Consumer news and opinion

A Consumer Awareness piece….

I received an unwanted email the other day about the movie, The Grey, starring Liam Neeson. It’s not that I am not interested in either the movie or the actor, but rather, it was the persistent source where I received the email from that aggravated the living (your favorite expletive goes here.) out of me.

The other day I was given an opportunity to attend a free movie screening… I’m not quite sure how I got this offer, but to be able to have a chance to get these tickets I had to sign up at ‘http://www.gofobo.com‘

Sure, great, no problem…

If you value the sanity of your email inbox, DON’T ****ING DO IT!

I signed up and then found out there were no more tickets available for what got me to the site. OK, whatever.

But before the day was up, I lost count at how many emails I received from the website regarding various “conversations.”

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The Ukraine is Poisoning & Incinerating Thousands of Stray Dogs

by Bruce Simmons on January 20, 2012

The 2013 UEFA European Football (Soccer) Championships will be co-hosted by Ukraine. In anticipation of hosting the event, they’re trying to clean up the streets of the stray animals. But the approach they’re using is riling animal rights activists.

What the Ukraine is doing to clear out the thousands of stray dogs and cats on their streets is poisoning the animals, but they’re enlisting the citizens of the country in the process.

Country officials are not only leaving out poisoned food, they’re paying citizens for every dog corpse turned in. Portable crematoriums are being used in the process and in some cases, allegedly some dogs are getting incinerated while they’re still alive.

At $55 a body, I’m guessing some morals go out the window… but that’s a guess on my part. I can’t begin to imagine this situation.

Craigslist Car Sale Scam Warning For Oakland

by Bruce Simmons on January 20, 2012

NBC Bay Area news is reporting that there’s a scam going on via Craigslist that involves armed robbery and a car for sale.

There are ads being run on Craigslist that list a car for sale outside of Oakland. You make the arrangements to meet and then you find yourself being robbed at gunpoint by 2 to 5 gunmen!

The meet up location has been around the upper area of Lake Merrit near the 580. This dasterdly deed had started up in December, so beware… and check the source link for more info.

(There’s a $20k reward associated with info leading to the arrest and conviction of these folks.)

[nbcbayarea.com]

Bay Area Spare The Air Days Are Human Distributed & Not Always Right

by Bruce Simmons on January 17, 2012

Back in the end of 2011, the residents of the Bay Area were subjected to “Spare the Air” days a number of inopportune times… Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, etc.. All times when visiting family from out of town would have absolutely loved having a fire going in the fireplace.

When I saw the Spare the Air alerts for the Bay Area, I thought to myself how unfortunate that this soulless, automated system is sending out alerts on THE absolute worse days of the year to do it… family holidays.

I mean, I don’t know about you, but after my family drove nearly 500 miles to see me and mine, well, it would have been nice.

I had presumed that the system that sends out the alerts was automated. I mean, in this day and age, I guess there’s a system that can read specific quantifiers in specific weather feeds and have it click off an alert.

Plus, who would be so inhumane as to sent out alerts on the biggest family get-together holidays of the year, right?

It would turn out that NBC Bay Area news reported that a human is behind the distribution of alerts. A human being destroyed my holidays! (OK, destroyed is a strong word, but each day, my entire family was rather disappointed that we had Spare the Air days on the few days we would see each other all year long.)

TITLE NINE Gives The Customer an Awesome Consumer Experience

by Bruce Simmons on January 16, 2012

Title Nine, per their website, is a “Sporting Goods Store, Women’s Clothing Store, Sportswear Store.” But don’t be fooled, they have cool trinkets too that might catch the guy’s eye too.

But what’s most important, is this is a husband’s point of view after having accompanied my wife to Title Nine in downtown Palo Alto, CA, and I have to say, this store, or company as a whole, gives you a fantastic consumer experience.

When my wife arrived at the store, she was looking for something specific, and walking into the store, you can pretty much see all that they have to offer the consumer. The layout is clean and easy to define where the products you are l00king for is located. And if you don’t see it right away, asking the staff that’s on hand seems to always be a win-win for everyone.

The staff is incredibly friendly, patient and knowledgeable, no matter what questions we laid out there for them.

The prices are about on par with what you’ll find in other venues. They may not underbid other competitors, but they do have a subtle edge that I’ll explain in a moment.

A Winter Spare the Air Day Alert Around The Corner, But Who Cares?

by Bruce Simmons on January 11, 2012

Over the 2011 holidays, we had several Winter Spare the Air alerts. All of them on critical days when friends and family would have loved to have had a fireplace going… Christmas eve, Christmas day, etc., etc..

