I'm not sure how I feel about "earned time off". It sounds good in theory but what happens if I get sick for a week - would I have to cancel my already-planned vacation later in the year?

If only all employers agreed that if you're sick, you should stay home. At my last job I got very ill one week and finally on Thursday went to the doctor, who told me I had pneumonia. He wanted me to stay home from work through Monday at least. When I called my boss to tell her I had pneumonia, her response was "So what time will you get here today?"

Another job I worked at gave us 5 sick days per year, and we found out at our yearly reviews that you would get points taken off if you'd used more than 3.

Because a few people have abused the system, it seems like everyone gets punished.

That's okay, I must be a sick puppy because my first thought was "Man, there really ISN'T much real meat in Spam, is there?"

On the one hand, I can see this being useful for people like my aunt, who have an "emergencies only" cell phone. Easy to understand, no frills, no chance of accidentally going online. I can also see it being useful for those who just don't want to bother with all the extras that are on phones anymore. Even my "dumbphone" has a camera, a media player, texting, and online capabilities, and I don't really need or want all that (Except texting. You can't take away my texting).

On the other hand, I can't help but feel that pandering to an already technophobic crowd only makes their fears seem more substantial (to them, at least). With technology changing so incredibly rapidly, it doesn't seem like the best course of action is to put them in a bubble and tell them it'll be okay, we won't let the bad bad digital phone hurt them. Technological advancements aren't going to go backwards; at some point these people are going to have to learn something new.

Mixed feelings.

Actually, I was thinking that two well-placed commas in the headline would have made this a vastly more entertaining story!

I'm sorry, are you *actually* going to compare reselling books to selling drugs and scamming people? I mean, you do realize this is how commerce works, right? You buy low, you sell high. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you feel the same way about people who buy items cheaply on eBay only to turn around and resell them. Or perhaps people who "flip" houses. Did you know that retailers buy items from wholesalers at a very low price, then jack up that price to sell the item in their stores? I hear they make a pretty good profit, too...

Additionally, how many of these people to whom he's reselling the books do you think would have made it to that particular library or thrift store? He's only moving these items from one market to another - local to global. The library still makes their sale. Now if he's going in and barging about, being loud, shoving people aside, etc. that's one thing, but it's completely unrelated to whether this is ethical.

I really need my morning coffee...

Definitely agree with you. When they first started doing their own video-by-mail service I thought, "Great! Now there'll be some competition and maybe a different selection of movies." So I signed up for their free trial and prepared to be wow'ed. I was... but not in the good way.

I found out that yes, they had some anime, but only 3 out of 8 discs of a particular show I wanted to rent. Not only that, but they weren't even in order - it was something like discs 2, 3, and 7, so I couldn't even bother just getting started on it. Why even offer the series?

So I looked up my next selection. Good, they had 4 of 4 discs. I added them to my queue, and they arrived out of order. I received disc 4 along with two other movies that were much later in my queue, because supposedly nothing else in my queue was in stock at the time. I had to send the two movies back and hope that discs 1 and 2 would show up next. They didn't - I got 2 and 3. I went down to the actual Blockbuster store to see if they had disc 1, and of course they didn't have the series at all. I think I ended up ripping them so that when disc 1 finally came I could actually watch all of them, without having to play 3-card draw.

The last straw was when I rented Superman Returns. The disc came, I ordered some pizza, got ready for a nice night in... and took the disc out and it was The Pink Panther. The sleeve said Superman Returns, but the wrong movie had been put in. So I went to Blockbuster yet again and asked for an exchange, where they implied that I had actually queued up The Pink Panther and the *sleeve* was wrong. I asked them why I'd be down there trying to exchange it if I *wanted* to watch it, and that stumped them. Canceled the service the next day, and luckily it was still within the trial period so I never paid them a dime.

I still can't figure out why they half-assed it trying to compete with Netflix. Rarely have I heard anyone say they preferred Blockbuster's service, and those that did admitted that they only watch popular movies. A few even had the same experience I did where they received the wrong movie, but they "just went down and exchanged it, so it wasn't a big deal." Once you've heard 5 or 6 people say that, though, you realize it's a much bigger problem than what they're seeing.

I sometimes feel like I am one of the only people who like this feature. I don't know if it has something to do with how quickly I process information or what, but I'm actually enjoying it. Granted, I don't need to use it every time because I generally know exactly what I'm looking for and what terms to use, but I think it's great when I'm researching something and I'm not sure what I need to look for. It's not like I have to look at what I'm typing, so instead I'm able to look at the web pages as they come up and glean information from the summaries. If I see one that looks promising, even if I've kept typing and it moves or goes away, I've already scanned the info I need and can add that in as I type to narrow it down further.

In fact I'm beginning to find it more annoying to search with the feature *off* because it means I have to hit enter to search for something, look at the results, say "Nope, not what I needed," and type in something else and hit enter again.

Of course, I've always been extremely fast at skimming and pulling out key words and phrases, and I've been told I read faster than most. I'm sure that makes a big difference; many of my friends who are not fast readers say they dislike it because they have to actually stop and read the results after each word they enter, whereas I don't have that problem.

I absolutely agree; one of my biggest frustrations was trying to get people I know to join so I could try it out. By the time I got the fifth person to sign up, persons 1, 2, and 3 had gotten bored with it and didn't want to give it a shot with more people involved.

I really think it should have been made a part of Gmail so that anyone with a Gmail account could get on the bandwagon and give it a shot, rather than expecting people to sign up for this new scary thing where they have to open *yet another* link to check each day. It's like forums - people say "I'd rather join an e-list so I can just check my email and see what's going on, instead of going to another website."

I think it really had potential and I wish email had been like this from the beginning; but it's a *collaboration* tool. How am I supposed to really collaborate when only two people I know have joined and are willing to try it?

I can just see that conversation...
Husband: "Holy cow, where's my toe? What happened?!"
Wife: "I finally lopped off that death-threat."
Husband: "What? That... that don't even make SENSE!"
Wife: "Yep, I've just been waiting for you to pass out drunk so I could take care of it. Smell was gettin' too bad."
Husband: "But... that ain't even possible! You can't just cut off my toe! Why are you lying?"
Wife: "*sigh* Okay, you're right, you're right. It was the dog. The dog actually bit it off and ate it. It completely ignored the rancid smell of rotting flesh, and ate your toe."
Husband: "Oh! Well that makes sense, that dog always was loyal! Good boy! Have some more Jack Daniels, boy!"

Nah, that's already been patented by Ticketmaster.

You know, a while back a friend of mine told me he had bought hosting at GoDaddy and was wondering if I'd help set up a site for him. I told him I wouldn't touch it until he got a better host, and he was shocked. His reaction was roughly, "What do you mean they're not reputable? They had Super Bowl commercials and everything!" Apparently people think that if a company spends millions on advertising, they must be upstanding.

I worry.

Aha, we have now obtained your true identity! You can come forward, Mr. Anonymous Coward. The game is up.

It makes for a great pickup line!
"Excuse me, miss, does this smell like chloroform to you?"

Works on me every time, anyway.