Category Archives: Rant - Page 6

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Posted by on November 4, 2014 No comments

I absolutely despise this season.  I’m not talking about the holiday season, I’m talking about politics season.  This is the time of year where everyone that has an opinion has an uncontrollable urge to convince you that they are right about something and you should think the same way.  It’s like a Caribbean straw market.

And of course, nothing is off the table when it comes to pitching your case.  At a public event a couple weeks ago, a crotchety old woman came up to me to explain why I needed to be opposed to a public transit initiative.  “It’s going to go from City A to City B.  What’s in City B?  Nothing.  There’s no reason to go to City B.  It’s stupid.”  Well, that’s a convincing argument.  Especially for people who live in City B.  Since I didn’t live in that county, I couldn’t vote on it anyway.

But yesterday, I got a spam political email for a public transit referendum in my own county.  What is it with the hatred of public transit?  There’s a bunch of selfish fucks that think if it’s not for them, they’ll fight it to the bitter end.  But before I rant on that too much, this is the point of contention for that email.

The email was delivered to an email address used exclusively for paying my electric bill.  I’ve mentioned before that I’ve started using a single email per website, so I can track how my addresses are misused.  So I responded and asked how he was able to acquire an email address that is used for a single purpose.  Did my electric company sell my email address?

I was surprised I got a response and more surprised by what he said:

No, they did not.

Beyond that, I will say nothing other than what I do is in full compliance with the law.

I chose not to engage him any further.  It is clear that the best criminals are the ones that use the law to their advantage.

Knowing that my email was not sold tipped me off as to how the address was collected.  Somewhere in the electric company’s website (couldn’t find it on a quick search), there is a notice that says that communications with a government agency – which my electric company is – are public record.  Somehow, somewhere, there is a way to request these communications, which would include email addresses.  It’s legal, for sure; it’s also immoral, for sure.

And that pretty much sums up this season.  It’s a bunch of fuckasses doing anything they can to manipulate you and get done what they want done for their own personal gain.  It’s all selfishness.  Two generations before mine – the “greatest generation” – knew that by creating infrastructure for everyone, everyone benefits.  The current in-power generation, throughout their entire life, has created an a la carte existence, where you pay only for whatever you want.  More importantly, you don’t pay for anything that you don’t want.

There is no sense of community anymore.  There is no sense of making the world a better place.  There is no sense of altruism.  The selfish pricks keep screaming their heads off about taxes and how “I’m just looking out for my children’s future!”  Well, how about you do some looking out for other children’s future? 

Food Bitching, With A Twist

Posted by on June 20, 2014 No comments

Here we go again.  Another restaurant on my blacklist, which is a shame because I’ve been very tolerant of them in the past.  But this incident had a a new, unexpected element to it.

I arrive and wait for attention.  This is typical.  I have no idea why this restaurant doesn’t have a host.  Finally, a man notices me and tells me I can have a seat anywhere.  And I do.

He brings me bread and a glass of water and says the waitress will be by soon.  Huh.  I guess they did get a host.  Good for them.  A lady comes out and takes my order.  Coke, salad, and an entrée.  Nothing fancy.

After a while, the host comes back out and asks if I need anything.  I just placed my order and I have bread and water, so, no.  I’m fine.  Good, attentive host.

Another party comes in and sits in the booth in front of me.  The waitress is apparently good friends with them, since they texted each other before arrival.  When the waitress eventually comes back around to take their order, she sits in the booth with them, chats with them for an extended time, and in-between, takes their order.  I’m thinking, “Where’s my coke?” 

Waitress goes away, checks on another table, then brings the neighboring party’s salads out.  Um, where’s my salad?  She goes away, comes out and clears a table, checks on another table and refreshes their drinks.  At this point, my water is empty and I’m being completely ignored, even when she looks right at me.  As I sit and stew, I decide:  It’s on.

At last, the waitress brings out my entrée.  I say thank you, then turn on the asshole mode.  “Now, may I have my Coke, my salad, and a refill of my water.  Please.”  She is stunned for a moment and says the other guy is my waiter.  What?  I thought he was the host.  She took my order.  She brought my food out.  I thought she was my waitress.  I tell her such.  Nope, they had switched.  She said that she got the Coke and salad ready, but he just left them there.

Wait.  She just admitted that saw my drink and salad sit there in back and did nothing about it?  She says the guy is new and she doesn’t think he’s going to work out.  Yeah, I never saw him again after he asked me if I needed anything, but I didn’t think he was a waiter.  In hindsight, why wasn’t he bussing the tables?  Hmmm.

