For a few years, my Messenger has been filled with so-called Customers who bother me whenever I get online.  They ask for help, often ask me to login to their servers remotely and fix things, and when it comes time to pay, I get the old, “When I make money, you make money!” thing.

     It ires me to no end.

     A few others have said, “Hey, we’ll pay you $x to do this website for us,” and then used the old, “We haven’t been paid for it yet,” trick.  Months pass, my questions get ignored, and then they have the balls to come and ask me to do more things for them.  And stupidly, I have.

     Still others have said, “We’re hiring you at $x a week, and we expect at least y hours out of you.  Are you game?”
     “Certainly!”
     I get their billing information, they get their login and password to the billing system and go in and enter a credit card like they’re supposed to.  The scam usually works when their credit card won’t bill, and they ask me to switch them to PayPal billing, which I do.  They don’t bother to pay that one, so I send them an invoice through PayPal.  They don’t bother with that one, either, and meanwhile, they change their passwords on their servers.

     It’s really annoying, trying to do business with people whose faces you never see, or people who are too far away to get hold of and rip their arms off when they do something like that.

     Tonight, one of the standard “When I make money, you make money” freeloaders got an eyefull:

Mark says:
Man, ya know, it’s really bugging me lately. I’m a consultant. It’s what I do for a living. And I just can’t just answer and fix servers for free all the time. I’m just not doing that anymore. It costs $xxx an hour, and I’ve given you something like 12 hours or more and you’ve always said, “When I make money, you make money!” Well, ya know, after a hundred times, it becomes bullshit.

Mark says:
Now fuck off.

Captain Asshat says:
hey!  but I’m not getting paid for this job!
have a nice life loser

Mark says:
Yeah, a loser who you keep asking to fix your servers for free.

     Really, knowing that Captain Asshat has never paid me a dime for the work I’ve done — even when he’s said he would — how could he expect anything less?  And, yeah, I have been a loser in the fact that I’ve lost every bit of revenue he’s promised after I’ve stupidly prioritized him above customers who actually do pay their bills.
     So maybe I’m a loser — he’s still a deadbeat.

     And why should I listen to, “That’s poor customer service!” from an asshat who hasn’t even been a customer?  I mean, by definition, customers usually pay. 

     So, Captain Asshat, seriously…  As far as “Customer Service,” my skills are absolutely excellent — ask any of my customers who actually pay per agreement. 

     Now, it’s not that anyone has to pay me to be nice to people.  It’s just that… well… I’m friendly.  I’m extremely helpful.
     As a matter of fact, I’ve been too nice.  Too helpful.  Too willing to let too many people take advantage of me.

     As far as my business goes … That ends now. 

     I’m more assertive when I’m working for someone else, and I’m not when I’m working for myself.   That’s a fact.
     There’s a point where you have to be an asshole, and start weeding out the freeloaders.  That time past a long time ago, and I have a lot of catching up to do.  *evil grin*

     And if you’re not paying me to do any of my “outstanding” work (your words, not mine), you’re gonna get what you pay for as far as “customer service.” 

A couple of years ago I had a physical and the doctor found that my cholesterol was a bit high (234 I think). So, being the nerd I am, I started reading all I could about this. I read one long article on WebMD and it had an interesting final sentence that said something like “there is no statistical link between high cholesterol and heart attack.” Hmmm.

I got my blood tested again recently and was thinking all would be good. I have been on a low carb diet for months now, lost lots of fat and was thinner and eating much better. Well, my cholesterol was now 269 and all the results were in the “very high” range, except for blood glucose. I have not had any sugar in a long time, so, that should be low. Now the doctor is saying that I may need to get on medication for my cholesterol.

So I did more reading and now I am fairly convinced it is a lot of crap. I read this article which sums up a lot of things. Basically, the cause of heart disease and heart attack and stroke isn’t cholesterol, but stress. The emphasis on cholesterol is perhaps more about selling you a drug you must take every day for the rest of your life.

Study after study shows no link between a low fat diet and lowered risk of heart disease. Study after study shows that lowering cholesterol does not lower the risk of heart disease. But it sells a lot of pills! If cholesterol was bad for you, why does your body make it? New studies are showing serious risks with the extremely low cholestrol levers due to statins. Low cholesterol used to mean under 400.

