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Having a baby? Before you name it, look the name up in the Name Voyager.

Interestingly, the name you think is so unique may be extremely popular.

Popularity: 4%

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On December 11th Coverville played one of my requests.

I requested The Strokes cover of Marvin Gaye’s Mercy Mercy Me.

I always feel like such a celebrity when my name gets mentioned on a podcast. W00T!

Popularity: 6%

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For years, my father has had a dream. He wants to live in a tower.

More specifically, he wants to live in a concrete tower silo. Appearantly, sometime during the middle of the 20th century, farmers could order kits for these concrete silos. Concrete blocks and cables to hold them together would be shipped to your location for a fairly reasonable sum. Today, of course, we have all kinds of ridiculous things like weight limits from UPS and building codes. Building a concrete silo is no longer as trivial as it once was.

My father’s idea is to take one of these old silos and build an internal structure with a staircase and an observation deck at the top. I’m fairly confident that if we had an ocean nearby he’d want a lighthouse too.

The point of all this is, that I’ve found my Dad’s kindred spirit with this water tower conversion in the Netherlands.

Popularity: 7%

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It’s not like the state of TV isn’t dismal enough with the writer’s strike and the resulting possible end of Battlestar Galactica, stopping of the Office, possible delay of 24 and a shortened season for Heroes.

To top it all off, our friends at NBC have nothing better to do than run a 30 second preview of one of my new favorite shows, Chuck, that gives away most of tomorrow’s episode. Not only do they have major episode spoilers, but they air them during tonight’s NFL game, so I can’t really ignore them. If I didn’t like the show so much I would NOT watch it because of the commercial…

Popularity: 6%

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Business Blog Consulting had a nice post last week about the awesome customer service of Zappos, and the horrid customer service of Spirit Airlines. Now I have never used either of these companies, I don’t fly much and I buy all my clothes (OK, not all, but most) from Ross. Actually bought a way cool pair of Rocket Dog shoes for $13 last week on clearance at Ross - way cheaper than Zappos.

Regardless, if Zappos customer service is as good as it sounds, YOU should probably buy from them.

On a completely unrelated note, the Boston Red Sox swept our Colorado Rockies in the World Series last night. I guess The Lisa was right about her beloved baseball team. Grrr…

Popularity: 13%

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So, the Rockies haven’t fared well against the Boston Red Sox. As of this writing, the Rocks are down three games in the series. Now, I normally don’t hate the BoSox, but when they are playing the home team…

Worst part is, not only is Boston beating up on my baseball team, the New England Patriots are busy annihilating teams on what looks like a steamroll to the Super Bowl. Appearantly Bill Belicheck has decided the way to win back the hearts and minds of America, after his cheating ways, is to embarrass his opponent in every game he coaches. Today’s 52-7 whipping of the Washington Redskins reminded me of the Nebraska (another team I hated) glory days when Tom Osborne would run the score up on every poor team he played.

Worst case scenario, the Red Sox will sweep the Rockies to be the 2007 World Series winners and the New England Patriots will beat the Colts next week, go undefeated and win the Super Bowl again.

The only thing that could make me hate Boston more is if the Bruins knock the Avs out of the Stanely Cup race.

Of course, best case would be the Rocks winning four straight to be Series Champs, Colts beat the Pats next week, and the Broncos rally to win the Super Bowl. Let’s hope for that.

Popularity: 7%

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As far as I’m concerned, the United States Postal Service serves two purposes.

The first is to deliver my monthly water bill to the city of Greeley.

The second is as a secondary delivery service for online vendors and ebay shippers that don’t use Fed-Ex or UPS.

As a result I don’t buy many stamps. With the postal rate CONSTANTLY changing, this sometimes is a problem.

Recently I had to send a personal letter, payment for some candles I ordered from my good friend Marti Jo (I know, candles aren’t very manly, but thats another story).

When I sent this letter I used some stamps I had that were clearly marked “First Class’. A few days later I recieved my letter back marked “Additional Postage Required”.

Additional Postage Required???? I sent first class letter, the stamp was clearly marked “First Class”, why didn’t they honor this stamp???

I know, I know, they raised the rates here recently, but as a none postal employee I’m not really up on the postage rates.

OK, fine, so I go to the post office to buy some 1 cent (2 cent, whatever) stamps so I can use my previous stamps, that I am assuming are the 39 cent variety. Of course, their automated machine that sells stamps doesn’t show anything small denomination.

So, I have to either go to the post office, stand in line, and buy a dollar’s worth of 1 cent stamps, or just use some old 34 centers I already have.

Bottom line, it cost me 63 cents to send that letter to Iowa, all because the post office wouldn’t deliver the letter with my First Class stamp…

Popularity: 7%

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I was fortunate enough to attend my first NFL game when my friend Sarah invited me to Saturday night’s pre-season Denver Broncos game. While I am an avid professional football fan, this was the first time I had ever been to a pro game live. While I had a great time, and really appreciate Sarah taking me, I don’t think I will go to another.

The amazing thing about an NFL game is that nobody really seems to watch the game. when I watch a game at home I am bombarded by three hours of play-by-play action by at LEAST two announcers. They give background information, stats analysis, and replays for BOTH teams. Invesco Field had two big screens that showed replays and information on the Broncos, but nearly nothing on their opponents, the Cleveland Browns. From my upper deck seat I couldn’t make out the name of any Browns players. I really felt like I only got to watch half a football game.

Again, this is not a critque of the evening. I had a great time, but I care too much about the game to watch another one live. I would much rather watch Jay Cutler fumble snaps and throw incompletions in the comfort of my own home, where I can switch over to Peyton Manning when I get frustrated…

Popularity: 8%

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A little over a year ago I moved my bank account to Compass Bank. Everything has been excellent since then… until today.

Today, I was checking my bank account online and I found that there was a late charge on my Credit Card statement. This seemed odd to me since I have made regular payments. The Compass Credit Card statement comes in the mail, not electronically, and isn’t even visible through the online interface. Since I can’t see the statements online, I typically just pay more than the minimum amount monthly and don’t worry about the actual due dates. This hasn’t ever been a problem until this month.

Between June 20 and August 10th I made three payments, all about three times the monthly payment. Unfortunately, the second payment, made in the first week of July, was ONE DAY before the actual date of the statement.

Looking at my account, I assumed this was the issue, so I called the Compass credit card people. After entering my credit card number into the phone four times, going through several levels of menus, explaining the situation multiple times to the young woman that finally answered and being on hold for about 20 minutes, she explained the situation. The payment was early (which I already assumed), so she couldn’t refund the late payment fee.

Just to clarify, I was penalized by the Compass Bank credit card division for making a payment a day early. Insane.

Popularity: 8%

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Recently I was at my sister’s house and we had a pineapple. Somehow it was decided that I should be the one to cut it up and serve it.

My pineapple experience has been limited to those handy canned rings Dole so conveniently provides us with, so I attempted to emulate the job the machine at the Dole factory does. It was somewhat disasterous, but tasty anyway.

Fortunately, thanks to this nice blog posting on serving pineapple, I can now impress my friends with my pineapple carving skills.

Popularity: 12%

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