Category Archives: Give me a break!

Stuff that makes me just throw up my hands in frustration.

ADT Once More

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Yep, ADT missed another appointment.   At least they called before hand.   That doesn’t mitigate the fact that I took off early from work again.

I don’t know why I expect anything better from ADT … they’ve established a clear pattern.

I’ve rescheduled once again … I’m seriously thinking of calling ADT tomorrow, speaking to a supervisor, and informing them that … if they miss this next appointment … I’ll be invoicing THEM for my time (which, I suspect, is worth a lot more than their’s is).

It absolutely boggles my mind that service providers have no compunction about telling customers to be be home for a 4 hour span of time … and then not showing up.

I can’t wait till 2008

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WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush has commuted the prison term of former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who faced 30 months in prison after his March conviction on federal charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators.

CNN – Bush commutes Libby’s prison sentence

Poor attempts at rhyme aside … this is absolutely ridiculous … how the hell can Bush justify this?

Based on recent actions … it’s clear to me that the executive branch of our government considers themselves above the law.

Thanks for the notice

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camera_1.jpgA few months ago the Village of Hoffman Estates sent us a letter informing us that they would be reconstructing our street.Last week, Ginny and I went out of town … we left on Wednesday (June 13th) evening and got back yesterday (the 17th) . As we drove home from the airport, we noticed that our street had the first layer of pavement scrapped off. I figured they had started the reconstruction.

As I was going though the mail that Pat (our pet sitter) had brought in, we found a letter from the village indicating that the reconstruction of our street was going to start on the 15th. I figure that the letter had been delivered on Wednesday … which means they were giving us a whole two days notice before commencing the reconstruction. Not a whole lot of notice.

So, for the next 4 to 6 weeks, we won’t have the use of our driveway … and have to park on the streets near our house. For me that isn’t a major deal, as I usually get home before most people … I’ll be able to find a good parking spot. For Ginny, however, it will be a pain … because she doesn’t get home till much later … she’ll have more of a problem finding a reasonable spot.

For what it’s worth … the image above is actually a live capture from my webcam.

ADT Does it Again

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I blew the entire morning waiting for an ADT contractor to come out and replace the wireless backup for our alarm system.

Seems that the cellular provider that ADT uses for the wireless backup is dropping support for analog devices. As a result, anyone who has an analog wireless backup for their alarm system needs to get the system upgraded to digital.

About 3 weeks ago I scheduled the upgrade for today between 8am and 12 noon. I made sure not to schedule anything for that day.

This morning I wake up early (earlier than my normal saturday roust, anyways) and get ready (emptied out the pantry where the transmitter is) and waited … and waited … and waited some more.

About 20 minutes after noon I called ADT to see what the problem was. I got transfered to a supervisor who was trying to get a hold of the contractor. She said she would call me back as soon as she found out what was going on.

About 15 minutes later she did call back (which was kind of shocking in itself) and informed me that the contractor had been overbooked for the upgrades … and wouldn’t be able to get to our house that day. We would have to reschedule. Problem is, the next available appointment wasn’t until mid-September.

She did offer a $20 discount on the upgrade cost … which I took. I also explained that this is the 2nd time that ADT had missed an appointment. She countered that the last time it was indeed ADT that had missed the appointment but this time it was a contractor. Obviously, from my perspective, there’s no difference.

Due to scheduling problems, the wireless transmitter won’t get upgraded until early October.

I’m getting a little annoyed at ADT.

Common Courtesy

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0223708.jpgIs it too much to ask that service providers CALL if they are going to be late for a scheduled appointment?

I’ve been waiting at home for a HVAC repair person to come out to fix our humidifer. He was supposed to be here between 9am and 2pm. It’s now 10 minutes after 2pm.

I called the main office and was informed that they were running behind schedule. They had some No Heat emergency calls that had priority.

Obviously I don’t mind if they have emergency calls that have to be taken care of first … but, in my opinion, it should be standard operating procedure that they call me to say they are running behind schedule. Maybe even give me the option to reschedule (although I wouldn’t have opted for that this time).

