There is an excellent article printed yesterday in SmartMoney.com called “Socialized Medicine Threatens Heath of Dollar”. Writer Jonathan Hoenig point “Yes, U.S. health care is problematic, but not because it’s a for-profit capitalist system. The problem stems from it not being capitalist enough”.

One of my favorite shows is the Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel. After every show I shake my head in amazement watching what those crab hunters do for a living on the Bearing Sea.

There is now a new show on the History Channel called Ice Road Truckers.

According to Electric Artist News last nights Series Premier became the #1 Original Premier Telecast of all time with millions of viewers.

Now the show definitely is following the Deadliest Catch formula which makes it intriguing. It’s funny that the Deadliest Catch uses “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi and Ice Road Truckers went with “Living on the Edge” by Aerosmith.

As with each episode of the Deadliest Catch where we watch several crab fisherman compete for crabs we watch Ice Road Truckers compete to see who can haul more truck loads to diamond mines way up in the artic.

The premise here is the truckers are hauling huge loads of goods while traveling hundreds on miles on an ice sheet that covers several lakes. There is a three month window where the lakes freeze enough to handle the weight of trucks but it takes one month to build the road. So truckers only have 60 days to haul their goods north before the ice melts. Apparently temperatures were warmer last year so they did not have enough time and have to make up their work this year.

Obviously we want no one to get hurt but I do look forward to seeing some truck crash through the ice…

(Picture taken from my wifes office in Hollywood)

Ocean’s 13

I want my money and time back for seeing this movie. Ocean’s 12 was horrible and this one was right up there with it. I thought Oceans 11 was a terrific movie and hoped they would correct themselves on 13 for the lame plot line of 12.

Steven Soderberg, the man who brought us Oceans 11 and Erin Brokovich has no idea how to make a good heist movie. There was absolutely no surprise or suspense and there is nothing more annoying then introducing new characters at the end of a movie to help complete the story. I call those the “How Convenient” plot twist.

The back and forth with time got annoying but to top it off the actors cool one liners became tiring. We accepted the fact Clooney and Pit were cool in Oceans 11, which is why we came back for more. It appeared the script was just full of bad one-liners.

In typical Hollywood fashion they tried to spoon feed elements which they thought the audience wanted but they got it all wrong.

Season Finale of the Sopranos

Seriously, for weeks I was anticipating the season finale as I had been watching the show religiously since 1999. I am sure there are many people who found it profound that they focused the last few episodes on AJ’s depression but I wanted more Tony Soprano mob action. For years AJ has been nothing more than a bitchy character and I think our time could have better been spent focusing on the mobs business.

How they ended this show was so infuriating I almost called my cable company and canceled my service because I thought my cable went out. I felt that little ending stunt of theirs was like a big “F-U”. It goes to show you can have a loyal fan for 8 long years and it takes only a few seconds to flip them.

24

Basically we stopped watching this show mid season. The blowing up of Valencia, Ca was sweet action but the whole concept of Jack Bauer had jumped the shark several seasons ago. I found this past season long and boring. It just felt like work and a commitment I was not willing to engage.

Ask.com Commercials

I have now scene these new Ask.com commercials of people singing in Broadway fashion a few times and every time I see them I keep thinking I am watching an Ebay Ad. I think whoever put these ads together should be fired. For years Ebay has set the stage for those type of musical commercials and Ask is doing nothing more but making me think of Ebay while spending millions on television advertising.

I am not the morality police and for sure the last person to stand on any soapbox and preach to people. And I certainly could care less how people choose to earn their livings. I say to each to their own.

What I do care is when I find out someone has cunningly used me as a tool to perpetrate their fraud or has outright used my identity for personal gain.

Yesterday morning I received a telephone call from a person who represented himself as a concierge from a company that my wife and I had hired to move our possessions across town for the end of this month.

After explaining to me who he was, he went on to tell me that a part of my moving package included coupons and special deals for many of the utility companies I might need in my up & coming move. He wanted my permission if he could send me an e-mail with these “special rates”.

I jokingly said as long as he does not give my information to anyone else he had my permission to email me the special rates. I then provided him with my email address and the conversation ended.

A few hours later I received an email. Not from my friendly concierge but from a Broadband reseller who relayed a message to me from our local Cable company.

“Congratulations! Your order has been placed directly with *** successfully!”

The e-mail went on to display all my personal information and notifying me that I had ordered their Premium Cable and High Speed Online including HDTV packages.

Being that my wife and I are up-to our eyes with moving boxes and the two of us have been on the phone everyday talking to different utility companies, I was not sure if she had changed over our Cable.

I quickly pinged her with an Instant Message asking her if she had ordered Cable for us and she said No!

I then called the Cable Company and attempted to explain to them what had just happened. But the customer support representative went on to explain to me that I must have been the one who ordered the service. Seriously, for several minutes he tried to convince me that I had been the one or my wife had been the one who ordered their service.

