Category Archives: Rant - Page 7

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.

Unclear On The Concept

Posted by on July 3, 2010 No comments

From a Yahoo Finance article:

“Bottom line: If you don’t have the discipline to list your credit cards in interest-rate order from highest to lowest and pay them off that way, try an online tool such as DebtGoals.com (about $15/month) that literally tells you what to pay off first to minimize your overall debt.”

If you have balances on multiple cards, maybe another recurring bill is exactly what you need.  I’ll remember this.

Too Many, Too Many, Too Many

Posted by on April 8, 2010 No comments

I’ve been thinking about things that have changed since I was growing up and what made them change.  And I’m beginning to point the finger at people.  Not specific people, just people.  There’s too goddamn many of them.  And they suck.  But, oh, don’t worry about me.  I’m doing my part.  I’m not incrementing that population counter at all and I’m not living past my prime.  I’m just a passing fad.

So what have we lost as we’ve gained people?  I haven’t done much thought on this topic, just some casual thinking.  So I don’t have a multi-page rant, but I came up with a few items.

Travel:  Whether by air or car, there are too many damn people travelling.  Air travel used to be luxurious.  My parents dressed me in a suit to go to the airport.  It was like going to church.  Now, it’s just a big cattle train.  With the apparent loss of manners and couth of the average American, it’s a terrible experience.

Education:  All the time, I’m hearing about how schools need to be built or expanded.  Where the hell are all these children coming from?  When I was growing up, there was no school shortage.  And with all this overcrowding, there’s no way anyone’s getting a good education and no teacher is getting paid for the effort they have to put in.

Beaches:  I haven’t always lived near a beach, but when I was growing up, there were regular vacations to a beach.  And I remember it was a lot different then.  For one, you could drive your car on the beach.  Not now.  And can you imagine if you could?  It would be a big-ass parking lot with no room for people.  Traffic jams on beaches; beach rage; idiot drivers.  Again, something that used to be a pleasant experience ruined by the masses.

Does it sound like I’m being elitist?  I don’t think so.  If the stupid humans of the world had enough damn sense that they don’t need to have more than two kids, much less 4, 6, or – holy shit – 8, then there’d be enough resources for everyone.  There’d be enough seats on a flight.  There’d be enough roadway for everyone.  There’d be enough beach for everyone to lie out and for some to bring their car. 

As humans, we’ve lost any concept of humans as a race.  And we’ve stopped thinking about the big picture, and we’ve certainly stopped thinking of anyone but ourselves.  2012 can not get here soon enough.

It’s Just Money

Posted by on March 5, 2010 No comments

Why is this conversion to Quicken so goddamn hard?  I think I’m a reasonably smart person, so why does my money keep getting screwed up in Quicken?

Whenever I use Quicken, it’s laborious.  And not because it’s different, I’ve come to learn the differences in the 4 months I’ve been using it.  It’s dumb.  And I pity the people that have been using for years and years, because MS Money had a much better user interface.

My latest fiasco occurred this morning when I got a notice from a bank saying a transfer was cancelled due to insufficient funds.  After confirming that the balance in Quicken differed from the bank web site, and after a short walk to calm the hell down, I discovered that I had six deposit entries in my register that were duplicates of downloaded transactions.  Thankfully, this was a simple transfer between savings accounts and had no effect on any bills.  Of course, it uncertain if I will be whacked with an overdraft fee or not.

The problem is, I can’t trust Quicken worth a shit.  This situation arose even after reconciling the ledger of the funding account.  Should I have been suspicious that I had unmatched transactions in my register?  Yes, but it has happened so often in my short time with Quicken, I’ve taken it to be normal.  And just now when I was downloading transactions, I had a transaction mismatched and I couldn’t find the real transaction it belonged to.  Why?  because the last time I downloaded, I thought I would trust Quicken and chose “Accept All” to auto-match all the downloaded transactions.

As far as laborious, the matching process is the worst.  The downloaded transactions are in a list at the bottom and as you select each one, it highlights the matched transaction in the register above.  So your eyes are constantly scanning up and down.  Payee?  Good.  Date? Good. Amount? Good.  Ok, next.  Three checks for every downloaded transaction.  And as I’ve found, you have to check all three, especially if you frequent a business often.

The bill payment is very confusing.  The idea that you can pay a bill in Quicken, but that it doesn’t really get paid until you update your accounts is dumb.  And I certainly got misled by “One Step Update”, which I thought would make an immediate payment, but instead merges payments and transaction downloads together.  You mean there’s an even dumber way to handle online payments in Quicken?

I haven’t even dared to test out the reporting and projection tools.  I’m actually scared.  Not that anything would get messed up, since you can’t change anything when running a report, but I think I’m scared at how disappointed I will be or at how confused I will get looking at the results.

This has been one problem after another.  I spoke to a co-worker one time about a business application we use and she commented on how stupid she felt after training because none of it made any sense to her.  It was because the program is so un-intuitive, it made her have to think differently about everything she wanted to do.  That is how I feel and I do not think it is my fault.

The Biggest and the Bloatedest

Posted by on December 19, 2009 No comments

My personal domain name is up for renewal.  I’ve been with Network Solutions as my registrar for a very long time, 15 years, maybe.  A whole lot of low-cost registrars have popped up during that time, but I always stuck with the leader.

