z33.org … sharing the love one nibble at a time.

Here’s a picture of a trash truck. You can show it to a child and they will be happy. If, however, you are viewing it because trash trucks make your nether regions quiver and pulsate, well, you can look at it too.

At the suggestion of my friend I am considering purchasing a home water carbonator. My son and I drink a lot of soda water. It makes more sense than carrying 2.4 metric tons of the stuff home from Trader Joe’s every year. Soda-Club shrieks, and leaps to the rescue!

Soda-Club has a selection of soda makers. While I was checking out the various options and combo-deals, specifically weighing the cost of purchasing an extra CO₂ container now, I noticed something interesting. I wouldn’t be purchasing a container at all, I’d be licensing it. The license reads like a classic software shrink-wrap license:

BY OPENING THE VALVE SEAL OF THE ALCO2JET CARBONATOR YOU ARE
AGREEING TO BE BOUND BY THE USER LICENSE.
IF YOU PREFER NOT TO BE BOUND, PLEASE PROMPTLY RETURN THE
ALCO2JET CARBONATOR WITH ITS VALVE SEAL UNBROKEN.

I guess there’s an implicit “and we’ll give you the bird” after that last sentence.

Will 2006 be the year I have to read a three page document before licensing a hotdog from 7-11? I better check the wrapper.

I’ve been getting loads of spam in my gmail account. It’s of the form:

from: kelly hinkleheimer
subject: inert reactive agents

[insert a bunch of snippets from public domain literature]

[insert a bunch of images with spammy stuff]

I thought, damn, someone needs to fix the gmail spam filtering. I dutifully click the “Report Spam” button over and over again. Time passes. It doesn’t get any better. Poot.

Deeper we go. I open up one of the messages and see, much, MUCH to my surprise, that it is addressed to my dedicated Ameritrade email address. You see, every time I hand an email address to some site or some service, I hop on over to my server first and create a special alias just for them* (e.g., supercheaphospitals@foo.com, unpasteurizedworldcheeses@foo.com).

I’m left a little stupefied by this betrayal. My Ameritrade email address is private. It is part of my account data. It is not to be shared. Either Ameritrade sold it to someone who sold it to someone who sold it to someone who spammed the living hell out of me (we’re talking about many hundreds of messages), or they’re leaking my private account details without their knowledge. I’d like to believe that they sold it. In this case they are not utterly incompetent, just corrupt and dishonest. I expect this of large corporations that have lost their way. Still, I can’t know for sure.

What would Bo and Luke do? Hell, they’d jump the General over Ameritrade, hoot loudly, and Ameritrade would slink away with their tale between their legs never to be shitty again.

I don’t have a Dodge Charger, and I don’t think Ameritrade is going to change their evil ways. What am I to do? I could sell off all of the holdings in my Ameritrade account, then repurchase the same holdings in a new account with another brokerage, or I could just live with the fact that I’m chummed up with a dishonorable corporate poopy head. What would you do?

* Spamgourmet offers a variant of this service (disposable email addresses) for free. It’s great. You absolutely must use it.