Sometimes it's better to leave the defaults

One of my clients chose to use a directory of "users" instead of roaming for roaming profiles. So there have been countless times where someone registered a user and enabled roaming and left the default of "roaming".

Then, to keep things orderly, we have to undo the roaming and put the profiles under users which is a pain because you basically have to undo roaming and re-enable. It's not just a config setting for the location.

So the moral is, just leave the defaults unless a good reason not to.

I love American Express

I carry a personal and business card. I love them because when an unexpected charge shows up on the account or a vendor charges too much, you can easily dispute that charge. You can dispute it online or call them to dispute it.

You might say, "So what, they all do that." However, that's not exactly true. Some of the other cards force you to prove you do not owe the money, to contact the merchant and argue with them etc. Amex does it the other way around. When I dispute a charge, Amex forces the vendor to prove I owe them the money. It's fantastic.

Case in point, I ordered something (a usb external hard drive) from a well known online vendor via a well known search engine company's checkout system. I left it in the box for a couple weeks before opening it. When I finally opened it, it didn't work on any computer (mac or pc) so I knew it wasn't just a setup issue. I emailed the search engine company but they told me the well known vendor had a policy of 14 days for returns. I wrote, "even for defective products?". My argument was what if it broke on the 15th day?

Anyway, I realized that I had purchased this with Amex and I was so happy! I disputed the charge based on broken merchandise and got my money back. I never even heard back from the vendor to take the product back which I was willing to do (at their cost).

The only downside to Amex is that there are many merchants who won't take them (I assume due to their merchant charges). But for online purchases, they are spectacular.