Ok, this is getting old. Waking up at 3:00 AM and not going back to sleep. Argh. The reason: Tate, one of our Greyhounds, goes out to relieve himself. He has been doing it at 5-ish, but lately that has become 3:00 AM. Alas, since he has a fecophilia vibe, he generally will turn around after defecating and wolf his own feces right down. Yuck. So, when I hear the swish/swish of the doggie door, I...
Whenever someone wants to talk to me and they say that they want to use Skype, I cringe. For a long time, I was unsure of why I cringed, I just did. Until recently when I installed the latest Skype client on my work PC. Sigh, there are plenty of things to hate about Skype. It is owned by Microsoft. It has occasional audio drop outs. But some things are truly pernicious: It really really...
Nothing like getting an out of the blue “Abuse Notification” from you webhost provider. Sigh. About 9:00PM last night I got the warning that there was malware on my wife’s WordPress site. Scripts in three unrelated files, and who knows what else damaged. Earlier, doing my normal maintenance, I found that the plugins and theme updates would fail. This was the first hint that...
Being a long time Apple fan, I have often sung their praises. Products that work, fit in with my natural workflow, and in general delight. That said, a recent experience has tarnished the gleam. About 6 years ago, I realized that the built in photo management tool, iPhoto, was completely unsuitable for the task. I had graduated to a decent DSLR, and started shooting in RAW format. iPhoto did read...
This morning, I had a doctor’s appointment in Mountain View, so I had a pleasant 70 minute crawl north on 85 to El Camino Real. I had plenty of time to observe the HOV lane. The HOV lane was a noble idea. Incentivize people to carpool, making a dedicated lane for vehicles with 2 or more passengers. A fast lane so to speak during the commute hours. Of course, here in California, they have...
My recent trip to Boston reminded me of the cattle car experience that is domestic travel (the last bastion, international travel is quickly degrading into this experience as well). I already posted on the delight of an asshat trying to take my under seat space with his friction’ laptop jammed in there, and my followup was going to be the amazement of abuse the overhead bins that is the...
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of flying back from Boston at an ungodly hour. Worse yet, it was on an airline that I have zilch status on. So, I was stuck in a middle seat in Steerage class. Just looking to stretch my legs as much as possible and catch a few winks on the 6+ hour flight, I was appalled to find that the inconsiderate asshole in the seat in front of me, felt compelled to cram his...
In this day and age, pretty much every hotel has free wifi. Woo hoo. However, there is a nasty nasty trend. Shitty free wireless that sucks just enough to make you want to pay for the faster service. Yes, the standard wifi is free, but it is so often bandwidth capped, and metered, so that surfing the web is painful. There are long resets and time outs, that will drive you bonkers. And your...
This is the email I sent to Capitol Honda in response to their badgering me to rate my service experience excellent. I thought I would share it. I already posted it as a review on Yelp. Perhaps you should not have emailed me. Having recently moved from Arizona to California, and needing a minor service, as well as obtaining a smog test to register my S2000, I booked an appointment at your...
I have been spoilt. In Arizona, the major dealers all competed with each other to provide awesome customer service. As there was plenty of competition with the independent service shops, many who were excellent, they needed an edge to keep customers coming back. I had become accustomed to fast internet, good coffee, fresh donuts and pastries, ample “quiet” comfortable chairs, and...