Category: Just Stupid (page 11 of 12)

April 28, 2007

Back from a 5 day vacation this week

Cabo from the Air (http://www.sanbachs.net/cgi-bin/mexico/mexico3.cgi/City=SJC&Hotels=) Every year Lily’s company nominates about 100 employees or so and sends them to a company paid vacation/off site meeting. These nominations are to reward them for outstanding achievements. The employees get to bring their significant others and this year Lily was selected to go.

This is the second time Lily and I went and we had a great time. The company sent us to Cabo San Lucas and Lily signed us up for the spa.

I’m not a sophisticated person. The barber is about as pampered as it gets for me (and it shows). So with some prodding from one of my friends we signed up for a pedicure, a manicure, and a massage.

It was a weird experience for me. Overall it was fine but I’m ticklish and kept laughing during the pedicure. During the massage I was asked if the pressure was too much. I said “No, it’s a little light” and she really worked on me. It did not quite hurt exactly but I now know what it’s like to go through a meat grinder.

Going to Mexico was a breeze. We had no hassle from the TSA, the transfer at Dallas was uneventful, and customs in Cabo was a snap. The most telling part of going was that we could not take water through the screening gate but we could buy bottles of water after the TSA and carry those potentially lethal water devices onto the plane.

(The TSA at the metal detector said we were allowed to buy water from the stands near the boarding gate, yes we took water on that way, and yes TSA war on liquids is too stupid for words).

Coming back was crowded and a little chaotic. We went through US customs and immigration screening at Dallas and once we were screened we got our luggage and went to the TSA guard like everyone else to go to our connecting flight. They do what you expect; they ask some questions and “randomly” select passengers for additional screening with x-ray of the luggage and some more questioning. We thought they picked us because we had a company provided lunch box with chicken inside.

Random, oh yeah, right. When we got into the waiting area and were lined up behind some people I told Lily “It wasn’t the lunch box”. They picked out every Asian passenger in the crowd. The only non-Asians were people like me who were traveling with an Asian (Lily is Chinese). Not a small amount of people either. That delayed our getting to our connecting flight in another terminal and we ended up racing to the plane.

At the gate I mentioned that we were delayed because of the TSA. The attendant said they screen randomly to which I replied “Yeah they randomly got every Asian”.

I did not complain to the TSA. They are not really law enforcement professionals like police officers, they don’t necessarily have an education past high school, and operate underneath secret and unpublished laws. Per other accounts they don’t have to explain to you why they abuse their authority or even really justify that abuse.

At Dallas they were not rude or unprofessional to us at all and aside from the obvious discrimination and delay I have no complaint. But had I made an issue of their “random” selections they could have gone nuts and I would have no recourse. See Homeland Stupidity for some better examples of problems with DHS. See Dr. Pournelle’s and others experience for more references.

Oh well. The vacation was great fun and like thousands of other travelers I just put up with this and hope that things get better.

April 15, 2007

Just how stupid can companies (scratch that, people) be?

I should make a new category called “Just Really Really Really Stupid”. I Saw this on Digg, it’s apparently old.

Google is your XP key friend. I’m not saying Google is bad, I’m saying that the company hosting this information is amazingly too stupid for words.

“The Company (who’s name shall not be said here like Beetlejuice), located in Maynard, MA, develops and licenses Internet based products which help make personal computers easier to use and maintain by large and small business users and individual consumers.”

I’ve never heard of them but if they’re going to make available their customers data then they sure are making personal computers easy to use alright. Especially for other people.

Update: After doing a RTFA I see it’s actually business as usual. The company is not posting the information. Apparently the end users are posting it.

Whew, I feel much better now. I mean some end users will do anything…

March 24, 2007

National Security Letter abuse

Remember it’s only an abuse of government power when other countries do it.

March 7, 2007

Webserver issue solved

I will not turn off “define(‘ENABLE_CACHE’, true);” again.
I will not turn off “define(‘ENABLE_CACHE’, true);” again.
I will not turn off “define(‘ENABLE_CACHE’, true);” again.

Now I will repeat that 1000 times on the black board and never do that again.

February 1, 2007

Cartoon scare in Boston

Saw this image off of CNN’s web site for the two who pleaded not guilty for the Boston scare.

vt1.cartoon.scare.ap.jpg

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please look at the defendants and try to tell me they are not guilty.”

I think Boston way overreacted.

From the article

Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards “bomblike” devices and said that if they had been explosive they could have damaged infrastructure and transportation in the city.

That’s like saying “We saw a suitcase and had it been a suitcase nuke like on that 24 episode, thousands of people could have died.”

November 10, 2006

Wow did I miss that one

Senator George Allen conceded to Jim Webb. The Democrats do get the Senate. The self-destruct that I was sure was going to happen did not happen at all.

I was watching Lou Dobbs and they had mentioned that the incumbent Democrats all got re-elected in the senate and the house. They did not lose ground at all, they just gained seats. Either the electorate are really unhappy or the Democrats 50-state strategy really worked. Probably a little of both (and some luck tossed in).

What will happen next? The ~~Cheney~~ Bush administration would go before congress and be disingenuous (I love seeing Attorney General Gonzales testify) and get a pass for everything. Even Senator Arlen Specter would not do anything but give a token protest and make empty threats.

