Laura

...because it amused me too much, although the original occurrence irritated me in equal measure. I posted:

Okay, I get that the new black is "scroll down and more auto-loads" - it's starting to be everywhere now.

But if you are going to do that, FOR THE LOVE OF LITTLE GREEN APPLES, STOP USING A FOOTER FOR YOUR SECONDARY LINKS.

No Love,
The Lady Chasing Your FAQ Link Down The Page

Seriously, these are two standard tools that SHOULD NOT be used together. ANY form of footer, unless PINNED, should not be used with infinite or even semi-infinite scroll. (Luckily, I was dealing with the latter....)

It's not that I don't agree with the woman who maintains it or her points of view in general. It IS that she emphasizes the most extreme, ridiculous ways modern society (modern America, mostly) hampers our kids from growing.

And far, far more, it IS the comments. The people who are appalled that parents treat their kids as competent human beings (oh noes!) and tailor what they let the kiddos do to their actual capabilities / development. The people who are sanctimonious at everyone who is nervous about same, or about society's reaction to same.

The Perfect Moms who think that, you know, they are All That and we oughta do it their way.

The working (out of the home) moms who don't understand the social interests/needs of the stay-at-home moms and work-from-home moms. The SAHM/WFHM who don't understand, nor care to understand, the limited schedules of the ones working out of the home.

And on and on.

This gem from today really had me irritated (and it's from someone who does, I notice, tend to have that effect on me): "I want my kids to be popular and have lots of friends and party invites and the way I do that is by buddying up to the moms and I get new friends too."

...wow. You know, not every kid even WANTS lots of friends/party invites. Some people only want one or a few close friends. Some people want depth. Maybe her kids want that. Maybe not. But I also boggle that she thinks she ought to provide it. Is she going to follow them to college and try to find them friends by networking with the other mothers who follow their kids to college? Oh, wait....

Observation 1: I do not respond well to the "oh, we're in your neighborhood doing X, we can give you a better rate in the next two days." In other words, you want me time-pressured so I just take your "convenient" and "cheap" option without finding out whether you are doing what I want and need (and if I wanted/needed it, wouldn't I already be researching, most times?), without finding out if you are in fact cheaper than equivalent competition (just cheaper than your usual prices, if they are awful, is not much of a selling point), and without pushing for a schedule or plan that would be convenient for me.

Observation 2: after I have said that I do not like time pressure sales tactics but will accept your advertising in paper form if you want me to think about it, YOUR INTERVIEW IS OVER.

Observation 3: you especially do not attempt to scare me by comparing a hobo spider to a brown recluse (yes, they are related, yes, hobos are not great, no it's not quite the same thing), then saying my neighbors have reported an increased incidence of them (1 - which neighbors; 2 - IS there an increased incidence, or is someone thinking every giant house spider is a hobo spider, especially after you scare them?), and then pointing to a spiderweb and implying it's a hobo spider's web, and pointing out a couple spiders on my house to the same effect.

Observation 4: especially not when I can positively identify the spider nearest me, one of those you indicated, as being not a hobo spider, probably some sort of barn funnel spider, but definitely not a hobo, by the legs. Just sayin'.

Observation 5: When I dismiss you again, now less pleasantly, and point out that I have your paperwork and said I would think it over, you do NOT then suggest I talk it over with my husband and get his advice. Especially not when I haven't confirmed I have a husband, but even if I had confirmed it, frankly you do not do that. Especially in a phrasing and tone that suggests that, basically, I should relay information and let my husband guide my stupid little female head to the 'right' decision (hiring you).

Observation 6: you do not get my business or ever hear from me again, either. If in fact you had convinced me I had a (spider) problem earlier in this exchange (as you did not), I guarantee that the rest of this approach would have sent me straight to one of your competitors to solve the problem. As it is, fortunately it seems that I just have a door-to-door salesman problem, and closing the door in your face after telling you we're done solves THAT.

I play Words With Friends from my iPhone with random partners. It's a word game with letter tiles not unlike Scrabble. It has a chat feature, which I try my best to ignore.

A recent game with a bozo:

I get the first move and play PARCHED, hitting a double word and scoring 63 points (including 35 for using all my letters). I feel slightly bad for my opponent, as that's one heck of a start to a game.

My opponent plays FAKE (using the A in parched) for 11 points, but when I see the move in the game I also see that he has sent a chat. The chat reads: "do u mind me askin u ur asl please?"

I reply "Yep." And feel no guilt and a certain amount of glee as I play ADDRESS across fake for FAKED, use all my letters again, and score another 63 points.

The score is now 126 to 11, and my opponent resigns.

Normally I am sad when an imbalanced game causes an opponent to resign before it's done. Not in this case.

( Details of why )

If you're in the market for a backup, investigate the alternatives and consider Carbonite the solution if and only if you need what they offer so bad that having this kind of customer service is worth it. If you don't need them that badly, you're better off finding out if they have competition that actually has customer service instead of customer aggravation.

