Category: Life

60 days — what a crock

My wife has an LLBean credit card. And, most months, the statement is accompanied by a sheet of “access checks”. She’s been trying to get them to stop sending then forever — without success. But now that BofA is behind the card (instead of MBNA), she tried again this afternoon.

Susan at the toll-free number tried to talk her out of it, claiming that their “zero liability policy” made sending the checks safe — but she reluctantly admitted that they could be “suppressed” but it would take 60 days.

Let’s see…they can authorize transactions in milliseconds, but it takes 60 days to stop sending something that the customer Absolutely Does Not Want? Tells you where their priorities are…

(If it weren’t for the free shipping from Bean, the card would have been shredded long ago on this issue — “zero liability” does not mean “zero hassle”)

Extending Jon Udall’s LibraryLookup bookmarklet

I routinely use three different public library systems (Los Gatos, San Jose, and Santa Clara County). Needless to say, searching all of them for a book is a real pain.

But today at lunch, a friend reminded me of Jon Udall’s “LibraryLookup” bookmarklet, which worked wonderfully, but still required three searches to check all three libraries. So I decided to extend the bookmarklet to do the work for me, and here’s the result:


javascript:var%20re=/([\/-]|is[bs]n=)(\d{7,9}[\dX])/i;if(re.test(location.href)==true){var%20isbn=RegExp.$2;void(win=window.open('http://146.74.92.11'+'/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term='+isbn,'Santa Clara','scrollbars=1,resizable=1,location=1,width=575,height=500'));void(win=window.open('http://64.204.128.44'+'/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term='+isbn,'Los Gatos','scrollbars=1,resizable=1,location=1,width=575,height=500'));void(win=window.open('http://mill1.sjlibrary.org/search/?searchtype=i&searchscope=1&searcharg='+isbn,'San Jose','scrollbars=1,resizable=1,location=1,width=575,height=500'));}

I’m sure there’s some easy optimization to get rid of all of the repetition in the JavaScript, but I’m lazy.

What I do wish I could do is have the bookmarklet open the results in tabs instead of popup windows, but I don’t think that’s possible without turning this into a Greasemonkey script or a real XUL plugin, and I’m lazy.

But if someone else has done it….

WorldCat would, of course, be a better solution, but it doesn’t seem to include the Los Gatos library (yet, anyway).