Orange is my favorite color » Complaint Dept.

Reunion.com FAIL

brian — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:36:15 +0000

Got to love marketing copy like this:

As you may know, we outgrew our Reunion.com name a long time ago. What used to be a site primarily for reconnecting with classmates has quickly grown into the internet’s most popular place to find anyone, anywhere — and it’s about to get even better as it becomes MyLife.com!

Oh really? The most popular? By what metric? Check out the Alexa graph – this was the only chart on which the Reunion numbers registered a blip. I don’t think Facebook and MySpace need to worry. Well, MySpace needs to worry, but for another reason.

Reunion.com, Please don’t treat us like we’re idiots. 1999 is calling for your VPs to tell them about this hot new book called Cluetrain Manifesto.

PS, the name change reeks of desperation. Find an M&A opportunity, stat!

WebKit FAIL on Javascript indented with spaces

brian — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:17:00 +0000

Pretend you have a few thousand lines of Javascript that leverages Ext. It works great in some browsers but in other browsers it just doesn’t work. Nada. It fails silently. And the completely useless choad these vendors pass off as a Javascript debugger gives you zero feedback. Imagine that, despite going bald, you managed to find the few remaining hairs attached to your head, pull them out and set them on fire.

Now pretend that changing all of your spaces to tabs fixes the problem.

You can stop pretending, because that’s what the solution was after last three days of debugging WebKit-powered Safari 3.2.1 and Chrome 1.0.

No, not a bug. Not a typo. Not a missing semi-colon. No, too many spaces. Because you know, they are in short supply!

I can’t tell you why. All I can tell you is I hate WebKit and especially Safari.

Now if you do the happy dance every time Steve Jobs blows his nose and you have a slightly masochistic side to you, you are welcome to explore the diff between the files that work in FF/IE7 but not Safari/Chrome and the one that works in all four.

To be clear, the single operation I performed between these two versions was a regular expression in Eclipse to change “[ ]{4}” into a tab character. Nothing more, nothing less.

In the mean time, I’m looking for my sanity. If you find it, please let me know in the comments.

RIP Steve Walsh – 12/12/2008

brian — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 22:01:23 +0000

Yesterday, a colleague and friend, Steve Walsh, died of a heart attack at his gym. He was 45. I know Steve through the BMW Car Club of America where we both volunteer to instruct high performance driving to anyone who wants to learn to be a better driver. In the last year, I’ve transitioned from the passenger seat to teaching the advanced classroom. Steve ran intermediate classroom and our sessions were back to back at our most recent Infineon driving school in November. He came early and sat in on my classes and occasionally chimed in or responded to a student question. I was impressed by the insightful but simply delivered advice he provided – it was effortless for him. It made me feel like I was babbling. I stuck around for one of his classes and the first thing he did was take the rows of fold-out chairs and turn them around into a circle so that everyone faced each other more intimately. That’s classic Steve.

There is no question 45 is too young. It’s a terrible reminder that we must squeeze the most out of every day. Never wait. Never rest. You never know when your time is up. It could come skydiving, at the gym or sitting on the couch. There are no guarantees. Get out there and make the most of it, 24/7/365.

The picture above is from the middle of the night during the 2003 Thunderhill 25 Hour enduro. It’s about 2AM, around freezing temperatures and nobody had slept in 30+ hours. There were still another 10 hours to go before the race would be over. Even in this drearily-taken late-night picture, you can see the twinkle in his eyes that everyone knows and loved. It’s this cheery spirit and good natured attitude that we will all miss dearly.

Keep the shiny side up and rest in peace buddy…

I thought maybe it was just me…

brian — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:53:58 +0000

I thought maybe it was just me, but it turns out uninvolved third parties have the same head-scratching case of bewilderment.

2008 called and it wants its common sense back. Pronto.

Three reasons the iPhone is overhyped

brian — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:55:52 +0000

Jason from 37 Signals says the iPhone ads are “Perfect Advertising“. The ads themselves are quite nice but this phone will not work as well in person as it does in the ads because:

Humans have dirty hands. with the entire thing being a screen that you touch, it is going to be filthy. FILTHY. This will lead to frequent cleaning and…
Apple’s poor track record on scratchable devices. The phone is beautiful but consider the problems with the screens on earlier iPods. What will it look like when it rubs against coins or keys in your pocket (You don’t all have hip holsters? Forshame!) or you clean it with something other than a microfiber towel because your filthy hands smeared mustard over the “Accept” button?
Small adjustments are difficult. This is a key complaint of mine with the iPod wheel: moving up or down just one or two items is challenging. Sure, not impossible, and for young kids who have the dexterity of a monkey, it’s cake. I’m not that old and I still have minor (but annoying) issues selecting exactly the item I want without overshooting and backtracking a couple of times. The whole “select a music album” by “throwing” the covers to the left and right is insane. Is there an alternative input mechanism like a rocker button or anything?

