Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Blog

  • Are we speaking the same language?

    Yesterday I was asked to record an outgoing voicemail message for a business. He’d prefer to have a female voice. No big deal, I’ve done it for him before. I tell him to email me a script and tell me the PIN number he uses to access his voicemail.

    He writes back wanting to know how to find his PIN number. I tell him that it’s the number he uses to access his voicemail, maybe he can look it up on his account online. He has Vonage. He doesn’t find it and he gives me his Vonage userid and password.

    Vonage does not show the PIN number in the online account, but it does allow changes online. I change the PIN to a number I know he can remember. I call in, access his voicemail and change the outgoing message. I also email him to tell him that I had to change the PIN and tell him what is (I don’t write out the numbers, I tell him what the numbers are, like “your birth year”)

    Today he calls. He says that outgoing message “sounds great!” He can’t check his voicemail and is wondering if there is a problem. I ask if he means online, but he tells me he means by the phone.

    “I used the same code I always do, but it won’t work.”

    “I had to change the PIN, I sent you an email about it.”

    “Oh yeah. Oh, is THAT the number you meant?”

    “Yeah…” I tell him the new number but I say it by number this time.

    “Oh hey! That’s a great number. It’s (the year I was born) it will be easy to remember!”

    Yay me.

  • Seriously?

    Somebody just forwarded me an email with 3 attachments, a pdf, a pub and a wps.

    Can you open these? I can only open the pdf file. I have no idea what to do with the others.

    I opened the non-pdf ones, created pdfs from them and sent them back. Not a huge deal.

    Here’s the thing. Also included in the forward was the email, a portion of which says:

    If you have any trouble opening any of these let me know and I will see if I can fax it to you or send it in another format.

    Why exactly is the first impulse to send ME an email telling me about the trouble opening them? I can imagine that they might think getting it in another format won’t go smoothly, but I know for a fact that when this person is sending me an email they are sitting right next to a fax machine.

    Also, the original sender is a business, trying to get a new customer. Why are they sending their information out like this? Not only are they sending three different documents (each one page only) in three different formats. They have also named them full sentences with spaces and periods, as in an extra . before the .extension. Surely this creates problems fairly often for the people they send them to. Why don’t they ask somebody what they should do instead? They totally overcharge for their services, they could afford to learn how to do it correctly.

  • Another Day, Another Annoyance

    Last week on Wednesday the 14th I ordered something at around 10 AM. I upgraded the shipping to next morning shipping. The place I was ordering from is 60 miles away from my house. Even shipping ground should have gotten it here overnight with no problem, but they also claimed that any order before 2 PM would ship same day if you paid for the upgrade, whereas ground orders would go out within 2 business days. I wanted to have it by Friday so it was worth it to me to pay the extra, because if they happened to take the full 2 business days to ship, I’d have to wait through the weekend.

    On the 15th in the afternoon I got an email that said it had shipped on the 14th and provided me with a tracking number. Now obviously if the order shipped by next morning delivery on the 14th, as it should have, I would already have it by the time this confirmation email was sent on the 15th. I did not have it. I was annoyed but not yet completely pissed off. I just needed the item by the 16th. I clicked on the link to the tracking information that was sent in the shipping email. It took me to the FedEx website where I got this message.

    Not found
    No information for the following shipments has been received by our system yet. Please try again later or contact Customer Service.

    There was also a link in the email to contact customer care if I had any questions. I tried filling out the form there, but it refused to submit properly. I tried to call, but they were already closed for the day. I tried looking up my order on their website. It claimed to have shipped on the 14th and also linked me to the same tracking information with the same result.

    The 16th arrived and my package still did not. I had a very busy day. I tried once to reach them by phone but the hold time proved beyond my ability to wait through from home and my call was dropped by cell. Their customer service was closed by the time I made it home again and had a chance to breathe and think and make another phone call. I checked the tracking info again and got the same result. I tried submitting the web form a few more times. They were closed all weekend.

    I called this morning, and waited on hold until I was able to speak to somebody. I gave my order number and explained that I did not have my package and FedEx claimed to not have my package either and that I was not exactly pleased with the situation.

    The man explained to me that the tracking number was for DHL, not FedEx.

