatre since the last century (with the exception of Crossing Over which had only limited release). I'll be surprised if it's still around next weekend. Looks like I'll just have to wait for the DVD.

I need a new mattress!

A few years ago, hubby and I decided it was time for new mattresses. We have a queen frame and two twin XL mattresses. We went to a local place, Koala, that makes mattresses. Apparently not very well. We tried some mattresses and told them how firm we wanted them, went back and they weren't firm enough, they told us they'd mis-quoted us but they'd stand by the price. We borrowed a truck and took them home and it wasn't long before we heard one of them crack inside. Of course by then, we couldn't find the paperwork and when we finally did it was just too big a pain to go back. We'll never buy from them again, though.

Now the "new" mattresses are at least seven years old, and they're kind of saggy. They're not comfortable at all. We turn them regularly (top to bottom and back to front), and maybe that has helped prolong the lives, but it's time for them to go now.

I'd love to win a really high quality mattress, like the Sealy Posturepedic® Signature 11-Series innerspring mattress being given away on blogs like BizzieMommy.com. Visit the site and enter for your own chance to win, but I'm not going to wish you luck. This is one I need myself!

adidas Star Wars Celebration

All I did was ask my husband if I could go to New York next week, and I sent him the copy about the event from StarWars.com. He re-edited the copy. His "improvements" are in bold.

The REAL story...

If you're in New York on February 4th, join adidas Originals and Foot Locker for an Imperial March to celebrate the launch of the adidas Originals Star Wars collection. Led by some pompous short guy from the 501st in platform shoes and a Rubie's Darth Vader costume, the march will begin at Foot Locker (43-45 W. 34th St.) at 9:30AM with a celebrity guest, most likely some asstard that appeared in the background in one of the prequels for half a second. Or Andy Dick. joining at the Times Square Foot Locker (1530 Broadway) at 10:00AM.

The first 50 customers to purchase a shoe at each location will receive a special Star Wars gift, being anally raped with a Hasbro lightsaber while on-lookers gasp and cry "You paid HOW MUCH for fricking shoes with Star Trek stickers on them?" Everyone will have the opportunity to get their photo taken with Star Wars characters, actually more of the self-loving losers from the 501st who are still savoring the smell of the smoke Lucas has blown up their asses while laughing at them for being a free PR machine for his empire. The March will continue south and culminate at the SoHo ('cause it sort of sounds like Solo, y'know from the movies) adidas Originals store (136 Wooster) at 11:00AM where the special celebrity guest will break wind whilst staggering around in a drunken stupor and hitting on the least fat female fans and then unveil the adidas Skywalker shoe , which will be available for purchase for the first time in the US. DJ Neil Armstrong will be on hand spinning for the crowd. By "spinning" we do mean break dancing. And at his age, once he hits the ground he likely to break every bone in his body. Or at least the ones that haven't been replaced with space bone by his alien overlords. Nerd.

Oh, and he nixed the trip to the Big Apple.

A Few Thoughts on "Avatar"

Hubby and I saw "Avatar" on Sunday afternoon in 3D. It was playing to an almost full house, not completely sold out but quite a good crowd for the movie being out for several weeks already.

Beware of spoilers ahead!

We'd heard a lot about the story, and for us nothing that happened in the movie was very unexpected. Certain plot points were set-up well in advance, and maybe we're just old and jaded, but for example, as soon as they encountered the large orange dragon-like creature and told the story that only five leaders had even ridden one, we knew that Jake Sully would be the sixth. When they tried to save Grace by transferring her into her avatar, it was obvious that Jake would choose that option and it would work, because he was not so weak. Immediately after the film, Tim commented that Grace would become the Obi-Wan character, if Jim Cameron made a sequel, and since then, he read an article that said Sigourney Weaver would be back for the follow-up.

The computer effects were very good for the most part; there were only a few moments where I noticed poor CGI. Notably they are the shot where Neytiri reached out to grab Jake when he's first following her through the forest and nearly fell, and then later when the guys are all climbing the vines to get to the creatures that they're going to try to ride. It's like their biceps weren't flexing at all, so it seemed there was no effort to the climb. For only a couple of moments to jump out at me as being poorly animated in a movie with this much CGI, that's pretty good.

The 3D effect was very well done. I must say, I did not have any "reach out and grab" it moments in the theatre, which I have felt like doing at Disney World -- but
I think it's because the Disney 3D movies were designed and filmed to capitalize on the 3D effect, whereas Cameron was telling a story that just happens to be in 3D. I must also say that whenever a shot seemed to call particular attention to the 3D aspect of the film, it pulled me out of the moment. They missed a few opportunities to take advantage of the 3D, such as when Jake is first trying out his avatar and his tail is knocking things over. Something could have been knocked towards the
camera or the tail could have flicked by our faces; Tim believes Cameron chose not to do that, because it would have pulled the audience out of the moment and reminded them that they're watching a film.

