Category: Rant


lhn_4th_offlineTrying to login to a portal I have used before, Ameriflex tells me my username and email do not exist. The online live chat, open until 8pm EST, is of course OFFLINE. And calling, strangely enough, will tell me my balances (so at least the IVR auto recognizes my number), but will not connect me to a human. There is not other way to contact them. Amazing…. Thank you Ameriflex. You suck. Not quite as bad as ADP/Paychex, but you suck. And nice feedback page too:
https://www.mywealthcareonline.com/ameriflex/feedback_page.php:

404 – File or directory not found.

The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

I did finally find a place to send for help via email. And the response is classic. I am now in an infinite loop of stupidity. American Idiot was written expressly for Ameriflex services.

Solution
[18 Nov 2014 08:38:33]
Thank you for contacting AmeriFlex.
Unfortunately, we are unable to efficiently diagnose Member login or site navigation issues via email. Please contact Member Services via phone at 888-868-FLEX (3539) or via Live Chat (during business hours) at http://member.flex125.com for live assistance with these types of issues.

Anyone want to start an FSA management company with me? I am 200% sure I can do a better job of creating a system to manage FSA for companies better than the last three systems I have been forced to work with…

Here is a quick review and summary of use of the Cardo S-800 Bluetooth Headset.

Image of Cardo S-800 Bluetooth Earpiece

Cardo S-800 Bluetooth Earpiece

I bought this on January 1, 2009 for about $15 with shipping form 1SaleADay.com. So I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I had a Blackberry Pearl and it paired and worked wonderfully. It has 3 extra programmable buttons and saves up to 3 last numbers. I was actually very pleased with it. It was lightweight, fit well, good sound both ways, loved the options. Coupled with RIM’s Pearl’s voice dial interface, it was awesome.

Then when I switched to a G1 Google phone, I was immediately less pleased. It became pretty useless. The G1 also had a very hard time pairing with my car’s Magellan GPS and the quality was equivalent to trying to talk to someone in a pool where you are both underwater. Pretty useless. Donut 1.6 did NOT help. I quickly became accustomed to pretending BlueTooth did not exist because as far as I could use it, it did not…. BOO ON GOOGLE! (The voice dialer on the Google phones is still pretty crappy, not hands free at all! Yet another issue)

So, other than that, great little piece of hardware. However by the time I got an excellent HTC G2 phone (preceded by a MyTouch Slide 3G, not a bad phone, not incredible, also had hard time with Bluetooth/voice dialer / genius button), the Cardo S-800 battery life had died and it would not charge after being in my electronics cabinet for the better part of a year or so.

Cardo no longer makes these little guys. They seem to specialize in cycling Bluetooth gear now.

http://www.cardosystems.com/us/homepage.

No replacement parts, out of warranty, yada yada yada. I tried taking it apart to see if I could possibly replace the battery. It was hard-wire soldered to several wires and components… hum.. Guess not.

I guess for $15 I got my couple of months of use with the Blackberry out of it and that was it.

Trash binned.

So I recently bought a Motorola HK-100 for about $14.00… A simpler device than the Cardo S-800. I’ll let you know how that works out.

 

V - Anna Screams in agony because of the V plot-line

Anna Screams in agony because of the V plot-line

V vs. Flashfoward

I would like to boycott ABC because they signed up for another season of V but canceled Flashforward. V was getting so corny and inconsistent I could barely stand it. Even though it had a bunch o’ my fave actors from Firefly and 4400, it was just getting TOO silly.

Flashfoward on the other had was a great little idea of a show. I really wanted to see what they came up with next. Quantum Entanglement Device, QED, right on! I think it posed great possibilities as we tackle that age old question of fate vs choice, free will vs deterministic outcome, and how that all mingles into ethics and morality. I mean, really, if you are a fatalist, do you really have any capacity to be ethical or moral? Because you ‘have no free agency’? Hum…

Pascal’s wager always comes to mind in these types of conundra.