Anyway, she apologizes and says she will get my Coke and take the salad off the bill and talk to her manager.  I’m semi-sympathizing with her at this point because of the misunderstanding that (at the time) I didn’t realize was more her fault than anything.  But then, a challenger appears!

The guy in the booth in front of me half turns around and says, “This is my first night here, and I’ll be your waiter.”  Remember, this guy is close friends with the waitress.  Obviously he’s been there plenty.  I didn’t quite get where he was going with his statement.

I chuckle and say, “Oh, I’ve been here several times." 

His voice changes slightly and he says, “This is a good place to eat.” 

Instinctively, I sense he’s a bit peeved about my dressing down of his friend.  I reply sympathetically and emphatically, “You’re right, this is a good place.” 

His voice changes more significantly and he orders, “Then shut the fuck up and enjoy it.” 

Dramatic pause.

Using a tone I have mastered that basically says, I have to say this, but I don’t mean a word of it, I reply,  “I’m sorry if I offended you, sir.”

He delivers more rambling f-bomb accusations with his back to me.  His wife is saying, “Honey, stop.”

Well, that’s that.  Without a bite of my food, I say, “You know, I don’t think this is a good place.” I remove my napkin and stand up.  I walk by his booth and say to him, “Thank you very much, sir.” 

I go to the waitress, who, despite the situation I put on her and the one happening between me and her friend, is helping another table… before she gets my damn Coke.  I put a bill in her hand and say, “Here’s $10 for the food. I won’t be eating here again.”  She chases after me trying to give the money back, but I shooed her off.

Sometimes the poison isn’t just the staff, it’s the patrons, too.

What A Deal

Posted by on February 25, 2014 No comments

Boy, does this piss me off.  Phone/Cable/ISP companies have a pretty bad reputation for ripping people off when they’re not looking.  I was actually kind of pleased with my Verizon FIOS contract, even though somehow the price kept climbing.

So recently, I looked up when my contract was up, so I could drop down to just Internet.  First off, I couldn’t find where to just get Internet.  Everything was a bundle.  But then, as I looked at the bundles, this “deal” hit me:

Capture

Total Monthly Price: $115.  That’s the total.  FOR THE FIRST MONTH ONLY.  How does one month of a 2-year contract equate to a total of anything?  How can they even get away with something like this?  I guess they can because they do divulge the true costs right below.  But still!  Assholes!

And who would want to do customer service for a company like that?  Can you imagine how many calls they get in month 2 and later?  “But you agreed to it, sir.  It is right there under the Total Monthly Price.”  “Yes, have a nice day.  Thank you for choosing Verizon.”

Facebook Ads

Posted by on January 26, 2014 No comments

Who even thought this was a good idea?

12

879345

Resume Retardation

Posted by on October 8, 2013 No comments

I’ve bitched before about the quality of resume we’re getting for our software developer positions.  We have another spot open and we got another resume riddled with errors.  I counted 18 major errors and I skipped a lot of minor errors.  This is just plain stupid, people.  I’m going to show you what you are doing wrong, so that you can review your own resume and possibly correct some of these before someone like me sees them.

First of all, this resume has the unique presentation where commas have been replaced by ellipses.  For example, when listing skills, it says something like, “This language… that language… some other language… some server software…”  I don’t know why people try clever things like this.  It reminds me of a goofball new-age manager who always used semicolons instead of periods.  So, sure, I noticed it and it makes me read your skills list with ridiculous, dismissive pauses as if after every skill you’re saying, “You know, I could go on…”  But if you’re going to do it and be pretentious about it, at least be consistent.  Don’t have the last three items separated by commas.

Now the offenses:

“Develop SSRS Reports in a ASP.Net Application using SQL, Silverlight, ASP.Net 3.5” – “A” should be “an”.  I am lenient when people talk about “a SQL database” or “an SQL database”, because of the two different pronunciations of “SQL”.  I know of no other way to pronounce “ASP”.  A/an errors appear three other places in this resume.

“Developed a WCF to be used by collages to receive leads for their schools” – “A WCF” means nothing.  “A WCF application” is probably what was meant.  “Collages” is completely wrong.  “Colleges” is the proper word.  There’s no excuse for this.  You are writing software for academics!  A similar problem where sentences end with “a SQL 2008” excluding any descriptor like “database”, “procedure”, or ”application” appears in two other places in this resume.  Another completely wrong word (“from” as “form”) is in the resume.

