Just ask Sweeney Todd.

In this Tim Burton adaptation of the musical, Johnny Depp plays the hunky and dark Sweeney Todd, the “Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, who seeks revenge for being sent to prison by corrupt authorities, for what was supposed to be a life term. He also seeks revenge for a wrongdoing which caused drastic consequences to his wife and child while he was in prison.

Checking out the movie trailer shows that this revenge is indeed worthy of its film: In one memorable scene, a body is seen dropping out of the chair into a chute. Another one down.

Unlike most killers, Sweeney doesn’t seem too aloof: You can visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace!

He also gives his fans a chance to confess to “your deepest shame” or “your proudest crime” at Sweeney Todd’s Confessional. Someone has already started it off with a video confession and a written confession. If I was going to make a confession and plaster it all over the Internet, it wouldn’t be of something illegal! LOL But I have confessed in places, that I’ve had 32 different jobs before I finally got off the empl*yment treadmill. And, one thing I don’t usually say outright is that I, myself, am a vengeful one! If someone does me wrong, I’ll do my best to even up, by whatever means are legally available.

So I can certainly sympathize with the premise of the movie (although I haven’t given anyone a fatal, “closest shave”), and can’t wait for it to hit the theaters on December 21st. Sweeney seems to be the kind of character I’ll end up wishing was real. And since he’s in a movie, he gets to take revenge all the way…

Visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site to see the trailer and see how jail can change a once-innocent man!

This updates my last post.

DHL, after I sent 2 emails and made a phone call as well, finally delivered that package to Seattle, WA.

All I can say is, “it’s about time.” It was supposed to be delivered on the 21st, and they literally drove it back and forth every day (according to their tracking report), until actually delivering it TODAY!

It wasn’t until my second email, when I told them to either give it to a competent driver or “just mail it” that they actually DID give it to another driver, who did his/her freakin’ job. Or maybe they actually mailed it…I’d love to ask the customer, but I’m afraid she’d think that was unprofessional. I’d also love to ask her if she hollered at DHL, too…I had emailed her with what was going on along with a link to the tracking, so maybe she voiced her displeasure to them as well.

DHL says I should be getting a refund for the cost of this shipment. While that’s good, and I definitely deserve it, I would have rather had the shipment handled correctly and not gotten another cluster of gray hairs!!

While DHL’s other locations have been fine, I will repeat, I’ll never send something to Washington State via DHL again. Next time I get an order like this, I’ll use 2 USPS Flat Rate Boxes even though it costs more.

Current Mood: Angry

A few days ago, I made a post praising DHL’s honesty. And, while they haven’t turned into crooks, they have seemingly forgotten how to deliver packages!!

For the last week, the idiots over at their Seattle, Washington facility have been taking a package out “for delivery” and then bringing it back to the facility every night! WTF?!? I’m ready to start wishing I could fire machine-gun bullets through the Internet!

Needless to say, I’ve written to Customer Service and they obviously just looked at the same “Track” screen I did, and said it was with the courier today and would be delivered. Well DUH, the problem is, the jerk courier isn’t DELIVERING THE THING!

Granted, they did say I’d get a refund on the shipping costs. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s $97 worth of stuff out there on the truck of some guy who seems to think his job is to drive around Seattle singing “la la la” without actually delivering anything!

So I wrote back (when it didn’t get delivered, AGAIN) and told them that if that guy can’t do it, they need to send someone who can. Or mail it. The USPS would be a lot more competent at delivering than DHL has been with this package. I’m so aggravated I could scream. If I had any idea that this would be the result of using DHL to ship to Seattle, I would have mailed it to begin with. Or even used that ubergyp, UPS.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up with that package back here. If I do, it’s going back out Priority Mail!

While I won’t fire DHL completely–most of the deliveries do happen–I will NOT send one more thing to Seattle with them. That facility has shown its incompetence “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

*Bangs head on desk*

Sensitive teeth can make contact with even the most mundane-seeming foods into painful encounters. Either too hot or too cold, and they go off–and that’s not even mentioning the “usual suspects” like sugar and other sticky foods!

So, short of going to the dentist, what can be done to stop the sensitivity? One thing that can help is toothpaste made especially for calming sensitive teeth.

Years ago, I had a type of toothpaste recommended to me which was popular at the time and probably is still the most well-known brand. After a few weeks, it did work, but the problem was, it tasted like SOAP! Really nasty!! Needless to say I did not use that stuff for long.

So, when I recently got a sample of the new Biotene Sensitive toothpaste, of course, the first thing I paid attention to was the taste.

They did a great job of covering up the soapy flavor of the active ingredients. However, they covered it with a super-sweet, kiddie-toothpaste flavor! That is still a great improvement over soap, though. And, the sweetness comes from Xylitol, not sugar, so it’s not counterproductive.