    “Umm, you do see that the email I was sent and the account information on your website both say FedEx?”

    “Yes, I think that is just a programming error, but the package was sent by DHL, so let me look that up for you…”

    (In the meantime I look it up on DHL myself.

    Tracking summary
    Current Status Processed at DHL Location.
    Est. Delivery Date: 3/15/2007

    Tracking history
    Status
    3/14/2007 10:25 pm Processed at DHL Location. Riverside, CA
    3/14/2007 6:54 pm Departing origin. Fullerton, CA
    3/14/2007 4:18 pm Picked Up by DHL. Shipper’s Door)

    “…Okay, it tells me that DHL still has the package, so let me give you the tracking number and the contact number and you can call DHL and see what the problem is. Once you have your package, call us back and we will credit you back the difference for the upgraded shipping.”

    *deep breath*

    “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Why do you want ME to contact DHL?”

    “It shows me that they have your package still. There might be some problem with your address, so you should call them.”

    “I bought this from you. I paid you for it. It is your job to get make sure I get it. I did not buy it from DHL.”

    “Yes, but DHL has your package and there might be a problem with your address.”

    “Well I am looking at my confirmation email from you and you have my address correct in that email. I provided you with the correct address. If DHL has something wrong about my address, it is between you and DHL. Why don’t YOU contact DHL and find out what is going on?”

    “DHL has your package.”

    “Yes, but I bought this from you. This is your problem. I don’t understand why I should be expected to do work to solve this. Why should I be on hold with DHL, you are the ones who pay DHL. I paid you. Why should I wait on hold again to talk to you later in order to get a refund?”

    “I can escalate this to customer concerns and they will email you back.”

    “When will that happen?”

    “Within 24 to 48 hours.”

    *really deep breath*

    “On the 14th I paid for next morning shipping because I needed the item last week. I don’t understand why I now have to wait 24 to 48 hours for you to contact me back and tell me what you are going to do about it.”

    “That is just an outside estimate.”

    “When are you going to contact DHL?”

    “I will escalate it to customer concerns and they will contact DHL.”

    “When will they do that?”

    “Within 20 minutes.”

    “Then why will I not hear back from them for 48 hours?”

    “That is an outside estimate, in case DHL needs to get back to them. DHL may take time to look up the information. If they have lost the package then we will need to ship you a new one. That will go out tomorrow, so it will be 48 hours.”

    “If somebody is going to contact DHL within 20 minutes, why can’t they contact me then to give me a status report?”

    “DHL might have to get back to them.”

    “Can I speak right now to the person who needs to contact DHL?”

    “I need to send the report first to escalate it, but they will get to it as soon as possible.”

    “Within 24 to 48 hours?”

    “That is an outside estimate.”

    “You are less than 2 hours away from my house.”

    “Yes, I see that from the address you provided.”

    “But it might take 48 hours for you to get back to me about how I will get a package that I ordered for next morning delivery, last week?”

    “They will get to it as soon as they can.”

    “Why don’t you just ship out a replacement order today, so I can have it tomorrow. You and DHL can figure out what to do about the other package?”

    “Yes, we will do that.”

    “So I can expect my order to be here tomorrow morning? Whether it is a second shipment, or the original, I will have my order tomorrow morning?”

    “Yes.”

    “And, you’ll be refunding me the difference on shipping?”

    “Yes.”

    “Okay, I will look for that on my credit card.

    “Is there anything else I can help you with today.”

    “No, I really don’t think so.”

    Along with my general joy over the order, I also have to wonder… What is with DHL? They have in their system that it has an expected delivery of the 15th, it is past the 15th and that is it, just no further updates? I am not convinced that I would necessarily call that package tracking. If they got something with an incorrect address, shouldn’t there be some sort of procedure for getting the correct address from the shipper? They did pick it up from the shipper’s location, so they know where THAT is. They could just go take it back.

    I am tired. My 3.5 hours of sleep did not give me enough energy to deal with this. I wonder if I will get my part tomorrow. Somehow I rather doubt it.

    Oh yeah, for the curious, I ordered from Targus

    .