Stress causes heart disease. That seems simple right? The C Reactive Protien is the better indicator. It also explains the “French Paradox.” This is the fact that although French people eat way more fat and have higher cholesterol, they have a lower incidence of heart disease. The cholesterol obsessed Americans decide this was due to their consumption of red wine. The real truth is that its due to their relaxed lifestyles. Two months of vacation a year. Shorter work weeks. More sick leave and fully insured. Less stress is the answer. The simple and obvious answer.

The other thing that was interesting to discover is that the optimum amount of exercise to strengthen the heart is 8-12 minutes. That’s right 8-12 minutes! Exercising a lot more is stressing your body, which is harmful. But that’s the American way. If 10 minutes is good 3 times a week, 2 hours twice a day is better! Wrong!

I am not going to worry about my high cholesterol. Unfortunately, this myth is so prevalent that my life insurance policy ended up at a much higher rate due to my cholesterol level. I wish I could get a lawyer to sue them over that! Class action!

     Apparently, Ashwin Khanna, the illustrious “Win $2500 for posting about my blog!“, is well on his way to being labeled “notorious.”

     Ashwin, henceforth known as “Asswin,” is nothing more than an 18-year-old, aspiring scam artist from London who seems to think it’s okay to use bullshit tactics to improve his search engine ranking … much like our last Asshat of the Day recipient, Steve Gallay, who used everyone who participated in a “Win $50!” contest to improve his search engine ranking by posting very little information about a missing child with links to his homepage instead of to an informative artcle.

     What Serr8d said about Gallay applies perfectly to Asswin Khanna, as well:

…he’s definitely a royal flush of an asshat…

(Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBsQFp6ZKS8)

     Just to let you know, Asswin, you’re only 18 and have an entire life of fraud ahead of you.  Nice to know you’ve started out so well!  I mean, what’s next?  Impossible-to-win footy boards?  A small pawn-and-loan-slash-fencing-operation there in Barnet?  Maybe a few billion e-mails asking for assistance in helping you get the money out of the bank account of a dead relative?
     Seriously, Asshat, what you’ve done is Fraud, plain and simple.  I hope someone takes a whiz in your Shreddies.

Tips: Contest Blogger, My New Hustle, Fracas

Ok.  It’s Saturday morning.  I just woke up.  My eyes are glued together.  My nose is crusty.  My chest is full of crap that just doesn’t want to come up.  In short, I have yet another sinus infection. 

Did I go to the doctor to get his verification of my diagnosis? NO!  

Why? 

Because the cost of going to the doctor these days is just ridiculous.  Besides the fact that I was only well for 10 days after the last time I paid my doctor office co-pay and $200 for a dufflebag full of medicatons that obviously didn’t do it for me.

The only perk I can think of today is that I’m high as a kite on the refill of codeine cough syrup Dr. Dude (hehe, I know you love that, Zacque) called in for me last time.  Thank God for refills.

 I feel for those in this great country that aren’t fortunate enough to have some kind of health coverage.  I mean hell, I’ve got it and I still find myself in the sorry ass position of making a choice between getting well or paying the damn rent and feeding my kid.

It’s ridiculous when the most prosperous country in the world has somewhere around 23% (I know they are lying about the numbers) of its citizens walking around with no way to get well when they get the crud, or worse have serious health complications.

I don’t have it all that bad.  My $200 sick day would have been near $325 had I not had my shitty insurance. 

A friend of my family has a heart issue and needs a transplant.  He’s a great man.  Works hard every day.  Yet, because he is self-employed he’s screwed.  No insurance.  And basically, until an Angel of light (anonymous) arranged a monetary donation of a huge sum, he was told “So sorry, go die”.  Well, maybe it wasn’t quite that harsh, but he could get no help.

As soon as some cash was waved around, it was amazing how fast that he was placed on the list of people waiting for a potential heart donor.

Anyway.  I just figured since it’s Saturday morning and I’m still sick (again), that I would pitch a tizzy fit about how we should be better taken care of.

Unfortunately, even having a fit over it isn’t making the shit in my chest break up.

I got this cool RAZR v3xx recently. I can plug it right into a USB port on my computer. It tells me in the manual that if I get a memory card, I can transfer video, music and pics onto the phone from my computer. So I got a 1 Gig microSD for $20.