The flavor isn’t the only improvement over the old brands, though. Biotene also has an enzyme complex which counteracts the effects of dry mouth, and inhibits “harmful bacteria growth found in oral infections and gingivitis.” These infections are often the problem which made the teeth sensitive to begin with. So, by inhibiting them, Biotene actually helps resolve the problem–unlike competing products, which just mask it.

It also uses the most effective active ingredient for tooth sensitivity, potassium nitrate.

If you need a sensitive toothpaste and want one that both helps solve the problem and doesn’t taste soapy, Biotene Sensitive is a good pick.

International forums are fun.
I don’t just mean the “technically the entire internet is international” bit, but I mean forums where there are actually people from lots of countries.

I like to discuss business on US-American forums, where the other people are working off basically the same cultural framework, but politics is another matter. The two really do belong apart, too, despite the temptation to mix ‘em up: it interferes with doing business, to find oneself caring about whether the other guy likes [insert candidate here], or supports/decries “X” controversial policy.

Truly international political forums are like a window into the systems and psyches of other countries. Lots of other countries have a system where there’s a gajillion parties, all of which may gain a few seats apiece, and in order to get anything done, they have to form coalitions. To me this sounds like a horrendous tar pit of gridlock just waiting to happen!!! Yet, those under such systems will swear by them (instead of AT them like I would).

In fact, if one thing is in common amongst almost all the internationals I’ve run across online, it’s that no matter what system their government uses, they think it’s the best and that everyone else should wake up and adopt whatever they have! It’s actually pretty funny. There’s even been people from N. Korea on, saying that Dear Leader is the greatest thing on wheels, although they don’t stay long. It’s like they’re doing those posts as a temp job. I’d think they were just trolling, but they don’t stay around long enough to stir anything up.

Then there’s the differences in local customs when it comes to simple things. For some reason, the English don’t like to give away their locations. So if you see something like “Location: Earth” you can bet it’s England, provided the custom hasn’t spread throughout the entire board. And I don’t mean “the UK” I mean the English part. Wales, Scotland, and Ireland don’t seem to have that trait, and will put something like “Location: [Town] Scotland” right out there. Then there’s Australia, which is addicted to calling their place “Oz” and variations thereof. As for the USA, we’re the ones who put some state name and expect everyone to know where the F that is, even if the other people are 4000 miles away! I admit I did that too, at first, but I added “USA” after realizing that the rest of the place has probably never heard of Michigan. I didn’t bother on the US-centric forum I’m on, though. Any “furriners” who come there can just Google it :p

Then there’s the tipoffs in the use of English. UKers seem to be surprised when they get spotted, because they forget how obvious their speech/typing patterns are. As soon as someone tells you he thinks something is “bollocks” you can just get a big UK stamp and stamp him with it! And if they get a “flu jab” they didn’t get it in the US–we get “shots.” He’s either in the UK, Australia, or maybe even New Zealand.

The same countries also think of “f*ck off” as an actual command–an insulting way to say “go away”–while US people use it more as a generic insult. This leads to interesting verb tenses not seen here, too, like “he f*cked off” which could result from him being told to, or (depending on context) the phrase could be an angry way to say that someone ditched out when he shouldn’t have!

If someone calls us “USians” they’re usually in some Scandanavian country and think it’s oh-so-original to use that term even though it’s been done to death.

The only confounding factor is the fact that speech patterns tend to be contagious among those in a group. So eventually, a few terms will cross over. I’ve picked up quite a few UKisms that are always trying to sneak their way into my typing. For instance, I wanted to type, “amongst those in a group” back there. “Whilst” is another one. In US-English it sounds pretentious as all hell to add these “st”s, but in the UK that’s just the proper way to spell it.

Then there’s the altogether different Indian-English. Irritatingly, they will argue that they speak proper English (meaning, like in the UK)! But it’s as obvious as rocks. First, they type in text-speak, and mess up the capitalizations. u c this, u no it’s frm India right away. Then there’s the odd use of articles. “If u want the internet jobs, u hv 2 no how to type.” Errmmm…
Makes me wonder if the schools over there are actually telling them that that’s the way to type online?!? I see it far too often for it to just be a couple of jokers. The strange thing is, when they’ve been online for a few months, they’ll suddenly quit that and then write pretty much like anyone else!!! So maybe they’ve been told that the (actual) proper way is “too formal” or some rot, and then when they realize that it’s NOT “formal” they go ahead and use regular English spellings…Dunno.

Of course, a post such as this isn’t complete without a look in the mirror at the good ol’ US of A. It’s easy to spot Americans online, too. We’re the ones who assume that the rest of the world knows what we’re talking about when referencing local stuff. Also, we do not Francify words like “color” and “flavor” by adding a spurious “u” to them! Oh, and we love to get on the Internet.

It seems rare that a large company deserves kudos, but I have some to hand out to DHL.

DHL, like UPS, has a surcharge for residential delivery. At DHL it’s $2.20. Often, I actually check Google Maps to see if a delivery’s going to be residential, but sometimes I’m pretty darned sure one way or the other, and skip that step.

