Cup color: Purple or pink

Is this cup purple or pink. My mom says it's pink and I say it's purple.

YouTube's comment failure

YouTube has this bell icon that indicates that someone has commented in a thread that you have commented in, but does not provide an easy way to actually get to the thread. What's up with that, YouTube? And sometimes YouTube, for no apparent reason decides to eliminate line breaks in your posts/

Banks and predatory fees...and PayPal.

Banks like to use acronyms to hide bad behavior on their part. My bank has a NSF ACH fee. NSF stands for Non-Sufficient Funds. Why they can't spell it out or say insufficient funds like the rest of us, I don't know. They also don't tell you about ACH which stands for Automated Clearing House which is overseen by the nongovernmental agency, NACHA, which on a one glance over their main web page and visiting a few other pages, I had no idea what it stands for, but can be found here. It stands for National Automated Clearing House Association. They charge to even look at their rules, which makes this article about transparency on their website a joke. This fee can be charged to savings accounts, which they don't tell you, and can and will be issued whenever someone decides to make any (automated? just about everything to do with account balances is automated to a degree) withdrawal from anybody else's account. Enter Paypal, Apparently, as I said before, they came up with a new "service" called Pay After Delivery which takes the money for no good reason out of your bank account, not your Paypal balance. The bank told me that PayPal told them that PayPal always takes money out of the bank account first. Look at this screen that PayPal puts up after selecting PayPal from a merchant.

Nowhere does it tell you anything about where the money is coming from. Also, there's nothing to tell you whether or not it just goes back to the site and tells it you successfully logged into PayPal and they're going to give the vendor the money.

Here's a link to NACHA's Contact Us form.

PayPal's contact page.

Update: Someone from my bank called me and told me that NACHA charges them for "returning" a request for withdrawal. The place that made the request for withdrawal doesn't get charged though. I don't know why NACHA members thought this was a good idea, nor why they have to talk in a jargon to understand each other but can't seem to understand ordinary words for things.

Achievements that are liberal in nature

Copied this from a site that is abrasive to conservatives. Wanted to start a post explaining why the ideas are liberal in nature, but this is in early stages.

1. The 40-hour work week.
2. Weekends
3. Vacations
4. Women’s Voting Rights
5. The Civil Rights Act of 1964

6. The right of people of all colors to use schools and facilities.
7. Public schools.
8. Child-labor laws.
9. The right to unionize
10. Health care benefits
11. National Parks
12. National Forests
13. Interstate Highway System
14. GI Bill
15. Labor Laws/Worker’s Rights
16. Marshall Plan
17. FDA
18. Direct election of Senators by the people.
19. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Workplace safety laws
20. Social Security
21. NASA
22. The Office of Congressional Ethics. Created in 2008.
23. The Internet
24. National Weather Service
25. Product Labeling/Truth in Advertising Laws
26. Rural Electrification/Tennessee Valley Authority
27. Morrill Land Grant Act
28. Public Universities
29. Bank Deposit Insurance
30. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
31. Consumer Product Safety Commission
32. Public Broadcasting/Educational Television
33. Americans With Disabilities Act
34. Family and Medical Leave Act
35. Environmental Protection Agency
36. Clean Air Act
37. Clean Water Act
38. USDA
39. Public Libraries
40. Transcontinental Railroad and the rail system in general
41. Civilian Conservation Corps
42. Panama Canal
43. Hoover Dam
44. The Federal Reserve
45. Medicare
46. The United States Military
47. FBI
48. CIA
49. Local and state police departments
50. Fire Departments
51. Veterans Medical Care
52. Food Stamps
53. Federal Housing Administration
54. Extending Voting Rights to 18 year olds
55. Freedom of Speech
56. Freedom of Religion/Separation of Church and State
57. Right to Due Process
58. Freedom of The Press
59. Right to Organize and Protest
60. Pell Grants and other financial aid to students
61. Federal Aviation Administration/Airline safety regulations
62. The 13th Amendment
63. The 14th Amendment
64. The 15th Amendment
65. Unemployment benefits
66. Women’s Health Services
67. Smithsonian Institute
68. Head Start
69. Americorps
70. Mine Safety And Health Administration (This has been weakened by conservatives, resulting in recent mining disasters.)
71. Food Labeling
72. WIC
73. Peace Corps
74. United Nations
75. World Health Organization
76. Nuclear Treaties
77. Lincoln Tunnel
78. Sulfur emissions cap and trade to eliminate acid rain
79. Earned Income Tax Credit
80. The banning of lead in consumer products
81. National Institute of Health
82. Garbage pickup/clean streets
83. Banning of CFCs.
84. Erie Canal
85. Medicaid
86. TARP
87. Bail Out of the American Auto Industry
88. Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
89. Wildlife Protection
90. End of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
91. Establishing the basis for Universal Human Rights