And here’s a freebie: doing anything meaningful with the phone appears to require two hands. How often do you answer the phone with one hand? I’m not saying it won’t be possible to use your thumb to both hold and activate the phone, but ten minutes spent watching people use their phones should have clued their research department in on this.

What am I missing?

+1 versus DPT

brian — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 02:00:17 +0000

In a historic turn of events, Ghidinelli scores his first point in the multi-year battle with the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic. My parking permit, due to expire today, would have cost $60 to renew for the year except we’re moving out October 31st. Here’s what I received in the mail today:

Dear RPP Customer:

Attention Area “E” and “U” Residential Permit Holders – Due to a computer error your residential permit renewal letters were not sent as scheduled. For your convenience, we have extended the expiration date in your area through October 31, 2006.

After countless parking tickets, several tows and stealing my tailgate, finally, FINALLY, I get a break.

Update! Clearly on a roll, Ghidinelli scores another victory against the evil empire. Make that +2!

Re: Protest of parking citation: 7116XXXXX
Dear Claimant:

A hearing was initiated in response to your protest.

After reviewing all the evidence, the citation has been dismissed.

The citation has been determined to contain incomplete or incorrect information.

You can expect a refund in the mail in 1 to 2 weeks. No further action is required.

This one was for a bogus double parking ticket. My street is only wide enough for one car to pass at a time and during street cleaning time (e.g., 2am), I was cited for double parking. That would mean my truck was parked in the middle of the street unattended blocking traffic. Many thanks to the hearing officer for being reasonable and believing logic.

Unconvincing

brian — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:55:03 +0000

I am selling my Klein mountain bike on Craigslist for $500. See the original post here.

Here are three responses I received overnight. Given the frequency, these must work on someone:

Subject: Klein Attitude w/ Rock Shox Duke XC, XTR, Cateye, Bontrager, ~18″ – $500 (Am offering $600) [$100 more than I'm selling it for!]

It’s a pleasure writing you this short letter of my. Am impress with your posting at craigslist, which am willing to make an immediate purchase of the item and i guess you must have been contacted by some buyer bidding for it?
Just to let you know, am willing to end the bid by offering you the above price.Hope you accept my offer?

Get back to me as soon as possible,
Julian.

Subject: Klein Attitude w/ Rock Shox Duke XC, XTR, Cateye, Bontrager, ~18″ – $500 (SOMA / south beach)

Hello Sale,

Am Richardson, I will like to ask about your Klein Attitude w/ Rock Shox Duke XC, XTR, Cateye, Bontrager, ~18″ – $500 (SOMA / south beach) that you have for sale, i will really wanna know if its still available for sale, if so, get me the present condition and how much is the last price you wanna offer is for sale, (and do note that I dont send check or money orders), I will pay directly to your bank account, I dont deal with scams, get back to me immediatly..

Rechards
Terry Richardson

Subject: Klein Attitude w/ Rock Shox Duke…urgent reply needed

hello dear, i am quite intrested in your *Klein Attitude w/ Rock Shox Duke* as advertised on the craiglist ad.
i will like to know the current state of condition,more pictures if available,your method of payment and the final price you are willing to offer it for sale.awaiting your urgent response soonest.
regards,
santos sanchez.

I mean… c’mon. Anyone who falls for these scams is an idiot. Selling stuff online these days is a PITA. Anyone using RapLeaf yet?

Comcast Customer (out of) Service

brian — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 21:46:46 +0000

Everyone has a tale of poor customer service. Usually it’s delivered with a cavalcade of profanity and met with an understanding nod. It is for this reason that I won’t relate my entire story, but I need to tell someone before my head explodes:

Comcast has missed 5 appointments in the past 10 days to come repair my Internet.

That includes 3 regularly scheduled appointments and 2 re-sends from dispatch. Every time I call they assure me this doesn’t usually happen and “I’m adding your contact number to the work order and a note to be sure they call.” They don’t call, they don’t write, they don’t show up. Even the organic grocery delivery hippies figured out how to work the callbox!