Brads Blog

I just did a survey about disposable razors and they will be sending me a free sample. This was put on by a company called Supermax.(I never heard of them) On the questionairre, I filled out everything except my phone number, just in case.
I unchecked the opt-in option for future mailings and discount offers so I hope I don’t get hammered with spam.
In case you’re interested, here is their fine print:

Please send your feedback at newproducts_feedback@supermaxworld.com

Legal disclaimer: Supermax respects the privacy of our online visitors. The information on this site is collected to identify you personally and only when you have provided such information at your own free will. The personal information provided by you is solely used to identify you, contact you to send free samples, mailing promotion material, if you have won any contest or promotions conducted. The personal information provided by you is not shared with any third party except with some service providers, however Supermax ensures that such service providers complies with our policies.

The above is applicable only in case personal information is provided online. Any non personal information is out side the preview of the above.

Supermax reserves the right to modify the above policy at its sole discretion and any such modification will be effective immediately. Supermax is liable to send maximum of 1 razor per household. The sample razors would be supplied in the regions of mainland USA, Canada, Hawaii and Alaska.

For any additional information or query please on the above please write to newproducts_feedback@supermaxworld.com

I’ll be sure to update here if I get hammered with spam. I would be interested if anyone comes across any other freebies such as this.

UPDATE:
I completed this survey about three hours ago, and have received five SPAM emails. If you do this survey, you might want to make sure you use a junk email address that you are comfortable getting spammed.

dealsfreebies

Now that we’re in Christmas season, I feel it’s appropriate to discuss giving gift cards as Christmas gifts. I admit there may be cases where they are ok, but for the most part they are not.

Do you remember growing up, and were told that it’s not the gift you give; it’s the thought that counts?
How much thought goes in to buying a gift card? Why even bother with it?
If you’re too lazy to do a little shopping, don’t waste you’re money.

Giving a gift means:” I thought of you and bought this”. A gift card means “I couldn’t find five minutes to make it past the customer service desk to find you a gift, here’s a gift card, go buy your own gift”.

Christmas only happens once a year, why not buy them something they will remember and appreciate? Don’t punish them buy sending them back to the store, just when they thought they were done Christmas shopping. Now they have to buy their own gifts!

As I was doing a review of the RSS reader IntraVnews, I got hooked on the whole syndication thing. I always knew feeds were out there, but never really paid much attention to them. Once I started tinkering with this software, I am suddenly wondering how I made it this far without it. Before, I would dance from blog to blog, website to website. There are quite a few I check on a regular basis. Now, I simply check my favorites like I check my email. I am much more efficient with my valuable internet time. I came across a good article, kind of a “how to” for RSS. Here it is.
If you are one of the millions out there who read blogs and don’t do the whole “feeds thing”, I strongly suggest you at least give it a try. It will make things much easier. If you are still intimidated, some sites offer email feeds (such as Bradsblog), where site updates are sent to your email.

I’ve seen the infomercials on Sunday morning television for Direct Buy. People claim to save thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars of home furnishings and building supplies. I felt like that’s too good to be true. I thought it might be a scam so I decided to give them a call and check it out.

DirectBuy is NOT a scam

The lady was a pretty big help with my questions, no complaints about her. But still, I felt it’d be important to visit the Direct Buy showcase in order to conduct a real DirectBuy review. I still, despite the lady being pretty friendly on the phone, thought there was some sort of DirectBuy scam.

So I visited the DirectBuy showcase and it was pretty neat. I actually didn’t have much time to stay, but I watched their presentation and it seemed like a pretty solid gig. I made a friend there who was also there to see the presentation – he was a pretty cool guy. I think he ended up joining, but I did not. Mainly because I just don’t have any stuff to buy yet. I’ll revisit the DirectBuy showcase next year and may join.

DirectBuy Update 9-14-11
If you were hesitant to join DirectBuy, I hear they are doing a 30-day money back trial. I have not verified they definitely have this yet, but I will keep looking into it.

Update 11/27/05
This seems to be a pretty hot topic, so I’ve decided to revisit Directbuy.

After I received several emails inquiring whether or not I found anything else out about the company, I decided to do a little research I found that there are many direct buy reviews out there.

One lady wrote to me and summed it up well:
“DirectBuy membership, It works if you do it right. My husband and I went to the presentation, and it seems like a good idea. Yes, you will save money, it seems, but it’s obviously only a good idea if you’re going to buy something. I have no complaints about direct buy, but I could see where someone would be unhappy if they joined and never used the service. I did that with cosco one year. Paid to join but never went there because I was too lazy.”