    Targus Group International, Inc. pioneered the notebook carrying case category, partnering with corporations, retailers, and OEMs to provide the best possible protection for notebook PCs. Targus continues to define and shape the market for mobile computing cases and accessories. As the leading global supplier of portable solutions, Targus has offices on every continent and distributes in over 145 countries.

    Impressive.

  • Spring Has Sprung, Except for the Dead Things

    I had someone over to look at the yard yesterday. Along with several plants, bushes and vines, it looks like we’ve lost 4 large trees (10-15 years old) from the unusual frost this year. I can try having the trees severely chopped back in hopes that perhaps they will revive, but she did not hold out a lot of hope for them.

    What sucks is that, beyond the expense of removing them, because of their location it is highly unlikely to get much of the root structure out at all. This means that nothing large can replace them as it will have no room to root itself. This is going to have a real impact on the privacy of the backyard.

    So perhaps I should try the chopping them back route? It is unlikely to work and will be quite ugly in the meantime, but there might be a chance of it coming back.

    I wish I could afford to completely redo the hardscape out there. It was very well done and has held up beautifully, but is not at all to my personal taste.

  • Weekend Update

    There is a girl who lives nearby. We met her and her family almost immediately upon moving into this house and her and my daughter began hanging out. There have been times when they have spent more time together and times when they’ve spent less time together. I’ve never actively encouraged the friendship because I do not care for the parenting style of her parents. At the same time I have not discouraged the relationship either. There are certain things I will not allow when I feel their parenting would possibly impact my daughter’s safety, but as far as whether or not the girl makes a good friend, I’ve tried to leave that up to my daughter to sort out on her own.

    I had several reasons behind this. For one, I did not want to hold the girl responsible for what her parents have done, as long as she could more or less manage to behave herself in a way that didn’t irritate the crap out of me, I didn’t mind her being around. Also, I will not be standing beside my daughter throughout her life. She needs to determine for herself how to make judgments about people and exactly how much she is willing to put up with. She needs to learn how to sort out relationship problems on her own. I am more than happy to give her my opinion, even when she doesn’t want it, but I also try to acknowledge all the other points of view and leave the important parts, like whether or not to consider the girl a friend up to her. I will restrict her from taking part in certain activities with a person, but I will not make some ill-conceived attempt to control her feelings for another person. That would just lead to her stubbornly hanging onto horrible relationships just to prove me wrong. Besides, I have disliked more of her playmates than I’ve liked, so if I asserted my influence too strongly she’d just grow up to be a hermit on a hill with a rifle, and dammit I already called dibs.

    Anyhow, last year this girl started middle school (and her period) and she has been a-changin’. She has new friends who have labeled my daughter as “syoopid” because she doesn’t like The Pussy Cat Dolls, doesn’t watch the new whorrific Puddy Cat Dolls reality show, and she freakishly likes showtunes “what r thos?” Recently it has degenerated further. The girl began to make prank phone calls. When my daughter called her on it (between recognizing her voice, and umm… you know, caller ID) she got pissed off. Little neighborhood miss then decided to pass around our daughter’s cell phone number to a few friends. “I didn’t call you. That was my cousin. If you don’t believe me you are a bad friend and I don’t like you anymore.”

    Ah, the joys of being an adolescent.

    Now I am truthfully beyond fucking irritated because A) cell phone minutes cost money, and she is on a very restrictive plan because we mainly got it so we could be in touch with each other, I have no interest in her wandering about with a phone attached to her head all the time and B) I HATE NOISE so the damn thing ringing over and over is pissing me the fuck off.

    My first instinct is to walk over to the girl’s house and just give her a good spanking, followed perhaps by doing something violent with her phone. I really need my daughter to decide for herself how to handle it, and hopefully to put some actual thought into it first and not just jump into something. We’ve discussed various options and possible and likely results. Now I am waiting. Of course to top it all off my daughter is feeling hurt and pissed off. This means I am stuck in the house with a moody creature.

    So, how is your weekend?