Declaration of Independence
92. Miranda Rights
93. Banning of torture
94. The right to a proper defense in court
95. An independent judiciary
96. The right to vote
97. Fair, open, and honest elections
98. The right to bear arms
99. Health care for children and pregnant women
100. A stable and strong government established by a Constitution
101. The founding of The United States of America
102. The defeat of the Nazis and victory in World War II
103. Paramedics
104. The Brady Handgun Act
105. The Glass-Steagall Act (since been repealed)
106. Oil industry regulations
107. The Affordable Care Act which makes insurance companies more honest and fair.
108. Woman’s Right to Choose
109. Title IX
110. Affirmative Action
111. A National Currency
112. National Science Foundation
113. Weights and measures standards
114. Vehicle Safety Standards
115. NATO
116. The income tax and power to tax in general, which have been used to pay for much of this list.
117. 911 Emergency system
118. Tsunami, hurricane, tornado, and earthquake warning systems
119. Public Transportation
120. The Freedom of Information Act
121. Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery
122. Antitrust legislation which prevents corporate monopolies
123. Water Treatment Centers and sewage systems
124. The Meat Inspection Act
125. The Pure Food And Drug Act
126. The Bretton Woods system
127. International Monetary Fund
128. SEC, which regulates Wall Street.
129. National Endowment for the Arts
130. Campaign finance laws
131. Federal Crop Insurance
132. United States Housing Authority
133. Soil Conservation
134. School Lunch Act
135. Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act
136. Vaccination Assistance Act
137. Over the course of nearly 50 years, liberal ideas contributed greatly to the eventual end of the Cold War.
138. The creation of counterinsurgency forces such as the Navy Seals and Green Berets.
139. Voting Rights Act, which ended poll taxes, literacy tests, and other voter qualification tests.
140. Civil Rights Act of 1968
141. Job Corps
142. Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965
143. Teacher Corps
144. National Endowment for the Humanities
145. Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966
146. National Trails System Act of 1968
147. U.S. Postal Service
148. Title X
149. Keeping the Union together through Civil War and rebuilt the South afterwards.
150. Modern Civilization

PayPal's horrible new feature.

https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/settings/wallet/ which you can't get to without logging in reads, "If you have a PayPal balance, we'll use it first." But PayPal's new "feature" Pay after Delivery bypasses the PayPal balance and goes for money in your bank account for some unexplained reason. It makes it harder to keep track of your spending because there is no setting aside money for the pending transaction as usual.  Also, this feature is opt-out instead of opt-in.
When I checked out of eBay with Edge, twice blank popup windows occurred and there was a PayPal box in among the eBay page. I don't know if I didn't look at the PayPal box too clearly, but all I saw was that the money was coming from PayPal.

I don't usually keep money in the savings account that PayPal is planning to take money from. All the unhelpful replies to my complaint amounted to just explaining the feature. I've changed banks and the previous one charged me for an attempt to withdraw money that wasn't there while declining the transaction.from a savings account. Update: The new bank charges the predatory price of $29 for someone attempting to withdraw money when there isn't enough there. More on this in a later post.

Entitlement Mentality Shaming Gone Wrong

So a video called Entitlement Mentality Gone Wild is a thing. It strings together snippets of news stories in an attempt to illustrate that... at risk vulnerable people act silly, I guess? But it begs the question of whether "entitlement mentality" is even a thing. Do these people have a sense of entitlement or are they just trying to get by the best they can figure out? But my attention was drawn to a clip where an Angel Adams says "Somebody needs to pay for all my children, and my... and all our suffering, for all our... somebody needs to be held accountable and they need to pay.


The video twists what she says. She feels mistreated by the system and believes someone needs to pay for what they did to her. That analysis is bolstered by the story at this link. she was trying to go it alone, but the state wouldn't let her.
Here's another clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3anuIAgJmys

Slashdot has become much harder to use

I wanted to write a Slashdot journal entry on how I discovered that information I thought had been at
http://slashdot.org/~hackwrench/ once upon a time had been moved to https://slashdot.org/users.pl so I go to my journal page and can find nothing to click to start a new journal entry.
http://slashdot.org/~hackwrench/journal appears to be the same page as http://slashdot.org/users2.pl?dp=journal

I did a search for write journal slashdot but couldn't find anything useful.

