Just a few things that drive me crazy

Pop up ads - where do they all come from? My ISP now has pop up ad blocker and it has successfully blocked 75% of the pop ups that I get but I still get way too many. The most irritating this is when the pop up ad contains a bad URL. At some point many moons ago somebody on my computer downloaded, accepted, signed up for, or in some other way put something called incredifind on my computer, this program intercepts whenever it takes more than 5 seconds for a URL to come up. It eats up all the system resources, stopping everything that I want to do, to tell me that the URL I have requested is not available. It gives me 100 choices for similar URL's and then lists 1000 categories if I just want to use one of theirs. It's annoying enough when it is a URL I wanted (I get it a lot on Stephanie's Blog, her's seems to take longer to come up), but when it is a forced URL that I certainly never wanted I get really frustrated. As for just pop up ads that one that looks official telling you that there might be spyware on your computer has confused even some of my brighter friends.

The Bank - I am still in arrears with my bank for the fraudulent charges they gave me provisional credit for the charges but had to leave the overdraft charges and are charging an additional $5 per day of overdraft. I got a computer generated letter last week stating that I needed to bring my account current immediately as it had been overdrawn for over 30 days. I called the bank to talk to the signatory on the letter (and kept very calm and reasonable now that Mel is signatory on similar letters). She said "did you contest the charges?" I told her that I had and that they had removed the charges but not the overdraft fees, she said "that takes a couple of weeks" I told her that it had been over a month. She told me she would look into and call me back. She did call back and say that they were just about done and would be removing the overdraft in a few days. Today when I checked they are still there. However I did earn .27 in interest last month. A month when my account was in overdraft status every single day. Go figure.

Dish satellite service - I have never been happy with these people and I am sure I will never be happy, I did settle into a lull of contentment after they gave me all of the credits that I wanted. For those of you not in the loop when I had Dish installed in January I was supposed to get 2 boxes each working 2 TV's, they did not have 2 in stock so they gave me 1 that worked 2 TV's and 2 for individual TV's and then charged me for the additional box. Early last week I received a call from Dish telling me that they were going to be in my neighborhood installing and asked if I wanted a satellite dish - I asked if this was in addition to the one already on my roof. They said "Oh, do you already have dish satellite?" I said "yes, unfortunately" that last word was of way too many syllables so they asked "how do you like it so far?" I replied that I hated it but was stuck with a year's contract, reading from the script they then asked "can you give us the name and phone number of a few friends who don't have dish network?" keeping in mind that they called (and hung up on) me I replied "Are you out of your freaking mind!" I thought that was that, silly me. The way the two TV system works is there is a box in my living room that controls both the living room and my bedroom. The remote in my bedroom is some kind of special remote that goes through walls. Megan's remote will not work in my bedroom to change my bedroom TV, but will work in the living room to change the living room TV. My remote no matter where it is in the house changes my bedroom TV. This all seemed cool, until they were in my neighborhood installing a system somewhere else (possibly next door as we have new neighbors). I was set to tape poker yesterday morning as I screwed it up Tuesday night. When I went to watch it all I had was my system going through a series of test things, you could see how someone was arrowing over and selecting stuff. Point the dish, select the transponder, and then the fun part set up a favorites list for the channels that you watch all the time. They set up a list to include food network, game show channel, and A&E only. The way the system works is you select guide and it shows you the current listing of channels each time you hit it, it scrolls through you favorite lists and then finally all channels and then all subjects. We keep it on all subjects because this shows you only and all the channels you actually subscribe too and have never set up a favorites list. Most of what I am telling you now I learned the hard way yesterday since when I turned on my TV it was on A&E, this did not make sense to me since the last thing I had taped was ESPN. I thought shit I forgot to set it up to change to ESPN to tape the poker I'm going to have two hours of A&E, but we hardly ever watch A&E. Oh well, I rewound the tape and saw that I had all of this other stuff - system set up stuff - I still wasn't understanding why. I stopped the VCR and tried to change the channel on the TV but if the channel I tried was under 110 it went to 110 food network, if it was over 118 it went to 118 A&E. I thought I had lost all of my other channels, but the living room was working just fine with all the channels through the same box. Maybe this is just God's way of keeping me in touch with trouble shooting. Because I quickly went to guide and saw that only those three channels were listed and that it said Favorites 1 on top, when I hit guide again all channels appeared and then once again for all subjects. I deleted the favorites list completely from the system and put the system back where I wanted with all my channels, still without poker though, good thing they run it all week long. Now my concern is did this just happen because they were setting up the system, or does this work through walls remote travel through the neighborhood? Everytime they change their channel will it change mine and vice versa (is that right?)? So far it's been alright but we shall see.

and I shall keep you posted.