Jacqueline MoodyJammin’ Jests, Jukin’ Jives, & Jolly Roger Justice

I have always thought gift cads were great as Christmas gifts. For local friends and family, I could give them a card to spend at a certain store. For those living abroad, Amazon.com has such a wide selection that it works well.

 Gift cards seem a little more personal than giving cash, but they are no longer the safe bet they used to be. You see, when you purchase a gift card, you become a creditor. That means of a company files for bankruptcy, it gains protection from all its creditors including everyone holding a gift card.

Best bet is to gone someone cash. While it may seem impersonal, your friend or loved one will be able to spend it even if the company goes out of business. There are things you can do to make it personal such as make a short rhyme, or take a picture of the store & put with it, or the section of the store they should spend it in.  All you really need to do is write a short note.

 Have a great holiday season!

Apparently phishing is very lucrative.  Now, instead of just sending spam emails to your inbox, they have started paying for postage!  Not only that, they have enough money to hire phones and people to answer them making their scam look even more legit.

This means if you get a piece of mail asking you to go to a website and enter information that can be used to steal your identity, or to call the company to give them information, you need to do your due diligence.  Also, be alert.  If you get an unexpected check (usually in the $3,000 to $4,000 range), no matter how legit it looks, make sure it is good.  The typical scam has you deposit money in your account, then western union money to them.  It may all look good, but in roughly 6 weeks the check will bounce and the bank will come to you to get the money back.  The money you sent through western union will be gone, and you’ll be out $2,000 to $3,000.

So if you win $500,000 in a contest you never entered, or you want to earn money just for signing up for something, be careful.  Make sure it is legit.  They know how to phish.

I just had to write again about my Chase card.  While so many things are going wrong with the economy and we are trying our best to get out of debt by the time we retire, this is one of the shining things that I am doing right.  The cash I get back on the Chase Freedom Plus Worldcard is just amazing.  On my last two statement,  earned $140 in rewards.  If that continues as an average of $50-70 per month, that means approximately every 3-4 months I earn $200 in rewards.  Since I wait for the $200 to build up, that means they send me a check for $250.  That means in a year, I earn $750 or $1000 just for using my credit card to purchase things I would have purchased anyway.

Another bonus I get is I never have to worry about if I’m taking too much out of my bank account as it is going on the charge card.  I can sit down and make payments based on what’s in my account, and if needed I can pull some out of savings to cover the payment.  I haven’t had to do that, but it is very reassuring to be able to look at my finances and handle my own rollovers.

One more bonus is that since money stays in my account longer, I earn more interest on it.  In the grand scheme of things it is a small amount, but that is still money to the good for me.

I sure wish they taught you things like this in school.  I make every charge with a credit card, pay off the bill every month so I never have to pay interest, and my credit card pays me cash for using it.  What could be simpler?  

Thank you, Chase, for giving me such a great deal with my credit card!

Comcast continues to prove they are not interested in what is best for the customer, just what is best for their wallets. It started with the company dropping packets for people who were using bit torrent. They claimed it was due to the added bandwidth; however, bit torrent specifically is designed to distribute files by saving bandwidth. There was a public hearing on this, and Comcast hired people to fill the seats in the room so that their upset customers would not be able to get in and be heard.

The FCC has gone after Comcast for their practices, and while they have now allegedly quit dropping packets on their customers, they told the FCC they stopped, but that they don’t think the FCC has any rights in controlling their Internet services.

So now, after all of this, they said they are going to cap their customers at 250 GB per month total. They didn’t say exactly what the ‘or else’ was; however, they said after twice going over the limit, they would refuse to provide service for a year.

They are actually cutting off their own customers! Of course, this only applies to residential. It is glaringly obvious that the success of services like Hulu and Netflix combined with the major networks offering shows across the Internet is a direct threat to Comcast. They are fighting back by attacking us, the customers.

We are in the process of getting all our TV setup so we no longer need cable. Sure, there are a few shows we watch that can only be delivered via cable, but they certainly aren’t worth the $90 per month bill that Comcast is charging us. That’s for basic cable with HD and an HD DVR. That’s it!

I predict Comcast will lose more and more customers as the bad publicity continues.

Google has a cool new browser they call Chrome.  It is currently in beta, as Google typically does, but it works very well.  One of the big things Google did to make its Chrome browser awesome was to make each tab a separate process.  I’ve always had trouble with both IE and FireFox because I work with 20 to 30 different browser windows open.  Both of those browsers run all windows and tabs within the same process, and eventually wind up overloading the availability of the process.  Also, one hung browser window crashed all of them.  

Not so with Google’s Chrome browser.  Now each tab or window runs in its own process.  If a tab locks up, you only have to close that tab, not every browser window and tab that’s open.  This is fantastic for me as I hate having to close and reopen everything.

They have changed the URL bar to make it friendlier and more functional.  For instance, since I go to http://jacquelinemoody.com frequently, I type just the letter j and Chrome guesses that’s where I want to go.  At that point, I can hit enter and I’m on my way.  

Another really cool feature is paste and go.  If you’ve copied a URL from somewhere and you want to put it in your address bar, when you right-click you get a choice of paste or paste and go.  Since 99% of the time you are pasting it in the address bar because you want to go to the URL, it is quite handy.

One thing people have complained about is Google hijacking their 404 pages.  If someone tries to hit a page on your site and you have the default 404 page, Google takes them to a window and offers these suggestions:

• Go to the homepage of the site
• Search the site using Google Search for the term you used at the end of the URL
• Search Google for the term you used at the end of the URL, with it prefilling the words it thinks you want. 

Now that last search is not necessarily going to use your domain name.  For instance, I have a domain with the word ticker in it.  The Google search window changed the term from ticker to ticket.  I assume it is a more popular term and the ads the end-user will see will pay higher.

I’m not very happy about Google’s apparent hi-jacking of 404 pages.  They do check to see if the 404 page has more than 512 bytes.  If so, then Google doesn’t hijack the page.  This means if you’ve altered the 404 to something meaningful, Google doesn’t take your visitor away.

Because this is an initial release, there are things missing.  One thing I was quite surprised at was that there was no Google bar.  I am quite used to the tools on it and hope they have a new one out soon.

All-in-all, I give Google Chrome a big thumbs up!

In the beginning was The Plan.And then came the Assumptions.

And the Assumptions were without form.

And The Plan was without substance.

And darkness was upon the face of the Workers. And they spoke among themselves, saying, “It is a crock of shit and it stinketh.”

And the Workers went into their Supervisors and said, ”It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odor thereof.”

And the Supervisors went unto their Managers, saying, “It is a container of excrement and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it.”

And the Managers went unto their Directors, saying, “It is a vessel of fertilizer and none may abide its strength.”

And the Directors spoke amongst themselves, saying one to another, “It contains that which aids plant growth and it is very strong.”

And the Directors went unto the Vice Presidents, saying, “It promotes growth and it is very powerful.”

And the Vice Presidents went unto the President, saying, “This new Plan will actively promote the growth and vigor of the company with powerful effects.”

And the President looked upon The Plan and saw that it was good. And The Plan became Policy.