MINI has made a bit of a comeback since being purchased by BMW. It's a car that is cute, fun, and gets relatively good gas mileage. When I bought my 2006 Mini Cooper S a little over a year ago, there was no dealer inventory where I was. You built your car, they ordered it, and you waited until it showed up.

MINI has also been known for its rather humorous (in my opinion) advertising. To introduce the new 2007 MINI Cooper, they've taken advertising one step further. Hammer and Coop. This is a humorous spin on Starsky and Hutch, Magnum PI, and Knight Rider (at the least) -- a short series of what can best be described as long commercials -- all done with that same bizarre MINI humor.

I found it humorous. If not a little male-centric. http://www.hammerandcoop.com -- I give it 4.5/5.0 stars of approval. It doesn't get a perfect score because, well, it *is* marketing....

I guess I find this little story mildly humorous, but probably more reassuring.

The current quarterly promotion gimmick with Discover Card is currently a 5% cashback bonus for things related to travel. Hotels, car rentals, etc. So the gimmick is working in that I've recently been putting all my hotel, car rental, etc. charges on my Discover Card. And this month, I've been doing a lot of travel as it turns out.

So I returned home Saturday evening to find a message on the answering machine from Discover Card's Security and Fraud division. Seems like they were concerned with the sudden increase in travel related charges on my card. Hmmm....mebbe because of their promotion?

The amusing moment in the charge review was the question, "And you have a charge here from Southwest Airlines for...." "$5.00" I answered. "Right" the lady replied. "How do you only get a $5 from Southwest Airlines?" A couple of witty responses danced through my head, but I decided to be nice and say "Security Fee on a Frequent Flier ticket".

But in all seriousness, it's nice to know that someone's computer algorithm for detecting these types of things actually worked correctly.

I haven't had a chance to write anything new lately - not because I haven't had things to say, but because I've been traveling around the country and sleep comes before blogging.

Hopefully we'll get back to regular blogging soon.

Just in case the link I referred to in my previous Super Bowl posting gets deleted, I wanted to include the punchline from the article:

"No one is allowed to broadcast the game on a screen bigger than 55 inches outside your house or with a large group. The NFL basically wants you at home watching the game with family. The NFL claims large gatherings skew the Nielsen number which are the numbers used to sell commercials."

or from the NFL itself (quoted from the Indianapolis Star)

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league's longstanding policy is to ban "mass out-of-home viewing" of the Super Bowl. A major exception to the rule is made, however, for sports bars and other businesses that show televised sports as a part of their everyday operations.

"We have contracts with our (TV) networks to provide free over-the-air television for people at home," Aiello said. "The network economics are based on television ratings and at-home viewing. Out-of-home viewing is not measured by Nielsen."

This is clearly all about the almighty dollar.

I think next year I'm going to plan an "NFL Super Football Game to the Letter of the Law" party....

Quicken for Mac is such a sad state of affairs. No competition. No incentive to get better.

The Mac version lags far behind the Windows version. And Intuit has no motivation to fix this situation.

It's frustrating. They've got us by the neck.

Today, I fired up Quicken 2004 to be greeted with a message that support for Quicken 2004 would be discontinued on April 30. With that, my ability to download transactions, update security prices, stuff that I do quite a bit, was going to go away. Essentially, Intuit was saying, "We haven't gotten money from you in a while - pay up." The equivalent to electronic blackmail....

It's totally reasonable for companies to obsolete support for software. Most obsolete software after 5 years or so, and usually by then, there's enough new features to warrant an upgrade. Not so with Quicken. Oh sure, some things have gotten nicer, and they've fixed a few of my complaints. But it wasn't enough to make me pay $70 to upgrade. Well, they finally forced me into it, and I'm not happy. Even with the $20 discount, it's still extortion. There aren't enough "new features" to warrant an upgrade. I call this a $50 mandatory software maintenance fee.

And, to show how much Intuit doesn't care - they couldn't even be bothered to make Quicken 2007 a Universal app to natively support the new Intel-based Macs. Everyone else has or has it on their roadmap. Intuit doesn't. Quicken users don't have any other options.

For once, I wish Microsoft would step in here and write some software. Microsoft Money for Mac. MMMmmmmmm....

This seems to be truly unfair.

NFL puts kibosh on church Super Bowl party

If you read this and other articles related to this story, it appears this is all about ratings and money. You can't have a party if you have a new 60" TV it seems.

Send your comments on this to:

National Football League
280 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017

I think I'm going to watch a movie this Sunday. The Chargers are out anyways, so who cares?