Your Chance to Win!

I went to Taco Bell for lunch on Friday (no fries). The girl at the register went into this rehearsed speech stating to please fill our the survey fora chance to win... Yeah, yeah the latest trend in marketing - the brief online survey. It seems like this trend went viral all at once. The bank receipt I was given at the drive through measures 10". The first 3.5" are my deposit information, and the rest is blank space and they "fill out our brief survey for your chance to win!" Really M&T bank? You are supposed to be professional, not a fast food or mall vendor. I'm sick of it, and have been for a while now. What irks me the most is the receipts that are a minimum of double their needed size because of all this foolishness. It bothers me because I need to process all business receipts which now entails an additional step. When I get the stack of business receipts for fuel, Home Depot, Lowes, and anywhere that uses thermal paper receipts I have to rip off the unneeded portion before scanning and filing of the documents. Otherwise, I would opt to not have the receipts and the bogus surveys, but I need to have accounting documents for everything.

On a brighter non-rant note the 12th Night party is tonight, and I'm really looking forward to it. Fancy drinks, and I'd say the crowd and music are the exact opposite of the 98 Rock crowd, if that makes sense. That's all for now.

twisty light bulb

Last week I had a high efficiency "twisty" light bulb in my house die when the light fixture it was housed in came in contact with water (from the dishwasher, a floor above). The bulb transformer most likely failed as it turned on and off several times before finally dying. The date written in Sharpie on the lamp was '07, so it did get some use before dying of unnatural causes.

I have heard and read that the drawback of the high efficiency light bulbs for the home is that they contain mercury and need to be disposed of properly. It's not entirely clear how one should dispose of these lamps properly if you are reading the packaging - it just shows a line through a trashcan meaning, "hey, don't just throw this away". Okay, where do you belong now that you are dead?

I checked the Google and found out that The Home Depot started a nationwide recycling program last year where you bring in your dead Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs to the returns counter and just drop it off with them. Today I drove a mototcycle with the lamp in jacket pocket to The Home Depot to see if it was truly that easy. Yup, it was that easy. Kudos to The Home Depot for stepping up and handling this recycling project.