Avenge Me

I would like to thank the local AMC theatre for screwing my day up.

We've got an after-hours maintenance event, tonight. So, I figured I'd use my late-start day to go see The Avengers. The earliest available showing was the 3D IMAX showing. Only reason I picked it was because it started the earliest.

We got our glasses, our concession and our seats and waited for the movie to start.

The local AMC likes to show "special features" and commercials before the previews. As we sat there, the "special features" and commercials were running but silently. Hmm... Fortunately, when the previews came on, so did the sound.

Midway through the previews, the thing pops up saying "put on your IMAX 3D glasses now". Did as instructed, only to find that the left eyepiece was oddly and distractingly dark. Took the glasses off and noticed that the screen was pretty much crystal clear. At first, I thought "ok, they played the 'put on your glasses' thing too early". Then, the movie started and still it was more watchable without the glasses than with. So, I began to wonder, "did they put the wrong disk into the projector?"

Just after Loki had tesseracted-in and was instructed to put his "spear" down, the screen froze. Apparently, one of the joys of "watching the future of movies, today" is that the projection system can crash.

I figured, "take an early bathroom break and maybe they'll have it sorted out by the time I get back". I get back and the screen's still black. Un-good. I walk back outside to ask the two theatre staffers what's going on. I'm told "we're hoping to get the projector back online in about ten minutes". I ask if the projector problems were related to why the 3D glasses weren't functioning as expected. They informed me that "yes: the projector had been miscalibrated but the glasses should work as expected once the movie restarts".

Fifteen minutes pass and still no movie. Just as I'm about to get up to ask how long the "ten minutes" is going to continue, a theatre employee comes in to tell us that, because the projector's taking so long to reboot, that they have to cancel this showing because it will cause delays to the next one. We're then offerred free passes and the thoice of either a refund or free tickets to the next screening.

Given that I'd chosen this one for its start time - it would have allowed me to see the movie and still make it to work in plenty of time tonight's maintenance window - waiting for the 14:30 showing of a 2.5 hour movie just wasn't an option. So, we got in line for our passes and our refunds: an hour of my day wasted; a movie not seen and $20 spent on "medium-sized" hoglegs of soda and a burnt hotdog - concessions not refundable.

Thanks AMC: you really Mondayed things all up.

Poor Advertising

The only message I can take from the new Mobile 7 commercials is that the phones suck too much to get engrossed in using them.

Weekend Go "Poof!"

Awesome is: trying to do some work over the weekend only to find that the server you need has failed.

Poorly Executed Code Push

So, today, Microsoft released the new XBox update. Unlike prior updates, they provided no update grace period. If you didn't install the update, you couldn't use any of your Live services.

Now, back when Live was pretty much exclusively about playing multiplayer games online, this kind of thing would be merely annoying, but otherwise not too much of a problem. Nowadays, where services like Zune music and video, Last.FM, NetFlix Streaming, Twitter, FaceBook, etc. all rely on being able to log into XBox live, you're kinda SOL if the service is unavailable to you.

There's also a LOT more people using the services in late 2010 than there were several years ago. So, if you're going to demand people upgrade, you need to ensure that they can upgrade in an easy, timely manner.

Microsoft utterly failed to do this. From the time I got home from work until I was able to get a successful download, it took me over 90 minutes. Now, this was 90 minutes of attempting to connect and download. Unfortunately, the XBox update method doesn't allow you to simply queue-up an update request, walk away, and let things happen unattended. No. You have to make the request, wait for the request to succeed or fail, then acknowledge the next action.

Because of the way they pushed the code, they had MILLIONS of people all trying to upgrade at once. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't use anything like BitTorrent to distribute updates, nor do they seem to use their "cloud" services to spin-up additional update servers to meet the sudden demand-spike (or, if they do, their "cloud" services are utterly sucktackular - even if they don't, you assume that they do, and it makes their "cloud" services offering look horrible, one way or the other). That means that, each time you request the update, it's a crapshoot on whether it will succeed. So, if you lose that crap-shoot, you can either immediately try again or come back sometime later and make another attempt.

Back when XBox live was just a gaming service, coming back later was the normal choice. Now that it's a control-center type of service, coming back later means that a lot of things you might want to use are not available. So, you have to try again ...and again, and again and again... All because their update utility wasn't designed with queuing features.

Seriously, Microsoft, this whole thing was a debacle. It makes you look like amateurs - both in your gaming service and in other things you do. You might want to rethink how you do future code-rolls.