I tried to tell them someone had committed fraud but the guy did not want to hear what I had to say. So I asked to speak with his supervisor and when he got on the line I attempted to explain what had happened. The supervisor did not care at all either.

I was practically pulling my hair out while adamantly explaining I was not the one who signed up for their service. I requested that they cancel that order and that they investigate their resellers as one of them slammed me into a service I had never requested.

The supervisor not only told me to take up my problem with the reseller “since I obviously was doing business with them”, but he made it very difficult for me to cancel the order I had never placed with them. After a few more minutes of arguing with the supervisor I was then able to cancel the order.

I was just about to blow up at the guy when I said “I am helping you guys out because obviously you have resellers trying to fraudulently collect commissions, but it’s obvious you don’t care, so be it!”

At this point I called my moving company.

When calling them I found out that their company uses a third party to handle their “concierge offerings”. After getting the name of the concierge company I explained to the moving company what had taken place and that I never given authorization to the moving company to give my personal information out, let alone request to be signed up to any utility services. The fact of the matter was, I never signed one document with the moving company, not even for the move so for them to give my information (or sell my personal information) is a complete personal violation.

Now I called the Concierge.

This was a treat. When I called I did not start off shooting from the hip. I had mentioned to the first person who answered my call that they put me on the phone with the man who called me earlier that day. I did not have the name of the guy but I mentioned I had more questions from previously and wanted to finish our conversation.

Apparently I was told this was not such an easy task and the guy who I was now on the phone with made it clear I must speak with him. I told him I did not want to speak with him and this conversation went around in circles for a few minutes before he told me he has to look me up on a computer that “has more power” because my request was so unique.

I am not kidding – that is exactly what he said. For him to track down who called me originally he needed a supercomputer.

I finally got a supervisor on the phone who then handed me off to the guy who originally called me. I asked the guy to explain to me what rights he had to sign me up to a service I never authorized.

Turns out, the guy was new to the job and he explained it was innocent mistake. We spoke for 10 minutes and while doing so I could hear many people in the background reading the same pitch I had heard earlier that day.

I then asked to speak with his supervisor. After a few minutes of speaking the supervisor he tells me he had a listen to the original phone conversation on recording and that he admits I was mislead by their company and they were at fault.

Here is a breakdown of what happened:

1. A moving company who I have signed nothing with gave my information to another company.

2. This second company calls me on the phone and records my conversation without telling me I was being recorded or asking for my permission.

3. This second company represents that they are with my moving company and they want to send me an email with discounts as a value added service.

4. This second company then takes my personal information they got from the moving company, signs me up to a local Cable company without my permission to fraudulently collect commissions. (I am only guessing this part but I figure since cable companies have a monopoly on our local area, chances are pretty high we would use this company for our Cable, unless we had Dish. When signing up with said Cable Company this second company would get paid out for referring the business.)

5. The supervisor of this second company admits to me that they are wrong for what they did and offers to send me a “Visa Gift Card”.

At this point I had enough and got off the phone.

Now I wonder what I should do about this. What I think happened here is what is called Slamming and long distance telephone companies were prone to doing things like this back in the day. But from what I understand it has became illegal.

What would you do?

This just in… We just found out this morning we are going to have a girl.

She is due Sept 28th 2007

It seems in these days one can’t spend a weekend among friends or family without hearing someone spew some anti-Americanism dribble.

As I am repeatedly told over and over, the United States has become an isolationist nation that cares nothing about global consensus and does only what she pleases. That the United States hides behind her military might and uses the global dominance of her almighty dollar to strong arm other nations into servitude.

The argument I am being told is that we’re our own worst enemy and that we’ve created the hatred spewing from the Middle East. (more…)

This is what my wife saw when she went back to her parked car during lunch time. Someone smacked into into it & took off. Unfortunately the video cameras in the parking lot were not able to see all the angles where the car was parked, so we can not catch who did it.

Her work parking lot is shared by a few businesses in the area plus a Gold’s gym. Now we have to pay a $1,000 insurance deductible.

Warning, the images in this video are highly disturbing. This seems to be making its way around the web but do keep in mind while watching of our beef slaughtering plants.

Update: 4/13/07 - I understand people are emotional over this video and want to express themselves. I am all for people commenting on this Blog and I hate to censor. But some comments are extremely hostile and inappropriate for the mass audience I have visiting this blog. If you want me to post your comments, keep it clean otherwise I have to delete them.

Thanks DJ Web Designing Nurotika!

It’s all about how you tell the story…

I heard on the news today that 60 Birds Found Dead in Downtown Austin & Mystery Gas Odor Reported All Over New York City

I think its time for a conspiracy theory. Sounds to me like this is an obvious sign the earths core is rotating backwards and that the writers of The Core may have been on to something. (more…)