lifebsideben

Wow, everyone wants to get gas at Costco these days, since it’s so much cheaper (today it was “only” $3.99 for 87 octane.) I tried to go to the Sunnyvale one as I needed to make a stop on the way home over there, and the line to get into the parking lot was going to take 10 minutes, let alone actually waiting for gas. So off to the one near my house, I went (Airport Blvd in South San Francisco).

It was pretty packed there, too… definitely the most folks I’ve seen there before. They closed one of the entrances so they’d have more room for lines, and I was directed by one of the attendants, to the second to last line. Fine, I pull in, OK, only one car ahead of me, then a guy with a trailer and a boat, and a couple guys at the pumps. The two guys pull out, and Mr. Boat pulls in. Hmm, won’t pull up to the front pump, huh? Great. So this is going to take longer. Mr. Boat and his buddy, we’ll call him Mr. Dinghy, jump out and try to figure out the pump. This takes a few minutes, and finally they start getting gas for the truck. Time passes. Folks in other lines are moving ahead. Finally they stop filling up the truck, and — you guessed it — start filling up the boat. This is when I get out of my car and ask them why they didn’t pull forward to the first pump. “There isn’t enough room” they say. Looks like there is, to me. There’s at least 25 feet in front of the pumps for cars to maneuver around, even if they stuck out 10 feet, it’d be fine. Grr.

OK, so, it’s a small boat. How much gas can it hold? How long can this take? Nearly 15 additional minutes, is the answer. I’m thinking this boat must hold a TON of fuel! I’m getting really impatient now, and I’m thoroughly bored both by NPR on the radio and by Valleywag on my iPhone. Hurry up already!! As I reach to honk in arggravation, they start capping up the tank on the boat. Sigh. So now the guy in front of me, and I, pull up to the pumps. The Boaties left their receipt. This ought to be good, I think, they must have spent $300 on gas. Hmm, only 24 gallons. What? Really? How can you only pump 24 gallons in 15 minutes? Lordy.

I swiped my card, pumped my less-than-7-gallons (the Prius has an itty bitty tank), and was back in the car within 3 minutes. That’s 20 fewer minutes I had with my kids tonight, thanks to the Inconsiderate BoatJerks.

Tags: bitching, Costco, gas, SFO

Normally, I like my Comcast service. I really do. I mean, it’s ridiculously expensive, yes… and I have the “triple play” (voice, cable tv, internet) so I theoretically “save” money. But usually, it’s pretty good. At least it has been fairly reliable compared to my past experience (many years ago, admittedly) with AT&T DSL, and it’s fast as all get-out for data. And the VOIP actually works, unlike Vonage or TomatoVine who should both be bankrupted as soon as possible for fraud, in my opinion.

However, last night was the exception to general Comcast goodness. Just before 10pm, Val calls down to me in the office… “the internet’s not working.” Usually, this is some wacky wifi issue on the mac, like the microwave interfering with it… oh wait, that’s right, she’s now hardwired in. Hmm. Let me check… sure enough, seems down. Check the router. The “online” light isn’t lit, but everything else is. Let’s try to reset it. Little switch on top does nothing, let’s try pulling the power cord… no dice, that’s right, I forgot. This is a VOIP modem as well, and we wouldn’t want that to die when the power went out, right? It’s got a big honking battery in the bottom. Sigh. OK, let’s actually call Comcast.

After digging up the number from a statement (paper statements, what a novelty! I guess they’re good in this case, when otherwise, everything is online and I can’t really, get online easily^*). Call them, navigate the voice menus, and “we’re experiencing difficulties in your area. there is no need to stay on the line to report this issue.” Grr.

OK, well, the cable still works at least. But yeah, no data. No voip (so no telephone). Meh. I did want to know how long this outage was actually going to have lasted by the time they resolved it, however, so I just set up a commandline to record pings: while true; do sleep 5 && date >>pings && ping -c 1 -t 5 www.google.com 2>&1 >>pings ; done and I figured I’d check the ‘pings’ file in the morning to see when it started having output. (I’m sure there’s a smarter, simpler way to do this… this was the 2-minute hackery version.)

