Telling Your Children “No”

It’s that time of year again. And with the economy like it is the gift giving might not be what it usually is. It’s hard to tell your children that they can’t have all the things you wish you could give them but sometimes you have to. Let’s be honest, kids are used to it on some level. I know when I was younger I wanted pretty much the entire Sears catalog.

This year might be a little different though due to layoffs and unemployment. Times are tough. How do you handle it? How do you decide what to buy and what on Santa’s Christmas list doesn’t make it under the tree? It’s not easy.

I looked back at the Bible for guidance on this one. One quote that you should remind your children of is Philipians 4:11. Telling your children to be happy with what they have is the easy part though. Dealing with your own feelings of guilt that were unable to provide everything your children wanted is a different story.

To resolve those feelings, I think back on the Bible to help remind me of the importance of telling your children “No” and setting boundaries as to what they should and should not expect. The story of Lot and his failure to deal with his daughters does a great job illustrating the point.

Instead of paraphrasing the Bible, I’ll just let the New Living Translation do that for me.

Genesis 19:31-36
31 One day the older daughter said to her sister, “There are no men left anywhere in this entire area, so we can’t get married like everyone else. And our father will soon be too old to have children. 32 Come, let’s get him drunk with wine, and then we will have sex with him. That way we will preserve our family line through our father.”

33 So that night they got him drunk with wine, and the older daughter went in and had intercourse with her father. He was unaware of her lying down or getting up again.

34 The next morning the older daughter said to her younger sister, “I had sex with our father last night. Let’s get him drunk with wine again tonight, and you go in and have sex with him. That way we will preserve our family line through our father.” 35 So that night they got him drunk with wine again, and the younger daughter went in and had intercourse with him. As before, he was unaware of her lying down or getting up again.

36 As a result, both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their own father.

I guess this is also good example of why you shouldn’t get drunk with your kids, even if you only have basic cable and you’re lonely because your wife turned into a pillar of salt.

Ex-voto Retablo – Octopus Attack

I’ve always been a huge fan of folk art because it is typically very unique and affordable. This piece is a great example of wacky religious stuff, which is part of the reason why I want it.

These are all kind of odd… This one shows a girl being attacked by octopi. The text on the up left supposedly translates to “I saw a ship coming and I went swiming to wave to the handsome sailors, but suddenly I felt caught and I saw that an octopus had me grabbed by the feet with its tentacles and I saw that other one came closer with bad intentions, I invoked the Virgin of Guadalupe and thanks to her the octopus left me free because he went to met to the other octopus, love at first sight I suppose, and I returned to the beach the most quick that I could..”

It’s painted on tin that is about the size of a sheet of paper. Oh, and if you aren’t familiar retablos, they are basically religious paintings made to thank saints. Ex-voto items are items that were given as a fullfillment of a vow.

Back to the important stuff. It is available on ebay. If you were cool, you’d buy this. If you were awesome you’d buy this for me. If you dig the retablos but not so much a fan of octopi, maybe just check out other retablos available on ebay.

Stootsi, $0.25 PC Games, and Gaming ResellerRatings.com

While checking around about a month ago I saw a deal-of-the-day site called sTooTsi that was selling unlimited random PC games for $0.25 cents each plus $5.00 shipping. That was a deal too good to pass up so I placed an order.

Unfortunately, the deal was also too good to be true.

After 3+ weeks of making and breaking multiple shipment deadlines (and promising not to cancel orders), they cancelled all remaining number of orders (including mine) and pissed off a number of customers (including me). Check the forums for that deal if you want to see how people react to poor customer service.

Five or so of those angry customers went to resellerratings.com and filed reviews stating how they were very dissatisfied with sTooTsi because of how the deal went.

sTooTsi didn’t like their recent drop in ranking on ResellerRatings.com because it now appears that they are gaming their review rankings. In a 4 day period (Sept 3 to Sept 6) resellerratings.com is showing 174 new reviews for their site. More than 90% of those reviews were ranked “Somewhat Satisfied” or “Very Satisfied”.

