With my new iPhone comes my new AT&T bill. I had been on Verizon before so this bill was totally new to me (how exciting). The first thing I noticed is that they don’t make it too clear on the bill that I can pay online and where I might go to do that. I’m pretty clever though so I guessed the URL and tried to regiser so I could pay online. No dice. For some unexplained reason, they’re not currently able to allow me to register my account online. No big deal I guess. Instead of quickly jumping on a web site, punching in my credit card info, and being done with the thing instead I’ll write out a paper check, rip off the stub from the bill, stuff both into a tiny little envelope, stick a stamp on it (what are those going for these days? $1.95?), wait for a postal carrier to walk up the two flights of stairs to our office (okay, she’ll take the elevator), pick up the envelope, carry it out to her truck, drive it back to the post office, sort it, put it on another truck, drive it to Carol Stream, Illinois (or maybe to an airport and then fly it up there?), and give it to some AT&T dude there. He’ll rip open the envelope, punch some numbers into a computer, stick the check somewhere, and at some point AT&T will get some of my cold hard cash. Seems inefficient.
Anyway, the best part is that I was looking through the bill to see if I was missing something about how to pay online and I noticed this section on the back of the first page. The last line in the Electronic Check Conversion section says, “You agree to pay a fee of up to $30 if your check” – and that’s it. That’s how it ends: “if your check” – no period, no additional words that would make it into a sentance. It cracks me up when big companies make dumb misakes like this.
Posted in business
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Tagged iPhone
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It’s becoming clear to me that the main reason I blog is to give myself a platform for complaining about things. So, here I go…
I won’t bother complaining about Twitter going down all the time. Maybe it doesn’t even go down that often anymore. Anyway, it never bothered me that much – I figure you get what you pay for. However, when Twitter’s down and they throw up the now famous Fail Whale what gets me in the little message that says that they’re having a problem but that they should be back up within an hour. An hour from when? Each time you load the page the hour starts again? An hour from an unknown point in time when Fail Whale popped up? I understand that they don’t actually know when the problem will be fixed but does the “we’ll be back within an hour” really fool anyone? Just leave it out.
Here’s another thing that bugs me: undated web content. The web is cool. I really love it. People put stuff up on the web all the time. There’s a ton of stuff out there (seriously – try “surfing” around for a while and see if you can ever get to the end of the internet). Anyway, here’s my bit of advice: when you write something and put it up on the internet please put a date on it. It’s going to be up there forever. Future generations (or a guy 3 years later) will read your crap and wonder when it was written. Give that guy (me) a hint by putting a date on your crap.
If you know me (and if you don’t why on Earth are you reading this?) then you know I’m a huge fan of the Washington Redskins. Growing up I never thought much about the name. I often was annoyed by the logo on the helmet, not because it might be offensive to anyone but because it was impossible (for me anyway) to sketch. The dreaded Dallas Cowboys had a super simple logo that any nine year-old could draw. How unfair!
Over the past few years (okay, maybe things got started 16 years ago according to the wikipedia page I link to in a second) there has been controversy related to using the word redskins – which when you think about it isn’t too surprising. I haven’t read up on the specific origins of the word but I’m guessing it didn’t get started as a term of endearment.
Of course the team uses the word now with a lot of pride. I’m guessing that even back in 1933 when they first started using the word there were positive thoughts associated with it.
But for me it’s still a tough issue to get around. If the term is offensive to some folks then it seems like a good reason to maybe pick a new name. It’s just a game – changing the team name shouldn’t be a big deal (heck, Danny could sell a ton more crap like the Bullets did when they became the Wizards). But lots of people don’t want to change the name and they don’t see what the big deal is. I guess this survey from 2004 even suggests that most Native Americans don’t mind the name. Actually, that’s pretty comforting to me – maybe I shouldn’t worry about the name so much anymore?
Honestly though, I have only good, positive thoughts when I think of a person called a Redskin. I’m not sure if that makes the term less offensive or not – but it makes a difference to me.
Go Skins!
Now that has to be one of the most used blog post titles ever, right? At least it doesn’t have “iPhone” in it.
Yes, football season starts soon. I’m a huge Washington Redskins fan and have been ever since I can remember. I have found over the past few years that my interest in pre-season has dropped to almost nothing. So, I don’t yet know much about the team yet.
The fact that the season starts soon means one thing: I need to call and get cable hooked up in the new house.
Posted in Skins, sports, tv
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(I just previewed this post. It’s a pretty long one – about diapers. That’s not good. Here’s the summary: Diapers.com provided us with good customer service.)
I have two kids. Only one is in diapers but we still seem to go through a lot of them. Buying them at the store is a pain. Also, we like the Seventh Generation diapers (maybe some other day I can blog about disposable diapers, the environment, and controversial topics like that) which aren’t always easy to find in stores. So, we buy them from Diapers.com.
First of all – they’re fast. They must have a warehouse across the street from us or something because the diapers are generally delivered about 45 seconds after we order them (okay, that’s an exaggeration – and I must admin I’m not the one who orders the diapers but my wife is constantly saying how quickly they get delivered).
