Kick in the Head

Verizon and Cablevision (whom I already have internet through, just not the triple play) are the primary sources of my junk mail. Verizon’s new triple play FiOS offer includes a copy of Halo Anniversary and a year of Xbox Gold.

The cover of said junk mail has a graphic of a PDA-like device with a thumb print on it. I looked at it and thought “HA! I’m just gonna look dumb rubbing this expecting something to happen.” But no, it’s actually heat sensitive and the special promo-code is revealed underneath. So yeah, I’m probably going to cut this thing out of the junk mail, toss the mail and rub it whenever I need a small bit of amusement.

This seems to happen a lot. Usually the package in Jersey means that the next day it’ll be in Brooklyn for delivery, but just about every time it stays in Jersey for a day. Maybe they have some crazy labyrinthian mail sorting system in Jersey which prevents it from moving out quickly.

I spent most of my Sunday afternoon shredding pertinent information from junk mail that has been piling up for a very long time. This was done using shredder scissors which are incredibly un-ergonomic. Actually doing cross shredding with them was kind of gratifying, but it was still a huge pain in the butt. I found three charity mails which contained free personalized address labels, the aforementioned interest check and also a membership card for a service I had signed up for a while ago.

After this I found the Opt Out Prescreen site which hopefully will do its job and cut down my junk mail.

But when I was at the UPS Store they said that we needed to fill some waybill thing out and get a shipping label, but that this waybill could only be acquired at a UPS center? I googled UPS center and didn’t see any nearby. So then he said that we could do it online, print the label and then come back to the store.

But then it turned out that in addition to an account number you need to enter in some more information into the UPS shipment form in order to charge the shipment in that manner. It actually makes perfect sense, because if it only took an account number then someone could get stuff sent for free provided they had some business’ number.

Still, the idea that a UPS Store cannot do anything and everything related to shipping things via UPS seems patently absurd.