Also the login button and new user button take some getting used to.


https://slashdot.org/users.pl contains the info on how many replies my messages have gotten, This is among the most useful information that Slashdot can provide, despite the statement on the page that suggests I wouldn't be interested in the page.

Funny things to say in connection with The Stanley Parable

Okay, I've pressed the key to question nothing, but nothing isn't being very forthcoming with answers. What buttons do I press to waterboard and choke nothing. Also, nothing seems to be on a hunger strike. How do I force feed nothing?

Some funny things to say about Portal 1

I really want to be revived with peptic salve and adrenaline.  What button(s) do I press to become light-headed from thirst and pass out?
I died in the furnace just like GLaDOS wanted, so why aren't the end credits running?
Okay, GLaDOS is telling me to get into the party submission position. What buttons do I press to do that?
I'm being told to go back, but I don't see where I can place portals to do that.

So I read this article on how bad the mobile web is, and thought "Its bad for people who like to read web pages with large text." I mean seriously, a lot of websites do something that makes their text reflow improperly so that it doesn't stay within the width of the window, Cracked.com also disables the scrollbar at the bottom of the window to make things even tougher.


Then there are the websites that right off the bat you get told isn't responding.

Went back to the eye doctor and she adjusted my frames. I told her that maybe a near vision test might uncover a ADD value other than the one she prescribed. She said that there's nothing magical about it and ADD values get adjusted based on years old. That sounds like more magical thinking than what I proposed.

Just how resource intensive is it to give everyone a near vision test. Years ago, the glasses I had then just bought wasn't working right so the doctor gave me a near vision test and made new lenses that were bifocal. Just recently I had to switch eye doctors, and the doctor said that I shouldn't need bifocals yet, This eye doctor didn't give me my prescription, a violation of FTC regulations. I don't know if my glasses are single focus or progressive.


Actually, the new glasses were causing me trouble when I first got them, I went back, had my vision tested again, still no close vision test and then they check if the lenses were made correctly and it turns out the left lens wasn't made according to the doctor's prescription.


Just now, I found out what the red green test is for and I had tried to look up information about the eye exam.

Free will, punishment and the right of society to defend itself.

People have suggested that if people lack free will, then they don't deserve to be punished. They seem to ignore that the people doing the punishment lack free will as well. I feel they also ask the wrong question, which is, do people deserve to be punished. A better question would be does society have the right to defend itself, and in what form should that defense take?

Outlook.com has so much blank space that could be used to show the subject

Microsoft doesn't have a feature to send feedback, so I figured I'd blog about it here. The folders panel has a lot of space that goes unused. My folder names aren't that long. Then there's an obnoxious amount of space between the Sender and the subject. I use CTRL "+" to make the text easier to see, and the subject line only gets a few characters before it is truncated. Then there's still more space between where the Subject is truncated to and categories. Then even more space between the categories and the time stamp. There's not much of the subject line that's visible.

Entitlement

Older people have been saying that the young people today seem entitled, but what if they are seeing people who know what they want and how to get it and don't appreciate it when older people insist they are entitled to tell the young people that no, you have to run a stupid maze to prove that you should have what you want..

Herman Cain's Hard Work and Luck

On http://www.hermancain.com/successful-people-are-not-lott Herman Cain makes statements that seem to indicate that he thinks liberals believe that only luck is involved in being successful and furthermore no luck is involved in success. I guess he doesn't believe he is lucky to not be saddled with a handicap. He is completely vague on what his dad did after he left his farm, and must not think he is lucky to be the son of such a dad. For that matter he is completely vague about his own efforts.

Corporate scams

I currently use MetroPCS on a 3G phone. I have tried to view their Terms of Service page in the past, but it had been blank. Recently, I've been getting texts that I have used up the 4G data for the month. How can you use any 4G data on a 3G phone? You may be getting charged 4G speeds without getting it, but how would you know?

Recently I received a phone call from Telecheck saying that I owe them a $20 return check fee from a few months ago when Amazon claimed that I owed them $15 but later admitted they were wrong. There was never any check. When I called them back they claimed to have found another $20 fee to stick me with. Telecheck thinks it can refuse to accept my statement over the phone or the internet and insists that it must have me send it a form in the mail. Well, it's not getting its form or the money it wants to steal from me. Unrelated to the $15 snafu, Amazon wants me to send them a FAX to unblock my payments account.

Typing this on my phone reminded me of the autocomplete/autocorrect problem. Why is it so broken?