The timing was poorly executed by mother nature. But none-the-less, the advisory board that runs the show distributed the warnings, regardless of the day.

It felt like the Grinch was running the show.

But it can be pricey to ignore the official warnings… first offense is a warning for any Bay Area resident found burning anything during the Spare the Air warnings. Subsequent fines could land in the $400 range.

That would be one expensive fireplace. The only exemptions are those who depend solely on fireplaces or wood stoves for their heat.

Back in 2008 when the Spare the Air program went into effect, they had seventy inspectors roaming neighborhoods.

But…

Beware of SOPA, Despite Its Intent

by Bruce Simmons on January 11, 2012

It seems that of all the “social” circles I travel, I seem to be seeing nothing but bad news or poor opinions of this SOPA act.

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. Its intent is to protect copyrights and defeat copyright infringements. IE: Those internet movie pirates that believe they’re entitled to steal content without paying for it.

So the premise is to protect the major players of the entertainment industry.

But it would seem that the way it was written, there are catches that seem, per so many perspectives being made on the web, to threaten even the smallest web entrepeneur… you.

The concerns are that websites can be shut down, even if you’ve done nothing wrong yourself. IE: A site visitor leaves a comment with a link out to something… BAM, your site is done!

(Suggestion: I have this site set up to not allow links in comments. They all have to be approved.)

Some of the New Aspects of Google… Are Different

by Bruce Simmons on January 10, 2012

The new Google is … different. I subtle ways, but there are some interesting differences starting to show up, or just disappear on the user.

Things I’ve noticed:

In Google Bookmarks, the links no longer open into a new page, but in the same page that the Bookmarks page itself is in, so beware, if that’s important to you.

Google Bookmarks labels no longer sort like they used to.

You used to be able to use an underscore in front of a name to have it sort to the top of the labels list. The web interface has gotten “smarter” and no longer does that. Now it is only sorting numbers to the front of the listing, so you need to use a number in front of the label name to get it to sort to the top again, if that’s what you want.

(I have about 30 labels, but only two or three I use regularly. So I have them sort to the top so I don’t have to keep scroll-searching for them.)

The Pursuit of Good SEO While Building Your Internet Presence

by Bruce Simmons on January 7, 2012

I Love this DIYThemes Call Out of TMZ and Pointing Out Bad SEO

For the aspiring webmaster who wants to create a blog and make it big, they have to generate website traffic hits. Web surfers don’t come on their own, that’s for sure. And it’s an interesting learning curve on what a website owner can learn about the all-important world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and other related issues.

As you delve into this seemingly easy world of the web, you’ll start noticing that there are good ways and bad ways to try and trick Google and other search engines into liking your website.

There are the basics that ProBlogger and DIY Themes can teach you. And as you grow, you’ll notice that different sites do different things to capture traffic. Some nice, some tricky. Some sites use open-ended questions in their titles to bait the curious. Some will use titles making you think they have certain content in the article, but all you get is a “to be posted soon” notice in the article. Then there’s something like what DIY Themes made note of in how TMZ had reported one event many months back.

DIY makes mention of ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’ SEO practices in their article. That is, doing article creation like a human might do or say it, using all the right key words, but using catch phrases when appropriate. Then there’s ‘black hat’ techniques… that would be like stuffing your titles or web paths or images with keywords, trying to capture traffic.

Did You Know You Can or Have To Set Your Garmin 305 To Record Splits? [Consumer]

by Bruce Simmons on January 3, 2012

Setting Splits on Your Garmin Forerunner 305… it doesn’t come out of the box recording splits automatically, but did you know it can be set to record splits?

I’ve owned a Garmin 305 since I did my Garmin 305 Product Review in March of 2010. It’s one of the best toys a runner can have.

Before owning a Garmin GPS tracking computer, I used to run predefined courses and then map them out on either Google Earth, Map My Run, and now, lately, if I do this any more, over on USATF America’s Running Routes.

To be honest, after a good run, the last thing you want to do is sit down and tinker on the computer.

So I snagged a GPS 305 back then because it was on sale for a ridiculous price on Amazon.com. Today I took a peek and today I noticed a Garmin or two on sale for around $180 at the time of writing this article. (Garmin GPS Watches on Amazon.com)

Since my introduction to my Garmin, I’ve been loving the premise of turning on my Garmin 305, putting it in the window sill until it catches the satellite signals, and taking off. This works out great because the watch needs a few minutes to find the sky and I use that time to load up my running fuel and water bottles. By the time I’m done with that, my Garmin is ready.