I plugged it in and sure enough, I can browse over to the phone. Yippee! I dropped a couple of tunes over there and a few pics and I am rockin. I’m gonna have a unique tune for all my friends and their pictures.

But, the phone says all the pictures are corrupted and the songs hosed.

I tried logical things like searching the Motorola support site. Did their thing. No good. Tried to exactly match images to the size and dpi of the pictures I took with the phone camera. Nope. Jpeg or gif. Nope. Downloaded a number of free software trials. Nope, nope, nope.

You see, you can indeed put files on your RAZR’s memory card from your computer, the manual does not lie. However, if you want to view those pictures or listen to those tunes with your phone, sorry man.

They want you to download your songs and ringtones for a price. They want you to email the pictures or send them some other wireless way they can charge you for. A nice slow draining.

I am begining to see cellphones as the biggest scam ever perpetrated on humanity. From sites that offer ringtone downloads, but first make you put in your number to back-handedly sign you up for a monthly fee to be added to your bill; to phones that start talking to other phones at will to send them songs and, hey, there is a small fee for the transfer, or, you can get the Googly-Moogly Bandwidth package that lets you send lots of crap from your phone each month for just $19.99 monthly! They went ahead and put this into my new contract without telling me. Thanks dude! And don’t forget the carefully placed extra buttons right next to the dial and hang-up buttons that immediately take you to the Internet and start the slow drip, drip, drip of your money… Oops!

I am a pretty smart guy and technically savvy, and this is clearly not a simple work around. The answer is out there, and I will find it. It’ll probably cost me of course. And if you want me to tell you how to get files from your computer to your RAZR, well, that’ll cost you. I want my cut of the action. Unfortunately, my feeding off of you does not make me young forever, but my kewl ass phone does… as long as I feed the beast…

I needed a new phone and my provider said I could sign a new contract and get a huge savings. I like my Motorola and got one of THOS RAZR PHONS. An MP3 playing device with no headphones. Sure. Makes sense to me. I love music with no bass…

 I am not all up in my phones business. I just require a calendar, alarm clock, phone, you know, the basics. The one bling I gots to havs is mah ringtone. Um, well, it’s the sound of a real Southern Bell Princess rotary from 1978. That’s a sound that will cut through the din of 12 people at Cancun’s drinkin’ $1.99 Margaritas and smoking like Lil Kim never will, beeyatch!

So I went to the iTubernet to find My Precious. Wow. Things have changed in the years since my last phone needed The Tone. The top 10-20 sites that came up on Google don’t sell you ringtones, they are scam sites. They want you to put in your mobile number and they send you a text message. In the small print they tell you that doing so signs you up for a subscription and probably hits you with some one time charge. Yikes!

Apparently selling ringtones is not the way to make money. Scamming idiots into subscriptions is. So, I am here to warn you. Actually, to get you to tell your kids about it. Do not use these damnable sites. Do not enter your mobile number.

My Precious still eludes me. I found the right sound, but the length of the ring and spacing between the rings is all wrong. Defintely not a SB Princess ‘78. If you have a map to My Precious, I’d love to have it. And if you know how to hack my RAZR so I can load it up with free ripped tunez, please show.

     What if …

     You move into a house with the intention of buying the place.  The landlord still has stuff there, and promises to come back and get it all out.  Eight months pass, it’s all still there, and the landlord has never bothered to do anything as far as your purchase of the house, either.
     All of a sudden, the landlord gives you ten days to vacate.  Nine days later, the landlord, who lives two states away, shows up and tells you the house will be sold.  You ask, “How much?  I wanna buy it.”
     The landlord replies, “No, you can’t have it.  No, I don’t want your money.  You’ve never paid me a dime!”
     The landlord is clearly insane.

     While you’re gone, the landlord moves into a bedroom.  The landlord throws away a bunch of your things while you’re gone, moves a bunch of things, breaks some things.
     Dumbfounded, you wonder what’s going on.  The landlord gloats, “I broke things?  Well, I’d hate to have to move your television, your computers.  They’re very expensive!”

     You’ve paid your rent.  You’ve kept the place up.  You’ve mowed the yard.  You’ve paid the utility bills, and kept everything up to date.  You’ve made friends with the neighbors, even helped them with some home repairs in a crunch.

