Yanni Performing in Acapulco, Mexico

Yep, my favorite artist, Yanni, is performing soon in Acapulco, Mexico. I hope he comes to the U.S. soon though. Chances are, thanks to our weak immigration laws, we probably have about the same number of Mexicans here as they do there now.

Justin's New Job!

After months of filling out applications all over town, and many weekly follow-ups, we now have results!

On August 30th, my good friend Justin and I attended orientation at Walmart on Summit Square Blvd. (off of University Pkwy). After much paperwork, videos, and well, getting 'oriented,' Justin is now officially a Walmart Cart Pusher! Now that Justin has a job he can begin saving up for his next vehicle and for his future!


It's been a long ride. First we got Justin a truck, then insurance and a license. Now he's got a job! Awesome! I'm proud of what Justin has accomplished. It hasn't been easy, but he's hung in there and made it happen.

If you have a chance to go by Walmart this week, be sure to say hello to Justin. His schedule for the upcoming week is as follows:

9/6/07 2pm-11pm
9/8/07 12pm-9pm
9/11/07 12pm-9pm
9/12/07 2pm-11pm
9/14/07 12pm-9pm


Also, if you'd like to send Justin an email of congratulations, his email is jcline@bluebottle.com

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,
Cliff

Is AT&T the Suckiest?

While using Google today, I was curious to see how many websites I could find that told how much AT&T sucks. While I was at it, I went ahead and looked up a few other cell phone carriers. Just who is the suckiest of them all? See the results below!

Congratulations to our winner! Sprint is, according to Google search results, the suckiest cellular carrier! There are apparently over 1 million websites describing the suckiness of Sprint. Wowzers! AT&T comes in a very close second with over 829,000 results (must be all those "fewest dropped calls"..lol). And once again proving correct the plentious positive testimonials I've received their customers, Alltel is perhaps the least sucky cellular provider out there. You go Alltel! This definitely isn't a "head-to-head" competition I would be proud of winning.

What does the winner of this competition get? Well, nothing. We should give these companies' executives a big kick in the pants for being suck slackers. Instead we'll just provide gobs of links to Alltel for being the least sucky. Visit them at Alltel.com.

Hopper Relaxes

My rabbit, Hopper. Look how he relaxes. So content after humping my brother's shoe. Ah, the joys of being a rabbit.

AT&T Realizes World is Wireless

What is the deal with this recent AT&T advertising? AT&T is wireless. Nah, really? Good for you. The rest of us have been wireless for like 10 years or so. What a waste of advertising space. Just another example of a goofy slogan brought forth by the drunken executives at AT&T.

Video: The History of AT&T

A perfect example of how rediculous all the company buyouts have gotten in recent years.

VIEW VIDEO HERE!

Goofy Slogans

Who in the world is writing these things? 'Radio Shack. Do stuff.' Do stuff? Huh? Doesn't that describe pretty much anything? What does it have to do specifically with cell phones and electronics? Does this mean you can wash your car at Radio Shack? Or perhaps you can go skydiving while you're there. Anyway, you get the picture. Fact is that somebody got paid to come up with 'Do stuff'. Unbelievable.

This isn't the only goofy slogan I've seen lately. Look for more soon to come, right here on my blog.

Cliff. Write stuff.

Legs or Fingers?

Alright folks here's a little test to see if you're paying attention. Is this a picture of legs or fingers? Click below to vote. Good luck!

Legs or Fingers?

	Legs
	Fingers

  Show results

Another AT&T Blunder

Well it appears that the infamous AT&T has goofed once again. And to think I was just saying in my last blog how they have sucky service! What a coincidence!

I just checked the mail, and my cellular bill from AT&T (previously Cingular) was a whopping $753.22! As soon as I had opened the envelope my heart started racing. Where in the world did these charges come from? My bill is usually between $40-$60 here lately, so I thought this was really weird.


As you can see in the image above, my bill shows (among the many other roaming calls that I allegedly made) that on 7/16/07 I made calls from the following areas:

in Jackson, MS at 8:15pm
in Atlanta, GA at 8:20pm
in Jackson, MS at 8:22pm
in Atlanta, GA at 8:25pm
in Jackson, MS at 9:06pm
in Atlanta, GA at 9:11pm

What amazing travelling I did huh?! According to my latest AT&T bill, I repeatedly travelled over 380 miles in under 5 minutes! I knew my Ol' Blue was a fast old 89' Ford Ranger, but that's really something!

I've obviously called AT&T and after keeping me on hold for over half an hour they seem just as confused as I am. They'll be calling me tomorrow after they've had some time to figure out how this happened. And yes, the lady assured me that they'll be refunding the additional $633 (plus tax, fees etc) they charged me for these bogus roaming minutes.

I've Touched an iPhone...nah nah nah nah nah!

Well, I finally got to touch an iPhone this weekend. Jenny and I were running around town shopping and looking at various odds and ends, when I got the crazy idea to go by an AT&T store and see about handling an iPhone. Well what-d-ya-know, there's an AT&T store right there in front of us. How convenient.

