A Cup of Joe

Just read this morning that as of yesterday, Compuserve Classic ceased to be. That's a major milestone for a service that had been around for a very long time. Now I didn't realize the old Compuserve still was operational, that was a surprise.

Anyway, Compuserve and I go way back. When I got my first modem in 1986 (a 1200 bps card for my Apple //e computer), the first place I dialed was Compuserve. As I recall, I ran up quite the bill that first month - something like $400. I was addicted to online stuff immediately. As time went on, I was a member of the Sci-Fi forums, and when I got hired a few years later by Apogee, the gaming forums, too. I was all over the place there.

And yeah, if you're a Compuserve old timer, you pronounce the name of the GIF file format like the peanut butter name. That's the right way, not the other way (sounding like 'gift').

Anyway, I lasted there for quite a long time, way past when it was commonly used by people. Basically until the point where the guy at my company who paid the bills asked why I still had that account going. :) My old account of 71540,306 is no longer needed, sadly. I read where you can still use your old email addresses if you wanted, but you probably had to sign up to keep it active. I didn't do that, so I'm guessing mine doesn't work anymore.

So goodbye Compuserve, you were my first.

The Pixar guys are quite awesome - I've said for years they have totally harnased the spirit of what used to be good about old school Disney films. They're also big fans of self references. They are constantly putting in references to their other films, and not always backwards - they go forwards sometimes, too. Like the time in Monsters Inc where Boo gave Sulley a Nemo toy - Finding Nemo had not yet come out at that point.

There is a really good article showing off where several of these references are in various Pixar films. Go check that out here. If you like this kind of thing, you will love this page, I guarantee it.

Anyway, this year Pixar is coming out with their annual new film, this one is called "Up!" As with all the others, I expect a gaggle of injokes, like "Find the Pizza Planet Truck", and "Where's the Luxo Ball?" (the latter can be seen in one of the earlier movie trailers, actually). Anyway, in watching the third (and I think final) trailer (shown below), there's a rather large bird in the middle of it, which appears to accompany the main characters in the movie plot. I'm looking at this thing, and it immediately reminded me of one of the older Pixar shorts.

There was one from 2000 called "For the Birds". It had a bunch of small, mostly annoyed birds sitting on a wire. A larger, stupid bird came up and sat on the line with them.

Anyway, in the new trailer, the "Up bird" looks to be influenced by the "For the Birds bird". It doesn't look EXACTLY the same, but given Pixar's penchant for self-referential characters, it wouldn't surprise me if this is the same bird model they were working from. Take a look, let me know what you think.

Yesterday was a day where Mommy was at work, and Samantha and Daddy were at home. We went out to storytime at our local library, hit the bakery for some stuff Mommy wanted, then came home. We sat there for awhile, and an idea popped into my head. We had talked about having Samantha ride the Dart High Speed Rail Trains. Trains are something I recall from my own youth with my father and brother. As you can see of this pic of my brother and I from the 70's.. :)

So anyway, Samantha & I were sitting at home yesterday, and I just thought - you know, why not right now? We weren't doing anything special at the time, we had talked about doing it "sometime", and we had a few hours to kill before we had to go pick up Mommy from work. So I suggested it to Samantha. She got rather excited about it, but when she said "Are we going to go TODAY?", I said yes, and she got massively wide eyes, and and started jumping up and down going "TRAIN! TRAIN! TRAIN! TRAIN!". It was quite intense. From the moment I suggested it until the moment we were in the car driving to the train station was about 10 minutes, most of which was taken up going to the potty. :)

So off we drove to the train station, and I talked to Samantha a lot about how she needed to hold my hand, and not walk away anywhere. She was asking a ton of questions about what color the train was, whether the driver was a boy or girl, how fast the train would go, etc, etc, etc.. I answered all her questions but went on a lot about how she must hold Daddy's hand. Which she did well with; if we weren't sitting in our seats on the train, she was holding my hand. While I wasn't really concerned, taking my three year old downtown into Dallas was something new, and I didn't know how she'd react. Or how people would react to her, to be honest. But we got to the train station, and went to buy our tickets. Even that was exciting to her. I printed out the tickets from the machine, and said here are our tickets, and she went off again, "TICKET! TICKET! TICKET!". But it was not lost on me the moment we walked over the train tracks and onto the station - this was something that I loved as a child and a family event, and then on my own when I was older riding the mass transit system of Philadelphia (Septa). Samantha got up onto the train without much difficulty, and found a seat.

