jcole’s weblog

I noticed yesterday that ServerBeach billed me. I initially thought that was a little odd, since I remember I used to be billed around the 5^th of the month, which was a much more convenient time to be billed $149 for me.

I checked into things and noticed that the billing date has been drifting backwards since I opened the account. Here are the billing dates for my account since I opened it: 2005-02-06, 2005-03-06, 2005-04-05, 2005-05-05, 2005-06-04, 2005-07-04, 2005-08-03, 2005-09-02, 2005-10-02, 2005-11-01, 2005-12-01, 2005-12-31, 2005-01-30. Yep, they’ve been billing me every 30 days.

It seems like that fact is evident on the bill, in the form of this line:

Sub-Total (30 Day Charges) $149.00

I opened a support ticket asking about it, and they confirmed and closed my ticket with this:

The ServerBeach billing cycle is a 30 day cycle instead of a monthly cycle. Due to the 30 day billing cycle, your payment date will vary by a day or so every month. We do not have monthly billing at this time.

Come on ServerBeach, join the rest of the world… hire a competent programmer to figure out how to bill monthly, and get that added. I love ServerBeach for every other reason, but this fact I absolutely hate. Ugh.

Not quite “heard over the cubicle wall”, but quite a hilarious series of emails—from the same guy—on Yahoo!’s internal stuff-for-sale email list:

16:09 – “FREE: Boxes” – “I have a ton (not literally) of boxes…”
17:17 – “REMOVED! — FREE: Boxes” — “I’m sorry this has been removed because my dog just peed on the boxes! I can’t believe it…”
17:40 – “FREE: Chocolate Lab Mix” – “She is a beautiful 2 year old chocolate labrador mix. She can catch frisbees in the Air. She is extremely gentle with children and is very very good with other animals…”

I’ll leave it up to the reader to determine why the dog is no longer wanted.

For the past month or so, Safeway has been giving out these “scratch and win” cards. We have scratched maybe 10 of them so far, but haven’t won anything, but I’ve been duly checking what we would have won. It’s always been sandwiches and soups. Why are they so stingy with the sandwiches?! You’d think they would let you win once in a while so as to not discourage you…

Today, I was shown amazingly egregious behaviour by and flipped off by a light rail conductor during my commute. I complained to VTA. Rather than rewriting the story again, here’s my complaint:

• Date of Event: January 20, 2006
• Time of Event: 10:50am
• Mode of Transportation: Light Rail
• Route: #902
• Vehicle: #950A
• Direction: North
• Nearest Major Cross Street: Mathilda & Java

This complaint is regarding the horrible behaviour displayed by a light rail conductor.

I commute from San Jose to Yahoo! in Sunnyvale almost every day on light rail, from Fruitdale to Borregas station in the morning and back in the evening. I love the service and have never had any major problems at all. Bravo!

However, this morning, I boarded the northbound Mountain View train at Civic Center at about 10:19am. Upon departing the stop before mine, Crossman, I promptly pushed the stop request strip, and confirmed that it registered. It sounded the chirp, and the screen displayed “STOP REQUEST”. There were two others on board the train who prepared to get off as well.

The train did not stop at Borregas station, and continued on without slowing. After it was clear that we were not stopping at Borregas, and no announcement was made, I pushed the intercom call button.

The conductor answered after a moment with “Is there an emergency, or are you disabled?”, already displaying an attitude. I responded “You did not stop at Borregas station, and there was a stop request”. He promptly hung up on me, and made a train-wide announcement “Would the parents of the small child please keep him from pressing the red button unless it is an emergency”. There were many witnesses around the intercom that I was using that were equally aghast at his behaviour.

The train stopped at Lockheed Martin station, where I got off. I walked to the front of the train near the conductor’s window and flipped him off … and he responded in kind by doing the same.

I understand that stops might occasionally be missed, and it would be inconvenient, but acceptable as long as it’s infrequent. However, I would have expected the conductor to make an immediate train-wide apology, or at least an apology after a customer called him on the intercom. I completely did not expect such a customer-unfriendly, and frankly utterly rude, attitude.

As I said above, I love VTA and I love light rail, but this is completely unacceptable. Thanks for your attention in this matter and prompt discipline of this conductor. Please follow up with me as soon as possible.

I hope they fire his ass. It’s not like they’re paid to stop when I push the button. Amazing customer-minded attitude.

Today, on Yahoo Messenger, a coworker was relating the story of a mysterious candy…

Guy: anyway he will try to sell you on the scientific merits of eating this particular candy
Guy: don’t believe him, it’s all lies
Guy: just a warning.
Me: haha
Me: not very good eh?
Guy: First off, they are incredibly chalky.
Guy: Second, they don’t taste anything like the advertised flavor (peach cobbler, key lime pie, etc.)
Guy: Third, the primary ingredient (mannitol) is a laxative.
Guy: also used to cut heroin, but that’s neither here nor there.
Me: haha
Guy: anyway they are some seriously gross and wrong candy.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Dear crackhead: Thanks. Yes, I really appreciated my first words of the morning to be “motherfucker!”, I needed that. So, thanks for doing a few hundred dollars in damage to my Jeep in order to steal $20 worth of socket sets. I hope you got a few bucks from the pawn shop for those.

Oh, and by the way: The door was unlocked. And uh, that window unzips from the outside. Stupid fucker.

Farris Hassan, a Florida 16 year old has done something meaningful. He visited war-torn Iraq, on his own, without telling his parents. And what does he get for it? A lot of flak and harsh feelings.

The news is reporting it with a strong emphasis on how stupid he is, and how he could’ve been killed, and how he will get in a lot of trouble with his parents. My perspective is a lot different.

I commend him for having the guts to do it. No, it wasn’t stupid. He wanted to see how it was first-hand, with no media filter. And he did it. Yes, he’s only sixteen. So what? The kid has a bright future, as far as I’m concerned. If you can figure out how to get to Iraq via Kuwait and Lebanon, and you have the guts to actually do it, at only 16, you have my support.

Update: Rich Tatum also blogged about this, a bit more eloquently, and I completely agree with him. Be sure to read the essay Farris wrote, at the Wikipedia link above.

When you try to dial a number in area code 212 at Yahoo!, it’s really easy to end up trying to call the cops.

A number like “9 1 212…” is easily misdialed as “911…” by missing the first 2. Of course, they intercept “911″ calls even though they are not fully qualified. (You’d have to dial 9911 to get the real 911, although I think they intercept that here, too.)

So it goes like this:

Jeremy dials 9 1 212 but misses the first two, notices, and hangs up to try again.
Phone rings.
Mission Control: Mission Control, 911 was dialed from this phone.
Jeremy: Ooops, I was trying to call 9 1 212 …

They must get that a few times a day…