Well let me say that the iPhone is very very cool. I'm not quite ready to trade in my Treo 650 for this phone yet as I would like to see them add some more features in it first. But it is very nice. Stop by a store and check one out. AT&T still has sucky service -- I haven't renounced that opinion. But the iPhone (an Apple product of course) rocks!

The Girlfriend Cage

Ever wonder how nice it would be to have a sturdy cage to put your woman in whenever she misbehaves? Well wonder no more! Introducing the Girlfriend Cage! Available now at The Habitat ReStore of Winston-Salem. Call 1-800-LOCKRUP today.

Removing a Bolt

We twisted, we sawed.
We hammered and clawed.
But try as we might,
And we put up a fight,
The bolt it just wouldn't come off!

Well its turned out to be another adventurous weekend with my good (and once in a while a pain) friend Justin. Yes sir! Nothing like a good sweat and a little grease to really get the blood racing.

Justin has been wanting a trailer for a while now to haul trash and things behind his truck (which I've appropriately dubbed the Justinmobile). Well a few days ago we saw an old rusty one here in King. I called the number and the the guy said he'd take $75 for the trailer. I told Justin I'd give him $30 for helping me on the Muncy trailer (in a previous blog entry). So a few more bucks from his mom, and Justin had himself a nice little trailer.

Now here's the problem. The ball on Justin's truck is only like two inches from his bumper. Every time we've tried to hook up a trailer, we have a very hard time with it because the lock on the coupler (the thing on the tongue of the trailer that connects to the truck) scrapes the bumper. It makes it very difficult to hook up a trailer. Also, Justin's trailer doesn't even have a coupler on it currently, so he's going to have to have one welded on there.

So today we took a trip to my Grandma's house to look for a solution in her basement. There's a myriad of trailer parts in her basement that belonged to Grandpa. Well we finally found something that would work. The plan was to simply take a part off of Justin's bumper and put on the new part we found. Sounds simple enough right? Yeah right. As you read in the poem above, it was anything but simple. Even now the part still remains on Justin's truck. I asked Justin to wait until a weekday so we could take it to somebody with the proper tools, but he insisted on continuing our efforts. So we ended up working on this little project until about 9pm or so. Yet the bolt remains. Slightly deformed, yet remaining. Happy Saturday.

Knight Rider Sightings

As you may know, I'm a HUGE Knight Rider fan. This was of course a TV show popular back in the 80's about a computerized, talking car named K.I.T.T. Well, something you may not know is that all over the world there are fans like me who have taken their fanaticism one step further. They've actually gone out and purchased a 1980s model Pontiac Trans Am and have converted it to look just like the original K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider.

Well I would of course love to buy my very own Knight Rider replica some day. In fact, this past weekend, I spotted a few potential Knight Riders-to-be which I've pictured here. And yes, one of them I even got to drive. It was for sale and I asked to give it a test drive. Awesome! Nothing like the sound of K.I.T.T.'s big V8 rumbling around you. Perhaps someday I'll be able to afford my own when I'm not looking at buying a house ;-)

Outside Primer Done!

Well its been a fantastic Saturday to work on the trailer! The trailer has been sitting up at Justin's house for about a week or so. The rear portion of the trailer which we had sanded but not yet sprayed with primer had started to get quite rusty just from sitting in the morning dew and day-to-day humidity. So I decided that today I would work on finishing the outside.

Thanks to Grandma (Connie Muncy), today I got to work in a nice, cool basement! What a luxury! If you've ever worked on a trailer in the scorching sun, you would know what I'm talking about. It was just plain fun to work on today.

So the outside primering work is now done with the exception of the corners on the very back and of course the inside. I'm not sure yet exactly how I'm going to finish the inside. I've got my choices. One is Rhino liner. Sprayed professionally, this is about $400. It makes for a really nice protective coating, and you can even get colored Rhino liner to match the paint. But I don't have $400 to spend on this. The other option is to get a do-it-myself kit and roll on my own coating. Perhaps I can get a white coating and then mix in some color (the trailer will be 'Coca-Cola Yellow'). We'll see. Plenty to do until then! Until next time...

Trailer Progress

Well this weekend we made some more progress on the old Muncy trailer. The weather in NC has been quite scorching lately, so we've had to work on the trailer a lot at night. Justin and I went by Walmart and bought some work lights (since my brother stole my other work lights), so that we could work at night. Sunday we started working at about 9pm after a hearty meal at the fabulous Dairi-o and worked until about 3:30 in the morning.

We made a lot of progress! In those few hours we were able to strip more of the paint off of the rear of the trailer, strip and prime the wheels, and spray rubberized undercoating on the bottom of the trailer.



The bottom was quite the trick. We actually had to tilt the trailer up by the tongue so that it was sitting on its tailgate. So far we've used up three cans of undercoating on the bottom, and I would probably like to do one more coat just to be sure. We've been through around 6 cans or so of primer on the trailer total, and we still need more.

