Tag: Money

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More coffee….. We all need it some days.

Since I’ve moved into my new place, I have a conundrum for the ages.  As a drinker or better said a former drinker of outside coffee because I was too impatient to wait for the coffee pot , have the coffee cool down than make it into an iced coffee. I’ve bought coffees from almost every major company that served iced coffee.  But as the years press on and the coffee gets watered and cheapened its getting very hard to make a choice , Now i can’t blame the companies , Its more over the franchisees . There are problems all around, They have crazy employee turnover and skip on machines in order to earn more money.

stooges-1

Formally, You’d have well trained employees that could manipulate the machines , now they just do whatever the hell they please when making coffee. For the milk and cream containers they have straws that need to be cut to a certain length , You just do not see that anymore, also the portioning has gone fucking nuts. Dunkin Donuts for explain if you ask for extra sugar , You summon the Brimley god and have to sign a contract.

WilfordBrimleyI’ve said in other post that i’ve sort of cracked the enigma code of ordering from dunkin donuts, if you look at the receipts they do not list regular sugar/ Medium sugar /Extra sugar/Extra super Diabeetus sugar.  If you watch the cash register when you order a coffee you will see the coffee droid press the Sugar button with a fix amount of sugar 1 2 3 4 5 6 sugars normally, I’ve seen these go higher. For the poor souls that do not know this system and ask for extra extra sugar they normally get this in there coffee!

SugarThere maybe a dunkin donuts under that pile! After they get a bulldozer to check where it is .

Honey Dew on the other hand 95% of the time they are fairly good repulsing the Brimley god away, Even asking for extra sugar the does not quake with the Eventual resurrection of the Brimley god.  On a rare occasion at honey dew though you will get a new worker that makes the mistake of it but they are whipped tortured and appeased to the brimley god so he does not rise. My only problem with honey dew these days is travel time. I walk or ride my bike so its a little bit of a huff to get to my preferred coffee. Though my bike was just stolen not too long ago. So my options are not really that great right now due to limited travel and health issues and being disabled does not help me get a bike .

imageccsStarbucks ….. Is …. Special , there is no way about this, they are just damn special.  The last time I attempted getting coffee from there was a failure on all levels. Ten monkeys on miralax had a better chance of getting my coffee, I walked in thinking hey no line, A guy working on a particle physics book and 5 workers…. I thought to myself “this just might work” The person in front of me ordered a simple coffee and I thought this will be quick.  I have no idea of the mental breakdown between five workers and two customers could reach critical mass this easy. So after standing around watching these coffee baristas in action, THis is where all things started going down hill. Out of the 5 coffee droids 4 had short outs and the register droid was broken as well. The order was made and from Cashout to coffee serve was longer than 10 minutes. I have never seen so many question in my life about an order and I tried to be patient. While Starbucks is a bit higher in price i was  ready to pay the premium to avoid Dunkin Gonuts.  Wrong move there, I should of just rolled around in coffee grinds while forcing K-cups into my eyes. I ended up leaving ten minutes into this exorcize of watching how coffee is made by professionals.

 

imageszzThis was the final straw, I’ve gone to making my own iced coffee. Sure it has a learning curve, but the money savings are excellent. In 3 weeks i’ve only bought myself coffee outside the house 2 times and both were goooooood.

bruce-almighty-its-goooodYou can make your coffee any damn way you want it . Even if you want nuclear death coffee or coffee that you can mess with genetics with and rewrite the base of the universe. Overall i’ve spent 10 dollars on making my own coffee and its worked out really well.  I keep perfecting  my coffee to the taste i want. which is pretty much Stronger than all of the coffee shops aaround without tasting like burnt donkey ass (starbucks) Coffee Flavored Water (dunkin)  Or A fairly ok Coffee for day to day that i miss (Honey Dew) .  But the savings are extreme by making your own coffee…. I’ve likely been saving somewhere around 5$ a day by avoiding coffee shops.

 

Note: this post was made at 4:30, I’m half brain-dead.