  • Random Mutterings

    Still chafing over this DST crap. It has really thrown a wrench into our lives. It shifted our morning schedule because our morning starts with an alarm clock and the clock time changed. We just work an extra hour because our evening schedule is based on the way it feels, and we don’t typically look at ending our work day until it feels late and we are feeling hungry. I don’t necessarily mind putting in an extra hour of work, we are behind on everything. The problem lies in that by the time we are ready to get dinner, our restaurant options have shrunk by 90%. I could cook, but the whole not feeling late and hungry means I haven’t started prepping already, plus since I am behind on everything, managing the grocery shopping becomes an issue too. The past two nights we drove up to the restaurants of choice to find them closed and were stuck with something else. Last night we did manage to grocery shop, so I will cook tonight. I need to set an alarm so that I notice it is getting late and start cooking on time. I think somebody is coming over dinner tonight.

    I used to hardly ever eat breakfast. I didn’t feel hungry in the morning and when I did eat in the mornings, it made me feel sick. Every once in a while I would make an effort to regularly eat breakfast because the common philosophy is that breakfast is “good for you”. Even after I stuck with it, dutifully eating a bowl of cereal or having a bagel each morning for a month, it still made me feel ill. It certainly didn’t feel very “good for me” and I’d give up on it. Then a couple of years ago the husband and the kid began having a regular breakfast routine that often involved cooking bacon. Soon I found myself attracted to the smell of bacon in the morning. I’ve now been eating breakfast regularly for about 2 years and I really do feel much better. The key for me is that mornings really have to be seriously about protein. Many traditional breakfasty things are fairly high carb (cereals, pancakes, pastries) and eating those things in the morning made me feel positively ill. It was especially problematic because I typically only ate breakfast because I was going out with other people, so not only was I have the morning carb load, but I was eating large portions too, since that is what breakfast places were serving. So now I usually have a small high protein meal in the morning and it tends to make me feel better throughout the day than I used to feel with no breakfast, so that’s one improvement in my life, and I really am pleased by any improvement.

    Most mornings I have spinach and an egg, or some egg whites and some bacon if somebody else cooks it for me. The egg whites is a new thing too. A little over a year ago we went out to breakfast and I ordered an omelette based on the ingredients. It sounded good. It arrived and was all white on the outside. I actually said “What the fuck?” I looked back at the menu and it came default as an egg white omelette. I’d never had one before. It always seemed like something people did to be healthy and when it comes to food I really prefer it to be about the food, especially if I am eating out. Still, I had ordered it, so I wasn’t going to send it back. It turned out I actually preferred it. I liked the texture better. I guess I should have beens surprised because if I get eggs cooked to order I go with sunny side up or overeasy, I don’t care for scrambled. So that led to me purchasing and using egg whites at home.

    This morning I still had some spinach left, but it was no longer in an edible condition. The fridge is running too cold right now. I keep tweaking but it isn’t helping. Without my normal spinach I was poking around trying to figure out what else to eat. I ended up making an artichoke heart, cillantro, onions and bleu cheese, egg white omelette. I really liked the combination. I’ll have to toss that into my breakfast rotation more often.

    Today I need to go buy more spinach, and eggs too.

    Maybe I will get dressed and head out of the house now. As I have mentioned before mornings are not my most productive time. So far I have only managed to do random internet time wasters and answer a couple of important meetings, made my daughter mad at me, plus have a brief talk with the writer/director of the short. This is all fine as long as I don’t give in too much to the random internet time wasters later in the day once my energy is up.

  • Joss Is Boss

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer lives on. The new comic book series, from Joss Whedon and Dark Horse Comics will pick up, with what would have been Season 8 in the story arc if they had not left TV following season 7.

    There is an interview with Joss in TV Guide, but it might have some things you would consider spoilers, depending on how much you like to just experience it as it comes.

    Here is one excerpt from the interview, which I am glad to hear.

    TVGuide.com: Does she get comic-book superheroine breast implants?
    Whedon: She really doesn’t. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never worked with a T&A artist. I’m very specific about that.

    TVGuide.com: Isn’t that the raison d’etre of lots of comics?
    Whedon: That’s part of why I stopped reading comics for a while. All the people I work with draw actual women.

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1, available at your local comic book store today.

  • My Homeschooling Experience – Part 2

    “What about homeschooling? You know it’s not just for scary religious people any more.”
    – Buffy Summers *

    I addressed a bit of the why and the how we got started homeschooling in a previous post.
    (more…)

  • People Make Me TIRED

    A couple of weeks ago I made a black & white 8 X 10 ad for somebody to use in some dumbass program they were buying an ad in.

