Perhaps they want you to take a new plan so they can get out of your grandfathered unlimited-data plan. Cough AT&T cough.
That might just annoy me enough for me to switch providers, depending what I was doing at the time. At least my outfit has the decency to use SMS for its spam, so you can ignore it.
When that happened to me I sent an email to the provider saying that I wasn't very happy with their service and the sales calls were putting me over the edge. So if I received another sales call I would cancel my plan immediately. It worked!
There was a point when I was getting a call every week from my network trying to sell me something. I eventually got them to knock it off, although on the other hand I was grateful when they called me to offer a free upgrade to my current phone.
I would like to communicate something similar to every single Democratic candidate in America about their emails. I support your efforts! But I do not want to receive 3 emails a day from every campaign in the country for the next year and a half. I can't do it. No, I can't even make the thousands of picnics and barbecues and town hall meetings in Kentucky and everywhere else. To be honest, I never even signed up for your email list.
How bad of a person does it make me to unsubscribe?
5: Just explain that, in this economy, cuts must be made to your inbox budget. It's common sense, yo.
Running an email account is like running a household. Exactly like it.
That explains the cases and cases of SPAM I keep on finding in the kitchen.
I would like to communicate something similar to every single Democratic candidate in America about their emails.
Yet another reason to support the Trapnel Plan for Electionless Utopia.
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Did somebody already post about this decent (albeit so obviously right it shouldn't need to be written) piece on the fluidity of sexual orientation/identity? If not, well, it exists (though shouldn't need to), and is decent (though "the idea that [same-sex desire] reflected fundamental differences between people, that gay people were a sexual subspecies, was a new one [in 1869]" shouldn't have passed any fact-checker's laugh test--christ, I just attended a wedding that quoted--at, honestly, excessive length--the relevant bit of "The Symposium").
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OT question: What's amusing to do in Las Vegas if you're not particularly interested in gambling? Buck has a convention and I'm tagging along for a weekend. Assume that I have no standards of tastefulness or maturity -- particularly good rollercoasters are interesting, as are especially ridiculous examples of hotel lobby decor. But really, I find that I have no idea.
I'm not opposed to gambling, I'm just cheap and unskilled, but if anyone wanted to give me tips on ways to spend an hour or two losing fifty buck or so other than just putting it into slot machines, I might be interested in that.
12: Ahead of your trip, watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; take notes; do the opposite of everything they do.
Assume that I have no standards of tastefulness
The Liberace Museum. Turns out it's "temporarily closed to the public at this time", though.
What's amusing to do in Las Vegas if you're not particularly interested in gambling?
Strippers and coke.
So preordering the fifty pounds of grapefruit was a mistake?
The American Dream is still out there somewhere.
There's a Chihuly display at the Bellagio.
I've heard the Atomic Testing Museum is interesting.
The Liberace Museum
Just yesterday I listened to a Savage Love podcast where Dan Savage likened Marcus Bachmann to Liberace. Spot on.
a Chihuly display
I swear I first read that as Cthulu--which would be appropriate for Las Vegas, come to think of it.
There is spectacularly beautiful desert one to two hours drive from Las Vegas. After you've seen the pirate ship show (free!) and the awesome timed fountains (also free!), rent a car and get the hell out of Dodge. You can come back in the evenings for your Celine Dion show or whatever.
21: Ooh, Red Rocks. I'm not sure LB can handle that much horizon, though.
What's amusing to do in Las Vegas if you're not particularly interested in gambling?
The New York New York rollercoaster is quite fun. It's the only one I've been on in Vegas though, so maybe there are better ones. Penn and Teller are well worth seeing. As for ridiculous hotel decor, the indoor canal at the Venetian is up there, as is the full scale Trojan horse at Caesar's Palace. If you're willing to venture away from the Strip, the Golden Nugget off Fremont Street has a shark tank with a water slide going through it.
I haven't been in a few years though, so it's possible some of the newer ones (probably the Wynn ones) are even more silly.
Gambling wise, I'd suggest entering a low stakes poker tournament. But that's because I love poker. You may not.
The Fremont St. Experience/"VivaVision", at night. Something like five blocks of tacky, yet impressively huge, overhead video display.
he Golden Nugget off Fremont Street has a shark tank with a water slide going through it.
Holy Christ. Now I want to go to Vegas.
I know. It's awesome, isn't it? I was booked there for a conference because it's dirt cheap, and then I rock up and see a freaking shark tank water slide. Vegas is so cool in small doses.
I find that nothing becomes Vegas like the leaving of it, me. What, are you there now? The Dwarf Lord is -- he doesn't like it either, poor grummit, but the meetings are important to his profession.
a shark tank with a water slide going through it.
OMG.
I might look for poker if I could find not-Texas Hold'em. I never got the hang of that, and it seems to be all anyone plays.
Part of me suspects the weekend is actually going to end with Buck having a conversation like this.
Don't take your Nest Egg.
Agree with JM, get out of town for a bit. Hoover Dam maybe... but hard to beat the shark.
Make going to Zion your single highest priority, even if it means a day of crazy driving.
Hoover Dam is awesome. And there's so much terrazzo!
Huh. We really weren't planning to rent a car, and Zipcar isn't in Vegas.
