Category: Rant

My boat and UPS

UPS tracking InformationI’ve said some nice things about UPS recently, but it appears that my streak of luck with them is running out. My delivery from Pygmy Boats is in three boxes, two of which are around 30 pounds, and one that is around 7 pounds. I’ve been tracking them eagerly on the UPS web site. All three of them showed as arrived in Hodgkins very late Thursday night. Hodgkins is a city that seems to be in quantum flux because some entries on the UPS web site say “Hodgkins, IL” and others say “Hodgkins, IN”. One of the two heavy packages hasn’t updated since it got there, and is still showing that although it’s there, it’s scheduled for delivery on Monday. The other heavy one and the light one, however, showed travel to Buffalo, NY on Friday via Middleburg Heights, OH, which is good because Buffalo is almost right next door. But for some reason, those two also say “Rescheduled for delivery” and Tuesday’s date.

I’m kind of at a loss to understand why it’s going to take them from Friday to Tuesday to get these packages here from Buffalo. Hell, I’d offer to go pick them up myself if it would help. Especially since the other package is evidently going to be dropped off via wormhole as Hodgkins makes its transition between its Illinois incarnation and its Indiana incarnation. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s probably a matter of scheduling low priority room on the truck or something, and the package whose status hasn’t updated since Thursday is probably going to be late as well. Still, it sucks.

Free clue

If you start a long rambling description of a problem, and in the middle of it I interrupt you to say “fixed three builds ago”, that means that I understood the description, and realized it was identical to a problem I recently fixed. Your action at that point should be to go back and upgrade your system, not continue with your rambling description. Because otherwise I’ll be forced to put my earbuds back in and resume listening to Glen Gould and ignore you until you go away.

Thanks.

Thank you for calling AT&T, now go fuck yourself

Update: 3 hours later, it’s working again. No thanks to AT&T.

I have a Palm Treo. I’ve had it for over 2 years, and all during that time I’ve had the same cell phone plan, one which includes “unlimited internet”. And all during that time, I’ve used it at least daily to check my email – and since my employer cut off my access to my home computer, I’ve used it even more like several times an hour while I’m at work I also use it to check weather, check Google maps, and other things that require an internet connection. This morning, I’ve been unable to get to the internet.

So I called “The New AT&T”. And once again, their “trouble shooting” involved me taking out the battery and sim, trying and failing to read the tiny little 20 digit number on the SIM card, reading the IMEI number from the back of the phone, and then putting it all together and getting exactly the same results as before. The “helpful” AT&T tech said that one reason for my problems might be that my data plan is incompatible with the Treo, and I needed to switch to a PDA data plan. Except that she couldn’t make changes to the plan unless I could remember my wife’s social security number. I tried to explain that there is nothing wrong with the data plan as I’d been using it on a daily basis for more than 2 years, but she insisted that she couldn’t do any more trouble shooting unless i gave her my wife’s social security number so she could switch my data plan. I shudder to think how much more a “PDA data plan” is going to cost.

So the question in my mind is: is this a temporary outage on their network that the tech wouldn’t admit, a problem with my phone, or did they just notice that I’ve had the wrong data plan after 2 years and suddenly cut me off? And how does this affect the probability of me buying a iPhone when the 3G ones come out?

Question for Great Big Sea fans

Has anybody managed to do the pre-order thing for their up-coming album? Pre-sales were supposed to start yesterday, but when I tried it just now, I got a notice saying that the album was out of stock, and therefore my cart was empty. Well, of course it’s out of stock – it’s a pre-order, after all. But I’ve had other problems using non-IE browsers on their site before. If you’ve managed to pre-order using Firefox or Safari on Mac, please let me know.

Construction project, Day 3

[table]Come to the table, for all is ready.

Today was a short day, but an expensive one. It started with a trip to Home Depot to pick up some strapping to make cross braces. Somehow I ended up buying a DeWalt 12V cordless drill. Then I came home and installed the cross braces, and put the tops on the tables, and plus I ordered the kit. Here are today’s interesting (to me) discoveries:

  • Walking through the tool corral in Home Depot is scary – tools keep leaping towards your shopping cart, and you have to keep fending them off or you’re going to end up spending thousands of dollars. There was a particularly aggressive mitre saw that kept stalking us.
  • Forget quick release drill chucks – the real secret to productivity is to have two drills, one with the drill bit and one with the screw driver bit. After the DeWalt cordless drill had charged for a little while (half an hour or so), I was able to do it that way.
  • You ever noticed when two contractors are talking about things with dimensions, they’ll often pull out a tape measure and look at that dimension to help visualize it? Well, it turns out there is a reason for that. I made a mental calculation, and thought I could hack 1 foot off the width of my table tops, based on the fact that it was 4×8 and my cross pieces were 3 feet. I forgot that I’d put the other pieces outside the cross pieces, so the under-structure is actually 3 feet 4 or so. Which I discovered when I was cutting the particle board and I thought “hmm, why did the saw just get slow and then speed up again”. I cut 3 or 4 feet into the board before I realized the mistake, so I went back and cut only 8 inches off, and put screws on both sides of the partial saw cut.
  • There is no room to walk around one end of my table. I hope that doesn’t cause any problems.

Anyway, more about the kit I ordered. After exchanging a few emails with somebody at Pygmy Boats, I ordered the Arctic Tern Hi Volume. I don’t really need a high volume boat because I’m not carrying overnight gear, but the deck is an inch higher and I figured it would help get my size 11+ feet in. The boat is pretty similar to my existing Skerry RMX in size, and it has a hard chine. I’ve already started experimenting with leaned turns, so I’m looking forward to doing that with a hard chine boat. I did not opt for the Silver Tip epoxy, because I am not clear that the hundred dollars extra would really be worth it. I also didn’t opt for overnight shipping, since it would add another $300 to the cost. I did buy the optional bulkhead and hatch kit – I had considered skipping those and just buying some inflatable floatation bags for the bow and stern, again because I don’t use it for overnight travel, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have them. I also went for the foot brace studs that you cement to the inside, instead of the standard ones that you drill through the sides. And considering how I like the built in thigh braces on my Skerry, I also ordered the “key hole” braces for this one. For some strange reason, I only ordered one hand toggle. I’ll have to email them to see if they’ll throw in a second one.

I can’t wait for the kit to arrive!