Couple random thoughts, observations, stuff:

Last night my wife wanted to pay her Sprint bill – she didn’t want to get up and go down stairs to grab her purse and credit card so she asked me for mine and I just tossed her my wallet without thinking. Rather than grabbing my dedicated credit card out she grabbed my debit card, which wouldn’t have been my preference (easier to dispute credit credit card charges if necessary). I was prepared to start answering the various interrogation questions necessary for a card purchase, since the CVV code is intentionally missing from all of my cards (no need to make it extra easy for a would be pickpocket), and was sort of suprised that she didn’t need any information other than the card number. It turns out Sprint uses the STAR network with debit card transactions and all it needs is the credit card number – how is that a good thing? Credit cards are already great theft targets since you only need a couple pieces of information to charge them – I don’t think reducing the amount of information is wise. In Sprint’s defense, only a moron would place a charge with a stolen card on their own account, but in terms of industry trends I can say that offering debit transactions with just a card number is one that I feel should continue.

Unrelated to that, the vast majority of blog spam that gets trapped by the filters at the moment is related to amoxicillin ads – what the hell? Can someone explain the psychology behind that to me? First, amoxicillin is an antibiotic – typically something you are using because you went to the doctor, found out you have an infection, and want medicine sooner rather than later; it is also something you only take for a short period (what, 5 days or something like that) and don’t renew – how is that a good candidate for mail order? On top of that its about the cheapest antibiotic known to man – it isn’t like Walgreens is charging $50 for it after insurance. Last time I needed to pay for amoxicillin it couldn’t have been more than $5. Are people really looking to knock that price down even further? What makes it good chum for spam fodder?

Well, those are my deep thoughts for the day, cheers,
~ Joshbw