Wait, I could be a crazy-person and put my bike in a bag and bring it with me. It wouldn't get me out of town, but it would get me around Vegas.
I'll be in Vegas tomorrow. For work.
I hate Vegas and think it's evil. Nonetheless, the Liberace Museum is worth seeing. The shark-filled aquarium at Mandalay Bay is genuinely awesome, one of the best aquariums I've ever been to. And the Cirque Du Soleil shows are great. I like the depressed looking lions in the MGM Grand.
The famous Thai restaurant -- Lotus of Siam -- is in fact really good. And there are lots and lots of other really great restaurants, of course. Probably the best thing you can do is eat a lot and sit by a pool.
Oh, and Vegas is a gigantic pain in the ass to get around whether you have or don't have a car. The casinos are impregnable fortresses and walking is pretty much impossible, especially in August. If you travel with your family you're less likely to have cab drivers offer to sell you women, which happens to me about 50% of the time I'm in a cab alone in Vegas.
23 et seq.: when I had a consulting gig in the Bahamas a few years ago, they put me up in a hotel with a shark-tank water slide, done up as (what else?) a Mayan temple. Perhaps inevitably, it was not as much fun as it sounds.
Also, the art collection at the Bellagio is in fact excellent and worth seeing.
Agree with Megan about Zion. Death Valley is also worth experiencing if you haven't, 2 hour drive. (It'll be 115+ degrees so you know. Hydrate.) The casinos are confusing but not exactly impregnable. I kind of like walking between them by using the sidewalks, but it's farther than it looks, and likely very hot, maybe crowded, and lots of guys pushing cards in your face featuring laydeez. Still some nice views of preposterous fountains, incongruities, etc.
You could also take a helicopter to the Grand Canyon, no idea how expensive or cool that is.
Ahead of your trip, watch read this; take notes; do the opposite of everything they do.
The first time I went to Vegas was before I had spent much time in Florida or southern California. I had only seen palm trees maybe a few times in my childhood. And there I was, walking down a street lined with fake everything, and there in the middle of the street between the two lanes was palm tree after palm tree. I had to keep reminding myself that trees were not fake.
This looks pretty neat--but not sure you can get in. The Neon Museum (although it looks like some of their collection is on display on Fremont St.).
The casinos are impregnable fortresses and walking is pretty much impossible, especially in August.
Yeah, as a non-driver, all I can say is it's not as bad as Dubai. But trying to get from, say, the Rio to the Venetian on foot is a fucking nightmare. And that's ignoring the heat, which is wearing even if you're just walking down the Strip. On the other hand, walking at night allows you to appreciate Vegas's own northern lights, if there's any cloud cover. The only place I've ever been where the entire sky is purple and green.
I've no idea how close Zion is to Vegas, but if it's reachable, do it. Beautiful place. Also Bryce Canyon, which I think is pretty close to Zion, by American standards.
Don't bring your bike. Don't go outside. It's going to be 120 degrees there. Seconded on the NY NY roller coaster.
Zion is two and a half hours and well worth it. Entirely worth it. You will only regret that Buck couldn't also go. Bryce is more like four hours, which is less worth it.
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Is there a way to hire a person to drive a car from one place to another? How much would that sort of thing cost? ~900 miles.
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Molly gets it exactly right. About the not going outside.
Viva! Las Vegas!
God, I love me some Elvis. AND YOU GUYS!
Neon Museum
In Vegas? I can't decide if that would have made Philip Marlowe cry or say "about time."
Telcom propaganda is especially lame and mockable, if not loathesome.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=stock_photos
I'm glad I'm not the only one who insists that anyone passing within a few hundred miles of it go to Zion. Seriously, it is worth it, and who wants to spend time in Vegas, anyway? (Disclaimer: I've never been in Vegas except for the airport.)
I agree with everyone else about Zion. Southern Utah is a true national treasure.
Make going to Zion your single highest priority, even if it means a day of crazy driving forty years of aimless pottering around eating stale manna.
I thought the whole point of manna was that it disappeared or went bad after a day, so it was never stale (except on the Sabbath)?
give me tips on ways to spend an hour or two losing fifty buck or so other than just putting it into slot machines, I might be interested in that.
I think gambling is basically dumb and have renounced it completely, but if you want to get sucked in, there's always basic strategy blackjack -- you can memorize the strategy in 10 minutes online and in some casinos they pass out cards. A moderately more fun option is playing pass line craps and taking odds (just look up the rules some place online).
Those are your best "bets" (i.e., you still lose over time, but not by as much) in the table games, (except for poker, which one theroretically can win, but which you personally will lose). And they can be moderately fun, certainly more so than throwing coins into a slot machine. But if you're on the Strip you definitely are quite likely to lose a lot more than $50 if you stay playing for an hour; there aren't a lot of $5 tables.
Don't play anything called "Casino War." Roulette has a nice spinning wheel but is truly a suckers game, even more so than all the other suckers games.
If you are Wesley Snipes, you should play roulette.
Roulette has a nice spinning wheel but is truly a suckers game, even more so than all the other suckers games.
Less so in Europe, but still so.
Ian Fleming has a whole riff about the American double-zero in Diamonds are Forever.