You are here: Home / Archives for Don't Panic

Sustained Panic Archives

An Open Letter to My Senators and Congressmen And All Others Who Say “I support the Second Amendment but….”

January 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Guns save lives. Support the Second Amendment.

I implore you to truly support the Second Amendment by voting AGAINST any new “assault weapon ban,” magazine limits or universal background checks.
On so-called “assault weapons” and magazine limits, the federal government’s own research has found no conclusive evidence that the AWB of ’94 had any effect on violent crime rates.
Further, the dishonesty inherent in the ’94 AWB as well as current proposals for a new “assault weapon ban” rely on confusion and deception by attempting to convince Americans that the firearms to be restricted or prohibited are actually assault rifles, which they most assuredly are not, or… Continue reading »

Filed Under: Random Musings

Protect Your Facebook Privacy the Right Way

December 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Facebook privacy hoax alert!

A Facebook friend of mine — who happens to be a real-life friend, we grew up together, and he was the first boy I ever kissed — recently posted a warning on Facebook about protecting your privacy.
It read like this:
Hello, my FB friends:
Just a reminder and thanks if you have already…… I want to stay PRIVATELY connected with you. However, with the recent changes in FB, the “public” can now see activities in ANY wall. This happens when our friend hits “like” or “comment” ~ automatically, their friends would see our posts too. Unfortunately, we cannot change… Continue reading »

Filed Under: Social media

If You Want Me to Buy From You Again, Don’t Spam Me!

December 2, 2011 by 1 Comment

I did all my Christmas shopping online, and I’m done. Completely done. I have no intention of setting foot inside any retail establishment (other than the grocery store) until after the holidays.
But now I’m getting spammed. Too many websites where I shopped automatically put me on their spam list without asking me, and have been sending me emails daily about their latest specials, new arrivals, hot products, etc.
Look, I engaged in a business transaction with you. I paid you money, you sent me my merchandise. That’s it; the transaction is over. I do not want to be your… Continue reading »

Filed Under: Random Musings Tagged With:

Setting Free The Bears

October 19, 2011 by 1 Comment
A grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park

Are Hannes Graff and Siggy Javotnik running around Zanesville, Ohio, this week?
In 1968, John Irving’s first novel, Setting Free The Bears, was released. It was about two new friends, Siggy and Graff, traveling on a grand motorcycle tour across Austria on their way to Vienna, with the ultimate goal of liberating all the animals from the Vienna Zoo.
Siggy dies on the trip, after crashing into a truck full of bee hives and being stung to death. But Graff carries on with Siggy’s scheme to free the zoo animals. I haven’t read the novel in years, but if I… Continue reading »

Filed Under: Random Musings

Earthlink Pisses Off a Long-Time Customer

September 18, 2011 by 2 Comments
Earthlink pisses me off

I’ve had an Earthlink dial-up account since 1999. My email addresses were @mindspring, from back before Earthlink bought them out. For a long time, my dial-up service was my only means of getting online; there was no high-speed internet where I live. I got satellite internet back in around 2003, but the satellite connection was unreliable — especially all summer long here in Florida, where our daily thunderstorm activity was guaranteed to knock out my satellite internet connection. So I needed dial-up as a backup, which I used frequently. Then a few years ago, DSL came to my neighborhood, and… Continue reading »

Filed Under: Random Musings Tagged With: , ,

China Is Not Your Poodle

September 10, 2011 by 1 Comment
China is not your poodle.

eBay is pinning its hopes for ebay.com sales on Chinese sellers. eBay has stated that it expects sales from large exporters in China to grow 30 to 40 percent annually. In efforts to firm up this expected growth, the online auction house is dedicating teams of staffers to provide customer support to sellers in China, and is also opening fulfillment centers in the U.S. to handle product inventories from sellers in China.
eBay has even struck a special deal with the U.S Postal Service and China Post to help sellers in China send packages faster and at a lower cost… Continue reading »

Filed Under: eBay, eBay & PayPal Tagged With: ,

Launchpad Kills Muscle Memory

September 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Launchpad on Aug. 26 — I have my apps arranged just how I want them.

I’ve been using Launchpad for a couple of months now, and it took me a while to figure out why Launchpad is so difficult to use as an application launcher.
It turns out that after I spent all that time initially dragging apps around in Launchpad and getting them arranged in way that suited me, Launchpad on its own moves apps around within the Launchpad screen.
What happens is, I drag a particular app to the first spot in the third row in Launchpad. I use Launchpad a few times to launch that app. My mouse hand developed muscle memory… Continue reading »

Filed Under: Apple/Mac, OSX Lion Tagged With: , ,

West Marine Destroys Their Own Datafeed

August 29, 2011 by 2 Comments
WestMarine's datafeed with categories and subcategories

So…. I make money from affiliate marketing. That means, basically, that I help people who are looking to buy stuff find what they need, and the merchant they buy from pays me a small cut of the revenue from the sale.
One of my favorite things to do in my affiliate marketing efforts is to use datafeeds from the merchants that I’m affiliated with. I get a download of their product catalog daily, or once a week, and I can pull appropriate products from the catalog to display to my site visitors.
Merchants are all over the board in terms… Continue reading »

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , ,

Free Stuff on the Web

August 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Google Plus: Free But Not Like Free Beer

Overheard at WebmasterWorld, in a discussion about Google’s new Google+ Facebook-wannabe social network and Google’s insistence on people registering with their real names:
If you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.
I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but it’s absolutely true! That’s not anything to panic over, necessarily, but when you’re using free services or free products, be aware that they’re making money off of it somehow.
If the money isn’t coming out of your pocket, then it’s coming out of someone else’s pocket. What they’re paying for is your eyeballs… Continue reading »

Filed Under: Google, Random Musings, Technology Tagged With: ,

QR Codes: I Want Them Everywhere

August 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment
A QR code can contain a web address, an email address, a text message, or other information.

I’m such a Luddite! I was only vaguely aware of QR codes — Quick Response codes. I had heard of them, and I had seen them, and I knew you could somehow embed information in them. But that was the extent of my knowledge.
Well, I finally read up on QR codes, and now I wish that they were ubiquitous.
A QR code is a sort of two-dimensional bar code that can embed textual information, a URL, an email address, an SMS message, and other types of information directly into the code. Anyone with a smart phone that has a… Continue reading »

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With:
«Older Posts