cellio | Entries tagged with rants

Bicyclists oft complain about drivers, and I understand the perspective: if there is an accident involving a car and a bike, you know that the damage will not be distributed evenly. Locally there has been some effort for the last few years to create more bike lanes and educate drivers, and we have a law about passing distance. This makes sense. Bike lanes make things safer for all of us, and some drivers (a minority in my experience) don't understand what to do with bikes on the road.

But. I am finding it very hard to remain sympathetic when the very same people who complain about dangers from cars are themselves dangers to pedestrians. Cyclists, you have to rein in your own -- the blatant disregard for traffic laws is bad enough when you just do it to drivers, but it's inexcusable when you're running down people who have no defense against you.

Friday night while walking home from services I was crossing Forbes at a marked crosswalk. This crosswalk is marked not only with painted lines, and not only with one of those signboards in the middle of the road, but also with flashing yellow lights on either side. It's the most visible crosswalk in the neighborhood. Nonetheless I always stop and look at oncoming drivers to try to confirm that they see me and are slowing down.

Friday night I looked both ways as usual and then started to cross. A bicycle whizzed in front of me at high speed (much faster than the last car to pass), its rider cursing at the "f---ing b----" in his way. I stopped and turned to stare, looking in vain for anything I could use to identify him. That's when two more whizzed by me, also cursing. One of them grazed me (I'm not sure with what, but no blood). All of them continued on, spewing vulgarities.

They had no headlights, by the way, and all were wearing dark clothes. Not that it was, legally, my job to see them -- just self-defense, which I attempted. I, on the other hand, was in a marked crosswalk wearing brightly-colored clothes.

This infuriates me. Not only did they blatantly ignore traffic laws, not only did they nearly mow me down, not only did they not even stop, but they acted like I was the problem. I think drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians all need to learn to share the roads, but some need to learn way more badly than others. These cyclists clearly thought they shouldn't have to care about anybody else.

Just the previous day I'd been nearly run down by two (more-slowly-moving, but still) cyclists on the sidewalk. That happens to me a couple times a month on average, not counting children -- I just mean adult cyclists here. Sidewalks are for pedestrians; we shouldn't have to be constantly on the lookout for speeding traffic hazards of the wheeled variety.

I am going to write a letter to my City Council representative (can't hurt, could possibly help), but I'd like to go beyond complaining. What concrete suggestions can I make, as our city expends effort (and money) altering public roads to work better with cyclists? What has actually worked in other cities to get everybody on board with sharing the road, and what has been done to hold cyclists accountable for following the rules of the road (and sidewalk)?

They are unregistered, so there are no license plates to spot; they are unlicensed, so their privilege to use the roads can't be taken away; they are almost never seen in the act by police officers, because that would require quite a bit of luck; they can easily leave the scene of any problem, so if the police are not already there they will get away with whatever they were doing. Does anybody require licenses or registration? What else can be done?

I'm not trying to persecute cyclists. I recognize that not all cyclists are like those ones on Friday. But I am trying to find a way to get them all to play by the rules -- and maybe even to recognize that when they do to pedestrians what they accuse drivers of doing to them, they do not help their cause.

Any ideas? Short of wearing armor when walking, and maybe carrying a range weapon, I mean? (If only I'd had a paintball gun and good aim... if I could have tagged 'em I could have called the police. But that's just not going to work.)

What concrete suggestions can I take to my local government?

Yesterday I and a fellow congregant approached Forbes and Murray while walking home from Shabbat services. The all-way red light was on and the big obvious walk signals were active. We watched a car come toward us on Forbes, turn right despite the pedestrians crossing Murray -- one of whom had a guide dog -- and then proceed to blast her horn at them, more than once.

No one was hit, fortunately. We (and several other onlookers) hastened to the car to confront the driver. Did you not see the red light? Did you not see the "no turn on red" sign? Did you not see the crosswalk with the big white "walk" signal? Did you really think it was the (presumably) blind man's job to get out of your way?

She looked annoyed, not embarrassed, and because I tend to think of the right thing to do only after the moment has passed, I did not lead the crowd in blocking her car until the police could be summoned. So she drove off, and will probably do this sort of thing again, and none of us even got a photo of the car. :-( (It being Shabbat, I wasn't carrying a cell phone.)

The driver's attitude disgusts me, but I am pleased that half a dozen people stopped what they were doing to get involved. Those are the kind of people I want in my neighborhood.

