Free Magazines for Everyone

Working at an industrial chemical company, I receive a lot of trade magazines for various things. All of them are free and almost all of them are irrelevant. Every few months someone calls requesting to update my information to continue receiving the free publications. They ask for name, title, number of employees, industries served, etc. They always try to throw in a personal question... for example, "In order to verify that I spoke with you today, could you tell me what city you were born in?" They have asked other questions too such as my birthday, it could be the year, month or date. I have a set of standard responses for the personal questions they ask:

Telemarketer: "Could you tell us what city you were born in?"
Me: "No."

Telemarketer: "Could you tell us what month you were born in?"
Me: "No."

Telemarketer: "Could you tell us what day of the month you were born in?"
Me: "No."

Telemarketer: "Could you tell me the name of the street where you currently live?"
Me: "No."

Telemarketer: "Could you tell me the day of the month when you were born?"
Me: "Tuesday"

After the personal question they always ask if there is anyone else in the company that would benefit from receiving Industrial Magazine. The answer is always an emphatic no.

The last questions they ask are:

Telemarketer: "Would you like to provide your email address to receive electronic copies of the magazines?"
Me: "No"

Telemarketer: "How would you like to receive your free subscription to Industrial Magazine, print or email?"
Me: "Didn't I answer that in your last question?"

Then I say that I would like to receive the magazine via email... But it makes me laugh so it is OK.

One thing I like about a certain free magazine is that it contains Dilbert cartoons. Having worked in a cubicle in a cube farm for a portion of my career Dilbert really rings true. I always look forward to it every month. One other thing I like about the magazines is the articles in some cases, but mostly the advertisements.

I'm not sure if it legal to scan comics but here is the Dilbert, you can view more at: www.dilbert.com

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Now it is time for the first post in what will likely become a series of posts where I/we look at the great advertisements in industrial magazines and take things out of context. This is the stupid stuff that makes me laugh. I hope it makes you laugh too.

First we have an unfortunate name for a company.

This is the guy's last name, maybe I would come up with something different as my company name. Since they are into burning stuff, why not Combo Controls or "Huh, huh, fire..." I just hope they are not burning their namesake, unless they are in Terre Haute, IN which is probably the worst smelling town in the USA. 

Second we have a headline.

I immediately thought of these...

My question for her is, "Why are you wearing a thong-a-tard? Is that really necessary for the feat you are undertaking?

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You are Not Qualified

The Chief and I have season tickets for the Indianapolis Colt's. We have had these tickets since 1996 or 1997 when Jim Harbaugh was the quarterback. We lived through Peyton Manning's horrible 3-13 first season as Colt's QB. We then watched in amazement when the following year they went 13-3 and made the playoffs and lost in the first round. It was still the playoffs...

Being a season ticket holder, the Colt's send us stuff. Every year we get a DVD of season highlights. The DVD for the 2011 season was very short... They also send us a Christmas card every year with a team photo. They also send us some cool stuff, like being able to call into a phone number and listen in to the team on draft day. That was pretty neat.

Since the NFL and the Colt's is a business they also like to have surveys filled out so they can "See how we are doing." I received one of these surveys last week. The email with the survey link said it would take approximately 15 minutes. I start answering the questions and after about 4 questions (and 2 minutes) this screen comes up:

I guess my opinion is not that valuable after all...

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Quirks

We all have quirks. I am sure that I have some things that I do that amuse or bug the Chief. She does some things that amuse me that I have never witnessed other people doing. I have talked about some of those things in other posts. A couple quick quirks: French Fry sorting, straw paper knot tying, car buying while I'm on a business trip... etc. Another one that I have noticed over the years is that when we go out to breakfast and there is toast as a side, the Chief always gets white toast. A normal breakfast consists of two full slices of toast cut diagonal into halves. The first piece she will normally eat all the toast. When she is nearly finished and starting to get full, she eats all of the toast except for the corner crust.

I asked the Chief if I have any quirks that she notices. The first one that she told me is that I line up the magnets on the refrigerator. All I have to say to that is "Who wouldn't line up the magnets. More will fit that way... duh." The second one she came up with is that I have an aversion to putting silverware into her lunch box. If I get up early enough, I will pack the Chief's lunch box, except for the utensils...

One other thing she swears by is a home remedy for the hiccups. You take a glass of water and bend over and drink it from the side of the glass farthest away from you. You are drinking the water upside down. I have witnessed her do this a number of times. The last time I saw it was while we were in the Bahamas with some friends. We were drinking and playing cards in our friend's hotel room. The Chief gets the hiccups and can't get rid of them. Next comes the drinking upside down...

I don't know if it works or not. I don't normally have to resort to such measures to rid myself of the hiccups.But the laughing in the semi-drunk group definitely prevented the rest of us from getting the hiccups.

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Here is some food for thought...

Why is it that recording artists were very upset by the free file sharing of Napster, to the point they shut the site down? I don't recall seeing authors of books being upset that you can go to the Public Library and read their books for free. Then you can recommend it to a friend and they can read it for free too...

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