Patrick’s Rants

Man sues 1-800-Flowers for ruining his marriage by revealing affair. Ok. This has got to be one of the stupider stories today. It goes something like this: woman files for divorce, man decides to see someone else and sends her flowers and a teddy bear, man reconciles with estranged wife, estranged wife receives thank you card from 1-800-Flowers, reconciled wife boots his ass to the curb - again.

Here’s where it gets stupid. His estranged wife is now asking for more alimony, more child support, etc. Man sues 1-800-Flowers.

First of all, his wife filed for divorce. She filed for divorce, meaning she didn’t to be married to him anymore. Can she be surprised that he sought the company of another woman? No. If she is, she’s stupid. Men aren’t that nebulous, really.

Second, why in the hell did he give his home address to 1-800-Flowers? If he was getting divorced, he needed his own place. Stupid, times two. IF he was expecting to get back together with his soon-to-be ex-wife, then he should have kept it in his pants. Period. I’ll repeat it for the cheap seats, I know sometimes you can’t hear me up there. If you are separated from your wife and you expect to be getting back together with her, keep it zipped up.

Third, she booted him out and expected him to remain faithful? I mean, she basically said, “you’re outta here” and she’s faulting him for what he did after she said, “see ya”. I hope he has a decent lawyer - then again, he’s suing 1-800-Flowers for a standard business practice.

Fourth, he’s suing 1-800-Flowers for a standard business practice. It goes something like this:

Wife: “What the heck are these charges?”
Flowers: “Yes ma’am, here is the receipt.”

In this day and age of identity theft and credit card fraud it would seem that 1-800-Flowers did the right thing by verifying charges. That’s what I would expect them to do if I questioned a charge.

Wife: “Oh no he dient!”

So. If there is any justice in the world here is what will happen: they end up on Judge Joe Brown, who’ll tell them to TCB - Take Care of Business - and dismiss the case.

Of course, justice is hard to find so he’ll just have to sue himself for negligent stupidity and tie up his assets for the judgment.

I’m researching hot swap drive trays… I found a site called “The Tray Man” through Google. I like to use this browser called “Firefox” and use this thing called a “mouse” to right click on links so I can open them in this novel thing called a “tab”. That way I can be looking at many different items in multiple tabs. It means I can navigate a site the way I want to. It also means that I can save multiple pages as “bookmarks” and I can open the pages all at once if I want to.

Well “The Tray Man” has a Javascript feature that “disables” right click with a popup box that states:

“Protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. No part of this site may be duplicated. Thank you. The Tray Man”

Go ahead try right clicking on this page. Too bad. I probably won’t buy from these guys since there’s an assumption of guilt cause I know how to use my “mouse”. And yes, I’m being really condescending and yes it is my opinion that this behavior is really stupid. I mean, do you really have people trying to “steal” images of hard drive trays that they can get from the manufacturer?

Lately there has been a push to make employers “certify” that the employees they hire are legal to work in the US. This push seems to focus some on companies that have government contracts, but it’s also being applied to employers in general. The thing is, we already do this. It’s called an I-9 form. The employer reviews a couple of forms of ID from their prospective/new employee to verify work eligibility. The employer keeps the form on file and has to renew it every so often - once every three years I believe. Employers can even, and are required to in some cases, verify the employee’s employment information - ensuring that the employee’s information matches the files at the Social Security Administration.
There are also penalties for not maintaining the information. Instead of making employers “certify” their work force, get out of the office and go see if they have the paperwork in place.

I just don’t understand why we have to write new laws to do the same thing that we can already do.

Bank Of America has a program that lets you keep your own money. If you use a debit card and have a savings account with them, they will round your debit card purchases up to the next dollar and put the “change” in your savings account. This amounts to an electronic change jar. Sure you might earn a little interest - probably very little, have you taken a look at what savings accounts are paying lately? - but it’s your money. It’s not like you are making money, although there is a slight incentive. For the first three months they will match your change jar. And after that all you have to do is leave the money in the account and they will add a whopping 5%.

I suppose that for people who hate to balance their check book not having to keep track of the $.05 might make life easier - except that they have to track it in the savings account now.

This just blows me away, I had to add a new catagory for this one. Stupid Ideas.