greasy taint

Costco is a wonderful company. They care for their employees by offering competitive salaries and great benefits. And they care for their customers by offering good prices, and good products. And they have their fantastic, no questions asked, return policy. It was meant to be a service to their customer, by following the rarely-followed “customer is always right” policy.

This return policy was applied to all of their products, including electronics. But with the state of the electronics development cycle, its definately at a retailer’s cost, if they offer such a liberal return policy. And costco has learned that the hard way. If I was a real ass I would buy all my electronics (tv, dvd player, laptop) from costco then return them for full refunds when new models come out. But I’m not an ass. Atleast not in this aspect. :P

But I guess enough people are. So they have now modified their electronics return policy to cap it at 90 days. Still a very generous policy. But it makes me wonder if the company will start to tighten up policies one after another in the name of saving money. It would be sad because I see them as one of the big companies that does things the right way, instead of always looking for the biggest profit.

For now I’ll keep my faith in them, and continue to be a member, customer, and stock holder.

Source : http://www.pfadvice.com/2007/02/27/costco-ends-lifetime-return-policy/

Here’s an inventive way of bashing sony for putting out the bloated PS3.

You crazy singing man who has too much time on his hands….. I salute you!

I have not seen the movie myself, but I have heard lots of bad things about it. And here someone has posted a series of scenes from the movie titled “Best Scenes from The Wicker Man” …

Jet Blue’s CEO/Founder issued an official apology via a letter on the website.

And after reading the letter, I do believe that he is geniunely sorry about what happened last week.

And he also released a video apology (see below) to get the feeling across. But, no where in the video apology does he actually say “I’m sorry”. Shouldn’t that have been the main point of the apology?

Also, if I was David Neeleman, to show that this was indeed a gross anomly in his company’s operating procedure, I would make it a big deal and give the passengers of that dreaded flight some largely public apology gifts. Maybe unlimited flights for them for 5 years. Something like that. Use the public spotlight mon! Don’t be a chump.

So I was visiting the folks/friends in the sf yay area this past weekend. And instead of flying up I decided to drive. It was my first chance to really smoosh the gas pedal on my gti.
And thanks to my handy dandy gti computer I am able to present some stats from my drive back last night.

Average Speed : 76 mph (this includes everything from door to door; time at stop lights, driving local, etc)
Total Distance : 394 miles
Average Mileage : 23.5mpg (yeah, not really proud of this one. It was around 26 mpg before I really got on it)
Total Travel Time : 5 hours 14 minutes (not too shabby if I do say so myself)

And there is a speed indicator that I can set on my car, which for fun I have set to 125 mph. I’m happy to say that the speed indicator signal went off about 4 times during my drive. tee hee hee!

Yes I was “THE ASSHOLE!” on the drive yesterday. I wasn’t weaving in and out of traffic (luckily I didn’t need to because of light traffic), but I was passing people. Only one fucker passed me, and it was Mercedes E350. Also it was during the beginning of my drive and I was on the phone, so I wasn’t gonna go crazy.

I have to say I’m very happy with the passing power in my car. Most of my passes went like this :

• Use paddle shifters to drop from 6th, to 5th, to 4th (while enjoying the sound of the turbo)
• Watch speedometer go from 80 to 100 to 110 in a couple of seconds
• Blow by the slow bloke
• Cruise around 110 to 120 for a few seconds
• Go back to cruising around 80-90 once there are cars around me

Mmmmmm. DSG. And that’s with the 200 horsepower and 207 lb-ft of torque on tap at the crank. Now think what will happen if / when I do go get the reasonably prices $600 APR ECU upgrade my car. With the claimed peak numbers of 252 horsepower and 303lb-ft. of torque, I will probably have a suspended license in no time. Mmmmmm

Other highlights of the weekend :

