Year: 2005

So today…got the invitation for CNBC first thing in the morning. The kids and I had breakfast at the cafe around the block. Around 1pm, we drove to Portland. Hung out at Lloyd Center mall for about an hour. Emily did some ice skating while me and Payton watched. Then went to the studio, about a mile away from the mall.

Sat around in a waiting room for awhile, then went into a studio. The interview was via satellite, so it was just me, the kids and a producer. Hooking me up to the show (I think it was based in NYC) required the producer dialing a few numbers on a couple of phones and leaving them off the hook. Once that was done, I could hear the show in my earpiece and I guess they could hear me. Strange that the audio seemed to be done via a few phones, even though they had the video feed going too. Kind of makes me wonder if I could get the phone numbers they use and hijack the phone lines. Muhaha… The first thing I heard once my audio was working was some kind of promo mentioning Wal-Mart and terrorism. When I heard that, I’m thinking, “Oh great, they’re going to yell at me for being a mean person…” Jammie told me later that they’d called it Corporate Terrorism. I was all worried before the interview that they were going to say that terrorists could use my methods of bothering Wal-Mart to overthrow the U.S. Government.

The interview lasted maybe two minutes. It went okay, I guess. I didn’t get ambushed and the anchor guy was friendly enough about it. I was all prepared for them to ambush me. On the drive to Portland, I’d decided if they called me horrible I would just agree with them and tell them when I wasn’t harassing Wal-Marts, I was out beating up old ladies in the street and setting small animals on fire. But that didn’t happen. He asked a few questions and I answered. I was thrown off a few times and stuttered a little. They played the Christmas Bows call and the call where a customer asks me for directions to the store. And that was it, it was over. The producer from New Jersey talked to me afterwards and told me that I did great and she thought the segment went flawlessly. It was a really fun experience overall. Big thanks to everyone who hounded me into going. And thanks to everyone who left suggestions and encouragement in my previous LJ entry.

The lady in the studio with us laughed when she heard Christmas Bows being cued up before the interview. And she smiled and chuckled as they were played during the interview. After it was over, she asked me all about phonelosers.org and said she would have to visit it. She wanted to know if we’d really taken over a Wal-Mart’s paging system like that and she was surprised when I told her it was actually the Fred Meyer store just a mile or 2 away. I’d told the producer that it was a Fred Meyer too, I guess she just wanted to go with it being a Wal-Mart so it would match the story better. That and half the country has probably never heard of Fred Meyer. The studio lady remarked how incredibly well-behaved my kids were and Payton talked to her nonstop about random things for 5 minutes after the interview was over.

The kids and I went back to the mall and had supper in the food court and then saw Cheaper by the Dozen 2. Payton continually called it Mine, Yours and Ours 2. Pretty witty for a 6-year-old. Played a few games at Tilt afterwards and then drove home.

A few people were supposed to record the TV show but so far all those have fallen through. Jammie’s dad screwed up his attempt to record it (damn adults and that modern VCR technology), her friend Rob completely forgot and Apok0lyps’ Tivo didn’t work. Gordo said he got it recorded, so maybe we’ll get it from him. I’ll put the video up on phonelosers.org when/if I get it.

Yesterday, some lady from the Boston Herald emailed me, wanting to do a phone interview with me regarding PLA’s Wal-Mart site. I told her I’d much rather answer her questions via email and she agreed. I didn’t get put into the article too much, I think mainly because I don’t really oppose Wal-Mart as much as she’d hoped. Here is the article from today’s Boston Herald. And here is the email of questions that I answered for her.

I’m not sure if my answers will be very useful to you, since I’ve never worked for Wal-Mart and I don’t really have an objective. But here you go…

Are you “Joe the Peacock”? (I saw that you live in Alton, Ill., but the link to Joe’s ”mentally incompetent” website has a Georgia address)

Nope, Joe can be reached at joe@—–.com. He lives in Georgia. I used to live in Illinois but I just moved to Oregon a few weeks ago. Joe might be able to give you some better answers than me, regarding Wal-Mart.

Did you formerly work for Wal-Mart? If so, in what capacity, during what period and where?

I’ve never worked for Wal-Mart before and I’ve never attempted to get a job there. I’m merely an occasional shopper there.

Do you shop there now or have you?

I try to never shop there. Sometimes it can’t be helped since they’re open later than most of the other large retail stores or they might have a certain product that the others might not have, such as a kids toy or something. I’d say I probably end up in a Wal-mart 2 or 3 times a year, but I make it a point never to make any large purchases there. While I realize that their prices are quite often lower than the other major stores, I stay away from them simply because I don’t like what they do to communities.

What do you have against the company that would make you spend time on doing a Website like this?

If you look at phonelosers.org, you’ll notice that everything I do stems from just way too much time on my hands. Even if I loved Wal-Mart, I probably would have made this page. Just as I put together the Fred Meyer page at http://www.phonelosers.org/issue/pla025.html or the 7-Eleven page at http://www.phonelosers.org/issue/pla008.html. I spend lots of money in those places. It just seemed like a funny idea when I originally put it together, which was 4 or 5 years ago.

