I've noticed that Yahoo's comment section has recently been bombarded by Asian spammers looking for "a good men in my town". At first I was clicking the little "thumbs down" icon and then using the "Report Abuse" link, but I've since given up. These fools are either using an automated program or they have a sweatshop filled with kids getting paid 1 cent for every 1000 comments they submit.



Not that Yahoo's comment section is bursting with intellectual insight; most of the time it's filled with people who think the caps lock key is always supposed to be on, terrible spellers, racist jerk-offs or far left/right wackos who are about as dumb as a bag of hammers. Worse yet are the people who possess a combination of the above characteristics.

Sigh -- maybe these Asian spammers aren't so bad after all...

As posted in my If I Only Had An Extra $1200... update, there are two lenses in my price range that I've had my eye on recently. As of Wednesday, one of those lenses, the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 Di-II LD lens, is on its way. After talking it over with Selina, we decided that I should go ahead and purchase it instead of continuing to rent it. And as shocking as it may seem, she didn't have to twist my arm to convince me it was a good idea, either.

According to the UPS tracking website, my new lens should be in my hands sometime on Monday. While it would have been nice to have it today, I didn't feel like spending the extra $20 to get it here one business day earlier. I guess it just means that for once in my life, I'll actually be looking forward to a Monday.

Back when I started school at the University of Texas in 1998, I needed wanted a bank that offered online account management, had a wide network of ATMs I could use and would also let me make deposits at those ATMs. Bank of America was everywhere (and I do mean everywhere) on campus, so I walked into the local branch across the street from the student union with $200 and opened an account. It met the requirements I had at the time, so I was happy to do business with them.

Well here it is, twelve years later, and I can still say I'm relatively happy with them. I find their ATM network to be convenient and I avoid any fees by having my paycheck set up as a direct deposit into my checking account. Their interest rates for the savings account is atrocious at 0.10%, however, which is why I prefer to keep our savings with ING (currently 1.10%, but used to be as high as 4.25% back before the economy hit the fan). Sure, there are others offering 1.35% right now, but I'm not going to chase rates unless there is a significant enough difference to make it worthwhile. But back to my thoughts on ditching Bank of America - there are several articles out there touting the end of free checking when it comes to banking behemoths such as Bank of America because of the legislation passed that effectively kills off revenue from overdraft fees. In an effort to offset that loss, they are looking at those of us who enjoy our free checking accounts.



Does this mean I'll be taking my checking account elsewhere? As of right now, no. If Bank of America decides to try and change the rules on me, though, it may be enough to convince me move everything over to ING (we already have an Electric Orange checking account with them) or my credit union.

Your move, Bank of America.

Pandora is great and all, but sometimes I want to listen to EXACTLY the songs I want, right now. Since I still refuse to purchase an iPhone (mainly because I don't want to pay AT&T $30 a month for a stinkin' iPhone data plan), I bring my 2nd generation iPod Nano to work with me. I also bring my USB cable with me, but not the AC power adapter that goes with it. If the battery was low, I just plugged my iPod into my work PC using the USB cable and fired up Pandora while my iPod flashed ye olde "Do not disconnect" warning at me. Now before some ding-dong out there yells, "Why didn't you just use iTunes?", let me say something one more time: this is my work PC - I cannot install iTunes on it.



Well, that was true until today. I finally stumbled across a forum where someone answered the very question I had: how do I listen to my iPod while charging it via the USB cable on a PC? Someone slightly smarter than myself suggested that I open Windows Explorer, right-click on the disk icon representing my iPod and select "Eject". Wow, it worked! Apparently this is different than doing the "Safely remove hardware..." option that I'd been using before. Go figure.

So now here I am, music a-playin' and my iPod a-chargin'. Hope this tip helps someone else out there.

OK, so I finally broke down and purchased a new-to-me phone off eBay, the HTC Hero. My old AT&T Tilt (aka, the HTC Kaiser) started shutting itself down right in the middle of phone calls, which was utterly frustrating. I would have purchased a new phone directly from AT&T, but the only phone they currently have that is running Google's Andriod OS is the Motorola Backflip, which I think is rather ugly and it felt like it was made of the same plastic they make LEGOs out of. I had originally wanted something with a built-in QWERTY keyboard, but I eventually decided I could deal with an onscreen keyboard and cut down on the bulkiness that comes along with it.



So far, the only bad thing I can say about the HTC Hero is that I don't have it in my hands yet. According to the USPS tracking service, it's "currently in transit to the destination". Well thanks a lot...that's about as informative as a "Check Engine" light.