Marc's Musings

Links for 27 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• Don’t Get Stampeded By The 7.1 Parade - Why 5.1 is perfect for smaller (not movie theaters) home theater setups.

Links for 26 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• ThnLnk - Make your URLs mean something...

Angry

TLEMK tells me that I should blog more when I'm angry because it makes her laugh (HAH!).

So right now I am "angry" that nobody wants $5.

All seriousness aside, we had a good time last night having a few drinks at Jimmy's in Naperthrill (I don't know Jimmy, too) for Tony's birthday--he'll get to 30 before me, if only by a few weeks. Oh, and he's funnier than I am, so go check him out, too.

It's too early to be blogging.

Links for 24 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• Scientists: masturbation not as good as sex - A swift one off the wrist - easy, convenient, refreshing - but just not the same as the real thing, perhaps.
• Sicko Marriage Contract One For The Ages - Not sure what's worse... That he created this contract, or that she still married him.

Get $5 for yourself and a birthday present for me

Raise your hand if you've heard of PayPal.

Ok, put it down.

Raise your hand if you remember how PayPal started. You don't? Well let me give you a little refresher... It started as a Palm OS app where you could beam money to your friends. They grew into the auction business more because the penetration of Palm OS devices wasn't very large.

Fast forward to today. Cell phones are pretty ubiquitous, and SMS is growing at a huge rate. There is a company that is don't the same thing, but using SMS to send money called TextPayMe.

Here's the deal. Sign up with the link above, or the banner below. They give you $5, and if enough people (36--get it?) click before my birthday, I get an XBox 360. So what better way to say happy birthday to me than to get me a 360 at no cost to you?

Hotels.com deceptive advertising

This is the tale of a disappointing experience with Hotels.com that was the only scar in an otherwise excellent weekend. Approximately a month ago, us and 4 others planned a "mini" ski trip to the huge Rib Mountain in Wisconsin, more commonly known as Granite Peak. Ok, so it isn't huge, but it's one of the bigger runs in the midwest. Our planned weekend: president's day as the teachers got it off.

When we first started talking about it, there were hotel rooms galore right in Wausau, WI. About a week later, there was nothing to be found in the non-smoking, 2 beds category. I pulled up hotels.com and did a search in the area. Lo and behold there was a hotel listed in Mosinee (about 10m away) that had 2 rooms, both with double beds and non-smoking:

Sweet. It's pretty close. It's got an ok rating, and we're really just going to sleep there anyway.

So I book it.

Fast forward to this past weekend. We get to Granite Peak, it's really cold. We ski/board all day. It's still really cold. We hop in our cars and drive down to the hotel. Finally warming up, we check-in, get the keys and head up to the rooms. I walk in and am confronted with a wall of stale smoke. Blegh. Other room--same problem.

Head down to the front desk to find out that they are full for the night (big surprise) and that the room was booked by hotels.com as a smoking room. After talking to the lady behind the desk, we figure out that we can move to a non-smoking room for the next night, and they would send someone up with commercial grade febreeze. This is about all I can hope for since the room was RESERVED as smoking by hotels.com.

There is obviously some sort of confusion here, so I send an email to hotels.com's customer care group. Monday morning I get this response:

Thank you for your email. Please be advised we are unable to guarantee any smoking preferences since it depends on the availability of those types of rooms. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. I hope you will allow us another opportunity to better serve your future hotel. Have a nice day.

Bwah? I look back at my original booking confirmation, and at the hotels.com site, and nowhere can I find that when they advertise a non-smoking room that it is only a suggestion and that you probably won't get it unless the hotel is empty. In fact, the only thing that mentions it is the confirmation that I received the day prior with a little (*) at the bottom.

My response:

If you are unable to guarantee smoking preferences, that should be stated up front. Instead when I go to book a room, it lists rates for non-smoking, with no disclaimer stating such. The only disclaimers for this particular hotel are (as copied directly from your reservation screen for this hotel):

* Rates do not include applicable tax recovery charges or our service fees.
* All rates are for double occupancy per room, and are quoted on a nightly basis unless otherwise specified. Some rates may require special identification. Taxes and Fees are not included. Extra people, children, roll-away beds and incidentals may be subject to additional charges.

Additionally, I was unable to find any text relating to this anywhere on your website. The only reference I see to this is in the reminder email that I received approximately one day before my scheduled arrival. This is very poor business practice. I will be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and never using hotels.com nor recommending it to anyone in the future.

I am still awaiting a response to that email. At this point, it is very unlikely that I will use hotels.com again--and probably not expedia.com, either.

Morning Person, Day 4

So far so good. I have actually been getting up at 6a without having to snooze or anything. This morning I have run into some difficulty, though. I'm bored. I'm sitting here in a hotel room with some friends, but they are ALL asleep. And it's really cold outside (-6F). It's supposed to get up to 12F today. At least it's warmer for skiing than it was yesterday.

Links for 17 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• Fun with food - different scenes. pretty great
• Kick Ass Firefox Extension - IE in a tab.

Morning person, day 1

For those of you that have the joy to know me personally (my condolances, seriously), you probably know that I'm not a morning person. I'm happy sleeping in until the sun is in the middle of the sky. These same people were probably the ones that were shocked when I linked to a blog about getting up early.

Well, I didn't do the insane 5a thing mentioned in that page, but I got up at the dark hour of 6a--about 2 hrs earlier than normal. I even did it without snoozing the alarm. You're probably wondering what I did with my extra time, eh? I'm going to tell you anyway. I got up, showered, took the dog for a loooong walk, dodging the crazy high school kids, caught up on my news, etc. Mostly the stuff that I do at 10a, just shifted early.

That same guy talks about doing multiple short naps in a day, but really being awake for about 21 hrs. I don't know if I will get there, but this is a start to sleeping a lot less.

Links for 15 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• How to Become an Early Riser - I'm thinking about doing this...

Links for 10 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• How to fold a fitted sheet - Sweet! No more "blob of sheet"

Links for 08 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• Spinning Suspicious Searches - "I present the following search terms I've entered and why they're not at all as bad as they sound."

Links for 06 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• IHateBestBuy.com - A site for people that feel the same way I do about the yellow price tag...

Links for 03 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• Nifty Corners: HTML CSS rounded corners - rounded corners without images. woot.

Links for 02 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• We thought you said spend the $200 billion on "dark fiber" - So do we compain and they raise our rates to build out the fiber, or do we complain and they raise our rates to pay back the taxes... Someone remind me why government protections are a good thing?

Links for 01 Feb 2006 [del.icio.us]

• I Should Be President? - This guy is bloody brilliant.