Dear First Data (online payment system):

If, on the first page of the transaction, you asked me for the credit-card type, and then on the second page you gave me a text-entry box for the card number that allowed enough characters for me to type the spaces between the groups of numbers on the card, do not get all snippy at me about "wrong format". First, you should have told me "no spaces" up front; second, you shouldn't have let me type more than 16 characters there for my Visa card. You had enough information to present a correct-for-my-card-type input box and remove all doubt. It's not 1995 any more; we have web technologies that can handle this. Actually, given your multi-page setup, we could totally have done that in 1995 too. I think I did, actually.

Also, after clicking the "pay" button I should not be presented with a blank page that takes nearly two minutes to show a receipt, leaving me wondering what happened. A simple "working, please wait" could do wonders.

I would be happy to refer you to someone who could fix your user-experience problems for a reasonable fee.

Someone I respect a great deal once told me he wouldn't be surprised if someday I leave the Reform movement for Orthodoxy. I don't think so; my beliefs (i.e. the dox part) align more with Reform, even though my practice does not. I'm used to being one of the most observant Reform Jews I know, and I'm used to working around some of the hurdles that come with that. (Why no, even though it's great that all the local Reform congregations got together for a joint festival service, no I'm not going ten miles to Monroeville for it, sorry.)

But every time something like the to'evah (abomination -- and yes, I understand the strength of that word) of this past Friday's service happens, a tiny little voice speaks up in the back of my mind saying "you know, this could be a lot easier on you...". It's frustrating. If it weren't for the excellent relationships I've formed in my congregation, including both of our rabbis, I sometimes wonder...

So, this Shabbat the Reform movement celebrated its sisterhood's 100th anniversary (movement-wide, not just us). Cool -- sisterhood has never, ever spoken to me (and in fact I believe its existence violates a core principle of Reform theology, but that's a different post), but I can understand the desire to celebrate that milestone and all their accomplishments, honor their leaders, and so on. The international president of the sisterhood umbrella organization happens to be a member of my congregation, so clearly we were going to do something. So Friday's service was led by sisterhood leaders from a siddur produced by a committee of that umbrella organization.

They wrote a "creative" service. Cue ominous music here.

So what we got was an evening service that ran almost two hours (!) and still managed to omit half the amidah and all the brachot around the sh'ma except one (there was a song for hashkiveinu). Also all of kabbalat shabbat except L'cha Dodi, but we never get a complete kabbalat shabbat unless I'm running it, so that's noteworthy in degree but not in type (we usually do more than this, though not all). Are they kidding me? Who thought this was ok? Rabbis and cantors on the committee, apparently, so part of me is glad I don't know their identities as my opinion of them has just gone way down. (My rabbi tried to salvage some of the omissions during the service; I don't know if he had had a chance to vet this service beforehand or if he had trusted his colleagues.)

What did they fill all that time with? Lots of poetry, lots of "women are great" readings, lots of sisterhood self-congratulations, half a dozen "how sisterhood changed my life" testimonials incorrectly labeled as a d'var torah in the program... all sorts of stuff that would be more appropriate at a celebratory dinner than at a Shabbat service. Shabbat, and God, got short shrift -- at a Shabbat service.

(There was also a short torah service (we do that on Friday nights about half the time), with group aliyot. The last one of the three was for anyone who belongs to sisterhood; I didn't go up because they said "belongs", not "pays dues to"; I've never felt I belonged but as a board member I'm required to be a member on paper.)

When I got there and saw the service booklet I considered turning around and leaving. In retrospect I should have, perhaps visibly. Instead I ignored their service at times and picked up our regular siddur instead so I could have a valid Shabbat service. (My rabbi noticed.) But after the mourner's kaddish I saw that there were still a couple more pages of readings and stuff, plus they were going to teach a new closing song, and at that point I just said dayeinu and left. Ugh.

If they had wanted to have a special additional service that would be one thing. But this displaced the regular community service. In that regard it was even worse than a typical Reform bar mitzvah, and I hadn't realized that was possible. It is possible to honor people while preserving community norms, but that isn't a strong-enough guiding principle in the Reform movement. I alternate between being sad and saying "how dare they?".

When I got home I set aside what I had been planning to talk about in Saturday morning's d'var torah (it was my turn) and mentally assembled something else instead. That'll be forthcoming, but in case you wonder when you see it, yes there's a connection.

You may have seen that monstrosity of a reading page they're getting ready to unleash on everybody. (If not, click on the link in the blue banner at the top of your reading page.) In a nutshell, they're getting rid of individual-journal styling for the reading page. The new style does not work for me. Profoundly.

