I get CNN Breaking News e-mails, and every now and then I can’t understand what they consider “breaking news”. This page will keep track of some of their Breaking News Alerts that I think are a waste of electrons.
Entries in the “Annoyances” category
According to CNN, there were two important breaking news stories today. The first was the emergency interest rate cute by the Federal Reserve, and the second was Heath Ledger’s death. I won’t get into why the second one is not important, but I just wanted to point out that CNN did not have a story on it so I went to one of my local TV station’s sites to see if there was an article on it. There was, and I was sort of interested in one particular sentence.
When you watch English speaking shows, they have the Spanish audio on a SAP (secondary audio programming) channel. How come the Spanish channels don’t have English audio on a SAP?
Why is it that wrong numbers don’t happen at 2pm? Why do they happen at 4am on a cell phone that you’ve never given the number out to people? And why does it happen on New Year’s Day when you were out quite late the night before? In addition, why can’t you get back to sleep once you get woken up by a wrong number at 4am?
When interviewing an ass, would you kindly make sure there isn’t another one in the frame? Thanks.
Is it me, or is she the second most annoying* person, ever? Evidence: “Delish”, “EVOO”, the Dunkin’ Donuts commercials, and she’s just so darn cheery all the time. I really dislike people who are cheery all the time.
* there is no “first most annoying”…sorta prevents one person from running away with the title…of course, she pretty much could run away with it if allowed to.
It’s been 7 days since the start of the holiday season, and the US Postal Service must be loving it. I say this because in those 7 days, 5 of which are home delivery days (I haven’t gotten the mail yet today), I’ve gotten an astounding 18 catalogs. That’s an average of 3.6 per day. Together they’re about 2.75 inches thick, and comprise a ridiculous 1,582 pages.
Forget the fact that they’re changing my zip code. Ignore the fact that they keep changing the stamp costs while I still have a boatload of the $0.39 stamps. Now they’re invading my private life.
I got home tonight and picked up the mail. As is my normal practice, I had my briefcase in my hand and put the mail in the same hand without looking at it. I do the briefcase and the mail in one hand, the left, because it allows me to use the keys in my right hand to open the vestibule door and, once I get to my apartment, my apartment door. It’s worked very well for me for years. Never had a problem until today.
When I hit the third floor landing, I bumped into the cute girl that seems to live on that floor. We exchange pleasantries, and I noticed her eyes darted downward, toward my left hand. I tried to make a little bit of small talk, and I noticed that her eyes kept darting between me and my left hand.
After saying our goodbyes, I finished the climb to my apartment. As I was opening the door, I noticed what she might have kept glancing at in my left hand. There, at the top of the bills and a promotion for Best Buy, was a postcard from Playboy. It didn’t just say “PLAYBOY” on it. No, this postcard had a naked woman on it, covered barely in appropriate places, and large letters that proclaimed that I, JOSHUA MADISON, have been “selected to enjoy PLAYBOY for just $1 an issue”. In addition, I could also get a free DVD.
The only positive thing that can come out of a cute girl in my building seeing that postcard is that it lets her know that I don’t already subscribe to Playboy.
I seem to have done a number on the middle-finger of my right hand. It’s swelled up about as much as it can, and it’s quite painful if any real pressure is applied to it. I can’t clench my fist because of it.
This happened Friday, and since then, I’ve found out how much I depend on it to do basic things in my life, and I’ve had to make adjustments…
- Let’s get the most important one out of the way first. Wiping. I’ve had to make adjustments to my normal wiping technique. This is by far the most disturbing change I’ve had to make due to this injury, especially considering that I’ve used the same wiping technique for as long as I can remember.
- I normally keep my apartment keys in my right-hand pocket. I can’t get anything out of my right-hand pocket easily now, so I’ve had to shift them to my left-hand pocket.
- I can’t play with my Wii (sounds strange, don’t it?).
- It hurts to write. Not impossible, but it’s not comfortable. The interesting thing is that the only writing with a pen I do, in general, is to sign credit card receipts. Typing is fine because there is no real pressure applied to the finger.
- Operating my light switches. Most of my light switches are dimmers and are the circular type, and it hurts every time I turn on a light or turn if off. I never realized that I used my middle-finger that much when using the switches.
- Smoking a cigar. What good is having a 2005 Limited Edition Cohiba if it hurts to hold it?
- Forget about opening a bottle. Even using my left hand to open it leads to the middle-finger hurting while holding it in my right.
Perhaps I should get it checked out?
I went to Chicago on Tuesday, and as I was sitting at the gate waiting for my plane to board, I noticed something that is just plain annoying. I looked out the window and couldn’t help noticing that the jetway was positioned almost right up against the window. On it, in large letters, was the logo for HSBC (sorry for the crappy cell phone photo, but I didn’t have a real camera on me at the time).
Where does the line get drawn on advertising? Are we going to have street lamps festooned with advertisements? What about mailboxes? Maybe crosswalks should have some sort of advertising on them instead of just silly white lines?
What I find interesting is that HSBC would choose that place to advertise. Obviously, it’s a good place because people are stuck sitting in the gate area and will look out the window and see their name, but it really doesn’t make sense to advertise a banking company at that point because people are about to go into a closed environment for hours and I don’t think that banking will be on most people’s minds during that time. I would think something more travel related would be appropriate, but then again, I’m not in advertising so I may not understand the subtle intricacies of how this is a brilliant place for HSBC to advertise.
Eggs come with advertising etched on them, why shouldn’t everything? (in case you couldn’t tell, I’m being sarcastic)
That’s especially true for banks and credit card companies that I’m a customer of.
In today’s mail, I found not one, but two offers from a credit card company and a bank that I’m already a customer of. These offers were not for additional services from the same institution, but for the very services that I already have with them. Even more disturbing is that both of tonight’s offers were addressed to me using my formal name, the same name that I use with their institutions.
How difficult is it for them to do a simple database query that compares whatever list they use for unsolicited offers to their existing customer list? If the names match, and the addresses match, don’t send it. I’m sure it would save them money. I wonder why they don’t do it?
I’d like to get a Wii, but I’m not willing to buy a whole bundle for $500+ and get four games, three of which I’m not interested in. I’m also not interested in waiting on line at the Nintendo store before 7:00 a.m. hoping to get one of the 12 or so that they might sell that day. I can wait for the day that I can walk into any Best Buy or Circuit City and just buy the base $250 unit and the one additional game I might be interested in.
In an effort to find a Wii, I’ve added a Wii tracker to my RSS reader in case someone has the base unit for sale online. This morning, I found out that Kmart has just that. Over my morning cup of coffee, I went to the Kmart site, and attempted to order the Wii.
When I added it to my cart, I was greeted by a message that, especially with my slow-morning-brain, I found quite perplexing.
So how exactly does one go about and order one from Kmart? They have them in stock, but have a limit of 0 per order.
Oh well. Guess it’s not meant to be at this time.
When did they start putting ads on eggs?
What’s next, ads on blueberries?
Peas?
Corn?
This is what happens when your stomach ignores what your brain can clearly see.
I bought this piece of carrot cake from my company’s cafeteria because it looked so good.
The problem is that it didn’t look that great after opening the container…
This week I noticed that the UNICEF snowflake was put up at 57th and 5th. While that was going on, the Bloomberg Tower also erected their Christmas holiday tree. There oughta be a law that holiday decorations can’t go up until after Thanksgiving.
I’m not trying to be bitter or anything, I just think that if we don’t reign it in, we’ll start seeing holiday decorations in August.