If you have ever looked into Direct Buy, or know of any other resources that may help those who are interested in the membership club, please post comments and/or your review here (scroll to bottom).

Update 1/4/07
Thank everyone who has left a testimonial in the comments. Hearing feedback about Direct Buy is a big help to clear up confusion on their membership club. Please keep posting comments here!

I mentioned in my post last Sunday that I plan to publish a glossary of common blog terms this week. However, I have decided that I will not be posting it on Bradsblog. I will give it a little more fine tuning then post it to the Blog-Hints blog.

I have some pretty deep rants on my mind right now I am writing up and will have those out this week as well. I continued to work on my newsletter, but will delay publishing it until I have more subscribers.

I am also gearing up for a review of the Bowflex workout system I use regularly. This should be done this week.

It seems like whenever you hear anything about the War in Iraq, something about how it all began is soon to follow. Lies, intelligence fabrication, whatever. The whole reason we went to war was because George Bush lied about Iraq WMD’s. Sound familiar?
It’s almost funny how easy we forget. I remember the no fly zone. I remember how there were daily violations of it, firing on allied aircraft. We got the UN weapons inspectors back in, but do you remember the lockouts, the runarounds they were getting? They were surrounded by a cloud of suspicion. After 16 UN resolutions we were trying to get yet another, only to be blocked by France, Germany and Russia. Enough was enough. We’re going in. The Nation was all for it. I recall over 70% of Americans were ready to go in. Now that it has been going on for a while, and the popularity is dropping off, our “leaders” are jumping ship. Leaders are called leaders because the lead people, not follow mob rule. Shame on them. How about a little follow through?

I took interest to Lifehacker’s post about the Google Web accelerator. This program is intended to load web pages quicker. I have to agree with him that the amount of time this program claims to save you is grossly exaggerated. I downloaded this utility not a week ago and have already saved several hours. To be completely honest, I really can’t tell a difference with this. I might uninstall it.

Update:
12/10/05
This morning I decided to uninstall this program. I have noticed that my computer has been running rather slow lately, and can’t put my finger on what the problem might be. I looked at the Google web accelerator and found that the cache had grown to nearly 500 megs. I cleared it then uninstalled the program. I haven’t really done anything to notice a difference, but will continue to monitor the situation.

My wife has been complaining that I suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, and has been ever since I began blogging. If I am at home, I am on the computer. It would not surprise me if there was a family picture of my wife and kids, and the back of my head.

While I was on my family vacation this summer in Indianapolis, I got the creeps in a Bob Evans restaurant bathroom and haven’t been the same since.

I had just finished washing my hands and went to open the door when I had a vision. How many nasty hands grabbed the door before me? A lot I’m sure. It’s almost like I could see the germs on it. The bathroom looked clean! It really gave me a weird feeling. I took a look around, is the water faucet safe? I just washed my hands, will I contaminate them by turning off the water? What about the paper towel dispenser? I figured the faucet and paper towel dispenser would be safe. Only clean hands touch the paper towel dispenser. I figured the best way to open the door would be to use the paper towel I just used to dry my hands and shield my hand from the door handle, then hold the door open with my elbow and make the two-point shot with the towel in trash.

It’s getting worse and worse every year. Big department stores are advertising deep cuts on prices of big ticket items, attempting to draw in customers on the traditional mega shopping day. As far as I’m concerned, this is all fine and dandy. The problem I have is when they advertise a sale, then only carry a handful of these items. It is classic bait and switch.
For example.
By brother attempted to get in on the $300 HP noteook on sale at Walmart. The doors opened at 5:00am. He got there at about 5:05 and they were gone. I happen to know an inside source, and he said they only started out with 21 of these. This is exactly why I don’t bother trying. In fact, I aim to be done with Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving so I don’t have to worry about it. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it this year so I’m going to have to go out in this crap.

Today my wife went to the grocery store and brought home a variety of potato chips. Among the different flavors and brands were Lays Original and Lays Light. I often wondered how big of a difference the light chips were compared to the regular. I compared the nutrition labels and this is what I came up with:

You might also want to consider, the Light version contains Olestra. They should put warning labels on foods that contain Olestra, “This product may cause frequent trips to the bathroom”

As far as taste, you can’t tell a difference between the regular and light. It is also worth mentioning, the Light chips seem a bit crispier than the original.