Thursday, October 2, 2003
| I figure that all lives have a moral. Even if you're not a person where one day you realize that everything you've done in life is leading you to one event, one momentous cataclysm that will define you and perhaps more, there still is a moral.
I was thinking that the moral of my life so far, both in stories that turn out well, and stories that don't turn out well, is seize every opportunity that comes your way. Every time I've done it I've been rewarded, and every time I've let it pass me by I've regretted it. So go for it!
Of course, the real trick is being able to tell opportunities apart from deceptions, isn't it?
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So I was in town today putting the NEFARIUS plates on Rachel's Toureg (if you're wondering where the O went, I used it on my face… j/k, there's an eight letter limit) and at the license bureau I was approached by a friendly looking portly woman with a big smile.
“Shannon Larratt?!?”
Uh…. Yeah….?
“It's Anne XXXX! From highschool?”
I'm sorry, I really have no idea who you are. I have a memory disorder and really can't remember anything from highschool, let alone yesterday.
“I married your brother…”
It's news to me, sorry. I really can't remember things like that. I really don't have any memory of highschool.
“Well, it's probably for the best.”
She figured out pretty quickly that I had zero interest in talking to her or being helped to remember who she was and wandered off. Anyway, on to why my satellite cut out. We'd actually cancelled the service a bit over a month ago (to end October 1st), but since we're back for a while, I'd called a week or two ago to “cancel the cancel”… but today it cut out, so I called customer service to find out what was up.
“You asked for it to be cancelled on August 28th, so I'm not sure what you're complaining about.”
Yeah, but I also called in to uncancel it.
“You can't call about things like that. You have to email. Unless you sent an email or a fax it doesn't uncancel it. It doesn't count if you phoned it in.”
No one told me that when I called in. Check the notes on my customer record and tell me what it says please. I was assured everything was fine and no one mentioned this “must email” deal.
“It says 'customer called on September 20th to request cancellation be cancelled and service be continued'. But I don't see anything about an email.”
So why did you cancel my service then? I mean, wouldn't that at least warrant that you call me and confirm before cancelling?
“Well, on August 28th you asked for it to be cancelled. What did you think would happen?”
(this repeats a few times)
OK, look, what do I have to do to get this thing working again?
“Will you be paying the re-connect fees by VISA or Mastercard?”
Nice.
Thursday, October 2, 2003
First, I've fixed the personals bug that was transmogrifying tattoo artists into cutters. Second, I've added a few more quick searches to the system, including:
- Women seeking women
- Women seeking men
- Men seeking women
- Men seeking men
I should note that these searches are gender inclusive, so they do include couples and transgender individuals. If you don't want that, you can easily create your own search of course.
Also, I tried to implement WAP functionality, but it turns out my phone can only see HTML… Not WAP! Maybe that's the case with most new phones, I don't know. If there are a lot of people I can add WAP support, it doesn't look hard, but I'd have to pick up another phone (they have a 30-day return policy).
Finally, I watched some of Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) last night. For those that don't know, it's an all-Inuit movie produced in Nunavut, Canada. I think it's probably the first ever Inuit-language film. It was a little weird because Inuit storytelling is so different from what we use in the south, and to be honest it was fairly obvious that they didn't use actors (it's not like you can find a lot of acting experience in Nunavut). But I hope they produce more.
But the reason I mention it here is that the movie was packed with authentic (if not real) facial tattoos:
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
I'm building a super-limited, super-small version of IAM for older wireless devices (Rachel uses an Audiovox Thera — that thing's got really good rendering already); I'm using some Samsug WWW-capable phone. When I got it they swore it wouldn't have coverage yet, but it turns out I have full high-speed right here right now… so Bell has built the 1X towers, but not told its stores I guess.
Now I've got to whip together an experience update, but it shouldn't be hard to build this functionality so I'll fiddle with it over the next week or two in my spare time. What? I have spare time? Hmm… Well, I'll find the time I guess.