Last week we got a delivery and started using the new diapers right away. Something was wrong with these – they didn’t seem as absorbent as the previous diapers had been. In fact some of them seemed like they didn’t absorb anything. Not good. We were wondering if Seventh Generation had decided to replace the super absorbent carcinogenic material with something more benign (that doesn’t absorb anything) and just didn’t mention it – or maybe we got a bad batch of diapers? (That’s a joke, I don’t think there are any cancer causing materials in the Seventh Generation diapers.)
We weren’t sure who to call – Diapers.com or Seventh Generation. My wife asked Diapers.com what was up. They weren’t aware of any changes to the diapers but instead of having us jump through a bunch of hoops to figure out what the problem was they just sent us another batch of them. The arrived about 3 minutes later.
We haven’t tried them out yet so we don’t know if our problem has been solved but it sure was nice that Diapers.com was willing to try something quick and easy to hopefully provide a quick and easy solution.
Wow, did you really read this far?
Posted in business
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Tagged diapers
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(I know, this is becoming an iPhone blog. Sorry.)
I splurged and got the 16GB iPhone instead of the 8GB. Still, 16GB isn’t that big. Everytime I plug my phone into my computer it triggers a backup. That’s cool – it’s probably good for me to back up my phone.
It takes forever! I have no idea what it’s doing. I don’t have much on my phone yet. Even if I did I can’t figure out why it takes so long to back up. Is it doing the backup over the Edge network to a computer running on a 300 baud modem? It looks like it’s plugged into a modern computer with a USB cable.
Posted in technology
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Tagged iPhone
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The iPhone is a multi-media wonder. In fact, my kid suggested the other day that I had switched to the iPhone from my old CrapBerry Pearl because, “your new phone has a TV in it!” I can watch movies, listen to music, look at photos – it’s quite amazing.
That is until someone sends me a picture message. You know, the cute pictures of the kids that my wife sends me from her primitive cell phone. When I get those on my iPhone I actually get a text message instead. The text message has a link to www.viewmymessage.com, which should actually be calledds www.nochanceyouwilleverviewyourmessage.com. First of all, when I try to go there right now this is what I get (and has been like this for at least 2 days).
The other day, when the web site was “working”, I got to a screen where I had to enter a message ID (something like m1bgdg3jp) and a password (which was something easy to remember like salt1opus). This is really easy to do on an iPhone… oh wait, no it’s not because there’s no copy/paste on the iPhone (and really even if there was it would still be a huge pain since there’s an ID and a password – two things to copy/paste). After I manged to get both things entered right I was treated to a tiny little thumbnail version of the image. No way to enlarge it.
This is some kind of a crazy joke, right? First of all, why not just support MMS like every other phone manufactured in the last 4-5 years? If you can’t do that, no big deal because we’re talking about the all mighty iPhone – it can do anything! Heck, I can buy, download, and watch a friggin’ movie on this thing. So, send me a TXT with a link, that’s fine. How about a link directly to the stupid picture? Give me a high resolution version of it too so I can have some fun pinching and pulling it on my screen to make it bigger or smaller.
There are so many ways to make this experience better. There have to be people at Apple and AT&T who are mortally embarrassed that it works this way.
Posted in technology
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Tagged iPhone
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I never used an iPhone Version 1 (don’t get me stared on Apple’s poor approach to version naming anything having to do with an iPod – enough with Gen this and Gen that – why can’t they be creative and give each new version of something a clever name or just stick with something simple like V1, V2, V3, etc.?) so I don’t have much to compare it to but there are times when my 3G seems a bit slow.
But I get it, there’s a tiny little processor in there so what can I expect? What really bugs me though is how clunky the phone can be when you turn it and it goes into landscape mode. I have to assume that the mechanical device that determines the orientation of the phone recognizes this change immediately but sometimes it takes Safari forever to bother flipping on its side. What gives?
Posted in technology
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Tagged iPhone
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I’ll admit that one reason I decided to try and blog some more was because WordPress released an iPhone app and in order to try it I needed to blog.
Well here I am blogging from my iPhone. It’s pretty cool. But, even though I’m getting better at typing on this thing I think my iPhone powered blog posts will tend to be short.
It seems you can also post photos from the iPhone… We’ll see how well that works.
Posted in blogging, technology
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Tagged iPhone
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Wow, I’m really keeping up with my blog! What’s this, five days in a row with a new post? I can’t believe that I’ve managed to sit down five days in a row and post something. Either that or I wrote five things on Wednesday evening (instead of taking out the garbage – that’s one of the most confusing things about moving – trash day is now Thursday and not Friday) and scheduled them to publish in the future.
Posted in blogging
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Tagged general
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Anyway, the best part is that I was looking through the bill to see if I was missing something about how to pay online and I noticed this section on the back of the first page. The last line in the Electronic Check Conversion section says, “You agree to pay a fee of up to $30 if your check” – and that’s it. That’s how it ends: “if your check” – no period, no additional words that would make it into a sentance. It cracks me up when big companies make dumb misakes like this.