Lately, I have noticed a sharp rise in an already very disturbing trend. When I watch TV, I am constantly interrupted with beeps, scrolls, and various alerts. I’m paying a lot of money for my digital cable service, and I don’t want the picture shrunk while half the screen has warnings on it. Why not make a whole channel for this stuff, or do it during the commercials?

In the past couple of weeks, nearly every prime time show that I’ve taped on my DVR either has had a thunderstorm warning, amber alert, silver alert, or local election results on the screen during the show. It is ridiculous! I don’t care about any of those things! If I want live election results, I don’t expect to find them on the channel showing American Idol. If a bad thunderstorm is coming, then too bad. What do you want me to do? I’m already at home! If a child or old person has gone missing, then I probably can’t help you. The person you are looking for is not standing in middle of my living room, so I suppose I won’t be seeing them tonight.

I think I’m at the front of this complaint. I believe the voices against this will grow louder once it becomes more commonplace and obtrusive. This must stop immediately! It makes me feel like every channel is going to go the way of the TV Guide Channel, which today has about 1/4 of the screen still reserved for the program listings, while the other 3/4 are ads and pointless programming. Gimme a break!

I have to finally weigh in on the potential takeover of Yahoo by Microsoft. As you probably know by now, Microsoft has offered up $40B in an effort to buy rival Yahoo. So far, the powers-that-be at Yahoo have not been warm to the offer. Still, Microsoft will probably go to any length necessary to make this a reality, even if the takeover becomes a hostile one. The company claims they need Yahoo in order to compete with Internet star Google.

Personally, I hope they fail…and fail miserably. I am no fan of Microsoft. Their decades of corporate greed and endless bullying of their rivals has left a bitter taste in my mouth. I think the company should have been broken up years ago. I believe they still operate a monopoly today, at least in the business world, and they abuse that power at every opportunity. Microsoft is all about stealing others’ ideas and claiming them as their own. I have watched for years as they relentlessly stomped on anyone trying to get a foothold in the business. The systematic destruction of the Netscape browser was among the most personal.

I think Microsoft’s web services stink. I do not like MSN or the new Live.com. Funny, I remember when Microsoft bought Hotmail.com and made it their own. It went from being a cool, hip place to send mail via the web, to a bloated, cumbersome service littered with advertisements. I remember once, years ago, when Microsoft updated individual user preferences for Hotmail account holders to include incorporate new privacy options. In doing so, Microsoft forcefully and deliberately set each and every user account to allow their addresses to be used for targeted advertising. Is that what you expect from a company you supposedly trust?

I happen to like Yahoo. The site is still a great online destination, and they have an immense array of product offerings. I admit that I use Gmail instead Yahoo Mail, but that doesn’t mean Yahoo is lacking. I do read Yahoo News and visit My Yahoo on a daily basis. I also use the Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Widgets, Yahoo Answers, Flickr, and Del.icio.us, just to name a few.

If Microsoft becomes the controller of Yahoo’s services, I am planning to cancel each and every one one of those services when/if it goes into effect. I won’t have any part of being a Microsoft web customer. Period.

Go away, Microsoft. Leave Yahoo alone!

What has happened to the state of Swiss Cake Rolls today? I remember when I was a kid, I would be so thrilled if I had a pack in my lunchbox. I can vividly remember how soft, fresh, creamy, and fantastic they were. Today, the same little cakes are borderline terrible. I don’t believe it is just my imagination, either.

Last night I opened a pack and I could only stomach one of the two rolls. It just wasn’t good, and had little taste. Today’s Swiss Cake Rolls taste so cheap and industrial, they are like biting into moist rolled-up cardboard. They have the texture of something made from chemicals and heavy machinery. I swear that over the years and decades they must have dramatically changed the recipe, and are just riding out their success using the original box. I don’t plan to buy any more of these, at least for a very long time. They are not the least bit good anymore.

Shortly after the start of the new year, some representatives from Beyond Fitness came to my work to sell gym memberships. Apparently, they were trying to cash in on peoples resolutions for the new year. They know once they get people to sign the dotted line, they’ll likely abandon those resolutions within the first month. The people they sent were practically body builders. That kind of image just puts a lot of gym-goers off. I feel that if they were out trying to recruit new members, the gym must not be much of a success. The discounted rate they were offering was a zero signing fee, and $25 per month. Regularly, $100 is due at signing, with a $39 monthly membership fee. Personally, I think even the discounted rate is still ridiculous. It comes out to be $300 per year.

I have been a member of two gyms in the past. Neither membership was worth the money I paid. I rarely went, and when I did, the cool equipment was often taken. Using free weights usually involved sitting next to a beefcake who is pumping ten times what I am trying to do. The same beefcakes were there most every day. And despite the fact that the gym was always crowded, the owners were always out trying to recruit new people to join. Banners were put up outside offering rates far below what I’d already agreed to pay. Gyms come and go. They most always eventually go under, or get bought by another company, who under the guise of a new name, still go out and try to rip people off.

I don’t plan to pay for a gym membership again. I think the whole business is a big racket. They count on people not coming very often, or giving up all together. If I ever get serious about working out, I’d rather spend money on a Bowflex machine that I can use at home.

I hate Wal-Mart! It’s funny looking back where I had said I hated Kmart. While that is still true, Wal-Mart has pretty much taken the place of Kmart as the store of choice for white trash America. In North Carolina, four out of five people who shop there look so grossly unhealthy that they look like they just walked out of a concentration camp. I am very serious. Some customers typically look outright puke-inducing.