Verizon's Still Got a Few Kinks to Work Out of FiOS

Ok, first, let me start by saying that when Cox advertises saying that their customer service is better than that for Verizon FiOS, this is not just marketing, it's verifiable fact. I had Cox as my video and internet provider for several years. So, I had several occasions on which I had to call them. I've now had Verizon for a little over eight months and I've called them more than I called Cox over the entire multi-year period I had their service.

Each time I called Cox, I was able to quickly navigate their call-tree and get a human on the line within a matter of a few minutes. Each time I've called Verizon, it takes at least ten minutes to get through their damned call-tree, and then you wait another 10-30 minutes just to get to speak to the first human in the chain you inevitably have to talk to.

Notice that I say first human. Each time I've called Verizon, I speak to a minimum of two people. Worse, with each hand-off, I have to go through the whole drill of "no, I don't have Verizon phone service" and provide alternate identifying information so they can find my record. Now, why, when they transfer you, the next CSR doesn't have all your info come up on their screen as part of the transfer process is beyond me. With Cox, I generally had a warm hand-off; on those occasions where I didn't, the next representative at least had all my info already on their screen.

Now, I was calling this time because, when I went to turn on tonight's Flyers game, I was met with the "you don't subscribe to this service" screen (and told to call their 800 number to change that). So, I called in. It took just shy of ten minutes to navigate their call-tree just to get to the point that I could be put in a hold-queue. I then spent just shy of fifteen minutes waiting for the first CSR. He got on the phone and we did the whole "find the account" dance. He locates my account and informs me, "that programming option's not on your plan. Does your set-top box not offer you the option of adding it?". I reply, "no, otherwise I'd not have called in." At which point, I'm informed that I'll have to speak to someone in their subscription/add-on services group and that I should, "please hold".

Another six-plus minutes passes on hold. As expected, the CSR that answers has us go through the whole no Verizon phone service dance. Ugh. He finds my account and then looks through it. Apparently, last winter, when I got my FiOS service, it was already at the halfway point of the season. My NHL Center Ice package only for the second half of the season. That half-season package was set to auto-renew in January. I start to laugh at how awfully moronic that was. I then ask him to go ahead and try to get the full-season package added and the half-season auto-renewal removed. It takes him another four minutes to navigate his computer systems (why is it every time I call a CSR organization, they always say "sorry, my computer's being slow"?). He gets the change sorted out. Unfortunately, it will take a minimum of 20 minutes for the change to show up on my set top box, and might even take until midnight for the change to take effect (depending on my market).

Whatever. I was already 40+ minutes into missing the game I wanted to see. Judging by the Flyers' web site, I wasn't really missing a game I wanted to see (they were losing 2-0 to the Columbus Blue Jackets by this point). Maybe, by the time I next tune into NHL Center Ice, it will be up and running on my set top box and will be showing a game I'll be more happy to see.

So, uh, Verizon: you get yet another big, fat "F-" for this customer experience (as you did for the four, prior incidents). And, that's an "F-" by way of comparison to Cox, who isn't exactly known for being top of the heap for customer service.

Dear Microsoft/XBox Live:

To start, your billing system for XBox Live membership renewas sucks. We're not just talking garden-variety suckage, either. We're talking completely broke-dick.

My current Live membership expires in early November (of this year). You, apparently, start working your renewal mojo three months ahead of the expiry. I started getting expiry notifications and "special" renewal offer emails in August.

In early September, I decided to accept the "$10 discount + Microsoft Points" renewal offer. I logged into my XBox billing portal, gave my credit card information and hit "Ok". Within a few minutes of hitting "Ok", I received a confirmation letter to the email account associated with my gamertag. I figured, "cool, that's out of the way".

At the beginning of October, I started getting more "your account expires in November" notifications. I forgot that I'd already done the renewal thing in September (well, to be more precise, I wasn't immediately, absolutely sure I had done it). So, I hit the "renew" button. This time, there was no special offer, just the normal $50/yr dunning. Again, after hitting "Ok", I received a confirmation email.

A week or so later, I got another "your account is expiring in November" notification. By this point, I was in serious "WTF" mode. So, I logged into my email account, verified that I'd actually received two confirmations of renewal. I then went to the XBox Live support web site to send my "WTF" inquiry.

A (business) day or so later, I received a response to my query. Apparently, they can't handle billing queries via the web/email response system. I was given a phone number and a service request number to use. Wanting to get this crap knocked out, I called the number, navigated the call tree and gave the CSR my service request number.

The conversation was very frustrating. The end result seems to be that I won't actually get billed till the expiry date and that I'll get billed the special offer rate (and that the second confirmed rate will not be billed/charged).

