I’ve begun to notice a widely accepted and predatory practice among business who are attempting to lure customers into their contract services. It’s called… the FREE TRIAL PERIOD.

It’s almost as bad as the whole FREE* issue. The difference lies in the fact that you are presented with every outward indication that this particular business is offering a trial period of service for you to evaluate your satisfaction with the product or service. What’s actually happening, is that a much more complex and risky deal is being hidden beneath a flashy advertising gimmick. What they’re really doing is attempting to play upon the natural human instinct of curiosity, desire, and forgetfulness in order to derive a profit.

Most “free trials” quickly end up annoying their potential clients because the simple exterior quickly peels away as soon as interest is shown. Let’s create a theoretical offer and I’ll demonstrate.

“New SuperTech3000 cellular phone offer! It allows you to make calls even while underwater!! 14-DAY FREE TRIAL! Hurry! Supplies are limited!”

You think, “Oh cool! I don’t know why I’d try to call someone from underwater…but that’s pretty cool. I’ll try it for 14 days and see if it’s worth the money.” Ah…will you now? Alrighty. You decide to contact this company and get yourself a SuperTech3000 for 14 days.

Oh! What’s this? You suddenly find out that the phone is $500, and requires either a yearly or monthly subscription for service. If you want the 14-day free trial…you have to give them your credit card information so they can bill your stupid butt if you happen to get forgetful enough not to cancel your subscription before the 14 days are up.

This is called the “ring through the nose”… if you don’t unclip the chain before 14 days pass…you are at the mercy of their contract. Oh are these people lovely? Wouldn’t you recommend them to everyone? If you participate in anything emblazoned with a “FREE” attached to the sign, you had best beware.

People are not in business to be kind to you, cater to your whims, do you favors or give out free things. Free…is never free. Free…is a way to get you to pay. Remember this, people. You’ll thank me for it.

Bottom line? If you can’t resist the “free trial period”….then invest in a memo book. Just because you’ve forgotten about Company X…doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten about you.

I’m outta here for now.

Upon relating my absent-minded behavior of the prior evening to a dear friend of mine, she insisted that I publicly and shamelessly indignify myself to the world by posting what happened, here….on my blog.

Are you feelin’ the love? I know I am. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, and as a testament to the fact that we all occasionally try to shove our heads up our respective posterior orifices… here is my story.

In preparation for the upcoming camping trip on Friday, my dear wife stopped by her mom’s house to pick up a brand new family sized tent that had been in storage for some time. My mother-in-law had won it at a raffle or whatnot some time back, but didn’t really have much use for it… so now it has become ours. New + Free = Happy Jason.

At any rate, the wifey and I had the foresight to pre-assemble the tent at the house prior to getting all the way down to our campsite and finding out that something was wrong or missing. As luck would have it, everything works like a charm! After assembling the tent and checking out all of the neat little gadgets included with our high-tech-portable-hut….I was informed that supper was ready, and to come inside the house. This is where the insult to intelligence began…

You see, there are two mesh pockets provided within the tent to place belongings in. This keeps sharp objects and loose personal effects from rolling around the floor of the tent (which can cause injury to the user or the tent itself, if rolled on or trampled on). There are also a few utility loops sewn into the walls as well. It was on one of these little loops that I clipped my car keys, so as not to lay on them when we went inside to inspect our little mansion.

They were left hanging in the tent when I went inside. After supper, I cleaned the kitchen up and told the dear wife that I was going to pack the tent back up and put it inside the tote bag it came in. I disassembled the tent, stakes, bow rods, rain fly, and equipment loft. I packed everything up nice and neat, and she helped me roll up the tent and pack it away. Everything tucked into the tote nice and neat.

Well……yesterday, at some point, our illustrious and infallible power company provided us with a nice power blink. I noticed, upon my arrival home, that everything that plugged into a wall and which possessed a digital clock…was blinking the “eternal 12:00” hour. At bedtime, I set the clock at my bedside to the proper time (mainly because I’ve neglected to replace the backup battery several times now due to forgetfulness.) and set my alarm to wake me up at 5:30am….or so I thought.

At approximately 6:00am, my wife wakes me and informs me of the time. I typically leave the house no later than 6:30 in order to arrive at work before 7:00am (clock in time). So, this gave me only 30 minutes (versus the hour I’d planned for) to get ready. All went fine and I was ready to start my truck….but where were my keys?

I looked high and low…retraced my steps….checked everywhere I typically lay my keys (as the clock ticked). I looked in my dad’s shop, my office, key rack, kitchen counter, bathroom, bedroom…nothing.
Well, it was now 6:30am and time to leave. Still no keys. Then it hit me. Could I have been that forgetful? The answer would soon come to me.

