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Alternative to AdSense
October 2005 Archives
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If you look real close, you can see Bob Griffin
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Shortcuts to talking to a human on 1-800 numbers
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HOWTO Add Del.icio.us links as entries into a MT Blog
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Shows Google Map of Recently Sold Houses In Area
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A ton of various financial calculators
Starting tomorrow (hopefully), my daily tags from del.icio.us should start showing up in this blog. Thanks to FortySomething for the HOWTO.
The Senate voted down a payraise today in a symbolic gesture towards the hurricane victims. Granted, the reduction in the budget doesn't amount to a hill of beans, but it is a bit of refreshing news. This holds especially true in Pennsylvania after the PA House (including the "esteemed" Bob Jubelirer) voted for unconstitutional raises for themselves, making them the 2nd highest paid legislature in the country even though they have have argueably been the least effective.
This site attempts to breakdown the United States into city based spheres of influence based on culture instead of traditional political boundries.
read more | digg story
I've been holding back on the whole iPod mania, but now that Apple has announced the video iPod availiable in the next week (at resonable prices), I might be jumping on the bandwagon.
I've been a loyal user of Bloglines ever since I started subscribing to RSS. I've tried several desktop RSS aggregators, but none of them gave me the flexibility that Bloglines has.
Now I see that Google has started a similliar service called Google Reader. At first glance, it seems pretty buggy and slow. Loading my OPML file from Bloglines seems to take quite a while. If everything works, it seems like it might have a few more features than Bloglines, but I don't think its going to be enough to switch.
Thanks to Phil, I'm now hooked on CNBC's Mad Money. Colleen absolutely hates it, but I find Jim Cramer one of the most entertaining things I've seen a long time.
Anyway, the Mad Money Challenge starts today. Each investor gets 100K fictional cash to invest as he/she sees fit. The winner with the most dough on December 20th gets a mention on the show. I know the prize sucks, but I just love these types of games.
OK, it appears that I simply had the junk comment filter on too aggressive and I won't be notified to approve a comment if the system identifies it as junk. Please leave a comment here to test.
It appears as though I'm having some trouble on the site with comments. I'm not getting notifications when a comment is posted and even if I was, the comment isn't getting into the database. Hopefully I'll have some time tonight to troubleshoot.
It is rare that I feel the need to publicly write negative entries about a company. In fact, the last time that I did so was with Peerflix (who immediately righted the situation) and then least two years ago about the salesman who tried pressure us into buying his exuberantly priced siding.
This time I’m writing about the Courtyard Marriott in Erie, PA. While our visit there was actually pretty nice, the trouble began after we got home. When I updated Quicken two days after our visit, I found that the Marriott had billed us twice for the room. I thought, “no big deal, I’ll just call and it won’t be an issue”. Well, I called, and the assistant GM said he would look into the situation and give me a call ASAP with the results. A week went by with no word, so today I called the Marriott “Customer Care” number. After being sent to multiple representatives on the phone, they ended up calling the property in Erie. Apparently the problem was that my reservation was for 2 nights. However, I am POSITIVE that I explicitly stated that my reservation should only be for one night. I knew that most of the people who would be staying at the hotel under the room block would be for two nights and therefore I made it very clear that we would be there only the one night.
Well, they refused to remove the charge and gave me the typical run around. While Jeff, the assistant GM, was courteous during the call, I can’t help but feel totally screwed by them. I reported the fraud to my credit card company and I’ll be sending letters to the manager of the hotel, the Erie Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Western PA Better Business Bureau.
Updates will be posted. Until then, I will be boycotting Marriotts in my numerous business and personal travels and will recommend that others do the same.