But that's not the main thing I wanted to post about. I've had an unused journal at Dreamwidth all along, so between this and the fact that LJ backups have been broken for a year or so (that is, I can no longer back up my journal to my own machine), I decided to import my journal to DW (keeping all the security groups, of course). Before doing so I changed my LJ password to a temporary one, and then changed it back again when the import finished 37 minutes later (wow, fast!).

That's how I found out that my original LJ password no longer meets their password requirements. It's not too simple; it's too complicated. Apparently the system is perfectly capable of storing and applying a password containing assorted punctuation characters, because I've been doing that for a while, but the "change password" form will no longer accept any punctuation. Letters and numbers, folks. How 20th-century.

Really, LJ? Security means that little to you?

I'm supposed to be 2+ hours into a flight right now. But apparently I'm not allowed to have nice things, and Air Canada needed to go for a clean sweep. Ten (!) hour delay this time! The mind boggles.

BTW, even though they had my email address and (local) phone number, there was no contact. I knew I couldn't print a boarding pass at the hotel and Internet there was kind of expensive anyway, so I didn't see it before I left. (Though I don't know if it was even posted; someone behind me in line said he had checked a couple hours earlier.)

They wanted to put me on a combination that would get me home around noon tomorrow. I asked if they could do any better and explained the urgency. After more than three hours of standing in lines I have a flight through Newark that gets me there around 8AM. And, learning from history, I confirmed that if that connection fails, there's another flight an hour later. They claimed to be unable to put me on the El Al flight leaving at 4PM for bureaucratic reasons, grumble.

This may surprise some given the comments in another thread, but most of the agents I've dealt with here have been polite. (One seemed to have no respect for the queue, though; she kept pushing me aside because I was going to be here all day anyway, but I didn't want to be in her Internet-deprived office all day! Sheesh.)

I came to the airport hoping to get an upgrade as partial compensation for the difficulties they caused on my trip here. Instead I'm begging for a flight home a mere 10-12 hours late and, of course, I'll get whatever seat nobody else wanted (middle, I assume) and I have to assume I won't be able to eat the meal and plan accordingly. I will be contacting Air Canada's customer service when I get home, and frankly, I want a full refund. This is freaking ridiculous.

I'm done with Air Canada after this. I might also be done with Israel; we'll see when I calm down more. It is too frustrating to try to get there and back from Pittsburgh. At the very least I am done with solo major travel.

TL;DR: Not one but two late flights causing me to miss connections, and I've lost a day of my vacation (and a lecture I wanted to attend). Most of the Air Canada reps didn't seem to give a hoot about passengers. (Note: the flight crews are not included in that statement; they were fantastic. The rest of AC could learn from them.)

An open letter to Air Canada:

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All I wanted to do was to buy some stamps.

The last time I did this (a couple years ago, I think), I went to the USPS web site, chose my stamps, and supplied a credit card and shipping address. It took about three minutes.

Last night I went through the following process:

1. I dug through product pages; the generic "forever" stamps that almost everybody wants are no longer the first thing you see.

2. I also wanted some pretty stamps for some invitations, so I browsed those. Clicking on the link for a specific product to get a closer look and then going back to the previous page reset the page values I had set (specifically: show all, instead of in batches of twelve). So after the first time I launched new tabs to view products.

3. Some of these invitations are going to Canada so I had to look up the postage rate. This involved approximately the following, all in form-like interfaces: choose type of package, choose shape of envelope (kind of a stumper; is my card a "letter" or a "square envelope"? no sizes were given), choose weight, and finally get a price. I'd been hoping for a simple rate table or at least for the most-common question ("how much to send a letter?") to be answered up front.

4. Now that I had everything in my shopping cart I thought I was within a minute or so of being done. That "crash-tinkle" sound you heard was my hopes being shattered. My options at this point were to log in or create an account.

5. I tried the username and password that I would have used had I created an account last time and got told "no such user". (Bruce Schneier is cringing, I'm sure, but at least they saved me the trouble of trying different passwords.) There is still no option to just pay already. Ok, I'll create an account. (By the way, Firefox offered to remember that password I typed. This will be relevant later.)

6. The password-entry form includes an assessment of the strength of my password. Nice. It thus came as a total surprise to me that my strong password was also not a valid password. They said special characters were fine, but I guess they didn't mean all of them. I simplified to a less-strong password.

7. The personal-information page requires a phone number. I typed it with hyphens and it accepted that. It thus came as a surprise to me when, on a later page, I couldn't put spaces in my credit-card number. In neither case was there any direction about formatting.

