Aimless Wandering

I know when I was growing up I used to play the game where you played your parents against each other - you know the scenario you want something so you ask mom and mom says no.  Since that’s not the answer you want you go ask dad in the hopes that he says yes….  While The Boy hasn’t started to really work that game, I’m sure it’s coming and while it will irritate me, in the grand scheme of things I’m ok with it.  It’s normal for kids as they’re growing up to do such things…

On the other hand, when you’re in your mid to late 30’s and trying such things on the job that game isn’t acceptable.  It’s childish and downright unprofessional, and yesterday somebody tried it with me and my staff.

We had a moron very novice computer user come to our Introduction to Excel class Wednesday - and by very novice I mean barely able to tell the difference between a keyboard and a mouse.  She told the class instructors and I that she really was looking for a way to allow users of her office to sign in on a computer and then use the information they provide when signing in to auto populate forms.  She wanted a way to get reports of how many folks used her office a day, and she wanted to be able to register students and track their progress through their coursework.  So we explained to her that what she really needed was a database and Access was the way to go.  We advised her to attend our Access classes so that she could gain a good working knowledge of the program, but while Access could easily do what she needed setting it up was rather complex and really would require the skills of an experienced database programmer - which we have on campus and available to her free of charge.

So she gets excited by the prospects and goes off on her way.

Now if you don’t know Access is a really powerful program - you could take a 40 hour class in the program and just start to scratch the surface of it’s capabilities.  Our Intro to Access class is 8 hours and really talks about the terms used in the application and builds a simple single table database and builds a form with the wizard.  The Intermediate class is also just 8 hours and covers editing forms, simple reports, and starts to explore relational databases.  By the time you complete the Intermediate class you know enough to start building simple but useful databases composed of just two tables.  However, we don’t go over things like building queries, custom forms, Visual Basic scripting and the like.  Heck some of that isn’t even in our Advanced Class.

24 hours pass and our novice user sends an e-mail to myself and the two instructors telling us that she was really excited to be taking on designing this database - and couldn’t wait to take our Intermediate Access class so she could start on her way.  The instructor again advises her that the scope of this project is very complex and really should be done by one of our in-house database programmers who were hired for just these types of jobs-

Apparently she didn’t like that response because she replied to that e-mail (and included her boss and my boss for some reason)  that maybe we should check with the other instructor first to find out what he thinks.  Never mind that the other instructor is also the least experienced and most junior member of my staff…  and that was when I snapped.

I sent her a response (and included my boss and her boss) telling her that everything she wanted to do with this project was well within the capabilities of Access…  However I’ve been teaching Access for several years and been using Access for several more years and what she’s looking to get out of this database is beyond my abilities.  With that in mind, I felt that the advice she was first given by us two days ago and again by the first instructor this morning was the best possible option.  In order for this to be done right she really needs to speak with the database programmers…

She responded only to me asking for the phone number of the database folks…

Ah yes the joys of manning our classrooms. We had a visitor yesterday in one of our classrooms looking to make a poster. I prepped him, he could make his poster on the monochrome printer so his posters would only be one color. No problem he says and starts printing his posters… Life was good.

Until he looks around the room and spots our color posters.

“How do I make this printer print my posters in color like those?” he asks me.

“Um, you can’t, that’s a MONOCHROME printer. It only does ONE color I respond.

 … because if you ask me again maybe the printer will do something different.

So I’m watching the coverage of the Florida primaries this morning and the anchor on the unnamed cable news channel I’m watching actually asked some senior member of one of the campaigns:

So what do you think your chances are on Super Tuesday?

As if the campaign member was going to say anything other than we’re going to win it all and our candidate is going to be the next President….

So like many site owners I like to go through my webstats and see just what it going on at the sites that I run. I get intrigued by some of the incoming links and like to take a look at them periodically. I had been seeing the occasional spam site linking over, but today I found something worse… A malware site linking over – and the site attempted to stick a Trojan on my system, and I was on my Windows machine. Since IE is NOT the default browser, my browser and my OS are fully updated and so is my AV software. As a result they failed as my AV software blocked the attempt, but still it’s something to be wary of…

So you put on your resume that you’re an experienced web designer.  You even own a music sales website that you claim to have designed.

