Yes, my poodle followed me here.

That's my poodle piddling on the comments.

He started at one of my posts at MVRWC, then followed me home, and then went to the wife's, and now he's here.

Remember though, he's just a poodle. Like all poodles, all he can do is yap. He has no bite.

He also follows commands like a good poodle. For example, he first dropped his poodle turds over 200 times at my blog. Then I pointed out to him that because every poodle turd was under a different IP address, he just raised my stats enough for me to jack up my BlogAd rates, which I did. My poodle turds have dropped significantly.

He also originally posted some poodle turds as "Fisting Fool." However, he changed it to "F1sting Fool" when I pointed out to him that the term "fisting" would draw tons of Google hits to my site, thereby allowing me to again raise my BlogAd rates.

Good poodle.

So, ignore the poodle piddling in the comments. He's mine, and he knows it.

And since there are 29 authors on this blog, it shouldn't be a problem cleaning up the poodle turds as soon as they appear. Sorry poodle.

Posted by: Vinnie at 08:22 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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1 Poodles normally have bad breath because they spend most of the time licking their own anus, or eating their own feces. A thought to ponder.

Posted by: davec at March 23, 2006 08:53 PM (CcXvt)

2 It just makes you wonder how big a coward, and how mentally unbalanced somebody has to be to act out like this.

Posted by: The Dread Pundit Bluto at March 23, 2006 09:00 PM (RHG+K)

3 Yawn, he's really getting boring. Who wants to trade Melissa Theriau pics?

Posted by: Vinnie at March 23, 2006 09:04 PM (f289O)

4 Save us, super, PixyMisa!! (\.\n\.\n.\n\.) !!!

Posted by: davec at March 23, 2006 10:00 PM (CcXvt)

5 Mheh, I'm gonna go watch a movie. I have a life, unlike my poodle.

Posted by: Vinnie at March 23, 2006 10:04 PM (f289O)

6 He/she is probably bi-polar like Debra Lafave.

Posted by: RepJ at March 23, 2006 10:42 PM (KpfBT)

7 Whats with all the dots?? Poodles like their own bums and eat their own crap, well that explains why they are so angry and aggressive all the time, i would be too if had to do the same.

Posted by: MathewK at March 23, 2006 11:03 PM (pVHqF)

8 Don't worry. We asians are known for eating dogs... we'll eat away your problem HA HA CHINA

Posted by: billy faeth at March 24, 2006 12:10 AM (vgNyM)

9 Back from the movie. Just had to watch "The 40 Year Old Virgin." Reminded me of a certain poodle. So, what'd I miss? Oh, more periods. Wow, I'm impressed.

Posted by: Vinnie at March 24, 2006 12:28 AM (f289O)

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Apparently, even though they have this policy of never refunding money once it's been extracted from their customers' bank accounts ClassmatesDotCom is going to make an exception in my case, and issue me a full refund. Since it's rather unlikely that anyone with policy authority was contacted on Sunday, during the fourth anniversary of 9/11, just to fashion a special policy for lil' ol' me, I'm speculating that they refund to anyone who manages to keep up a barrage of five irate emails. (One original and four responses.) You probably don't even need to use proper diction or spelling.

But I'm not just an irate customer who had his pocket picked. I'm also a public policy researcher who would just love to find out how many people Classmates has nipped over the past three years, and since I now have a "free" membership, perhaps (as a commenter suggested) I' could put together a brief survey for people in the institutions where I went to school as a young turk. I know no one will pay me to do it, but it's a logical next step.

In the mean time if you or someone you know has had their account raided in this way you now know the policy prescription: One email followed by four irate responses gets a refund. Pass it on.

Posted by: Demosophist at 01:38 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 238 words, total size 1 kb.

I realize this dispute with Classmates is kind of a distraction from the theme of the day, but there are probably more than a few dollars nipped from my pocket at stake. Plus, in the spirit of sovereignty of Flight 93, I find it depressinng to just keep my seat while this sort of thing goes on. Bear with me. Jeff Jarvis just linked to a guest post on GigaOm by Robert Young about the way Internet 2 is impacting the firm-customer relationship. This situation fits right in. It's about preventing exit.

To get back to the fracas, if I understand Classmates correctly, they're now willing to refund half the money that they extracted from my account without permission. That's a little like offering to return half the toe they've just chopped off, but it's a step in the right direction. It's not a step that suggests they've quite grasped the concept of integrity yet; nor is it very competent from a business standpoint, but it does kind of shred their claim to having an unbreakable policy about refunds.

And there's something else of note. Either "Suzie" is in communication with someone who can make on-the-fly changes in policy (unlikely on a Saturday afternoon), or she's reading from a script that tells her, for instance: "After three irate email responses offer to cut the membership fee in half." But that's not important. What's important is what the exchange reveals about the company's ethical standards, which just aren't very high, and about its business savvy, which also isn't very high. At least, it's not high enough to cope with the very medium that gave them a market opportunity in the first place.

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Posted by: Demosophist at 10:53 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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If my dispute with the Classmates Dot Com scam is unfamiliar, and you're interested in taking such scammers to task, see the original post here. Classmate's response to my case, presented in an email, was to simply reiterate their right to extract funds from my account without my knowledge or permission, and to "compensate me" by offering to extend my "membership" by three extra months for free. Which is a little like offering someone a free bucket of scat. It's just the right attitude to take in a public relations strategy promoting a "helping hand" image for their company. The perfect mix of smarminess, cynicism, and untouchable arrogance.

So I'm giving them a little more "free" publicity, understanding fellow that I am.

Just in case it's not obvious, the implications of their claim that a "terms of service" contract--agreed to during the initial sign up of every client--covers any access to their customer's accounts that isn't vigorously and consistently resisted, basically amounts to a license to steal. Fundamentally what it means is that anyone who has ever signed up with this company had better have access to a good lawyer, or resign themselves to the possibility of having their pockets picked once a year, from now on... more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 11:52 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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A couple of years ago I joined Classmates.com as a premium, or "gold" member, on a trial basis. I decided not to renew the second year, because it simply wasn't worth anything. I didn't get one iota of value out of it. Never successfully contacted anyone, and no one contacted me. Most of the schools I went to have their own alumni organizations that have proven very effective, so this commercial one just never had much value added. I gave it a try, and figured that was that.

Well, not quite. They have this automatic renewal option, but I set it to manual at the time. Apparently somewhere along the line my renewal switch was changed to "automatic" and even though I've assumed I was no longer a member they apparently managed to slip the fee past my radar for the second year. In fact, I didn't notice that they'd deducted a membership fee until a couple of days ago, when I was surprised to see the deduction of $39 for a third year listed on my bank account. I almost missed it this time too, had not my bank manager pointed it out to me. I'm starting to get pretty steamed. I'm having trouble paying for gas money as I work independent contracts to put food on the table, and these guys are stealthily ripping me off...
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Posted by: Demosophist at 11:52 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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