The designs of the hardware were good, but also kind of disappointing because everything Cameron does features very similar machinery. We saw the hunter-killers from "The Terminator" and the power loader from "Aliens." Very early on,
I heard a clip of music that was probably right off the "Aliens" soundtrack, thus confirming for me that the hack James Horner did the music. Most of it was good and seemed original, although after becoming disillusioned with his work after hearing
so much of the "Star Trek II" & "STIII" music rehashed in "Aliens" I have not gone out of my way to listen to his music. For all I know the pieces that sounded like Native American flute music could have been rehashed Celtic music from "Titanic"
played on a different instrument. In the final fight between the Sarge (was he a Sergeant?) and Jake, ooh, surprise, the same "thrilling moment" music Horner used in both "Trek" films, and "Aliens" and "Clear and Present Danger" and "Krull" and everything else he's ever done. I suspect he probably used it in "Titanic" but it wasn't as recognizable being played on Celtic instruments. And Lord save me from the "hit single" that was played over the credits. That was painful.

Lest you think I didn't enjoy the movie, I was entertained, I cared about the characters, and I had a good time. It just wasn't as special as the $1.6 billion+ box office would suggest. If the plot were quite so simplistic and predictable, it could have been an excellent movie instead of mediocre. I suppose mediocrity doesn't really matter when you're getting butts in seats and winning all kinds of awards for the cleverness of getting butts in seats.

Before the film, they played several 3D trailers, which surprised me. I wasn't expecting that at all. "Alice in Wonderland" was one, plus "Shrek Forever," "Piranha 3D" (interesting choice, since Cameron directed "Piranha 2" when he was first starting out as a filmmaker), and something else about a supervillain and his young nemesis but I can't recall the name.

So, that's my review of "Avatar." It's not the best review the movie will get, nor is it the worst. Ultimately, it's making Cameron even richer, and I suppose that's all that really matters to Hollywood.

Oh, my aching back

I'm tired all the time, but when I get the chance to sleep in, I wake up achy. I blame it on the mattress. We bought our mattresses at Koala Mattress in Pensacola probably seven or eight years ago. Very soon after we bought them, hubby heard some of the wood supports in his start to crack. It was under warranty, but it's a major headache getting the mattresses home, much less borrowing a truck to take it back to the store and doing without while it's being repaired. So, they've just continued to get worse. Funnily, we were looking at a mattress-in-a-box option at a local department store and talking with someone else who was looking and he said (with no prompting from us), "Don't waste your time with Koala Mattress." So, we are not alone in our bad experience.

Right now, I am pinning my hopes on winning a new mattress from Sealy Posturepedic. Sealy is giving away several of their new Sealy Posturepedic Innerspring Signature 11 Series mattresses through some of the popular blogs. The winners get to choose the size mattress they get.

Here are some links where you can enter:
Mommy Mandy
Bizzie Mommy
From Dates to Diapers

Hubby and I use two Twin XL mattresses on a Queen frame, and all our linens are Twin. If I win, clearly I'll have to choose Twin XL for the size, and hubby will be on his own, because I will claim the new mattress in the name of Spain (my birth country). If the mattress helps me sleep soundly enough, maybe even the tag team of Wicket and Kali will not be able to disturb my slumber. One can only hope.

The Power of the Pea

I just ate my fourth bowl of black-eyed peas of the day and will be dipping in for more in a few minutes. You see, when I was a child my Pap-pa told me that for every black-eyed pea you eat on New Year's Day, you'll earn a dollar in the coming year. I figure that if the going rate was a dollar per pea in Pap-pa's day (when a dollar a day was a good, living wage), that the value has to have gone up by now. Eating a crock pot full of black-eyed peas, therefore, will ensure a very successful year.

So, how exactly does this work? Because it has seemed to work for me these past few years. I've won a good amount of cash and some valuable prizes. I think it works for me because I believe in the power of the pea.

A few days ago, I had lunch with a friend who's as avid a sweeper as I am and another old friend who saw our sweeping chat on Facebook and wanted in on the action. They've both read The Secret - the popular book about the Law of Attraction. I've never read the book, but I have seen a few minutes of the video online, and I've read about it. I was introduced to the concept some 20 years ago, by an actor friend who had read Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. This friend told me that when she was looking for a new place to live, she imagined the perfect townhouse in the perfect neighborhood at a great location in the city, and she turned down a street and there it was, just as she had imagined, down to the color of the buildings and the layout of the rooms.

Ms. Gawain was not the first to write of this concept. On Wikipedia, you can read The Science of Getting Rich written by Wallace D. Wattles in 1910; he called the concept Thinking Substance.

Imagine what you want. Believe it will come to you, and it will. That's the Law of Attraction. Creative Visualization. Thinking Substance. The Power of Prayer.

I remember hearing a story long ago about a friend of a friend who was not well off financially, she may have been disabled, and she really wanted a piano. She prayed and prayed for delivery of a piano. When out of the blue things fell into place in such a way that she was offered a piano at no cost, she gave credit to God and prayer. My dad told me the story of helping their new preacher move into a parsonage house recently purchased by the church. Standing in the room designated for the preacher's youngest daughter, the church members offered to re-paint it. Not necessary, the preacher said, for his daughter had prayed that in their new house, her room would be pink and purple, and that's exactly what it was.

Gives you chills, doesn't it?

So when I eat my bowl of black-eyed peas, I'm believing in the goodness and prosperity they will bring me over the next 364 days. Perhaps a grand prize win of thousands of dollars cash. Maybe another trip to New York or L.A. In the past year, I've won a laptop computer, a jousting helmet, DVDs, free food coupons and gift cards, books, and all kinds of products.

I credit the peas of 01/01/2009.