8. I had failed to notice that giving my credit card a "nickname" (what? I'm only giving you one!) was a required step. Clearing all form fields and telling me to try again was unnecessarily rude.

9. I finally had an account and now had to log in. I wondered whether my shopping cart would still be intact after all this, but it was. Yay. 20+ minutes after I'd started, I was finally able to submit my order.

10. After signing out, I decided to sign back in and let Firefox remember some data this time, since I'd had to violate my password patterns and might not remember. The login dialogue wasn't the form that I'd previously encountered but, rather, some pop-up (Flash?) thing that was very sensitive (had to try a few times to get it). Firefox couldn't detect this as a login dialogue. So I guess when I come back in a couple years I'll be finding out what the "forgot password" link does. This won't be helped by the fact that I had to provide answers to security questions including the word "favorite". Pfft.

I liked it better when the minimalist approach worked. Yeah, sure, now they'll remember my address and credit-card number, but it takes me 30 seconds to type those and anyway the credit-card info will probably be stale by the next time I need stamps. I'd have to make an awful lot of transactions before last night's time sink would pay for itself.

Followup June 15: This is how they shipped my stamps to me. Those pieces of cardboard are pretty thick. I think they could have done better.

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This is (basically) a rant I posted on the work wiki, with serial numbers filed off of course.

I have (customer-supplied server) running on a (corporate) laptop with a scrawny little hard drive. The C partition is only 83GB, and while there's another 40GB languishing on D, IT can't repartition without risking data loss and it took too long to get this set up in the first place. So there's a "why can't I just use Partition Magic to fix it?" rant wanting to get out here, but that is not this rant.

This week I ran out of space on C. Usually this means the server has written a bunch of logs that I need to delete, but that wasn't it this time -- I reclaimed maybe 2GB that way. Defrag wouldn't even run well because it didn't have 15% free and couldn't buffer on D -- but that is not this rant.

No, the rant is that when I went looking for the culprit (it's a pretty lean machine as these things go), I found that Proventia Desktop (firewall -- it ought to be called Prevent-ya, as in "prevent ya from getting any work done"!) had written 70GB of logs -- and tampering in any way with firewalls can be a firing offense, not that I have privileges anyway. 70GB -- really? On an 83GB partition? Haven't the guys who make that ever heard of rolling logs? Or archiving? They zipped down to a hundredth their original size. Sheesh!

(Fortunately we have a very helpful on-site support person who was able to fix this for me.)

The big new bit of stupidity -- this time not from the SCA board of directors -- is a new Pennsic rule that minors, meaning people under 18, cannot attend classes without being accompanied by an adult. I guess it's just too dangerous for a 16-year-old to learn Italian dance or a 17-year-old to learn how to spin wool, or something. This is totally bizarre, as there is not a general restriction on teenagers at Pennsic. They can go (unaccompanied) to shop (even to the blacksmiths!), or to shoot archery, or to watch the fighting, or to any private camp they choose. (Kids under 12 are more restricted.)

Sadly predictable is the reaction of many people in the face of the ensuing discussions. The original rule said minors had to be accompanied to classes by a parent or legal guardian, which is totally crazy, and in the face of much protest they "clarified" that they really meant a responsible adult, meaning any adult appointed by the parents, and not something involving legal process. And today, with that change, people are saying "oh, well that's not so bad then" and "that's reasonable" and "we can find people to take our kids to classes, then". It's as if they've forgotten that the fundamental policy itself is broken. They're saying "oh, if you're just going to take an arm rather than costing me an arm and a leg, that's ok then". Hello? And it only took a day! Amazing.

I'm not saying people need to Stand Up And Do Something Now, because I don't know what we can do. Yes, I want to fix it, but I don't know what to do today to do that. (I can think of small, tactical things to do to mitigate the damage, but that's not a solution.) It seems obvious to me that there is something deeper going on, and I'm not dialed into it. But I do know that it's a short step from "well, that's less bad" to "that's ok" (we're seeing this already) to "of course that's reasonable and you're a reckless idiot if you don't agree". We've seen this before from the SCA (mandatory membership, no wait an unjust tax instead, to point to biggest but not sole case) and it's certainly not unique to this organization. Heck, we see it in marketing too; remember New Coke?

Regardless of where it happens, its success depends on people focusing on the here-and-now and not taking the longer view. I guess hill-climbing is a popular algorithm. (For the non-geeks, this means you take an alternate path if it will directly improve on where you are, but you rule out paths that make it worse -- even if those paths then lead to something much better.)