“Developed and Deployed an Company Intranet site (Oracle, HTML, JavaScript, and Java)” – “An Company” is improper.  You can read it and say, oh, it used to just be “an Intranet…”, but he added “Company” and didn’t change the “an”.  Yes, that’s probably correct, but it’s not an excuse; it’s just an explanation.  By the way, the random and inconsistent capitalization is a lot of the minor errors I didn’t count.  Also, note the proper use of an ellipse.

“SharePoint Sever 2007” – Really?

“Windows Phone 7 Developments” – How many developments are we talking, here?

“Wrote to chapters for the WROX SQL 2012 Bible on Row Level Security and Data Encryption.” – I hope those “to” chapters were proofread by someone capable of writing proper English.  This is not someone who should be writing or contributing to books.

So what we have here is a resume by someone who has been working professionally longer than I have. This resume has not been proofread by anyone, not even the recruiter that submitted it.  This person, who has been working as a contractor, has had to update his resume seven times in the last three years.  It appears he has not reviewed his work in full.  This is someone who clearly does not have an eye for quality and when the work is done, he moves right on to the next thing.  This is why contractors suck.

Postscript:

The interview was a total failure, so I didn’t need to voice my opinion on the quality of the resume.  However, as a personal embarrassment, I found the worst resume mistake during the interview.  The heading: “ACCOMPLIMENTS”.  I never would have thought a heading to be misspelled.

English, Motherfucker, Do You Write?

Posted by on June 7, 2013 No comments

Ok, you idiots.  You want a job?  Do you know how to get a job?  You have to present yourself well.  No, you have to present yourself as perfect as you can be.  There’s a lot of conflicting advice as to whether you have to answer questions 100% perfect in an interview or whether you should just be yourself.  The answer is both.  Be yourself and be 100% perfect.  If you’re good, this should be easy for you.

Now, the reason for this bitching is because I’m doing interviews now.  These are interviews for decent jobs.  I don’t actually know the pay scale, but 50-80k is not out of line.  The jobs are for computer programming, so a level of precision is somewhat expected.  Why then, of the last four resumes, do I see spelling and grammatical errors?  Why, you stupid people? 

The two resumes I got today each had at least five mistakes in them, and I even purposely ignored punctuation and poor sentence structure.  How can this happen?  The one resume was five pages long – which is ridiculous to begin with.  Apparently, all the technical terms were generating spell-check warnings, so spell-checking was probably turned off for the document.  Stupid.  Are you in some kind of hurry?  Do you not understand proofreading?

You’re not solely to blame, either.  Your resumes are being submitted by recruiting firms.  They missed the errors as well!  Do you realize you are literally giving money to people who are doing nothing but sitting between you and an employer?  This recruiter is doing nothing for you.  They copy your resume text into their template and call it a day.  In one of the two resumes from today, the document formatting changed midway through.  The recruiter’s standards are just as low as yours.

It gets better.  The first interview for today has cancelled.  You don’t cancel an interview unless you got a great offer.  Someone out there looked at the resume, either didn’t notice the mistakes or didn’t care about them, interviewed this guy and hired him.  This is what we’ve come to.  We’ve had candidates come in wearing business casual clothes instead of a suit.  We have resumes submitted with multiple mistakes.  We have to accept these shortcomings from candidates because if we don’t someone else will snatch them up?  Screw that.

But I’ve been instructed to not point out these problems in the interview.  So go ahead, fools, see how low you can take the standard.

Serving You More By Providing Less

Posted by on April 17, 2013 No comments

Long after I’ve stopped using Quicken, the emails still continue to amaze me.  Here’s the quote to start off this topic:

“Many of our customers ask why we discontinue certain services and the answer is simple—to better serve you.“

Today I got an email from Quicken stating that I had to upgrade to Quicken 2013 because they were shutting down services for Quicken 2010.  Which services? 

  • Transaction downloads
  • Online Bill-pay through Quicken (not sure if that’s different from banks’ EFT-style payments)
  • Stock quotes and portfolio management through Quicken
  • Technical Support (except online self-service)

Well, 3 of the 4 items are Quicken-provided services, so if they want to shut them down, I don’t have an issue with that.  It’s the first item that bugs me.  The transaction download portion has a server component and a client component.  The Quicken software is the client.  The banks run the server component. 

I know how banks operate: slowly.  There isn’t any way Quicken could force banks to update their software by their imposed deadline.  Many banks will have these libraries integrated with their own software, so there would need to be some rewriting involved and major amounts of testing and documentation.  Not going to happen.

What option does that leave?  Time-bombing the client so that it will become inoperable on a specific date.  Downloading transactions is what the majority of people would use.  The bill-pay, I’m not sure of.  But, in order to better serve you, we think it’s best to not let you do this any more.