As you go through 2010, believe in yourself, be steadfast in your dreams, and may the year bring you everything you desire.

My Entry For the Kia Sorento Ultimate Road Trip Sweepstakes

In 1987, I decided I wanted to go to the official 10th Anniversary Star Wars convention in Los Angeles. It would be cheaper to drive than to fly, but it meant being on the road for at least 10 days by myself, age 21. My mom decided to go with me, and we turned it into a great adventure, nearly three weeks on the road. We stayed at really cheap motels (except in L.A. where we stayed at the conference hotel), and we stopped anywhere that looked interesting: national parks, state parks, tourist traps ("You don't want to miss THE THING, 25 miles ahead!"). We saw the Grand Canyon, and played the slots in Vegas. We visited the London Bridge, Hoover Dam, and photographed every cactus in Saguaro National Park. My parents and I had traveled a lot when I was growing up, but I didn't appreciate it like I did this time.

My husband's travel experiences have been far less interesting. His parents would drive across the state for a piece of pie, meaning hours crammed into the car with two other kids. His dad drove around town for work on the weekends, and carried the kids with him. These excursions were more boring and frustrating than anything. Nowadays, my husband just wants to get where he's going and get back, and usually time constraints mean that's what we have to do.

As unrealistic as it is, I would love to take my husband on a two- or three-week trip like the one I had with my mom. I think that if we weren't rushed, and if we stopped anywhere and everywhere that looked interesting, he would have a good time. No telling when we'll have the freedom and money to do that, but it's a dream that I will keep in my heart until the time comes.

Now, tell about your dream road trip at MomLogic for a chance to win big.

When a Child Drowns....

It's very easy for everyone else who wasn't there to criticize and blame the parent or caregiver, the one who was "supposed to be watching." I have been and will continue to be critical of how many people parent (or don't parent) their children. In the Shellie Ross case, I think people are making some assumptions that I am not prepared to make.

I don't know how big Mrs. Ross's property is or where the chicken coop is in relation to the pool. 25 years ago, before cell phones and blogs and tweeting, the very same thing could have happened. Mom walks out to the chicken coop to check on them or gather eggs or feed them, the toddler walks away while she's doing her chore and falls into the pool.

I don't know if the critics have children. I don't. I have cats. I keep a pretty good eye on them when I'm at home, but yesterday, hubby and I were having dinner on the sofa, watching a show on TV, and Petra jumped up on the kitchen counter maybe 12 feet away (and behind a wall, but not behind a door). She pulled down a burrito that was cooling on the counter and started helping herself to the contents. Hubby walked in with his plate and caught her at it.

Do I think that a lot of parents could play closer attention to their children? Absolutely. Mrs. Ross probably tweets from a cell phone, an accessory some people consider as important as their heads. If you make or receive more than three cell phone calls on an average day, I think you're on the phone too much. I see people talking on phones while they drive, walk, bike, and use the toilet. They make and receive many personal calls or text messages at work. I recall hearing stories of children drowning in a pool or mop bucket or tub while their caregiver was on the phone. Doesn't even have to be a cell phone; the old landline variety can be blamed for some of those deaths. A landline phone ties you to the wall where the phone is plugged in.

Mrs. Ross had her cell phone with her and was outside with her son. She says he slipped away in two seconds. Maybe it was really 30 seconds or a minute or five minutes, but it wasn't long.

If you have ever turned your eyes away from a child in your care, what happened to Mrs. Ross could have happened to you, Twitter or no.

Bryson's death is a horrible tragedy for the Ross family. Mrs. Ross will live with this for the rest of her life. She will second guess her actions. She will question her choices on December 15, 2009, for as long as she lives. She doesn't need anyone else to do it for her. On that evening, her life was spinning and her heart was contracting in her chest and she turned to her friends for comfort. 25 years ago, she might have screamed for a neighbor. She might, even today, have called her mother or her sister or her best friend in order to ask for prayers, to express her grief and her horror and her fear. Instead, she texted. It's second nature to her. That brief message took just a few seconds and reached many people who Mrs. Ross considers to be her friends.

I don't know if her harshest critics follow her blog or her tweets or if they heard about that tweet second-hand. It sure didn't take them long to hop onto the internet to tell everyone in their circle of cyberfriends what they thought of the incident. It's kind of hypocritical, isn't it? To condemn someone for spending too much time on the internet in an online forum. To chastise someone you don't even know for not spending enough time with real people, from the computer in your house where you're presumably not talking with a real person because you're too busy typing. To do telephone interviews with magazines so you can get some attention from someone else's tragedy.

My dad died two years ago. It was an expected death from cancer, and my mom and my husband were there with me. When he passed, we each took turns on the phone calling the hospice worker, the funeral home, the church, and family. It wasn't long before I got online and sent some emails and posted on some forums. When you're hurting and grieving, you're in a daze, I'm sure even more so when it's sudden. You need to do something but there's nothing you can do. While the paramedics were working on her son, Mrs. Ross had to stand back, out of the way, and wait. She was restless and frightened and aching, so she tweeted. She asked people to pray for her son, because it's all she could do at that moment.

So cut her some slack.

It needed to be said.

Do you know the difference between "right" and "write"? If not, you should watch this video by Chris Pirillo.

