Paleck.com

In a day and age when there is such a push for web standards I find it inconceivable that a major internet company can’t design a new interface that will work in a majority of the major browsers. Some may argue that Safari is not a major browser because it’s current market share is in the vicinity of 3.5%. Fortunately or unfortunately Apple’s OS X is still a major player in the consumer OS market and OS X’s primary built-in browser is Safari. Yes I could use Firefox or Internet Explorer, but when I am on my Mac I prefer to use Safari unless I absolutely have to.

Browser incompatibility isn’t the only reason that Yahoo’s new Mail Beta needs some work. I tried it in Firefox on both my PC and my Mac to disasterous results. The new interface would be better termed as Yahoo Mail Billboard, as in the billboards you see driving down the freeway. There are so many ads that the interface is cluttered to the point of confusion. To make matters worse, in order to maximize their advertising dollars various areas of the page continuously reload themselves and their rotating ads. Since the ads are continuously changing you would expect that Yahoo would be careful about each of the ads keeping a uniform size….they weren’t. The end result of this mess is a page that appears to be having a seizure, each time an ad reloads and changes size the page has to readjust to fit the new size.

The verdict: Yahoo, please please please remove this embarrassment and wait until you have it fixed before you attempt to roll it out again

For this story I have waited a year from it’s start, so as to give my former cell phone company a chance to respond to me. If anyone who reads this blog uses Cingular I recommend that you run the other way and find another cell phone company as fast as you can. Do you think I am overreacting? I don’t, read on for why.

Originally I was with AT&T Wireless for three years. During that time I never had any real problems other than a few minor billing issues. The service was great and the customer service was pretty good. Then in 2004 Cingular and AT&T Wireless announced their doomed merger and impending downfall. At first I had no problems with merger, since it allowed me to save up minutes using Cingular’s rollover minutes. As I look back on it the service went down hill as well. I started having more problems being able to make a call and more dropped calls. Since Cingular and AT&T Wireless used different types of phones and networks I assumed maybe it was their way of phasing out the AT&T Wireless network.

Fast forward to December 2004, I decided it was time to upgrade my phone and switch over to the Cingular network completely. The phone I chose was the Motorola MPX220, a windows based smart phone and the biggest POS on the face of the planet. Of course I didn’t know that at the time, but back to my story. For about 4 months everything worked great, until about mid april on a business trip my phone started rebooting itself into a ROM programming mode. It would reboot just fine and the phone would work until it decided to reboot into ROM mode again. Imagine waiting for an important call only to find out you missed it because your phone decided it wanted to be in a programming mode rather than in a calling mode.

Once I returned back from my trip then the real fun began. It took an hour and a half on hold and only 10 minutes actually talking to a live person to be told that my phone was malfunctioning, but the fun didn’t stop there. The customer service representatives have no actual power to actually get a replacement(even within a warranty) from there the only department that can handle replacements is the RMA department. After 4 failed transfers I finally got the direct number, not that it helps much. It took about 4 hours in total to actually talk to a live person, once I did I was informed that my phone was on backorder and it wouldn’t be available for at least a week or so. When I finally received the replacement phone I sent my old one back immediately thinking nothing of it. The next morning I received…or at least attempted to receive a phone call. It was then that I discovered that my new phone didn’t work. I could hear people just fine, but no one could hear me.

Luckily I had a second phone for work that I could use in order to get ahold of Cingular once again. First I had to get ahold of customer service again and then the RMA department. Except this time my phone was backordered for a minimum of two weeks(is this starting to sound like a broken record yet?). Towards the end of the second week I called the RMA department again and was told that my phone was still backordered and that nothing could be done about it. I wasn’t about to stand for that at all, so I asked to speak with a supervisor who after arguing with him for a few minutes he finally offered to send me a different phone temporarily until my phone came into stock. I received that phone a week later and at least had service.

Once I actually had a working phone I called customer service again and asked for a credit for the time that I was unable to use my service. Now keep in mind my airtime only charges averaged about $79 dollars a month. Customer service decided that I was only entitled to an $18 credit with nearly 3 weeks without service. A few days later my replacement for my original phone showed up, but this time I decided to test it first. It’s probably a good thing that I did, since this new phone refused to power-up. At this point it was mutually agreed upon between myself and Cingular that we should give up on my phone and have it replaced by a comparable phone both in price and features.

