Category: Rants! (Page 10 of 11)

I’m not taking your @#^$ing survey!

September 20, 2013 / Justin Matthews / 5 Comments

I know it is not just me but have you noticed an abundance of surveys EVERYWHERE lately? I for one am getting tired of it. This constant need for companies to find out what you think has entered the annoying. This sounds almost like a rant that would be good over at http://cantankerousoldcoots.com, but today, it is here!

This survey thing is not new. I have been bugged for the past few years with them. The first ones were the phone surveys. They call you up and ask you to rate your last visit to X. Sometimes I answer these when it has to do with the hospital and my daughter. It was however one of these surveys that prompted this post. They called for my wife and I really don’t know what they wanted but I told him she would never be available. In hindsight, that was probably mean but he was a douche on the phone.

Now they have surveys to win gift cards on damn near ever receipt that you can get. Most of them are longer than the receipt itself. I bought a bike tire and a donut at Walmart yesterday and the receipt was 14 inches long. Ridiculous. A waste of my time and the paper it is printed on. Like I really have time to call you up and answer inane questions for the 1 in a million chance that I can get a $50 gift card.

I did call one on a receipt from PetsMart the other day for a coupon so that I could get a free fish, and then I proceeded to lose the receipt. I knew I shouldn’t have bothered.

The other thing that is really pissing me off lately is the pop up or lightbox surveys that come up at what seems like every damn website that is not a blog! I am so annoyed with certain companies that do this that I don’t even go to their website anymore. It just seems like every time you turn on a site, there is a box of varying size begging you to complete your survey.

Even at Disneyland they want you to complete a survey. My wife signed up and I thought “Ok not too bad”. That was in the first part of October last year. Last week the survey came into my email box. I had forgotten about it so I clicked into the survey. It didn’t take very long but it was a huge whine about why we hadn’t been back to Disneyland since we left in October! I don’t know about you, but my kids would live to go to Disneyland every month. There is just no way to afford that!

Which brings me to the online, “Get paid to take survey’s” scams. I have signed up for several “reputable” companies that you have seen and or heard about on TV. Not just infomercials, shows like the NBC Nightly News and the like. Here is the thing and the reason I have dumped most of them from my inbox lately. I can’t seem to find ANY of their surveys I “Qualify” for.

I have taken the time to fill out all of their information, all of the demographic stuff which brings the “you have a new survey” emails. When I click into the survey it gets about 6 questions into the thing and gives me the “Were sorry but you aren’t good enough for your opinion to count” message. I have begun to think that they only want the information from the first of the survey and that is how they get out of paying. Cheap corporate bastards.

So, if you are out there and you like taking surveys, go for it. If you are working with online paid surveys, go for it, you can have my share. If you are a company and need to have a survey to figure out how people like your stuff, maybe you are not paying as much attention to your customers as you should be.

I have run a couple of surveys in the past on here and have had very minimal response. The only reason I can figure out why there are so many surveys out there is so that the .75% that actually get answered have at least some value to advertisers.

I for one am tired of the surveys.

Discuss freely! Please Digg, StumbleUpon, retweet and comment below!

Thanks for reading!

-Justin

Cantankerous Old Coots Unite!

September 20, 2013 / Justin Matthews / 6 Comments

Well folks I did something very impulsive last night. I was sitting here trying to come up with some topic to write on. I am tired and only partially fueled by caffeine. My wife said I had that “look” and tonight’s post would be a doozy. She has seen the writing frenzy that exhaustion and caffeine has wrought.

The problem was this. Carlos sucked all of the ideas out of me during the PreWriting Challenge! Ok not really but it has been a day of writers block for post titles. I have a couple of story ideas though. I had a thought this morning after taking the kids to school that I hope I was not running dry of ideas. I am almost at my 3 month mark and ready to push past it.

I know there are more ideas, I just either need more sleep or more caffeine to make them flow. Or some good inspiration. I went and read some blogs, left some comments and tweeted a bit. After that I went back to look at my comments just hoping there was something there.

And there was! My internet buddy and purveyor of many life experiences Ralph(http://ralphcarlsonblog.com/wordpress/) had left a comment. The discussion was about niches, and fitting in, when Ralph says,

“I am not sure that there is any market for cantankerous old coots but if there were, I’d claim it.”

I laughed and replied that I would sign up for the RSS feed of that. I didn’t think much more about it until Dave Doolin pipes up with his sage advice to go claim it. So I did. Coming in the next week or so, I will have a bunch of work with another blog at www.cantankerousoldcoots.com.

I think I am going to fill the blog with the wisdom and rants of those older than me, even though I am getting up there myself. I hope to get Ralph to fill the first guest post with something profound, and later Dave with something that would be totally inappropriate on his site.

I need to create a badge….crossed Preparation H and Ben Gay over a grouchy old guy’s face…. Our motto could be “Whatever” and our niche is “Advice for life from old coots.” We of course would have to adopt a Red Green type lodge… Hmmmm there are many possibilities. I would love to hear suggestions. We would have bylaws too…if you are under 40 you need to have an old coot persona or you can’t be published. Only rants on things that were better in the past could be posted. Any bowel problems are better off on your own site unless they have a really funny punchline and a cute nurse involved.

Wow I must be tired. This is going to be huge amounts of fun. Let me know what you think in the comments and sign up for my newsletter, I will keep updates in that as well!

Thanks for reading!

-Justin

PS. Ralph, this is a Kettlebell:

The top 10 things I learned from Superbowl XLIV

September 19, 2013 / Justin Matthews / 0 Comments

Here are the top things I learned watching the Superbowl yesterday.

