I despise Mail-In rebates

I hate mail-in rebates. Let's get that out of the way right up front.

However, if the deal is good enough, I've been known to put up with the hassles of the MIR to get a few bucks off when buying tech items.

I've been looking for a good deal on a 1TB external hard drive for a while, so when I saw the following deal for a 1TB external drive for $90 after rebate, it caught my attention.

However, when you view the rebate form needed to get the $50 MIR, the chance of actually receiving the $50 seems to be slightly less than a snowballs chance in hell.

Check out the crazy hoops that you must jump through to get your rebate.

1) You must visit the rebate website and register your rebate to get a Claim ID
2) You must write down the Claim ID on the envelope (the claim ID isn't even on the rebate form)
3) You must mail in the rebate form (filled out in ALL CAPS) by 10/30/08.

(The purchase requirements are 9/12/08 - 9/30/08, so if you buy the drive on 9/30/08, you have 1 month to receive your item, decide you're going to keep it, and get to this step in the rebate process.)

4) You must wait until 12/11/08 and then you have a one month window (12/11/08 - 1/9/08) to go back to the rebate website and "verify" your information.

(According to the form, "In order for the money to be sent, you must check the status online to assure the information is valid.")

5) Then you must "allow 8 weeks from the postmark deadline date to receive your rebate"

(If you're thinking that 8 weeks after the postmark deadline date is during the one month online verification window, you would be correct...12/25/08)

If this all doesn't sound sketchy enough for you, if you read the bottom of the rebate form, it says "By submitting this rebate, the customer has read the rebate rules, requirements in this form and on www.mir411.com/policy.aspx and agrees to abide by them."

So you're supposed to follow all directions on this form, AND visit that website to see if there are any other requirements!

If you visit that site, it's pretty much the same rules as listed on the rebate form except for one little gem: "The rebate will be void if the rebate form was not signed."

So even if you followed the steps on the rebate form exactly: recorded your claim ID on the envelope, filled out the form in all caps, mailed the form quick enough, marked your calendar to verify the information online, and then waited some unknown amount of time for your check to come...your rebate money probably STILL won't come because you never signed the rebate form!!! And why didn't you sign the rebate form? Because nowhere on the rebate form is there a signature line!

Have I mentioned that I hate mail-in rebates?

Letterman vs. McCain

John McCain was supposed to be a guest on the Late Show yesterday, but bailed on Letterman at the last minute so that he could return to Washington to address the economic "crater" that America is facing.

As you can see, Letterman was not very happy with this:



What made the situation more interesting was that McCain then showed up on the CBS evening news being interviewed by Katie Couric in the middle of the Late Show taping.

There is now some speculation that the reason that McCain canceled on Letterman to appear on Couric's show was that the CBS Evening News was supposed to be airing an interview that Sarah Palin had given to Couric. In the interview, as with the other two interviews that she's done since being named VP nominee, she made a complete fool out of herself. So, it is speculated, McCain dropped in on Couric's show at the last minute so that they would have to air an interview with him instead of Palin.

Watch the clips of Palin's interview with Couric and see if you'd let her in front of a nationwide tv audience:

Lots of People Could Use a Cash Infusion

"Lots of People Could Use a Cash Infusion"

If average Americans acted like Wall Street . . .

Slacker Uprising

Michael Moore has released his new documentary covering his failed attempt to unseat President Bush in 2004.

Watch it below:

Or watch it here or download a copy.

7 Years later

In memory of 9/11/01, here is a link to the 9/11/01 web archive. This was a collaboration between the Wayback Machine at archive.org and the Library of Congress.

You can browse the web pages that were covering the 9/11 attacks as they looked in the days, weeks, and months after 9/11/01.

Cleveland Area Discount Offers

Stephanie recently discovered that numerous Cleveland area radio & tv stations were offering discount gift certificate offers via their websites.

After seeing Stephanie check numerous sites for new discount offers, I figured I could write a web page that would automatically check & consolidate all of the discount sites for her. (It helped that the stations all use the same 3rd party for their discount pages).

So, after a couple hours, my discount page was born. They usually have some decent offers, and they put new offers up every week.

