28 November 05 - 01:48Illinois toll plazas
While coming back from Thanksgiving in Chicagoland, my wife and I were able to enjoy the real hospitality of the Illinois tollway. About a year ago they doubled the tolls for anyone paying with cash (from 40 cents to 80 cents for most tolls). More recently they have eliminated the vast majority of coin lanes. This combined with the heavy traffic of the end of a holiday weekend meant we spent over an hour going the last 6 miles to the Rockford toll. Thanks Illinois, you really helped make our weekend.
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24 November 05 - 17:43The UPS Store
Brian enters a The UPS Store with a packed box and UPS form filled out and to be paid by the receiver
overly cheery lady: Hi How can we help you?
Brian: I need this weighed and shipped.
pleasant manager dude: With that form we can't help you.
Brian: Errr, what?
manager dude: UPS does not allow us to accept ground shipments being paid for by another party.
Brian: I am in a The UPS store, and this form is a UPS ground shipment form right?
manager dude: It's not our fault, UPS doesn't allow us to accept those, there is an actual UPS office nearby.
Note that the cloesest UPS story was more than 15 minutes away
Brian: So the fact that your store is called The UPS Store is really a sick joke meant to torment customers?
manager dude: It's not our fault, here is a map to the UPS shipping center
Brian: Thank you for once again disappointing me and giving me further reason to avoid coming back to any The UPS Store.
Later that same day Brian enters a UPS shipping center.
Gruff UPS man: How can I help you?
Brian: I need this weighed and shipped.
the man weighs it, fills out the form and asks me to sign it
Gruff man: Can I see your ID?
Brian: no
Gruff man: it's new UPS policy.
Brian: I don't have one with me.
Gruff man: well, I can't ship this than.
Brian: It's being paid for by the receiver.
Gruff: well, I will let it slide this time.
Brian: So why couldn't a "The UPS Store" accept this package?
Gruff man with a level of honesty that was surprising: Those stores are franchises and won't do anything that won't get them money, and since this is billing between a company and UPS they don't get paid
Brian: And who would I send my complaint to about the suckyness of "The UPS Store"?
gruff man writes a phone number on the back of a form
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23 November 05 - 07:15RealOne Player for the Palm
So my Zire 72 came with RealPlayer for Palm. Why Real was willing to put their name on this product is beyond my comprehension as the program is awful. First off, it doesn't even try to look like a native PalmOS application and as a result it has an ugly non-standard interface. It presents all music it finds in a single list, which is seriously annoying if you have more more than a 25 or so audio files and you are looking for in particular. And worst of all, in a very normal usage situation it fails in a frustrating and stupid way.
While playing a song you can enter and leave the program and the song will continue to play; this is good and as it should be. Now if you were to pause playback, leave the program and later come back to it, where do you suppose playback would start if you were to hit the play button? Why clearly at the beginning of the song as remembering the location would be hard.
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22 November 05 - 16:08CompUSA wins! and loses
In the same visit, CompUSA both earns my praise and annoys me. While checking out, I swiped my card through the customer facing card reader/screen. Expecting to have to indicate that the card should be processed as a credit card, I was pleasantly surprised when the screen told me it was being processed as a credit card. This is how it should work, seeing as the card I used was a credit card and can't be processed as a debit card. Unfortunately my happiness was quickly smashed into the counter by the counter jocky as I was asked to press the affirmative button indicating I accept the price --I really should hit no some time, I wonder what it does.. The pieces of my happiness were then ground into powder as the clerk handed me a physical reciept to sign. My checkout has certainly been made better by the addition of the customer card reader and screen.
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