Well, according to the file, pings started working at 1:25am. Three and a half hours Comcast data was down. That’s pretty sucky. I hope this was a major fiber cut somewhere that they dispatched everyone in the area to fix… for voice customers particularly, that’s really lousy, on a holiday night (hey, relatives can be calling! your great grandfather who served in the Big War might decide to call you from beyond the grave on Memorial Day, who knows?)

^* by “easily”, I mean, without walking upstairs. Yes, my iPhone would get me online. Yes, my 3G card would get me online. But mighty sloth, would not let me traverse the steps unless absolutely necessary…

Tags: bitching, Comcast, telephone, VOIP

Lenny Kravitz just released a new album, ‘Love Revolution’, and it’s a typical Lenny album: not groundbreaking, but eminently listenable. His is probably the only music that would be classified as straight “rock” that I listen to these days, and this album doesn’t disappoint, although telling it apart from his other CDs isn’t obvious if they’re loaded in the changer.

Anyhow, I knew the album was forthcoming, not because I follow him that closely, but because I went to the Oracle OpenWorld party back in… December? It was pretty amazing actually, quite impressive, with 3 separate stages, free for conference attendees (of which I wasn’t, but my friend’s husband was and gave me his ticket), and featured the likes of Billy Joel, En Vogue, Stevie Nicks, and our man Lenny. There were some bands that would appeal to a younger demo as well, but I have to admit I must be getting close to the Oracle vendor target market in age, because a couple of the bands were too heavy metal-ish (or what passes for it these days) for me, and a couple others were just plain going on stage too late. Yes, I am coming to terms with my lameness is later life. But, I got to see Lenny anyhow, and he definitely puts on a good show. I also saw him at the Shoreline many years ago, and was impressed with the energy he put into the corporate gig, it was about at the same level as his concert. He did play a track (the title track) from the new album at the Oracle thing, and it was Zeppelin-ish Lenny goodness, so I’ve been awaiting the new album.

So I saw it at Costco on Thursday night, but for $13, which seems un-Costco-like. I figured it’d probably be on sale cheaper at Target or similar, and sure enough yesterday I was at target to buy valentine’s stuff for my kid’s playgroup, and saw it for $9.99, with a “Only at Target” sticker that said ‘Digital Extras: Video downloads include a behind-the-scenes look at the new CD PLUS 2 acoustic songs and 4 of Lenny’s classic videos. Over 30 minutes in all! Also featuring the single “I’ll be waiting’ & ‘Bring it On’. Offer valid while supplies last or through 05/05/08″. Sounds pretty good. I’m going to buy the album regardless, but a couple acoustic songs sounds good. Now, how to go about actually getting to this content? Beats me. No insert in the (hateful) thin paper packaging (I don’t mind the reduced environmental impact, but there have to be more usable designs than this!). Nothing on my receipt. Nothing on the product page on target.com. Nothing on Lenny’s site. OK, I’m stumped.

Does it not make sense to publish an URL on the sticker? Maybe that checks against my receipt that I bought it? Or put an insert in the CD itself with a special code (as Kanye West has done)? How difficult is this?

Tags: bitching, Lenny-Kravitz, Music, Target

I upgraded to Leopard at home, which is awesome, because it’s a really great OS. Well, so was Tiger, and to be honest there aren’t a lot of really significant improvements, but lots of little ones that are nice. Definitely the new Finder is a lot more useful (I’ve stopped using PathFinder, sorry guys) and the speed of Spotlight is much improved (making Google Desktop Search a lot less critical). But, some software isn’t compatible, as to be expected. The worst bit is that you can no longer install the older Adobe apps.

