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

As someone who advocates a low-carb diet, I don’t get very excited over sliced bread, but I do get very excited over saving some dough! Thanks to the credit report business getting more competitive, I was able to do just that today.  There are a few different free credit score companies that have popped up.  I tried a couple of them and found the one that I really like is Quizzle http://www.quizzle.com.  It is cool!  They give you your Experian credit score free, and you can repull it at any time.  You can also see what’s on your credit report including who did hard pulls on your credit recently.  In my case, I’m seeing 2 years worth of credit pulls.  I didn’t have any three years ago, but had one four years ago and five years ago. Those are too old to show up.  If you have a problem with the data on your credit report, they have a button you can click right next to the item that takes you to an online Experian page that lets you dispute the item.

They have some other really cool tools too, including Read more…

This is a folk song from the 1800s, but we probably knew it from Dinah Shore’s recording of it in 1951.  I always thought it was hillarious.  Here’s the lyrics as we sang them:

(Chorus) Sweet violets, sweeter than the roses,

Covered all over from head to toe,

Covered all over in sweet violets.

Read more…

After previously rejecting Microsoft’s marriage proposal, Yahoo once again rejected Microsoft today saying that they wouldn’t even take Microsoft to the prom.  Yahoo wants to be friends, but isn’t interested in dating Microsoft. Showing a brave face with a single tear, Microsoft said, “That’s OK. I don’t need you anyway,” then turned and walked away with it’s chin raised high.

While publicly Yahoo told Microsoft that selling part of their company to Microsoft was not in their best interest, Yahoo told it’s friends Read more…

I was completely floored today.  Normally when I get a call at home from a company, they’re trying to sell me something.  I’ve eliminated virtually all the sales calls by using the do-not-call list. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the charities or the political call. It also doesn’t stop those who you do business with from calling.

When I got my Chase credit card, they used this loophole to start calling me at home all the time. They wanted me to tranfer balances to them (for a 3% fee!!!), or to buy their junky payment insurance.  I wasn’t too concerned with one or two calls, but they were relentless.  I had to actually have them put me on their own do-not-call list. And they’re my favorite credit card!

I thought something similar was happening today.  I went out shopping yesterday to Guitar Center and got a new set of headphones.  Today, they called. They asked if my new toy was working ok. I was waiting for the upsell - the junk maintenance they tried to sell me yesterday or some deal they were having they wanted me to know about. To my shock and amazement, it never came. They actually called just to make sure I was happy with my purchase!  Now, that’s excellent customer service.

Adobe has entered the growing cloud computing space.  Their flagship Acrobat product, along with Adobe Connect, have been combined into a free cloud product. 

http://www.acrobat.com 
Adobe’s Acrobat website is written in flash and provides access to different products. Here’s their description: Use Acrobat.com to create and share documents, communicate in real time, and simplify working with others.

The create and share documents part is Adobe Buzzword, which is their Google Docs competition. It is also another company with a strong cloud word processing presence completed before Microsoft.  They used Flash to write it, and because of that it doesn’t have the limitations of html. They also have some cool sharing and collboration features, including recent version history, so if someone accidentally deletes an important part of your shared document, you’ll be able to go to a previous version and get the information back.

In addition, they have a version of their connect product that lets you meet live over the web and share your screen with other people.  They also are using this to sell Acrobat. They have an online trial version that lets you create five .pdf documents.

This is a strong cloud computing contender for Adobe and it continues to challenge the desktop model.

The more songs I post, the more I seem to remember.  This one is from when I camped at the YMCA.  Did you ever sing this one?

Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me.
Guess I’ll go eat worms.
Big fat juicy worms. Long slick slimy worms.
Oooey, gooey, worms.

Bite their heads off. Suck their juice out.
Throw their skins away.
Nobody knows how I can survive on
Worms three times a day, ole!

Worms in a bottle - or a box.