This was supposed to be mainly news about our novelty/oddity websites, and the novelty industry in general,
but then I got way into novelty music and set up Restless Mouse Radio, so now there's links for that, plus I post the ocassional joke, and, well,
it winds up like most blogs... a hodgepodge of nonsense.
Fortunately there are topic tags so you can find relevant posts easily.
And so it begins... WAMU stuff
I almost made milk come out of my nose when I saw this on eBaY... I reckon they should have planned for rainy days instead.
My sister is concerned about her savings at Washington Mutual. I set her straight, her money is federally insured to 100 grand, and between me, her, and everyone on my street, except the Pederson's on the corner, couldn't come up with 100 thousand dollars. So it's not really an issue. I wonder how many other people do not know about FICA? I think it says something about that right on the bank door.
I just looked and they have 176 Washington state WAMU openings posted at Monster.com - One of the openings is "Operational Excellence Black Belt" which is kind of cool, but how would they be able to lay that guy off later? You would get your ass kicked.
I took Daphne to the BECU annex at the Albertson's so she could open a savings & "checking" account. I was going to have her get checks too but the teller (?) said that a lot of people don't get checks anymore, since you can use "online billpay" and BECU will send a check on your behalf, free of charge.
Upon perusing my checkbook, I see a few instances where that wouldn't work; checks mailed that require a detailed explanation or a copy of the original invoice, such as to The Jethro Gazette (for multiple subscriptions) and the Herald (Special price, although I am not going to renew my newspaper subscription because they pulled "One Big Happy" from the comics) Or written on behalf of someone else, as for Daphne's yearbook.
Other than that, I might have abandoned the checkbook entirely.
Some people are abandoning their land telephones in favor of those horrible annoying intrusive tiny-handset tiny-button cellphones, but I will give up my land phone when they pry the handset from my cold dead fingers.
It was bad enough when we all gave up the rotary dial. I kind of liked the whirrr-clickclickclick. It gave you time to look at the next digit, and think about what you were going to say. I think I will get one on ebay.
We started the pages with the buy-now buttons on TheRestlessMouse.com because we needed Google Checkout capability.
When you get to the cart, either the PAYPAL or GOOGLE checkout buttons can handle your Visa, Mastercard, Discover or American Express card, safely and securely. HOWEVER- Google Checkout orders get 3% off (for a limited time). Use the coupon code "restless"
We can do this because Google doesn't currently charge credit card transaction fees. You would think that the big banks would have stomped them flat for doing that by now, but meanwhile, let's save some money.
Hardly an hour goes by I don't get some kind of forwarded junk in my email box, a guy I know is notorious about this. A few days ago he sent me something that claimed that if you were being forced at gunpoint to withdraw money from an ATM, punching your PIN with the numbers in reverse order would still dispense the cash and would also summon the police!
This had all the earmarks of an urban legend, which I quickly confirmed it was and notified him, against my better judgment (People hate to be called on their BS). Of course now he's irked at me for that. He called me a "wet blanket" to which *I wish* I had replied, "Sometimes it takes a wet blanket to smother the fires of stupidity".
He still insists that this reverse pin thing is in effect at some ATM's somewhere. I offered to go to a local ATM and give him 5 to 1 odds on a bet that it would simply say something like "invalid PIN". My plan was to actually punch in my PIN number as usual, very slowly as if I am not used to doing it "backwards". Then I was going to yell "you win the bet but I'm out of here!!!" over my shoulder and speed off, leaving him standing there waiting for the police. Oh well, those things never go as planned.
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We started the pages with the buy-now buttons on TheRestlessMouse.com because we needed Google Checkout capability. 
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