This afternoon, I was well on my way to being packed and ready to go, laundry caught up, house in order. Then my husband calls, I need a ride to pick up my truck from the repair shop."

I thought this would be a good chance to stop by K-Mart and pick up a few things for the trip. Because I left the house in a hurry, I only took a small wallet with a credit card, driver's license, and a few dollars in it. Because it's the day before a holidy, the parking lot is packed, but I didn't mind walking the half mile from the car to the door.

After filling up the cart with all sorts of goodies, including Popsicles and ice cream, I go to check out. My credit card is denied. I have enough money to buy the frozen items, and I tell the checker that I'll be back in an hour to pay for the rest.

"Please put my name on the basket," I asked. She assures me that that won't be necessary.

I hurry home, put the popsicles in the freezer, and we spend the hour on the phone to the credit card company to find out our why our card was denied when our balance is $0. Sometime earlier this year, the company changed our card and (supposedly) sent us a new card to replace the one that is no longer valid. Since we didn't get the cards, we called back to cancel the card. (Fill in phone jail and press 1 for this and 2 for that ad infinitum...)

Finally with that settled, we go back to K-Mart to get the stuff. I look where the checker said it would be, and it's not there. Customer service said, "Oh, we put all that merchandise back on the shelves."

I was going to walk out and go home, but instead I dash around the store, playing memory, and grabbing up the same items from the first shopping. I forgot a few things, and grabbed the wrong size in another that I'll have to return or exchange.

Now I'm home and it's after 10 p.m. I never did get the laundry finished. I'm not packed, and the house is a wreck.

Oh... and the truck has to go back to the shop. It's running really rough.

This topic arose from a question from one of my readers.  I thought finding the answer should be simple.  It wasn't. I can't imagine anyone thinking that mosquitos are new to Barrow.  Even if Egan's article didn't say that, Herbert's article certainly gave that impression to the reader who asked me, " Are mosquito’s new to Barrow?".

I posted to Global Warming Forum of the New York Times as well as sending an e-mail to Bob Herbert.  If I get any responses, I'll post them here.

My post in the New York times:

Mosquitos in Barrow, Alaska

A recent opinion How Hot Is Too Hot? by Bob Herbert referred to an earlier article by Timothy Egan on the climate in Alaska.

Quoting from Herbert's article:  "the average temperature has risen seven degrees in the last 30 years and mosquitoes have shown up in normally frigid Barrow, the northernmost town in North America."

I've lived in Alaska for over thirty years, and I've never heard that Barrow didn't have mosquitos.  I wasn't able to check out Timothy Egan's article because it has already been archived.  Is Timothy Egan saying that mosquitos are arriving in frigid Barrow only recently because of global warming?

I wasn't able to find anything on the Net about this phenomena.  You would think that something this extraordinary would have at least hit the Fairbanks paper.

Please point me to the scientific article, or any article, that supports the statement about mosquitos in Barrow.

Thanks,
Pamela Joy
Fairbanks, Alaska

Oh Diddly

Freebies

Nothing is free.  Oh sure, people tout that "this is free" or "that is free", but really everything costs something.  Free e-mail costs you the time it takes to delete all the spam it collects.  You send for a free television offer and find out that the shipping and handling costs more than the product.

One woman saved up a zillion coupons off disposable diapers because the manufacturer promised a free toy for her child.  Six months later (after she sent in her shipping and handling) she's still waiting for the toy.  After she took her problem to the media, the manufacturer agreed to refund her shipping and handling.  What did this free offer cost this mother?  Six-months of dashed expectations and a mound of red tape just to get back to where she started.

Today in my e-mail, I received these "free" offers:

Win a $500 Shopping Spree



GET 250 COLOR BUSINESS CARDS FREE!



FREE custom lipstick with any custom product purchase from ....com!



Get your FREE credit report

Reading my credit report would cost me peace of mind.

Free mousepad



Free BonziBuddy Download

This one might cost me my marriage.

FREE instant message/dating software

Some freebies entice you by the threat that this deal will end soon.

Click below to see how this FREE (for a very limited time) opportunity can help
you make a never-ending cash flow stream.

[URL removed to protect the gullible.]