With a new place to live i am testing more ways to make coffee and trying to replicate drinks from coffee places and see what I can come up with.  I have pretty much nailed down iced coffee to perfection of what i want.

 

In two and a half weeks my wallet is also noticing that i am saving money on my attempt to make my own coffee,  From my own math so far in 2.5 weeks if i had gone to a store for coffee everyday I would of spent over 70.40 in coffee , Thats fucking insane,  Since I’ve started this i’ve spent less than 15$ for coffee and still have half a bag left.

I am curious to see where this goes and see how much of a savings there is by the 21st of this month… Lets see…

Coffee post to follow up shortly!

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Wells Fartgo and the idoits who run it and shake down old people.

It’s been awhile since i have typed up something on here and I’ve made it a point to catch up and get something on here.  I’ve been dealing with a mortgage company from hell or pretty close to it and, it does take a lot of time.   I’ve tried to reason with this company , I’ve tried pleading , I’ve even tried to get them to realize this mortgage was flawed from the inception. It’s gone to the point of throwing lawyers at the bank and seeing if they will listen, Ironically they are trying to play deaf, dumb and, blind to said lawyers.  Rather than replying to any request the lawyer sends out they in turn reply to us and try to scare the hell out of the people in this house by sending people to “check if the property is occupied” it is alright.

The first instance of these so called inspectors ended up with a man trespassing on to the property and recanting on how he “beat his son and went to jail for breaking his arm”.  he’d also went on about responsibilities and such to my mother, I was not home at the time and It only was made known a few days later to me.  Now fuckstick stuff like that and being a representative of a large company hiring thugs sounds like something out of a movie plot that Brian De Palma would direct. That said alone it is a threatening posture to take . he Was told to leave the property and while being told he continued to keep taking pictures of the yard inside the yard and inside the garage. Now I don’t take nicely to people trespassing on my property nor masked threats, You don’t treat people like they are shit nor to you recant your life as a criminal when you’re representing a company. Calls to wells fargo went unanswered or passed off to different departments, and treated as if it did not happen.

The Second incident took place Not more than a month later. Again a person trespassed into the yard and was either looking around or otherwise , When confronted he went to his car and sat in the car with the windows up, when confronted the person would not identify who they are and what they were doing. After a momment that person put down there window and said “HI” and than pulled out almost hitting the person trying to get some identification from this person to who and what they were doing, since all they leave on the house is an envelope with a phone number in it. unknown to asshat whom almost hit someone he has been caught on camera and pictures exist of the incident.

I was livid and called the number in the envelope and asked when since wells fargo was trying to corner the market on murder, to which the person said sorry and said there was nothing that could be done since it was a third party , My ass…. They are hired by wells fargo and they control what these little droids do.  Its nothing short of bullying and scare tactics in order to scare the people whom have mortgages with the company, I’ve fought my way through this and if i even started on the fraud that wells fargo has done I’d have to rename this site Wellfargofraud.net.

It has got to the point where if i call my own mortgage company they will not talk to me in ANY details about anything other than pay us money , if you want information from us its Subpoena only.  I was forced on to the mortgage, I was defrauded on the Initial application and since 2008 I’ve been trying to confront this issue to which wells fargo(wacovia) has categorically ignored any and all communication from me and will only talk to my mother.  to this end I’ve sacrificed almost any credit i have in order to keep this house due to this scam of a loan.  Wells Fargo/Wachovia/World Financial has got away with defrauding almost every American out there and with the foreclosure fraud settlement they have basically got away with murder without as much as a slap on the wrist.  36 billion is a drop in a bucket the size of china when it comes to how much they have invested into derivatives / oil / securities and everything else.

I could write all the issues i’ve been having in this post but I think I’d overrun the internets bandwidth in doing so with this company and how they treat people. So I will save it for another couple of posts….

 

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Phone Fun MMXXIV – thank you sprint….(nexus S 4g)

After Much Dealings with replacing my phone more times than the amount of explosions in a Michael bay movie, Sprint has worked with me and I have gotten away from HTC..