I had been asked not to wake my dear wife when I left for work today, because she had been given a day off from work as a “thank you” for putting in valuable time at her job. I’d already forced her to wake ME up this morning from me obviously setting the alarm for pm instead of am. Now I was about to wake her again by having to rustle through a folded up tent. I did…and she asked me what in the hell I was doing.
After telling her, she shook her head and let me continue my search.

I found them, still attached to the loop inside the tent, and promptly set off for my truck. I arrived and clocked in…at 7:04am. Granted, it’s a Tuesday… but it’s the second “Monday” of the week for me. As the great Paul Harvey says…

“And now you know…the rest…of the story.”

It’s been awhile since my last entry, so I reckon I better make quota huh? ~lol~ Well, let’s seeeee…what’s been goin on…

At long last, the camping trip is a “go”. We’re going to be camping on scenic Lake DeGray for the July 4th weekend. We’ll be leaving out this coming Friday to meet our friends down at the camp site. We’re doing the tent-thing and they’re bringing their tag along camper. I found out rather quickly that mid to early-70’s campers were NOT designed for 6’-7” hillbillies… the ceiling is at about neck level for me. So, if I go in there, there’ll be a lot of stooping going on.

I’m sure most of our time will be spent outside in lawn chairs or at the water. The only things that historically drive people inside their RV’s or campers are swarms of bugs, intense heat, or thunderstorms. I’m hoping we don’t experience any of the above.

This weekend was all about visiting our friends, setting plans in place, and getting their camper spiffy for the trip. I volunteered to help, but there wasn’t enough room for everyone to be inside the camper cleaning. My wife’s pretty short, so it was easier for her to get around inside the camper… and Chris pretty much had the outside covered, as far as a bleach-wash on any mildew.

I busied the kiddos with some ATV rides and video games. I worked on some of my Genealogy and grilled some hotdogs for supper. It was a good weekend. This week I have to concentrate on getting a fishing license and getting my truck’s tags renewed. Wouldn’t make for a very good camping trip if I got pulled over for expired tags….now would it?

Speaking of my Genealogy hobby… I’ve got several things in the fire at the moment. One of my ancestors supposedly owned a mobile sawmill and cut lumber for a local lumber company back in the 1920’s. I’ve asked a lady at the local historical museum if she’d look through some of her old photographs of that time period and see if (by some chance) my ancestor might be featured with that mobile sawmill. I’m sure I’ll be hearing back from her around mid-week… so I have my fingers crossed. I have a picture of his wife…but not one of him. He’d be my great-great-grandfather.

I also have trips planned to two southern Arkansas towns in the near future. I need to do some microfilm searches and land record searches on the earliest ancestor I have on record, to date. He was born in Tennessee around 1789. That would put his father’s lifetime right in the period of the American Revolutionary War. I’m hoping to get past this “data roadblock” I’ve been experiencing…and hopefully gain some information on his parents. I wonder if they were immigrants from the Old Country at that point, or if my lineage can be dated back to the pilgrims? These are the kinds of possibilities that keep me searching. It’s like a mystery novel…and each chapter holds new clues, and new discoveries. All I have to do is be persistent, dedicated, and crafty. Oh, and there’s the whole “extremely lucky” aspect that tends to help out at times when there’s nothing to go on.

I guess I’d better take a break from writing for now…. I have some work to get done. Gotta pay bills, ya know. As always… more later.

Ok folks… it’s time to ponder a question that’s been annoying me for a long time now. Acronyms. Note, that acronyms are not to be confused with abbreviations. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines the word “abbreviation” as follows:

ab·bre·vi·a·tion: n. 1) the act or result of abbreviating : ABRIDGMENT 2) a shortened form of a written word or phrase used in place of the whole

So, an abbreviation is a shortened or truncated version of a larger word it represents. However, an acronym is something of a different color:

ac·ro·nym: n. 1) a word (as NATO, radar, or snafu) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term; also : an abbreviation (as FBI) formed from initial letters : INITIALISM

I bring this subject to light due to my observance (and subsequent resulting annoyance) of its continuous and somewhat absurdly grotesque overuse. It seems like everything has its own acronym these days. It’s especially true with regards to commercial advertisements for anything medical. Medical terminology basically consists of nothing BUT acronyms for every disease, treatment, body part, drug and billing procedure involved in the healing of human beings.

What’s wrong with the original word or words? Are they too long to pronounce with any form of dignity by the general populous? Is it an effort to confound the consumer with enigmatic truncations so that they will mindlessly assume that they don’t need to know the words associated with the acronym? Perhaps the medical community figures that by complicating an already dizzying series of Latin words into jumbled up acronyms, they will be more easily remembered?