This deal is so good that the offer is followed by this disclaimer:

The previous was an advertisement. The views expressed in it are those of the
Referralware only. As with any business you could make more or less money than
the results described. Your results will be based on your individual monetary
investments, business experience, expertise, and your level of desire. There
are no guarantees concerning the level of success you may experience, other
than Referralware's product performance & return policy, if applicable.



100% Risk Free

Remember at the beginning of this very limited offer, the word FREE was used?  Whaddya know?  This free offer costs $124.99, unless, of course, you opt to pay more.

Well, this particular offer has two price options. Either $124.99, or $249.98. (You'll be shocked when you find out why more people will select the higher priced option)

Not me.

What really started me steaming about freebies was my free airline ticket.  I made my trip to Indiana by cashing in 35,000 frequent flyer air miles.  I didn't mind paying the tax and the new airport security fees on this free ticket.  However, when I needed to make a change in my return trip, my sister spent two hours on hold waiting for a ticket agent.  By the time she got through 120 minutes of Music from L and every special offer the airlines has to offer (free, of course), the agent told her, "Your sister will have to call herself."

Why did she think my sister was calling?  If I was too sick to go home and thus needed to change my ticket, then I was too sick to sit on hold for two hours until my (free) number came up.

Yes, I finally got my ticket changed after I spent an hour of my free time waiting to talk to the ticket agent myself.  When I finally had my turn, the transaction took about 30 seconds.  By the way, did you know that I can use my frequent flyer miles for a free trip to Hawaii?

Just because I'm not complaining doesn't mean I don't have any complaints.

Banner advertisers on the Internet don't know diddly.

The Internet is not television.  Die-hard surfers want speed.  That should be obvious by the ever-increasing push for faster and faster Net connections.  There's no quicker way to alienate a web surfer than to make him wait on a 50K flash ad to load before he can see what he came to see.  Isn't that counter-intuitive to the purpose of advertising?

Is some dork sitting in a big office on Park Avenue thinking, "Let's see how big I can make this ad so I can alienate everyone who sees it.  Then let's saturate the market with this ad until the average Net surfer has seen it ten jillion times.  Our product name will be a household word (of what to avoid)."

No, I don't think the ad people are thinking that.  That's the problem I don't think the ad people are thinking at all.

Advertising is to sell things:  Ideas or products, it doesn't matter.  I think text ads on the Net are the direction that advertisers should take.

Metafilter and Blogger both use small text ads that:

• Display within the page.
• The ads are inexpensive.
• Anyone can purchase them.
• They load fast and change with every load of the page.

I've sat and reloaded a page a dozen times to check out the ads. Now I've never done that for a banner or popup advertisement. No-sireeeee.

Now RedRival is going to offer a similar service.  I surely hope netizens jumps on the bandwagon.

As I sit at my computer in my nightgown, I feel a diddly coming on.  In the world scheme of things, this is an insignificant ripple.  On the other hand, it continually bugs me.  So it's time to let off a little steam about it.

The last time I was in the states, I bought a blue flannel nightgown.  It's very pretty with blue lace, pink ribbons and flowers, and crocheted trim.  The bodice has three pearl buttons.  The designer must have decided that these buttons are rare and might be needed immediately if one of them popped off because an extra pearl button is sewn into the hem of the gown.

Everytime I sit down while wearing this nightgown, this spare pearl button stabs me in the leg.  When I roll over on the button in the middle of the night, I feel like the princess sleeping on the pea --which feels more like a boulder when I'm sound asleep.

Now for the diddly... why in the world would a nightgown manufacturer reason that I would need an extra pearl button for a nightgown?  In what circumstance would it be imperative to have an extra matching button for a garment that is only worn in the privacy of my own bedroom?  It isn't like I'd be at an important business meeting in my nightgown, and say, "Oh drats!  I've lost a button.  I must have a matching one immediately to sew back on."

I didn't buy this nightgown at an exclusive boutique.  If I could afford to buy anything at an expensive boutique, I'm sure I could afford to pay someone to mend my nightgowns.  I bought this gown at K-Mart.  Are K-Mart shoppers really all that worried about missing buttons or that all their buttons match on what they wear to bed at night?  Really!

Ouch!  And for that I have to keep getting poked in the rear.  Now why didn't he include a pair of scissors to cut the annoying thing off?