Tag: Reader

Don’t drink from hotel glasses or coffee cups

Don’t drink from hotel glasses or coffee cups

With the current scare regarding Swine Flu (more appropriately called H1N1 flu), I want to remind my readers to not drink from hotel glasses unless you are VERY confident that they use appropriate cleaning measures to clean their cups and glasses.  It does no good to ask at the front desk when you check in, of course they are going to say that they are following laws. If you aren’t sure, ask the front desk for paper cups to take your morning vitamins.

My rule of thumb is simple.  I look for a maid cart.  If I see a cart and it has DIRTY glasses that the maid has been collecting to take downstairs to be cleaned, I assume proper techniques are being used.  If I can’t find a cart or if that cart has not collected dirty glasses, then I assume the maid is cleaning the glasses in the toilet.

Of course, if you are really concerned.  Stick with bottled water.

Check out this disgusting and scary video.

Hotel Glasses

RANT! Be careful buying iPod Touch from BestBuy

RANT! Be careful buying iPod Touch from BestBuy

My 3 teenagers have all purchased the iPod Touch from BestBuy.  Actually, the youngest one just received his as a birthday gift and that is what is prompting this rant.

There are a variety of gadget sites that talk about the deals available at BestBuy (see here and here). The forums are split as to buying the warranty (here and here) but Apple doesn’t have a great track record on iPods and the BestBuy warranty has replaced 3 separate iPods for my family over the years so we think it is a good deal.

So when my youngest son wanted a new iPod Touch to replace his nano, it was natural for us to go to BestBuy. He was ecstatic when he opened the gift and it was plugged into the family computer within minutes.  Imagine his disappointment when his brand new Touch had pre-2.0 software on it and iTunes wanted him to upgrade for only $9.95!  This OS upgrade was announced almost a year ago.

I wouldn’t have been too upset except for four issues:

  1. this same thing happened when my daughter bought her iPod Touch 9 months ago and we had to fight BestBuy for a resolution
  2. if we had bought the unit from Apple, it would have had the latest software (according to the Apple customer support person when we dealt with this issue on my daughter’s iPod)
  3. because of the experience with my daughter’s iPod, we had asked the BestBuy sales person upon purchase if it had the latest OS and was assured that it did (I am not sure why I trust a young man that still is suffering from teenage acne though)
  4. the rude treatment that I received on the BestBuy support call

I have already written to BestBuy complaining about their support call as well as their shady service.  But they don’t get off that easy.  I am also going to complain here.

I have no quibbles about the software not being up to date for a product that is shrinkwrapped and unopened.  I fully understand that BestBuy is buying their Apple products by the truckload (or container load) and that some of these may sit on the shelf past an upgrade.  However, they should be clearly marked as having the old OS and there should be an automatic coupon printed at the time of purchase to allow the consumer to upgrade the unit. The unsuspecting consumer should not be penalized for BestBuy getting a great deal from Apple because they bought a million iPods at once.

I almost wonder if this is a plan by Apple and BestBuy to lure some unsuspecting consumers to pay for the upgrade to the new OS even though they are legally entitled to that upgrade for free.

So what was the resolution?  The same as it was for my daughter’s iPod.  I called BestBuy, complained, and told them we would be returning the unit if they didn’t make this right.  After a bit of grief that was inexcusable for customer service rep, they promised to send me a $10 BestBuy card to cover the out of pocket cost for the upgrade.

BESTBUY SHOULD AUTOMATICALLY GIVE OUT COUPONS TO COVER THE COST OF UPGRADING TO THE CURRENT VERSION OF OPERATING SYSTEM!

Lesson learned for any readers out there: check the OS on your iPod Touch that was recently purchased from BestBuy. If you need to upgrade to a current OS then call BestBuy for a gift card to cover the cost.  Don’t pay for the upgrade yourself!

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The 100 accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration

The 100 accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration

As I write this, George W. Bush is only a few days away from the end of his 8 year Presidency.  Earlier, I had graded Mr. Bush on a variety of major factors but I felt that I left off a huge number of things that he and his administration did or did not do.  This list is the result of trying to be more inclusive.  Many items on this list are actions by the Mr. Bush and his administration and some of them are inactions.


