Archive for the ‘random’ Category

AT&T has been sending me relentless amounts of AT&T U-verse letters in the mail without any opt-out addresses to respond to. After a quick search on the Interwebs, I found this post on how to opt out of AT&T’s mailers.

Although the post had some great information I still don’t think it should be this hard to opt-out.

Please comment below if you know a better way to opt out. In the meantime here’s a few different methods from their post if you are a current AT&T customer:

• Contact Information to address concerns- clicked on contact us- NO PHONE NUMBER. -but buried in text is a list of phone numbers -Contact
• Email-Please e-mail us at  privacypolicy@ATT.com or write to AT&T Privacy Policy Manager, 208 South Akard, 27th Floor, Room 2750.04, Dallas, TX 75202 to address any concerns you may have about our privacy practices and policies.

If you are a not a AT&T customer:

• https://attdns.acxiom.com/
  AT&T Opt Out Request
  5565 Glen Ridge Connector
  Suite 1230C
  Atlanta, GA 30342-4756

Determined to be opt out, I emailed AT&T at their privacy policy email asking them how would be the best way to remove an address from their ad campaign. Surprisingly, I received a quick response from them in about 25 minutes. Their email said:

Thank you for writing the AT&T Privacy Policy Mailbox. Please provide your wireless telephone number and mailing address and we will process your request.

While we will strive to honor your request, you may receive an occasional mailing. To the extent that you receive unwanted U.S. Mail from any source, it is hoped you can make it available to a paper recycling program.

Sincerely,

AT&T Privacy Policy Inbox Manager

I promptly replied back with the respective information and received another email the next day confirming the removal:

Thank you for providing the requested information. Your request for Do-Not-Mail has been submitted for AT&T. Please allow up to 30 business days for the process to complete.

Sincerely,

AT&T Privacy Policy Inbox Manager

Kudos to AT&T for having a process to get names and addresses removed from their mail list, but seriously it shouldn’t be this difficult. In this day and age of automation this process should be much much easier.

As most people already know, Gawker’s commenting accounts were compromised recently resulting in some Twitter accounts to be hacked with tweets to acai spam websites. Fun times for those that got hacked, the developers who get to work overtime fixing everything and everyone else that has to deal with changing their passwords and the rest of the hassle.

In addition to all this, I received an email from hint.io with a similar message. Not knowing if I even have a gawker account or for that matter now, a hint.io account I had to search for what the heck hint.io is too. Fortunately, Ruth Suehle did the legwork and posted her thoughts on hint.io’s email blast.

Although hint.io’s email may be legit, it’s definitely not cool to be opportunistic in light of such events. Here’s two things I would have done differently:
1) Don’t use tracking links in your email for this purpose. I can’t tell what the true link is and looks very spammy.
2) Explain yourself better. We get enough phishers and spammers in addition to all the other emails we get everyday. You only compound the issue.

Hopefully they’ll get it right next time (by not emailing).

And I don’t want to hear it anyway.

Creating events in Outlook calendar works fine on my Dell laptop. Editing the event after posting it the first time creates a huge bug which I blamed MS Outlook for the last couple of years. Basically Outlook automatically posts the same event recurring every day for an infinite amount of time. THIS DROVE ME NUTS! But apparently not enough to simply Google it and find the solution. I finally found it and apparently it was Dell all along to blame. Grrrr…

Here’s the solution posted on Egghead Cafe. If you own a Dell and have Outlook 2003, you probably have this problem. Simply uninstall “outlookaddinsetup” from your programs list and you’re good to go.  Special thanks to Google Suggest which provides key terms you may not ordinarily think of and Graeme who took the time and found a fix for Outlook’s recurrence problem.

Starting this summer (July 1st for new cards and August 15th for existing accounts) customers will have to opt-in to get overdraft protection on their account. My bank calls it Courtesy Approval Service.

It looks to me banks are pushing hard to make sure everyone enjoys the convenience of Courtesy Approval.

What better way to celebrate Pacman’s 30th anniversary than for Google to not only design their typical iconic Google themed logos in Pacman maze letters but to one-up themselves by creating an actual interactive Pacman game you can play from their home page on May 21st /22nd, 2010.  To top it off, if you press Insert Coin, they even have a version with both Pacman and Ms. Pacman playing side by side

If you’re old enough you probably remember Pacman Fever on the blasting on the radio waves and from the arcades 30 years ago. And if you didn’t know,  Pacman is the most recognized game character in the world. Hopefully Pacman will make a decent comeback someday soon. Inspired by Pacman’s 30th anniversary and feeling a little nostalgic? Check out all these Pacman arcade games on Amazon.

So if you missed Pacman on Google, you can watch the Pacman video clip below. Way cool Google.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Now back to work…

San Diego and much of SoCal experienced one its first major earthquakes today ranging from 6.9 to 7.2 located in Baja Mexico. Although minimal damage was reported, Twitter was the first place everyone announced it. Once the Tweetphotos are posted http://tweetphoto.com/17203656 http://tweetphoto.com/17193393 and the FourSquare Swarm Badges are garnered, it's time to kick back for a beer and a few aftershocks. Cheers!

Filming "Terriers" TV show for FX in Bankers Hill, San Diego. More details on Google search.

Yahoo celebrates their 15th year online on March 1st. 2010. I thought I'd upload a few screen shots of Yahoo!'s home page over the course of time from Archive.org.

Photo credit : Yahoo on Flickr

This spuds for you!

Random, I know. But what better day to post a heart shaped potato? You tell me.