Remembering Pap-Pa

My mom's brother, my Uncle Howitt, is in town for a couple of days, and I had dinner with him and my mom on Sunday and hubby joined us for dinner on Monday. We had great conversation about food and customer service and the legal system and how things have changed. He and mom recalled the outhouse they had when they were little, and even after they got indoor plumbing, as kids they'd use the outhouse to avoid catching their momma's eye, because she was likely to put them to work if she saw them.

He told the story of how a reporter from the paper was out visiting him one day, and Pap-pa (what I always called my grandfather) mentioned that they were in for a harsh winter. This was in 1976. The reporter asked how he could possibly know that. Pap-pa showed him the dog's coat and said if the fur doesn't thin out in the spring, it's going to be extra thick for a cold winter. He showed the reporter an anthill that was close to the ground. If it was going to be a mild winter, Pap-pa said, the anthill would be eight inches off the ground, but instead, the ants were digging deep, to be ready for a cold winter. The reporter took it all down and wrote a tongue-in-cheek article about this old country farmer's antiquated ideas about weather forecasting. Come October, though, and an early hard freeze or two and the reporter came back, to do a follow-up story about how accurate the old farmer's predictions had been.

Too often we forget or discount the old ways, but that ancient wisdom came from experience and from having to make do without the internet and live Doppler radar on the 10pm news.

What digital SLR should I get?

My mom has indicated that she will buy me a digital SLR for Christmas. She's going to get the same make and model for herself, so I can figure it out and help her. I've read good things about Pentax, plus you can use 35mm Pentax camera lenses on their digital cameras (so I've heard) and we have some of those. Big benefit.

I have also heard some really good things about Nikon and Canon models.

What do you think?

Banner Ads can be so misleading.

I was on Facebook, and I should have known better. The ad showed a couple of small pink Tupperware containers and a pink ribbon and said that the free sample offer would be ending in 11 minutes. Mm-hm. And the next free sample offer will start in 11:01.

But I fell for it. I clicked. It took me to QualityHealth.com and asked for a little basic information, including mailing address, age, and general medical concerns. The next thing I knew, I was responding to page after page of "don't you want to buy a Nissan?" and "don't you want to get 180 health-related e-newsletters two or three times a week?" questions. Grrr. But I finished the survey (honestly, I'm afraid to stop, because what if I end up signed up for something because I specifically didn't say no). Did they say that my free samples would be in the mail? Did they even mention what free samples I would receive? Of course not.

So, I hunt around and look for a way to contact the company, and when I find the form, what options do I see listed in the drop-down menu for subject? Stuff like "Complaints" and "Advertised Offer Not Available" and "Samples Not Received." A little further digging finds that this site (and other sites targeting people looking for information on specific diseases and conditions) is run by Marketing Technology Solutions." Based on their own corporate website, linked-in page, and a press release about a lawsuit they recently filed against a rival, MTS seems to be in business to put ads in front of people seeking medical information and to "generate leads" -- in other words, collect personal information from people so that pharmaceutical companies (and apparently other businesses like Nissan) can try to sell them stuff.

Now, I know there's no such thing as a free lunch, except that the reason you're giving me the free lunch is in hopes that I'll want the same thing for lunch tomorrow and I'll be willing to pay for it. Luring me into the restaurant, having me fill out a bunch of surveys, then sending me away hungry is not the way to win my trust or my business. All I'm asking for is a little honesty in advertising.

Marketing Technology Solutions should be ashamed of themselves, but they seem to have come up with a scheme that brings them in a lot of money from medical companies and that's all that matters to them. Same for Facebook. They ought to ban misleading ads, but they're in it for the money, too.

Enter to win a Kindle

Click here to enter at Noobie.com.

I would love to have a Kindle, because I would like to read some books that are only available as ebooks, and I would like to carry the complete works of Shakespeare and some reference books with me all the time.

The Soggy Book

Over the summer, I won a book called Counting the Cost. It's a depression- era love story, inspired by real-life events recounted by author Liz Adair's family members. A couple of weeks ago, the book arrived in the daily post. It was soaked.

A wet book is a ruined book, and as we have not had any satisfaction from the local postmaster, the branch manager, or our carrier on those few occasions in the past when we've had a serious issue with mail delivery, I didn't bother with them.

Going back a few months, when the USPS was talking about cutting back to 5-day-a-week delivery and raising postage rates again, I sent a letter through the USPS.gov website. I pointed out the damage that one of our carriers did to a package by jamming it into a too-small mailbox instead of driving down the 600' driveway to deliver it (we were home at the time) or leaving a slip. The branch manager told us the package should have been insured if it was important. The carrier said, if it's important, use FedEx or UPS. Seriously.

I got an email back asking for some very specific details, which have been forgotten over time. This was more than five years ago, before we moved to our current house.

I went back to that e-mail and hit reply. I explained that I'd just received this book, and it was soaked through, meaning it did more than get wet from the mail truck to my mailbox. The box itself was closed; the doors (front and back on this model) were up tight.

I received an email back asking for specific information about the date of delivery, where it was mailed from, and a few other questions. They were not responsible for compensation, but they would investigate.

I answered their questions and hit send, and I got an automated response that said, basically, I was sending it to the wrong place, the address had changed, yadda yadda. Long story short, I ended up copying the Postmaster General of the U.S. with my final report.