Note: the discount page will take a few seconds to load, since in the background it's actually downloading data from numerous web sites.

Hallelujah, the pod is gone!

Apparently the court system scared my crazy neighbor into cleaning up and getting rid of the pod prior to her 9/3 sentencing. For the first time all summer I can actually look down the street without that eyesore!

The pod's all packed up

Those who know about the pod-lady who lives next door to me will be interested in seeing just how many packages she had in her garage.

I happened to see a couple of movers loading all of the boxes from her garage into her pod. Keep in mind that this pod is probably about 20 feet deep and the mover told me that it was packed solid all the way to the back.

Now that the garage has been cleaned out, she needs another pod for the rest of her condo...

Edit: According to the Summit County Criminal Justice Information System, pod-lady's sentencing date is 9/3/08. She's probably trying to get her condo cleaned out before then so she doens't go to jail.

Day trip to Put-In-Bay

This past Monday, Stephanie and I drove to Port Clinton where we met up with Mom and Don, went to the African Safari Wildlife Park, and then took the Jet Express to Put-In-Bay.

Click to view album

British Car Day 2008

While my Dad and Mary were in town visiting this weekend, we stopped by the British Car Show at Ursuline College. While there weren't as many cars there as last year, it was still impressive.

British Car Day 2008

Twins Day 2008

Pictures from Twins Day this weekend

Twins Day 2008

Go Tribe!

Here's a shot from the Indians v. Tigers game this past Tuesday. Unfortunately, the Indians lost, but it was Dollar Dog Night, so it wasn't a complete loss.

Is this legal in CA?

Apparently they are encouraging children to drive and talk on their phones at as young an age as possible.

Google's keeping us safe

During a recent visit to Chili's restaurant for Fajita-Rita Monday, I tried Google'ing the Chili's menu from my phone to check on something that I had ordered.

I was surprised to find that Google was blocking the chilis.com domain as malware!

A search for Chili's would result in the following Google results:
(Notice the subtitle of the result pages)



And clicking on one of the links would bring you to Google's standard "You-shouldn't-go-there" page:



I can appreciate that Google is trying to keep us safe, but blocking Chili's website? Are they trying to keep us from getting Salmonella via the web?

According to Google's explanation,

"Of the 48 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 2 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 07/28/2008, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 07/26/2008.

Malicious software is hosted on 3 domain(s), including bce8.ru, iroe.ru, kpo3.ru."

So apparently this is not Google trying to protect us from web-based food poisoning, but simply a case of Russian hackers somehow inserting malicious links into the Chili's website.

Buffalo July 2008

Stephanie and I were in Buffalo this weekend for a visit.

Check out the pictures below:

2008_07_26 Buffalo

Free PC>Land Line calls

If anyone needs to make calls from their computer to a landline and doesn't want to pay for SkypeOut or other pay per minute computer>land line VoIP service, check out the free EarthCaller service.

I just used EarthCaller for the first time to call an 800 number that always has a half hour wait - I really didn't want to burn up my cell phone minutes, and my client hasn't been nice enough to put a phone in my office at their location.

Using the EarthCaller site is extremely easy, just visit the website and dial. It needs to install their ActiveX control (IE only), but after that, you're all set to go. The sound quality on my 30 minute call was excellent (using an old headset that Ross gave me). I noticed some minor sporadic distortion, but for the most part, talking through EarthCaller was just as clear as talking on my cell phone.

Who knows how long this site will be available and/or free, but it's nice while it lasts

Weekend in NYC

Stephanie and I got a great last-minute airfare deal to NYC and decided to make a long-weekend out of visiting the Big Apple.

We flew out Saturday morning and got to NYC in time to meet Ross for a lunch of authentic "New York pizza" at Patsy's. After lunch we wandered wandered the Upper East side in the 95 degree heat.

Saturday evening, on the recommendation of Steph's sister, we ate dinner at Junior's and then saw Xanadu on Broadway. Both were excellent choices! However, we were so full from our dinner that we didn't get to try the famous Junior's cheesecake. After the show, we met at Ross & Molly's new apartment and then walked to Cafe d'Alsace for dessert and drinks.

