When I deal with various companies as a customer I’m fairly easy to please, but at the same time it’s easy to lose me (it’s also easy to lose me before I become a customer).  I had a few incidents over the past week or so that by themselves weren’t big enough for posts of their own.  Here they are:

1. Requiring a phone call for simple things is something that tends to turn me off.  I’ve dealt with so many poorly organized phone mazes that have wasted so much of my time and left me so frustrated that I dread calling any company these days.

   The knob on my washing machine broke recently.  It was made out of plastic, so I suppose it was inevitable, although in Whirlpool’s favor is the fact that it lasted nearly 9 years.  I went to their website to see about ordering a replacement.  It took me a while to find the section on parts, but all it did was give their 800 number.  It seems to me that ordering parts should be a simple operation that can be automated.  But no, Whirlpool was mostly interested in trying to help me find a local service center.  I found another vendor online that stepped me through the process of identifying the part.  Interestingly enough, they had a replacement part made by a third-party that used metal threads and was $6.00 cheaper than the plastic Whirlpool part.  From the front they were indistinguishable (at least in the pictures on the website, which were well done and used a grid pattern underneath the part for visual reference).

2. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently left a complimentary paper on my driveway with an offer for a six month subscription for $30.00 (including weekends).  I decided to take them up on it, since they cover North Tarrant county fairly well (their national coverage reeks of bias, and don’t get me started on their editorial cartoons, though).  A few days after I subscribed I got a phone call.  It started with a recording that said it was the Star-Telegram’s customer service department calling to confirm my subscription and that I was happy with it.  It then asked me to wait on the line for the next available operator.  I said a few bad words and slammed the receiver down.  There’s nothing that infuriates me quite like being called by a machine and then put on hold.  If you’re going to call me at least do me the courtesy of having someone on the line when I pick up.  I almost called back to cancel the subscription, but I counted to 10 first.  I noticed that they finally had a human call me today to follow up, though.  Maybe if enough of us refuse to deal with automated callers they’ll get the message.
3. Ignoring my express wishes is a good way for a company to be on my shit-list forever.  Rainsoft called a few months ago and I told them to put me on their do-no-call list.  For the past week they’d been calling again on a daily basis between 6:00 and 7:00pm.  I’d been ignoring them based on the Caller ID until last night.  When I picked up they said the exact same thing they said before (“we’d like to welcome you to the neighborhood, etc…”).  I told them I’d asked to be put on their do-not-call list previously and that my number is on the national and state do-not-call lists.  It’s always a bad sign when a company ignores the do-not-call list, so I did some checking into them.  From what I could find it appears that Rainsoft is a high-pressure telesales firm that sells water softening equipment using questionable tactics (and at inflated prices).  If they’d have left me alone I’d have never bothered to look them up.  Now they’re on my permanent do-not-use list and I’m writing about them here.
4. Calling me after I’ve made an order to try to sell me more stuff is a generally bad idea.  If I’d have wanted the other stuff I’d have bought it already.  Thompson Cigar did this to me.  At first they pretended the call was to follow-up on the order and give me status.  Then they started in on trying to sell me a membership in their club (where they ship you cigars every month).  I don’t smoke enough cigars to warrant any kind of club.  Given my habits, I’m probably better off going to a local shop anyway.  That way I can buy singles and try out new brands.  With online/catalog ordering you frequently have to buy a whole box (or a minimum of 5 or 10, depending on how expensive the brand is).

Update: Added last item after the entry was published.  I got distracted while writing the post and forgot to add this one.

I see that the History Channel is running Band of Brothers starting tonight with “Currahee.”

If you haven’t seen it (what, you’ve been living under a rock the past couple of years?), do yourself a favor and skip the 9/11 crap on NBC and check it out.

Someone calling themselves “maybenot” left the following in the comments to the previous entry, concerning Monday’s troll incident.

Um, did you really call the L.I.S.D.? Becuase you really scared my friend, if that’s what you were going for, scaring middle schoolers, you should be proud of yourself. Good job.

This steamed me a bit, so here’s my response:

Maybenot,

Yes, I did call Leander ISD. I will not tolerate people spewing crap on my weblog, regardless of their age. Given that your illiterate little friend called me a “fagish com. geek” in the comments on my own website, then tried to put someone else’s email and phone number on this site, a little scare isn’t a big deal. Maybe it’s what he needed.