I can’t remember if I still have Quicken installed somewhere or not, but I’m going to be testing this out.  First, if they did manage to get all the banks to upgrade their code and change the format of the QIF file, then it should fail to import into MS Money.  Otherwise, I’ll guess that you can manually download transaction files and import them.  This is a slight inconvenience, but it’s not rendering Quicken unusable.  However, at that point, you have the same level of functionality of MS Money Sunset, so why not use a better application?

Here’s the bottom line.  There’s nothing new in banking.  There’s no reason to upgrade banking software.  Quicken is milking this cash cow for as long as they can.  By practicing forced obsolescence, they are forcing their customer base to choose between paying forever or leaving them.  I made my choice.  Mint.com is certainly helping people make a choice. Hmmm.  I think I need to revisit mint.com and see what’s happened since the last time I gave them a try.

Quit It

Posted by on April 8, 2013 No comments

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/why-quit-job-now-151346969.html

Now here’s a real doomsday article:  Quit your job or get fired.  And this speaks to the heart of the problem – 24-hour news, which has certainly caused a serious decline in people’s outlook on life.

Let’s start with the basic problem of 24-hour news.  You need to fill up your time with something. So you pull anything that will attract an audience, which usually means extremist positions.  Putting the sensationalism aside for a moment, watch the news for a while and see how much of it has any bearing on your day.  Miners trapped somewhere?  Landslide in South America?  Violence in the Middle East?  What’cha gonna do about it?

So you hear about this every single day.  There’s always a crisis somewhere, why do we have to absorb the world’s misery?  How long can we do it before we become tainted by that misery?  It’s too late.  When did this change?  1980.  The start of CNN.

Older generations remember “the nightly news”.  You had an hour, maybe two hours of news.  And the harsher news was the 11 o’clock news, which was reserved for adults who stayed up that late.  When CNN came, there was news all the time, which then spawned competition, and we go from there.

It’s no surprise that since that time, people have become less trusting, more cynical, and more paranoid.  If you hear a story every single day about rapists, it doesn’t matter that every story is in a different city thousands of miles away from you, the news makes it sounds like it’s local.  You act more defensively, which makes other people act defensively.  Then you end up where no one will help anyone.

But anyway, back to the story.  Here’s a person listing the reasons why your job is worthless and if you don’t quit now, you’re just going to get fired.  It’s a terribly narrow-sighted view of employment.  Is he right?  Sure, for some positions in some industries.  But he applies the fear to everyone, pitting employees against their employers.  He fosters distrust, which become material when it is fully believed.

I read a line somewhere that said “Nobody ever gets fired.  They always fire themselves.”  When someone starts suspecting that they are being targeted, they’ll behave in a way that invites suspicion.  “What I fear most has come upon me.”  If you want to take that further, you could apply it to all of the negative news that is programming people to expect the worst.  Personally, I’ve never been happier since giving up on TV and news.

In this article, the pundit says some pretty silly things, like  “If you’re stuck in a cubicle, you have a target on your back.  Temp staffing is sweeping the nation.”  What business operates fully on temp labor?  A business has processes and rules.  Why would a business bring on a bunch of temps, train them, dispose of them, and then do it all over again?  From a meeting I just had yesterday, my employer invests about 50k to keep an employee for one year.  That’s why we want to hire the right person the first time.

The 10 reasons to put in your 2-week notice list is so random and contradictory that I can’t even address it.  “Money is not happiness” and “Abundance will never come from your job” are a couple of head-scratchers.

So, with all of this doom and gloom talk, what’s the proposed solution?  Not sure.  A “compromise” is offered where you can keep your job (while you can, I guess) and do side work or start a new business of your own.  But the actual solution?  The title says to quit your job.  The pundit says temp staffing is sweeping the nation.  The pundit also says that companies are replacing employees with cheaper temp staff.  So, the solution must be to quit your job and work as a temp for less.  Which works out well for the pundit since he’s in with a temp staffing company.

What kind of gall does it take to help companies destroy their workforce and then tell the remaining workers, “Just give up, already.”

Finally, I understand.

Posted by on January 12, 2013 No comments

Today I was out at lunch, eating at the bar and a commercial came on – Finally Fast!  Go to Finally Fast dot com for a free analysis!

This commercial has been around for a long time, and I’ve always known it to be just some sort of ridiculousness.  But I had a thought, what if I did actually run it… on a brand new OS installation?  Could Finally Fast make a brand new computer even faster?

So I set up a fresh fake email account because I know I’m going to have to register for this crap (turns out I didn’t need it).  And I created a clone of a new Windows 8 virtual machine.  Let’s go.