Umm... "ok", I guess. This seems really broken. I mean, even if you aren't actually going to bill me till November, shouldn't you update your billing/notification system so that I stop getting expiration warning emails? Once one billing update order has been accepted - even if not charged - shouldn't future attempts to order subscription renewals produce a "your account is already set to renew" messages, rather than a new "confirmation" email?

I mean, other than wanting to have customers confused and vexed and having to call in and speak to a CSR, why would you run your renewals system this way? It's hopelessly stupid. And, what if I'd have used a credit card that expired after the transaction date but before the renewal date? Would you have flagged it (somehow, I'm thinking "no")?

Oh well, just more brain damage from Redmond, I suppose.

What Does Support Mean (WTF, Verizon)?

So, for the past few weeks, I've been having odd networking issues. Periodically, Donna's laptop will show that she's connected but that she has no internet. My XBox Live connection has been unstable. I've been getting pauses and stutters in my NetFlix and Zune streaming. I've had some sound-quality issues on my VOIP (Vonage) connections. Most recently/obviously, I've been unable to download large software packages (e.g., VMware WorkStation, Linux  ISOs, etc.): the DL will get a few tens to a few hundreds of megabytes in and then just stall.

Tuesday night, Donna comes up the stairs, complaining that her internet connection's not working again. I track things back from her PC, to the home WiFi, to the LAN and finally back to the FiOS router. I'm able to get into the FiOS router and notice that it's having issues on its WAN connection link. It's stuck in "getting DHCP address" mode. I try rebooting, full power-cycle and disable/enable the WAN interface. All result in no change. So, I contact FiOS support (by the way: trying to find their number on a cellphone-based browser and then navigate their asstacular call-tree system SUCKS).

Eventually, I get through to a human being and we start working on the problem. He finds that he's not able to talk to the ONT to get diagnostics from it. So, he has me pull the terminal on its batter backup unit and unplug it from the wall. Afterwards, I restore the power and it starts coming back online. Ten minutes later, still no Internet connection and, now, no TV! The tech informs me he's going to dispatch a tech to look at/replace the optical network terminal (ONT). Unfortunately, the first available service slot in two days later (Thursday/today, 16 September 2010). 

Two days of no TV and no Internet... Donna was n-o-t pleased. I pointed out that the LAN still worked, so she had access to music on the NAS. I pointed out that we still have a large collection of DVDs, BluRays and CDs. We even have a couple of XBoxes and other game systems. I also pointed out that she had several sewing projects that this outage could be a bit of a blessing in getting her back on track with them. She was still most displeased.

/me shrugs

The next morning (Wednesday), I discover that the ONT has apparently come back online somewhere in the wee hours of the morning. I have both TV service and Internet. So, it's fairly apparent that, while not yet dead, something is in the process of dying. So, I leave Donna a note letting her know that she may have TV and/or Internet service, but that it may also die, given the prior behavior.

While at work, Verizon calls to let me know that a service slot had opened up for later that day: would I mind the tech stopping by? I'm like "sure" as I really wanted to get this shit knocked out. Three techs (and three service trucks) roll up a little after 16:30. I show them to the equipment. They tear open the ONT and note that its status lights aren't quite right. They try several stabs at getting it into the normal/expected state, but those steps all fail. However, they don't have an ONT with them with which to replace it, so, they replace the router, instead. The service lead tells me, "I'll call you tomorrow to see if things have improved or whether I need to come back out with a new ONT".

Today, things are still flakey. In fact, the new router seems to have introduced some new problems. It starts rolling up on the previously scheduled appointment time and I've not heard from the tech. So, I call Verizon FiOS's support line. Apparently, the ticket had been closed and no one is coming out. I'm like "WTF: he wasn't supposed to close that ticket - he was supposed to call to find out if he still needed to come by." Unfortunately, there's no available techs to come out and do the originally scheduled appointment. So, now I have to wait till tomorrow to hopefully: A) get someone out to do the tech work; B) hope they have the requisite repair parts; C) that it solves the problems and doesn't introduce any further ones.

Oh well, I at least have basic network connectivity. I just can't program my DVR and I still can't download my VMware Workstation or (RedHat - other distros use BitTorrent and, because of the small individual transfers, I was able to get Fedora, Ubuntu and CentOS) Linux ISOs.

The phone support people have all been very pleasant. The techs that came out were pleasant. Unfortunately, the availability of techs and parts has made this a drawn-out failure of a support incident.

FB Permissions Management (WTF)

Oh WTF: first, can't remove the wall permissions from apps and now it's not letting me nuke the apps?? Fuck you, FB.