I'm talking here mostly about process and meta-issues. As for the base question of how we treat children (of all ages), the best comment I've seen has been from Cariadoc, who wrote: "I have long held that there are two fundamental views of children: That they are pets who can talk, or that they are small people who do not yet know very much. The wrong one is winning." This non-parent says: yes, that.

On the heels of passing legislation to place local police officers between a rock and a hard place, Arizona is now proposing (state) legislation to deny citizenship to people born of illegals. I say this from the bottom of my law-respecting soul: Arizona, WTF?

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When I started hearing about Google Buzz several days ago I mentally filed it under "could be interesting; look into it when you've got some time". Then in the last day or so I started hearing how they'd rolled it out. It sounds like the Buzz team made two decisions that were individually marginal and, in combination, terrible. The first decision was to automatically create links between you and your most frequent contacts. The second decision was to make links public by default. The privacy concerns here are pretty obvious, I trust.

A third decision was unambiguously (IMO) bad: they made it opt-out instead of opt-in. I am having trouble thinking of a single case where it would be a good idea to automatically, and without notification, make changes to existing accounts. [Edit: I meant good for the customer, and not counting things like "hey, we gave you more disk space". I mean new behaviors.] Auto-on for new accounts is quite defensible (with documentation); changing the behavior of accounts that people set up on the basis of a different implicit contract, no. Especially if you haven't previously sent out an update to your privacy policy.

There's one more problem with Buzz: opt-out doesn't really work. If you do the obvious thing and click on the "turn Buzz off" link, all that does is remove a shortcut. Your connections are still there. That's just bad engineering.

Google says they have heard the feedback and will fix things in a few days. And, while I can't verify this without a second account, some people believe that deleting your profile keeps Buzz at bay. [Edit: confirmed with the help of another gmail user, thanks.]

Buzz could, potentially, be a useful tool, though it remains to be seen whether the world really needed yet another attempt at a social-networking site. But their roll-out of it has left a bad taste in my mouth, so I'm likely to wait a while, until I hear positive reviews from people whose opinions I value, before I touch it. And I'll have to be certain that they aren't publishing information that (otherwise) exists only in my mailbox. Linking to my public Picasa album is fine; it's public (same as the vast majority of this journal). Telling the world who I correspond with and how often, however, is not.

Haiti is dirt poor, and until

browngirl posted about it I did not know why. This article explains Haiti's call for $21B from France:

Why $21 billion? It's the modern equivalent of the 90 million francs Haiti agreed to pay France in 1825, in return for official recognition of Haiti's sovereignty. For two decades following Haitian independence in 1804, the former mother country, with the support of the United States, Britain and Spain, enforced a crippling embargo, accompanied by a threat to re-colonize and re-enslave Haiti if indemnity wasn't paid for lost property -- i.e., slaves. Haiti, once France's richest colony, agreed to pay the price -- more than twice the value of the entire nation at the time -- but could only afford to do so using high-interest loans from French banks.

Haitians had to buy freedom with their lives and then again with cash, and the US helped make that necessary. I sure didn't learn that in history classes...

In other news, there have been some interesting reactions to Pat Robertson's drivel about why the earthquake happened. There's Pat's conversation with God, and the devil's response, and, more recently, the Pat Robertson voodoo doll being offered on eBay (all proceeds to to earthquake relief). The creator of this last item later added a Rush Limbaugh doll, which is also doing well.

Dear Habitat for Humanity,

I helped you build a house once, and later gave you money. You spent far in excess of that donation sending me solicitations, making me less inclined to send you more. (I know other charities that use their money more wisely.) Then you started sending me spam and ignored cease-and-desist notices. I used your next postage-paid envelope to send a final cease-and-desist on the spam thing, and that didn't work either. You went onto my "do not donate, ever" list.

And today you called and were irritated that I considered this a problem. The proper response to "your policies have led me to re-evaluate and I do not want to hear from you" is not "but we do all this good work!" but, rather, "I'm sorry" followed by either "I'll take you off all our lists" or "how can we make things right?". I have now directed you not to call me and I'm sure it's been 18 months since I sent you any money (which is the timeout on the do-not-call law). If you call me again I will invoke the attorney general. If you want to set matters right, you must send me a physical letter (not email, not a phone call) actually addressing my complaints. Have a nice day.

Dear Pittsburgh CLO: I gave you my phone number so you could contact me if there were problems with my theatre tickets. You lost points by calling to ask for a charitable donation, and you lost lots of points when your agent argued with my labelling of the call as a solicitation. His claim: you're not selling anything but asking for a donation, so that's not a solicitation. I recommend you buy him a dictionary. Unfortunately, you'll be doing it with your own money, not mine.

