How To Remove Netflix DVD Labels

I would like to preface this by saying that I have personally used this method successfully many times, however use it at your own risk. If anything at all goes wrong, that's your problem - not mine. Anyway, now that we got the disclaimer over with, let's begin.

Netflix, my favorite DVD rental company, recently started putting little white circular stickers on their DVDs to help make things more efficient. That's all well and good, but certain ancient DVD players (such as the one in my laptop) have a hard time with the slight difference the sticker makes and refuse to play DVDs that have them on.

Here's the easiest way I know of to remove them.

Materials:

Tweezers (don't use your girlfriend's - get your own)
Goo Gone (I like the spray gel form available at Walmart and other retailers)
Sink or water bottle
Disposable tissue or toilet paper
Disposable paper or plastic plate

Directions:

1. Put the DVD onto the disposable plate.
2. Apply Goo Gone to the sticker on the DVD.
3. Let it sit for two or three minutes.
4. Wipe off the Goo Gone with a tissue or some pieces of toilet paper.
5. Holding the DVD in one hand and holding your tweezers in the other, slide one side of the tweezers between the sticker and the DVD.
6. Squeeze the tweezers shut and gently pull the sticker off.
7. Put the DVD back onto the disposable plate.
8. Apply more Goo Gone to make sure any sticky residue is removed.
9. Wash the DVD and then dry it with some more tissue or toilet paper.
10. Enjoy your movie.

It's important to use a disposable plate so that the surface underneath your DVD (such as a wooden table) isn't damaged by the Goo Gone. The purpose of the Goo Gone is to loosen the sticker from the DVD and remove the residue the sticker leaves behind. And using tweezers is much smarter than using your fingernail. I learned that the hard way.

Anyway, hope that helps. Please comment if you find this information useful.

Stupid Posts On RipoffReport.com

If you didn't know already, there's this site called RipoffReport.com that gives regular consumers a way to fight back against unscrupulous individuals and companies. In principal, I like the idea. However, I have found that most postings are by complete morons who didn't live up to their end of the bargain.

Examples of types of posts you will see again and again if you check out this site:

1. "The company closed my credit card! Boo hoo!"

My response: I don't know when people started to get this idea, but a credit card is not a right. It is a line of credit that a bank can give or take away from you at their discretion. 99% of the time, your credit card will be canceled because your credit score dropped or you didn't use the card for several months. In any case, if not having a credit card has a significant impact on your life, you need to learn money management skills fast.

2. "The bank charged me an overdraft fee even though times are tough and my mother is in the hospital/I just lost my job/my son needs a tutor! Banks should be charities and never charge me fees just because I am irresponsible!"

My response: Tough freaking luck. Checking accounts are finite. If you spend more money than you have in your account, the bank is forced to give you a loan. And they charge you for that loan. If this was a total anomaly, most banks will refund the fee. But if it happens more than once a year, it's your fault. I don't care what's going on in your life, sad as it may be. Banks aren't charities. If you want a free loan, call up a relative. As long as that person isn't me.

3. "I fell for a quick money/get rich quick scheme! Boo hoo!"

My response: You're an idiot. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Any work at home "job" that requires no experience, promises lots of cash and is fuzzy on the details is probably a multi-level marketing scam or just a garden variety hoax. Read up on the various scams that exist and be a little less of a sucker. If you weren't so greedy you wouldn't have been taken in to begin with.

Those seem to be three major themes that show up again and again on that site. Horrible spelling abounds, and people seem to think that if they repeat their title over and over people will be more likely to click. Well I find it to be obnoxious, and it seriously removes any sympathetic inclination I might otherwise have.

It saddens me that most complaints are from people who feel entitled and refuse to understand simple cause and effect (not paying your car payment for four months leads to having it repossessed for example). Many, many people on there do not understand basic personal finance, and the way banks operate. They genuinely seem to think that their personal hardships give them the right to not pay their bills without consequence.

Meanwhile, the real complaints from smart, reasonable, hardworking people who were actually ripped off gets buried underneath thousands of pages of this dung.

The Volunteer

There are volunteers in every community. Some are firefighters, others do work in hospitals. Still others deliver food to the old, sick or poor. But in the frum community, there is a unique kind of volunteer. This person dedicates much of their free time to "helping" teens stay or go back to being frum. In my experience, most of them have their heart in the right place. They genuinely want to help the teens they deal with. And some of them do. But there are some times when irreparable harm is done.

Teenagers are in a crucial period of their lives; a time when they figure out who they are and who they want to be for the rest of their lives. Yes, some off-the-derech kids are lashing out in a desperate cry for attention. But there are plenty who are miserable being forced to live a life that revolves around beliefs they just don't have. Can you imagine spending most of every day learning about and following rituals that have absolutely no meaning to you? Does that not sound like complete hell?

