By
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Bill Ryan
Editor-in-Chief
Washington Research Associates Inc. |
I nearly broke down in tears last night. There was this touching commercial on TV about this guy who met his true love on the WWW, all thanks to a certain website called eHarmony.
Speaking through a sly smile he intimates that "She wasn't even one of my first matches." Or something like that. Now doesn't that truly speak to the Power of the Internet? Here's this young guy who's apparently already been through a considerable list of women who WERE his first matches, and now we get to meet a really attractive tenth or fifteenth match, who he is at present madly in love with, and learn she is just on the second or third team. Just a bench-warmer, really. But you want to know what I think? I think that, if he's a red-blooded American male like I was around the time of D-Day, he doesn't give a hoot if she "matches." In fact, he may even think this whole business about "matching" with somebody based on their answers to a bunch of idiotic multiple choice questions like "Do you like dogs?" is really kind of beside the point.
So what IS the point? It's just this little caveat: Ladies, watch out, the "match" you find may be a match collector. When perusing dating sites always bear in mind this simple truth: Give the average young man two tickets to the World Series, a beautiful summer day, and a good-looking girl to take along... and you can keep the tickets to the ball game and the beautiful summer day.
Now, on the subject of dating sites, if you're bound and determined to go this route, I'm told Eharmony's actually okay, if you hold your nose through the "matching" questionnaire. However, according to my grandniece the best (of several thousand such sites) is Yahoo Personals. Me, I wouldn't know. I don't use dating sites myself. At my age you can meet all the women you want at funerals.
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Well, the economy is in the toilet big time and people all over this great country of ours are looking for Payday Loans. This is another area where the Internet can really bamboozle you if you let it. There are now hundreds of Payday Loan websites out there. Some of the interest rates they charge would put Tony Soprano to shame. This may be possibly the best way found to soak the poor since subprime mortgages. What is sad and ironic though is that many of us, poor or not, NEED these damned short-term exorbitantly-priced loans sometimes. For example, what if you're a college kid and one morning your clunker won't start? How do you get to class? What if you're a single working mom and your teen-ager needs a new electric guitar? Okay, not a good example. But you get the idea. So here's what I suggest. If you really HAVE to get your hands on some cash, go to our new website Web Search Guides and read our free report on Personal Loans. It lists quite a few ways almost anyone can raise some fast cash without putting up their blood as collateral.
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Ever notice all these "free" things you can get on the Net nowadays? Like I signed up for a "free trial offer" for a certain magazine article listing service called HighBeam a couple months ago. Boy, did I stub my hoof on that one. Next thing I know there's a $199 charge on my American Express bill. Guess why. I had forgotten to cancel my "subscription" within their fleeting one-week "trial" period. Talk about setting a bear trap for us Web surfers. What's more, American Express refused to let me out out of it via a chargeback. Bye, bye $199.
Another Internet "freebie" I hate -- and I know this sounds eccentric -- is credit scores. "Do you know what your credit score is?" is the way the usual pitch goes. No, sir, I don't. And don't want to, either. The fact is, I nearly always pay my bills late, just because I hate bothering with them. Fair Isaac, the credit scoring company, no doubt has me on their black list with a couple lines under my name. Do I care? No. I don't. Now you say my crummy score will make it hard for me to buy a house. Good. I already have a house. I won't be able to get credit cards? Even better. A new car? Let me tell you my philosopy on buying cars. Always buy a good, reliable Japanese model. Then drive it till it dies. Then reincarnate it.
Now I realize not everyone is past 80. And not everyone pays for everything in cash. If you are such a person click here and find out what your credit score is. By the way, it ain't free.
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Finally.... let's take an idyllic cruise, down to the South Seas. Most cruise companies have amazing websites, full of information, and you can even get online virtual tours of the ship. So you'll know exactly what you're getting into beforehand, thanks to the Internet, right? Nope. Turns out it's a little more complicated than that.
Last December my wife and I decided to cruise down to the South Seas and Australia and New Zealand. We perused a bunch of cruise websites and settled on the Celebrity Mercury -- a 28 day cruise. Two gorgeous restaurants! Fabulous casino! On-board library! Spacious cabins! So said their website.
I figured I'd be spending my days at sea reading the classics (John Grisham or Tom Clancy), eating wonderful cuisine, and sipping drinks while counting cards at the blackjack table.
Well, that's not quite what happened. First off, it turned out there was only ONE real sit-down restaurant on the ship. The "second" restaurant turned out to be the breakfast buffet with tablecloths thrown over the tables in the evening (I guess so the cruiseline website could claim there were "two" restaurants on the ship). The library was, to put it charitably, tiny, stocked with a few dusty books and magazines. And what about the spacious, luxurious cabin I was expecting? Turned out to be about the size of a SuperMax prison cell with a toilet that turned into something out of a Stephen King movie when you flushed it.
The worst thing was I could not find a place on that boat to sit and read where somebody was not either taking Rhumba lessons or playing bingo. Most lights in the lounges didn't work. So you had go out on the deck, where the wind blew off your hat and urchins stomped on your feet.
Take my advice -- don't rely on cruiseline websites. Talk to people. Maybe even a travel agent.
That's it for this newsletter. Remember, if you need to do Internet research check out our new website, Web Search Guides. Give us a click!
Bill Ryan, Editor-in-Chief
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