In preparation for the work that you were supposed to be doing on our website you were told at least 5 times by several people not to work on the live version of the site.  You were told repeatedly that a development server existed for you to design your pages on and test them out before you implemented your changes on the live site.

So off you went to go work on updating and redesigning the website.  Not surprisingly, after looking at the underlying code on the page you discovered that the design is fairly amateurish at best and decided to work to update the templates used.

On the plus side, you created a CSS template to standardize the design and layout of our webpages…

What you didn’t do - was create that template on the development server!  Knowing that our webpages as originally designed DIDN’T conform to any real design standard, you should have realized that the pages were going to act somewhat unpredictably when you applied that CSS template to them.  That happens to be exactly why we told you to work on the friggin development server!!!!

Even worse was that you didn’t even bother to go through the site to see what happened after you had applied the CSS template.  So you had no idea that the template had screwed up several pages.

Then you ran in to a problem as you were working on a page so you contacted the server administrator for help.  When the server administrator discovered that you were doing development work on a production server  he told you to stop - your response was to argue with him that you were just creating CSS sheets and editing HTML and not writing scripts!

Then when OUR boss confronted you - you got rude and actually yelled at him!  YOU were wrong.  YOU ignored what you were told, YOU were the one who broke the pages.

When you were asked why you deliberately ignored what you were told you came up with ridiculous excuses.   First you told us you didn’t have access to the correct network - you were reminded that wasn’t true.  Then you told us that you couldn’t work on the laptop you were issued because the display was too small and you couldn’t read it.  Then we reminded you that you could use one of the monitors that was at the desk you were working at…

Then you tell us that you don’t understand what the development server would do because you don’t understand how that would help you - even though you can’t remember what the page looked like before you screwed it up!  Then you gave me a blank look when I explained that if you screwed up the page on the development server, what was on the public server would be untouched - and you could compare the two SIDE BY SIDE AND SEE WHAT THE CHANGES WERE!

The bottom line though.  This is just one more reason why I have absolutely NO CONFIDENCE in your abilities - real or claimed on your resume - and if I had any control over the situation, I’d fire your ass already…

So I was paying bills last month and in perusing our credit card bill from a nameless three lettered credit card providing company I discovered that they had decided to raise our interest rate - A LOT.

This card more than any other that we have does nothing for us. There’s no benefit to having it other than that it exists… So I decide to dig into our savings and pay it off and close it out that way we don’t have to pay them a crazy high interest rate for no reason. Fine right?

Except that the very day after I discover that they jacked up my interest rate I get a letter from nameless three letter credit card providing company stating: “Congratulations! Due to your stellar credit history we’re raising your credit limit by $8k!” Come again? First you raise my interest rate a lot, like 5% a lot, then you DOUBLE my credit limit?!?! WTF!

But that’s not all… Oh no, first I pay off the balance on the card and wait for the payment to clear. Then I call them up to close the account. After telling rep #1 twice to close the account I’m transferred to another representative; this one in the recovery department or whatever the heck they call it. Rep #2 wasn’t going to take no for an answer - heck he didn’t want to take “CLOSE MY ACCOUNT” for an answer either. He offered low balance transfers, super low teaser rates, and even was willing to lower my interest rate by 6%, he might have even said that I was making his puppy sad, and that by closing my account little orphans in East Kersplakistan were going to starve….

After telling rep #2 to “CLOSE MY ACCOUNT” for the 10th time, I decided to add the extra prod: “Look pal, just quit wasting both of our time with these games, abandon your script because there’s nothing you are going to offer me that isn’t going to make we tell you anything other than CLOSE MY ACCOUNT.” So finally we get the account closed.

End of story right… not really…

Yesterday I got the confirmation letter from nameless three letter credit card providing company that they had indeed closed my account. Today I got a letter from nameless three letter credit card providing company telling me that they have RAISED THE CASH ADVANCE LIMIT ON MY ACCOUNT!!!! Oh and here’s some CHECKS so you can get cash and pay it off plus 23% interest on that cash too!

Not that I was going to get rid of it - but I think I’m going to want to make sure I keep that letter confirming that the account has been closed ….

Ok, I understand that toy and electronics manufacturers have a bit a conundrum.  They want to make their products as attractive and compelling as possible while on the store shelf, while at the same time making them difficult to shoplift.

