Rants Archives

  1. Searching for Satellite 2…

    On Wednesday Auguest 31, our DirecTV went out. I did the magic rebooting of the TiVo dance, but to no avail. A tech came out on Friday September 2nd and replaced the multi-switch1 as well as the power supply to the multi-switch; fixing the problem. On Saturday the 3rd, it was broken again. A tech…

  2. WordPress Breaks Copy-Paste

    I’m obviously a fan of WordPress. I use it here and on several sites and have donated a good deal of my time to help it succeed and have also contributed code and bug fixes in the past (though none recently). That said, the default ‘texturized’ output from WordPress gives me a few major headaches.…

  3. Some Warranty

    Last week I bought a new chairmat because the one I was using had cracked and was crumbling near the center. When I removed the sticker before putting it on the floor, I noticed a “3 year warranty” claim on the sticker. This caught my eye because I’d bought the mat I was replacing less…

  4. How to Lose Customers

    Perhaps I spoke too quickly in defending Kensington in the comments of my previous post. I got an e-mail confirmation that my order was cancelled, then a day later I got an shipment notification e-mail on the cancelled order. Sure enough, the product showed up a few days later and my credit card was charged.…

  5. How to Frustrate Your Customers

    I placed an online order with Kensington a week or so ago and one of the items I ordered was back-ordered. They sent me an e-mail to let me know this, giving me the option to cancel the order. At this point, I was thought they were pretty on the ball. Today I ended up…

  6. Windows Explorer Replacement?

    UPDATE 2006-12-18 – UltraExplorer has been officially released. Go check it out, finally a Windows Explorer replacement worth using. I’ve been looking for a decent Windows Explorer replacement and so far have been sorely disappointed. All I want is a quick-access favorites panel (not in a menu) and a drop stack – and something that…

  7. Car Shopping

    Jason recently posted some great tips for buying a car which I followed today. Unfortunately, after finding a sales rep we liked during the test drive process, things fell apart during the financial negoitations. The sales rep said he’s going to talk to the dealer’s other finiancial guy (apparently the son of the owner w/…

  8. CitiMortgage Frustrations, Part 2

    Maybe I spoke too soon when I said things had been resolved… I got an automated phone call this morning from CitiMortgage; the threatening one where they say no payment has been received and they will be reporting you to the credit bureau, etc. *Sigh* So I call the number as requested and sit on…

  9. CitiMortgage Frustrations

    For the second month in a row, I’ve gotten a late payment notice from CitiMortgage. This is very frustrating since in both months my payment has been on time. When we got our first bill, I set up a bi-monthly recurring payment though my online banking to pay half of the monthly payment plus a…

  10. Don’t Use My Site Design

    From time to time people ask if they can use my site design for their site. The answer is always no. Please respect this, I get ornery when I discover someone using my work without permission (like I just did). It’s rude and it’s also illegal. I host over 80 WordPress styles and 135 WordPress…

  11. Frustrated

    I was been reminded today why I’m glad I work for myself. I’m helping on a remodel of a web site (no, I’m not linking to it), working in concert with the marketing fellow at the company, someone at an outside design house and a fellow who I believe is a contractor of the design…

  12. Furniture Delivery

    Next week we’ve got some family coming in for a visit so we went out last week to look for some much needed furniture. We bought a patio table and some chairs, a chair and a kitchen table. We bought from different stores and each store would deliver the furniture for a nice delivery charge…

  13. On-base Percentage

    I was out helping a friend shop for a new TV today and caught some footage of Harold Reynolds talking on ESPN. I like Harold Reynolds, I remember him as the second baseman for the Mariners when I was growing up in Seattle. That said, he was spewing some real non-sense today. (Paraphrased) On-base percentage…

  14. Changing Your TiVo Program Data

    I spent about an hour on the TiVo support web site, looking for a way to tell the TiVo I’d moved and I need it to get program data for Denver instead of the Bay Area. When I failed to find it on their web site, I poked around until I found their support phone…

  15. MSN (Qwest) DSL *does not support* SMTP!

    I can’t believe this… after 45 minutes on the phone I’m told that MSN does not support SMTP or POP3 email anymore. They are requiring you to use HTTP (Hotmail) for your email… I am stunned! I finally got through to someone who is putting in a request to enable POP3 access – it should…

  16. Damn Comcast, Part II

    24 hours later, our cable TV goes out. After spending 45 minutes on hold (really wasn’t worth it) I talk to some lady who tells me the cable TV was turned off at the same time the cable modem was disconnected. She claims that both were done at the same time by someone who physically…

  17. Damn Comcast

    Cable modem wasn’t responding. I did the usual unplug-the-modem-unplug-the-airport two-step but still no joy. I called Comcast and found out they disconnected my service 5 days before they were supposed to. At least they admitted it was their mistake, but they will not send anyone out to fix it. Thank god for WirelessModem and my…

  18. Parking a car too difficult for you?

    In the last week (including twice in one day), several idiots have parked right next to my driver-side door so that I have to get in through the passenger side. They did this while there were at least a dozen open spots on the other side of my car. I am now carrying print outs…

  19. Pet Peeve: Download Managers in Browsers

    Am I the only one who hates having a whole separate download manager window to deal with? We’ve got trays up the wazoo in Mac OS X, if we must have a download manager, why can’t the download manager at least be in a tray (side tab in Mozilla is fine)? I don’t care if…

  20. Comcast is Junk Mailing Me

    So I’ve got Comcast as my cable modem provider and I think they took over the AT&T cable TV service in my area as well – point is, they know I’m a customer of theirs. For some reason, they’ve been sending me junk mail (snail mail) about once a week for the last month offering…

  21. Good Netiquette Starts Here…

    Perhaps a semi-precious metal rule of good netiquette and development would be: Ask Google before you ask others. Especially in forums, etc. but in real life too… The internet is out there with lots of answers – look first on your own before asking for help. People will be much more receptive to questions if…

  22. Baseball is pissing me off!

    Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here… but I still can’t figure out why if Pete Rose admits to doing the very thing that got him banned from baseball for life, he will likely be reinstated. If Bud Selig won’t stand up and say "Betting on baseball is completely unacceptable and…