You see, I own a copy of the ‘Adobe Design Collection’, which is basically what they called Creative Suite 1 before officially rebranding it that way. I use it occasionally (Illustrator mostly, but sometimes PhotoShop too.) I’m pretty happy with the older versions of the apps in it, but after upgrading to Leopard (and getting a new Intel Mac), it wouldn’t install and I decided to flip for an upgrade to the latest version, CS3, for $400. Pretty steep given my usage pattern, but heck, it’s pretty good software and I would like to be able to use it when I want to.

Some background: the Adobe Design Collection has all the exact same software as CS1 (PhotoShop 7, Illustrator 10, InDesign 2, and Acrobat Pro 5). It cost me $900 when I bought it. Since it has the exact same software as CS1, I thought the upgrade path would be the same. However, there is apparently two big differences between the ADC and CS1: 1. I have serial numbers for each individual product, instead of just one for the suite as a whole and 2. that means I can’t upgrade as if I had CS1, even though I own licenses for all the same versions of the apps. This really sucks, and I didn’t know that, and I didn’t figure it out until I got to the step in the installer (near the very end, 40 minutes in, after it’s actually installed) that my serial number(s) wouldn’t work. Grrr. I called Adobe sales and it went something like this: Read more »

Tags: Adobe, bitching, software

Maybe it’s just getting used to not paying for lunch, but today the power went out for a bit and it was unclear if it’d come back on in time for lunch in the cafe, so a few of us decided to hike it up to Quiznos a couple of blocks away. I like Quiznos, it’s not bad for fast-food, but I was pretty shocked at the bill. I had a large classic club with bacon, as a combo. It came to $11.13! I couldn’t eat the entire thing anyhow, so a ‘large’ was probably not a good choice to start with, but $11 seems pretty insane for a sandwich, outside of Manhattan or an airport, anyhow.

Tags: bitching, food

OK, I goofed, and I didn’t have quite enough in my checking account to cover my AmEx bill, which has an online banking-initiated payment for “whatever amount is due” to be paid, when the bill is due. Bank of America bill pay went and made the payment anyhow, and I got a $35 overdraft fee. (2 days after I transferred money in to cover the extra amount from savings!) So yes, I’m stupid, but $35 for an overdraft? I called to try and get it reversed, and because of a problem a year ago (similar but not the same) where they *did* reverse the fees, they won’t do it now. Arrrgh. I was certain when it happened a year ago they told me in the future it would automatically transfer the funds from savings (which had plenty of cash), but apparently, that wasn’t set up. They claim it now is, but who knows.

Anyway, yes, I’m an idiot; but $35 seems awfully steep. I can’t imagine this actually costs the bank *anything* (well, perhaps the interest on the “negative” amount they “loaned” me for a day). Certainly not $35. It appears these fees are incredibly lucrative, however, and Bank of America has recently raised the overdraft feeso as well.

Most importantly, from a computer-science / user-experience standpoint, the automatic bill pay system gives a bunch of options, including “only pay if it’s less than X amount”, etc. Why isn’t there a checkbox for “don’t pay if amount exceeds available balance–email me instead”? That seems simple, and logical. Maybe bill pay and the accounts are two separate systems, but it seems simple enough to bridge that gap–they’re all part of the same financial institution and they at least appear to be unified in the web interface. Of course, I guess that would cut into the possibility of some of that $17BN the industry generates from overdraft loans and fees, according to the link above from the Center for Responsible Lending…

Tags: banks, bitching

I was skimming this month’s Doctor Dobb’s Journal, which doesn’t take long in recent years due to the Microsoft-centricity of the ads and overall relatively lightweight article content (there’s always a gem or two, though, which is why it gets skimmed at all), but ran across an ad for a programmer’s editor that grabbed me, not in a good way.

The ad says “Need a Code Editor that’s Powerful - Flexible - Robust and Supports over 40 Languages?” (For the 1 person who reads my blog who isn’t a geek, by this of course, they mean programming languages)… “Introducing Dr Koder, The Powerful, Dynamic Code Editor(tm)”.