Unfortunately I don’t remember what phone the attempted to replace mine with. I only remember that it cost less than half as much as I had originally spent months ago and it was missing major features that I had originally chosen that phone for. They did this not once, twice or even three times, but five times. During this time I talked to multiple agents who agreed that I should be getting a different phone, but every time I received the “replacement,” I still got the same phone. Around mid-July I called Cingular and informed them that I would be moving my service elsewhere, however, when I told them this they offered me a month’s free service. This flabbergasts me because when I didn’t have phone service for 3 weeks I only got $18, but when I threaten to cancel they offer me a full month’s bill. On July 22, 2005 I moved my service to Verizon Wireless and haven’t had any problems since.

Epilogue: Shortly after transferring my number to Verizon, I also sent a letter to Cingular’s corporate office describing all of my problems. In it I asked that they waive they cancellation fee since I couldn’t get a working cell phone, or a cell phone that was at least comparable to the one I had and because I had been dealing with this issue for over two and a half months. I never received any response Verizon when they decided to send me to collections in September. I payed the bill before it went to the collections agency and affected my credit. Next I wrote Cingular another letter and once again have never heard from them.

What is with all the letter writing you may ask? Well in order for any kind of a complaint or dispute to be worked on you must write to Cingular’s corporate office. Nothing can be done or tracked by the customer service reps, so there is no way to know if anyone even received it. Unless of course you send the letter registered mail so that you receive confirmation. I neglected that step so it’s my own fault on that part, so learn from my mistake if you ever need to deal with this yourself.

Sometimes you have to wonder just what people are thinking or even if they are at all. Now I normally hate regurgitating the same thing that about a million other blogs are talking about, but these stories have convinced me that Charles Darwin is having the ultimate revenge. He proposed the original theory and now generally accepted fact of Natural Selection in 1842. The only people that are not at all convinced are those that are so those that only believe the religious word and have lost all ability to think for themselves. In my opinion this process of evolution can fit in perfectly with religion, most of the time. For instance the bible says that the earth was created/populated with animals in 6 days and on the 7th day he rested. Now the problem with taking it literally is that since the bible was written by man with the influence of god there is a problem of translation. How do you explain how long 1 day is when the person you are talking days are 24 hours long? God’s measurment of a day could be one year, 10 years, a millenia or 100 millenia. Second problem if god created the earth, night/day, trees, animals, etc it doesn’t mean that he necessarily snapped his fingers and they appeared. By implying that God is all powerful/all knowing then God has a knowledge that we don’t/can’t understand at this time of how to possible seed life and mold it over time. This makes even more sense when you take if you accept that God’s version of a day was a millenia or more. Now I didn’t mean to take this discussion into this, so I will leave this at that and get on with my original point.

The last few days( or years) I have been continually amazed and the stupid things people do. Whether it is the lady who left her 6-year old son overnight at a Chuck E Cheese, the lady who sued McDonald’s when she spilled her coffee in her lap or any one of million other similar stories. The problem comes that first people don’t think about what they are doing and second they won’t accept the responsibility for their decision/inattention, so it must be someone else’s fault.

The video clip is about a snow storm, imagine that a storm so bad that you lose control of your car going 10-15 mph and end up sliding 500ft along the curb. Now would you even think about getting out of your car to try and help slow it down. Let’s think about it for a second, say the average car weighs between 2000 - 4000 lbs, do you really think that on roads that bad that your 175lb body pulling against the direction of the way you are sliding is going to make that much of a difference? Say there is a line of 8 cars that have all crashed into eachother, how many people do you think actually got out to try and slow their car down? If you said 0 or 1 then you are mistaken, the answer in this case was 2. Now for my last question about this story, if you were to lose your grip on your car and fall into the roadway, do you think anyone else is going to be able to stop or turn to avoid running you over? Judge for your self:

Now ummmm…..I don’t even know how to explain this one, so let me just quote from the page:

So let me explain a little bit here on my situation. My dsm is down and It’s too cold to go outside and fix it. There’s no way I’m laying on the cold pavement and pulling the transfer case. So I’m carless.

