The best part is that the pages are numbered consecutively in the following order: upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right.

Now, this difficult-to-read format is bad, but it wouldn’t be nearly half as bad if I could simply opt out of it.  Word 2007 displays a document in two columns if you change the zoom from a position where only one column could fit, to a position where two columns could fit, regardless of whether you recently set the display option for single or dual column.   The setting is ignored as soon as you start to zoom.

This is an infuriating quirk.  Here’s a quick video demonstrating the problem:

And JW below was right, this is whiny. In the video I even have an exacerbated sigh!

Ignoring the fact that I can’t uncheck the final checkbox, take a look at the totally legible submit button (or is it a clear button?):

It gets no clearer when you mouse-over it:

Oh, and it’s not just Firefox, here’s the site in Internet Explorer:

Same legibility problem:

Same mouse-over problem:

It’s almost as if they don’t want you to be able to unsubscribe. Go figure. Boo Mint.com, I hate you.

Mandatory auto renew is a crock and certainly does not aid me as a consumer, it just gives me a chance to forget that I’ve signed up for a product that I definitely only want for one time period. I just find it ironic that Consumer Reports would take such an anti-consumer friendly position considering their general pro-consumer stance.  This is a slimy, pro-business anti-consumer move and they should be shamed for it.

I guess I’ll just get the car issue off the newsstand, ebay, or preferably from my local library.

First the video. Tell me if you’ve ever watched a safety video as enjoyable (and non-condescending) as this one:

Now the safety placards. They, like the video, communicate the same safety information you’ve seen a thousand times, but Virgin America has gone through the trouble of updating the imagery so it doesn’t look like the hypothetical disaster is affecting passengers in some strange 1970s universe.

Here’s the entire Virgin America safety card:

Click to big-ify

Check out the attire on the passengers. And the facial hair. I’ve pinpointed a few examples of what I’m talking about:

Click to big-ify

Attention to minor details isn’t going to convert a bad customer interaction to a good one, but it indicates that someone, somewhere is actually thinking about the customer and trying to make every aspect of his/her experience a better one. That bodes well for everything else. Good job!

This picture is from a Best Buy in Virginia near Charlottesville. The price of a new 3 foot component video cable was $7.99, the price of the “open item” version of the same 3 foot component video cable was $9.99.

What a bargain!

On Tuesday, October 16th I purchased a package of Del Monte Quality brand celery from my local Safeway that contained two celery hearts and one caterpillar. Obviously I only intended to purchase the celery hearts, so the caterpillar could be seen as something of a bonus. A very, very disgusting bonus.

Just today, when I opened the package, I was halfway through preparing a large, tasty salad for myself when I discovered the caterpillar. He seemed quite friendly, though disturbingly slimy and gross. While I might not mind having him as a friend, I certainly don’t want to find him crawling out of my lunch.

Here are some nice closeups of our friend the caterpillar:

And here the caterpillar is in its natural environment, surrounded by half eaten celery stalks and the Del Monte Quality celery packaging.

Before I threw away the celery, and shoved my friend the caterpillar into the garbage disposal, I took one last picture demonstrating my current opinion of Del Monte “Quality” products:

While I acknowledge there may be a limit to how much caterpillar prevention you as a corporation can undertake, if this represents your best I would ask that you hire a series of scientists to invent some sort of an x-ray caterpillar scanner because this sort of thing really, really puts me off eating produce… especially yours.

Thank you.

PS. To see larger versions of these images, click on them and then, once that page loads, click on them again.  

At the time they were constructing a new centerpiece installation which turns out to have been Shibboleth (or, Doris’s Crack, after its creator Doris Salcedo).

The 550 foot long, 10 inch wide crack runs most of the length of the ground floor of the museum and symbolizes… you know… immigration or something. Anyway, people have been toppling into the thing, including at least one woman who believed it was painted on. Whoops! She must have been thinking of these.

Why?