Economy
1 Increased defense R&D spending
2 Accelerated the cleanup of brownfields
3 Prescription drug benefits in Medicare
4 Ordered renovation of military housing
5 Signed Medicare Reform
6 Allowed disabled people to use up to a year’s worth of vouchers to finance down payments on homes
7 9.7% increase in government-wide homeland security funding
8 Increased budget deficit to Eisenhower levels (% of GDP)
9 New Health Savings Accounts
10 Increased the limit of Education IRA from $500 to $2,000
11 Didn’t fix economy hurt by housing crisis
12 Allowed mortgage crisis
13 Initiated 3 separate raises for US military personnel
14 Increased the Defense Department’s base budget more than 70 percent since 2001
15 Pushed through 2 separate income tax custs
16 Reduced the number of homeless veterans by 40%
17 Fixed economy inherited in 2000 and hurt in 2001 attacks

International

18 Killed the old US/USSR ABM Treaty
19 Paid off US debt to UN
20 Signed the largest nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia
21 10 ABM silos in Alaska
22 Prematurely declares “Mission Accomplished” regarding Iraq
23 Doubled foreign assistance
24 Forced Syra to leave Lebanon
25 Condemned the Russian attack on Georgia
26 Allows Secretary of State to go to UN with false evidence regarding Iraq
27 Won support for three U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran
28 Increased the number of free trade agreements from 3 to 14
29 Designated Iraq, Iran and North Korea as “Axis of Evil”
30 Implemented President’s Malaria Initiative in Africa
31 Increased money for medicine for AIDS suffering in Africa
32 Setup the Afghanistan government
33 Halved the nuclear weapon stockpile
34 Secured a commitment from N. Korea to end its nuclear weapon program
35 Watched as Israel attacked Lebanon
36 Iraq invasion
37 Massively increased aid to Africa
38 Got Libya to give up nukes
39 Tried to get Europe to deal with Iran
40 Watched as Israel attacked Gaza
41 Set up new government in Iraq
42 Forced N. Korea to work with multi-national panel
43 Dealt with China and the US spy plane
44 Remove Saddam Hussein
45 Afghanistan occupation
46 Afghanistan invasion
47 Gave Pakistan billions of dollars

Policy

48 Watched passively as Katrina hit New Orleans
49 Denied knowing Ken Lay from Enron
50 Created Project Safe Neighborhood
51 Lifted the Executive Ban on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf
52 Kept reading children’s books on 9/11
53 Was elected in 2000
54 Made changes to allow necessary clean up of national forests to reduce fire damage
55 Reduced H1B visas from 195K per year to 66K per year
56 Substantially Increased Funding for the Great Lakes
57 Federal Energy and Carbon Sequestration Programs
58 Mandated a Cut in Mercury Emissions
59 Nuclear Power 2010 program
60 Exempt food from unilateral trade sanctions and embargoes
61 Established Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
62 Put polar bear on endangered species list
63 Eased field-testing controls of genetically engineered crops
64 Tried to privatize Social Security
65 Reduced drug use among teens by 25%
66 Killed Kyoto Global Warming Treaty
67 issued an executive order that limits access to Presidential papers
68 Ethanol production has quadrupled from 1.6 billion gallons in 2000 to an estimated 6.5 billion gallons in 2007
69 Created the Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors
70 National Space Policy
71 Was re-elected in 2004
72 Created USA Freedom Corps
73 Appointed Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito
74 Appointed Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
75 Stopped funding of new stem cells for research purposes
76 Reversed the requirement of parental consent for abortions
77 Issued an executive order regarding union dues being used for political campaigns against individual’s wishes
78 Challenged UN to not be the League of Nations
79 Stopped US involvement in International Criminal Court
80 Issued an EO implementing the Supreme Court’s Olmstead ruling
81 Established the The White House Office and the Centers for the Faith-Based and Community Initiative
82 Started the USA Freedom Corps
83 Supported the Law of the Sea treaty
84 Strengthen the National Health Service Corps
85 Ordered a 5 year plan to restructure each agency
86 Reorganized the intelligence agencies into the Department of Homeland Security
87 Put hundreds of thousands of government jobs up for bid
88 Banned partial birth abortions
89 Double the research budget of the National Institutes of Health
90 Enacted the Do Not Call list
91 No child left behind
92 Signed Teacher Protection Act
93 Interstate Air Quality Rule
94 Clear Skies Initiative to reduce air pollution
95 Prohibited federal fund for groups providing abortions

Terrorism

96 Detained foreign citizens in prison without due process
97 Increased border security and interior enforcement funding more than 110 percent
98 Attacked Al Qaida
99 Implemented a wire-tapping scheme to detect conversations with terrorists
100 Allowed torture of suspect terrorists
101 Told American’s to shop after 9/11
102 Dealt with anthrax scare
103 Signed the Patriot Act
104 Created Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) to monitor foreign students
105 Split the Immigration and Naturalization Service into two agencies
106 Signed the workplace verification bill to prevent hiring of illegal aliens.
107 Established a six-month deadline for processing immigration applications.
108 Told Americans that Islam was a religion of peace
109 Created the TSA
110 Created a new air monitoring system to detect harmful airborne agents
111 Signed 2 bills that arm pilots with handguns in the cockpit






And of course the one accomplishment that many people feel is the most important:


A couple of comments on the above list.