It’s that desire which has led to the vast wealth of toys encased in plastic with the exception of a button or two to allow children and parents alike to sample some of the functionality of the toy prior to purchase.

I’m starting to be amazed at just what manufacturers will do to lock their products in to place.

Take for example the remote control dump truck that one of The Boy’s friends gave him for his birthday.  The truck was encased in a veritable cocoon of plastic and cardboard that allowed for the buttons on the remote control to be pressed and for parts of the truck to move about in the box.  Great right?

So then you start to undo the origami like folding of the box to remove the truck, fold after fold until the bottom piece of cardboard that the truck is secured to is exposed.  Now it would seem reasonable to me for the truck and controller to be held in place with some plastic glued to cardboard base and maybe a twist tie or two for extra re-inforcement.

But this truck, the plastic shell surrounding the truck and controller was glued to the cardboard, then there were not two, but FOUR twist ties wrapped around the axel holding the truck to the cardboard.  The controller had it’s own two twist ties securing it to the cardboard, these twist ties went through the controller and to remove them needed to be fished out of the controller.

Oh but that wasn’t all.  The truck was also screwed in to the bottom of the box, but just unscrewing the brace plate and removing from the cardboard wasn’t enough.  Oh, no but the bracket on the truck that the brace plate screws in to also needed to be removed.  If it wasn’t the back wheels sat too far up and the truck wouldn’t go anywhere.

Why does this packaging need to be this complicated?   I could understand the twist ties and plastic to secure the truck in the packaging, by why the plate to screw it in to the box?  Not just that, but also the special bracket on the bottom of the truck that needs to be unscrewed too before the truck could be used?

Really I understand the need to showcase the product yet still make it difficult to steal-  But come on!

I think it’s really cool that you consider me one of the cool kids that you want as part of your online social circle, really I do. However, please know just what it is that you’re inviting me to before you send the invite.

I’m talking in particular about Tagged. If you have joined it or thought about joining it, please take a good look at it first…

Let’s see, first there are the pushy invites the system generates –

You’ve got to love the little guilt trip that they try to send you on “Please respond or soandso may think you said no”

But do you know just what Tagged actually is? Before you provided Tagged with my address did you take 30 seconds to read what they do?

From the “About” page on the site: “Tagged.com is a premier social networking destination and an ideal place for advertisers to reach their target audience.” In other words, in the guise of “social networking” we find pawns to sign up for our “service” who then go and provide us with the e-mail addresses of their friends so that we can spam them and send them all kinds of garbage.

Heck, Tagged even spells it out further: “Tagged is experiencing dramatic growth Advertisers love Tagged because they get clear, uncomplicated access to our audience”

Now, I know I’m not very Web 2.0ish, I don’t have a MySpace, Facebook, or even a Flickr account. That being said, I thought that the purpose of all of the social networking sites was to help people connect with each other NOT to give advertisers an even easier conduit for spamming people.

So do you know what really burns my butt?   Ok, other than a flame about three feet high…

The weekly statistics that I have to submit to my boss - statistics that I’m pretty sure nobody reads, but heaven help us if we don’t get them submitted on time.  Now I don’t mind doing the weekly report, it’s not hard and I have a pretty good system going.  When I get the data I need, I can complete the report in about 30 minutes - and then claim that it took me at least 90 minutes to finish…

The trouble is that I have to rely on other folks to get me the data I need in order to complete the report, and if they forget to pull their data or just generally slack off then I can’t submit the statistics on time and I get chewed out by my boss because the numbers are supremely important to him.

So knowing that the statistics are due today, that I had yet to receive the data I needed, that I couldn’t begin to work on the report for the week - my boss decides to let the person who needs to pull the data I require go home early…

Ummm yeah thanks!

So we got notice last week that we are now under mandatory water restrictions.  The local water authority has declared that all users must reduce their water consumption by 15%.

Ok.

The problem is they don’t say how.  They offer several ways you can conserve water - all of which are ways that have always been promoted as methods to conserve water.

Everywhere I’ve been that has enacted water restrictions has published specific restrictions, whether it’s restrictions on watering landscaping to prohibitions on washing cars and other outdoor water uses.  Not here, all that we’ve been told is to reduce by 15%.

I’ve got to wonder if such an ambiguous restriction is actually effective.  We are in an extremely eco-friendly area, but if folks are given any real guidance for conservation will they actually conserve?