lordpil

e.g. R+R front wheel bearing on a bill.

I applied online for a Kohl's Charge card and expected to receive an instant approval. Instead, I got a generic message indicating that I should call a 1-800 number. I called the number and my application was approved and I received a temporary account number.

Now, I tried to probe as to why I had to do this, and of course I got generic 'for your security' answers. I also asked directly whether everyone had to do this. I was told 'yes'.

When I called I had to repeat everything in my application 'to verify my information' over the phone. After she approved it, she asked for my email address and I said I already gave it on the online form. 'I don't have it, it was in the application process'. 'What's the point to the online application then?' 'It's for your security'...

So, my guess: my application got flagged (false positive) for some reason. Perhaps I answered one of the credit check questions wrong. And the rep flat-out lied to me about this process being normal. Any thoughts? Anyone gotten an instant approval without having to call?

I found a bunch of these under a couple pairs of shoes near my door that I probably haven't moved in months. They appear to be dead, or at least they don't move when prodded or ever.

http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/9792/img0465cro...

I'm looking for some input from some city bicyclists on why they behave the way they do. I'm not a perfect driver by any means, though I've been continually trying to improving my driving such that I don't annoy or endanger anyone unnecessarily.

It seems that the majority (certainly not all though) of cyclists I see riding around in the city here don't wear helmets and drive full speed through intersections with red lights (often without looking), expecting cars to stop for them. The other day a large group of cyclists decided to blockade the entire roadway for 5 minutes to let them pass through a red light.

I imagine all the good ones are just not riding on the (dangerous) streets I drive on. But what are these people thinking? I can deal with them, but it seems like they are wrecklessly endangering their lives. Is it just the same issue that drivers have -- they don't care? Personally I'd be more cautious on a motorcycle or bike just because it's so much easier to be killed.

It's 2008, I'm almost 24 years old and I just finished viewing the Matrix for the first time. Now I'm wondering if there is anyone else at all out there who hasn't seen the movie?

I used to wash my clothes a lot more often. I used to wear 4 or 5 different pairs of jeans and wash them every weekend.

Recently I've moved toward a one jean model where I'll wear one for a long period of time, then another. And I've found that I've been avoiding washing them because I am tired of them tightening. After you've worn them two or three days, they fit perfectly.

Keep in mind I might go to work and come home and not do anything strenuous in them or get them dirty. In the winter they tend to get dirtier at the bottoms, though. When I come home I will often change into something else.

In summary, it seems that I've become lazy and fat?

So I just got back from the supermarket, after spending 25 minutes going back and forth to my car to get the store to honor the price of a product I purchased. The sign said 50% off, but it rang up full price. First the guy just returned it, until I demanded they honor the price.

I've seen this happen a lot more frequently at this supermarket than others, especially on 50% off reduced to clear items, and I suspect they do it intentionally. Am I wasting my time, or should I go back and buy another one tomorrow to verify they updated the price?

I also just realized they have a price guarentee, and I should have gotten the items for free instead of at the correct price.

It's almost 5am on the east coast, 2am west coast. Am I the only one?

I already know it's Jason, but I just wanted to see if YOU knew since no one seems to be asking tonight.

So I've been hearing about the impending deadline for digital conversion for years and years now, since they also moved it out. Now it's finally coming and they are making a big deal out of it.

How many people really actually still watch TV over the air with an analog television? Personally, I'm the only person I know that doesn't have Cable, but I live in a city and I can get lots of broadcast HD stations with a small antenna. And I only watch one channel anyway. I'm watching on a 1080p tv with atsc tuner of course. I can't even imagine still watching the analog stations these days.

People that don't understand technology drive me nuts, I hate them.

Don't you hate me because I only ever took intro biology and don't have any deep understanding of medical science. I also have barely scratched the surface of law and politics. My knowledge of Buddhism is almost nil. I've failed to comprehend String Theory beyond the pretend way I read lay books on it. Don't I disgust you for being so unknowledgable?

I must be so infuriatingly irritating to you with my lack of comprehension of even the most trivial of matters in these subjects.

So this weekend I've been staying up all night doing calculus problems. Sounds normal enough, except I graduated college two years ago.

