Category: Rant

So what exactly did you verify?

I spent nearly an hour on the phone with Time Fucking Warner (yes, that’s the correct name for them) trying to get them to set up an install of a CableCard for my new TiVo. They have to come out to do it, although last time the guy came out, plugged it into the TiVo, then called into the office, read them a couple of numbers, verified that it was set up on their side, and then left. Yeah, I couldn’t do that.

Anyway, getting them to set up the appointment involved 3 long times on hold, and getting transferred twice. The third guy once again asked me for my phone number, and then asked me for my full name, email address and billing address “for verification”, just like the other two people had done (evidently they can transfer a call, but can’t transfer the information they’ve collected on you). And yet, after talking to him for some time he couldn’t seem to understand that we already had a CableCard in the other TiVo, and some other details on what he was telling me about my account didn’t match up. Finally he calls me Howard, and when I said I wasn’t Howard, asks me what my phone number is. And then he says “oh, I had your number in as [number which is a simple transposition of mine]”.

Which left me scratching my head about all the other verification of name, home phone and mailing address. Had he even listened to what I’d said? What is the point of those verifications if they could end up sending out a technician to the wrong address because they got the phone number entered wrong? And they have the nerve to try to get you to dump the phone company and switch to them?

Same shit, different job…

I’ve written a few times (here and here) about how every time you change something, every bug anywhere near that area now becomes your fault.

In my current job, I was in charge of a system called “Entitlements” that controlled who could do what and could access what parts of the system. Which means that dozens of new defects come to me with a note from the business analyst or equivalent person saying “looks like an Entitlement issue”. And I have to look at it and say “no, the reason they can’t access that part of the site isn’t because of Entitlements, it’s because NOBODY WROTE THAT PART OF THE SITE YET”.

Side note: we’re using “Agile Development”, which is a short form way of saying “we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing from day to day, and we’re not sure what has been done and what hasn’t until somebody complains that it’s not done”.

The good part is that because we’re Agile, that means when I discover that the problem is that nobody wrote that part of the site yet, I get to write it. So yay me.

More Mailman idiocy

I’ve written a few times in the past about idiots who get their monthly email reminders from my Mailman mailing lists and then write to me personally to unsubscribe instead of following the instructions in that email reminder.

For the last couple of months, somebody has been doing that, with a pissy “this is the [N]th request” just as a topper. I write back with “That email you got a few hours ago contains 3 different ways of unsubscribing yourself from the list, and nowhere is “writing a pissy email to the server administrator” listed as a viable option”. Unfortunately, in this case it turns out that the email address the guy is writing me from bounces. And it’s not subscribed to any of my mailing lists. So even if I wanted to unsubscribe him, I can’t.

So I guess I’ll just wait to see what “N” he gets to before he gets really mad. Not that I’ll be able to do anything about it. Or care, for that matter.

Why I don’t consider myself a Linux person any more.

Time was, I was an enthusiastic Linux geek, proselytizing, apologizing, saying “well, it doesn’t now, but somebody will write something to do that”, overlooking the visual horror of the clashes of look and feel and user experience of all the disparate programs written on all the disparate X11 widget sets (yes, I could tell the difference between Xt and Xm at a glance), actually not laughing in people’s faces when they said that Gimp was better than Photoshop, ignoring the fact that Richard Stallman is a smelly looney who eats his toe jam in publc, etc. But over the years, two things have happened:

  • I care more about user experience than I do about raw computing power
  • I don’t apologize for my computers any more

Or to quote Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie “yeah, well I’ve got a girlfriend and things to get done.”

So I use Linux on my servers, and I think it’s a great OS for servers. I even contribute to open source products here and there. I hardly ever use it as a desktop any more, although it was my daily work desktop a year ago, and it was fine for work where video and audio didn’t matter. I’m just not anything like the “freetard” I used to be. Which is why I recognize the type so readily. And when somebody sends me something like this, and thinks it says something about how iPad is nothing new, I can instantly recognize the scent of crazy. Especially since it was sent to me in response to my saying that I hope HP hurries up with the Palm WebOS-based tablet because I like the user experience (UX) of WebOS better than I like iOS.

I’m sorry, but if you think somebody who is debating the subtle differences in UX between WebOS and iOS is going to like a hefty laptop with the keyboard broken off, running Windows XP or Linux, with no multi-touch, a stylus and a battery life that’s probably measured in minutes, you have greatly misunderstood the question. Or the purpose of a tablet. Or the meaning of life.

Not exactly how I planned to spend this evening

I want to start putting in some long distance paddles in the Thunderbolt – specifically I wanted to do a couple of 10+ milers early this week before I have to start tapering for the Armond Bassett race on the 10th. I’ve been doing mostly surf ski paddling since Tupper Lake, and that mostly tires out my balance muscles rather than my forward stroke muscles and aerobic system. Tuesday’s practice is another surf ski session, and Wednesday is the time trial, so really that left today and Thursday or Friday.

So I figured what I’d do is get to work early today, and get home early, feed Widget, and then go out for a long paddle at GWC, then come home and walk Widget. And everything was going perfectly according to plan (I even brought along my headlamp in case I took longer than expected) until I got into the boat. I pushed my feet down onto the foot rest, and there was a strange noise and the foot rest gave way. That’s when I had a sudden flash of insight that a few days ago I’d found a wing nut on my driveway. After spending a few minutes trying to figure out if I could rig something in the boat to hold the foot brace in place, and failing that, trying to see if I could paddle without it. No luck. So I packed up and brought the boat back home.

Then I spent at least an hour with the boat upside down on a couple of saw horses, with my head lamp on, trying to squeeze both arms into the front of the boat, trying to thread screws through angled holes by feel, and generally getting frustrated and annoyed. With the boat upside down and my head in the hole, the heat rising off my body got trapped inside the boat, raising the temperature and activating the smell of hundreds of hours of wet swampy feet that have soaked into everything in the kayak over the years.

I finally got it done. I think I got the foot brace in the right holes – I guess I’ll find out on Wednesday. And because I missed the long workout that I wanted to do, I think on Wednesday I might do a lap around the bay before the race.