Sunday morning, we met Ross, Molly, Eric, and Wendy at Penelope for brunch. We had to wait for over an hour for a table, but it was worth it. I would definitely recommend the Nutella French Toast!

After brunch, Stephanie and I made our way to the Empire State Building to get a good aerial view of the City. We had bought and printed our observatory tickets from our hotel lobby and was therefore able to skip the majority of the lines. After a short wait in the line to get to elevators, we headed up to the 86th floor observation deck. What a great view! Unfortunately it was pretty overcast that day, but the view of the city was still quite impressive.

Next on our agenda was a walk though Central Park. We had grand intentions of walking from the south end of the Park to the Boathouse - however, those plans didn't take the 95+ degree heat into consideration. We ended up just sitting on a park bench and people watching.

When we couldn't take the heat any longer we walked to the Shops at Columbus Circle, across the street from Trump Tower. The Shops is a very high-end mall, so we definitely couldn't afford to do any shopping there (we admired a $255,000 crystal sculpture on display) but we could take advantage of their air conditioning.

Stephanie's college friends, Craig & Amalia, met us in the mall and we had a drink in the Stone Rose, a fancy lounge supposedly owned by Cindy Crawford's husband. The drinks were good, but I don't know if they were worth $16 each!

After finishing our drinks, we walked the Upper West side and had dinner at a nice French restaurant, Bistro Cassis. Even though we couldn't tell if our waitress was French or German, we had a very nice time at dinner.

After dinner, we said our goodbyes to Craig & Amalia and took a subway back to Times Square to meet Ross & Molly for a late-night drink. (No...we don't usually drink this much) We met at the Ava Lounge, which is on the roof of the Dream Hotel. The drinks were ok, the waitress was less-than attentive, but the view was great...you could look down over the lights of Times Square. We had a very nice time at the lounge, until rain and lightening forced us to head home for the night.

On our way back to the hotel, we noticed a group of people swarming outside a theater exit trying to get autographs from someone. We went over to investigate and found that the commotion was around Bradley Whitford, currently starring in the Broadway show Boeing Boeing.

Monday morning, we walked to Rockefeller Center, where we had a New York bagel for breakfast and to saw the Today show taping. They weren't filming outside the Today show studio - they were busy converting the street into a beach tennis court - but we could see where they were filming.

After leaving Rockefeller Center, we took the subway to TriBeCa to meet Eric & Wendy for lunch. It is Restaurant Week in New York, and Eric was nice enough to modify his lunch reservation at the Tribeca Grill to include Stephanie and me. We had a delicious lunch off of the Restaurant Week Prix Fixe menu and learned all about morels.

After lunch, we said our goodbyes to Eric & Wendy and caught a cab to Chinatown so that Steph could go purse shopping. We had heard that the authorities had been cracking down on some of the knock-off purse distributors, and we definitely saw evidence of that during our trip. Most of the shops had removed the name-brand logos from their purses, leaving slits in the leather where the logos had previously been attached. We were assured by the vendors that they would re-attach the logo for us, but that kind of detracts from the mystique of buying a "name-brand" product. The vendors also seemed much more reluctant to invite customers into their back-rooms where the better knock-offs are sold. After much looking and negotiating, Steph finally got a couple of new Chinatown purses to add to her collection.

After Chinatown, our time in NYC was almost up, so we took the subway back to our hotel at Times Square, retrieved our luggage, and then caught a cab to Laguardia for our flight home.

It was a very hot, exhausting, expensive weekend, but we had a blast. Now that Eric and Ross will both be in the NYC area, we will definitely have to back more often!

Click below for pictures from the weekend:

2008_07_19 NYC

Dr. Margo

Congrats to Dr. Margelefsky! We all went out to Pasadena, CA last weekend to see Eric give his thesis presentation at Cal Tech. We didn't understand a word of it, but it was definitely impressive.

Click for Album

23-cent pizza for Cleveland

If you live in the Cleveland area, be sure to go pick up a $0.23 "apology pizza" from Papa John's on Thursday.

About time, VZW

Could it be? Looks like Verizon is FINALLY going to be releasing some decent smartphones!

The XV6900 in April and the BlackBerry Curve in May.

Looks like my Q's days are numbered...