A couple of days later, I get a call from my local postmaster, the same person who, when we tried to call him about a previous problem a few years early, said we needed to talk to the branch manager without even listening to our complaint (which involved the branch manager's attitude). This time, he was really apologetic. He was going to go to my house and look at my mailbox and talk to my carrier and find out what happened. Wow!

An hour or so later, he called again. Said the carrier told him the package was wet when it got to Pensacola, and because he didn't follow procedure and package it up with a note explaining what happened, he was going to reimburse me for the price of the book.

At the same time, the Ms. Adair's PR lady had kindly offered to send me another copy of the book, which arrived about 10 days later (I was beginning to wonder if my carrier was taking revenge) and it was in great shape. I have offered to pay for the book, since the Post Office came through, and I'm waiting to see how to make out the check and where to mail it.

I know that the post office handles a whole lot of mail without any problems or damage. I know that accidents can happen. I do wonder what befell that first package. Did it fall into a puddle? Was there a leak in one of the mail trucks en route? How long did it sit in water? If it fell into a puddle, as long as it was retrieved quickly and wiped off, it wouldn't have been ruined. As you can see from the photo, the package was torn in several places -- did that happen before or after it was exposed to the water? Was it really nobody's fault, or was someone having a bad day and when the book fell into the water said, "Screw it, someone else'll pick it up." The Postal Service uses plastic tubs to sort and carry the mail; if water got into one of those tubs, either being carried through a downpour or because of a leak in the truck or some other reason, the mail in that tub would just sit and soak until it was re-sorted or delivered.

It's up to every person in the chain to be alert and considerate to ensure the safe delivery of the mail. I thank the outstanding men and women of the U.S. Postal Service who give their all to make sure the mail gets through. To those who think their job is not important, that they don't get paid enough to care, I hope you find a new job really soon, something that really isn't important or meaningful to anyone, because we'll all be better off without you.

Something I Don't Get About Google Alerts

Google Alerts is supposed to be a great tool, and I have a really unusual name so it should be easy. The thing is, I get the same page, the same mention of my name, fairly regularly. One of the few other Auriette's in the world is a racehorse. She was racing '96-'98, from what I can tell. These same old articles keep showing up in my Google Alerts. I'm alerted about some of my tweets. Today I got an alert about a comment I made on another person's blog three weeks ago. I don't receive alerts about most of the blog prizes that I win, which are often posted on the giveaway blog. I signed up for Google Alerts to try to help me find out about wins, just in case the sponsor doesn't notify me directly or the e-mail gets lost. Unfortunately, it just doesn't seem to work that well.

New Salad Dressing is Coming

I have this morning off work, so I was at home during business hours, and I called the number on the O'Charley's Honey Mustard again. Now, the name on the bottle is Donelson Foods. I couldn't understand what the phone system said the company's name was, so when I reached a person, I asked if this was also Donelson Foods. She mentioned the O'Charley's Dressing and asked if I wanted HR. I explained I had a bad bottle of the dressing and she transferred me. That person (I didn't make a note of her name) mentioned clearly Choice Food and Diversity Food. I left a detailed message, then I started looking around. Apparently, what the phone system says is Vietti Foods. I guess they still make some foods under that umbrella, but then I found a press release that referenced "Choice Food of America formerly Vietti Foods" and how they were teaming up to form Diversity Food to reach the multicultural market. I was going to follow up with an e-mail to someone, if I could figure out their email address protocol, when the phone rang. The woman apologized, told me the person who handles these things is out of the office until Monday, but there's been another complaint about products with the 13Oct09 date stamp, so they would send me a replacement two-pack next week. She gave me a direct-line phone number to call if I don't receive it in the next couple of weeks.

I knew something had to be wrong with it, and I didn't let it go. I was polite on my message, but I also mentioned that I'd left a message before and never heard anything, and that I really hoped someone would call me back this time. Maybe the message didn't save correctly, or the person I left the message for has been out of town all this time. With voice mail, you never can tell. The person today seemed genuinely apologetic that no one had called me back. It pays to be persistent.

Why do places not return calls?

We bought this O'Charley's Honey Mustard dressing, made by a place called Donelson Foods, and it turned out we still had another bottle (we get them in 2-packs at Sam's Club), so it was sitting around for a while, but the expiration is not until October and the stuff we just finished was good until June according to the label, and it was still fine. So, it looked really dark and separated, the new stuff, and I shook it up and I poured some out, and it was really runny and looked nasty. I keep forgetting to take the bottle to work with me to call, so I called one evening, and they were closed, but they said I could leave a message, so I did. No one called me back and I'm really irritated about that.

HP is addictive.

HP is giving away a really nice laptop and a mini. And an awesome Timbuk2 bag to carry them in. I have an HP desktop that I love, and you know what? The DV6 Laptop they're giving away in a series of back-to-school blog contests is even more powerful. More RAM. Slightly bigger hard drive. Plus a Blu-ray player, which I don't even own one yet, so that would be a really nice added feature.

The mini is tiny, but it would be perfect to carry in my purse (I'd have to clean it out of course) for comparison shopping while we're on the go. Don't you hate it when you're out and you see something and you wonder if it's really a good deal. What do the other stores have? Are there any sales? Pop into the nearest hotspot and you have your answers.

Head over to Daddy Forever right now for your chance(s) to win. You can enter up to four times using different methods. This blog I'm writing? This is one of my four entries.

