Ok, so putting your old or unused medicine down the toilet is bad, umm kay!  We put enough crap into our water supply through all the scented cleaning products, soaps, shampoo (why does it need to smell like desert?), etc.  And how about all those unnecessary prescriptions that people do not even need but rush out to their doctor after seeing the commercial the night before, never mind the rashes, incontinence and other annoying after effects, you can now walk on the beach with your loved ones!

I recently came across some materials that were mailed by Apple to me at an early employer.  I was particularly intrigued by the cover letter extolling the virtues of Macintosh/MS-DOS Compatibility.  The time frame had to be in the early 1990’s.  The products they were referencing were SoftPC and the Orange Micro Orange386.  The closing sentence “Thank you for taking the time to learn why your next MS-DOS computer should be a Macintosh.”  Is this some strange future prediction?  How interesting that today with the Mac product line transitioned over to the Intel processors, more and more people are making the Mac platform their Windows computer of choice.  Welcome to the 90’s again.

As a side note, I found it particularly funny that when doing some research the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article came up for Orange 386.

I was recently on a Delta flight from JFK (New York) to MCO (Orlando) on a recently updated and modernized Boeing 757-200(E) which happens to be International configuration.  The first thing I noticed is that seat 1A is configured for crew rest with a small privacy curtain. The seat pitch was definitely not domestic, and they had foot rests and even quite fancy chair controls with two position memory even!  On the right front portion of the seat was a standard US grounded power plug and in the right arm rest a flip out video unit.  Finally I looked down to the left and noticed a small white piece sticking out.  I looked closer and it appeared to be a USB and RJ-45 port.  Could Delta be putting in the first pieces for in-flight data services?  I know JetBlue has been testing on-board wireless connections on their BetaBue aircraft, but the limitations make me believe this is of limited purpose.  

I was at the self-checkout at IKEA today and as I pulled my American Express One card the clerk minding the stations walked up and asked why I as using an American Express card. I explained that it was my card choice. She then asked if I had another card, would I still use an American Expess card, obviously this woman does not know me. I said “of course.”. As I finished checking out she walked back up to me and offered me either a milk or hazelnut chocolate bar, I opted for hazelnut. I directly credit American Express for my free chocolate bar.

I received a letter from American Express a few months back that indicated they were discontinuing the ExpressPay key fob as of 31-July-2008.  I immediately wondered why they would make one form-factor RFID device stop working while still supporting it embedded in other products such as the American Express Blue Cash card.  Some of you may remember the original Blue from American Express which was a Smart Card, something that does not exist today in the US market.  The Smart Card has been removed and now Blue is just another card which happens to have ExpressPay RFID embedded.  I phoned the ExpressPay customer service line to enquire as to why they were discontinuing the, in my opinion, most convenient form-factor device.  They took my complaint and asid that somebody would get back with me in the next few days.  Even though it was American Express I half expected to hear nothing.  No more than two days later I have a very friendly call from a nice person working in the Salt Lake City office.  He listened to my concerns and explanation then answered my questions and took the time to make sure that I understood.  Apparently the original platform for ExpressPay on wich the key fob was developed had never been integrated with the rest of the American Express processing platform therefore the decision was made to discontinue that device.  Also apparently some people had problems with the key fob coming off the key chains.

My friend Mike and I have been discussing the benefits of points, miles or cash back from credit card products.  He finally figured out that the best option is just to take the cash so he encouraged me to get rid of my Delta SkyMIles card from American Express and get a Blue Cash because at least I could still use ExpresPay and it does have up to 5% cash back rewards program.  I phoned American Express customer service and asked if I could simply convert my existing Delta SkyMiles credit card to a Blue Cash, “no problem” was the response and less than three minutes later I hung up and my account conversion was complete!

I setup my email accounts for MobileMe and Exchange. But I was told that you cannot have more than one contact or calendar set or syncing. I was confused how on 2008 people designing mobile phones did not grasp the concept of somebody wanting to separate personal and business information. After having the phone for about ten days I got to looking around. I tried turning on the Exchange calendar and wonder of wonders the iPhone made a new group “All calendars”. With contacts I was not so adventurous. I looked online then made backups of both contact lists and tried it. The heavens smiled upon me and I not only did I have separate contact lists but I was also able to view a combined list. I should have expected this to com from Apple!