Great mysteries of the week

I ran into a couple of unique situations during my weekend. Since then, one has been solved, but there is one that is an unsolved mystery (tm).

• The Contact Lens Fluid Incident. During my weekly shopping at Wal-Mart (yes, Wal-Mart, want to fight about it?), among my purchases was a bottle of contact lens cleaner. Everything scanned fine, but the contact lens fluid kept coming up "restricted item." The cashier attempted to assist, but also met with failure. She called back to the pharmacy, who said that I could try scanning it back there.. but whoops, they're at lunch and won't be back for another 30 minutes. Score one for customer service. I couldn't buy a bottle of contact lens fluid, and everyone was clueless as to why. As it turns out, I looked up the brand online, and there was a news story that stated the exact fluid I was trying to buy had been pulled off the shelves by the FDA only the day before, citing that there is a slight chance the fluid may be connected with some rare viral infection. This Wal-Mart just didn't get the memo I suppose.
• Phone calls from 000-000-0000. I was bombarded with phone calls on Wednesday from a phone number displaying on my caller id as 000-000-0000. I don't answer calls from numbers I don't know, so I let it ring. On occasion, they would leave a voicemail, and typically it was dead air. Sometimes I heard faint noises in the background. Soon I began picking up and then hanging up immediately. Eventually I had to turn my ringer off. Finally I got fed up and called my phone company. The bonehead on the other line proceeded to repeat my opening statement about 3 times, and never actually seemed to acknowledge what I was trying to say. I said I doubted he could block the calls, but at least he could report it. Nope. No comprendo. Eventually he said he couldn't do anything, so I politely said, "Okay, so I'll continue to receive harassing phone calls the rest of the night, thanks" and hung up.

Luckily the phone calls stopped the next day. I Google'd the problem and couldn't come up with anything solid. Most likely, it was some kind of telemarketer, or worse, some kind of scam. Since I never actually talked to anyone I not sure. Whoever it was was extremely tenacious. It was quite irritating.

There are many other things that are a mystery to me, but that's another blog post. For now, I'll sit and wonder about the clueless Wal-Mart employees, and the person with the 000-000-0000 phone number.

I am catching on (slowy but surely)

I would like to take some time out of my day to tell you something that I have come to realize. I will try to keep my ranting to a minimum (believe me I can really rant on this subject). As I have mentioned before, I work at a place where women are the majority. Naturally, this entails some unique learning experiences for me on how to deal with women ( ok now lets all get our minds out of the gutters). Since, I have been around seven years at my job I have gained a few women friends (yes, just friends), and I have slowly gained a trust with them. There are times during the day that we might have a chance to have nice therapeutic conversations (talking with kids all day can get tiring). Naturally, working at a high stress job will lead some conversations to be nothing but expressing frustrations (I call it venting), and I have slowly become experienced at just sitting and listening to my friends. I'll be honest I usually listen but at the same time try to come up with solution to their problems (I think finding solutions to a problem is considered a male trait), but lately I have been told that I am good listener. I was taken aback by this wonderful compliment, but I also thought it was too generous. I think I am slowly getting the grasp of listening, but it is hard to keep focus on the talker and not let one's minder wander (guilty). The main motivation for me on learning to be a better listener (especially to women) is I need practice, and I wanna be an atypical male. Guys, I am sure you all have heard women complain that men never listen, well I don't want to be included in that group (sorry guys). During the past few days, the tables turned on me and I truly learned how frustrating it was for women. The other day I was venting to a friend at work about a hard week that I've been having, but it was hard to get things out due to endless distractions that made me feel worse than before I started talking. The distractions mainly of the cell phone variety, which (I think) caused her not to be as focused as I wanted her to be. Needless to say, she is still my friend and I don't hold a grudge (God knows I am guilty of not be focused during a conversation). Things like this will happen to all of us, but that experience made me think of that complaint that women hold against men. I see how frustrating it is and I get it ladies. I am learning, women of the world, and I want you all to know that I am learning (if ever so slowly). Sometimes, bad experiences can be learning experiences and if takes a failed vent session to make me see that I need help in listening, then so be it.