After going back and forth with the executive customer care since my phones kept having issues. they offered to restart my contract and pick up a phone at new contract cost, which was alot better than returning phone after phone. I tried to get a brand new EVO in hope of getting a phone without issue.
It just seems sprints flagship phones from the refurbished end are TERRIBLE.

From the B spot to random reboots and bad sound…

I wondered if HTC’s release products are the same – there is no way quality control should of ever let these phones back on the market. A refurbished phone is like a repaired car, It should look and act like NEW..

Anyways I am fully done with HTC.. the only way I’d use one is if one was given to me…

well, This time i’ve gone with a Samsung… though, The second phone problem going back to Phone fun 3 was a samsung.  This time I’ve gone with a Samsung Nexus s 4g

Now in previous post I’ve had my “Requirements for my phone”.

  1. to make calls –
  2. The Phone is configurable
  3. good battery life
  4. add/make ringtones
  5. Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
  6. Durable

Basically The nexus S is as follows.

  1. This phone makes calls and does it well with one small stipulation.. in some areas the antenna for the phone is lacking.
  2. Configuration on most android phones is your mileage may vary.. but this phone you can configure it pretty much ANY way you please… rooting is fairly simple. reflashing is simple.
  3. This point Really needs a to be explained, since any smart phone will not hold a candle to a “dumb” phone , On average a smart phone lasts about 1 day on a decent charge. The EVO on average would require charging after about 18hours. The nexus easily passes the 1 day marker and most days it gets close to 2 days before requiring to be charged.
  4. on android phones this is a dead simple process.
  5. Android Market has all kinds of applications- but, Its now not cost … but moreover privacy with apps now.
  6. While this phone feels very light its fairly durable. the EVO in comparison weighs alot more.

So far  this phone has served me extremely well .. and hopefully (knock on wood a tree or something) I will not have any issues with this.

Im leaving this post fairly short.

Hopefully I will not have to go back to this post and make phonefun MMMXXXVI

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Phone fun CDIV: WTF HTC?!

SO………………
Yeah..
IN the last issue of phone fun.. it actually turned out to be not so much phone. err fun….. well the Story might of stopped if it hadn’t been time for a new contract and me wanting a new phone due to the horrid life of the HTC touch. The HTC touch at the time i thought was a good phone but the thing is those phones seem to SUCK. I had gone through 11 or More HTC touches.. Now in the end Sprint made good on there end and offered me a HTC Diamond to make good. the HTC diamond was a much better phone.

Figuring my contract was up in 2010 , I figured I’d start with a brand New phone the HTC EVO, funny enough I didn’t even pre-order the phone I figured i’d goto the store and buy up the phone and they didn’t have it I’d wait. I went in to best buy On the day before the phone was due to be released and tried to pre-order the phone which didn’t work so well since the pre-orders we’re filled as of that day , So I was told to come back at the crack of opening at best buy, they were actually opening early that day to sell the phone. so on June 4th i got out of bed at the crack of dawn and headed out to best buy , Waited At the entrance and was told that it may not be possible to get the EVO , well since i was the first person in line which upped my chances, I got in the store first to find out they had only 2 EVO’s being sold on the floor and the rest were filled in as pre-orders. I was thinking Yee-fucking-ha as I got to the Mobile area first and started filling out the paperwork for the phone. The guy who was behind me was also in line heard the same thing i heard about 2 phones and thought i was going to buy both. Even if i wanted to i couldn’t.

But Happy i had the phone I walked out the door with a day one release phone and was Happy … Till about 6 months down the line. I had gone to the local store and was buying soda – I had been using the phone as a music Player after a bike trip and was thirstier than a man lost in a desert on mercury. So i took the phone out to shut off the music and while trying to manipulate the phone it happened….
The phone dropped and it was like slow motion. in a last ditch effort i grabbed the earphone plug…. Bad mistake… almost as bad as playing with a flamethrower in a gunpowder factory. As i had the cord thinking i was saved the phone stopped for what seemed a moment and the earphone jack disconnected and snapped the momentum of the phone Screen down to the cement … FUCK , I stirred at the phone for a moment like a dead animal not wanting to know if it was truly dead. After getting some courage and picking the phone up the worst of my fears were confirmed . the screen was smashed and only being held together by the screen protector. Well, the second thought swirled through my mind as to “AH HA , I have insurance.” so i picked up the pieces and headed down to the repair center , They quickly replaced my screen and i thought i was on my way again.. wrong…