1. If you want to actually watch the game and have kids, a DVR is invaluable. By the time we got home from church, the game had almost started and the kids had yet to be fed, much less snacks prepared. I recorded the game and ended up starting about an hour after it actually began. And you can pause it whenever you want. Very handy.

2. If you even have and inkling that you may be right, Challenge The Call On The Field. Sure they could have been wrong and charged with a timeout, but they weren’t and the Saints ended up with 2 points. This was the “Big One”, the last game of the year so they had nothing to lose. Life can be like this. If we just go along and be sheep never questioning or never challenging others opinions can we truly call ourselves free thinkers? It doesn’t matter how big something is, if you have a valid point, challenge it. You may be wrong but at least you are thinking for yourself and that is a beautiful thing.

3. You may never have enough chicken. Saturday night. “Yea that should be plenty” I said. “We have all this other food too.” Cut to Sunday, start the Game. First quarter nearly over. 6 year old whining because he needs more chicken. Pause game. (see #1) Thaw out more chicken to cook during halftime. When you get t0 the “yea, that should be plenty” place, think again. Not always good to second guess but always good to rethink your initial preparations, not just in food but in life.

4. Doritos has their advertising budget priorities askew. All I can say is, if you channel the $$ for even one of those superbowl ads into a decent ad agency you wouldn’t have a whole bunch of stupid commercials that seemed to be trying hard to be Budweiser but missing the mark by 3-4 thousand miles.

5. And for Budweiser… Still doing something right. Good commercials that were memorable even if they didn’t have as many big punches as in the past. They still are cranking out memorable content, and people still remember their commercials from the past 10 years. Much like us bloggers would like to achieve, things that jog memory yers in the future.

6. E-trade…Just give up already. While I am ranting about advertising, and I guess it works or they wouldn’t keep doing it, but the talking babies at the computer? Really? I don’t think they are cute or witty or anything but stupid. Sometimes you just have to know when to give up and go a different direction. Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com, take a memo. You are darn close.

7. Last advertising I promise. Gold’s Gym. Brilliant campaign. Showing “typical” superbowl party foods and the related calories and fat grams followed by “See You Tomorrow”? Brilliant! Toss is just enough guilt to be memorable and you have everyone’s family. I bet if you tracked Golds Gym membership visits today they would be up. They made me glad I went with veggie platters and chicken breast nuggets for our party. Still going to need a double kettlebell workout today.

8. Even if “Puxatawney Palomalu” says 6 more weeks of football I don’t believe it. There is no professional football until August. And the country mourns.

9. Don’t give up. We hear that all of the time. ALL of the time. Both teams yesterday played the whole game. Mistakes were made but both played the whole game. Except for one interception for a TD, it was a much closer game than I expected. The Saints were down on the scoreboard and they found a way to come back. The colts were down and found a way to come back. The Colts were down at the end of the game but were still playing like time wasn’t against them and they could get those 2 touchdowns before the end. They didn’t make it, but they didn’t give up.

10. And finally, Onside Kick to start the second half?!?!? A WTF moment that turned out to be a brilliant move. One unconventional move sent the Colts reeling and they never seemed to shake off that blow to the head. They never seemed as crisp on either side of the ball after that opening play. Something for us to learn. Sometimes a gamble or unconventional move can be just what we need to succeed.

Hope you had fun watching if you could.

Justin

My TSA Nightmares begin…

April 3, 2013 / Justin Matthews / 0 Comments

LAS VEGAS, NV - FEBRUARY 01: U.S. Transportation Security Administration supervisor Nick Fox (R) and another TSA employee demonstrate an advanced image technology (AIT) millimeter wave scanner using new Automated Target Recognition software being tested by the TSA at McCarran International Airport February 1, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The new software detects potential threat items and displays them on the outline of a generic body displayed on a monitor attached to the unit instead of using passenger-specific images. TSA officers will no longer need to use a remotely located room to view the images, which will make the process more efficient according to a TSA spokesman. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Last year there was much speculation and fear associated with the TSA and flying in general. It hasn’t eased up. If you haven’t read already, we are headed to Florida in 3 weeks for my daughters Make A Wish trip. We have known this for a while now, and, of course, getting to Florida from Utah means flying.

With that I know that the TSA is imminent. I began to research the new security procedures and things we would have to do. It didn’t encourage me. I started figuring that I may as well make the best of this and get through security with as little hassle as possible. Now, with the trip so close, I have a plan for dealing with security.

I did not have a plan for my nightmares about dealing with the TSA and spending the whole Make A Wish trip in a jail cell. The jail cell came after handing the tickets to my wife and saying, “Have a nice trip” as I launched myself at the TSA Agent who went above and beyond his duty in the pat down search of my 11 year old daughter.

His wandering hands earned him a broken nose and disfigured face. I may not be a finesse boxer but I have spent considerable amounts of time on the heavy bag just hitting hard. It was no different in this dream. The first punch caught his nose, the second his jaw. By the time he fell and I jumped on top of him, there were 3 other agents there pulling me off. I woke up after that so I don’t really know if I made it to Florida or not.

I hope that was not a prophetic dream. I am still trying to take a deep breath and make the best of the TSA thing, but I have 4 kids to get through security. Even writing this post may doom all of us to full body scans and pat downs but I have nothing to hide so it should be ok.

Image from the backscatter advanced imaging technology (AIT) machine used by the TSA to screen passengers. This is what the remote TSA agent would see on their screen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Any horror stories from you all about the TSA, or better yet, good stories that will take me away from all fo the bad that happens to show up every day. Let me know in the comments.