During install, I took a moment to actually read the license agreement.  It scared the hell out of me.  There was lot of text relating to payment, recurring billing, cancellation, and chargebacks.  For example, if you request cancellation of the service, they have 3 days to respond to your request.  If they don’t respond, it’s up to you to request again.  So if you wait until the last day to cancel your “subscription”, you might as well expect it to be too late and you’re going to get charged for another year.

If you try to cancel payment by calling your credit card and cancelling the charge, they will dispute the chargeback and will charge you $500 for “defrauding” them. If you intend to cancel payment through the credit card company, you have to provide Finally Fast with a police report showing that you reported your credit card stolen, since that’s the only acceptable reason for cancelling a charge this way.

If you couldn’t tell this was a scam from the start, and I’m not sure how you couldn’t, it should now be clearly obvious.  If a company threatens its potential customers, you do not want to do business with that company.

So here’s the results of my scan on a brand new install:

image

64 “Errors”.  Missing shared files (which happen to be all references to the obsolete .NET Framework 1.1) and invalid file extensions for file types that are hardly ever used, like .ARJ.  None of the “errors” are critical.  They won’t make my computer faster.  Clicking Fix Now does what you expect, it opens a web browser to make the sale.  The scan has been scheduled to run every 7 days, which I am confident will present the results and another request for activation.

At this point I’ve lost interest in the application.  You can download a bunch of other applications that do other scans and I wasn’t going there.  My curiosity was satisfied that a new OS install evidently has “errors” that must be fixed by buying an application from a company that expects you are going to defraud them.  And as we all know, what you believe will happen, will happen.

The Biggest and the Bloatedest III

Posted by on January 11, 2013 No comments

It seems to be the natural progression of things to become so big and so complex that they just become useless.  Then new upstarts that are simple and lean take over, until they become huge and the cycle continues.

At my job, we use custom controls for our website and application.  Custom controls have always been a great thing for developers because they give you extra functionality built in, so you don’t have to code it.  Telerik controls have been leaders in this field.  But recently, there have been changes – breaking changes – in the newer versions.

I had a simple RadTextBox that I added a script to so that it would do a postback when there was 5 numbers in the textbox (a zip code).  Simple and easy:

if (((event.keyCode||event.which)!=9)&&((this.value.length==5)||(this.value.length==0))) setTimeout("pnlUpdate",300)

This suddenly stopped working.  Well, the postback would happen, but the RadTextBox’s value would be blank.  Telerik support suggested I handle the control’s KeyPress event:

function KeyPress(sender, args) {
    var textLength = sender.get_textBoxValue().length;
    if (textLength >= 5) {
        sender.set_autoPostBack(true);
        sender.set_value(sender.get_textBoxValue());
    }
}

This is stupid enough, that I have to use a custom event and custom methods to get and set the value of a textbox, but there was more that needed done.  The event fires on the key press, but the textbox value doesn’t include that key yet, so you have to include it yourself when measuring the length.  But you have to insert the new character in the right position for when you set the RadTextBox value.  Finally, when using the KeyPress event, the RadTextBox’s MaxLength isn’t enforced, so there has to be a check included for that. 

So from the Telerik proposed solution, I ended up with a script like:

function checkZipCode(s, e) {
    var t, l, c

    c = s.get_caretPosition();
    t = s.get_textBoxValue();
    t = t.substring(0, c) + e.get_keyCharacter() + t.substring(c);
    l = t.length;
   
    if (l > 5) {
        e.set_cancel();
        return
    }

    if (l == 5) {
        s.set_autoPostBack(true);
        s.set_value(t);
    }
}

This is totally unacceptable.  And all because Telerik decided to begin managing the control’s state independently, breaking the standard HTML input behavior.  It’s been growing over time that a developer using Telerik controls has to do things “the Telerik way” in order for the controls to work properly.  Where Telerik controls once were written as extensions to existing controls, they have become total replacements, with little resemblance to the original controls they look like.

So, it’s going to be my recommendation to reduce our dependence on Telerik controls.  I doubt we’ll be able to get rid of the RadGrid, which has its own universe of functionality and weirdness, but when DropDownLists  are rendered as <ul> and TextBoxes don’t use the standard Input Value property, there’s something really wrong about that.  It’s garbage like this that makes MVC so appealing.  Put it this way.  If the big argument against WebForms is that it is trying and failing to make a WinForms model work on the web, then Telerik is taking a WebForms app that is acting like a WinForms app and trying to make it act like an AJAX website.  At that point, you might as well not use WebForms.