Trip 1 phone 1:
WHen they had replaced the screen they goofed it up by somehow putting what seemed to be bad glass on the screen which was causing pressure on the LCD making the colors go all LSD on the LCD . I brought it to the original repair center and they said they would take a look at it. figuring i was in OK hands I left the phone with them to come back 2 hours later. when i picked up the phone sprint claimed to had have replaced the Screen and made sure of everything was ok. but, I did notice something. the Receipt for the back end service area your not supposed to see was in front of me , at the time i questioned the “DNR SENT BACK TO Customer”. not thinking what it meant i had left and was halfway home when it hit me…

DID NOT REPLICATE. FUCK….and behind the screen was the same dust that they had got in the phone from the first replacement.
So… Trip 3 i went back and explained my problems and how they did nothing and they offered to replace the phone. I was fine with that figuring I’d get a phone that was in better shaped than my phone. 2 days later I received that phone. that phone had its own problems Dead pixels and sounding like a constipated cat when getting calls.
Trip 4 Phone 3:
This trip ended up with sprint offering to send a Phone to my house in order to save me the trip of picking it up from the service center, well that was all good except this phone was also in sad ass shape. when you hit the touch screen the colors went into strobe mode and than freaked out………..
So another trip to the sprint repair center
Trip 5:
Again offered another phone i was still sort of happy with the service I’ve received from sprint. So this time it was offered that they would ship a phone from sprint corporate to the repair depot so they could inspect the phone themselves.
Trip 6 phone 4:
Miserable failure…. I had gone down the street and realized this phone had some pretty bad issues too..

In the end of this phone sprint again offered to ship the phone from corporate to my home.
I had asked and was told that I would be receiving a brand new EVO, which I would of been happy with Had i Actually had received on rather than Yet another refurbished problems.
Phone 5:
I ended up dealing with that phone for less than a month when i noticed the screen looked like it was badly put together and it had literally waves in the screen, that had looked like whomever worked on the phone crushed the LCD screen in there hands. The phones when it was off looked phone but when you looked at it it had whats known as the B-spot but about 10 times worse.

At this point I had it with refurbished phones I had it with the EVO. I was sick of running across the state and i was sick of seeing people order replacement after bad replacement of phones. Whatever company that repairs and refurbished the Sprint EVO’s was doing a terrible job. I would not be surprised if they just cleaned the phones up and let them loose into the world. For One of HTC’s flagship phones they made no effort to make these phones aesthetically pleasing for being a refurbished phone.

Sprint or whatever company handles there repairs seriously needs to check themselves for Quality control. there is no reason in the world these phones should be sent out into the wild like they are. Also the costs involved with this is likely crazy.. Replacing a phone 5 times has to has some costs behind it that are expensive.

For now I’ve sworn off HTC. It may not be there fault but after being through so many phones it leaves a bad taste in my mouth…

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The state of gaming.

Ever had one of those days where you look at something and say hmm.  Well, I’ve been doing that for about a few months.  For awhile Now I’ve been wanting to spread out my gaming more than just between the WII and the PC.  Both platforms in my opinion are suffering from bad development and bad companies.   Well, After long thought and wondering if I’d be better off with a Bluray Drive for my PC or Some other upgrade I finally decided against both and went with the black sheep of the decisions.

Continue reading “The state of gaming.”

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Phone Fun IV: A New hope.

