From a Yahoo Finance article:
“Bottom line: If you don’t have the discipline to list your credit cards in interest-rate order from highest to lowest and pay them off that way, try an online tool such as DebtGoals.com (about $15/month) that literally tells you what to pay off first to minimize your overall debt.”
If you have balances on multiple cards, maybe another recurring bill is exactly what you need. I’ll remember this.
I’ve been thinking about things that have changed since I was growing up and what made them change. And I’m beginning to point the finger at people. Not specific people, just people. There’s too goddamn many of them. And they suck. But, oh, don’t worry about me. I’m doing my part. I’m not incrementing that population counter at all and I’m not living past my prime. I’m just a passing fad.
So what have we lost as we’ve gained people? I haven’t done much thought on this topic, just some casual thinking. So I don’t have a multi-page rant, but I came up with a few items.
Travel: Whether by air or car, there are too many damn people travelling. Air travel used to be luxurious. My parents dressed me in a suit to go to the airport. It was like going to church. Now, it’s just a big cattle train. With the apparent loss of manners and couth of the average American, it’s a terrible experience.
Education: All the time, I’m hearing about how schools need to be built or expanded. Where the hell are all these children coming from? When I was growing up, there was no school shortage. And with all this overcrowding, there’s no way anyone’s getting a good education and no teacher is getting paid for the effort they have to put in.
Beaches: I haven’t always lived near a beach, but when I was growing up, there were regular vacations to a beach. And I remember it was a lot different then. For one, you could drive your car on the beach. Not now. And can you imagine if you could? It would be a big-ass parking lot with no room for people. Traffic jams on beaches; beach rage; idiot drivers. Again, something that used to be a pleasant experience ruined by the masses.
Does it sound like I’m being elitist? I don’t think so. If the stupid humans of the world had enough damn sense that they don’t need to have more than two kids, much less 4, 6, or – holy shit – 8, then there’d be enough resources for everyone. There’d be enough seats on a flight. There’d be enough roadway for everyone. There’d be enough beach for everyone to lie out and for some to bring their car.
As humans, we’ve lost any concept of humans as a race. And we’ve stopped thinking about the big picture, and we’ve certainly stopped thinking of anyone but ourselves. 2012 can not get here soon enough.
Why is this conversion to Quicken so goddamn hard? I think I’m a reasonably smart person, so why does my money keep getting screwed up in Quicken?
Whenever I use Quicken, it’s laborious. And not because it’s different, I’ve come to learn the differences in the 4 months I’ve been using it. It’s dumb. And I pity the people that have been using for years and years, because MS Money had a much better user interface.
My latest fiasco occurred this morning when I got a notice from a bank saying a transfer was cancelled due to insufficient funds. After confirming that the balance in Quicken differed from the bank web site, and after a short walk to calm the hell down, I discovered that I had six deposit entries in my register that were duplicates of downloaded transactions. Thankfully, this was a simple transfer between savings accounts and had no effect on any bills. Of course, it uncertain if I will be whacked with an overdraft fee or not.
The problem is, I can’t trust Quicken worth a shit. This situation arose even after reconciling the ledger of the funding account. Should I have been suspicious that I had unmatched transactions in my register? Yes, but it has happened so often in my short time with Quicken, I’ve taken it to be normal. And just now when I was downloading transactions, I had a transaction mismatched and I couldn’t find the real transaction it belonged to. Why? because the last time I downloaded, I thought I would trust Quicken and chose “Accept All” to auto-match all the downloaded transactions.
As far as laborious, the matching process is the worst. The downloaded transactions are in a list at the bottom and as you select each one, it highlights the matched transaction in the register above. So your eyes are constantly scanning up and down. Payee? Good. Date? Good. Amount? Good. Ok, next. Three checks for every downloaded transaction. And as I’ve found, you have to check all three, especially if you frequent a business often.
The bill payment is very confusing. The idea that you can pay a bill in Quicken, but that it doesn’t really get paid until you update your accounts is dumb. And I certainly got misled by “One Step Update”, which I thought would make an immediate payment, but instead merges payments and transaction downloads together. You mean there’s an even dumber way to handle online payments in Quicken?