Shoulda Been Using UNIX...

So, pretty much ever third time I click a link on the Microsoft Live/Hotmail/WhatTheFuckEver site, I get a page similar to the below:

 

This page is temporarily unavailable

We're sorry, there was a problem showing this page. We experienced some technical difficulties retrieving the content.

Please try this page again in a few minutes.

 

© 2010 Microsoft Terms Privacy Advertise

Help Center Feedback English

I mean, I never use the damned site. I have it because of my Xbox and MSN-chat. That's it. And, the only reason I was going there, today, in the first damned place was to tweak my privacy settings to cut down on all the damned "friend" invites from all the bots that run rampant on the service. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK. I mean, even if I was thinking of actually using it for more than the bare minimum I'm currently using it for, this would be enough to put that straight out of my mind. Bigtime FAIL, Microsoft. 

The "P" In "PEPCO" Stands for "Powerfail"

Shocking: PEPCO's reporting 10x (or more) many power outages (from the current storms) than any other power utility in the region. Dominion (Northern VA) reported like 250 outages - mostly related to a mechanical failure rather than weather; PEPCO reported over 7500 weather-related outages.

Dear US Bank:

I get that you make your real money on the mortgage interest, but do you have to make it so freaking painful to pay extra principal?

Soundrack for Work-FAIL

Grendel's "Hate This" (well, many aggrotech titles) is great soundtrack for working with awful software.

Q&A Instead of "Real" Search?

So, FaceBook is coming up with a Q&A "service". It's going to be a zero-privacy, zero-filters proposition. Basically, anyone can ask, anyone can answer and there's not much you can do about it. Intentional anarchy. Well ...with one exception: it won't be indexable by search engines. Speculation being that this is a shot over the bow of Google with the hopes being that it would be a "first stop" for people that have questions. That people would hit FB Q&A, get their answers and not have to go the next step to Google (et. al.) and FB could reap the advertising rewards.

Now, I've used a lot of forums over the years. Some were truly designed to be help-oriented. But, generally, the first responses given - particularly in tech circles - were of the form, "did you RTFM" and/or "did you Google it"? So, clearly, there's plenty of people that either can't be bothered to do research on their own or are willing to wait for answers rather than finding them on their own. I guess this is part of why KGB was born (haven't seen commercials recently, but their website's still there, so, they're probably still around). Granted, useful answers can be found - particularly if you display a level of clue in the asking of your questions. But, if you've got clue enough to ask your questions well, you frequently aren't going to be use a simple Q&A site.

I've also used a few, more entertainment-oriented Q&A sites. They were always a mixed-bag, however.

One of my favorites was Wis.DM (RIP). It was a lot of fun. I still don't know whether its creators intended for it to be serious or not. Not sure anyone that those who became regular users saw it as a site for serious answers - mostly it seemed to just a way of initiating discussions (and flame wars - made me miss Usenet, sometimes). Unfortunately, it died. It's users scattered to the four winds, but many stayed in touch (a few of my FaceBook friends I know only from Wis.DM). Some found homes on new Q&A sites - some making their own in an attempt to recapture some of the magic that had been the Wis.DM experiment.

I've tried a few other sites, since then. Unfortunately, for what I was looking for - semi-interactive entertainment - they were too serious or so pointlessly stupid as to be unbearable. The first place the Wis.DM crowd fled to was Fluther. Unfortunately, it was very restrictive - particularly for someone, like me, who likes to post a lot. Worse, Fluther's community and moderators didn't react terribly well to the recreational questioners that flooded in when Wis.DM died. However, they apparently have a niche and they're doing well enough, these days.

Google once tried a Q&A service, but it was kind of a bust. They shuttered it at least four years ago. 

Yahoo still has their Q&A site. My primary experience of it is through sites like YahooAnswerFail.com. It didn't have the social aspects that Wis.DM did and tended to have lower utility than Usenet did. So, for people like me, though, the lampoon sites that have more value than the actual. They act to distill the most humorous aspects of the site into convenient, easy to find morsels.

I just don't see that FB Q&A is apt to be any better than Yahoo answers. We already have a couple FaceBook humor distillers (e.g. FailBook and LameBook). Do we really need an FBQnAfail.Com site? The world can always use more humor, I suppose.

Oh well. Should all be interesting to see how it all plays out.

What Happened to My Outlets?

Two days in a row of Fail Whale.

FB's been having issues, today.

Tumblr's been slow for the past several days.

Posterous was being DOS'ed, the other day, as well.

WTF??