Of course, teens often don't have much of a choice. They are not economically independent yet so they have to either obey their parents or end up on the street. And well meaning Rabbis tend to take advantage of this situation. They probably think they're saving souls. I bet they do. But when parents ask "Should I send him to college?" and the Rabbi says "No! That will just infect them with tumah - send them to X Troubled Teen School" you have to wonder what they're thinking.

I have seen what happens when teens are sent off to Troubled Teen Schools. They pick up bad habits such as drugs, eating disorders, promiscuity, shop-lifting and more when they would have never imagined doing anything of the sort before. I've seen it happen. But somehow, cloistering a group of off-the-derech teens in a controlled environment is considered preferable than letting them go out into the world, get an education and sort things out. I am grateful that my parents did not send me off to one of those hellholes despite the advice of a Rabbi.

If the goal was really to help teens, these volunteers would help teens find their way. If they decide religion is right for them, great. If not, not. But these "saintly" volunteers have only one goal in mind - keep the teens following the rules of the Orthodox community. There is no regard for their emotional health or happiness. This proves that the volunteers are not the altruistic people they pretend to be.

Just Opt Out

At the ripe old age of twenty two, most of the girls I went to elementary and high school with are married or divorced. Many have children. If I were frum and not married at my age, I would be quickly approaching nebach status, dreading my twenty third birthday. But instead, I am exactly where I want to be. I just graduated college, got promoted at work and live with my boyfriend.

In my new world, it is perfectly normal to wait to get married. No one bats an eyelash if you are twenty eight and not married. Because getting married at all isn't viewed as necessary, and more importantly women are not judged as more or less important based on their marital status. What does it say about a society when a woman is nothing without a husband? Doesn't that sound like an attitude more suited for the middle ages than year 2009?

It is understandable that many frum singles feel depressed. After all, when your purpose in the world is to get married and have children, how exactly are you supposed to feel if you have not found that special someone yet? (This also applies, although less so, to couples experiencing infertility.) To make matters worse, since many frum people do not date casually getting married is the only real validation they get that they are considered truly desirable by someone of the opposite sex.

So what do you do if you are not a top tier commodity that everyone is running after for dates? Should you crawl into a cave somewhere and cry your life away, as you work at a heimishe office for $15 an hour? I say no. There is an option that you probably have not considered, and that is to just opt out. I'm not saying to go to the nearest McDonald's and order a cheeseburger, but definitely look at your life and where it's headed. Where do you want to be in ten years. What will happen if you don't get married?

No one wants to think about it, but you should. It's important to. Do you really want your life to be dependant on whether or not you get married? My advice is to just put that on hold and make something of yourself. Go to law school or something. Sitting around makes you pathetic and undesirable. If you're busy, dynamic and passionate that is extremely attractive - to the right guy anyway. If you were brainwashed in seminary to only date kollel guys, change that pronto. You'll start dating a different class of man, a man who works for a living and is on planet earth.

I have always found it ironic that kollel has so little to do with spirituality and living simply and so much to do with being better than everyone else, leeching money from your parents (or in-laws) and living in luxury (take a look around Lakewood!). Single kollel guys are usually the most stuck-up about shidduchim. They will want to know how old you were when you were potty trained and whether your mother dyes the hair under her wig (chas v'shalom) instead of what you are like as a person.

But I digress. You are not the problem. The shidduch system is pitted against those who are not slender and gorgeous, with perfect reputations and unblemished family histories. You don't have to put up with it if you don't want to. You can just opt out.

TV Writers

When I was a teenager I decided briefly that I wanted to be a tv writer. It was one of many possible careers I flirted with. The irony was that I really had no familiarity with television at all at that point. However, the research I did gave me a little perspective.

TV writers are an incestuous bunch. They eat at the same restaurants, type on their laptops at the same coffee shops and have intersecting groups of friends. It's a phenomenon that is unique to LA as far as I know, and it has some interesting affects. Basically, tv shows start to resemble each other. Since all the writers talk to all the other writers, the same plot devises start to show up in all the tv shows at the same time.

It's starting to become really ridiculous. Several shows are currently using hallucinations as a plot devise. The Unsuals, Grey's Anatomy, Bones, Fringe and House. And probably more that I'm not aware of. Coincidence? I think not. Writers, I'm on to you. I used to think I wasn't worthy of joining your ranks but now I know I dodged a bullet. You're supposed to be creative. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

[By the way, there are some exceptions. Lost, for example, is filmed in Hawaii. I suspect that the writers are there as well and their isolation might explain why Lost hasn't "lost" its touch.]