I haven’t even dared to test out the reporting and projection tools. I’m actually scared. Not that anything would get messed up, since you can’t change anything when running a report, but I think I’m scared at how disappointed I will be or at how confused I will get looking at the results.
This has been one problem after another. I spoke to a co-worker one time about a business application we use and she commented on how stupid she felt after training because none of it made any sense to her. It was because the program is so un-intuitive, it made her have to think differently about everything she wanted to do. That is how I feel and I do not think it is my fault.
My personal domain name is up for renewal. I’ve been with Network Solutions as my registrar for a very long time, 15 years, maybe. A whole lot of low-cost registrars have popped up during that time, but I always stuck with the leader.
Now, recent re-evaluation shows I don’t really have a need for any of the services NetSol offers, so why should I be paying a premium price for their services? Let’s take a look and see what the cost of renewal is with NetSol. I just want to renew my domain.
This is where NetSol has really shot itself in the foot. Not only is it a premium-priced registrar, it seems they are so money-hungry, they want to take every attempt to get more out of you. After clicking renew, I am taken to a series of advertisements about other things I should be buying.
First, a pitch to add additional domains. These are variations on my existing domain. No, I don’t see any need to have three more domains with less-recognizable suffixes (or TLD’s for the technical). No thank you; next.
Next, a pitch to make my registration details private ($9/yr). Other people have complained about this before. Why should I have to pay extra for privacy? And had I bought extra domains, multiply that $9 per domain. Next!
Next, a pitch for web hosting. New domains, hmmm. ok. Existing domains, you probably already have hosting. If you were transferring a domain, that would be another valid opportunity. But, no. I’m fine where I’m at.
Next, a pitch for forwarding web requests, mail hosting, custom website design (even if you selected no web hosting), and an SSL certificate. Jesus, isn’t this simple renewal request ever going to end? This is four full pages of advertising!
Then, finally, you get to see the price of renewal: $35/yr. 4x the amount of other registrars? For what? 4 pages of ads when you renew? Now, you can see that NetSol has been overtaken by salespeople and scammers. Granted, there are discounts for multi-year renewals, which is how I’ve stayed with NetSol as long as I have.
The way I see it, when you click renew, you should be taken straight to the shopping cart where a line item shows the domain(s) for renewal. Under the line items, a line with a checkbox for each of these offered services should be shown. Clicking the checkbox would expand the section to let you choose which renewing domains will get the service. Obviously a “Learn more about service” link would be provided.
That’s quick, simple and to the point. One page, all options available. Instead, NetSol is afraid that if they don’t shout the features and prices at you in a full page ad, you might not take them up on their overpriced services. In the virtual world as well as the real world, overselling, overhyping, and shouting drives me out the door.
Farewell, Network Solutions.
A while ago I was browsing around and someone had mentioned a blog that sounded interesting, so I visited. It was ok for the first couple of posts, then I left. Recently, I hit upon another blog that gave me the same reaction. In both cases, the blogs were trying to be raise awareness. The first about racial stereotypes and the second about racial and gender biases.
I consider myself to be pretty open minded. I’ll listen to anything, but I tend to just collect the information to form a complete opinion. The more opinions you hear, the better able you are make your own. But some people have one opinion and spout it ad nauseam. And sometimes those people think they are being open-minded simply because their obsession is a minority position or some other radical thought. But they’re still closed-minded, or as I say, singularly open-minded.
So, thinking about this idea made me wonder how being open-minded related to being uncommitted. Can you be truly open-minded and still have an opinion or does having an opinion give you an artificial bias? And maybe it has to do with the level of acceptance of differing viewpoints. You can hold an opinion until the opposing arguments convince you otherwise.
And that’s one area I take issue with the blogs that I had read. I can only take so much “selling” at one time. I must have determined quickly that the remaining posts would be more of the same. The more I hear an argument, the less persuasive it becomes. Some of it is: You’re trying too hard. If your idea was so good, you shouldn’t need to go on and on about it. The other part is cynicism. If you don’t shut up for a minute and let me consider what you’ve said, I’m not going to believe any of it.
Now I’m getting all worked up. Thanks.
It pisses me off to no end that the word “sammich” exists. It makes me violent. That’s all I have to say.