Now my girl, I normally just car pool with her to work. Which is fine because we live together and we’re both working the same hours and near by each other. But I took Friday off and I opted to watch the kid instead of having her drop him off at my moms. So I was at home and everything was all good untill about 1pm. I got a call from my boss and he needed me in. I work at Burger King in the mall, so I told him I really can’t but if I must I’ll have to ride my motorcycle in and it’s 20*F outside. He said it would really mean alot and mean I might be eligalbe for management come my 6 month review. So I told him sure.

Now I have a problem, I have my son. He’s 2.5 yrs old and just a bundle, but I have no way to have someone watch him. I forgot about this detail. So with no options left I get out his old broken car seat and fix the buckles with some duct tape. Then I strap it to my bike and set him up in it. I didn’t have a helmet that fit him so I just used a towel and some tape and secured him to the carseat with that. He was snug as a bug so I put a towel over the carseat and jumped on it. I set off to my moms to drop off my son about 5 miles away. Really just a few turns down the road but it was snowing and cold as ####. I was about 3 miles to her house and I got pulled over. Freakin arrested for child endangerment and now they won’t give my bike back. I just bought it in april. It’s a 02R6 and it means the world to me. They said they’re holding it till court to display to the prosucuter and people how unsafe I was with the car seat duct taped and bungied to the bike.

I think it was really secure and I had him bundled up and me being on the bike blocked the wind.

My girl want’s to kill me and she’s all worried about our kid getting taken away. Right now they’re making him stay with my mom untill court.

How do you think I could get my bike back? I’m leaving on Wednesday for bikeweek.

This is BS.

Judge for yourself and let me know…

I’ve had my laptop for about 3 years now and have had almost component replaced in it replaced. For them most part it’s been a good little laptop and I am definitely glad that I paid for the 4 year on site guarantee!!!. Well recently the motherboard went out on it and that had to be replaced. It took almost two weeks before they actually came out and replaced it. Me arguing with them(Politely, of course), before they would even think about doing anything they assumed it was a battery problem. Nothing could dissuade them of that even though I had just purchased a replacement battery a few months earlier. Finally they replaced the motherboard and everything worked….until now.

Just recently I had another problem with my laptop, it still works, but the sound card is apparently dying. When I say dying, I mean a very slowwww death. When it works I get to hear any noise coming from it warping in and out. It interferes with shutting down Windows and sometimes the driver can’t even start the card at all. Before attempting to contact Dell I replaced the driver, removed the driver(to make windows reinstall it), completey unpowered the laptop(attempted to turn it on with no battery or power. Don’t try to tell Dell that though. I decided instead of waiting on hold for 3 hours only to not understand a word of what the support representative was saying, I used the online hardware support chat. Before you ask yes, yes I did it from a different computer. Give me just a little bit of credit.

See for yourself how well the conversation didn’t go. The names have been changed to protect the guilty and any sensitive information has been removed. Other than that nothing in the conversation has been changed in order to make myself look better or Dell look worse.

So every once in a while when I am being lazy or just crave it I venture down to my local Taco Bell. You see I am hopefully addicted to their chicken quesadillas. But that is part of the problem, although I like quesadillas I hate tacos. Why is that a problem? The chicken quesadilla meal comes with a taco, so normally I just ask them to substitute out the taco for a bean burrito. It’s normally no problem since according to the menu a taco and a bean burrito cost the same amount($0.99).

Well yesterday I was feeling the urge to stop by and and get my usual meal. When the lady went to ring it up, it came out a dollar cheaper than it usually does. Now I’m an honest person and I questioned the lady on it and discovered something very interesting. Since I wanted a burrito instead of the taco; she rang up the drink, quesadilla and bean burrito separately instead of in a meal. Is this just a fluke or have I really overpaid a dollar every time I have gone to Taco Bell for the last 2 years?

I guess I’ll have to go back and find out what happens next time…