Thursday, May 22, 2008

Shame on you espn

So waking up at this early hour, I see very little on. I have seen one commercial for a Bra sale at Boscovs for anyone who cares, you know the 50 percent of Americans who likely wear one every day.

If you have not seen the Champions League final yet, and still want to, please stop reading.


Last night I watched 90 minutes, plus penalty kicks, of the Champions League final. This is one of the biggest sporting events in the world, yet ESPN managed to play the first 45 minutes and then picked it up at the 75th minute after halftime. I'm sure there are some creative editors out there who could have chopped player's rolling on the ground, and taking forever to get a goal kick in so that we could have seen the rest of the game. I do not believe that anything significant happened during that time, but don't play part of the game. By the way Manchester United won on Penalty kicks.

Monday, May 5, 2008

Thanks for the memories...

Which of the following is most irritating?

A) The service light of my car turns on and I have to go to the dealership to have it taken care of?

B) The guy in front of me in line at the dealership parks his car and refuses to get out of it. When he decides to get out of his car he looks at my car, half in the garage, half out of the garage, looks at the entrance, back at my car, and then proceeds to walk to the entrance. He then looks at me dumbfounded as a honk the horn at this asshole and ask him to pull his car forward so that I can be completely in the garage.

C) I must spend the next hour and a half listening to this idiot asshole abuse his "courtesy phone" privledges and make 5-8 business calls speaking as loud as a Penguins fan during yesterday's overtime win against the New York Rangers.

D) Pay $35 to have my tire "plugged" and have to deal with idiots at the car dealership.

E) All of the above

Sunday, May 4, 2008

DC Metro and baseball

The angry consumer is back. Let me just say that I spent a good deal of time on Thursday traveling to the DC Nationals new baseball stadium. I was not very impressed with the new stadium, but it is a work in progress. Maybe I have been spoiled with PNC Park, but the food selection was poor and there was a minimal view of anything. Outside the ballpark there is virtually no development and no where to go for a quick bite to eat or drink. I think that once building was in place investors should have been breaking ground for some sort of convenience store and/or restaurants. I’m sure it will happen soon enough and is under development right now. The fact that I paid $7 for $18 seats and then received 5 free tickets, 3 of which were 3 rows from the 3rd base foul pole, shows how great the demand for Nats tickets and development really is.

As I stated earlier it took me some time to travel to the game. I drove to the Metro station and parked the car. I quickly arrived at the stop and was given the wrong information on the price of the subway ticket by a woman who would not accept my money, or for that matter teach me to use the vending machine card dispenser. Thankfully another frequent customer helped me out. I was also quite disappointed that I had to pay $10 to park at the Metro station. Yes they advertised it as $4.75, but either I did not understand the sign correctly, or they mislead me to understand that you have to pay an additional $5 for a Smartcard, a piece of plastic that probably costs $0.10 in addition to my $4.75 to park. If I was a regular using the DC Metro maybe I would not have issues with them. However DC is a major tourist center and should be a lot more “user friendly”. I have been to NYC, London, Atlanta, and several additional cities in Europe and the States whose system is so much better. The only city that has worse public transportation is Florence. However my experiences with public transport in that city are a whole story in itself, which involves a high fair and the possibility of jail time. I will save that store for some other time.

Friday, May 2, 2008

The angry consumer returns


I will have more to report on my experiences as an angry consumer with a certain Maryland subway system and a certain Maryland baseball team, but I'm mostly upset with Starbucks. Can someone explain to me why I paid nearly $3 for 8 oz of coffee? They reduced the size. I may not be the first to report this, but seriously I think a "tall" (8 oz. is not tall at all) used to be 12 oz. Good thing I'm not a Starbucks regular.