I'm used to size variation in women's clothing. (Why oh why can't women's jeans use waist and inseam like men's?) And I'm used to minor variations in shoes in US sizes (I seem to wear a size 7.75, which doesn't exist). I had not realized that there is significant variation in sizes on the (tighter) European scale. The size-38 Naot sandals I just tried are nearly half an inch shorter than the size-38 Birkies that fit (and that I bought). They're both the same style, your basic two-strap slip-in sandal.

Dani's company watched searching for evil recently. It's an overview of Internet security issues -- probably nothing new, but he spoke well of it so I want to bookmark it for when I've got a spare hour.

IANA considerations for TLAs was making the rounds at my company this week.

Via goldsquare comes this bizarre story: a man lost parental rights to his younger child, appealed, and was then killed in a car accident. Now state child-welfare agents want to support the appeal, so the child can share in his estate. The court says this is uncharted territory.

Specialized seasonal question: can anyone tell me, in the next 8 hours, if I use high-holy-day melodies in Hallel for Rosh Chodesh tomorrow morning? It's the last day of Av, not the first day of Elul (so we don't blow shofar yet).

( funny image and video behind the cut )

I keep starting and abandoning posts about the murder of Dr. Tiller. I guess I'm still a little dumbfounded by the fanaticism involved.

It's not about pro-choice versus pro-life; the people I know who oppose abortion are not cold-blooded murderers, and we can disagree thoughtfully and respectfully. And most of the people I know who oppose abortion still grant that under some circumstances it might be the least-bad path, if the life of the mother is at stake (and with it the life of the fetus anyway, in some cases). I don't like abortion, but I feel it can be necessary sometimes. People like Randall Terry call Dr. Tiller a butcher; what do you call a doctor who stands idly by while a woman dies from a pregnancy gone horribly wrong?

But as I said, this isn't just about abortion. The person who murdered Dr. Tiller committed the same kind of terroristic act as the unabomber or the Oklahoma City bombers or any number of other people trying to advance a position by inciting fear and committing violence. No matter what the issue is, the method is unacceptable. As with treason, terrorism is about more than the specific acts committed by the wrongdoers. It doesn't seem like our legal system has a good way to deal with that, and indeed it would be hard to write the relevant laws, but I sure hope this factor is taken into account when Dr. Tiller's murderer is convicted and sentenced. The murder of any individual is sad; this was not just the murder of one individual. It needs to be discussed and, if possible, prosecuted as the larger crime.

Our DSL was supposed to switch from Nidhog to Verizon today. Nidhog was reselling Verizon, so that should be a no-brainer, but this is Verizon we're talking about. Almost everything they told me in advance turned out to be wrong (some things were probably outright lies). We have no connection at home and now they're jerking me around.

"Maddy" claimed that we would have uninterrupted service (aside from the momentary blip of the switch). We lost our connection overnight and the support person I spoke with this morning told me I should expect it to take until 6PM for them to connect us. That's a pretty loose definition of "uninterrupted" -- and that's assuming the claim is correct. By 6PM the business office is closed, so there's no one to escalate to.

The claim that I could create a temporary account and thereby get my router settings last night was, near as I can tell, utter fabrication, though it is possible that "Manu", his supervisor (whose name I couldn't parse through the accent), "Rauel" (this morning), and "Linda" (escalation this morning) were all wrong about that. All of these people told me, last night or today, that I would have to connect a single machine to the modem and setup would be automatic from there, and after that I could put the router back and it would work.

Err, what? Are they claiming that somehow, once I put my password-protected router back on the net, their software is going to reconfigure it? I don't think so. Everyone has been utterly unwilling to just tell me the configuration information I'll need (e.g. DNS servers). I predict that what they are actually going to do is configure a single machine and leave me to fend for myself from there (examine what they did to that machine, use the info to configure the router, and undo what they did to the machine).

"Linda" was supposed to escalate this and said someone would call me back on my cell phone "ASAP", but that hasn't happened yet. (That was at 9:30.) I guess I get to play support roulette tonight when I get home. (I'm posting this via email from work.)

One minor thing in my favor: if I have to connect a single machine to the modem anyway, it's going to be a Mac. I don't know Macs particularly well, but it seems less likely to get me routed to the undertrained, underinformed, English-limited support pool. (This morning I chose "Mac" on the phone tree and got to "Rauel", who seemed to actually know what he was doing -- but, unfortunately, he couldn't make them connect my service.)

