Navigation system getting irritating

The navigation system we have had in our car for a few weeks performed pretty well on our trip this week, at least as far as providing directions to known destinations. It's not very good when you are looking for a particular kind of store, as entering text is slow and it presents you with all local stores first and you have to scroll through several screens to get to the point where you can expand your search. It doesn't seem to have a search function, so you can't look for "Del Taco" or something like that. Maybe you can and I just can't find it.

One thing I am tiring of is the warning message that shows up every time the thing starts up. Don't try to calculate your position while driving... I got it the first 10 times and now it's just an irritation. Maybe it can be turned off.

IKEA Winter sale commercial

I don't watch too much television, so I don't see lots of commercials, but I did notice the IKEA Winter sale commercial this evening during the Lakers game. At one point, almost every piece of furniture in our house larger than a desk lamp came from IKEA, and the closest store was 350 miles away in Burbank! Eventually I got tired of the text free directions they provided and the time it took to assemble some of the furniture, plus we had very little room left for anything else, but I have never gotten tired of browsing the store or the catalog. In fact, we went to the IKEA in Tustin yesterday. Once I visited 4 IKEA stores in one day and rented a car to take everything home.

Anyway, the unique thing about the IKEA commercial is that in the process of making the point that sofas and families come in many different varieties (I think they use another term, but I can't remember what it was), the commercial ends with a shot of a couple sitting on the floor in front of a sofa with their child. I don't know if this is a first for television in the US, but the couple in the shot are two men, something I don't think I've seen before in a TV commercial. I don't know if this is an LA only commerical or if they show it everywhere there's an IKEA store nearby.

Time Goes By

I'm starting to think about resources for a one day class on blogging that I'll be teaching in February. The course is open to anyone, but should have a good number of "older" people because it's being offered at a location which has a number of programs targeted at people over 50. I'm not sure that over 50 is really old any more, but that's what it is.

One resource I think is a good one for this class is Ronni Bennett's blog, Time Goes By. She talks about aging and ageism at work and in the media, among other topics.

MacAppADay seems to have run out

MacAppADay shut down for about 5 days and they seem to really be creating a problem for themselves by promising certain things and then not delivering on them. Today's free app isn't an app at all. It's a 3 month trial membership to beta test a new site for creating web pages. Since the site hosts your content, it seems like you won't have access to it after 3 months unless you pay, which makes this one a little different than all the other freebies which were actually applications you could use.

Mostly bad customer service, with one exception

On our short trip to Long Beach, we had various encounters with bad customer service. Restuarants, Costco, the Aquarium. I don't have time to go into detail as I'm still on the road, but there was one exception. The Hyatt really surprised me with their response to a problem. I'll write it up later.

Disclosure problem for bloggers

and it's not related to PayPerPost! Microsoft gave a bunch of bloggers laptops with Windows Vista on them, presumably to write a review. At least one blogger didn't point out that the laptop was a gift and that got him into some trouble, at least in the comments on his site. Then MS decided the laptops weren't gifts after all, and everyone has to give them back! Sounds like a PR disaster all around.

We visited the Aquarium of the Pacific

I guess I was spoiled by the last Aquarium I went to -- the Monterey Aquarium. The Aquarium of the Pacific isn't bad, but it was smaller than I figured and was pretty busy today. It was a little bit of an adventure just getting the tickets. Costco advertises discount tickets, but they didn't have any at our local Costco, so we drove to Long Beach and stopped at the Costco there. Turns out they only sell the tickets in the summer. Plan B was to go to the hotel and order the tickets online at the hotel and then pick them up across the street at the Aquarium. I would save about $16 that way. Well, the Hyatt doesn't have any free Internet access. I could have sworn that when I upgraded to a nicer room it said "high speed wireless Internet". Actually, it did, but they left out the $9.99 per day fee. They do have one free access station in the special room for people who pay more money for their rooms. Since I did that this time, I was able to get in that room and buy the tickets. We walked over in very strong winds and I went to the kiosk to pick up the tickets. They expect you to bring along the confirmation code -- 15 digits -- even though when you purchase the tickets online they do not say that you need the code to pick them up. It just says swipe your credit card. Anyway, I got the tickets and we joined the crowd inside.

Aquarium of the Pacific

We are making a trip to the Aquarium of the Pacific tomorrow. It should be interesting. I haven't spent much time in Long Beach since I lived there about 13 years ago and it has changed quite a bit. I think the area around the Aquarium has been developed. The Hyatt hotel was being used to shoot a movie with Arnold Schwarzenneger when I lived there. They build some kind of device on the outside of the building for a particular shot which seemed to take weeks. I don't remember the movie, but I don't think it was very good.