No deal

The latest network television show to receive overexposure due to high ratings is Deal or No Deal on NBC. The game show is now on 3 nights a week. Doesn't anyone recall what happened to Who Wants to Be a millionaire? when ABC barraged the viewing audience with it? The show died a slow death.

And it's not if there's all that much to Deal or No Deal. Certainly not 3 nights worth. Haven't seen it? I'll give you the gist of it; the contestant picks a briefcase out of twentysomething cases, the one he/she believes to contain the top prize. They then eliminate the other cases one by one, finding out how much money was in it. Depending on the odds of the contestant having the briefcase with the top prize, a "banker" proposes a deal to the contestant, who then either takes the money or continues playing. "Deal or no deal," get it?

I find the game strikingly similar to the "Punch Game" on the Price is Right. (I have three days off in the middle of the week, I watch some daytime TV. So sue me.) On THAT game, the contestant gets x number of punches on the punchboard. They can keep the amount that is in one hole or give it up and go for another amount. Only on the Price is Right, they get it done in about 5 minutes. And even that can be too long. Deal lasts an entire HOUR.

It's not like the game requires any kind of skill whatsoever to play; it's all based on chance. NBC milks the show to the point of ridiculousness. While I have never seen an episode in its entirety, it's conceivable that a person could go the entire hour. They will bring the contestants friends and family out during the game, and their entire purpose seems to be to discourage the player from making the smart move and take a reasonable offer from the banker. Sure, you could take the $85,000 offer the banker just gave you, but there's still a 2% chance you can win $250,000! No deal!

In the middle of all this absurdity is Howie "Gizmo" Mandel, who bless his heart, seems to be trying, but seriously, a comedian as a game show host? Haven't the producers seen Louie Anderson as the host of Family Feud? Mandel stands there with his oh-so-masculine soul patch and tries to maintain order as the scantily-clad models open the briefcases (models..another similarity to Price is Right).

So here we are, with another reality show nightmare. At best, NBC, this is a two-night-a-week show. Certainly not 3. I don't think America can tolerate one more "only 3 cases left.. but he'll open them next time!" Its certainly one of the examples of "reality" TV I hate.. but that's another blog post.

Hit the Internet Ad Designer and Win a Free IPod!

A few months back, I commented how when it first started, cable television was largely an ad-free zone.

To some extent, the same is true for websites on the Internet. I seem to recall the most annoying type of advertisement was the "watermark," which was largely used on sites like Geocities. Basically what happened was if you visited a website there, you'd see "Geocities" on the bottom part of the screen, and it would follow you as you scrolled up and down. That's pretty tame by today's standards.

Nowadays, it seems like you can't visit a website without getting some form of advertisement. It started simply with the popup ads. That was put down by popup blockers and certain web browsers. But then the popup ads changed, and some manage to get past popup blockers (Due to the coding used for ads like this sometimes they're referred to as "pop-unders"). Now there's different types of ads based on the different programming languages online.

The worst kind play on the gullibility of the public. They'll go and boldly tell you, "hey, we found problems with your computer! Want us to scan it?" Click yes, and congratulations, you've got spyware. Other ads proclaim that if you play a simple Flash-based game you can win items like IPods (if you fall under certain restrictions, I'm sure).

It's gotten to the point that now not all browsers or ad blockers are infallible. Advertising will leak through. You've got to have firewalls, virus protection, popup blockers, and even plugins for your favorite browser just to offer some measure of relief. And if you turn off certain features of your browser to stop the ads, you may miss out on website content that legitimately uses the programming languages.

What really irritates me is that there are people out there that are paid to come up with these eyesores. Its like, "hey, we'll pay you good money to go and compromise a person's computer security so we can hock our wares." What is up there on irritability level is the websites that actually use ads like that. Granted, I know running a website costs money, but come on, the goal is to keep people coming back to the website, not drive them away. Some websites will even charge you money so that you can access the website "ad-free!" Good grief!

Sadly, ads like this are a fact of life now. It's just that I hate this mindset from people. It's the same principle as going to the movies and seeing TV commercials ahead of the movies. If I wanted to see those I'd stay at home!

Enough with the ads. Beam the product placements directly to our brains in our sleep, ala Futurama, and be done with it!