I could say that it’s because of a few bad experiences I’ve had with the Wal-Mart in Wood River, Illinois, which are written about at http://www.brad-carter.com/consumer_alert.html. But it’s not. It’s all in good fun to me.

What’s your ultimate objective?

As far as Wal-Mart goes, I don’t really have an objective. I don’t really care for the Wal-Mart company and as a result, I try never to shop there. My Wal-Mart page honestly has nothing to do with my dislike of Wal-Mart. Since the ideas on it are so generic, really they could be applied to any retail store. I just really enjoy making entertaining content for other people to enjoy, and the Wal-Mart page is a result of that.

Lastly, are you being straight with me? I realize that this could be a prank…

Come on, do I seem like the kind of person that kids around? :)

I thought it was pretty retarded that she asked me if I was being straight. Here’s where the bizzare part of the story is…a producer from CNBC read the article this morning and emailed me, asking for my phone number to do an interview. I replied that I would prefer to just answer the questions via email if that was okay with her. After a few emails, we finally end up talking on the phone and she talks to me a lot about the site. In the end, she ends up wanting me to drive to Portland to do a live interview with the host of the CNBC show “On the Money.” I politely decline. She even offered to send a car for me.

Then I tell Jammie and Joe Peacock about the encounter. Both Jammie and Joe relentlessly encourage me to do it. Then murd0c starts in on me. Finally, my weak mind gives in. I’m going up there later today to talk live, via satellite, to Anchor Dylan Ratigan. It will be approximately a 4 minute segment starting around 7:40pm EST. They’re going to play some of the sound clips from the Wal-Mart page, including one that has murd0c in it. I just finished editing that clip for her to make it more TV-friendly.

I fully expect to regret this somehow in the end. The producer assures me that they’re not going to ambush me and call me a horrible person for encouraging people to give grief to Wal-mart. She says it’s going to be a “fun” segment. Something about that doesn’t click, though, since it’s a money program. I’ve never seen the show, though, and I’m too lazy to Google it. The producer seemed genuine in her phone calls and her emails, although she gave me lots of fake-sounding encouragement. We’ll see how it goes. Even if it turns sour, it’s not every day that I get to be on a nationwide TV show. That’s probably what those people on Jerry Springer think, right before Jerry spends an hour making them look like fools.

Anyone have any suggestions? Other than encouraging me to rip off my clothes on live TV and scream, “OMG HAX!@#$”

Hooray for productivity…

I don’t know why, but I’ve been working on phonelosers.org about 800% more than I normally do lately.

• Worked a lot today
  
• Wrote a new script for displaying random things all over phonelosers.org. Now instead of 50 lines of code, it’s 5 lines of code. My webhost (Cal) should be happy about that since there’s about 10 randomized things on phonelosers.org.
  
• Completely revamped my advertising methods. Put it all in a flat file database. This means nothing to anyone reading this, but it’s sure going to make things easier for me. I ripped apart the PHP code from my homepage’s guestbook, found the part that looks at a database and turns it into html, and used that to display ads on phonelosers.org. Did hours worth of advertising junk this evening while the kids did their homework next to me. Guess that’s why it took hours, I kept having to pause and help them. I still need to strip some stuff out of the script to make it a little smaller, but it works. Most importantly, I learned quite a bit about php today.
  
• Made a Shoutbox on phonelosers.org! I’ve been wanting to do that forever but none of the PHP shoutboxes I found would ever work on phonelosers.org even though they worked on my homepage just fine. Finally I just wrote my own, using a combination of PHP and Perl. I got hacked on the first day that I put it up – somebody forwarded the shoutbox page to a porn site. Fixed that and haven’t had any problems since then. Once I learn PHP a little better, I’ll get rid of the Perl portion of it.
  
• Fixed the Fruitwall – people can post on it again
  
• Did a few more anti-spam robot things so that they can’t as easily auto-spam the comments sections all over phonelosers.org. I set up a log to tell me exactly how much spam I’m preventing. Today it prevented 12 spam posts. Yesterday it prevented FIFTY-FIVE spam posts. (I spelled out the number to make it look more dramatic.) Last week I set it up so that all comments have to be manually approved by me now which eliminates 100% of the spam. But now that I’ve done this new anti-spam thing, the spam doesn’t even get to me. I’m only deleting a couple a day. Stupid spammers, they should die.
  
• Modded the guestbook on my home page again to deter automatic spamming. So far I’ve gotten ZERO spams there since I did it.
  
• Hey Stella – I found a really simply form-to-email PHP processer. I’ll get that working on your site tomorrow if you want.
  
• Put the random Christmas banners on the top of the website last night. Jammie made one of them and I put it up this morning.
  
• Worked on the PLA book a lot this week.
  
• Got the kids a bed finally! Really nice bunk bed for $200 – 1/3 of what it cost at the furniture store.
  
• Bought a new table for the kids room today for Legos.
  
• Hooked up a hub to my modem and got my Vonage line running again. Now I’ve got twice the free long distance at only double the price!
  
• Did Christmas shopping for the kids
  
• Took back the $29.99 trash can I bought at Fred Meyer and got a refund. I didn’t know the City of Albany provided our trash cans for free!
  
• Finished reading Mentally Incontinent
  
• Paid tons of bills