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Last year I was lucky enough to be out of the country for the Super Yawn but this year I’m here in the US and my neighbours are already gathering on their front yard for the party. Typically the guests have decided to park opposite my house rather than opposite the house they are visiting, I hope I don’t accidentally back the Jeep out too fast and dent the shiny F250 that’s blocking the view from my window. It almost seems a shame not to watch the game – I’m sure it would look great on my big screen TV – but instead I will find something more exciting. Anyone know what channel is showing paint drying?

Nude juicebars, eh?

Last year I got a great deal on a couple of T-Mobile Motorola V-300 cellphones. They were $0.00 to buy and each came with a $50 rebate – new phones and a $100 in the pocket, how can you go wrong? Well, its easy ‘cos you know you’re going to get screwed.

Sometime after activating the phones we found out that we had been given a Palm Springs area code making our numbers long distance from our home area. T-Mobile gladly changed them to a new number and everything was fine.

Then came the first of the rejection letters. Our rebate isn’t valid because the numbers I put on the form don’t exist. I called Young America, the company doing the rebate fulfillment, spoke to the usual hostile representative and eventually made him understand what had happened. He resubmitted the rebate with the new numbers.

And now I have a second rejection letter. Now our rebate isn’t valid because the numbers we have weren’t activated during the promotion period. Amazing, but not really suprising. These companies will do whatever they can to deny you what is rightfully and legally yours.

I wrote both Young America and T-Mobile to tell them what I thought of their process. I know I won’t get any joy but you can be sure that I won’t be a customer of T-Mobile once my current contract expires.

And whilst we’re talking about asswipes, the MINI blog got flooded with comment spam last night, so much for my ‘clever’ modifications. Maybe this weekend I’ll install the comment spam blacklist software.

Had to spend some time this evening implementing some hacks to the MINI blog website, after a period of no comment spam the onl*ne p*k*r dickheads were back in force. Hopefully I have them this time – I renamed the comment script and put a dummy form in the page which mentions the original filename but doesn’t appear on the screen. Well, I am sure it will hold them for a little while longer. Next up will be blacklists! Kinda over the top for a pointless little site like mine.

Tuesday morning update: here’s something new…. trackback spam? This morning this website had a bunch of trackback’s from the dickheads, I’ve not seen that before.

We’ve had so much rain in the last couple of months that the desert floor is a sea of green right now, I’ve never seen it look anything but barren (excepting the ocotillos and cacti). This has also meant the desert wildflowers are blooming like never before. This weekend, Teri and I went out to the Anza Borrego State Park to have a look see and we were amazed at the colour and volume of the flowers that are out. Snapped a few pictures that you can see at my photo website but here’s a pretty dune evening primrose to tempt ya to go see for yourself.

Make sure you head for Coyote Canyon and Henderson Canyon for the best sightings. And be sure to stop at the park headquarters for a wildflower identification map that can be had for the princely sum of just one United States dollar.

More proof that the Imperial Valley is growing hugely – there are two El Pollo Loco’s opening here later this year. One will be only a few miles away, mmmm mmmm good!

To see the flaming pile of poo of course!

I love it when you follow a chain of blogs (note, there must be a geek term for this) and find a gem. In this case, the chain wasn’t real long, only had to look at eSchwa to discover Waiter Rant. Priceless, totally priceless, and worthy of a place in my links list.

This morning on the way to San Diego, the area near the border patrol station was buzzing. For about a mile I was paralleled by a helicopter and I saw many border patrol vehicles off the freeway, parked in various ‘ready to go’ locations. At the station everyone was being stopped and officers were having a very good look in the windows and, in some cases, the boot too. However, when I pulled up in the MINI I was waved straight on – I guess they knew the people they were looking for couldn’t possibly be hiding anywhere in my car. One more benefit of driving a small car.

UPop is playing this song all the time and I can’t get it out of my head. The urge to kill is growing stronger. Coincidence or related?