About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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November 15, 2007
Not that watching the end of Michael Bay’s Transformers wasn’t a great use of my morning commute time, but now that I’m done, I could start spending that hour doing something that is more productive or educational. I can’t concentrate on learning a language if I’m not also reading and writing at the same time (I did try some foreign language podcasts), so another option is reading the Wall Street Journal.
I recently tossed out a teaser letter from the WSJ that offered the print paper for $99 a year. I wonder if I can find better rates online?
For 26 weeks, they offer:
Print only: $59
They say I would save 75%, “plus 1 week free!” (When I click on subscribe, it says that I will receive 27 weeks, total, so it’s not just a bait and switch involved with the discounted price vs. newsstand price.)
For 52 weeks, they offer:
Print/online combo: $125, plus 8 weeks free
Print only: $99, plus 2 weeks free
Online only: $79, plus 2 weeks free
At 6 issues a week, if I subscribe for 26 weeks, I’m getting 162 copies for $59, which equals: 36 cents each.
OR I could get:
Print/online combo at 360 copies for $125 = 35 cents a copy, plus online access.
Print only: 54 cents per copy
Online only: access to the current issues and archives.
The online only version isn’t an option because it doesn’t help me on the commute unless I get internet access gadgets, which isn’t a cost effective solution.
Hmm…then again, given my current cash crunch, spending money at all is not a good solution. It’s time for some creative funding. Normally I deplore the use of any mileage for magazine redemptions, but I do have number of Alaska Air miles that will likely expire before I fly Alaska again. Maybe I can redeem those!
November 14, 2007
Since the customer service representative that I was corresponding with so graciously admitted that the circumstances of my complaint were not of the usual sort, I’ve been awaiting to see what my “goodwill offer” had swelled (or not) to. Originally offered 2000 miles, I countered with a bid for 10000 and have been given 5000.
Yea or bleah? All depends on how you look at it. 5000 miles is a third of a short-haul award ticket, or one fifth of a standard ticket. It approximately meets the crime of making me stand for nearly one fifth of my flight to New York, and more satisfyingly, means that not settling for the first offer has paid off in the form of 1.5 times the original price United was willing to pay. Not that giving me a handful of miles actually costs much, for them.
November 13, 2007
DSW: Buy a $50 gift card and receive a $10 bonus card. The bonus card is only good between January 14-February 3rd, though.
Borders: Has a 40% off the list price of any single disc CD (limit 3).
AMEX: If you have an American Express Business card lying around, you could order gift cards fee-free between Nov. 1, 2007—Dec. 31, 2007 using Promotional Code OPENGC07. You do have to use the AMEX to pay for the cards, but the purchase fee is one reason I’ve never liked to give AMEX gift cards.
November 9, 2007
Sign that making retirement contributions might be old hat
Seeing that my account has lost $431 in the last two weeks, my first thought was “Well, that means now’s a good time for the contributions to go into my account. Better prices now. It’ll go up later!” It’s great that I’m not panicking, especially since I see the fluctuations every day but I sure hope I know when it is time to panic.
Sign that I’m losing my mind
I’d sorted through Coworker C’s set of work, and set it aside. Asked for Coworker A’s, and set that aside. Ten minutes later, I looked down and thought, why the heck are these out of order? Oh, they’re from Coworker A. Wait, when did these get here? How did they get here?
Me: “A, did you just sneak over here, put this on my desk and not tell me!? How did you…. how did I not notice??”
A: “No, I handed them to you. You’re crazy.”
Me: “Oh. Ok. Huh.”
November 8, 2007
I just wasted half a cup of rice, or half a POT of brown rice if you’re a pessimist like I am. Struck by a craving, I put a pot of brown rice on the stove to cook while I ate my boring white rice. Instead of using my sports watch, I foolishly used the microwave timer to keep track of the 35 minutes. I checked on the rice after 20 minutes, added a little water, and went back to my room. Brilliantly shut the door to keep the warmth in, and completely forgot that I couldn’t hear the timer through the door.
25 minutes after THAT, I raced out to the kitchen to find that there was a small bowl worth of brown rice cooked perfectly, nestled in the sad, smoking craters of burnt rice. Dangit!
Paducky likes crispety, crunchety burned white rice, but doesn’t like brown rice at all, so I couldn’t even salvage it. Did you know that burnt brown rice smells like burnt popcorn?
Now you know.
*yawn* That’s about the best reaction I can muster for United’s response to my recent grumble about their flight attendants’s behavior on my red-eye flight to NY. They had started the beverage service when I was in the bathroom, and refused to back up two lousy rows for me to get back to my seat. They made me wait until they served 17 rows, ie: 45 minutes, of passengers before I could sit down again.
No happy flier was I. After the outrage had somewhat subsided, I wrote a complaint letter admonishing United for their poorly trained flight attendants and was offered a piddly 2000 miles to soothe my irritation. Meh. Are you kidding? In any poor customer service situation I’ve ever encountered, I’ve never been offered less than 10,000 points or miles as restitution. I mean, 2,000 miles? I wouldn’t even be a quarter of the way to a discounted, short-haul award flight. Even those require 15,000 miles, much less a standard 25,000-50,000 mile redemption.
Yes, I do think that offering someone points or miles in the case of poor customer service should be a means of encouraging them to easily return to the business in question, not a pittance! It’s not like they have the ability to do-over, they should at least make a serious offer.
I’m going to ask for more. It probably won’t happen, but at least I’ll have asked.
November 7, 2007
They say, (and I don’t know who, but I’m going to quote, roughly, from David Weber), “If you have one problem, a solution may be difficult to find. If you have many problems, often, they will solve each other.“
My real life application isn’t tied up with a ribbon or anything, but it sort of worked out that way.
Little Boss and I had a chat outside today. It was more a ranty-rant at him about the workload and difficulties in accomplishing certain tasks uninterrupted. I hadn’t even mentioned the problems with trying to schedule my doctor’s appointments.
He offered to allow the office to take two work-away-from-office days so that they could fulfill their parts of my project! The benefits:
1. Getting a good amount of work done in one concentrated swoop. That puts the pressure back on me to pull together their parts of the project the following day, but the work would be done!
2. I can spend my day catching up on the whole chunk of project that’s been piling up on my desk without interruptions.
3. Finally, I could schedule my doctor’s appt on one of those two days and not “miss” any work because I’m saving 3 hours of commute time a day just by working from home!
Now, how is THAT for good news?
And in the mail this evening? A letter to MaDucky scheduling her follow-up MRI scan. *big sigh*
Item C [work] has an action plan, check. Item D [Ma’s medical] has a next step scheduled, check. Item F [my medical] is on the calendar. And I just spoke with my brother who promises to have the car back here tomorrow afternoon, so I will have transportation on Thursday to accomplish the above tasks, check, check. Hallelujah, praise Heaven. Well, not just yet, but I will if he shows up. Item G [wedding stuff]… I will print out at work, having received permission from Little Boss to do so.
Bills were paid last night, I’m scheduled to get the ‘brows groomed tomorrow and booked my ticket, using my two Southwest credits from previously cancelled trips, to see BoyDucky for some good ole couple time at the end of this month. It’s a shame I won’t be able to fly up a third time this year to claim that freebie award ticket from their Buy Three (in CA), Get 1 Free! promotion, though. That would have been really nice.