We waited just a minute or so (our timing was good), and the train took off. Samantha got up on her knees and looked out the window. I spent most of my time making sure she didn't fall out of her seat. As this was her first train ride, she didn't have any knowledge of how to balance her body weight when the train took off, or sped up or anything like that. So that's what Daddy did. But I also was enjoying her just watching things. She would look out the window, look at the signs in the train, the other people. I asked her once what she was looking at, and she said "Everything!". On the first leg of our ride, there was an older gentleman sitting right behind her, he looked to be around 70 or so. He would smile at her, and ask her her name, and would talk to her somewhat, he was a nice joy. I know my child can be bubbly, and that's good in my opinion. But I also know not everyone likes bubbly, so it was nice she ran into someone who didn't mind a three year old looking at him. :)

She got all excited when I told her that the train went under the ground. Not a lot of the rail line goes underground, but there's a part where it does as it approaches the downtown area. She really enjoyed that part - I don't know why as there was nothing to look at out the window - was just black, save for the one lone underground station they have on the line. But she loved it, which is odd, as it is Mommy's LEAST favorite part. So we got out of the tunnel and called Mommy, who at this point was on her lunch break. She was quite surprised to realize that her husband and daughter were in downtown Dallas on a train. But Samantha obviously conveyed how much fun and happy she was, so that was good. By now, I think Samantha wanted to see something else, so we got off the train at the West End Station which is a big transfer station, actually. We walked around a little bit, and posed for a picture that came out QUITE well, it's shown here.

The train in the picture was the same one that we rode down in, and as we were waiting at a light to cross the train tracks, we waved at the conductor, who waved back. Samantha loved that too, and started jumping up and down next to me, which the conductor had to have seen. As we crossed the tracks, I pointed down and said look - what is that (pointing directly at the tracks). She said she didn't know, and I explained train tracks to her, which she seemed intent on listening to me about. Someone else apparently saw this exchange, and appeared to be chuckling in approval behind us, which I rather liked, too. We did briefly walk into a store that sold fruit, I thought about getting her a fruit smoothie, but she didn't seem interested, so we walked back out and sat down to wait for the return train.

We sat on the bench by the curb, and Samantha in the picture above showed what my wife said was "your look - Wow does that look like you". Apparently the furrowed brow look is something I do a lot. But something fun while sitting there. Some kids a couple of benches over were throwing some sort of food onto the train tracks, which attracted a ton of pigeons, something like 30 or 40 of them. When the train showed up going the other way, all the pigeons scattered, and flew everywhere. Samanatha thought it was funny and asked why the pigeons all flew away like that. I told her the other train scared them by making a loud noise, so they flew away. When they came back again after the train left, Samantha kept trying to get it to happen again. She'd sit there screaming "PIGEON! - PIGEON!". When I asked her what she was doing, she said she was trying to scare them because it was funny when they all flew away. I enjoyed that exchange. PIGEON! While we were down there and I had three people make some sort of variant of the same comment, which was "I see you have your valentine with you", or "What a beautiful little girl", or something like that. It never occurred to me that we'd get noticed by people, I just saw the entire exercise as "Daddy wanting to spend some time with his Daughter".