If FiOS ever comes to my neighborhood I'll be thrilled. As soon as Verizon switches me over to it, I'm going to turn around and transfer my account to Nidhog (who now does FiOS but not DSL). Nidhog knows how to take care of customers!

An open letter to the Pittsburgh UJF:

When you called me a few weeks ago looking for money, I told you that: (1) I do not approve of telephone solicitations so put me on your do-not-call list, and (2) I would consider a written request along with all my other requests for charitable donations. I would have just told you to go away, but -- even though, like the United Way, you impose an overhead surcharge -- you do help some worthy local organizations that I don't already support directly. So I'm willing to consider a donation, but on my terms, not yours.

Sending me a letter thanking me for my pledge of $X was not the correct next move on your part.

Now that I think about it, you did the same thing last year. I called you and you apologized, saying it would not happen again. I eventually made a small donation. $X, in fact.

This year I'm not buying that explanation. If you had requested my help in an appropriate way I would have given, and probably more than $X. But you didn't ask; you presumed. Later this year you will send me a "bill" for a pledge I never made. Unless you convince me that you have taken corrective action, I won't be sending you anything this year other than this letter. And if you do convince me but your phone-spammers call next year, we're done forever.

You might decide that my donation is too small to be worth the effort of setting this right. That's fine too. If I don't hear from you, I'll assume that's what happened.

I've also posted this letter to my blog. If there's any followup, I'll share that with my readers too. I'm not unfair, just unimpressed.

Edit 2-12 21:30: Today I came home to a polite message on the answering machine from the campaign manager, along with email saying she would like to speak with me. It was too late to catch her today, but I will call tomorrow morning.

Edit 2-13 17:15: I spoke with the campaign manager today. She is very apologetic, said she would put me on the do-not-call list, and offered to just send me a letter once a year and otherwise not bother me, which is perfect. She also wants to meet me for coffee (or equivalent in my case), even after I pointed out that I'm not one of their big-time donors.

We use BitDefender for anti-virus protection. Once it's running I've found that it behaves itself better than Symantec and MacAfee did when I ran them -- less intrusive, more likely to do the right thing, etc. (I've never had to clean up after a virus -- a combination of being careful and being lucky, I assume.) Maintenance, on the other hand, is a pain.

( small rant about sloppy software (and business practices) )

The class I'm taking this fall in Biblical Hebrew had so much promise. But I'm now pretty frustrated, and I'm not sure what to do about that yet.

( Read more... )

Dear Company That Wants to Make Money Through a Web Site,

It's 2007. Not only have enough people to matter abandoned IE, but Firefox has been significant for years. Why is Firefox special? Because its extensions allow people to customize their browsing experience to their hearts' content. That, and tabs.

What does this mean for you? Simply that you cannot make assumptions about the browser any more. We've been blocking pop-ups for close to a decade and selectively blocking Javascript (via NoScript) for at least a couple years. We use GreaseMonkey scripts to add content to your pages (we don't care if you like it), AdBlock to remove some of the annoyances, and Stylish to rewrite your CSS. Get used to it.

If you want to win, then -- short of being a monopoly, and good luck with that on the web -- you'll have to learn to cope with this. The users -- your potential customers -- are not going to switch browsers, disable security settings, or even just turn off things we like, just to use your site, unless you're really, really important to us. Do you really want to place that bet?

No, it's not fair; my problem in using your site could well be in one of my extensions. But you know what? That doesn't matter; if it only affects your site, to me that will not seem to be my problem. If I like you a lot I'll try to debug it; if I don't I'll move on. Your only recourse is to bullet-proof your web site. Use fewer bells and whistles, and make them optional. Stop with the gratuitious Javascript (and Flash, for good measure). Do at least some testing of your site with the common Firefox extensions. Heck, write your own monitoring extension (that tracks and reports problems with your site) and offer it to your customers; we might help you out.

You do not need to use every new-fangled browser-thwarting doodad that comes along. Every time you do, your site breaks for a few more users. Designing resilient sites is not rocket science.

I used to think I wanted the internet in my brain, but I've reconsidered.

The phone rang around 8:30 this morning. That was early enough to be plausibly important, so I answered. The caller butchered my name (my last name doesn't even have several of those morphemes); my suspicion that it was a junk call was soon confirmed.