There are a few more days in this ongoing HP promotion, and you can find more participating blogs and details about the prizes at HP's Back to School site.

Yes, I know I just blogged that I won an Acer laptop. Am I greedy? Maybe... But hubby's parents don't have a computer at all, so if I win this very sweet HP package, I will choose one of the smaller computers to send up to them so they can have e-mail. I think that if they ever used the email, they would enjoy being able to communicate with family members who don't live close by.

Think about your own reasons to win and start visiting Daddy Forever and the other participating sites for your chance.

Finally!

I won a laptop! Thanks to Deal Seeking Mom and the fine folks at Acer, I will be receiving an Acer Aspire Timeline. It sounds great! Only 3.5 pounds, about an inch thick, and 8+ hours of battery life. From what I can tell, the processing speed is only moderately slower than our desktop, and the Acer has more RAM. It's got a 13.3" screen, which is a little larger than most netbooks. The 80gb hard drive is small, but external drives are not that expensive if I find I need more space. What I mainly want it for is checking email & entering sweepstakes online and for word processing (will I finally finish that novel?).

I got the notification on Thursday and Deal Seeking Mom confirmed receipt of my shipping and contact information on Friday. I'm hoping Acer will be able to ship next week, so I'll have it in time for my road trip on the 18th. I'm driving my mom to Indiana and flying back. It's going to be incredibly awesome to have a laptop for the trip!

That reminds me, I should start looking for wifi hotspots at the Indianapolis airport!

The Spirit of Cooperation

So, over at StudySuccessful.com, they're giving away some HP computers. Regular readers will know that I'm obsessed with trying to win a laptop or netbook, and here's my chance to win both and shut up about it.

For my chance to win, StudySuccessful wants to hear about a great cooperative experience in my academic career and something that went terribly wrong. Many of my experiences working with people in school went pretty well (except for the evil girls in middle school science, but there's nothing positive in that story). The best example for the purposes of this story was "Of Thee I Sing." That's a musical that the University of West Florida theatre department put on in the fall of 1984. I had a couple of lines and the rest of the time I was in the chorus. The "star" of the show was Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, but he only rehearsed with us the last week or so. But I digress. The great spirit of cooperation was within the cast. A lot of us were in theatre classes together. This was about the third show I'd ever done in my life (not counting the Christmas play in elementary school where my big part was ripping off bits of fake fiber snow and throwing snowballs), so it was all very new to me. The director was kind of crazy or at least forgetful; I remember one of the actors standing up to him when the director was yelling at us for not doing what he wanted because he had changed his mind and forgot to tell us. During rehearsals my friend Michelle gave me a great piece of advice. She said, "No matter what happens, just keep smiling," a piece of advice that I had to use on this particular show, because something did go terribly wrong.

I had a quick change backstage, and somehow the button on my sleeve got caught in a hairpin or something, and it took me a minute to extricate myself and pull my clothes on. By that time, the dance number had started and I wasn't in place. All the guys had partners except Bob the actor, who left dancing alone and wondering where I was. Michelle was backstage (she wasn't in this number) and I whispered, "What do I do?"

"Get out there and keep smiling!"

So, I put on a big smile and sashayed across the stage and joined the dance. I wonder sometimes if the audience knew what had happened or if they thought it was just part of the number.

Working on a big musical like that is a great experience in teamwork. Everyone relies on everyone else doing what they are supposed to do, being in the right place at the right time, for everything to go smoothly. When something goes wrong, you have to help each other out to get things back on track. To work together successfully on any project, you have to fulfill your duties, and when something goes wrong, you can't just point the finger at someone else, you have to step up with help or solutions or just part of the problem.

Fiber.... It's not just for breakfast

I remember about 15 years ago or so, Disney built a Stepford town called Celebration just outside Orlando. One of their big pitches was fiber optic cable instead of coax for better internet and cable connections. People started complaining because, as I recall, the fiber was in the houses or apartments, but not on the street leading up to it.

Today, my mom complains about her cable and internet connections because the coax running up to her house has literally been there since I was in high school, in the '80s. She blames a lot of her connectivity issues and poor picture quality on the antique (ooh, make that "vintage") cable, but the company refuses to change it.

Me? I got my cable installed for internet only about five years ago. Yep, good ol' coax.

I know it's expensive, but Cox and and the other internet and television providers are making money. We're paying for these services, a little more every year. The companies are constantly asking us to upgrade and bundle and give them a little more hard-earned cash every month.

So, why aren't they investing in us and giving us a better quality product?

All this came up today because I discovered a new website: fiberforall.org. It's run by AU Interactive out of Sarasota, Florida, and its purpose is to educate people about fiber technology and which communications companies are taking the initiative to switch over.

If you don't know anything about the great fiber debate or if you're very interested and one a one-stop-shop to keep up with developments, check it out. Hopefully we'll all get the chance to experience fiber connectivity at home in the near future.

Win from author Eve Silver

Eve is a two-faced writer. As Eve Silver, she writes dark contemporary paranormals and historical suspense. Her alter-ego, Eve Kenin, writes speculative romance (think science fiction). It's kind of like if Superman decided to write for the newspaper, too. You'd get excellent writing from him and Clark Kent, but they'd have a different perspective.

Eve is having a contest at her site to celebrate the release of her latest Silver book, Seduced by a Stranger.