Wal-Mart is always slam-packed. Parking and shopping are a logistical nightmare. They install nearly 50 checkout lanes in the supercenter, but I never see more than about 8 in use at any given time…if that. Waiting in line always takes a whole 10-15 minutes before you can even place your items on the counter. There are always people ahead of you buying $300 worth of milk, Sam’s Choice soda, and other stupid nonsense.

The store greeters almost never say hello to me when I walk in, but always have to harass me on the way out by looking at my receipt all the time. Then you have to work your way past a slew of charities and girls selling cookies on your way back to your car, which is parked a half-mile away.

And almost worst of all; Wal-Mart and their owners think bad language in music is sinful, and only sell watered-down versions of popular CDs. Tampering with an artist’s work should be illegal. Absolutely never, ever buy CDs or movies at Wal-Mart! Ever! I’d much rather shop at Target. The cleanliness and style of Target is simply no comparison to the likes of evil Wal-Mart, its disgruntled employees, or its customers.

Why isn’t there a grocery store in the mall? It is a glaring omission to shopper’s needs. There should be a fully stocked supermarket in-house with prices that are comparable to the ones you’d expect elsewhere. I would like to have a one-stop place where I can eat, play, catch a movie, grocery shop, buy alcohol, etc. without driving to different places. A Wallgreens, or something similar would be great in every mall as well. For that matter, put a pool hall in the mall, too. Put everything people may want to go out and do in one giant place (the mall) and don’t overcharge rent to the tenants so all of the prices will be equal than their standalone counterparts. I think it is a great idea!

I am sick of reading about hurricane predictions. The first article in the Raleigh N&O about hurricane preparedness was in June! I am sure that even months before that, they were citing the forecasters in the National Hurricane Center, announcing how many storms we were going to see this year, and beyond. Give it up. First, don’t print stuff about hurricanes until we actually have some in the ocean. What you print in June is long forgotten by September when we actually have something to worry about.

The worst fact of all is that I read in the paper today, September 5th, that the hurricane forecasters have revised their prediction for the 2007 year to reflect less storms. Too late, buddy! That is like someone betting on the score of a football game, only to up and try to change their prediction at half-time. Get real. If you have the nerve to predict the storm activity for the next decade, at least stick to the crap you shoveled out before the season got started a few months ago!

I have been a Cingular customer since I got my first cell phone several years ago. On the whole, I am satisfied with my service. I think their Rollover plan is the best in the business. Since I have had Rollover and unlimited in-network calling, I have never gone over my minutes a single time. As you all know, Cingular was aquired by AT&T this year. I am not all that excited about that fact, to be honest. I wish they’d kept the Cingular name, for one. It sounded modern, new, and futuristic. On the other hand, AT&T sounds like old, entrenched technology. Of course, to the older generation, it is a name that one would trust. That said, I am not writing today to debate the fact that Cingular in its original form is no longer.

My complaint is with their advertising saying they have the fewest dropped calls of any cell provider. I can’t imagine this is true. I just personally feel that if any other network has more dropped calls, they wouldn’t even be in business. Me and Laura both have had Cingular for years and make the majority of our calls in the capital city of our state, North Carolina. Even here, we have had dropped calls day after day for a long time. For the record, I have used a Nokia phone and today I use a Razr V3. Even when the call doesn’t drop completely, it is still stuttered all too often. Since becoming AT&T, the company seems to have stopped using the least dropped calls claim. Now their slogan is More Bars in More Places. That may be, but why even with full bars am I hearing so many drops in the calls I make?

Cingular isn’t alone in this problem, I’m sure. It frustrates me that the providers are investing so much into increasing web bandwidth and other new toys that have nothing to do with actually talking. I want my calls to be clear as real life, without any hiccups. I think this is possible. Why don’t we have it? Remove all the other features and give me clear calls.

People are talking more today about saving energy than ever before. With record heat in many places, and seemingly endless population growth, power plants are being stressed more than ever. Our individual power bills are also growing higher than ever. People point to large industry and home owners as a strain on the grid. I have another idea.

It kills me how much electricity is wasted in my office. People leave their computers and monitors on 24 hours a day, and they are even encouraged to. During the week, I log off of my computer and do leave it running for easy access the following morning, but I at least have a decency to shut off my power-hogging monitor when I leave every day. It stuns me how you drive past office buildings, and see all the lights on, with computer monitors and fans blasting. How hard is it to cut back on this? Aren’t these businesses interested in saving money? I just think it would make more sense to shut as many devices off during the night as possible if no one is going to be present to use them. If you work in an office of 100 people or more, you can imagine how much electricity this all must add up to. Replacing old CRT monitors for more power-friendly LCDs would help a great deal, too.

I won’t even go into the fact that people are allowed to have individual space heaters at their desks. During the hot summer, the air conditioning can keep it quite cold in the building; apparently so cold that some turn on their personal heaters at their desk. It is unbelievable. If the energy industry wants to find a good place to encourage conservation, I say start with large office buildings. You won’t believe the amount of wasteful consumption!

I have seen a crop of newspaper articles lately where some egghead motorist mouths off about saving gas by driving slower. Gimme a break. Please do not follow this advice. People on the highway don’t need any more excuses to drive slower than they already do. I don’t care if it saves gas or not. Ask yourself how much your time is worth. If the speed limit on the interstate is 70, then drive 75. These clowns in the paper said they drove from state to state over the Fourth of July driving 60 mph! Are they nuts! That should be illegal.

I can’t help the fact that we have cars that run on oil and gasoline. I wish that wasn’t the case, but I am not about to drive any slower to save a few nickels and dimes. My car’s A/C doesn’t even work, so I am saving already. If you want to save on gas, go buy a more fuel efficient car and ditch the SUV.