• Meeting mary/danny/adam on my drive up on friday. They were travelling down to Irvine, so I was able to meet them in Lost Hills along I5, and eat at Wendy’s (which by the way isn’t as great as I remember it being).
• Seeing gary and rey on saturday in sf. I thought the most painful part of that day would be seeing gary’s face, but it turned out to be a whole lot more painful. And my jaw still hurts. (I’ll let your imagination fill in the rest)
• Watched Ghost Rider on saturday. All I can say is, it’s a close call between watching Nicholas Cage’s cheesey acting and sitting in a dentist chair while two scary dentists put their tools in your mouth. The graphics might have been cool, but the movie over all did not impress.
• Spending lots of time with my sister in law, nephew and dad.
• Going to the dog park with my bro and his family on monday. We went to Point Isabel park in Richmond, CA. It’s off Central, past the costco, if you are familiar with the area. It was a ton of fun. It’s an off leash dog park, and all the dogs were well behaved and having lots of fun with each other. If you have a semi-well behaved dog I would highly recommend it. You could always go there with your doesn’t-give-a-shit dog and keep it on a leash. Either way, the people are nice, the dogs are cute and it was fun. And costco polish dogs are just a couple of minutes away. You also get great views of a couple of the bay area bridges from there.
• Almond milk tea with boba, and yummy pastries from the chinese bakery around the 99 Ranch store. I highly recommend the Beef Curry Horn.
• Going to the batting cages with my bro. My sides still hurt, but it was loads of fun. And it reminds of how much I liked to play baseball. Must buy myself a mit and find batting cages close by.
• 3 words : creamy lamb curry (Thank god for moms who can cook)
• hot dogs and cherry cokes on a long drive
• The new Muse album, Blackholes and Revelations, on the long drive. My favorite tracks are Exo-Politics, Supermassive Black Hole, Map of the Problematique, Starlight, and Assassin. Check it out!

And today I’m home sick. Figures. Bah!

Not only is Pablo Francisco hilarious, but this fellow, http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Rubix89 , who puts the comedy over anime skits that match the mouth motions and actions. Very well done mr Rubix89 person.

An old lady gets pulled over for speeding…

Old Woman: Is there a problem, Officer?

Officer: Ma’am, you were speeding.

Old Woman: Oh, I see.

Officer: Can I see your license please?

Old Woman: I’d give it to you but I don’t have one.

Officer: Don’t have one?

Old Woman: Lost it, 4 years ago for drunk driving.

Officer: I see…Can I see your vehicle registration papers please.

Old Woman: I can’t do that.

Officer: Why not?

Old Woman: I stole this car.

Officer: Stole it?

Old Woman: Yes, and I killed and hacked up the owner.

Officer: You what?

Old Woman: His body parts are in plastic bags in the trunk if you want to see.

The Officer looks at the woman and slowly backs away to his car and calls for back up. Within minutes 5 police cars circle the car. A senior officer slowly approaches the car, clasping his half drawn gun.

Officer 2: Ma’am, could you step out of your vehicle please! The woman steps out of her vehicle.

Older woman: Is there a problem sir?

Officer 2: One of my officers told me that you have stolen this car and murdered the owner.

Older Woman: Murdered the owner?

Officer 2: Yes, could you please open the trunk of your car, please.

The woman opens the trunk, revealing nothing but an empty trunk.

Officer 2: Is this your car, ma’am?

Old Woman: Yes, here are the registration papers.

The officer is quite stunned.

Officer 2: One of my officers claims that you do not have a driving license.

The woman digs into her handbag and pulls out a clutch purse and hands it to the officer.

The officer examines the license. He looks quite puzzled.

Officer 2: Thank you ma’am, one of my officers told me you didn’t have a license, that you stole this car, and that you murdered and hacked up the owner.

Old Woman: Bet the liar told you I was speeding, too.

Sometimes there’s a lot of crap on ytmnd, but every once in a while you find a beaute. And this is one of them. kudos to the author. Assuming of course, he/she didn’t steal it.

http://wdstw.ytmnd.com/

This looks very cool by the way. I was also recently reading an article about a device that will allow people to fabricate anything at home. This would allow designers, inventors etc, to try things out before actually paying some people to manufacture it and taking half the profits.

This particular video is about a device that allows one to make dishes (plates, bowls etc) on demand. The selling point is that you would not need to wash your dishes. You just melt them back to the acrylric disks, and make more dishes from them when you need. Guys will love this. Plus I can see guys making booby shaped bowls. Or a vagina shaped plate.