GRAND PRIZE: $50 gift certificate to the online bookstore of your choice PLUS an authographed trade paperback edition of the anthology NATURE OF THE BEAST.

FIRST PRIZE: $25 gift certificate to the online bookstore of your choice PLUS aN autographed trade paperback edition of NATURE OF THE BEAST.

SECOND PRIZE: Autographed Trade paperback edition of NATURE OF THE BEAST.

So if you win, you get to sample Eve's writing, and you might even get to stock up on some of her other books. I haven't read any of her Silver book, but I'm definitely a fan of Kenin!

Here's the URL to enter http://www.evesilver.net/contest.html. Stop by before August 31 for your chance to get in the drawing.

Ode to Internet Friends

Painting our nails, doing our hair,
sleepover party, talking and beer,
separated by miles, but friendships so dear,
you all know what I’m going through.
You all know what I’m going through.

JenHinton.com is our corner bar,
where we whisper of fears and wish on a star.
Our hearts are together though we come from afar.
You all know what I’m going through.
You all know what I’m going through.

The Classy Closet offers advice,
guidelines, suggestions, and tips to entice,
the Chicks Who Chat will share any vice
You all know what I’m going through.
You all know what I’m going through.

You are my friends, my helpers, my mates,
you understand me, you know what it takes,
you don’t ever judge me, you’re not ever fake.
You all know what I’m going through.
You all know what I’m going through.

Why is it....

That I can think of all kinds of things to blog about when I'm in the car or at the store, and then when I have blogger open in front of me, it all flies away?

It pays to shop around.

My mom and I spent all day Wednesday going to car dealerships and looking at Wagons and Crossover SUVs. She has an 11-year-old wagon and wanted to replace it with a newer vehicle. She likes to haul a lot of stuff, so a car wasn't going to cut it.

Finally, she had it down to the Subaru Outback, which is more of a station wagon build and the Toyota Rav4, a crossover SUV. On Friday, we went back to both dealerships, test drove the vehicles, and learned a little more about them.

Joey at Subaru was nice, a brand new car salesman. The ratings weren't quite as good for the Subaru. Also, my mom had seen some sort of sale advertised three weeks earlier, but no one knew what she was talking about or offered to pull out old sale papers. That was kind of a black mark.

Jed at Bob Tyler Toyota was also nice, a very good salesman, and we went in and made an offer. After some back-and-forths, he took an offer to the Sales Manager. Came back with a counter offer of $24,908. We haggled some more, Jed went back to the SM, and he came back with the same offer.

We left. We went back to Mom's and I looked around online at other options. Was there something we missed? Every other vehicle in the price range either was too small or the company's in bankruptcy or had poor ratings, and if we were going to stick with the $24,000 price, why look at other vehicles that cost the same or more?

So, I went to the VW dealer's website, and I asked for a price quote on a Jetta Sportwagen. I received an automated response, but as of yet, no prices. Then I went to the Quality Imports website and checked the prices on a 2009 Rav4 from their dealership. I clicked on the "make us an offer" tab and made a very low bid. Within a couple of hours, I had gotten an e-mail quote and then a very reasonable offer by phone.

We figured we'd be on the road at least three hours, plus the time to complete the transaction, if we went to Ft. Walton Beach, and Jed had spent a lot of time with us showing the car this week. So, I called him, told him that I had an "out the door" offer of $22,622 from Quality. Could he match it? "I'll make it happen," he said.

I picked up my husband from work at 5pm, stopped by for mom, and by 5:45pm we were at Bob Tyler Toyota. We played the game of him writing the amount on the paper, mom initialed it, then he took it to the General Manager (bypassing the SM, he said). When he returned, he had a new number written on the paper. Still more than $24K. And I lost a little respect for him, because he basically said that Quality must be lying to us, just to get us to drive over there. There's no way they could be selling the vehicle for that low. Bob Tyler paid more than $21K for the car, so how could Quality have an invoice price of $20,900? I said that Marty at Quality told me they'd make their profit through a dealer rebate (sounds like the dealer holdback I read about on Edmunds). Jed insisted there were no incentives available for the Rav4 (although holdback isn't an incentive). We said we had to check it out.

After we left, I called Marty at Quality and basically told him what Jed said and asked to verify the price of $22,622. He checked and called me back and said he'd left off a couple of fees to the tune of $10.50. I said I could live with that and we'd see him in the morning.


My mom and I hit the road about 8:30am and we arrived around 10am. We took I-10, because we figured Highway 98 (the beach route) would be at a crawl on the 4th of July. Marty said the car was being gassed up, so we started the paperwork. Turns out they hadn't calculated the sales tax exactly right because of us living in a different county. Then we added on the extended warranty and road hazard protection for a grand total on the check of $24,246 and change. So for less than Bob Tyler wanted to charge us, my mom got the vehicle she wanted, plus she is protected for seven years against anything going wrong with the car AND for several years, she's covered for any flat tires or rim damage.

I'm really tempted to fax the final bill of sale over to Jed to prove that Quality Imports was true to their word.

Quality Imports also gave us a free lunch. They were having a cookout and Scion enthusiasts show. Here's a little video I took with my new Flip Mino, which I won from Liz at This Full House. I'm still kind of getting the hang of the video, so it's not the greatest, but do check out the Green Boxzilla. It's awesome!