So we got back on the train, and made our way out of downtown. There was a younger woman about 20-23ish who sat behind us, and Samantha waved to her, and they talked briefly. Said woman used the idiom, "How are you doing baby?" to which Samantha replied (somewhat sternly, too) "I'm not a baby!" The woman chuckled and said "I'm sorry!" Was actually a sweet exchange. She seems pretty at ease with talking to random people, which is both good and bad. As we start to venture out into the world, I'll have to teach her limits and who to look out for, and all that. But for now, it's quite good. We had talked about Valentine's Day, and that we needed to get home and make a card for Mommy, but somewhere in here Samantha said we needed to go to a store - she wanted to go to a store on the train. So I got off at a stop about halfway between downtown and back home, as I remembered that the place was supposed to have a bunch of shops. Well, it did, but they were the snooty ritzy kind of things, places we didn't want to (well, I didn't) spend time looking around in. Especially with my leg acting up a bit lately, I wanted to reduce the walking, not increase it. The place did have a a very nice fountain system at the top of a stairwell we went down. Fortunately I had a few pennies in my pocket which she threw into the water. She enjoyed that. She's always liked throwing pennies into a fountain.

We made it back onto the train, which involved a very long escalator going up from the platform initially, and then an elevator back down (as the down escalator wasn't working). By this point, I think the lack of a nap coupled with all the excitement was starting to wear, because she started getting mildly cranky, as the train had to stop at one point. There were construction workers on the tracks we were on, and our train had to wait to be diverted to the track on the other side. At this point there were four stops left till we got back to the end of the line where we had parked. With two and a half left, she told me she wanted to go home. This was borne out by the fact that when we did get to the end of the line, we waved goodbye to the train, and then got in the car. Samantha was asleep within 3 minutes of getting the car moving. She had a blast, but it definitely tired her out.

I suppose the greatest moment of this day beyond the obvious joy my kid was experiencing was the fact that what we were doing was something I recall from my youth at a time when my mother and father were still together. Doing something with my daughter that I too experienced as a kid, and loved on my own (as a kid, teen, and an adult) was great. She's now at the age where she will probably pick up a few things that will stay with her the rest of her life, so to be responsible for putting some of those memories in her head was by far the best Valentine's Day present she could have given me.

I love my daughter.

This was on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. MacGruber is a recent vintage SNL recurring bit, and for some reason I laughed really hard at this (especially the third one). My wife witnessed it, and it's really short, dumb, and it always blows up at the end. For some reason, I really enjoy the MacGruber bits. :)

There's more of them available here.

First off, I hope it goes over in February, and not June. Folks have been saying it's coming for years, the February date has been known for quite a long time now. What are you waiting for, people? If you didn't notice by now, go dark. Meh.

Anyway, the question I have is this. In all the talk we see about the big digital switchover, the talk is that the air wave space that is currently allocated for over the air analog television signals is going to be reassigned for other use. What is going to happen at some point down the road if I plug in rabbit ears to one of my old television sets without a digital converter box? Will my TV set pick up whatever is using that old spectrum space?

I'm sure if it's data, it'll be encrypted, but what if it's used for voice or something? Will my old TV set become the new police scanner radio of the next decade? :)

I got a phone call from my wife today, who decided to give me a report on what Samantha told her.

Samantha said that when she grows up and is an adult, she wanted to come work with "Daddy & Mr. Bryan". (Bryan is a friend and co-worker) When Lynn asked her what she wanted to do, Samantha said..

"Daddy has a second computer in his office, I will work with him!"

"But what will you do there, Samantha?"

"I can type and I will do email, and I can help him play Duke Nukem".

So basically Samantha thinks Daddy's work is a cool place to be. She's never played Duke Nukem, as it's not appropriate for a three year old. But it was quite heartwarming to know my kid apparently idolizes me, as she wants to work with Daddy when she "becomes an adult".

Gotta love that.

I've been playing a lot of Animal Crossing: City Folk lately. I was hooked on this game in the last iteration on game consoles (that being the Gamecube version). This new one is mostly the same, and that's a disappointment, but there's enough small stuff changed that it doesn't feel 100% like the old version. Anyway, I've been visiting a lot of people's towns now. That's one of the new things, you can visit people's towns via WiFi and play on their consoles.

