Category Archives: rants

general ramblings, rants

cringe

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i just got an email from sarah from one click ventures. the email informed me that she is a representative from the fedora store and that they have recently been hit with a google penalty for the links going to some of their sites. Their consultant recommended that they try to remove some of the links on, you know, the internets that link to their site.

so she has asked me to remove a link from cindy’s blog where she linked the word “fedora” in her blog while talking about buying a fedora from said store.

after i got the email, i was incredulous and appalled. you want me to remove content from my personal blog? well, actually, it’s cindy’s blog, so you want me to ask someone to remove something from their PERSONAL BLOG? the crazy thing is that i think what cindy did was “the right thing”™. she correctly linked the word fedora to the place where, you know, they actually bought the FEDORA!

so, ok, i decide that i’m just going to ignore the email because i get all sorts of emails all the time asking me to do things that i don’t really want to do and that’s the end of that. but no. it isn’t the end of that. not at all.

instead, i’ve been getting emails from sarah almost every other day asking me if i’ve had a chance to remove the link. the first time around, sure, i’ll excuse it, because, you know, it doesn’t hurt to ask. but if you haven’t heard back, maybe the person doesn’t have anything to say? why? why would you keep writing asking for the same thing over and over again? is it because if you keep asking, you think something will change?

it was the third email she sent me that finally got me upset enough to reply because she told me in her email that she has been getting a lot of pressure from people above her to get this link removed. cindy, do you hear that? it is really important for the link to fedora on your blog dated two and a half years ago be removed!

so i decided to look up sarah and guess what? she’s a self-proclaimed SEO and social media specialist. and sarah does work for the parent company who owns the fedora store. so i guess she’s trying to do her job and all, but really? is this how the internets work now, people?

i don’t know why i’m so worked up about this. i think it’s because i feel like this is breaking internet etiquette. you don’t ask people to change their content. am i naive in thinking this?

maybe it’s because i feel like it’s a form of censorship. maybe it’s because i feel like whatever i decide to put on my blog is really my business. if you don’t like what you read, stop coming. it’s not like i have posted anything on this blog since the kids have been born anyway, so i don’t really anticipate that i would make much of an impact at all, but hey, if cindy’s post really is that big of a deal, then who knows?

i had flashbacks of the time when i was threatened by a pearl tea store owner to remove my review of their store from my site because it was unflattering. they said that they would sue me. by the way, banana crepe in japantown in downtown san jose, i still think your pearl tea is terrible and wouldn’t recommend anyone to go there for that. i hear your crepes are pretty good, but after that email from you, i promised never to bring my business there again.

so yay. i blogged a rant. about fedoras. *eyeroll*

did you know that this same company sells neck ties and scarves and hand bags and reading glasses and socks and sunglasses and travel products?

wait…am i helping them or hurting? i really feel like i’m doing “the right thing”™ here, right?

rants, techie

dns-323 putty missing characters

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for the longest time i had been struggling with putty telnet/ssh’ing into my DNS-323. every so often i would drop characters and so typing anything in the shell on the NAS was a monumental waste of time. i have finally figured out why this is happening. it turns out that the reason why i’m having problems is because i have putty set to send a keepalive null packet to the NAS. whenever putty does this, it drops whatever characters i’m typing. talk about weird, huh?

rants, techie

stupid optional coding conventions

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i am a stickler for coding conventions. part of making code readable is to adhere to some set of standard coding conventions. i’ve been using the same set of conventions for a long time now, which means that at least when i look at my own code it looks properly formatted. what pisses me off is when i have to deal with code that has tabs all over the place inconsistently. it’s ugly, it’s awful, and it pisses me off.

i’m working with code where the code is a mess. there are no regular conventions used, it almost looks like people used whitespace on a whim. it’s like writing english sentences and using punctuation whenever you feel like it. now, i know that i never capitalize when i write emails or blog entries, and i’m sure that there are those of you out there where it’s a big pet peeve and it grates on you. fine, i get that. sorry. but at least the meaning of the content is clear. at least, you know, in my head it all makes sense. but i just spent 10 minutes looking at a block of code trying to figure out why something isn’t working when it should be and i finally found out why. it’s because the previous programmer decided that the use of braces and whitespace isn’t very important to them.

