I just found this very nice video that explains how a loan makes it to the recipient and how it is repaid. All in natural colors

Video

A few pictures: http://chris.ravenscroft.info/v/Places/Pasadena/

Kurt Vonnegut: November 11, 1922–April 11, 2007

This morning, like thousands of other hopefuls, I was ready to play the odds and see if I was able to type fast enough to snatch a $100 Xbox 360 deal.
I was ready. I had my PC on the Amazon page, I had posted in the “clock calibration” thread and read the various advice posted by Amazon employees.

Turns out, I wasn’t able to score the damn thing. But not for the reasons expected. In fact, Amazon simply went down. For more than 10 minutes, all of Amazon was timing out; Their servers were just being overwhelmed. I used a dozen different proxy servers to confirm that it wasn’t just a peering issue.

Of course, when Amazon finally came back to, the deal was sold out.
At first, I thought that it was unforeseen circumstances on Amazon’s end. But browsing the customer discussion threads I quickly realized that it wasn’t that. Actually, Amazon is a monopoly. And as such, they have stopped showing respect for their customers.
What happened this morning was more like the local [insert wealthy character here] throwing gold coins at the beggars outside Sunday morning’s church and watching the stampede with a satisfied smirk on his face.

It’s happened before: (Quoting “Pirate Parrot”)

Trust me if you followed the PS3 launch and what they did to us over there you would see they are a P.O.S I even emailed Jeff Bezos and got a canned response they dont care anything about their customers… They just disappeared our orders without telling us after putting a hold on our funds… Jerks…

And what to make of this? (Quoting I. Rankins)

This was a complete fraud. Some people got through to the server at 10:59am Pacific and it already said sold out before it even was suppose to be offered!

But, in the end, Brandon C. Stordeur summed up the issue:

Depending on where you live, your ISP and traffic determined who won today, which is not random nor fair.

Of course, some people also posted positive comments, putting things in perspective. After all there are children out there dying of hunger, etc.
No argument here. But that’s not the issue I am trying to address here. I am taking exception with a monopoly showing little respect for their customers, and if nobody gives them flack for it, there will not be any motivation for them to change their ways.

Amazon lost customers today, I am not sure that this promo worked out for them in the end.

Tip for a new cooler:

1- Clean up the interior with a wet piece of cloth; clean the grills with liquid soap.

2- That’s all you need: rinse and dry thoroughly…

3- Beauty!

Enters The Giant Destroyer. It looks like dynamite but it doesn’t explode. Instead, it releases a gas that is lethal to gophers.

We used to have many gophers. Now, it’s down to that last one, and it’s only a matter of time until I get rid of him too.

So far, TGD has been extremely efficient. It costs about $1 per stick and, in my opinion, you need more than 50 sticks to wage war to gophers on a 10,000 sqft backyard.

So, there: I recommend this product. Of course, do not forget to spray gophers repellent regularly or it will be the same as never having done anything.

It’s quite an amazing story, really. Take a look.