She was calling from "Concerned Women for America". She got about three more words out before I said "don't call me again" and hung up. That was based on the rudeness of a solicitation at that hour, but I also had a negative reaction to the name of this group I'd never heard of before, and I found myself wanting to look them up while on the phone, with no computer immediately to hand. Every word in that name except "for" set off a warning bell (and "for" is on probation due to proximity). Taking them in the order the alarms sounded:

"America": in a political context, high correlation with rabid right-wingerss
"Women": you're going to try to categorize my beliefs, interests, and priorities, and you will be wrong
"Concerned": you have a crusade

If you want to see how I did, check Google. It's not hard.

Maybe I don't want a neural link to the internet. It's much easier to scrub the pollution from a browser cache when it's on disk.

This isn't a gripe about the electronic voting machines with no audit trail and annoying user interfaces; that's a separate rant. This is a gripe about a feature also shared by the old machines: the "vote party line" lever/button.

I am offended by the presence of this option. It wasn't as glaring on the old machines, where the entire option space was in front of you and you watched the affected levers go ka-chink, but it was still wrong. My ballot this morning consisted of six screens, so I could have pressed that button without even looking at the effects. (Yes, there's a confirmation phase, but it's easy to just hit the big red "vote" button at that point.)

I don't want it to be that easy for people to vote for people whose names they won't recognize two minutes later. If you want to vote a straight Democrat or Republican or Pastafarian ticket, you should have to touch every lever, button, or check-box. Voting is a responsibility in which you should invest more than a few seconds' worth of thought. There were ballot items I skipped this morning because I did not feel well-enough informed; that should be more common, and the party-line button makes it less likely.

If we want a parliamentary government where you vote for parties instead of people, we should make one explicitly. I've heard the argument that taking away this option would disenfranchise some voters. Well, yeah -- if you don't want to look at each ballot item on which you're voting, you should be disenfranchised. If you've gone to the polls at all, the incremental cost of facing the candidate's names (and parties -- you get that information) does not seem at all burdensome. If even a few voters look at a name and say "hey, wasn't he the one who was indicted?" (or whatever), it will have served its purpose.

I'll de-snark this before actually sending it, but right now I just have to get this out of my system.

Dear Mayor Ravenstahl,
I write concerning the annual disturbance of the peace known as the Great Race.
As you will see from my address, I live on the starting line for this event. This means that crowds begin to gather at 7:00AM and the sound system is fired up soon thereafter. I understand the need to give instructions to the racers, but the primary use of the sound system is to play high-decibel music. I do not understand the logistical need for that.
I work hard all week, and Sunday is the one day when I can sleep in a little -- except when this great ruckus occurs outside my bedroom window. (There is, in fact, no room in my house where this is not a problem, so I can't just sleep on the couch that night.) I understand that you consider the Great Race to be a great community-building event, so I would like to suggest that some other neighborhood become the beneficiary of this community-building starting next year. It's time for the race to move. If you can't change its location, please change its time by several hours; the end of September is late enough that the mid-day heat is not a concern for runners (and late afternoon would certainly not be a problem).
Regardless of when and where the race is, I urge you to eliminate the unnecessary noise; residents are more likely to tolerate the necessary noise if we do not feel abused by gratuitious disregard of our Sunday mornings.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I would appreciate the courtesy of a resolution before election day.

Dani and I have had a (family) cell-phone plan with Verizon for more than two years. This means we're elligible to upgrade phones, but we hadn't done anything about it because our plain old phones are mostly fine. Our biggest complaint has been battery life (if Verizon would just send us batteries we'd be happy), and a couple weeks ago we bought batteries.

Wednesday Dani's phone died. (Mine is fine so far, so we don't immediately suspect that the battery did damage.) We have no particular reason to change providers, so Thursday over lunch he went to a Verizon store downtown to look at phones and ask some questions (namely, is this a use-it-or-lose-it upgrade event for me too if he upgrades?). He came back from that with the information that there would be financial benefits to upgrading together, so last night we went to the Verizon store in Monroeville to do that. That's where the trouble started.

( Read more... )

Verizon is currently sending me small Amazon gift certificates in exchange for customer feedback, so I think I'll see what they have to say about this. I wonder if I'll still be welcome in the focus group next week. :-)

Monica

cycling hazards

incredible

design failure

entitlement or obliviousness?

latest LJ fail

unbelievable

an open letter to Air Canada

user-experience fail

an IT rant

[SCA] Pennsic policy games

AZ, ur doing it rong

Google Buzz: bzzt!

Haiti

an open letter to Habitat for Humanity

random bits

how can a murderer be pro-life?

the joys of Verizon

chutzpah or cluelessness?

a small rant about my anti-virus software

Hebrew class :-(

bad web sites

(no subject)

voting machines: too much automation

draft letter to mayor

customer disservce, thy name ist Verizon

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