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So I call BankONE to report the card abuse and during the process to establish my identity I am asked to give my old address in South Carolina. Well, I’ve never lived there, never even visited the state. In a classic tale of “its says so on my computer so it must be true” we spent the next 10 minutes arguing about whether I was the owner of the card. In the end she froze the account, not because of the transactions, but because she believed I was not the owner of the card. When I was finally able to tell her about the transactions she marked them as disputed for me but reminded me that I would not get a new card until I could give my Carolina address. I told her she should just cancel the card as there was no way I was staying a customer after this treatment. She said she couldn’t do that until I could verify I was the owner of the card!

Un-freaking-believable.

Ok, so the last few posts have gotten too serious. Here are some random links that have me smiling for a variety of reasons.

This poor guy shares the same name as the lead singer of Maroon 5, lives in LA and has his phone number in the book. Tired of being called by fans all day long, he’s started posting mp3s of some of the more interesting ones on this site.

Looking for some Flash games? This site has them in large buckets. Its not Roller Coaster Tycoon but you’ll surely find some that amuse you for a few minutes.

There may be nothing to see here but I don’t recommend viewing it at work or if you are offended by lingerie ads.

Well, I guess thats it for now.

I never had much faith in the US media before I came to the US but the more I view it the less respect I have for it. Take the latest video of the marine ‘executing’ a terroist. Ok, its not a nice thing to have happen but its a war and these things happen. Compare this with a ‘news’ program at the weekend discussing the new ‘beheading’ video being sold by the Virgin recordstore. The presenter was clearly outraged that such a thing exists and certainly would never show such a thing – so how come its ok to show the US marine over and over again. The host for the ‘beheading’ video was superb, dealt with the presenter with great skill but made one great point: people should see the videos that terrorists make of beheadings and other executions/terror, then the true context of the marine ‘execution’ will be understood. But the US media would rather let everyone think that the terrorists are the good guys in all this. Thank heaven for the BBC News

Having just had to delete 180 spam comments from my MINI blog I am setting both that page and this one to moderated comments, at least until I find a good solution to blocking the annoying !%!@*!ers.

Update: I found a list of IPs to deny at the webserver and since then the spamming attack has stopped. Now I don’t know if its because they had gotten bored or if the block list is working. Maybe I can ummoderate comments soon.

According to this article, the first Hooters in China opened Friday in Shanghai. If you go to the pictures contained in the article you will see just how wrong this is.

Back from a weekend in Vegas, no matter how easy a weekend one has, it always leaves you feeling knackered. Saturday night in the Luxor, the lounge was invaded by British Royal Marines in full dress uniform, medals and all. My Dad commented to one that he was surely having no trouble scoring with the ladies in the uniform but the answer was no: instead, he had been asked to park cars, fetch drinks and been generally treated like a hotel employee! Typical of Vegas, I guess, low-class idiots abound. I wonder how many US marines in uniform would have been treated like a valet….

Saw the highest priced gas ever during the trip, $3.19 a gallon for premium.

Well, you still have to type in a search string so its not quite a new way, but it is a new way to see the results. Snap is a new search engine from the guy who invented Google’s AdSense program. The difference between this and, say Google, is that you get a spreadsheet style results page where you can sort the results on popularity, pricing etc. For instance, take a look at this search for digital cameras.

It seems like we are getting a lot of new search engines these days though nothing that has displaced Google in my heart, yet.

It took a long time but we finally got our spa installed and working this week. Thanks to being out of town I am yet to enjoy it but Teri says it is pretty darned nice to relax in. It was a pretty frustrating experience having it put in but no more difficult, I am told, than any other experience with contractors.

In other toy purchases I finally caved and bought a big TV, the Sony KDF-50WE655, a 50″ rear-projection LCD screen. It is sweet!! I hate American football but even I had to admire it when Erin was watching the big game on Sunday. If it can make football look good, just think what it can do for my DVDs. Now to decide whether to sign up for High Defintion cable or not….

Why the hell does this idiot have a prime-time talk show? He walks on at the beginning like he’s some big star, makes a few “I’m so humble” gestures to the crowd whilst clearly being anything but. Then his interviews and, ahem, comedy bits are as about as interesting and funny as having a favourite pet put to sleep.

And while we’re on the subject of people I can’t stand seeing on my TV, will someone please get Kerry and his Smithers-style lickspittle Edwards off my TV screen? I don’t care what they are saying, their gestures and smug ‘saviours of the human race’ expressions piss me off. If I had a vote in the USA I’d probably be a Democrat but whoever advised these two to act how they do should have to work on McEnroe’s lame-fest as punishment. Although I really don’t like Bush, hopefully I won’t have to see them after a few more weeks as I can’t afford to replace any more TVs.

Got my first mass spamming today. Some asswipe going by the handle of ‘texas holdem poker’ (and variants) posted a bunch of crap to my comments and, judging from the WordPress boards, also to many other WordPress users. I know I should be annoyed but frankly I’m flattered that anyone even knew this little blog was here.