     So what do ya do?

     And does it change things if said landlord is the person who gave birth to you?
     Some people you trust, and don’t think you need to get receipts from.  This just goes to show you that trust like that is extremely stupid.

Since November 2006 a quiet storm has been gathering strength in Washington. Now it appears that Washington State politicians want to play El Nino to their D.C. colleagues, effectively taking the wind out of their sails by calling for impeachment ahead of their Center City counterparts.

Unbeknownst to D.C. Democrats who have been plotting to impeach Bush for “Security Breaches Post-9/11″ (most often for things that they did themselves in a very botched and public political chess game), their constituents in Washington State have already come up with a proposal to take W down: they’ve draw up investigation and impeachment documents labeled Washington State Senate Joint Memorial 8016, to be decided upon tomorrow, March 1st.

Should they get the go-ahead from their State House & Senate, they merely have to refer the document to the Speaker of House of Representatives, and the Investigation process will begin.

The most atrocious charges in the document implicate both President George W. Bush and Vice-President Richard B. Cheney in a massive coverup of pre-war intelligence and subsequent lies to Congress and the American people as a justification to invade Iraq. However, the rest are at best laughable:

  WHEREAS, The war with Iraq has cost the lives of many Washington state residents and squandered taxpayer money from the state of Washington; and

  WHEREAS, The President has publicly admitted to conducting electronic surveillance of thousands and perhaps millions of American civilians without seeking warrants; and

  WHEREAS, Washington state residents are likely to have been subject to this electronic surveillance; and

  WHEREAS, The President, the Vice President, and members of the President’s Administration have acted to strip American citizens of their constitutional rights, based solely on the discretionary designation by the President of a United States citizen as an “enemy combatant”; and

The translation is as follows:

“We hate war! We don’t know how many of our citizens have died in Iraq, we read the Washington Post where it said that G.W. admitted to wiretapping, we’re not sure if that includes any citizens of our state, we’ve never read the Patriot Act even though our own representation passed it, and we generally think W is a big doo-doo head!”

These brainiacs (Washington State Senators Oemig, Regala, Kohl-Welles, Kline, Spanel, Fairley, Kauffman, Fraser and Prentice) have certainly not done their homework. And yes, their own idiots in D.C., Cantwell and Murray, both voted for the very bill that gave the President the power which they claim G.W. has dubiously wielded. But of course they aren’t sure whether or not it actually affected anyone in their state.

I sincerely hope that this particular impeachment goes through.  It will make them look like the bunch of ninnies they are and save a lot of Washington D.C. Democrats some serious headaches when the “Security Breach” investigations get turned right back around on them.

Although, that could be fun, too.

Democrats want George Bush impeached over many esoteric thing for which there is no evidence. Ahead of all of that is the War in Iraq.

It would seem that the vast majority of them are talking about the “hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children” killed during our invasion of Iraq, but the truth is, there have been remarkably few except in violence created and carried out by their own people, foreign terrorists and Al Qaeda. Factions inside of Iraq pleaded with us to get rid of Hussein, who was personally responsible for gassing and bombing hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children.

But it seems that Anti-War Protestors are unable to think of the lives we’ve saved.

Other Democratic factions claim that Iraq is “another Vietnam,” a sentiment which is as offensive as it is ridiculous, not only to those who actually fought in Vietnam, but also to the families who loved ones during the conflict.

They claim that the United States acted unilaterally and without provocation, despite the fact that the majority of Western countries were in favor of invading Iraq.

But even more heinous than those lies is their typical warcry: “We don’t need to lose another U.S. soldier in Iraq!” Yet, they want to cut funding, and prevent a slight increase in the number of deployed troops who would certainly be able to help in hotzones like Fallujah.

This sort of bullshit illogic is similar to the rhetoric they gave early in the war when they underbudgeted and entrenched to keep from sending additional aid. Meanwhile, our soldiers were dying due to lack of Armor on their persons and Humvees.

Do you ever read what your representatives are actually doing? How many things did they vote correctly on? Did they even bother to show up to work and vote?

These sorts of things prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that our politicians certainly do not have our interests in mind, and will do anything to further their power.

All you have to do is pay attention and remember things.