Paramount is breathing life into its “Star Trek” franchise by setting “Mission: Impossible III” helmer J.J. Abrams to produce and direct the 11th “Trek” feature, aiming for a 2008 release.

– Variety.com — Trekkies have a new leader

Oh please … will they quit already. They’ve beaten this franchise to death … let it go.

It’s clear the people who are in charge of the Trek movies just don’t know how to do a good story.

Let’s see how it stacks up …

• The Motion Picture — Boooorrrrriiinnngggg
• Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn — Probably the best of the lot … action, adventure, angst, and a great villain.
• The Search for Spock — Not bad … but not great
• The Voyage Home — Pretty good. Added a humorous twist
• The Final Frontier — Lame.
• The Undiscovered Country — Stupid.
• Generations — So so … reasonable crossover. At least Kirk died. I kind of consider this the start of a new series of movies.
• First Contact — Not bad. Good action, good villain, good resolution.
• Insurrection — Fair to middling. Would have been better suited as a mini-series or 3-4 part regular series episode.
• Nemesis — Dumb.

Well it’s finally happened … the folks at ING Direct have completely lost touch with reality.

They recently implemented a new security technique that makes it incredibly cumbersome and difficult to log in to their online account management system.

Not only do you have to enter your account number … and a randomly selected challenge question … but now you have to enter your PIN number as randomly selected characters that correspond to the digits of your PIN.

Don’t get me wrong … I’m all for online security … but this is taking it way too far.

I think ING Direct is just trying to push their customers away by making it increasingly difficult to access their online system. First they took away the ability for us to download account transactions directly into Quicken. Now this?

I think it’s time to find another online bank that offers good rates, but has more rational and realistic security policies.

[tags]banking, ING Direct, security[/tags]

I purchased some software from amazon.com a few weeks ago … then I found it cheaper at a B&M locally.

I purchased the cheaper copy and tried to cancel the order on amazon… sadly, it was too late to cancel.

I requested a refund and got a shipping label.

As soon as the item arrived, I slapped the shipping label on the box and sent it right back.

I just got an email from amazon indicating they had processed my refund … here’s the refund breakdown…

The following is the breakdown of the refund:
——————————————————————————-

<THUD> (sound of jaw hitting floor)

I sent the software back to them unopened, in completely resalable condition … Needless to say, I immediately sent a message to amazon.com requesting a full refund. If I don’t get the refund, I will contest the charge and refund with the credit card company. A 50% refund fee is absolutely unacceptable.

Update 12:00 — Amazon said the fee was a mistake … and they are refunding me the full amount of the purchase … including the shipping. Case closed.

[tags]amazon.com[/tags]

I gotta hand it to the United States Post Office … they are very efficient.

Yesterday we received an envelope, from a bank or insurance company, addressed to one of the previous owners of our house. The envelope indicated that the sender wanted return service, so I put a sticker OVER the address window that say “RETURN TO SENDER — ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN” and dropped it in the mail slot at my office.

Today the same envelope arrived, with the sticker still covering the address window, back in our mailbox.

I gotta hand it to the post office … it only took them one day to COMPLETELY IGNORE the sticker that COVERED the address window and deliver the envelope back to the wrong address.

I mean please, give me a break … the postal worker who sorted that letter had to move the envelope around to find out our address … because the sticker I put on it was deliberately obscuring the address window.

[tags]USPS, Post Office[/tags]

Yeah … Dell Support again.

A few days ago I ordered a new laptop … Inspiron 600m. It’s very similar to my current Inspiron 8600, but has a smaller display (I don’t like the wide display on the 8600), and it has wireless a, b, & g.

I placed the order on July 28th … and the order status hasn’t changed since going to “In Production”.

I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a problem with the order, so I went to the Dell website and navigated to “Chat with order support”.

The order support rep I chatted with had a very very tenuous grasp of english … and didn’t really understand the concept of ‘shipping date’ and ‘delivery date’.

The rep I chatted with told me that the system was going to “SHIP” sometime between August 16th and 18th. The online order status page indicated that the system would ship on the 11th.

We went back and forth a few times … he couldn’t figure out where I was getting a shipping date of the 11th. I couldn’t find a status page that indicated anything other than the 11th.

Turns out, when he was referring to the word “SHIP”, he meant “DELIVERY”.

The system would still SHIP on the 11th … and would probably be delivered sometime between the 16th and 18th.

I sure wish Dell would bring their customer service and support back to the states. Problems like this would probably go away.

Update a litte later:

I found a useful site that provided a better way of getting order status. If you call 1-800-433-9014 and “speak” your order number, you can get a more up-to-date status. In my case, even though the official order status is “In Production”, the phone system indicates that my order is in the “Build” phase.

Oh, did I mention that I hate VRU’s that require that you speak and do not accept input from the telephone keypad?

[tags]Dell, Support[/tags]