In our last episode of phone fun I had got an HTC TOUCH , Well…… That didn’t work out so well. Exactly 360 or so days the HTC touch Starting having issues with the screen and Calls.  Now, from trials and tribulations with sprint I learned the last thing you want to do is call *2 on your phone.  Doing that is like crank calling the deathstar while its in orbit around your planet.  Sprint Over the phone support basically told me I had to buy a new phone. Which I don’t have money I can magically pull out of my ass.   So I did the next best thing, I headed down to a sprint corporate store.  Since I pay my phone bill locally by walking into these stores I figured I’d get a better idea of what to do. After a short talk they sent us down to Boxboro Massachusetts.  They have a repair depot up that way, anyways  after a 30minute drive and a 30 minute wait they told me the phone was shot(radio was damaged).  After a short wait they sent me on the way with another HTC Touch(#2), After getting that home with-in a few hours the audio on that phone sounded like a cat barfing in your ear.   Called *2 and sprint offered to send out yet another HTC touch(#3). They shipped it overnight which was very nice and it arrived on monday.

I had that phone no more than 48hours when the phone would just lock and gave a screen of death, Now I am fairly careful with phones and use screen protectors and such. After wasting 3 of them I was not exactly happy.  That Phone went back to sprint. To make a long story short, I’ve gone through alot of HTC touches and as Far as my last post about this phone in 2008 . How does the phone rate up?

A bit of a learning curve which kind of surprized me but none the less I like it so far. As far as my requirements for a phone

Requirements for a Phone

  1. to make calls
  2. The Phone is configurable
  3. good battery life
  4. add/make ringtones
  5. Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
  6. Durable

Well… After a year with one phone and 1 to 2 months on 4 others.

1 The phone defiantly passes on. For a refurbished HTC-Touch that is debatable.

2. Again you can’t knock the touch on this, its extremely configurable once you figure out the interface.

3. battery life… That is actually pretty good.  Although using the GPS Or other intensive options I would recommend a car-charger.

4. You can make ringtones till you puke with this thing rather than jumping through hoops trying to convert soundfiles into strange formats.

5. As Far as applications go, you can find most of the common apps you need on the phone although I’d recommend downloading Google maps. With enough looking you can find pretty much any app you want for the phone but, this is where i’d give the Iphone or palm pre a small advantage with an “app store” for centralized buying of applications although the Iphone is more like Locked into the app store which I believe you can not install any 3rd party apps w/o jailbreaking the phone.

6. Lastly durability I seriously question, as the phone did make it One year. as Far as the refurbished HTC-Touches.. Those sucked ass.. there’s not enough swears in the English language to say what shit the HTC Touch Refurbs are. I may of run into a bad line of them but that is hard to believe that i’d of gone through that many phones.

as far as my current phone, Sprint has offered me a HTC Diamond,  Again i leave this post open till the next time I come back to phones.

As far as sprint is concerned – It seems they are OK as far as support as long as you get the right person.

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Fun With Teva shoes

In the early half of 2009,  I purchased Teva aravalli mens shoes. For years I have worn Teva shoes since Timberland shoe quality went downhill.  Now since I do not drive a car, quality of shoes are important to me.

Around Mothers Day in 2009 I purchased these shoes and out of the store they were very comfortable. but, after a month these shoes started to fall apart which aggravated me.  The glue to hold the sole together had was very inferior due to the fact that the more you walked the more that the sole separated from the shoe.

After I had returned the first pair I figured that the shoes were a fluke.  In june I the second pair and those too fell apart in no time.   Since I needed shoes and the older Teva shoes I had some holes in them, the retailer I bought the shoes from did everything in there power to help me out, but to no avail. finally I had emailed Decker shoes the parent company of Teva figuring that i’d get no response. About a week late to my surprise I received an email back

Hi Mike

Thanks for your email.  Honestly.  We really appreciate you taking some time to connect with us and share your feedback.

First, I’m sorry to hear of your most recent issues with Teva products.  You are absolutely correct in your frustration, we definitely owe you a huge apology and a new pair of shoes.  I hope you will accept both from me and know that I will help in finding a resolution.  Teva prides itself on high performance, quality and, as a sign of our camaraderie, our customer service.  I’m sorry to hear we fell short in these department for you.

As you may know, the Aravalli is no longer available in our current line.  However, I would be happy to replace your shoes with a pair from our current selection.  I would like to offer something like the Riva Leather eVent or the Riva eVent.  You can check both out here.  If these aren’t exactly what you’re looking for, just let me know if something else stands out.