But back to the show. It was very interesting to watch the characters sort this all out, process it, deal with it, face it and stare it down. It was also a great show because things were never truly black and white and often not what you first thought. It evolved, grew, deepened.

I don’t get it, ABC. Are you trying to market ONLY to people who don’t have any depth? People who can only follow a simple story line with black and white, true or false? Who ignore gaping storyline holes that you could drive an army of tanks through?

I think I threw in the towel completely when ship security failed: These sophisticated aliens have optical feeds sewn into acolytes uniforms and have massive security rooms with massive systems in place to monitor all of earth’s activities. However, once a human is on the ship and gets past the front gate area, you can walk all over anywhere you want. The queen’s quarters, the egg rooms, where ever you want. No one notices you setting bombs, acting suspiciously, running around in these ultra sensitive areas. That makes perfect sense. And adds to the believability.

Yep. Right there, I thought to myself, ABC must think I am a total idiot. Or they are idiots. I prefer to think it’s them, not me. Since I noticed the unlikely scenario, after all. This show officially sucks.

Grrrrrr…..

Traffic backing up on Gentile & Flint

Traffic backing up on Gentile & Flint - This is on a GOOD day.

The T-intersection of Flint & Gentile has just been given a stop light. This was in anticipation of a few things: Gentile has picked up a lot traffic over the past few years, there is Layton Elementary very nearby, and a new I-15 interchange is going in on Flint. So more traffic is anticipated, safer for elementary kids to have a light, and theoretically a stop light would let people turn west on to Gentile from Flint and south onto Flint from Gentile.

The one thing that irks me to death everytime I go by the new stoplight is they effectively wiped out the *understood* right hand turning lane that everyone used to turn south onto Flint from Gentile.  With the new light design, there is only one lane and if a single car goes straight and gets stopped at the light, EVERY right turning car has to wait wait wait. It is already a problem and gets backed up 3o to 40 cars in the mornings and the interchange is not completed (which means a large part of daily traffic is using some other route, especially given that Gentile and Main is under construction right now as well). What’s MORE inane is the fact there is a HUGE swath of land that could have been used to make the turn lane. All they need is 3 more feet to make it work.

Once the interchange to I-15 is done, this is going to be STOOPID. I just can’t imagine increasing traffic, of whom a majority will want to turn right onto Flint, is going to make this STOOPID STUPID STOOOOOOPID intersection work better. I want to throttle someone at Layton City for allowing this.  GRRRRRRR.

Prairie Schooner Is What It Is

Generally, we all love the Prairie Schooner for what it is: A slightly overpriced steak house with a cool old west night time theme. However, the last couple of times we have been and/or TRIED to go, we have been mildly dissappointed. Mostly (for me) the value proposition is lacking  just a bit. I think the food is pretty good, but the choices are a little limited or start to get a little crazy spendy more in the ilk of what  Spencer’s or Ruth’s Chris in Salt Lake serves. Is the the steak THAT good? Um…. well…. probably not quite. Not quite. But not bad. Of course. I am speaking for ME. My wife is pretty upset. I do a more formal review of the food on my main site: http://www.williambroadhead.com/.

Mad Wife, Sad Life

She wanted to go for the weekend brunch with the girls this Labour Day Weekend and she tried checking out the menu on the website. No brunch menu, and only painful PDF’s for Lunch and Dinner to download from the Flash Based icky website. Not ugly-icky, just navigational stupid-icky.  She also tried calling several times the day of going and could only get  a prerecorded message with general info.

Village Inn It!

So she went to the Prairie Schooner, got out of the car, went to the door, read the posting on the door, and then went to Village Inn. The reason? They are closed for renovations until September 13th, 2010. So of course, you have to wonder what kind of idiot doesn’t put that on their website or at the very least on their pre-recorded message on the main phone line. Oh, Prairie Schooner idiots. That’s who!