A mind of my own

EPA awards DIRECTV for energy efficient electronics they then “dump” on consumers

admin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:01:42 +0000

Read the excerpt below, which is obviously a press-release from DIRECTV, and while you do, think about where all of those 10 million+ receivers are going to go AFTER the customer is done with them, since the customer “owns” the receiver, and DIRECTV owns the access card. Without the access card, the receivers are useless to law abiding citizens. Hopefully, they will dispose of them in a responsible manner, but what about if they don’t? Environmentalists should be up in arms about the “Dumping” of useless electronics on consumers. But I bet you will never see this on 60 Minutes….

DIRECTV News : DIRECTV Awarded 2010 ENERGY STAR®

The U.S Environmental Protection Agency has named DIRECTV a 2010 Excellence in Energy-Efficient Product Design winner. This award is presented to organizations in recognition of their outstanding contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution. In addition, with the help of ENERGY STAR® products, American’s saved nearly $17 billion on their energy bills and reduced greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of 30 million vehicles. Winners of the 2010 Excellence in Energy-Efficient Product Design award were selected from more than 17,000 participants in the ENERGY STAR® program. DIRECTV is the only TV service to receive this award. All DIRECTV receivers — SD, HD and HD-DVR — produced since January 2009 comply with current ENERGY STAR guidelines. By the end of 2009, DIRECTV manufactured and deployed more than 10 million ENERGY STAR®-compliant receivers in customer homes.

Fight the blacklist bills – SOPA & PIPA

admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:06:46 +0000

I’ve censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet–a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit: http://americancensorship.org/posts/5396/uncensor

I ███████ ██████ █████████ for █████████ if ████ can ███████ the ██████████ ████ ███████ the ██████ of the ██████ █████ the ████████ of ██████ ████ of ████.

Dumb Commercials

admin — Thu, 26 May 2011 05:12:45 +0000

Okay, does anyone else think there are way too many stupid rich people? Apparently Mercedes Benz does, with the commercial with all the people talking about falling asleep at the wheel with their child sleeping in the car. WHAT!?
Thanks to Mercedes Benz, it is now okay to fall asleep, drift into the wrong lane, or forget to hit the brakes while texting, all without dying as long as you are rich enough to buy a Mercedes Benz.

Citibank and Home Depot

admin — Mon, 23 May 2011 22:27:23 +0000

I use credit from time to time, either as a convenience or to get things that are needed right away, and pay over time. I also don’t begrudge a company for making money, since that is what they are in business for, after all.

What I don’t like is a company using predatory practices to line their pockets.

What am I talking about? Well, I just got a bill from Home Depot, whose credit card is run by Citibank.. I paid the bill in full last month, and this month they want interest on the amount I had on that previous bill, which is accrued daily. So for the amount of time my payment took to get to them, and get posted as a payment, my previous balance was still growing, and they want that money also! What happened to “if you pay off the whole amount, you don’t get charged interest”? NOT ANYMORE, at least at Citibank.

So, if I pay this bill, how much will my interest be on the interest I accrued daily from the bill I already paid? Sound ridiculous? I think so.

I called, kept hitting 0000000 until I finally got to a human, and I told them they had a choice – get paid the $8.15 they were charging me and never get a dime from me ever again, or correct the issue. I was told they would be able to credit me, because they didn’t want to lose a good customer. I thanked them after I was credited, and when the nice lady asked if there was anything else she could do for me today, I told her, “yes, cancel my account.” She replied, “but we credited your account!”. I then explained to her that I shouldn’t have had to ask for a credit, the charges should never have occurred, and if that was the way Citibank did business, I didn’t want anything to do with the Citibank or with a Home Depot credit card.

So a word of caution: Check your credit card statements, and see if you are getting charged DAILY interest. Not all credit cards are done charging you if you pay it all off at the end of the month!

New look

admin — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:48:45 +0000

Another new look, another new year. I just hope it starts getting better than it has so far.