a telemarketer called me on my work phone to try and get me to buy a subscription to a local paper.

telemarketer(TM): sir, i want to get you this great opportunity to receive the blah blah blah.
me: oh, i’m not interested in that.
TM: but sir, i’m not even asking you for any money, i just want to get the news to you for free.
me: i hate the news.
TM: that’s ok, sir, there’s plenty of other things in the paper like sports, weather, and it really is a good thing to read up on the news.
me: i hate reading.
TM: well, sir, that is ok. you can use it to pick up other things.
me: i don’t like picking things up.
TM: well sir, that’s ok too, the paper can be used for a variety of things. it makes a great stuffing or packing material.
me: hahaha. ok, it’s been fun, guy, but really i’m not interested.
TM: ok, well, you have a nice evening.

talk about a persistent and creative sell.

lowe’s has shipped me a gift card with a credit for the amount of my order. the only reason i know that they did this was because i got an email from lowe’s telling me that the tracer for the order has been completed and a merchandise card is being shipped to me.

the problem with this is that i asked lowe’s to send me the items that i initially ordered, not a credit back on what i had ordered. i am now terrified to order the items again online because i don’t want to go through this hassle again.

lowe’s support also said that they would contact me to keep me updated throughout this process and they never have. i got two calls from UPS, one that was nice, the other that was a little menacing. then no word from lowe’s about what happens next except this email that tells me that instead of shipping the products that i asked them to ship me, they are shipping me a gift card.

*sigh* i guess i’ll have to go into the store and buy the items. i’m going to try and spend the rest of the gift cards i have while there so that i never have to do business with them again.

because there is so little tv on these days, my netflix shipments just aren’t coming fast enough. i’ve been going through movies pretty fast. even though they come pretty quick after i send them out, it’s still pretty slow going. i wonder if it will go out any faster if i drop off the netflix movies at the post office.

i was really disappointed with blood diamond. it just didn’t hold my attention like i thought that it would. suburban girl wasn’t as good as i hoped, i think mostly because i couldn’t believe that sarah michelle gellar’s character would get involved with someone like alec baldwin. i fell asleep to pirates of the caribbean, but i was tired, then forgot that i didn’t see the whole movie and returned it accidentally.

we’ll see if this next shipment has some winners.

after the latest changes to the online photo album, i’ve been really happy with the results. i love, love, love the way that the photos zoom up and down. i love how the gallery looks. it’s the first time where i feel like the UI for the gallery is acceptable.

being a lazy developer and having no real incentive to develop cross-browser webapps for personal use, i never bothered to check what the gallery looks like in IE. i did today and the horror! i fixed up the CSS so that what the gallery looks like in IE is closer to the intended affect.

one of the places where i’ve been a little lazy is the admin console. sorting the image order in the albums were excrutiatingly painful, at best. i’ve added drag and drop sorting, and it helps a little and is tons better. it can get better, but i think it’s good enough for now.

the only thing now is that i need to start taking more pictures!

i have always thought that i would be able to have a 100″ tv screen. sure, it’s true that the room that my tv is in isn’t very deep and a 12′ throw might be a little short to project out to a 100″ screen, but…maybe it’s still possible.

it turns out that after some research, it is indeed quite possible. it would be a pretty interesting to see how that would eventually work itself out, but there are many projectors out in the market that are quite capable of doing it.

now, the next question is…would i get motion sickness from a screen that big and that close to me? that is a good question. i guess i’ll need to go sit up close to a tv and see if that happens or not!

i thought that shanghai kiss was recommended to me, but the person who i thought recommended the movie to me said that he didn’t have any recollection of recommending the movie to me, but did see it and did like it. anyway, i saw the movie over the weekend.

i’m not crazy about the star, ken leung. there’s just something about him that i don’t like. maybe it’s just because he is ugly and i can’t imagine him picking up all the girls that he does throughout the movie.

anyway, hayden panettiere (of heroes fame, but really should get props for bring it on: all or nothing and remember the titans), was great in the movie. her dvd interview wasn’t quite as polished as i had hoped it would be, but the girl can act.

if you haven’t seen it, go check it out.

my trusty laptop has been with me through thick and thin for i’m guessing about the last 4 years. it feels like it’s been forever, but it really struggles running current apps. it used to be that having 768MB of ram was a big deal, but now i don’t think you can even purchase a laptop with that little ram.

*sigh*

i also can’t seem to stay true to my rule of not spending more than $1000 on a laptop. i don’t know where to bend. should the laptop be slower? should it have a less fantastic screen? should it have a smaller, slower hard drive? what to do? what to do?

these are tough decisions, but as i look at what the cost of my laptop will be, i think that i might just have to wait a while and save up. it’s a struggle, though, because i look enviously at christi’s new beautiful laptop.

the announcement of the new super thin apple laptop came just a little while ago and though it has definitely stirred a lot of talk, there are just too many things wrong with the laptop to really justify even considering it seriously. it’s pretty, though.