Friday was my birthday (Woooooh! I'm officially old now.) and to celebrate I did what any normal person would do…. I went to the Vilas Zoo in Madison, WI to see Chang Tan the Red Panda! I've posted about Chang Tan before… he's about as awesome as an animal can get.

I took this video of him climbing around in his home. Unfortunately it artifacts quite badly in a few spots.

This is straight from Gmail's "Deleting messages" FAQ:

"Deleted messages are a lot like the stuff in the trash can in your kitchen: eventually, it's all going in the big dumpster outside, but for a little while, you can still rummage through it if you lost something important."

….made me laugh

You know what would be neat? Skydivers that wore suits, or used parachutes, designed to form an image when they were in the correct position… and then take pictures from a plane flying over.

The best? Make a treasure map, with dashed lines and the obligatory "X" to mark the spot!

There are very few times when a person can get repeatedly pummeled in the head, and then be declared a winner. Boxing is one of them.

Can you imagine getting the snot punched out of you (literally), and then – just because you were the better beater-upper – being expected to celebrate your victory? On the upside, you wouldn't have to drink as much to get to that magical "my brain is only functioning at 50%" state of being.

Sometimes I have dreams very similar to this.

Hey guys!

I know you're all planning to stay up until 2am this Sunday to set your clock ahead an hour… but, how bout this idea? Let's just set it forward HALF an hour, and then in the fall we just won't do anything. Ever again. We'll never adjust the clocks. It'll be great!

No one will ever have to remember "spring forward, fall back" anymore! Everyone will just live their lives knowing that their clock isn't supposed to spontaneously jump an entire sixty minutes. Ever.

I call this brilliant idea "Daylight Averaging Time".

I just redeemed 5,000 rewards points on one of my credit cards for a $50 statement credit. Not a bad deal.

Trying to score some more free money, I decided to check my Chase card and see if I qualified for anything. Nope. A $25 statement credit from Chase is 3500 points. And that's pretty lame.

Just for the hell of it, I checked the rewards program rules and found this gem:

Redemption Rules

1. A service fee of up to $25 may be charged for the use of Reward Headquarters services for point redemption. We reserve the right, in our sole discretion to determine the amount of the service fee, to waive the service fee, or to change the service fee without notice.

That's right. Once I get up to the 3,500 point limit and redeem those points for $25, Chase has given themselves the right to then charge me a $25 service fee for redeeming those points. Granted, they'd probably exercise their right to waive that fee… but… douchebags. That's all that I can think of.

I think the "flexible" part of "flexible rewards" just means they expect you to bend over when you attempt to use the program.