Once you choose a style, please let me know your size and address for shipping.  I’ll go ahead and get these out as soon as possible.  Also, for all of your troubles, I would like to also extend an offer for a pair of our Mush flips.  I know it’s starting to change seasons but year-around these are a definitely a treat for your feet.

Thanks again Mike for reaching out.  We’re glad to hear from you and I apologize again, on behalf of Teva, for your troubles.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

jaime

Jaime Eschette

Teva Public Relations

Goleta, CA

(###) ###-### x1178

 please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

After a few email exchanges Teva sent me a pair of Teva Riva Event shoes, These shoes are amazingly comfortable, A little tight at first but after you break in the shoes. they are very light, durable, and weatherproof. I really have to hand it to Teva/Deckers shoes for helping me out and fixing this problem with my shoes.  Really as far as shoes go I never thought of Teva for shoes, I used to use Timberlands for shoes but, as there quality went downhill I was happy to find this brand.

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Retail Zombies riiiiiiiiiise!

just when you thought circuit city was down and out there website is back up .

the only thing that’s weird is

Systemax Inc., a leading multi-channel retailer of computers, electronics, and industrial products, has purchased the Circuit City brand, trademark, website and other assets. The purchased assets include the customer records of the original Circuit City.

As part of our “Customer First” initiative, and respect for your privacy, you can opt-out of having your personally identifiable information transferred to the new Circuit City. Personally identifiable information may include name, address, email, phone, and purchase history. However, it DOES NOT include credit card data or other personal financial information; this information will not be transferred to us at all. If you opt-out prior to June 9th, your personal information will be purged and you will no longer receive email communications from Circuit City.

although they do include and opt-out form for the data retained by the new company.  but if you opt out, they will expell your data from the site.

compusa was also bought by the same company. the funny thing i’ve notice is they have a twitter feed on the compusa page.  I personally don’t like twitter due to its retard factor of dumbing things down to 140 letters. Media has attached themselves to twitter like its the best thing since sliced bread.

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700 billion dollar bail out stinks.

The Federal government has just authorized a 700 billion dollar bailout for banks, and immediatly I had my concerns about this.  Did the banks do anything to improve there situation , Fuck No. Instead they are right back to there old ways.

Reason i say this, My phone rang yesterday, I look at the caller ID and said what the hell! It was Washing mutaul, Now just for the pure sake of curiousity i answered the phone and was greeted to a Credit Card offer.. WaMu was offering me a credit card which i couldnt help but to inquire more on .

This is seriously stupid.

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“Dunkin’ Donuts lookin’ out for java lovers” Are they trying to find some ….

Or are they kidnapping them and forcing them to forms of torture that they wouldn’t even do in Guantanamo bay? Dunkin Donuts has been known for serving coffee that taste like burnt ass or as bluesteel would say my old cesspool.  Apparently they have a special going on which i find kind of funny since this article states that dunkin donuts is looking out for the java loving joe…

From the article,

When times are tough and money’s tight – don’t despair, Dunkin’ Donuts has your back.

For a moment i thought to myself Interesting but, I read further..

Today the coffee giant ushers in an era of cheap lattes to get you through the afternoon energy slump. Starting this afternoon, DD will offer 99-cent small lattes between the hours of 2 p.m. – 5 p.m., available in caramel, mocha or pumpkin. It’s apparently available for a “limited time only.

Look closely at that… somethings wrong… Oh yeah No normal person can get a coffee in those hours unless they work 2nd or 3rd shift,  I can see that fly at an office “hey boss I’m going to get myself a cheap coffee at dunkin, ok?” as the boss glares at you and says sit down asshat and drink the office coffee. Although I think the final comment was the kicker..

And check this out to read about other ways New Yorkers are cutting costs as the economy crumbles

Just what we need, people tweaked out on coffee as the stock market goes in the toilet or is that goes to the toilet after having cheap dunkin donuts latte?  My thought on this is Ditch the dunkin and either make your own coffee or find a local mom and pop coffee shop, often times there cheaper and will apprecaite your money alot more than dunkin donuts or starbucks would.