That's cool, as it helps ratchet up one's stock of foreign fruit. The town you play in comes with its own "native fruit". That's the kind that grows wild in your town. For me, that's Apples. There's about half a dozen different fruits the game can have. The others are oranges, pears, cherries, coconuts, and one or two others I can't recall right now. There is a lesser known feature in the game, called a "money tree". Anyway, I mentioned to a few people whose towns I was visiting about the concept of money trees. I wrote this big email to one of them, and decided to post it here in case anyone else wants to know about this.

In Animal Crossing, you dig things up from the ground (or bury) with a shovel you get at the local game merchant's store (that would be Tom Nook). Anyway, as you progress in the game, the various objects have "gold" versions, which are snazzier than the standard ones. They look somewhat cooler, but they have better functions. For example, the gold slingshot will shoot three pellets instead of the one the standard one does.

Anyone who knows me knows I've been a big fan of major league baseball for ages. So it was with great joy that I got ready for January 1st, 2009. That was launch day for the MLB Network, a new 24 hour baseball channel. So I was rather excited to see that launch. Especially given one of the lead guys is Victor Rojas, who left my Texas Rangers broadcast booth to take a job there.

Some (important) background

A little background info first. A couple of months ago I bought a nice 46 inch HDTV. Not necessarily in anticipation of this channel, but this was going to be a benefit. This TV has a TiVoHD hooked up to it - this is a CableCARD device, so the cable goes from the TiVo just to the TV, there's no "cable box" as such. My bedroom has an older SDTV, and a Series 2 TiVo. This TiVo uses a Motorola Cable box provided to me from Time Warner in addition to the TiVo device.

January 1st Rolls Around

So January 1st rolls around, and I find out I have some big tech problems getting the channel (which persist to today). I found I could not tune to the channel. This is Channel 198 here in Dallas. On a TiVo box, you can tune to a channel two ways. Either through the guide, or "manually". On the TiVoHD/HDTV one, if I try tuning to 198 through the guide, it's impossible, as Channel 198 is not listed as a channel that exists. If I try tuning to Channel 198 manually from LiveTV, the screen is still black, and I get one of two error messages saying something like "Channel not Available, CableCARD device may be needed, please contact your cable company". I've been reading online about the problem since, and some information I found on the bizofbaseball website says this:

Reports have also filtered into the Business of Sports Network that some using TiVo players with cable cards are unable to access the channels listed. In the cases reported, subscribers had premium packages. Others, however, have reported that the systems are working properly. MLB Network is looking into the issue at this time. A technical issue has been reported in the past with premium channels and TiVos with cable cards, most notably those looking to watch NHL's Center Ice.

Great. Sigh. So on January 2nd, I went through all the options I know of on my local TiVo unit to reset the channel lineups. No luck. Any TiVo has a screen in the setup options that lists every single channel known to the TiVo service that is on your specified cable provider. In theory, it should match the list of channels available from Time Warner Cable. Guess what? Channel 198 isn't there. There's a 197, and then it goes to 200. Sometimes when a channel is new, TiVo won't have guide information available for said channel, but it will be on the list of available channels as "To be announced". 198 isn't like that - it isn't even a selectable channel, which is why I get a blank. As far as my TiVoHD is concerned, Time Warner Cable doesn't have this channel at all.

The Real Hell - Calling Customer Service

So I pick up the phone and called TiVo Customer service. Got a nice CS rep on the other end, which as good, since we were on the phone for about an hour. She had me walk through some options I didn't know about, she looked up things on her end, but the end result of that hour on the phone with TiVo was that "This is a Time Warner problem". The CS rep told me that TiVo has filed an official problem report with Time Warner over this specific issue I raised. So as far as TiVo was concerned, this wasn't their problem, and lodged a complaint with TWC over it. They told me it can take up to a week for TWC to deal with their lodged complaint, which would be January 9th (this coming Friday). Those who know me know patience is not one of my strong points, so I couldn't just "sit" and wait that long.

