I just received this email:

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN®) recently agreed to reduce their Registrar Transaction Fee from $.25 to $.22. What does this mean for you?

Good news. You have been credited $.03/yr for each domain name you registered or renewed dating back to July 1, 2006* — $.03 has been placed into your Go Daddy® account with this customer number: XXXXXX.

Your in-store credit will be applied to your purchases at GoDaddy.com® until it’s gone or for up to 12 months, whichever comes sooner. If you have any questions, please contact a customer service representative at 480-505-8877.

As always, thank you for being a Go Daddy customer.

Sincerely,

Bob Parsons
CEO and Founder
GoDaddy.com

THANKS ICANN FOR THINKING ABOUT SOMEONE OTHER THAN YOURSELF. I suppose that .03$ would be good for people with a billion domain names. But it kind of makes me laugh. Whatever you have to do to sleep better at night, ICANN.

Everyone knows that every commercial that involves computers whether as a point of focus or in the background, except those for a specific brand of computer, show a Mac of some sort. Well, it’s moved on to spokespersons’ makeovers. Consider the following:

Copyright ©2007 Mars

I heard about it on NPR and had to look for myself. If nothing else, this seriously cracks me up. NPR was discussing the inherent prejudice and racism in the concept of Uncle Ben and how it started in a time when many spokescharacters were racist, sexist or the like. The guest they were speaking to was talking about how many of the others have been since replaced. Mars (the company who owns Uncle Ben) evidently decided that giving Ben a promotion was the answer to any questions of impropriety.

I don’t really have an opinion either way regarding the underlying political issues. I just think it’s hilarious that Uncle Ben now has an iMac.

Backstory. My MacBook crashed in a rather spectacular way and I ended up heading into the Genius Bar at Apple Somerset to get it checked out. Turns out one of the guys’ girlfriends had the same problem at some point and we fixed it pretty easily. I was having a couple of other issues intermittently as well, so after we went through fixing it, I stuck around for a few hours to mess with it and see if it would duplicate the problem. I chatted with the geniuses and other customers. I ended up talking to them a bit about the job, what it was about and what it involved. By the end of the afternoon, it was settled. I had to have this job.

I went home and read the job description. I had experience relating to literally everything on the list. I put together an applicable cover letter and eventually posted it to the Apple jobs site. I really didn’t have any idea what the process was or whether I was supposed to take further action. I thought about taking my resume to Apple Somerset, but (to be honest) laziness won out and I didn’t bother. Then, I get a call from Michelle, an Apple recruiter. She put me through a basic interview and a tech screen, which she referred to as “not a test, but some questions to give us an idea of where your knowledge level is.” (Right.) Either way, she gave me a date for an interview with both the store manager at Apple Somerset and the regional manager. It happened to be my birthday. Best present ever, right? Well, she called back again and left a message to let me know that the interview was for sure. I figured since she had already told me the date, things were basically set. I called her and left a message about 6 days before (which was a weekend day) and emailed her a couple of times. I finally got in contact with her the Monday of that week (3 days before). “You hadn’t called back, so we thought you weren’t interested. We decided to fill all the positions internally.”

Best birthday present ever. Epic fail.

Anyway. She had mentioned when I talked to her initially, she had mentioned a program where I would come in as a Specialist (floor sales) and work towards being a Genius. I began emailing her and calling to try to discuss that option. I never received a response. I figured I had basically borked myself. That was that.

Well, I’m driving a few weeks later talking to my mom and receive a call from an unrecognised out of state number. I tell her I need to take the call. It turns out to be, of all people, a different Apple recruiter. Karen said she got my name from yet another Apple recruiter (Shannon). I told her who I had spoken to, and it turns out Michelle had gone on maternity leave. (That made me feel a bit better.)

I have a phone interview Wednesday at 5pm!