There, among real news headlines like: Whistleblower: AT&T Maintained a ‘Secret Room’ for the NSA, Personal Assistant Is Charged in Broker’s Killing, Kurdish Guerrillas ‘Open’ To Dialogue With Turkey, we learn that Britney Spears ran a red light.

Red.

Light.

World news.

We also learn that there are 196 articles on the three anemia drug warnings, 301 articles on the Kurdish guerillas and Turkey—the articles flanking Britney Spears’ failure to stop at a traffic light. The incident where the government is spying on people from within a private telecom corporation: 34 articles. If we assume newsworthiness from the amount of articles about a given topic based on quantity then the most important story I am seeing right now is the one where Britney runs a red light. There are 524 different ‘news’ sources willing to tell me about it: How exciting it was to be there… at that intersection… when she went through it… to probably get coffee… or… a cheesburger.

World news.

Important stuff you need to know.

Red light.

On the way in to work this morning I noticed this sticker on the rear window of the SUV in front of me. I was immediately distracted by the owner’s choice of placement for the sticker—right under the rear wiper. Why would someone chose to put it, where 99% of the time it is obscured? There were three other, better suited locations that they could have chosen: top left, top right, bottom right. This person had a 75% chance of getting it right. The odds were in their favor. But they fell short.

If this person is a project manager, a designer, an artist, hell, even a landscaper, in any sort of planning position whatsoever, they should be fired.

I couldn’t quite make it out because it was obscured by the wiper but I think it was an oval with the letters ‘OD’ on it. Makes sense.

This is from the email I submitted to CompUSA’s customer service:

Last night, Feb. 28, 2006, at approximately 8:30PM I went to my local CompUSA to pick up a high gain antenna for my wireless router, a D-Link USB Bluetooth adapter, a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse. After locating all of the items and walking back and forth between the Apple section in the back corner and the mice/keyboard aisle comparing the optical wireless mice, I was informed the register was closed and I would no longer be able to purchase the items every employee in the store saw me carrying around.

I don’t know if this is store policy or not to shut down and kick people out at close without so much as a warning but in doing so, CompUSA lost a few hundred dollars of my money. I cannot fathom how this location could stay in business with customer service like that. At any time any of the 8-12 employees in the store could have approached my wife or myself and told us they would be closing the register and I would have to hurry up and check out.

To sum it up, the empoyees working the store last night should be ashamed of themselves. That’s not the way to treat the people that make sure you have a job. In the past I haven’t had an unfavorable opinion of CompUSA but I would have to say that this has colored my view and I may never step foot in one of your stores again.

As soon as I got home I ordered the items I was carrying around the store from Amazon. Yeah, I have to wait for it to be shipped but at least they didn’t wait until I filled my shopping cart up and then remove the checkout button from the website.

Bastards!