So I fumed for a bit, and contacted TWC's online support later in the evening (via their online live chat). I basically talked to the customer support rep. I knew this would be bad, since TWC is not known for their good customer service, and my problem is definitely not your garden variety "can be fixed by a customer service script problem". I was right. The CS rep I spoke with issed a box reset from her end, and it didn't make a difference, I still could not access 198 on my TiVoHD. After talking with her some more, she kept wanting to send out a tech to "fix" my CableCARD issue. I asked her what the point in that was because TWC doesn't officially support TiVo. She said they didn't, and after my rather useless CableCARD installer originally, I said "I do not want a tech to come out at this time", since I couldn't see what they'd do - except make things worse. So Time Warner's response was that it was a TiVo problem.

Great. They both blame each other. That doesn't help me. My TiVoHD/HDTV setup is stuck, I can't get the channel at all.

My Bedroom TV

Now all that above is about my primary TV, the one I want to watch this on. What's interesting about this whole situation is that my bedroom TV CAN get the channel. Further reading on the bizofbaseball site says that there are plenty of providers around the country who have MLBN on incorrect "tiers" or programming packages. My first thought was perhaps my account was not setup right to get the channel. So I check my bedroom TV. Guess what? I can get it. If I bypass the TiVo here and directly change the channel on the cable box, I can get 198 - MLB Network is there. So I know it's not my account not having access, it's some tech problem with my living room TV/TiVo. The bedroom TiVo does have 198 listed in the list of available channels, so I am able to set up recordings on my Bedroom TiVo.

TiVo & Tribune Media

I cannot do it "properly", though since the TiVo service does not know about Channel 198 on Time Warner Cable in Garland, TX for my zip code. Zap2it is run by Tribune Media - the backend company that provides the guide information that TiVos use in their service. So I went through zap2it's feedback mechanism, and told them "Hey, 198 is missing, where's the lineup"? I sent the same kind of request to TiVo as well. What I was hoping for is for TiVo's service to recognize 198 in my Garland, TX zipcode. My thinking was that if it showed up as a channel in the TiVo service, it might kickstart my TiVo into thinking the channel is there, and allow me to select it. However, as of January 5th, the channel is not there on either of my TiVo units. Likewise it is not on the guide info at tivo.com nor at zap2it.com. So TiVo (the service) doesn't "know" about the channel, despite the TiVo CS rep's statement that they did.

Summing up - what to do now?

So that brings me to now. It would appear that the statement over on bizofbaseball about TiVo/CableCARD devices and these kinds of channels is true. While my TiVo service doesn't know about the channel, I was able to tune to it via the Motorola cable box in my bedroom, so it is not an issue with my level of account access. I spent some time talking in a thread on dslreports.com about this issue, and others have confirmed that it is available in my area, it's something local with me. I hate those kinds of problems, since it's harder to get a CS rep that cares enough to learn your problem and really deal with it - most CS people just want to "script" you off the phone.

One curious thing, though. If you look at the listing of channels for TWC in Garland, TX, Channel 198 shows up as uncategorized. I wonder if perhaps the channel is mis-categorised at TWC's end, and if so could be contributing to my inability to see the channel on the TiVoHD device.

I'm at a loss. I'd be far more mad if I couldn't get it in the bedroom. Since I can get it there, I am manually recording things in there, and then transferring them to the TiVoHD and watching them out in the living room. It's certainly not optimal, since the programs have things like "Ch 198 - 6PM" as program names, but at least I can see the channel.

The final little turn of the knife in all this is that Time Warner is not even OFFERING the HD feed for MLB Network. According to MLBN, any carrier that carries MLB has the option to offer the HD version of MLBN - but TWC in the Dallas area is not even making it an option. That's lovely.

UPDATE FRI JAN 9: When I came home from work, my wife said that at some time in the middle of the afternoon, MLB 198 came on the TiVoHD unit. In addition, Channel 96 came back on, too. Whatever was going on at the headend appears to have been fixed. So, w00t! Whether it was my multiple calls to TiVo, or my complaint to TWC, I have no idea, because it just "came on", no tech ever visited my house (fortunately).

Now if TiVo would get some guide info in there...

