Jim's Depository

If you use Orbitz, they will sometimes tack on unwanted travel insurance. You will know this happened when you get an email from Access America with your policy. Orbitz will then pretend they can not remove it and direct you to a dysfunctional voice menu system at Access America, I suppose to try to wear you down. (There are no appropriate options, and I never could get to a human. It appears to always have “higher than expected volume”.)

Don’t let them win.

• http://www.accessamerica.com/
• Find the Modify/View Policy link
• Your policy and departure date are in the email
• They will thank you and maybe in 30 days give your money back.

Update: Refund arrived.

An January 20th iFixit published Apple’s Diabolical Plan to Screw Your iPhone about Apple’s evil pentalobular screws and their $10 kit to live with them.

As viral nerd stories go, it has everything. There is a powerful evil villain, an underdog hero, an articulate, attractive nerd (if you found the video), educational material, and a happy ending.

Let’s see how it turned out for them…

Alexa measures internet traffic with some system of taps and spies unknown to me. But you can ask it about a web site and see how their traffic fairs over time:

Google Trends will tell you how search term frequency is changing with time:

I think we can safely say that article tripled iFixit’s web traffic. It’s too soon to know the long term effects, but presumably some of those eyeballs were connected to memories that will come back when they need help repairing their devices.