Never give up... Never surrender....

The watchwords of the crew of the Protector, the sci-fi spaceship made real by aliens in the delightful comedy film GalaxyQuest.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I'm never going to give up my quest to win a laptop computer. Or a notebook/netbook/mini or whatever other cutsie name they come up with for a compact and portable personal computer.

My quest has today taken me to The Mommy Files, where the prize is a Toshiba Portege A-600. It weighs just over three pounds and includes an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor SU9400, 3GB of SDRAM, a 320GB hard drive, and a DVD-SuperMulti drive. It comes with Windows Vista installed, but nobody's perfect. I also love the fingerprint reader. Wow, just like James Bond.

Hope on over to The Mommy Files before midnight on Wednesday for your own chance to win this beauty. And my offer stands -- if you win, and you don't really need the computer, I'll be happy to take it off your hands.

Don't it make my brown eyes blue...

So, DH left work at 5pm and walked down to the theatre and he looked over to where the line formed for the Elcano, and he said, "Doesn't look like there's a line today." So we hotfooted it (literally, it was boiling) one block east and a couple of blocks south to the gate of the port, and the cop was turning people away. And it wasn't 5:30 yet!

Flashback to Saturday. We parked at DH's work, and he said, "Let's go look at the farmer's market" so we walked over to the next block and looked at the stuff, and then we headed down to the port. The line was out the gate and up to Main Street, so we waited for about an hour, and we were about 25 people away from getting inside the gate and they shut it.

The Juan Sebastian de Elcano is a Spanish tall ship, a sailing ship, that is visiting Pensacola as part of the Fiesta of Five Flags and the 450th Anniversary of Pensacola. Nothing was said about how the gate was going to be shut 30 minutes before the tours were scheduled to end. Not until after Saturday morning. Then the paper says the gates will be shut a half hour before the tours end. So, we should have been able to get in on Monday. Nope, they shut it earlier.

Now, I would imagine that these tours are nothing new for the Elcano and its crew. They should have some reasonable idea of how many people they can have aboard during a three-hour tour window. How about having someone at the gate counting off as people go in (there's a clicker that counts, we used them at Disney before)? How about looking at the line and establishing a cut-off point before people waste their time standing in the hot sun for an hour?

I understand if it's full, but use some common sense and don't waste people's time.

So, I'm very sad. I could be made happy again if I won a beautiful Vivienne Tam-designed HP Mini. If you read my blog regularly, you know how badly I want a laptop of any description, but I have coveted this Vivienne Tam one for months, since it was first unveiled. It's gorgeous, it looks like a stylish evening bag but it's a computer! The website BlissfullyDomestic.com is giving one away today. I won't win, because I want it so badly. Such is the way of things. Still, I have to try. You might as well try, too, and if you win, and you really don't care about it that much, you could give it to me, and that would be your good deed for the day and help you get into Heaven.

Win a Sony Reader

84 words

Is it the Swine Flu?

Oops, sorry all you darling little piggies. I should ask, "Is it the H1N1 Influenza Virus? I have had the most major headache all day. It's definitely a sinus headache. I hope that's all it is.

We did eat Mexican on Wednesday night, but it was at Moe's Southwest Grill and I don't think that anyone there had been to Mexico recently. Well, unless they went on spring break or something. If I die, REMEMBER THE ALAMO! No, there's no relevance. I just felt a battle cry would be nice at a time like this.

Trickster is having a lot of sinus issues today, too, but according to the American Veterinary Association website, cats don't get the swine flu.

In the meantime, I am easing my pain with the pleasant diversion of trying to win things. The prize du jour is a charm bracelet from Things Remembered. They have some beautiful charms that you can customize. Visit MommyGoggles and leave a post about your favorite charm from Things Remembered.

Did you ever do something really generous for someone...

And then they turn around and kick you in the butt and tell you that you didn't care enough?

That's basically what happened to me today.

I wish I could go back and retrieve those two months of my life that I gave up, when my dad was dying.

Don't Trust Online Tax Services

We came home Thursday to a big package from the IRS saying we didn't report some of our income last year and we owe a big chunk of back taxes and interest.

Last year, I filed my taxes through the government's Free File program, using eSmart Tax by Liberty Tax Service. Maybe they should call it eDumb tax. Apparently, it didn't include any of my 1099s when it totaled up my taxes.

Now, some people (including my husband) say that I should have realized that our wages and various incomes (a grand prize cash win among them) added up to more than the total on line 1. However, I worked two jobs for two months, I got a substantial raise at job #1, when I did my taxes I realized that job #2 had been paying me less than I was supposed to be paid, my husband went full time at his job for the first time. The final total was much more than the previous year, so it sounded right to me. I suck at math.

And besides: if I have to sit down with all the paperwork and add it up manually, why should I take the time to plug it all into the software? It's supposed to do it for me and get it right!

We went back to the Liberty Tax Service and looked at last year's returns, and I see in Step 6 where I filled out all the 1099 information. The software just didn't add it in.

Obviously we have to pay it; at least we still have some of the big win in the bank to cover it. I do plan to include a letter of explanations with printouts from the Liberty Tax site, and I also plan to send copies to Liberty Tax explaining just how much their "free" service ended up costing me. I've been told they have a guarantee and should cover the penalties, which makes me feel a little better.

Beware.....