So, when I got an order from someone with their own domain, I had checked that web address and found it was for a business–a business at a different address than the delivery address. So, I figured, the customer wanted it delivered to his house and checked off “residential delivery.”

To my surprise, it was NOT a residence, but another business address! And here’s where the kudos come in: DHL was honest and DID NOT charge the residential fee–that’s how I found out it wasn’t his house!

I think this is worth kudos because all too often, a company will catch it when something does cost more, but not-see it when something could cost less. DHL hasn’t been like that. They charge based on the actual destination–even when it’s obvious that I had no idea what kind of destination it is!

So even though I am sometimes bemused and baffled by their routings of certain packages, I have to applaud. And even when they do send something on a Michigan–>Wisconsin–>Michigan circuit, they’ve always managed to get the stuff where it’s going, so no real complaints there either (although when that happens, it’s irresistable blog fodder…).

Sometimes, a need arises for more money than is right on-hand. You may want to fix up your house, buy a car, consolidate your bills, or even finance a wedding. There are a few solutions for that: Get a(nother) job, do overtime, or get a loan. If you’ve already got a decent source of income, chances are, you won’t want options 1 or 2. After all, you’re already doing enough!

In that case, getting a loan may not be a bad idea. There are a few kinds of loans, including unsecured loans and homeowner loans.

Unsecured loans are the kind I would go for, for most credit needs. When a loan’s unsecured, more risk is shifted to the creditor–they can’t just automatically repossess your stuff. Unsecured loans, however, tend to make up for this by charging more interest. To me it’s worth it.

If you want to borrow more money, or pay less interest, a homeowner’s loan may be the ticket. These loans are secured by the home that is owned–hence their restriction to homeowners. These can be good for those with the stable incomes associated with jobs.

Current Mood: Ecstatic

It’s always a joyous day when the FIRST SALE of a new merchant site rolls in! And today, I got another hit of that special joy. I woke up to my first sale from Merchant Site #3!!!

Yes, yes, yes. What is there to say but glorious “YES!!”

Another baby has come to life.

As you know if you’ve been following this blog, I recently got Merchant Site #3 up and put it on PPC.

Seems that I got a bit carried away and overconfident in that. I just got reminded that even doing PPC for years does not totally immunize a person from the hazard of shirt loss.

Figuring that hey, I have the Merchant’s Share for these items, I went ahead and bid 30c/click. I checked the next day and it said it was averaging an actual cost of 25c.

Well…something turned out to be wrong with The Picture.

First off all, the traffic from there isn’t converting. Nada. So either I have too general of keywords, or people just like to do more shopping around for things like shower curtains. It could be the latter, which is no problem when the traffic is free, but is a HUGE problem when it’s costing!!

Second, when I checked my account, they had managed to eat up $66+ in click fees. Fortunately, buried in there on some screen or another, is an Account Max Spending Limit. This kept them from going all the way to Bermuda on my money, at least.

That PPC campaign is now off. It obviously needs major reworking before I allow it to live again. Needless to say I’ll be checking the performance of my other campaigns now, too!

On the bright side, in the other window, Google sent all of 16 hits. Free. And, one converted!

It could be a fluke, but it looks like the real buyers for this product line are not hanging out at Yahoo!

Current Mood: Erm…

Every fall, some mouse or other will think it’s a good idea to go inside for warmth. While, on the face of it, it does seem like a logical move, the fact that they want to make their winter home IN HERE is a problem!

So, every year, out come the traps. Last year, we found these great plastic jobbies that have a lot less chance of snapping on my hand than the old-fashioned wood ones. The principle of them is a little different: Instead of putting the bait right on the trigger, the bait goes on a little “ceiling” above it. Then, the mouse, in order to reach the bait, puts his foot on the lever…which triggers his journey into the next realm.

But, this year I’ve got a dumb-luck mouse. Apparently, he’s too dumb to realize that it’d be a much easier reach to the bait if only he’d use that handy little step that’s been so graciously provided. Every day, I wake up to find the peanut-butter smear has been licked off the trap “ceiling” without so much as a mouse hair left behind.

So now, I’m trying to think of ways to encourage him to step on the trigger. I’ve tried putting the peanut butter a bit farther back this time. If that doesn’t work, I’ll put it WAY back–maybe if he’s too dumb to use the trigger as a step, he’ll also be dumb enough to just blunderingly clod into it if it’s in the way of getting to the bait!

If all else fails, I’ll have to resort to the Green Grain. Rat poison. I use rat poison for mice, because “mouse” poison comes in overpriced little packs, and is usually underpowered, too. The reason I call it the Green Grain is simple: The stuff is always dyed a garish green, I presume so humans know it’s not good to eat. The mice don’t know what the color means, or even that it looks really phony, so they go ahead and eat it. The problem with the Green Grain method is that, soon after, an unfindable dead mouse will start reeking up the place and keep reeking until it finally mummifies!

So hopefully Mr. Dumb Luck Mouse will just stumble into the trigger soon and activate the trap.