Zagone

I have a "baseball cap" style hat that I bought about 8 years ago and have rarely worn since.

It is in the style of all the navy veteran military ship caps commonly in use today in the USA, and I believe it was even made by the same company that makes hats for crew and military veterans.

Here's the thing though -- this is a cap for the USS Constellation -- a FULL RIG SAILING SHIP in use from 1797-1853 (see https://historicships.org/explore/uss-constellation ). I bought it from a tourist display stand!

I am walking around Disney world this week and I keep getting "THANKED FOR MY SERVICE". Okay -- kind of amusing as I would have had to serve in the REVOLUTIONARY WAR -- but then I do nothing to purposefully pose as ex-military (which is very uncool). CAN PEOPLE NOT SEE THE SAILS ON THE BOAT?

My brother thinks I should make light of it ("yes, I served -- I climbed the rigging and packed the gun powder... you should have seen those Brits run! Avast ye mates! Walk the plank!")

I'm thinking of finding another cap to keep my bald head from sunburning... What do you think?

-- Zagone

Several items here:

#1: T-Mobile wants me to log into their website to re-enter my expired credit card. The card number remains the same -- only the 3-digit code on the back has changed and the expiration date has updated. They seem to know this -- they are perfectly happy to keep billing the "expired" card, but my $5 per month discount is removed until I update the card.

#2: Their website is a circus to log into. I'm unclear if it's because I'm on vacation out-of-state, using a VPN, or have/had Privacy Badger plug-ins to block the 13+ trackers on their site. In any case, by the time I have turned all that off (and after deleting browser cookies) they either are on alert that I must be an attacker or else their shit just malfunctions.

I begin an endless round of enter email address and password, get sent a 6-digit code by email, enter that code, have to enter my T-mobile phone number (which I never use since this is a 5G home Internet service), get told the "good news" that there is already an account associated with that phone number, then start this same cycle all over again (email, password, 6-digit code...).

#3 So I give up (hoping "attack" alerts will be expired by the next morning) -- nope -- same problem loop as in #2 above. So I call tech support. They want a PIN number I must never have gotten (I ALWAYS write these things down). "No problem" -- they can send a temporary PIN to my router -- if I'm at home to receive it.

#4: So I try online again -- this time with VPN enabled to look like I'm near home. The website starts entirely blocking my ability to access the site at all. Okay... So I turn VPN off. Now I can access the site again, and once again enter the login infinity loop as in #2 above.

Keep in mind all this bullshit is so I can save the $5 per month on an "expired credit card" that they know is not expired since they can keep billing it while I'm not able to login and update the expiration date and 3-digit code!!

Free is lovely. Yet I'm sometimes willing to pay to get extra service or just to keep a favorite vendor going.

I'm mildly infuriated when there is no upgrade in service from free tier to paid tier. Makes me feel retroactively stupid.

Like when Doxy.me (medical televideo site with too many trackers) offered no service improvement to paid customers at the beginning of the pandemic.

Like when I decide to upgrade from free Zapier.com to get more "tasks" per month -- then my Zaps immediately proceeded to not run for 2 days.

Like when I move up from free tier with IFTTT to get more than two applets, and they still take hours to run.

Yeah -- I'm working on learning to implement free code from GitHub but come on guys -- I'm not a programmer and at least ought to be able to buy this stuff while I learn!

On certain items, Sam's Club requires a $8-$12 delivery fee. This is problematic enough given some items are free delivery.

At the end of the order process, I'm then asked to tip the driver. It seems to me that Sam's Club could put together a big enough delivery route to be able to pay a driver well and maintain the delivery van at that delivery fee per each stop.

I feel over-charged paying tip on top of that. However, I never dick over delivery drivers. Is Sam's Club paying them? How much? What is that delivery fee going towards?

So I end up tipping.

More frequently, I just avoid ordering items with a delivery fee. (Not a good option for people stuck at home for good reasons like age, disability, lack of transportation, etc.)

Oddly, customers are not asked to tip on the free delivery items.

Looks exactly like an X in the upper right corner of a pop-up window I need to close. Instead, pressing the X launches Twitter.

EDIT: Yes, I know Twitter has rebranded to X, but now I have to relearn 40 years of habit. Why put the logo in that position?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-charged

This gem courtesy Rite Aid Pharmacy.