23 January 06 - 10:24My In Car Parking Meter
I purchase smart cards for use in my in-car parking meter. The system works like this-- Park car in assigned lot. Turn on parking meter. Insert smart card. Verify that the time, day, and lot are set correctly. Presss Ok, remove smart card. Hang meter from rearview mirror. Between the hours of 7:30am and 4:30pm, the meter will remember how long it is on and deduct the appropriate amount from the next smart card inserted into it.
There are just so many little things wrong with this little device. Why wasn't there a simple trigger in the card slot to turn it on when a card is inserted. Why does the timer continue ticking (making it seem like you will be charged for the time) even when it is not between the hours that you are actually charged. Why do I need to tell it what lot I am in if I need different smart cards depending on the rate I need to be charged (which is lot dependant). But really the thing that tweaks me the most is the error given if a smart card no longer has any money on it. "Card Bank Error". What the hell? Why couldn't it be something sane like "Card Empty"?
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22 January 06 - 17:46iTunes and Quicktime
Curious about the quality of the audio and video from the iTunes Video Store (This curiousity brought about because of ad seen during Battlestar Galactica that indicated the episode would be available via iTunes a day after original airing) I go looking for the iTunes webstore. It seems however that I can not look at what's available in the iTunes store without using iTunes. So I fire up my virtual test machine, download itunes, and install it. Before I get back to the iTunes store, I have complaints about the installer.
iTunes requires Quicktime. That's fine, I even appreciate that QuickTime is included in the installer, but why did the installer need to install QuickTime on my system which already had an up-to-date installation of QuickTime. Once the installers had finished, I noticed that the QuickTime tray application was in my tray (something I turned off after installing QuickTime myself). It seems that the reinstallation not only made the assumption that I was addled when I disabled the tray app the first time, it also incorrectly assumed that I wanted QuickTime to automatically check for updates.
Now back to the iTunes store. I open up iTunes, take a moment to promise to sacrifice my first born to Steve Jobs, and start poking at iTunes looking for how to get to the iTunes Store. While I find the store and even find that they do carry the entire season of BSG, I spend fifteen minutes looking for how the audio is encoded (and if it is at least encoded with some type of surround sound my reciever can handle) without finding an answer. As to the video quality, it isn't bad. Not great, but not bad. Considering I can get 10 episodes for $30 on dvd, the price isn't bad, but it isn't good enough considering the limitations that iTunes puts on the media. I power off the virtual machine and don't bother saving its state. I am not really surprised that iTunes once again disappoints me.
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22 January 06 - 17:20Winamp, skins, and mp3 software
I love and hate Winamp. I love it because of it's playlist management features. I hate it because it can be skinned. I am sitting farily far (nearly four feet from monitor to my head) away from my monitors (17 inch ones running at 1280x1024). I can see and use my web browser and email client without difficulty but I can not tell if winamp is currently set to shuffle playback. If it weren't for my knowledge of which button is which in the program, I would never be able to use the playlst control widgets. And I can barely read what song is currently playing. If I could get a version of Winamp that looked and acted like a normal Windows app using normal widgets, I would be a happy man. I simply see little excuse for an app to be skinnable.
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19 January 06 - 17:10Compressed Files and Bit Torrent
What the hell is wrong with people who put things up as torrents? First off, why do they insist on compressing data that is already compressed. Compressing an mpeg video really won't get you much. In my experience it will result in a larger file than what you started with. Worse is when you combine that idiocy with the use of some silly compression system like RAR or ACE. All I wanted was to watch a missed episode of Battlestar Galactica.
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18 January 06 - 05:00Hot Water for Tea
A department in the building I work in pays a service to provide supplies for and maintain a commercial coffeemaker. Anyone that drinks the coffee puts money into a jar. It's a good arrangement all in all, not that I am particularly interested in the coffee. I am interested in the hot water spigot that the coffeemaker has. With nearly boiling water I can make myself a cup of tea. Unfortunately the kitchen sink in my apartment can put out hotter water than that spigot. A sample of the coffee indicates that the coffee isn't getting hot enough water either. Sadness. Back to the inelegance of heating water in the microwave.
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17 January 06 - 08:06Star Cinema bathrooms
While on a date to see
King Kong with my wife, I noticed that the men's bathroom is on the wrong side in the new
IMAX wing of
Star Cinema. The bathrooms are a pretty typical setup with a single opening in the wall and one gender goes to the right and the other gender goes the left. Now the two bathrooms next to the main lobby/concession area are symetrical. To the left of the main entrance, Men go to the right to their bathroom. To the right of the main entrance, Men go to the left. This is broken, but at least symetrical. Now to make the situation worse, the bathroom in the IMAX addition (which is to the left of the main entrance) has men going to the left to use the restroom. That is not just broken in changing the customer's expectations, but it also breaks symmetry. Bad architect. No biscuit.
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10 January 06 - 04:15You suck Nvidia
I was once again reminded why I dislike Nforce based motherboards. I go to install the latest Nforce2 driver package on a fresh install of Windows XP and am told;
"DirectX 9 was not deteced on this system. This driver requires Microsoft DirectX 9 for proper operation. Please install DirectX 9 from the below location, then restart this driver setup.
http://www.microsoft.com/directx/homeuser/downloads
[Yes] [No] "
Now the first problem here is that the machine doesn't yet have a working network connection as I need to install the network driver that is part of the Nforce driver package. The second is that the yes/no options don't do anything. Both options exit you from the installer. How idiotic.
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02 January 06 - 14:53On location radio promotions
While I have always disliked the silliness of on-location radio promotions, my dislike of them has grown to outright hatred in the past year or so. Not too long ago, it took effort to setup the needed transmistter and equipment to do an on location radio broadcast. Now instead of having practical logo'd vans with neat telescoping antenna arrays, they use god damned cellphones and drive around in "cute" compact SUVs. And what's worse, is they aren't even using noise canceling headsets. So not only do we get to enjoy the idiotic banter between the business owner and the annoying radio personality, but we get to enjoy it through a crappy cellphone connection, and with all the background noise from the location.
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02 January 06 - 14:15Please stop polluting reciepts with "contests"
National chains (including CompUSA, Best Buy, and Circuit City) are seemingly so desperate for marketing opinion data that they put instructions to enter a "contest" at the bottom of every receipt. These instructions tell the customer that they can be entered to win thousands of dollars (I recall seeing $5-10k as the prize) if they complete a survey online or via the phone. This will frequently double the length of the receipt and add to the bulk and clutter that lives in my wallet. Ignoring the issues of "odds of winning", I suppose this could just be a plot to get identifying information for customers. If stores really are this desperate for customer opinions, there is clearly something wrong. Either pay a survey company to perform a proper survey, or (and I prefer this idea), employ managers who understand sales and should be able to get the feel and opinions of the customers through day to day interactions. To those companies still desperate for opinion, here is some general advice.
You suck. Seriously. I am much more often than not disappointed in my experiences with national chain stores. If you want to get in my good graces, I suggest you-- 1) Empower your employees to do the right thing, 2) Stock good products that you believe in, 3) Be honest with your customers, and 4) the customer is not always right, but they do deserve to be treated with respect.
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