word!

So I’ve been invited into a secret inner gathering where everyone knows my name. Well not really, I’ve been keeping my membership under wraps, due to an accute paranoia over spammers.

But that may all change with the release of Gmail by Google. I’m almost giddy with the prospects of Google giving the email market a good shakeup as now Yahoo! and Hotmail have shrunk down their services to a few megs, when Gmail’s is 1 Gig. As things stand it’s only in Beta, so better things are to come.

The worries over privacy? All they do is show ads about things relative to your ‘conversations’. I’d rather see ads about things I’m interested in, than an ad for AOL’s awesome dial-up service.

And to think that google is such a popular word. I remember reading some odd fact/word book once and finding the word googel fascinating. Too bad I didn’t have the where with all to trademark the unique word back then; I could have been richer than the founder of IKEA(no not Bill Gates). Sadly I wasn’t even remotely interested in the internet or on the ball back then.

Zombo.com

I have always had a special place in my heart for Corvairs. Ever since I was a lil’ un, we had a ’61 Corvair 95 as our piggy truck (Namely for hauling lil’ piggies to market, but that’s another nursery rhyme.)

For those without a clue, Corvairs are wierd ducks in the vehicle world. Both the cars and trucks have their motors in the ‘trunk’ area. These motors were 6 cylinder, in 3 flat, with an aluminum block and air cooled. The trucks were more so unique that they had a ramp on the side to load them, with the engine beneath the truck’s bed.

Unfortunately, Ralph Nader detested the fact that Corvairs were somewhat unsafe vehicles, mainly due to the way they often lost control when roads were wet and the disproportionately heavier back end would start going it’s own way, leading to some nasty crashes. But by doing so, Ralph launched himself to national prominence as a safety crusader and never looked back.

But to see running one is a thing of beauty. Unfortunately, ours died after a repair mishap and hasn’t run since, dispite an extensive attempt to try to revive it in 1998. So, I’ve been scouring the internet and eBay, hoping to find something. But they are becoming a cool antique to have I think.

Just today I saw D12/Eminem’s video for ‘My Band’ with a Corvan in it. I’ve seen the Spice Girls with a Corvair 95 in one of their vids, but the name escapes me. Also them boys from Everclear have a video where they play a song from the back of a Corvair 95 pickup as well.

It’s a knack I have for recognizing such a odd duck at the wierdest places you could find it. But it’s the search that’s half the fun!

I’ve been spending a few years on the internet now and in that time have been using online auction houses with little trouble. It’s easy to see why people love eBay, because you can buy anything on it. I’ve boughten many things on it and have even bought my first computer and two monitors from it’s electronic competitor Ubid. So I was prepared to buy my brother his first computer after such good, solid experiences. But what happened next made me doubt the auction houses themselves.

In the end of October 2001, I found a decent price on a computer that was decent for the money. So I bid and eventually won. Little did I know that at this time Ubid was implementing a new processing system. So after one week of no action with regards to my winning bid, I tried contacting them. I emailed, called and wrote letters in the next month and a half, but to little avail. The emails would only be auto responsed or vaguely worded that they were working on processing my order immediately. Phone calls were a little better, I could at least get to a person, but the messages they gave me were as vague as the emails, yes they were experiencing problems and things would be resolved shortly. But after a time, their phones were DISCONNECTED! (Due to the customer’s overwhelming outrage with their bumbling of this system) Letters were sent but never responded to.

After the middle of December, it looked like they wouldn’t even start to dig themselves out of this mess by Christmas, dispite the fact that Ubid still continued to operate at full scale and with full auction listings. I called after the holidays, in early January 02, to try to finally get this resolved. By that time I had bought a great computer pre-built to our specs from iBUYPOWER .

I finally got a hold of someone that could resubmit my winning bid, yes, a whole 2 months after the bid had won the auction! But this was after I was told I should have just canceled my order. Within the next week, I finally recieved the beige box that I had worked so hard for.

But Ubid still wanted payment. Having used a credit card for payment through Ubid, I at least had some options. I first cancelled the orders on my end, eleviating actually paying for something I didn’t recieve, especially in regards to their user policy. I also wrote to the Better Business Bureau about this erroroneous situation,due to the fact that the BBB logo was prominently displayed numerous times on Ubid’s website. Through all this, Ubid only offered a $50 forgiveness on the computer and free shipping, but only if I accepted that they hadn’t erred.

Excuse me? After 2 months of waiting and constant correspondence on my part, that’s all they could do? Forget it. I continued to balk at their attempts to retrieve payment for something they erred on and wouldn’t stand behind. So without a paid credit card billing, they’re the ones out a computer, not me.

But to add insult to injury, the disputed computer was pretty much a lemon. The modem, DVD drive, fan, power button and hard drive have all failed and have been replaced since it was acquired. Sure glad I didn’t pay a cent for it, because it wasn’t worth it. At least my sister has something to bang out an email on now. And I hope it makes it the rest of the school year without me having to fix something else! GOOD RIDDANCE!

I’ve always waited in eager anticipation for that magical time of day when the mailman would show up and deliver goodies just like Santa. I’ve even tolerated the goofy 2 cent or so rate increases from year to year. But ever since I’ve learned that some of those increase are going to promote the US Postal Service to Europeans and other bicycling enthusiasts in general. Since when did this quasi-government department, (the only part of the federal government that breaks even every year) start getting greedy and in need of marketing? I’m sure most could care less, but since I don’t use a personal courier yet, why market a basic universal service everyone in the US uses?

Is that why we are forced to pay the postal rate increases, so that they can promote domestic mail delivery? Sure you pay for the advertising that NIKE and Cheerios puts out, but you can always buy the generic non-branded substitute at decent prices. Does the Post Office offer that? NO.

On a somewhat related matter, everytime I decide that a parcel I wish to mail might be overweight and needs to be sent without being returned, I’ve handed it to the worker behind the counter at the Post Office to correctly charge me. I was appalled recently when I thought it was close to weight and was actually under, but the worker insisted it was over and weighted it until it was over. Cheap.

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