I've actually done a Photoshop rendering on my computer of what the trailer will look like (hopefully) when we're finished. I would post it online, but I don't want to spoil the surprise just yet. Keep on watching my blog and photos page to see more!

Click here to see the rest of the trailer photos.

My New T-shirt

Hey ya'll check out my cool new t-shirt! I had it custom-made with a logo I designed myself. Nah, it doesn't look that similar to the MySpace logo...does it? Nope, my logo has block-heads...hehe. Gonna wear it to express my controversial view on the ever expanding U.S. population. Oh, and yeah I own the domain name too. Not sure what I'm gonna do with it yet though.

AT&T. We giveth and we taketh away.

Well folks it looks like cellular/wireless services are going to continue to charge you more and give you less for your money. As you may or may not know, I've been a customer of Cingular Wireless since they first started in 2001. Now of course, they are 'the new AT&T'. I now have what they call a 'grandfather plan.' I guess that means it's just old -- kind of like me. Anyway, this grandfather plan, as they call it, is really nice. It comes with 325 anytime minutes, 1000 night and weekend minutes that start at 8pm (not 9pm like most), free text messaging, and several other nice features. And it's only $29.99!

Well, a few months back I received a text message that tells me that I am no longer going to be getting free text messaging. So I call them. I even email the assistant to the president of Cingular. He calls me back. I'm outraged that they're going to take away a feature I've been getting for six years. Wouldn't you be? I mean, why cut it off after six years? How odd.

So I now pay $14.99 extra to add 1500 text messages and 5MB of data to my plan (for internet). Text messages which I was previously receiving for free. Obviously my bickering and complaining didn't do any good. So now I'm up to around $45 per month.

Well, I'll be derned if the story doesn't end there. Recently I called them because I was having trouble sending photos with text messages. Some go through, and some do not. Now 'the new AT&T' is telling me that I don't have the right plan for my phone, my Treo 650 (smartphone). Even though this is the plan that THEY recommended. They tell me that AT ANY TIME my internet, messaging and all features could cease to function (even though they're working just fine now), just because I'm on the wrong plan for my phone. So what's the right plan I ask?

Well here it gets kind of confusing. I've spoken to three different AT&T representatives and they all have slight variations in what they offer me. The first lady I spoke to said that my phone should keep on working just fine. The second lady said I need to upgrade to a $39.99 add-on that would include 1500 text messages and unlimited internet. The third person I spoke with said I would need to upgrade to a $69.99 add-on that would include only unlimited internet, but no text messaging. That's $100 a month to get less service than I'm getting now for $45! Next, the guy puts me on hold and says he has found some 'conflicting information.' Then he comes back and tells me the same thing the second lady told me. Good grief.

So basically from my understanding, the kind of deal you get with AT&T depends on what representative you speak to at the time you call. So if you want a nice new iPhone, feel free to call back a few times until you get a good deal. That or just avoid this silly company altogether.

So why don't I just switch companies, you ask? Well, I called Alltel today. My girlfriend highly recommends them. Turns out that in order to move my service to them, and get all of the features I currently have. I would have to pay about $69 for a new plan. Plus, I would have to re-purchase my nice Treo 650 cell phone, since cellular carriers can't seem to agree on a single compatible cellular technology. I'll stay on the lookout for a better plan. If you have any recommendations, feel free to leave a comment on this post, and I'll be more than happy to check with your carrier!

Related:
AT&T Wireless Users Sue Cingular, Say Service Sucks
CingularCucks.com
Enlightening Travel Report Number One: Cingular Sucks!

Taxes Are Voluntary

It may sound absurd to most of us but the amount of evidence out there is plentiful. I encourage you to research it for yourself! Think this is incorrect? Freedom Law School is offering up to $300,000 to the first person to prove them wrong. Go for it!
Freedom Law School :: Live Free Now!

Cingular becomes AT&T. Eckerd becomes Rite Aid. World domination eminent.

What is the deal with all the merging and buying here lately? Why do these companies have to be so huge? Why don't we just go ahead and give up and make one gigantic store in the middle of Asia or somewhere that carries every item known to man? The boss of this fictitious company could be so wealthy that he would basically own the whole world. He would become our leader. We would bow to his every whim. Oh wait, this sounds a lot like the anti-Christ which is spoken of in the Bible! Enjoy the ride folks, its gonna get bumpy! Ohh yeah..

AT&T. Fewest Dropped Calls?

Make the Call: Do carriers do anything right? - Single Post View - CNET reviews: "... whose advertising campaign was built around the statistic 'Fewer crashes than any other carrier?' Come on! What other industry tries to expand its customer base by touting that it fails less than its competitors? If the best air carrier lost planes as often as the best phone carrier loses calls, the airline industry would not exist. That Steve Martin-John Candy movie would have been called 'Boats, Trains and Automobiles."