Got ahold of Carbonite finally (see previous entry for backstory, if you missed it earlier). I had the brilliant idea to file a stripped-down "help request" in case some character or something in the earlier one broke the response page, removing the button I needed. I called it brilliant because it did in fact get me the button. I was finally able to get thru to the chat program with a customer service representative.

Who assures me that my card will in fact be billed correctly. But who is otherwise not much more helpful than the rest of their system.

Things that need to change:
1) There needs to be some way to get to chat with a CS rep without going through the damned search form in case it is BROKEN.

2) The CS rep should see what you put in the search form if you came in via that route (and, if they already do, be trained to actually read it first).

3) The form should be fixed so whatever about my earlier request broke it doesn't.

4) CS reps should have basic ability to read and understand English and respond to the actual problem. I am pretty sure I was not talking to an Eliza program, but I don't think I was talking to the most attentive person ever, either. And when they didn't understand or care about my final question, apparently, they just disconnected!

5) I hope their technical staff is better at preserving my data than their CS folks are at responding to my inquiries.

( My entire conversation with them )

I am really, REALLY annoyed at Carbonite. Understand, I've used them for backup for a while - even had to restore once when a hard drive died - and while I don't consider them perfect I have been very pleased. Best of all I don't have to think about it, so it actually gets done.

However. I am having a billing problem at the moment. With most companies, "billing problem" means I have been charged and did not want to be. With this company it means they are threatening NOT to charge me. They are saying the subscription for one computer, when it auto-renews, will fail because the credit card on file will have expired by then. However...it renews August 7. The card expires at the end of DECEMBER. And it clearly shows on their web site the right card and expiration date. This makes it impossible to update my billing info to fix it since my billing info IS FREAKING FINE.

So I called them. The guy told me I misread the email, and then I got disconnected. I was on my cell phone so I am hoping it was a dropped line, but I still don't feel like calling back and being told I can't read again. So I used the help form on the site, which takes you to a search for your terms (which, since I am writing a letter, finds nothing). According to the instructions on the form, you then click the "Continue Submitting" button to send your question to them.

A small hint: IT'S HARD TO CLICK A BUTTON THAT IS NOT FREAKING THERE.

I'm off to do something useful with my day. If the auto-renewal fails, I will take that as a sign to find a different online backup service (even though I really hate the initial backup, which takes a while). Anyone have any to recommend, if I hit that eventuality?

...also, I'm gonna link their twitter guy to this. Maybe that way I can actually contact them (though then I'll be out for a while, but such is life). So the (slightly edited) text of the letter is ( Below the cut )

A couple people mentioned good experiences with these folks at other locations, so I'm guessing this is either "this location" or "these people" but either way, I'm not going back. But I don't know that my experience applies to the chain, at least. It's resolved. I'm not thrilled, but I'm not furious and I am done with them. Very, very done, but done.

( Yesterday.... )

I made a couple orders from Walmart of baby stuff (toys to try to keep him entertained during tummy time, a shopping cart cover that was on sale that won't be needed for a while, etc.). They started arriving today. One box came UPS, two more Fedex. They arrived safely, I have to give the companies that much credit.

UPS "hid" their box (they like to do this and won't leave a box in "plain sight." Look, either leave it in plain sight or don't, but it is not hidden by putting it against the house wall and leaning by door mat against it. Who leaves their door mat leaned over objects against their house, honestly? That's just as obvious as the box would be. Sheesh.

( Photo of the 'hiding' of the box. )

Fedex simply left their boxes. However, they parked in our driveway while dropping them off; their truck is large enough to occupy both parking spaces. Of course, this was just as the workday was ending, so I got home with Drew in my car and Scott got home right behind me and we had to wait for the Fedex guy to move his truck. BRILLIANT. Get OUT of my DRIVEWAY. I want to park there. (I'm just glad Drew, who had been screaming part of the way home, was asleep again by then. I'd have been furious as opposed to merely irritated if I'd had a screaming baby in the car while I waited for him to move.)

At least all the packages arrived intact with contents in good shape, but sheesh.

Drove to the grocery store this morning to get cat food for our two bottomless pits, er, beloved pets. Also picked stuff up for us, though there wasn't much we needed, and all of it could have waited. It was quite foggy today, hung on all day, but this was early in the morning and visibility of oncoming traffic was about 1/3 mile ... when they had their headlights on. So why were about 75% of them driving without headlights? I especially liked the white and off-white cars doing this. Not that the dark cars were really much more visible. (Fortunately, they were all in their lane and no problems, but c'mon folks, headlights!)

I have read The Hero of Ages, book three of the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. And unlike most of my other recent reads, I enjoyed it greatly and think it was well-done. I had trouble getting into it at first - I think that owed more to my mood and physical comfort levels than the book, but I'm not sure - but once I did it was excellent. I keep wanting to say the ending was too pat, except that I do not see how it could be, considering that it completely blew me over in shock.

The radio station I listen to for music and traffic reports has been playing Christmas music for the past two weeks already. It's a LITTLE early folks. And we've already hit the moronic Christmas Shoes song at least once. Ugh. I can tune to their HD2 station and get regular music, but then I don't get the traffic reports. And that's only in the car: the home stereo can't handle HD. (Need to do something about replacing it, at some point.)