So how would this lead me to believe that sTooTsi is trying to manipulate ResellerRatings.com review stats? Those 174 new reviews are MORE THAN 5 TIMES as many reviews they had received in previous 6 months and close to double the amount of customer reviews than they had received since 10/31/06. Sounds awfully fishy to me, but it gets better…

Many of the reveiws are pertaining to a free product (ear bud headphones) they gave away in 2007. It looks like they emailed the customers who ordered the completely free item to specifically beg for a review @ resellerratings.com.

One reviewer specifically mentions that their review on 9/3/08 is for a holiday promo that sTooTsi ran after Thanksgiving. Another reviewer mentions that the headphones worked for 6 months and then died (meaning that the deal they were reviewing was more than 6 months old). What would inspire so many people to all the sudden run out to a review website to talk about a product they ordered 10 or 11 months ago?

My guess is that they got offered a coupon code for posting a review. If that is what they did, it would be extra classy since some people in the PC game purchase forum are claiming they didn’t get refunded their shipping amounts even though no product was shipped to them.

Here are few of my favorite reviews:

Very Satisfied
Reviewer: cherronlogan (1)
9/3/08 8:13 PM
I DONT EVEN REMEMBER WHAT I AM REVIEWING, IT HAS BEEN SO LONG! WHATEVER IT WAS, IT WAS FREE SO IT WAS GREAT. THANK YOU FOR THE FREE PRODUCT! FIVE STARS!

Somewhat Satisfied
Reviewer: orbitrap (1)
9/3/08 9:05 PM
I don’t think I’ve received anything. But never got charged either.

Satisified with a vendor but you can’t remember what they sent you or if they ever did?

Nah, I changed my mind. These people weren’t enticed into leaving a review. I’m sure they just rolled over in bed one morning and told their spouse “Hey, remember that thing that I don’t remember! I should go write a review on a specific website stating that the place that may or may not have sent the thing I don’t remember to me how they are doing such a swell job!”

It creeps me out a little though that it happened so many people on the same day.
I better put on my tinfoil hat.

EDIT (9/15/08): As expected, the number of new reviews sTooTsi has received since 9/6 has dropped off by more than 90%. A few new complaints are mixed in with the dwindling flow of “Red Friday” reviews. My guess is that in another couple weeks they will back to the usual rate of just a few reviews a month.

“Obama For America” Sold Out

If you wanted to purchase the “OBAMA FOR AMERICA” LCD @ CDW” that I found the other day, you are too late. CDW must have sold out of them because they are off the website and no longer available.

After digging through my traffic stats, I assume that the people using the 5 different IPs owned by CDW that hit my site yesterday probably read about the great deal and bought up the remaining inventory.

In case you missed it and you are as bored (and boring) as I am, it is still visible thanks to everyone’s favorite Big Brother Google. Google cache from August 28 still shows the product info page. I grabbed a screen shot of the CDW’s Barack Obama for America product, since it will also probably fade away soon.

I’m sure the gaffe was due to an overzealous Obama supporting employee at CDW. I can only Hope that his/her employment status doesn’t Change. Get it? “Hope” and “Change”! Oh my god, sometimes I kill me.
Wow.
Oh man.
Phew.

What was I saying? Oh yeah.
OEF

Big Business for Obama?

Today I was searching CDW, Chicago-area Fortune 500 electronics wholesaler, for crappy cheap (= Acer) LCDs and found Acer’s new “Obama for America” monitors.

Here are the search results for the acer ET.B16RP.F02 lcd. I added some screen shots below in case CDW runs out of stock on those Obama units and drops them from the search results.

Click for pointless larger screen shot

I decided to check on old Man McCain at CDW but they tell me that John McCain doesn’t get results…

Click for pointless larger screen shot

The best part is that if you are logged on to your account (well, my cdw account) the Obama LCD is the only one in stock. The other Acer LCD with the same part number is out of stock. Oh yeah, and the Obama display is $4.00 more expensive. A friend of mine suggested that the $4.00 price increase was to cover the increase in taxes CDW would see if Obama was elected and had his way.

If you aren’t logged in the Obama for America LCD is the same price which is probably what it shows if you go there now and don’t have an account.

Should I email my sales rep to ask if I get a refund if the candidate is defective? It looks like they already had to take the McCain ones out of inventory because they were past their shelf life.

Anyways, Hope! Change! Reform. Prosperity. Peace. And prices I can believe in. Thanks CDW.