Now that the Democrats are going to be in charge of the house and senate, are they really going to provide oversight? Forget impeachment or trying to jail the likes of Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and gang (which would be bad unless it can be proven they actually broke a law and not just did something their opponents don’t like).

Can the Democrats actually show up and do their job?

November 7, 2006

Vote early, vote often!

Voting is important and if you don’t vote but can, don’t complain.

Today is election day and Lily and I voted before going to work this morning. Except for state comptroller it was a straight vote down the democratic ticket for me.

Alan Hevesi really ticked me off with his attitude, enough that I voted for the other candidate who seems qualified to do the job.

Tonight the common opinion is that the democrats will take at least the house and possibly the senate. My opinion is that the dems will with great effort and press coverage grab defeat from the jaws of victory. I think that the close races are going to get ambushed by lawyers on either side.

I’m hoping that I’m wrong but we will all see tonight.

September 2, 2006

Dell still can’t get it’s act together (updated)

Update: 12:30PM 9/2/2006

After calling their 800 number, I got a gentleman who really knew what he was doing. It’s the system board. They are sending me a replacement system board.

The support technician actually restored my faith in Humanity!

That may be overstating it, but he really did his job well. I’ll see how long my replacement part takes to get here and if that solves the issue. Ought to; the error we were getting was the same each time.

Original blog entry here:

Sigh. Don’t buy computers from Dell. Give some other company a chance to screw up like Dell does.

I am really beginning to think that Dell’s only concern is to take orders and move boxes only. Their once really good support model is not really working.

Dell shipped me my XPS 700 and it works well. I am playing F.E.A.R. at 1920×1200 with all the options turned onto the max. I average about 112 FPS at that resolution.

It’s a great system. When it powers on that is.

Last night around midnight I tried to show Lily my new kick butt workstation. After 10 minutes of trying, the system would not turn on. The fans would switch on to max rpm and stay there. No BIOS messages on the screen, no sound from typing on the keyboard, nothing.

That’s bad on a new machine but that is not why I am complaining. When you buy something you expect it to work. But us “grown ups” know that sometimes this happens.

What really ticks me off is that Dell’s support system does not know my machine exists. I cannot get support because the service tag for my workstation is not recognized by their support system. I tried to call the support line and got the “Approximate wait time is 10 minutes” message. Having done that before, I figured I would try the online chat system.

The support rep I chatted with yesterday basically said “try back later”. 18 hours later the support system still does not know about my workstation. I tried the support chat again but since I did not have a valid service tag, the system would not even start a chat with the right person.

Instead I chatted with someone else who sent me to the correct queue. Which of course did not even start because I had did not have a valid tag number. One good thing about chat, as opposed to actually speaking with someone, is that I get a transcript of the chat, with me saying “it won’t work”. Doesn’t help me but I feel like I can at least track this nonsense.

I resorted to using the web page mailer to send a I’m-mad-as-hell message. I have no expectation that this will actually accomplish anything.

Sigh. Wonder if HP has decent workstations?

August 1, 2006

Dell XPS 700 still no useful ETA

This morning checked my Dell XPS 700 status page. Originally it was supposed to ship last Tuesday July 25th but on that day it got bumped to today August 1st.

This morning I checked and the status now says August 8th. Any bets what it will say next week?

Still no call from Dell regarding the offer of a free upgrade to a Core 2 Duo.

Here’s the time line:

Ordered the XPS 700 on June 18th.
ETA was originally July 25th shipping.
Updated July 25th to new ETA for shipping August 1st
Update August 1st to August 8th

What’s really funny is that there is that the new status requires me to click on a “I agree to this delay” link for FTC reasons. The link does not work; it gets a nice error page of 404 – File not found.

July 25, 2006

Dell is not the company they used to be (Updated)

Dell XPS 700 from CNET's web site After pushing my old PC up hill long enough I ordered a new kick ass Dell XPS 700 with a 24 inch wide LCD panel. I’m getting the black one.

I had received an e-mail about how to check the status online and the estimated ship time was set for over a month when I ordered it. As the time went by I had contacted their customer service and asked if the system was going to be built. I was told that as far as they could tell they would make the date.

I ordered the Dell June 18th Father’s Day. The estimated ship time was today July 25th. As of 10:10AM today Dell’s system sent me the e-mail notifying me that I was in for a disappointment.

So I called the Dell customer number and after 2 minutes of informing the system that I did not know my customer number or order number (I do but I have learned to hate the machines). Eventually I got a real human being.

The call was professional. Phrases such as “Parts are hard to come by” and “if you’d like I can expedite the order” were said. The rep was able to upgrade to next day shipping for me so I am placated for now.

I am on for shipping Tuesday August 1st but unfortunately I expect to get another e-mail. I know that I am getting a new to market system but Dell should be able to gauge availability based on the fact that they have been doing this for a long time.

Dell XPS 700 image from CNET’s web site.

Update: In this day and age, you’d think I’d check via Google or Engadget before calling Dell. Per Dell’s Blog (see item number 2) I expect to be able to upgrade from my ordered Pentium D to the Core 2 Duo.

Core 2 Duo, that’s a bad name it trips up the tongue. On the web site it says “an option of either a free upgrade to a Core 2 Duo processor or a Dell gift card” so naturally I am going for the upgraded processor.

The blog site clearly states that you should wait for Dell to call you, but reading the comments from the customers I figures I would get pro-active and call them. I waited until lunch time and called the number for customer service number.