One that seems to proliferate the television and radio these days is acronymed as “E.D.” ED stands for “erectile dysfunction”. A layman's explanation of this is that: “the ol’ penis ain’t doin what it’s supposed to be doin as well as it used to do it.” As a result, the medical community has capitalized on this wide-spread psychological, medical, or stress-induced state of sexual trouble with a catchy little acronym. It’s most likely a ridiculous and uselessly chivalrous attempt to protect us from some kind of assault upon our delicate moral sensibilities by the avoidance of uttering “erectile dysfunction”. But in an age of Real World, Dukes of Hazzard going Rated-R in the movies, and even so-called “childrens shows” having crudely disguised inuendo humor in them… what could we possibly be offended by in the term “erectile dysfunction”??

For pete’s sake, people… it took nearly 6 months before Rogaine would tell us what the hell they were providing a treatment FOR! Why would we pay money to go and see a damn doctor and inquire whether Rogaine was right for us… if we had no idea if it was a possible treatment for cateracts, bunions, hemmorhoids or baldness?? I assume it was out of pure luck or process of elimination that some poor sap with a receeding hairline finally was told was Rogaine DID…and then he spread the word. Talk about an advertising guffaw. Sure, it got the name out there… but how stupid does a company look when everyone knows the name of its product…and over 3/4 of those people don’t know what it’s used for…then probably only 1/4 of the 3/4 would even benefit from it if they knew? Very odd.

But, back to what I was saying… Acronyms. They’re everywhere. Think about it. USA… MPH… STP… OBGYN… LOL... YIM... MSN... XP... S/M/L/XL... PDA… PDF… PDQ… CST… ED…CAT Scan... AWOL…. DT&L… BLT… AT&T…. SBC…. SLT… DOA… R/T… GT… GTO… GTA… MP… AP…CD/CDR/CDRW…. RAM… ROM… CPU…. MPG… AM/FM... JPG…. GIF…. NBC… CBS…ABC… WTC…. WMDs…. AM/PM… AC/DC… ASAP…. it just goes on and on and on. You can probably think of a dozen that I haven’t mentioned yet. The system smothers you with cryptic acronyms for every damn thing under the sun these days. And why? So they can save money on text? So they can be trendy? Who knows. It just seems rather excessive to me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’m going to fix a BLT and a frosty A&W, then enjoy some R&R by watching some MST3K.

TTFN!!

I figured I'd take a few minutes and type up a new entry for today. We woke up nice and early this morning and headed down to Lake Degray to do some relaxing and swimming. We had a nice picnic lunch and I tossed the kiddos around in the water. I only got a little pink on the forehead from the sun... (thank you SPF15...the white boy's friend)

As I type this, I'm over at our friends' house for supper. We're going to hang out here tonight and then go to the mud races tomorrow. We might swing by a Civil War Memorial cemetery and see the monument erected there which honors the unit my ancestor fought with back in 1861-1865.

Well, supper is about ready... and I'm hungry. I'm outta here for now. As always...more later.

Alright kiddies, it’s time for another installment of the…. Oh hell, it’s another blog entry. Take it or leave it.

Well, what’s been going on with me? I got some much needed new tires for my truck. Michelin tires suck…plain and simple. The ones that came on my truck lasted a mere 25,000 miles. They were nearly bald. I decided to get some Firestone Firehawk Indy 500 tires after checking the customer reviews on them. They weren’t as expensive as the BFGoodrich’s I was eyeing. They should do fine until I can get some 20” wheels. Here’s a stock pic of them if you’re interested. Ok, well here’s one anyway. (I only wish the wheels came with em)


The spare tire cover for the wife’s Jeep finally came in. (pic below) I got it because it matches her front license plate. Being the “green eyed cat person” she is, I was sure she’d love it and she does. We’re going to be seeing the new movie Cars tonight with the kids and my folks. They’ve been wanting to watch it too. Sounds like a pretty fun time to me. Tomorrow, I’m gonna take the wife and kids out to the lake for some swimming, and then down to our friends’ place for the night, because on Sunday we’re headed out to the mud races near their house.

All in all, it should be a good weekend. Here’s that tire cover. More later.

I’d like to take a brief moment to address a pet peeve of mine. To whomever posted the advertisement and subsequent web addy in my comments section… please don’t be rude.

Like many other people, I’m constantly bombarded by annoying advertisements from every marketer under the sun. I don’t like them. And to invade my personal blog and comment section with a plea for business at your or anyone else’s website at my expense, is wrong.

I don’t care how relevent you thought it was, based upon my interests. Please refrain from posting advertisements. Thank you.

If I see anyone else doing this, your comments will be filtered out.