    Last week they contacted me wanting to know if I still had a copy, and wanting me to send a PDF of it to another email address. They were purchasing an ad in a new program. Let’s not even address the fact that the first ad was personalized to the program it was being printed in.

    I asked, “You are getting another 8 x 10 ad?” (It is an usually large ad.)

    He asked, “Does it matter?”

    I tried to explain to him that it did. It turned out he didn’t KNOW what size ad he was purchasing, just that he had agreed to spend a certain amount of money, so he was going to ask and get back to me.

    He got back to me and told me that it was a 5 X 7 program and he was getting a half page ad. “Can you just reuse the old ad?”

    “No, I really can’t. I’ll make a new one.”

    Now, is the half page adspace 5 X 3.5 or is that the size of the paper, with the adspace being a bit smaller? Of course I have to wait to get the answer to that because he doesn’t know.

    Today I get email that says:

    they said to make it 5 x 3.5 and they will modify the size as needed.
    they may enlarge the size to 8x 10 because kinko’s may do their
    printing for free.

    That, my friends, is why when you see ads in programs for dumbass little events they always look like total shit and the logos are completely stretched and distorted.

    I HATE that, so I will email them a 5 X 3.5 design and an 8 X 5 design. I know it doesn’t matter, because they will no doubt use the wrong one for whatever fricken size they end up with. As long as nobody ever ever ever shows me the finished product, hopefully my head will not explode.

    ETA: To be clear, yes I mind a little that he doesn’t just get the fact that an 8 X 10 ad can’t be used as a 5 X 3.5 ad, just because it means I have to work a bit to keep THAT tone out of my voice when I answer. I accept the fact that if most people feel like they “have somebody” who understands “that stuff” they call before they think. Also, you go to some portrait studio to have photos taken and they show you the proof and give you check boxes to selects photos in a variety of sizes. It is presented as if all these sizes will be the exact same visually, but in a different size. With photos they typically handle the aspect ratio problem by cropping and a lot of people won’t notice the difference. With print ads they usually distort to handle aspect ratio differences, the look of which drives me completely crazy. Or they maintain the aspect ratio and shrink to fit and create useless whitespace while a client is paying for a certain amount of advertising space.

    What really pisses me off are the people on the other end. I don’t care if they are just volunteering to help some organization raise money and this isn’t their real job. If they are asking people to give them money in order to print and distribute an ad, they should make an effort to give those purchases a chance of having the best had possible. They should have an instruction sheet detailing out everything (preferred format, resolution, various ad sizes, type of color, b&w or grayscale, bleed, etc). If the purchasers are too stupid to follow the instructions that is one thing, but don’t just plan to do a half-assed job from the get go and then have the nerve to have people pay their hard earned money for your shitty nonchalant services.

    For the people selling the ads and giving the instructions to say it should be made as a 5 X 3.5 and they will just resize it if they change to an 8 x 10 sheet (and notice they plan to resize it up, not down which will increase the quality issues) just irritates the crap out of me.

  • See What’s Become of Me

    I don’t really understand the way so many people seem so hung up on time.

    I completely understand it as a tool to coordinate. It would be much more difficult to meet somebody for lunch if we had no common reference point for when.

    I also grasp it to measure the passing of it. It is good to know how long something took to accomplish.

    I just don’t understand the random value attached to certain times of the day.

    Daylight Savings Time, for instance, to me is a big dumb piece of crap. People tell me how happy they are because “It stays light later.” What does that mean? The sun isn’t staying up an extra hour all of a sudden. It isn’t like the whole world changes, heck it isn’t even as if the whole country changes. Change the times at which things open and close, don’t change the time designation.

    I also hate “banker’s hours”. We live as part of a global economy and it is dumb that we don’t have a 24 hour society. It would make more sense to me if we worked on shifted schedules and all service industries also worked on shifted schedules so that people could find a place that was open and take care of needed errands no matter what time they worked, without taking time off. For some reason the collective mind thinks we are supposed to wake up “early” and go to bed at a “decent hour” and that no good can come of being out and about at the wrong times. Our population would not be putting as much of a drain on space an resources if we were active around the clock. Traffic would be less of a problem. Companies wouldn’t need to build or acquire buildings as much or often in order to increase their total number of employees. Everybody would be safer because there would always be activity instead of those quiet times when they claim only criminals operate.