in some places code looks like:

if ($variable==true) {
// do this
// and do this
} else {
// do that
}

in other places code looks like:

if ($variable==true) // do this

and in other places it looks like:

if ($variable==true) {
// do this
} else // do that

and in other places it looks like:

if ($variable==true) { // do this } else { // do this; //do that; //do this too; }

it kills me. i’m glad that i enforced a coding convention when we had multiple programmers here. all of our new code looks beautiful.

rants

lowe’s customer support is awful

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the more experience i have with lowe’s customer support, the more frustrated i become with them. i placed an order on the lowes.com website and they were supposed to deliver the product via UPS. the UPS web site states that the package was delivered and was left on the porch. when i arrived at home later that day, there was no package on the porch. i’ve never had a problem with UPS deliveries left on my porch before.

i called lowe’s customer care to let them know about the problem. i explained to them that i did not receive the package. they told me that UPS tells them that the package was delivered. so then i told them that i know that UPS is telling them that it was delivered and that’s why i checked the porch that day to get the package, but upon arriving at the porch, the package was not there.

they checked the UPS tracking system again and informed me that the person who signed for the package was…PORCH. oh, right, it was left on the porch. so they tell me that they will forward my inquiry to the internet sales division and that the internet division will contact me in two days. the support person got my telephone number AND email and though i did not like the idea of waiting for two days to get a response to my inquiry, i was willing to wait to see what would happen.

two days pass and i haven’t heard word from the internet division of lowe’s. one of the biggest pet peeves i have is when someone tells me that they will do something and they don’t do it. i would have been less irritated if they contacted me and informed me that they are still looking into the order and need more time, but instead nothing. and that kills me.

so i contact support again and tell them about my situation. the support person begins to tell me that she will forward the inquiry to the internet sales division, but i tell her that i’ve already called before and that is the same thing that i was told two days ago. she pauses and i hear some typing and she tells me that indeed it is true that there is a record that i called two days ago and that the inquiry was forwarded to the internet division.

i ask if i can get a phone number to the internet division, but she tells me that she doesn’t have that number. i ask if i can get an email address to the internet division and she directs me to the lowe’s web site’s contact us link. fine. i sent an email via that contact us link, but i’m not really hopeful that there’s going to be much progress there. their web site BARELY works to begin with.

so the resolution is that she will note that i called again to inquire about the missing package and that she will forward my inquiry to the internet division. i should hear word on tuesday. i’m going to see how this plays out and give them the benefit of the doubt and wait until tuesday to see if i do, indeed, hear word.

both CSRs that i talked to were courteous and apologized for the inconvenience that i was experiencing. i’m sure that the apology is part of the script that they are instructed to use, but still, their staff seemed to be polite and courteous…just ineffective.

all of our other deliveries from our registry have been delivered from lowe’s have been delivered without incident, so maybe this is an isolated case, but it annoys me to no end that i was promised that they would contact me and they didn’t.

rants

commitments

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when you make a commitment to me, i expect you to follow through and deliver what you had promised me. if, for some reason, you cannot do whatever it is that you promised me that you would do, i would expect you to tell me that you were unable to do it. what i would not expect from you is not hearing anything from you and to be left wondering what the hell happened.

it is probably the biggest professional pet peeve i have when someone fails to get deliverables to me AND doesn’t say anything to me about it. it is not my job to check to see why you couldn’t do something that you promised me you would do!

rants, techie

more work grumblings

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yeah, yeah, i know, i just got back from a vacation from hawtlanta and all i’m doing is complaining about work…

i’ve figured out my problem.  i will just add another 3GB of swap space.  let’s see my code EAT ALL OF THAT RAM.  stupid computers.