MaternityCard can help with having a baby

Having a baby is a complicated matter. I didn't realize how much went into it and how expensive the Cost of Having a Baby could get until we had our first child. We went through some training classes and got a tour of the hospital where our son would be born and learned what to do when the time came. I remember looking at the intensive care unit and assuming I would never have to deal with that, but our son had some serious complications which kept him in the hospital for 8 days after he was born, and he spent some of that time in one of those isolation rooms. It was very stressful and it would have been even more stressful if we didn't have a good medical plan covering the expenses.

I think anyone who is having a baby would benefit from the kind of services provided by MaternityCard. For a monthly fee, they offer a comprehensive maternity service package which includes everything you need related to have a baby. They guarantee their services will pay for themselves or you will be refunded the difference plus $200, which is a nice deal.

MaternityCard works with with a very large network of doctors, obstetricians, hospitals and medical facilities to make sure women who are expecting a baby receive the best care available at the very best rates. Their services extend to the first two years after your child is born and will cover checkups, immunizations and any other medical costs. It's good to have that kind of coverage just in case you need it because you never know what may come up.

Christmas gift

I didn't buy any hi tech stuff this Christmas, at least not for myself. I got 4 of those stick people animated cubes for my sons, but I'm not sure those are going to get a lot of use. I'm saving my money for the Apple streaming device which may or may not show up at Macworld. I hope it will be worth the wait.

Jeff Garcia fan

I always liked Jeff Garcia when he was with the 49ers. We lived in San Jose at the time and he did too, plus he was from San Jose and his dad was his coach. I felt bad for him when the 49ers let him go and also when he had to endure some of the stupid comments made by Terrell Owens. Glad to see that Jeff Garcia is doing well and it was quite a contrast to watch the post game comments he made compared with Terrell Owens, who only complained about not getting the ball. Garcia is a team guy and he shows that in the way he plays. Owens has always been a me-first player who disrupts the team whenever things aren't going his way. I don't expect him to be back with the Cowboys next year and maybe other teams will wise up and see that as good as he can be on the field, his other antics make him not worth the effort.

MacSanta ended at 9 PM EST

I got my answer on that one as the coupon failed to work on the last application I tried to buy, CSSEdit. I can get it later for full price if necessary. It probably would have been a good idea to indicate the expiration time on the MacSanta site, as there was really no way to know which time zone they were using. One other minor gripe -- Rogue Ameoba was behind the site, but they didn't offer the discount on their Fission & Audio Hijack Pro bundle. You could either take the bundle discount or the MacSanta discount, but not both. Other vendors did allow the use of the MacSanta coupon with their bundles.

I went back and checked and at least on some of the sites, the coupon was still working, so maybe there was something wrong with the CSSEdit site to begin with, although the MacSanta site does say the deal is over.

Lean and mean on PayPerPost

I am running low on open opportunities on PayPerPost. It's Christmas and things have been slow for a while, but there are a few remaining opportunities that I haven't done. Not many, but a few. Some of them are in the list 2 or 3 times and I don't think it looks good to have the same one every day. I think at this point there are only 3 that I could do. I was all set to finally break down and do that old one about moving to Scottsdale, Arizona -- 10 words for $2.50 but it disappeared! Finally... Let's hope things pick up again soon, although for the sake of the PayPerPost staff, they should probably have the rest of the week off.

MacSanta closing up shop

I am not sure if MacSanta ends at midnight Pacific Time or some other midnight, but I'm trying to get all my purchases done by 12 EST. One thing that is frustrating is that for a number of the apps there is not a clear way to use the discount. It doesn't always work in the coupon field and sometimes I've had to go through the process 3 times to get it right. Not to mention that not everyone takes PayPal and that sometimes if you use PayPal you can't use the coupon. Strange.

Chargers win

The Chargers didn't look too good against the Seahawks today in the second half, which was when I was watching. They did manage to pull it out at the end, so they have the best record in the NFL now. I think if they can avoid playing games in bad weather they should make it to the Super Bowl as long as Philip Rivers can limit his mistakes. He didn't have a good game today but he made the big play when it counted.

One thing that bugged me watching the game was hearing Dick Enberg and Randy Cross keep saying that guys were dropping balls and Rivers had a poor completion percentage and they never once mentioned the fact that it was raining the entire game. Gee, I wonder if that had anything to do with it.

MacAppADay takes 3 days off

MacAppADay is off until the 27th, when presumably they will finish off the week with a few more free apps for the Mac with something special on January 1. The special might be a bundle for purchase. Fine by me. Although MacAppADay is taking a break, there is no holiday among the commenters who keep finding more things to dislike about a site which is giving stuff away for free. The complaints range from not liking the fact that the free applications aren't upgradeable to the site's claim that they would give away an application each day in December and haven't lived up to that. Maybe those people should find other stuff to gripe about. Sure, you don't get the same rights with the software that you would get if you bought it, but who can give away 5000 copies of their software for free and stay in business? Many of these applications are things I had never heard of before, so I can't imagine that they have a huge customer base. It's been a good way to learn about new applications, along with MacZot and MacSanta.