Quite frankly, the very idea that I should be ashamed of myself for reporting this says more about you than it does about me.

The very attitude that I should somehow be ashamed of this really irked me.  It reflects an attitude that he should be entitled to come on my weblog and spew garbage towards me and act like some kind of online vandal. 

While websites and weblogs didn’t exist when I was that age, I know that if I’d done the equivalent my butt would have been heated by the principal’s paddle (or my dad’s belt).  Unfortunately, that’s an effective method of discipline, so it has of course been removed from schools. 

Coddling kids and excusing their bad behavior will not serve us well in the long run. 

But what do I know, I’m just surly curmudgeon who’s starting to feel more disconnected from the current generation every day.  I’m not sure where the cutoff occurred, but it probably won’t be long until I’m yelling at the neighborhood kids.

<old man voice>
Damn kids!  Get off my lawn.
</old man voice>

Late last week I received several comments on an old post from last year under the name “Victoria Redmayne” that listed “[email protected]” (last name redacted—see below) as the email address.  These comments came from 66.141.49.243, which is a DSL IP in the Austin area (adsl-66-141-49-243.dsl.austtx.swbell.net).  The first comment was rather obnoxious (the text consisted solely of the poorly formed sentence “you r so gay u fagish com. geek fuck u!”), so I deleted it and the one that followed (”.anyone who whant to get it on with me just call me at 260XXXX” (phone number redacted—see below) and banned the IP from posting further comments.

Today I received another comment in one of last week’s posts from this same person (or at least someone using the same name and email address) that consisted solely of the text “my# is 512259XXXX”.  This post came from 204.57.104.6, which turns out to be ce1.leanderisd.org.

I’m coming to suspect that this is a young teenager (the piss-poor texting style of the first post would also have been a dead giveaway) who is trying to perform the web version of the old bathroom wall theme.  I suspect that the phone number belongs to some poor girl who probably rejected this loser. 

Anyhow, I called the Leander school district and talked to someone at their technology helpdesk to give them the relevant info.  Hopefully it will only be a matter of time before they track down the PC from which this was sent.  Whether that will reveal the identity of the culprit is another matter, though.

But remember this: everything you do on the Internet leaves traces behind.

While I don’t require a valid email address or name to post here, the IP address of every comment is logged.  Even with dynamically assigned IPs (like with dialup), it is often possible to find the identity of the user (most ISPs have DHCP server logs that could be used to identify the dial-up caller that got the address; the same holds true for DSL and cable modems).

Update: The troll has changed his name to “viciredkillyou” (Is this a threat?) and is still posting from school.  Instead of banning him I’m changing all his comments to say something else.  We’ll see how long this goes on.

I always hate the switch to Daylight Savings Time.  It screws up my internal time sense, which keeps screaming at me that the time on the clock is wrong.

I’m just glad that I’m working from home tomorrow.  My emprical observation from past time switches is that driving seems more dangerous for the first couple of days after the switch.  As a nation we’re already sleep-deprived enough without losing an hour to an arbitrary time switch.  It’d be interesting to compare accident statistics between the week before and the week after the switch.

I think a lot of the anti-smoking laws we’re seeing that regulate private clubs and restaurants comes out of a holier-than-thou desire to “save” other people from their choices, regardless of whether they want to be saved or not.  So it was with amusement that I read an ad in today’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram for a product called Revel (careful, tobacco content on that site!).

Someone once said that the internet regards censorship as damage and routes around it.  I like to think the market is a similar organism when it comes to regulation.  Revel is just smokeless tobacco pouches that can be used without having to light up, but it represents the market routing around the do-gooders.  Good for the market.  I hope it gives the anti-smoking nuts apoplexy.  I can see it now: How dare those ignorant dolts ignore us!  We know what’s best for them!

Note:  I acknowledge that there are a few people who are genuinely allergic to tobacco smoke, but I don’t see how that outweighs the rights of business owners to decide on their own property if people may smoke or not.

This article in yesterday’s paper caught my attention (link is to the Miami Herald because the stupid Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the article behind a registration page).  It’s definitely a highly-specialized occupation:

Seizo Fukumoto has died 20,000 agonizing deaths. He’s been gored by samurai and gunned down by gangsters. His bloodied body has slammed into trees, tumbled down stairs and crashed through sliding paper-and-wood doors.

