Do you know who I’m talking about now? Good!

I received my biannual billing statement from State Farm and the cost of my insurance jumped about $150 per year. As you might imagine, I was shocked by the jump considering that I don’t get into any accidents, I don’t get any tickets, I’m a good driver, I haven’t purchased a new car in a couple of years, etc. The only thought that came to my mind after reading that bill was, “What gives?!”

After reviewing the bill to make sure that there weren’t any weird or one-time charges included, I called my local State Farm agent. This is the agent that I’ve been using since I first received my driver’s license back in the late 1990s, so we have a generally good history together. I’ve never had a claim or any other problem with my insurance during the entire time that I’ve used State Farm. When the woman answered the phone at the agent’s office, I explained my concern and asked why my rate was increased such a large amount. She responded that she had to check with one of the senior folks, but that I should wait on hold – so I did. To their credit, I was only on hold for a few seconds before they transferred me to one of the more senior associates (who I’ve sat down with and discussed insurance with one-on-one in the past).

The senior associate told me that State Farm just changed their rates and my rate went up. I responded that I was aware of this change, but I wanted to know why my rate would go up after I’ve done nothing but pay my bill every 6 months like a good, faithful customer. They said that there was nothing they could do about it – the rates just went up and that was the cause of the increase. I said that if my rate didn’t return to what it used to be, then instead of gaining my original rate plus this nearly 20% increase, they were going to lose 100% of my payment because I was going to cancel.

Now, I’m not a big believer in the customer always being right. However, I think I made a decent case. Here I was paying nearly $1,000 per year to this insurance company and I wasn’t even using their services. They wanted even more money from me and I said no… and they opted to lose all of my business instead of saving my already exorbitant annual payments.

In a remarkable display of poor customer service, the folks at my State Farm office stood their ground and I canceled my coverage. How a company can happily accept losing all of my business – after 15+ years of being a good, paying customer – and not even try to fight to keep my business is beyond me. This was one of the poorest examples of customer service that I’ve ever seen.

But hey, I saved more than 15% in less than 15 minutes by switching to Geico!

That’s why I was a little surprised when I received an e-mail from the Kars-4-Kids people asking me to vote in an online poll for a new version of their theme song. Here is the current version of the song, which is iconic in local radio, I think.

And here is the potential replacement – a newer version of the same song.

So, what do you think? Which version of the song is better? You can vote by clicking on this link and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments box on this page – we’d love to read what you think!

The first thing that I noticed was that there weren’t that many people at the gym, even though there were cars all over the outside of the building. Bear in mind that the size of this building is no larger than your typical Verizon Wireless store, so when I say that cars were “all over” the outside of the building, I mean that there were 6 or so cars. Honestly, I expected that because I assume that a lot of people workout early in the morning. However, when I walked in the door the place was near empty. The owner was there, someone he was training, an older woman, and some guy working out. That’s it.

This is in line with what I’ve seen in my general observations of this place – namely that there aren’t too many people who go there during the off-peak hours. I suppose an extension of this observation would be that the 6:15am hour is considered “off-peak” at this place! Weird.

So here I am at about 1:00pm today and I’m feeling alright. Most people believe that working out in the morning is a good idea. I guess I could get into it, but my schedule is so weighted towards not going to sleep until midnight or later that getting up early each morning would be a challenge. We’ll see what happens…

Anyone who knows anything about Pixar knows that they are the absolute best in terms of rendering almost life-like three-dimensional images on screen. Cars is no exception. The movie looks phenomenal, literally. From Lightning’s (Owen Wilson) flashy shine to Doc’s (Paul Newman’s) rebuffed exterior towards the end of the movie, the designers did a masterful job of putting together a tremendous looking piece of work. And the landscapes are awe-inspiring, albeit digitally rendered.

While I highly recommend this movie and I will probably go back to see it if I can catch a $5 matinee somewhere, I did have one major problem with the core of the story. I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that Owen Wilson’s character winds up in extremely small-town America which consists of one-street’s worth of a previously bustling tourist area. Well, the “story” is that with the creation of the interstate, Route 66 (the home of Radiator Springs, the dead tourist town) is not used too much any longer. The implication? The mini-tourist towns along Route 66 are decimated by people buzzing by on the highway instead of passing through their tourism-fueled towns.

Sad and true story.

But something just rubbed me the wrong way about the Disney Corporation making a movie that pretty much scolds the public for neglecting Middle American tourist spots. Isn’t this the same company that all but killed the Heartland tourism industry by putting two mega popular theme parks in Florida and California? And weren’t highways built, in part, to facilitate mass transportation to and from these places? I also think that it’s quite ironic that people will take these highways and continue to pass these small former tourist areas in order to go to these theme parks so they can see rides and attractions about this movie…

And as far as complaining about the fast-paced lives of today, I have a problem with the company who owns ESPN bitching about this. Let’s not forget that ESPN just introduced their own mobile phone brand that gives you even more sports-on-demand options than the standard mobile phone sports service… because sometimes you JUST have to know what your favorite baseball player’s batting average was when he was in high school…

Those points aside, I thought the movie was great. The graphics rocked, the story was good, and the plot moved along well. The actors all did a great job with their voiceovers and I highly suggest going to see this movie – especially if you have rugrats that you need to entertain!