UPDATE THU JAN 15: There's finally guide information in here now about the channel, so all is well. I'm just annoyed it took so long to get it all working. Not annoyed enough to get truly angry about it, after all it is just a TV channel.

Yesterday, something really cool happened with Samantha.

My wife took her out to see a movie yesterday, and out in front of the movie theater is a rather large fountain. Samantha has always loved throwing pennies in there, and making wishes.

The cool part is that Lynn said that Samantha was washing for things like "Daddy's leg to feel better", "For a healthy new baby", for "A baby sister", "for mommy not to feel sick", things along that line. No toys, and NOTHING for herself. That's really quite amazing that a kid won't ask for anything for herself.

Wow.

This was a great movie in the theatres (saw it there three times), and I cannot recommend it highly enough when it comes out on DVD in a few weeks.

Ordering Links:

Wall-E (Widescreen Single-Disc Edition)

Wall-E (Three-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy)

Wall-E (Two-Disc) [Blu-ray]

Wall-E (Three-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray] + Digital Copy

Once again, the fact that the United States has its collective head up its ass over the issue of sexuality comes up again, and has made me want to rant about it. This time it raises it's ugly head in the form of the August 2006 issue of the free magazine Baby Talk.

The cover story is about breastfeeding. They chose what I felt to be a totally appropriate subject, that of a baby breastfeeding. Check out some of these quotes from an AP news story I read on the subject.

"I was SHOCKED to see a giant breast on the cover of your magazine,"

"I was offended and it made my husband very uncomfortable when I left the magazine on the coffee table."

Several readers said they were "embarrassed" or "offended" by the Babytalk photo

"Gross, I am sick of seeing a baby attached to a boob," the mother of a four-month-old said.

Another reader said she was "horrified" when she received the magazine and hoped that her husband hadn't laid eyes on it.

Excuse me? To these women who are complaining about this.. Uh, what the hell do you think your breasts were designed for? This is their designated function. What the hell are you complaing about? Breastfeeding is about the most natural thing a woman can do with her body (other than actual childbirth). This is a thing to be celebrated, not shunned. Come on people, get a grip. I don't see you people complaining about things like this in the public. These pics are meant for titillation's sake. Not actual breastfeeding. At least the Britney Spears pic is a "motherhood" thing - which means.. Uh, oh. She could be breastfeeding later on - HIDE THE KIDS!

Christina Aguilera shopping in public	Pam Anderson in a PETA protest window display

OH NO! A naked pregnant Britney Spears!	Lindsay Lohan dressing slutty in public

Oh, and to the woman who was saying her husband was uncomfortable.. the only reason was because YOU were in the room. Trust me - men are never uncomfortable at looking at breasts. What a collective bunch of twonks these complainers are. I suspect these people who are complaining about half of the side of a breast on the front of a magazine are the same kind of people who complained about this:

So, if you're like me, in honor of all these people complaining, support your local women's health clinics and support breastfeeding. It's about the best thing a woman can do for her child. Women should get MORE support for wanting to breastfeed, not less - and certainly not puritanical middle aged women from Kansas giving people who try and push the issue any crap. These complainers should just go back to the hole they came from and just shut the hell up. Nobody with half a brain cell wants to hear this kind of nonsese. Immerse them in some of the European cultures - their heads would probably explode.

If you'd like to read more about breastfeeding, here's a few links for you:

• Google Image Search on breastfeeding
• Wikipedia entry on breastfeeding
• The Beauty of breastfeeding calendar
• The actual article from Baby Talk magazine that goes with the magazine cover image above.

You should also support Baby Talk Magazine. It's free, but you should make sure any new parents you know of get this. At least the bruhaha hasn't scared off the magazine from saying they'd do it again.

UPDATE Oct 2008: W Magazine has fanned this controversy again by having Angelina Jolie on the cover of their magazine, breastfeeding. It's actually a fairly tasteful picture - it's not overly sexy, yet still shows how beautiful a woman be doing this. Yes I'm a guy, and yes, I like looking at breasts, but Jolie has a really great smile here, which is the focal point of the picture to me. Of course, the same zealots who freaked out about the Baby Talk picture will probably freak out over this one. These people were probably not breast fed themselves. Yeesh.