Now, recent re-evaluation shows I don’t really have a need for any of the services NetSol offers, so why should I be paying a premium price for their services?  Let’s take a look and see what the cost of renewal is with NetSol.  I just want to renew my domain.

This is where NetSol has really shot itself in the foot.  Not only is it a premium-priced registrar, it seems they are so money-hungry, they want to take every attempt to get more out of you.  After clicking renew, I am taken to a series of advertisements about other things I should be buying.

First, a pitch to add additional domains.  These are variations on my existing domain.  No, I don’t see any need to have three more domains with less-recognizable suffixes (or TLD’s for the technical). No thank you; next.

Next, a pitch to make my registration details private ($9/yr).  Other people have complained about this before.  Why should I have to pay extra for privacy?  And had I bought extra domains, multiply that $9 per domain.  Next!

Next, a pitch for web hosting.  New domains, hmmm. ok.  Existing domains, you probably already have hosting.  If you were transferring a domain, that would be another valid opportunity.  But, no.  I’m fine where I’m at.

Next, a pitch for forwarding web requests, mail hosting, custom website design (even if you selected no web hosting), and an SSL certificate.  Jesus, isn’t this simple renewal request ever going to end?  This is four full pages of advertising! 

Then, finally, you get to see the price of renewal: $35/yr.  4x the amount of other registrars?  For what?  4 pages of ads when you renew?  Now, you can see that NetSol has been overtaken by salespeople and scammers.  Granted, there are discounts for multi-year renewals, which is how I’ve stayed with NetSol as long as I have.

The way I see it, when you click renew, you should be taken straight to the shopping cart where a line item shows the domain(s) for renewal.  Under the line items, a line with a checkbox for each of these offered services should be shown.  Clicking the checkbox would expand the section to let you choose which renewing domains will get the service.  Obviously a “Learn more about service” link would be provided.

That’s quick, simple and to the point.  One page, all options available.  Instead, NetSol is afraid that if they don’t shout the features and prices at you in a full page ad, you might not take them up on their overpriced services.  In the virtual world as well as the real world, overselling, overhyping, and shouting drives me out the door.

Farewell, Network Solutions.

Singularly Open-Minded

Posted by on August 5, 2009 No comments

A while ago I was browsing around and someone had mentioned a blog that sounded interesting, so I visited.  It was ok for the first couple of posts, then I left.  Recently, I hit upon another blog that gave me the same reaction.  In both cases, the blogs were trying to be raise awareness.  The first about racial stereotypes and the second about racial and gender biases.

I consider myself to be pretty open minded.  I’ll listen to anything, but I tend to just collect the information to form a complete opinion.  The more opinions you hear, the better able you are make your own.  But some people have one opinion and spout it ad nauseam.  And sometimes those people think they are being open-minded simply because their obsession is a minority position or some other radical thought.  But they’re still closed-minded, or as I say, singularly open-minded.

So, thinking about this idea made me wonder how being open-minded related to being uncommitted.  Can you be truly open-minded and still have an opinion or does having an opinion give you an artificial bias?  And maybe it has to do with the level of acceptance of differing viewpoints.  You can hold an opinion until the opposing arguments convince you otherwise.

And that’s one area I take issue with the blogs that I had read.  I can only take so much “selling” at one time.  I must have determined quickly that the remaining posts would be more of the same.  The more I hear an argument, the less persuasive it becomes.  Some of it is: You’re trying too hard.  If your idea was so good, you shouldn’t need to go on and on about it.  The other part is cynicism.  If you don’t shut up for a minute and let me consider what you’ve said, I’m not going to believe any of it.

Now I’m getting all worked up.  Thanks.

Degenerative American Literacy

Posted by on July 19, 2009 No comments

It pisses me off to no end that the word “sammich” exists.  It makes me violent.  That’s all I have to say.

Vultures

Posted by on January 18, 2009 No comments

So now Circuit City is going under and the vultures have arrived.  I dropped in on day two of our local store’s liquidation and it was a madhouse.  People were all over the place picking at the carcass of the former leader of electronics sales.

One of the first thoughts I had was "Where were all you damn people only a few weeks ago?"  This company needed you then, but you’re here now after the pulse has stopped.  But judging by the people crowding the store today, they weren’t there for the company; they just wanted the plunder.  Maybe a "Yeah! We killed the dragon, now let’s rob the treasure room!" kind of sentiment.

The other thought I had was that some people scrambling for purchases took their local store for granted.  They just always assumed it would be there to provide an alternate shopping location when Best Buy pissed them off.  Now, Circuit City is going away and these people need to grab what they can before it’s gone.  Because when it’s gone, so is their option of buying somewhere else.

It has been reported that the liquidation company marks up the prices to mark them down over time.  These first few days of the sale would be the most profitable Circuit City would experience in a long time, if only it were them that got the revenue.

The shopping atmosphere in the store was pretty harsh.  The liquidator had obviously taken over.  They blocked off one entrance so you had one door to enter and exit through – inconveniencing incoming and outgoing customers at the same time.  But what do they care?  The liquidator is operating under another company’s name and has no obligation to please anyone.  The customer has no power and no rights.  A threat like "I’m never shopping here again!" would be met with "You’re correct." 

So when the company selling off another company’s inventory purposely deceives customers into thinking they are getting good deals and purposely disposes of customer service because there is no value in it, who are the real vultures?