Yesterday, I was feeling particularly intellectually superior while in the midst of writing a comprehensive custom error handling library that we’ll use in all future application development. Then I received a phone call.

The call was for Jim.

I had to put the caller on hold so I could get step-by-step instuctions from somebody on how to transfer a call.

That whole intellectual superiority thing? Yeah. Not so much now.

Be careful walking through Great Northern Mall. Every twenty feet there are kiosks and booths set up with pimply-faced youths hawking everything from hair care to cheese. The most vicious of these has got to be the hitler-youth gang hired to run the T-Mobile wireless phone booth. Although I’m always careful to avoid eye contact they call out to everyone walking by like cheap street-walkers.

“Hey sir, can I ask you something?”
“Excuse me ma’am, do you have a moment?”
“Little girl, can you get your Daddy for me?”
“Oh, I like your shirt!”
“Me love you long time!”

Jesus Christ guys… leave us alone! One time my wife got caught in their trap and when she told them we were already with another provider they suggested that we cancel our service (and incur the huge cancellation fee) and sign a contract with them. Lack of business ethics aside, I imagine there is some T-Mobile salesman training school where prospective employees are placed in a room and try to convince Muslims to eat pork by administering only noogies, pink-bellies and purple-nurples.

Wouldn’t it figure that the one Taco Bell that we can actually stand to eat at catches fire and burns to the ground?

We have another Taco Bell that’s a little closer to us, but it’s gross as hell and the service is almost non-existent.

Oh well. No more runs for the border for us.

I bought a Belkin router about a year ago. It was cheap and worth what I paid for it. It lasted about three months before it crapped out. Anyway, during the time I owned it, I had signed up for Belkin’s email list. Since I’m too lazy to click the unsubscribe link, I keep getting the occasional email from Belkin hawking products and services.

Today was such a day.

A mere second before I could click the delete button, I noticed the title of this particular email: “Holiday Gift Guide For Her”. So I decided, Hmmm, maybe I’ll check it out.

At once I noticed that the gifts they were advertising were basically crap. But what really caught my eye was the sexist wording of the advertising blurbs. Phrases like: “Choose from blue, green, and orange she’ll especially love the fun, cute colors.” and “she won’t have to crawl underneath the desk to plug and unplug her devices”, make it sound like Belkin doesn’t want to burden the ladies with any kind of complicated details or hard to understand facts this Christmas. My god… how did some of these make it past their marketing department?

The coup de grace however had to be the advertisement for a Concealed Surge Protector. I couldn’t believe that I read it correctly, so I took a screen shot: (Click it for a larger version)

Can you believe it ladies? A convenient outlet for your vacuum is built right in!! I’m not sure if you could also plug in your iron, but if not, I’m sure an extra surge protector would fit the bill.

How in the hell did the word vacuum get into an add created by a company that basically manufactures computer components? I’m visualizing a bunch of old men sitting around a boardroom table. Cigar smoke hangs thick in the air. “The Surge Protector has a convenience outlet” one of the men says, “We should push that fact in the advertisement!” Amid murmurs of agreement a voice pipes up from the back of the room. “What could ladies use a convenience outlet for?”. The room falls silent.

“Well, a vacuum, of course!!” one of the men shouts! Cheers fill the room and the men congratulate each other on a job well done.

“Any day that you are not robbed by your own bank is a good day”

We’ve been banking with Charter One for close to 15 years now and today they decided to get a little back.

Every day I get one of those “account summary” emails from the bank. The email gives me a quick summary of credits and debits from the past week. Normally it’s one of the more boring emails I get during the day, as I’m usually prepared for what I’m going to see. But not today.

Today’s email detailed how our checking account went from a positive balance to more than -$50 overnight. Leading off the list of items in the email is a $70 “insufficient funds fee”!

WTF!

I call my wife and ask her if she knows anything about it. Her response:

WTF!

Time to call the bank and find out what the hell is going on.

Now I imagine that the bank gets these calls all the time and 90% of the time they do a quick lookup on their computers and it turns out that the customer forgot an entry in their checkbook ledger or a spouse cashed a check or a child hit the ATM and forgot to mention it. Easily explained. It must feel good to smile smugly and tell the customer: “Oh no, our system is correct. The error is on your end. If you’d pull your head out of your ass and keep better records you’ll be able to avoid embarrassing episodes like this in the future. Thank you for banking at Charter One and have a good day.”

But not this time.

They don’t know who they’re messing with. We keep crazy-detailed records.

After transferring us all over the company and us shooting down a couple of their lame attempts at explaining how this could have happened (and confusing us with another customer in the process) we get a call three hours later.

They’re sorry. It was their fault. Our account had been incorrectly penalized and the funds will be reinstated.

Damn right they will.

for a bi-polar city.

7:00 A.M.

5:00 P.M.

sigh…

HAHAHAHA!. Hahaha. ha. hmmm.