I look at questions here and I write them out on my little whiteboard here and work on them. I don't always get them right: I just managed to integrate cos(x^2) in terms of simple functions. I don't even answer most of them online, I just am doing them for myself. I've particularly fallen for the rate of change type problems, I find those immensely fun.

I didn't do that great in math in college, after having exceled before then. I gave up on mathematics after linear algebra, I never even took numerical methods.

But now suddenly I'm doing all these problems and I enjoy them! I wonder if it might not just be the whiteboard. I never had my own whiteboard before. It seems so much more fun to do this stuff on a whiteboard for some reason...

I have recently watched the following movies (in the following order):

The Bourne Trilogy

Spider-man trilogy

I am Legend

Minority Report

Children of Men

Casino Royale

Stardust

I, Robot

Goodfellas

Gone Baby Gone

American Gangster

My choices were influnced by the last movies I watched. For example, Goodfellas led to American Gangster. I more or less liked all of them. I particularly liked Bourne, Children of Men and the Spidermen movies. I am ashamed of it but I liked Stardust too.

Whenever I put my likes into those movie suggestion generators I never like any of the suggestions. I like newer movies, anything older than 1990 won't go. Preferably available on blu-ray or hd-dvd. I value picture quality and surround sound, but don't obsess over them. I sometimes avoid indie/low budget films because of this, but then sometimes like thme anyway if I watch them. But that doesn't mean I want one.

Please answer correctly. Thank you!

From time to time I've tried to answer math questions here with helpful explanations, but I'm always beat out by the people who simply give the answers (right or wrong) without explanation.

I can understand why kids paste/type their homework here, but it's harder to understand the motivation of the answerers. I appreciate the questions (at least the more difficult ones) as a review, but I still feel compelled to help the asker understand how to solve it.

So far I've only found one store, Stop and Shop in Brookine, MA, that had it. They had Coke and Diet Coke (just labeling?) with the yellow cap. I was hoping to find Sprite, if it exists...

http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/4449/1001107wz0...

Oh and please don't tell me to buy Mexican Coke.

I am an embedded firmware engineer by trade, so I typically write code in C and assembly, and it's always has to be very fast.

I also have many years experience in higher level languages as well. I've written only a minimal amount of Java code as I never got past the 'slow' factor.

I always see people defending Java as just as fast as C++, and I don't doubt it can chug out computations as fast as any code. But when you're talking about any app that's used by an end user, that isn't just going to stay open for a year at a time, load time is important. Even the simplest little applications take an egregiously long time to load whether as a plugin, webstart or with java -jar. A top of the line system with 4GB of ram, 64-bit OS and latest version of Sun Java doesn't seem to even help much.

How has Java not died off yet because of this? Presumably most java applications are end-user ones, right?

I'm really cheap. Though in the past I have thrown out the really low denomination checks I've gotten, lately I've been cashing every single one that I've received in the mail.

They are those things that if you cash them, they enroll you in a 30 day trial of some bogus service or another (most likely run by Trilegeant), e.g. Payment Protector, Hot-Line, ID-Secure.

I got $40 from signing up for Chase Payment Protector on two cards. I just cancelled two more today that netted me about $20 combined. I just cash the check and put a reminder in my calendar to cancel it in 30 days. But when I call up I always feel bad as I listen to them drone on for 5 minutes, and give my reason as 'no reason'. I don't actually say I just wanted the check they sent. Am I a bad person?

Am I a bad person? Too smart? Too dumb? Too polarizing? Too neutral?

I feel very out of place here.

My tires on my 2005 Mazda 3 now have just about 50,000 miles on them. The front tires are worn much more than the rear tires (my fault for not rotating as often as I should). I'm planning on replacing them all fairly soon (never really liked these tires that much anyway), but I never really understood the 'penny' method for checking tire wear.

The tire type has two deep grooves along the center, and diagonal treadlines along the rest of the middle that are shallower. The front tires clearly are just about worn down flat for the diagonal lines, but the middle grooves are still fairly deep. Is the depth test supposed to apply to 'whichever is the most shallow' or what? Why would they make some of the grooves deeper than others?