OK, this is fairly wrong on a few levels, as obviously it has to be powerful, and “dynamic” to some degree, and edit code. So why trademark that expression, I have no clue. But the more important bit is “Dr Koder”. No period after the Dr., but I would assume they mean it in the form of “Doctor”, even though there’s no crazy tagline like “heals your code quick!” or “diagnoses your code ills” or similar. So forgiving that, the main point is, “Dr. Koder”, with a K yet? What is this? No self-respecting developer, let alone software engineer, is going to proudly reply to “what editor do you use?” with “I’m a Dr. Koder man!” It just sounds lame. No wait, not just that… it IS lame. A terrible name. Obviously, the engineer(s) who wrote this thing, got naming rights. Don’t do this. Get some consensus, ask around, hire someone… something.

Adding to the hilarity, is the “ComingSsoon! Signup [sic] for your copy Today!” As if, developers wait around for that next great editor with baited breath, and stand in line to get it the first moment, etc. That’s for iPhones, not code editors. Here’s how it works with editors: you download a free trial. If the trial is cripped in any way besides time-limited (and that, something reasonable along the lines of 30 or 60 days), you ditch it. You try it with a small project. You read the manual (well, only after figuring out there’s something you’re “not quite getting”). You see if it compares to Eclipse. You see if it’s got some magical redeeming features / look and feel / behavior (a la TextMate on the Mac only), and if not, stick with Eclipse (or heaven forbid, the Microsoft Visual Studio tools if you’re so deeply stuck in that world), or emacs/vi if you’re a diehard Linux geek and don’t understand the productivity gains of a modern IDE. That’s how it works. Dr Koder has no chance at this point, in other words. Maybe they should get the free trial up and running, and only then advertise it.

Meanwhile, I’ll be using my free trial of Dr. Browzer to surf the web–it kicks Firefox’s ass!!

Tags: advertising, bitching, coding, engineering, software

Roxio is the company that makes Toast, the best disc-burning software on the Mac. Which is a little like saying they make the best anti-virus software for Windows, in that it’s something the OS should really provide a pretty robust solution for. Anyhow, it is pretty good, and although I think I’ve yet to get it to transcode video into a DVD without crashing, it manages to do the basics–jamming files onto DVD-Rs, reasonably well.

The catch to all this, is that it’s a really expensive piece of software, at least for what I have successfully made it do, with a list price of $99. Now, I’m sure no one pays the list price, I mean even on their own site you can get it for $79. Still, eighty bucks is a lot for software that basically copies files. Plus, between Toast 6 and Toast 7, they removed some features at the behest of the MPAA. I don’t like my software companies taking orders from bully industry groups. But anyhow, I bought 6, and upgraded to 7, which cost me $60 as I recall. So, I’m into these guys for well over $100, and basically, just to burn backup copies of my digital photos. I mean, there’s some features about making audio CDs–oh wait, I use iTunes (free) for that, and for video editing–oh wait, I use iDVD for that (iLife came with my Mac). Still, I’ve been relatively happy with it as a product, and it makes burning the occasional .bin/.cue easier than not having it.

Read more »

Tags: bitching, dvd, email, roxio, software, spam, toast, upgrade

I ordered a copy of Gore’s Keynote-riffic movie on Earth Day from Amazon, so that Paramount would donate a copy to schools as well (it was a promo if purchased that day). Thanks to Amazon Prime, it arrived today, with three bubble-bags, an insert, a packing list, and a 12×9x4 cardboard box. Sweet!! Pretty much negated any benefit of the paper wrapper instead of a clamshell for the DVD, I guess.

Probably should have just downloaded it. Oh wait, I did bittorrent it first… this was just to make me “whole”

Tags: amazon, bitching, environment, movies

I broke down and applied for a corporate credit card today, as I felt it might alleviate some of the pain of receipt collection and expense report generation. I got a little worried when step 1 of the application process starts out:

Please visit https://www.americanexpress.com/applyforcard via the Internet…

as opposed to visiting it what… in person? The actual site seemed to work OK at least.

Tags: big_business, bitching