I don’t really watch news, but somehow I catch a lot of it second hand. I may listen to a news station during Opie and Anthony commercials, or read some headlines on the web. Thanks to the way they repeat the “good stuff”, I consider myself informed and up-to-date. Here is what happened in the past few days. Oddly, it’s mostly beer-related.

1. Obama said some people were bitter.
2. Hillary and McCain jumped all over that.
3. Hillary got booed for complaining about Obama’s negative attacks.
4. Hillary had a beer. And a shot. Obama mentioned the photo-op in a speech.
5. Oops…turns out Obama had a beer in some bar several months ago.
6. Some Republican Congressman called Obama “boy”, and then apologized. (was he drunk?)

I think that about covers it. I’m ready for my own beer.

I got an E*Trade account a few weeks ago, hoping to buy a stock. As I watched the stock price climb day after day, I waited…and waited…and waited. E*Trade had my money hostage; although the funds were CLEARED and GONE from my checking account, they did not show up at E*Trade. As I discovered, you have to wait five full business days before your transferred funds are available. Shame on me for not understanding the fine print.

So on day four, I decided to open a Scottrade account. I signed on that evening, created the account, transferred some money, and placed the stock purchase order within minutes. The next morning, once the market opened, I had my stock.

It was the NEXT DAY before my money finally showed up on ETrade. So I tried transferring my money out, preparing to close the account. Oops…I received a bizarre “email cannot be confirmed” error. So I called customer support, and they informed me “that’s just a bad error message”. In reality, I have to wait another five days before I can pull my money out.

At long last, about two full weeks after starting down this path, my money is finally out of ETrade. What a joke. A traditional full-service human broker would have been faster, not to mention cheaper, because I could have gotten that stock at the beginning of the week when it was cheaper.

Hopefully this post is useful to someone trying to decide between E*Trade and Scottrade. There is nothing “E” about E*Trade — it is every bit as inefficient as any stodgy old bank.

I think I found a sure-fire way to identify a product that sucks. Just look for the “killer” claim. For example, Rick Ross says the Nokia iPhone Killer will have Java inside. An “iPhone Killer”? Really? Hmm…

• HTC Launches Apple iPhone ‘Killer’ - HTC Touch
• Linux-powered iPhone killer available online in March
• Verizon Voyager: iPhone Killer?

Lest you think this insanity is limited to iPhones…

• Microsoft’s iPod killer?
• Is the Sansa e280 an iPod Nano Killer?

And it’s not even limited to Apple products. Just do some Googling…

• Windows killer
• Rails killer
• Java killer

I can’t think of an example where the “killer” actually “killed”. The problem is, the market leader became the leader by leapfrogging everyone else with an innovative new product that nobody saw coming. The iPhone was a quantum leap above everything else on the market, and all of these stupid “killer” phones are desperately trying to catch up. So far, nobody even comes close.

If someone really is working on a killer product, you have not heard about it. Not only that, most people probably won’t even recognize it as such, because it will be innovative and new. It’ll storm onto the scene and become the new leader, spawning a whole new generation of “killers”.

I just read that they inadvertently released Sara Jane Olson one year too soon. After nearly a week of freedom, she was returned to jail to complete her sentence. That has to suck. They blame a “clerical error”, but I’m thinking this is a fencepost error in some poorly tested software.

I can only speculate, but it seems pretty likely that a prisoner serving several years in jail knows EXACTLY when his or her sentence is up. I know I’d be counting down the days. And if I had exactly 365 days left and the warden set me free, I doubt I’d complain either.