When my Covad DSL went out, they the repair tech called to tell me that he was 10 minutes behind schedule … and he called more than an hour before he was due.

I’ve also had service techs from other companies arrive BEFORE they were scheduled … stick around a few minutes, leave a note that they were here and I wasn’t, then leave. I, of course, arrived at home right on time to find their note.

Of course, the worst was ADT … when we had our windows replaced they were supposed to come out and remove all the sensors from the existing windows. They never showed up and never called. And I took time off of work to be here when they were scheduled to arrive.

Maybe I should start sending invoices to service providers that don’t meet their promised time window and don’t even try to notify. What do you think? $25 / hour? Maybe $50 / hour on weekdays where I have to take time off of work.

[tags]service, repair, appointments, schedule[/tags]

Taxes and Mortgages

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Gotta love the government.

I did a check on the Cook County Treasurer’s Office website to find out if there was any overpayment of property taxes for our house.

Well, according to their web site, there was … and not a small amount. Of course, in order to get a refund I have to prove there was an overpayment. They obviously think I payed too much, but they won’t give me the refund unless I provide evidence that I actually over-payed.

So I go through some of my records … and can’t find any evidence of an overpayment. Maybe the mortgage company has some information on that?

I CitiMortgage’s web site to send an email … but the question form won’t accept my message because it thinks I’ve entered illegal characters … like a question mark. Isn’t a question mark a normal part of a question? It also won’t accept special characters such as !&;*)(%, etc. Seems like a pretty silly restriction to me. I know that a properly written web app can handle those characters. And, for what it’s worth, I didn’t have any illegal characters in the message.

Oh well, I’ll have to call them on Monday.

[tags]taxes, mortgage, web forms, cook county[/tags]

Reading and Understanding

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Clearly, reading and understanding is on the decline.

Three times since the article in IBM Systems magazine about me was published, people have walked up to me and congratulated me on having my article published.

As much as I appreciate the comments … I really wish they would READ the article … so they would know that the article is not BY me … it’s ABOUT me.

[tags]reading, understanding[/tags]

Painful

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This is just way TOO painful …

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) explained why he voted against the amendment and gave an amazing primer on how the internet works.

There’s one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn’t going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people […]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.

[…]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.

It’s not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

– Your Own Personal Internet

And this guy is a senator?

Watch Links

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No, I’m not saying pay attention to hyperlinks … I’m referring to the links in a watchband. 🙂

I recently purchased a new watch from Amazon.com … it is a Casio Men’s G-Shock Atomic Solar Watch.

The watch arrived last Friday without incident … but the watchband, which is metal and has removable links, was far too big. No big deal, all I had to do is remove some of the links to make it the right size.

Problem is, there’s no instructions on how to remove the links… and it’s not immediately obvious how you do it. Clearly you have to slide the pin down (I’ll add a picture of the link later) to get it out, but without a really tiny screwdriver, it’s impossible.

I checked the Casio website to see if I could find anything … but there is nothing but a PDF of the watches manual available.

I find their support number and give it a call … the guy I talked to indicated that they could email me the information on how to remove links. I say great … I’ll keep an eye on my inbox. He replies that it probably won’t be until Monday that the email is sent … because the person who sends email is out of the office today.

<sound of a jaw dropping>

I reply (with an appropriate level of incredulity): “What? You can’t send the email? Doesn’t your system just have the ability to send email directly?” I’m informed, that their system does not have that ability … and the only person with email access won’t be back until Monday.

Ok, I say, but I really think you guys should move into the 20th century.

After I hang up, and play with the watch a bit more, I’m able to figure out how to get the links out … and the watch is comfortably on my wrist right now.

To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever had a situation where a technologically oriented company (as I’m assuming Casio is) wasn’t able to send email on demand. IBM, Dell, Compaq, even Yakima, have all been able to send me information immediately via email.

Update: Tuesday, 6/6/06 (auspisius date, to say the least).

Casio finally sent me the instructions … they sent a file named “RESIZING” … and informed me that I could open it with Adobe Acrobat or any Word Processing program. Of course without a file extension, it will be hard to open the file with any program.

[tags]Time, Watches, Casio, Watchband[/tags]