If you bought 5 or 10 or – well, let’s not even go there – pizzas at Ultra last week, don’t forget to check the codes inside the box.  Since I’m running out of freezer space(!), I took all the pizzas out of their boxes and entered the codes at Palermo.com.  I WON A FREE PIZZA (3rd place prize)!  My coupon will arrive via snail mail, which should give me enough time to clear out some space…

Message from an alert reader:

Called 1-800-SAFE-SUN regarding the recalled Banana Boat sprays.  They are sending replacement coupons for the recalled items.  They told me to discard the products I have.

On July 11, 2012, the Court granted final approval to seven Settlements totaling over $538 Million. To review the Court’s Order click here.  Additional Settlements have now been reached with the last three Defendants totaling $543.5 Million and premilinary approval for these three Settlements was granted on July 31, 2012.  To review the Settlement Agreements, click here.  The combined amount of all ten Settlements is almost $1.1 Billion.

According to the lawsuit:  “Sharp, Hitachi and Samsung agreed to fix prices and limit the supply of LCD panels starting some time before 1999.   As production increased in South Korea and Taiwan, the conspiracy expanded to the other manufacturers. The companies took turns holding meetings during which vice-presidents and other executives and managers exchanged information on prices, customer demand, supply and shipments.
The participating defendants typically discussed how to raise prices and reached agreements on target prices, floor prices, and/or price ranges for . . . LCD panel sales,” the lawsuit alleges. “They also discussed their pricing regarding specific customers and reached agreements as to how to deal with customers’ requests for discounts. The participating defendants also typically reached agreements to limit the production of . . . LCD panels by setting target production levels, delaying capacity expansion, slowing assembly line volume . . . and other mechanisms.”  After the U.S. Department of Justice prosecuted the manufacturers, Van Hollen and the attorneys general of Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan and West Virginia sued the companies in California.  The settlement releases all claims of indirect purchasers including consumers, businesses and state government in Wisconsin. Companies that purchased LCD panels directly from the manufacturers are still pursuing lawsuits in California.

In 2006, the worldwide market for LCD products was about $70 billion, according to the lawsuit.

Eligible consumers and businesses in 24 states and the District of Columbia may be able to collect $25, $100, $200 or more by answering a few simple questions about the LCD flat screen TVs, monitors, and laptops they bought from 1999 to 2006.

These are the 24 states participating, together with the District of Columbia:  Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

This article appeared in today’s Wired.co.UK.  It relates the story of a woman who ran afoul of Amazon rules and found her Kindle wiped clean remotely…something Amazon reserves the right to do.  While this is unlikely to ever happen to you or me or even anyone we know, it’s still the kind of thing that makes me even more paranoid…

Imagine having every book on your Kindle remotely wiped, with no way to get it back. If you’ve invested hundreds or even thousands of pounds, that may seem frightening, if unlikely. Yet it’s exactly what happened to one Amazon customer in Europe. And even more shockingly, it was apparently the company itself responsible for deleting her library.

According to Linn Nygaard, an IT consultant living in Norway, Amazon remotely wiped her Kindle and closed her Amazon account for as yet unspecified violations to its terms of service. It’s frightening evidence that when you buy into an ecosystem built on DRM, while you may own your device, you don’t own the data that lives on it.

Amazon did not return Wired.com’s call for comment (Note: See update below) but it is relatively easy to parse what has happened here. For whatever reason, it seems Nygaard ran afoul of Amazon’s rules. (It seems likely that it was because she was using her Kindle in Norway to buy content licensed in the UK.) Based on that, Amazon decided to close her account. And here’s the thing, when it does that, it can then revoke the licence its customers have bought that allows them to read books. That’s what this controversy is ultimately about: licensing.

Click here to read the article in its entirety.

Back last May/June, Walgreens was blowing out the Banana Boat Ultramist Sport sunscreen.  Remember?  I turned over most of my cans to Rachel and other friends, since I prefer to fry my face whenever and wherever possible.  Turns out that these cans are part of a recall because using them around open flames causes oopsies…  Read the entire story on ABC.com.  So now they will be true moneymakers!

PITA and her father went to see Hotel Transylvania Saturday afternoon at the Wheaton Movie Grill.  Lots of those Groupons, after all!  Movie opened last week, so figured it wouldn’t be that crowded.  didn’t figure on a rainy day.

Husband claimed they waited 20 minutes in line, but everyone was very polite, etc.  Actually, he said that there is a big bar in the center and all the fathers were sitting there drinking while they waited for their wives to get through the lines.  You’re offered menus for real food because each leather seat has a table you can pull up.  One thing he didn’t know was that you buy assigned, not general admission seats.  Because of this, they weren’t able to get seats together (theater was full), so they asked the manager for tickets for another time and they chose today.  I like this idea because you can always be sure your kids stay together (except when they one by one all have to use the bathrooms within the first 15 minutes of a show and then 15 minutes before it ends – been there, done that).

Saw this photo on Nickmom and just had to check it out:  Yes, Health Street is a real company and operates nationwide.  Click here and see how much fun you’ll have at the next office Holiday party after this sucker rolls up..