As Japan’s top “kirareyaku,” which translates into “sliced-up actor,” Fukumoto dies for a living. When Japanese directors need somebody to kill, he’s the man they call.

While he’s been in so many films over the years, he isn’t known for it since often his name doesn’t even make the credits.  However, he did finally get some recognition in The Last Samauri as the “Silent Samauri” who died to protect Tom Cruise’s character.

Sometimes it’s possible to forget that Texas is the “buckle of the Bible Belt” until you get slapped upside the head with another reminder.

A CVS pharmacist refused to fill a woman’s birth-control-pill prescription this week, the second time this year that a Metroplex-area druggist has withheld a prescribed contraceptive because of personal beliefs.

Julee Lacey, 32, a Keller district first-grade teacher with two young children, said she was astounded when the pharmacist came to the drive-in window of the CVS on Precinct Line Road on Sunday night and refused to fill what Lacey believed was a routine prescription that she had had filled many times.

“She told me she did not personally believe in birth control and said that’s why she wasn’t going to fill the prescription,” Lacey said. “She told me there was a Walgreens down the street I could go to that could help me. I told her I didn’t have the time to go there and set up a new account, and she said she couldn’t help me.”

It turns out that CVS has a policy in place to deal with this, but the pharmacist in question ignored that policy (she was supposed to hand the prescription off to another pharmacist on duty).

It irks me when I see people going out of their way to impose their personal beliefs on others.  Of course, a private company may choose to sell or not sell any particular item.  However, in this case it wasn’t the company, but the personal beliefs of one of its employees.  If this pharmacist feels so strongly about the issue, then maybe she should go start her own pharmacy instead.

Ms. Lacey also brought up an interesting point concerning the possible detriment that this pharmacist’s actions could have brought about.

“She had no idea why I was getting birth control. There are so many reasons people get it that aren’t even for birth control—cysts on ovaries and even endometriosis. She didn’t know anything about my history.”

It looks like CVS is trying to make it right with the customer by delivering the prescription to Ms. Lacey’s house free of charge.  They also apologized.  However, this is still going to give them something of a publicity black eye.

In today’s Ft. Worth Star Telegram I learned that Cabela’s is interested in building a new store close to my house.

Cabela’s, a top retailer of outdoor equipment and clothing, wants to bring a megastore to the city’s northern edge, but first wants an incentive package worth $40 million over 20 years.

City officials say construction could begin by June on a 200,000-square-foot store at the northeast corner of Texas 170 and Interstate 35W near Alliance Airport. Similar to Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World stores, Cabela’s stores sell hunting and fishing gear and typically include a wildlife museum and aquarium. Because of their size, they attract millions of visitors each year.

I’d really like to have this store nearby, but I am somewhat concerned about their desire for $40 million in “incentives”.  If it was just a set of tax breaks, perhaps I’d not be as concerned.  However, it sounds like they may be funding some of this with taxpayer money.

I’ve become a skeptic of late concerning the most recent drunk-driving laws.  I originally supported MADD in most of its efforts, but I think they’ve outlived their usefulness and are starting to go off the deep end.  As an example, the 0.08 laws seem designed simply to ensnare people who have had one or two drinks and don’t actually pose a risk to other drivers.  The real problem drivers are the chronic drunks who get stinking drunk and drive regardless of penalties.

Given all this, I’m not sure what to think of a new law that recently went into effect in Ohio.

A new state law in Ohio requires judges to brand convicted drunk drivers with special “scarlet letter” license plates—with red numbers on a yellow background so other motorists will know exactly what they’ve done.

I’m always wary of laws like this that attempt to alert the community to someone’s actions.  I think that if a person is that much of a risk, then the original punishment should be severe enough to get that person out of circulation until they are no longer a risk (which is why I oppose sex offender registration; if they’re so dangerous then they should have gotten life and shouldn’t be out and about).

Anyhow, don’t think I have any sympathy for real drunk drivers (i.e. ones who were at 0.10 or higher) who cause real danger to others.  That’s why I’m not particularly moved by this complaint.

And of course, not everyone likes the red-and-yellow plates. Those who get slapped with them say they’re humiliating—not only to them but to others in their families who get hit with the drunk-driving stigma when they take the car out for a spin.

There’s a very simple solution to this problem.  Don’t get in the damn car if you’ve had too much to drink.