Mem:    775296k total,   293172k used,   482124k free,    17428k buffers
Swap:  4551544k total,    36360k used,  4515184k free,   209272k cached

general ramblings, rants, techie

near work disaster

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on the suggestion of my boss, i decided to repartition my work laptop hard drive. i got this laptop from him and he had a linux partition on the laptop as well as a windows one. the linux partition (which i didn’t have access to) was taking up valuable porn work-related hard drive space and i needed to free up some memory.

the big download that i had been getting basically ate up all the free hard drive space so i needed to find more space. i have never resized a partition before AND kept the data intact, i always just reformatted, but because this was a work laptop, i decided to try to resize it without losing all of the data.

having never done it before, i did a little research and decided to use this linux boot disk and use a program called QtParted which is a free clone of partition magic.

it SEEMED straightforward enough. delete the linux partition, resize the windows partition, and you should be done…or so i thought.

when i rebooted, i was greeted by a “grub>” prompt. uh oh. i didn’t know exactly what that meant, but i knew that we weren’t in kansas anymore, toto.

i tried to set the active partition, i tried to do this and that, and i think it boiled down to the fact that the partition that had the info on how to boot the machine was just removed so the laptop didn’t know what to do.

i then had to sheepishly ask the IT department for a windows CD to try and fix things. the conversation went something like:

me: uhhh, hi, mr. IT guy. can i get a copy of the windows install CD?

IT guy: you need the windows CD?
me: uhhh…yeah.
IT guy: why do you need the windows CD?
me: oh, you know, i’ve always wanted to see what one looked like.
IT guy: well, let me see if i have one around…so i got it and i was trying to fix things when it asked for the Administrator password. uh oh. now i knew i was in trouble. i tried guessing what the password was and tried all these combinations but nothing worked. finally i had to fess up to the IT guy what kind of trouble i had gotten myself into.

1) i, uhhh, resized a partition on my laptop.
2) errr, without backing anything up.
3) and uhhh, i might have broken things, but i don’t think i did.
4) oh yeah, and i didn’t tell anyone what i was doing, but you know, it should be ok, right?so he goes and peers intently at the password prompt, ponders for a moment what it may be, and GET THIS, he hits the enter key.

let’s let that sink in for a second.

HE HIT THE *ENTER* key. no password. NO PASSWORD.

i’m not sure what was worse. me not thinking of that or there being no password for the admin account. either way it hurts my brain.

but everything is fixed and all is well.

yay.

i can work again.

err.. boo.

rants, techie

motorola T721

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i hate this device more than you can ever know. i hate it because it is ugly. i hate it because it is old. i hate it because there is just nothing that i can like about it.

it is because of its insanely TINY buffer size for WML content rendering that i spent a good part of the day trying to figure out why my pages won’t render.

grrrrr.

rants

city beach santa clara complaint

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i’ve been playing at city beach in santa clara for a while now. last season the water fountain broke and they have not yet fixed it. it’s been well over two months now. previously, they put out pitchers of tap water for players to drink as a replacement for the broken water fountain. that seemed pretty reasonable and fair.

during playoffs they refuse to give out pitchers of water AND they have not yet repaired the water fountain, in fact, they have completely removed the water fountain from the wall and all that is left there is the piping that the water came from.

i find it outrageous that they have been providing water all season and then suddenly, without explanation, they flatly refuse to give water to the players. that just seems ridiculous.

i’m going to buy a pack of water for the team in case they get thirsty and don’t want to spend the money for some drinking water.

rants

how could this happen to me

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how could this happen to me
–simple plan

I open my eyes
I try to see but I’m blinded by the white light
I can’t remember how
I can’t remember why
I’m lying here tonight

And I can’t stand the pain
And I can’t make it go away
No I can’t stand the pain

Chorus:
How could this happen to me
I’ve made my mistakes
Got nowhere to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me

Everybody’s screaming
I try to make a sound but no one hears me
I’m slipping off the edge
I’m hanging by a thread
I wanna start this over again

So I try to hold onto a time when nothing mattered
And I can’t explain what happened
And I can’t erase the things that I’ve done
No I can’t

How could this happen to me
I’ve made my mistakes
Got nowhere to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me

I’ve made my mistakes
Got nowhere to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me

———————————–

despite our best efforts, one of the most difficult challenges in life are those that we could never anticipate. they are the things that terrorize you under a beautiful summer afternoon when your day seems to be as normal as any other. it is during these trying times that we must gather our strength, our fortitude, and our undying resolve to face the day and its challenges.

it doesn’t hurt to shake your fist at the blue sky and scream:

“HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO ME!?”