Last week I was contacted by a GoDaddy company representative by the name of Logan, who provided me with a list of my expiring domains  until the end of the year, informed me that he has been assigned to my account and can offer me a discount. I responded to him by asking for more information about the discount. The discounted price per domain he provided me with, in his replay email, was the same price I receive as a member of the domain discount club.

One would thing that when offering discount to their customers GoDaddy would check to see if it is worth doing so, when the customers are members of the domain discount club, and the company is not willing to offer a greater discount! I suppose it makes no difference, because this is a courtesy service and a money raising act, but if it was me I would have taken a different approach.

My experience with GoDaddy, as a customer since 2003, has ALWAYS been positive. I have always had a good experience with their customer support, which I am glad is located in the States and I can call them at any time. To my knowledge GoDaddy does not outsource, so I must give the company and Bob Parsons props for doing this and keeping Americans employed. I know that part of the company’s customer relations strategy is to provide courtesy services, like company representatives personally calling me and emailing me to remind me of my expiring domains. In the past I have benefited from it, I enjoy it and appreciate it.

yhoo stock rebound - image from TechCrunch

Last week I tweeted that Yahoo’s stock was at $10 per share and it was time to buy. Comments on my tweet (Micro post.) said that it is pointless to do so. As I was on my way to New York, I wasn’t able to provide a response to the comments.

With today’s reports about Yahoo’s CEO, Jerry Yang, stepping down I wish I had listened to my own advice. But there is still time to buy, buy, buy. People have been complaining about Yang and wanting him out of the decisions circle. Now he is out and I can only imagine that the stoke will continue going up as the company finds new leadership or is bought or merged with another one. I would like that company to be Microsoft.

Recently Amanda and I went car shopping. Now that Alexandar is growing bigger and we are planing on having a family expansion we needed something other than the Jeep. So, we went looking at minivans. After looking at the 5th minivan I was becoming more and more bored of the activity and pretty much all of them started to look the same to me - a vehicle with lots of space inside. Having gone through the majority makes and models of minivans on the market we decided to go to CarMax and see what they had to offer in addition to saving $20,000 from the price tag. What I noticed in majority of the minivans and crossover vehicles we had looked at is that ashtrays are no longer a build in feature. Ashtrays seem to have become an extra feature you have to request.

Personally I don’t care that there is a lack of ashtrays, but I do not think that it is fair to those who have chosen the slow suicide. Yes it is an option to order one, but what if you are reselling the car. Some people won’t buy the car for the lack of one. I suppose it is a marketing and economic decision. If the manufacturer does not have to make the space for it, they won’t. Same goes for spending money on the materials to make it.

I just find this trend strange. What do you think? What new trends have you picked up on that have surprised you?

Just a while ago I finished 3 pounds of Cajun crawfish and 2 cans of Mountain Dew (my favorite non-alcoholic drink), and it was awesome. Sadly the crawfish, that are available in my area from the only place in southern Chicago, if not in the whole Chicago metropolitan area, are no longer produced and packaged in the USA, but are from China.

I recently had oysters produced and canned in China, and they weren’t very good. There were bits and peaces of shells. I had to go to a more expensive store to buy ones that were made and canned in Germany. I can tell you now that the quality was significantly different . From the size of the oysters to the quality of the oil there were in - just an unparalleled improvement.

What king of sea food do you like? Have you had similar experience with can foods?

Valve being bought by Google! That is a horrible thought, but there are number of web sites which are reporting this. Here are a few links:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/17/google-valve
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/google-to-acquire-valve/

I decided to send Valve a quick email, and I think that everyone that is agains this happenign should do as well.

Good morning,

TechCrunch and TheInquirer are reporting a potential acquisition of Valve by Google.

Please say it isn’t so. I’ve been a fan of you company and games since you guys first started. I have been following your company and enjoyed your products all these years. An acquisition by google might seem like a financially good choice but technology and product wise it is not.

Valve has managed to remain financially independent and overcome a variety of obstacles all this years. Please do NOT give into the google idea. Be yourselves. Visiting Valve headquarters and working for Valve is a dream for many people. Don’t destroy your fan base.

Sincerely,

Alexandar Tzanov

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/17/google-valve
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/google-to-acquire-valve/

You can email Valve at contact@valvesoftware.com, or contact the company in the following ways

Telephone:
425-889-9642

FAX:
425-827-4843

Postal address:
PO BOX 1688
Bellevue, WA 98009

The community has already started a discoution on the Steam forums.

Based on the people I follow on Twitter, I have noticed that people are tweeting more before lunch CTZ than in the afternoon, irregardless of geographical location. It seems like people stop tweeting for the second half of the work day, then they pick up again latter in the evening.

I guess it is true, people slack in the morning more than in the afternoon. Of course I have read other wise, but I think that the opposite is only true for the first quarter or half of the work day morning.

I believe the same holds true for pro bloggers. There seem to be more posts in the morning. My guess is they write some in the morning and more in the afternoon, which would explain fewer posts in the afternoon. They publish in the evening writings from the afternoon, then write some more and schedule the posts for the morning. If all that makes sense.

So, tell me twitterers - what do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Have you noticed any other trends or facts about twitterers’ personalities, behavior, or patterns?

Another win for Net Neutrality. Today it was reported that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) “disciplined” Crap…Comcast for their violation of their customers basic write to access information on the Internet. I say disciplined, because Comcast was not punished via a financial burden. They were just told “you were bad. Don’t do it again. Fix it.”. It is hard for people and especially for companies to learn their lesson, when negative reinforcement is not used. Comcast was not punished, so they have noting to loss. If they had to pay fins, for example in the form of free or discounted service for their customers, then they, as the money garbing leach that the company and its operators are, will think twice before violation the freedom of access to information and data of real people and some intangible IP (Internet Protocol or Intellectual Property) address.

Now, because they were not cause to pay fines, the operators of the company will have learned, in their attempt #1, what they can do. Because the company did not have to pay fines, it will again try to throttle its network, but at its second attempt it will know how far it can go with certain actions and how to hide its procedures better.

You can read the announcement here: FCC Comes Down On Comcast For P2P Blocking

I recently decided to track how many mile I drive to work. It so happens that I drive 70 miles to work and back every day. I spend between 2.5 and 3 hours driving, and almost everyday half of it is sitting in traffic. I spend $70 every 5 days to fill up my sedan.