  • Yes, I know that there are more than 100 items on the list.  However, I didn’t want someone to say that two items were actually duplicate of each other.  For this reason, I felt that it was prudent to overshoot my goal of 100 in case a reader felt that some should have been excluded.
  • The links to many of the items are not meant to be the definitive source on that topic.  Rather, I wanted to remind the reader of the topic in case you didn’t remember that effort.  My hope was the link would lead you to the discovery of the issue and the action of the Bush Administration.  In the cases where I didn’t include a link, I felt that nearly everyone reading this list would understand those issues or could easily find more information by do a quick web search.
  • I titled this list as the 100 accomplishments.  I fully understand that many will feel that some of these items were failures.  That really isn’t the point.  My goal in creating the list was to try and identify the top 100 or so things that the administration did (or by inaction didn’t do). This is not a scorecard.
  • The list is not ordered by time or importance.  Do not take any inference in the numbering scheme.

Did I miss anything?

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 1 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 1 of 5

The web is filled with pronouncements that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever (or not).  I thought I would spend a few moments on the subject. This is a multi-part post so come back later to read more on this subject.  Better yet, subscribe to the feed and you can get it delivered to your email or feed reader.

First, lets look at what the historians say about W or at least how they grade other Presidents.  Wikipedia has a pretty good write up on the subject so let’s start there.  As with all of the recent Presidents there is a lack of the number of surveys and rankings. We can see from the couple that are there that the Wall Street Journal ranked him 18th out of 42 and Siena put him at 23.  That is squarely in the middle of the pack and nowhere near the worst.  The worst Presidents tend to Harding, Grant, Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Buchanan.  Depending on your political bent, you could throw Carter or Coolidge into this mix for the worst.  W doesn’t appear to be in this company.

If you look at History News Network though, we get a slightly different picture.  There, Mr. McElvane cites several people and informal surveys that put him as the worst or among the worst.  Mr. McElvane is not exactly impartial though as his various writings on the web show (a quick look at Huffington Post shows he strongly favors Democratic ideals and liberal policies).  We can probably discount him as just another of the liberal herd that are saying W is the worst.

Rasmussen Reports did a poll that pretty much splits on the subject of being worst.  41 said the worst and 50 didn’t.  Unfortunately the poll didn’t ask was he among the 5 worst or the 10 worst.  To be honest though most Americans probably couldn’t get within 10 of the number of Presidents that we have had so this poll (and any other poll) probably is not a good barometer.

The US News and World Report interviewed Jay Tolson and he ranked the 10 worst Presidents.  George W. Bush doesn’t appear on this list but perhaps that is because he was being nice to a sitting President.  It is interesting that the reader poll that is on the page lists George W. Bush as the worst by 72% of the voters (as of this writing).  This is far from scientific or lacking of political slant since Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan make the worst 5 vote receivers but there is little historic push to list those two gentlemen that low.  Even Mt. Rushmore President, Abraham Lincoln, received 8% of the vote in contrast to most lists that put him at or near the top of the group.  So obviously, polling data doesn’t really mean that much.

What we need to do is grade the President on his actions for the important issues of the 8 year tenure.  Read the next post to start to dig into that subject.

More on this topic later!

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RANT! emails again – 2 of 2

RANT! emails again – 2 of 2

Your signature on an email is essential. It should contain the information that allows the reader to contact you without sending you an email. It should not contain images as these will only slow down the transmission of the email and may not be read by the reader’s email program (remember, assume they are reading this on their phone).

Your original email should have quite a bit of contact information. This may include your full name, phone numbers, address, and a link to a website about you or your company. However, don’t be a bandwidth hog and include that same signature on a reply email since it is likely the person already has most of that information. For replies, you should only have the basics e.g. your name and a pertinent phone number.

INCLUDE A SIGNATURE AFTER EVERY EMAIL BUT DON’T OVERLOAD IT WITH WASTED JUNK – EMAIL IS ESSENTIAL SO KEEP IT SIMPLE!

Here is some related reading for you to enjoy:
RANT! Incomplete emails
RANT! emails again – 1 of 2

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

Did you know that you can have these articles emailed to you? Click on the Email link in the upper right corner Subscribe section, fill out the details, and you are set. No one will see your email address and you won’t get more spam by doing this.

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