Below is the the full AP News Story that went with this original post in August of 2006:

Update:

I've been making use of the policy below for years, but I had read this past week that it was discontinued on September 1st. This is a major bummer to me, as it was a great deal which I've gotten much money back from. Perhaps that is the reason they stopped doing it. I wrote to Amazon Customer service earlier this morning and inquired if it was the case, and this is the disappointing email I got back:

Hello from Amazon.com.

Thanks for writing to us asking about post-order price policies for items purchased from Amazon.com.

While we don't always beat the best available price on every product, we do offer deep discounts on many thousands of items and cannot offer discounts after your order is complete.

From time to time, prices on some items will change due to special offers from suppliers and manufacturers or our inventory and sales volumes. When we can offer a lower price for new purchases, we will.

You may have been able to take advantage of post-purchase discounts on orders you placed in the past, but that policy was discontinued on September 1, 2008.

I am sorry this may disappoint you.

Major bummer. :(

Original Post from August 24, 2006:

I've been an Amazon.com user for a long time now - my first order with them was placed on June 24, 1997. I could probably figure out how much I've spent with them over the years, but I'd be afraid to. :)

But money is why I'm writing this short article you're reading. Being a long time member of Amazon, I was surprised to find out earlier this year that they have a 30 day price guarantee policy. I don't know what Amazon officially refers to the policy as, because it's not mentioned in their help anywhere (that I could find). However, if you notice that Amazon.com drops their price on something after it's been shipped to you, you can write them and request a refund in the amount of the difference, and they'll do it. It is internal, it's not like they honor a lower price anywhere (say at buy.com), but it works internally. At least that's how I understand it to work, anyway.

It doesn't matter how small the amount is (I've written in for as little as 8 cents), they'll give it to you provided it's within the 30 days (after it ships, I believe). Anyway, what you do is go to Amazon.com help area, and select the "Refunds" option in the "Returns & Replacements" section. From there, select the "Contact Customer Service by E-Mail" option, and then "Refund Inquiry" from the dropdown. From there you are presented with an interactive list of your previous orders, you find the one with the item you want the refund on, and then you are given the option to type in a message. That's where you actually ask for the refund. Make sure and mention the 30 day Amazon price drop policy.

It's a little bit of a hassle with all the clicking to ask for the refund, and you have to keep an eye on your orders for 30 days after they ship, but the way I look at it, if they're going to give me money back, I'm gonna take it - even if it is just eight cents! Make Amazon pay you! :)

I also tried this at Amazon's UK store, and it worked there; I don't know if it works universally at all their stores (amazon.ca, amazon.de, amazon.jp, etc), but it does at these two.

I don't often talk about politics, mostly because I know the kind of conversations that usually come after it. They're generally not good. However, I feel compelled to say something.

PEOPLE THAT VOTE FOR SOMEONE BASED SOLELY ON THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN OR THEIR PARTICULAR GENDER REALLY PISS ME OFF.

I know way too many people who were voting for Hillary Clinton just because that person happened to have a pair of breasts. I know too many people who are voting for Barack Obama merely because his skin color is not the normal color for a US politician. That just irritates the crap out of me, and makes me feel that they don't take their politics seriously. Now I'm no political expert, but I do take my vote a little more seriously. You won't see me jumping up and down in the aisles, saying "Look - there's an overweight white guy - I'M VOTING FOR HIM BECAUSE HE'S JUST LIKE ME!" If you base your vote solely on a person's gender, or their skin color, than I think your vote should not count. Take it seriously, people.

Now if someone likes Obama, or McCain, or Sarah Palin, or Joe Biden, or any of the other fringe candidates who will get like 500 votes tops nationwide, I don't have a problem with that. Provided you like them for some reason like "I like their policies", or even "I don't want to vote Republican". I'm OK with that. *NOT* becuse of gender or race. Come on, we're supposed to be better than that.

Having sad all that...