My website got some mail the other day. Not email – physical mail delivered to my house. It was addressed to “Thunderofwade Com” and offered to sign the site up for an American Express card.
I guess some mailing list assumed it was a business – and a successful one at that – and then trawled my Whois entry for the physical address. Though, my actual name is there too as the owner/admin.
I can’t imagine how I would actually sign up for something like that. It’s not like my website has a social security number – though I guess there is a date of birth of sorts. Or as they would say in Blade Runner, an incep date.
In any case, I declined on behalf of my site and shredded the mail. After all, I wouldn’t want its identity to get stolen.
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Over the weekend I was at home and wanted a little background music while I worked around the house. I fired up my Playstation 3, signed in to Spotify, and started a playlist going. While I was still in the room, I heard the “Kawoosh” of my phone’s notification.
(I have a notification sound set to the audio of a Portal opening. Naturally.)
I checked my phone and found a message from Spotify that, when opened, showed the Spotify player – queued up to play…
The song I was already listening to.
It even noted that this was what was playing on my Playstation 3. So, errr… what do I do with that? Does it not know how a playstation works? If I’ve got that going, I’m very likely to be in the same room – due to the nature of how sound works. I sure don’t need it on my phone too.
Except… I did kinda have to go to the bathroom. And that trip took me down to the basement where I couldn’t hear the playstation music.
So, I “could” have had a musical accompaniment while I pooped – but I opted for Sudoku instead.
Did it know that I needed to poop and thus anticipated that I would leave the room and potentially miss out on that song? Or was this all just really dumb?
Funny how narrow the line is between super smart and deeply dumb. I think – hope – it was the latter.
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Finally, I got a robo-call from the president of the university last week about the football game. On my cell phone – while I was at home.
Now, a few years ago we got a “reverse 911” call sent from the telecommunication system to all of our voice-mails at work. It was a call from the head football coach at UA encouraging us to become…
Do I have to say it? Yes, I suppose so…
“Bowden Backers”
…and support the football team. I was only a few seconds into the message before I hit *D and obliterated that one – but I could at least see how the ill-conceived idea had been implemented.
This time, I’m guessing the department of Athletics got a hold of the Alumni list of phone numbers and again tried to spam us on the phone to get us to a football game.
And it worked as well as the voice-mail at work. I’m pretty good with the disconnect button on my cell phone too.
It would be nice if they asked me – on a scale of 1 to 10 – how enthused I was about Athletics. I could then give them a negative number – I would actively discourage other people from being interested.
And yes, I knoooooow they won. And nooooooo, I still don’t care.
(See? Actively discouraging.)
Wasting my damn time…
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So, UA Athletics has my number, Spotify knows when I’m about to poop, and my website is ready to start earning airline miles.
I think… I think I need to unplu… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….