So now Circuit City is going under and the vultures have arrived. I dropped in on day two of our local store’s liquidation and it was a madhouse. People were all over the place picking at the carcass of the former leader of electronics sales.
One of the first thoughts I had was "Where were all you damn people only a few weeks ago?" This company needed you then, but you’re here now after the pulse has stopped. But judging by the people crowding the store today, they weren’t there for the company; they just wanted the plunder. Maybe a "Yeah! We killed the dragon, now let’s rob the treasure room!" kind of sentiment.
The other thought I had was that some people scrambling for purchases took their local store for granted. They just always assumed it would be there to provide an alternate shopping location when Best Buy pissed them off. Now, Circuit City is going away and these people need to grab what they can before it’s gone. Because when it’s gone, so is their option of buying somewhere else.
It has been reported that the liquidation company marks up the prices to mark them down over time. These first few days of the sale would be the most profitable Circuit City would experience in a long time, if only it were them that got the revenue.
The shopping atmosphere in the store was pretty harsh. The liquidator had obviously taken over. They blocked off one entrance so you had one door to enter and exit through – inconveniencing incoming and outgoing customers at the same time. But what do they care? The liquidator is operating under another company’s name and has no obligation to please anyone. The customer has no power and no rights. A threat like "I’m never shopping here again!" would be met with "You’re correct."
So when the company selling off another company’s inventory purposely deceives customers into thinking they are getting good deals and purposely disposes of customer service because there is no value in it, who are the real vultures?
Got one of the common letters in the mail, "Important Information Enclosed: Privacy Notification". Now why is it when I see one of these, the first thing I think of is "Important Information Enclosed: We are reducing your level of privacy". Would I ever see a privacy policy change that is actually more restrictive? Here’s a quick summary of the privacy policy I got:
Well, that covers just about everyone. I guess there’s no privileged information anymore. Wait, there’s one more.
Oh, ok. The notice provides some examples of some ways they would share info, but the only thing that limits this is the phrase "as required or permitted by law". Well, that covers just about everything. In fact, this phrase is in the notice: "even if you tell us not to share, we may do so as required or permitted by law." So technically, if law permits it, we’ll share your info regardless of what you tell us. Another little twist is that your choice of what to exclude is limiting. Think "You are being attacked by three monsters and you have one bullet. Which one do you want to shoot? Remember, even if you kill one, it may reanimate and attack you again, as required or permitted by law." That’s what you get.
I haven’t ever been a big privacy nut. I don’t really do anything that I think anyone cares about. And if I do things and am included in an aggregate, I care even less. But this is about garbage. Garbage sent to my home, garbage in my email (that’s a hopeless cause anyway), and uninvited phone calls. My use of a company’s services makes my personal information their property that they can sell at will. I wonder when this happened.
This kind of crap extends to virtual businesses. How is an Internet site valued when it provides a free service? By the number of users it has. With a quick sale, a change of ownership and a flip of a switch, all those users can be bombarded with advertising. The thought that we are being farmed, bred, or fed for eventual sale and slaughter is pretty sickening.
One last note. The formal letter introducing the privacy policy has the incredulous statement: "Your privacy concerns are important to us, and protecting your personal information is one of our top priorities." An absolute lie if I’ve ever seen one.
Here’s a rant. This is a peeve of mine. I was at Wendy’s and I went back up to the counter for a refill. I took the lid off the cup and the counter girl asked what I was drinking. Coke, obviously. So she grabs a new cup and starts putting ice in it. I’d seen this many times and it always angered me at the simple waste of a cup.
So I asked, can’t you just use this cup? She said no, that I might have a cold and not know it, or I might have "done something" to the cup, and that it was a health risk for her to take it; they could get sued. Ok. I understand. She gave me my new drink and I asked "can you throw this one away?" Sure. She took it from me and I said, "Now you’re touching my cup. Why couldn’t you fill it?" she quickly countered with "but I can wash my hands afterwards." And you could have washed your hands after filling the dirty, filthy, customer cup, too.
But America doesn’t think like that. A bunch of germophobic, sue-happy morons. Here’s a clue: Germs don’t obey the law. You and your immune system are either stronger than them or you will succumb to them. You can’t pass laws and policies that will stop them.