    I pay my local and state taxes, but I cannot use the public parks most of the time I would actually want to, because they are “Closed at dusk” and don’t open again until morning. They close them because they claim it discourages crime and use of the parks for illegal activities, but making it common for law abiding citizens to use the park at all times would also do that.

    The morally superior attitude of some so-called morning people, also baffles me. So what if the early bird gets the worm? I am not a bird. I don’t eat worms, and owls are not starving to death either. Back in college we were usually up until 4 AM, and it was not at all unusual to still be up working on something at 6 or 7 AM. If we didn’t have an early class, that might lead us to still be asleep at 10 AM. However if the husband’s mother happened to call at 10 AM and find us still home and in bed, she never apologized for waking us. To her, it was like she had caught us being naughty and lazy. She had been up since 6 AM and had four productive hours of the day behind her, so she found us lacking. Of course, she had gone to bed at 10 PM. If we had called her and woken her up at 2 AM , she would have been pissed off.

    I used to consider myself a night owl, but I am no longer convinced it is that simple. Yes, I do tend to prefer the night for reasons such as, less sun, less crowds, less heat, and less distractions. The thing that made me think I was night owl, was because I typically had an extra boost of energy at night, and felt motivated and alert. I attributed this to me being a night person.

    Then I went through a stretch of time when I lived alone and had no outside obligations, and I just did whatever I wanted sleep-wise most days. What tended to happen was I would wake up, but still feel rather fuzzy and unmotivated. I’d fumble about doing mundane tasks and laze about. Eventually I’d feel semi functional and I would start to assess the things I was planning to do for the day, look through things, maybe get in touch with people I needed to be in touch with to get things done. After 2-3 hours I would eat something and then get going. I would spend 8 or 9 hours doing whatever it was I needed to do. By then I had been up for 10-12 hours. Around then I would feel very energized and alert. This was when I was most likely to get involved in a new project, get a burst of energy to finish a project. I was at my most alert and productive and also as the most receptive to social interaction as long as it didn’t interfere with something I was driven to work on. This would last for 6 hours and then it would start to fade away. I still felt amped, but no longer alert. If I was driven to finish something I would keep working, if I had no time pressure I might start reading a book or something else to help me wind down. Assuming no pressure to stay up and finish something, I would go to sleep about 20-21 hours after I woke up, and then sleep for around 5 hours.

    20 or 21 plus 5 does not equal 24, so I would not get up at the same time everyday. Instead I would chase myself around the clock. So some days I would be getting up in the morning, other days I was getting up at night. However my most alert time was typically after I had been up for about 10 hours, whether that was at night or in the morning. While I still liked running errands at night because of the things I mentioned about liking nighttime before, it became apparent that it wasn’t really that I “wasn’t a morning person” it was that I didn’t wake up alert and ready to start the day. Sleeping more did not help. Waking with an alarm versus waking on my own didn’t help. What helped was simply being awake for a while and having a chance to get moving.

    I see other people who hop out of bed and are totally ready to go. Most of them don’t get that burst of energy later in the day though. They are alert early and then have a longer slower decline cycle.

    Of course for most of my life there are external forces asking me to get up in the morning, at about the same time each day. This typically leaves me never getting enough sleep. I want to be up for 21 hours, but I want to sleep for (now that I’ve gotten older) around 6 hours. I either have to force myself to wind down while I still feel like I could really accomplish things allowing me to get the amount of sleep I’d like, or I can stay up until I feel like sleeping and then only get a few hours of sleep. I usually alternate between these two. If I do the not enough sleep option for too many days in a row I can induce insomnia. That is never good. I once had insomnia for a little over a year, and boy was I in a horrible mood.

    So, I try not to be too annoyed by the people who wake up all energized and then are blobs by the time I am ready rock, as long as they don’t treat me like I have a character flaw because I am not constantly trying to eat worms.

    I am ALWAYS annoyed by anything to do with DST. Spring ahead. Fall back. Fuck off.