Category: Blog

“You know, I would totally watch Survivor: South Pacific, in which the challenges involved washing that man right out of your hair.”

“History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.” – Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'

Some of you, well, maybe one or two of you, may have heard of my hobby of taking pictures of discarded furniture. I set up a seperate gallery at http://www.roadsidefurniture.com/gallery/ that's also available from the right sidebar here. Went out and shot some more today.

So here's a question. Many of these fine pieces of…furniture have really cool colorful patterns. What occurred to me was that an interesting art piece could be made from the picture, mounted in a swatch of the original fabric. Except that would necessitate me slashing into the furniture; normally I'd never touch it. Seems wrong to me, vandalising junk – many will obviously never be used again, but still. A better idea occurred to me: take the picture, then load the junk into a trailer, slash my swatch, and haul it off – to where? Optimally I'd find an ambitious furniture repairman who could recover and sell the stuff. Second would be to the dump – but I have no idea where there would be a dump around here. So I think the best idea would be to load it into the VW Microbus and throw it into a ravine somewhere, a la Arlo Gunthrie. Make one big pile out of a lot of little piles, as it were.

Anyhow, speaking of piles, (are you sitting down? never mind.)rather than pile all the pictures into a single folder, I've split them up by “session”. I haven't gotten to reorganizing the original pile.

Each pile has a “hit counter” that shows how many times people have seen it. It's interesting that a few people a day hit that site. If I put a new gallery up, it'll get hit within a day. Are these just google image-spiders? And wouldn't that last sentence have sounded bizarre to someone pre-internet?

Around 6/18/2003, I wrote:

But a better idea is what I call the “letter rate” stamp – stamps that don't have a dollar amount on them, but are good for mailing a letter – forever. Buy as many as you want (at today's rate) – when the rates go up you don't have to bother with penny stamps or worse, returned letters. Ditto for the $3 express mail envelopes – buy as many as you want – their stamp is good forever. The Post office would certainly make more money from people buying early. Probably makes too much sense though.

LA Times from this morning:

This Stamp Could Be Mailed 'Forever'
From the Associated Press
May 4, 2006

WASHINGTON

After finding this site in a search for Pinzgauer information, someone asked:

“Is the purpose of this site to allow fred to engage in unilateral diatribes about n'importe quoi?”

Yes.

“Who is the audience”

Friends of mine, and anyone who happens to find it.

“and why are the posts of others ignored?”

Because there's something wrong with the code, again. I wrote the code for this site myself, and I recently modified something that's supposed to filter malicious data entries so hackers can't crash my database. I saw your initial comment; it got mailed to me; but I didn't see it on the site, so obviously there's something wrong. This site is also a place for me to test web programming. I'll try to get it working again soon, but it isn't that high a priority to me. I tend to suspect it has something to do with use of the apostrophe, but I'm not sure.

I do reserve the right to delete comments I don't like, and to block IP addresses if necessary. As well as the right to serve refuse to anyone.

“That hardly seems like something worth posting on a public Internet…???”

And that should matter…why? I also post most of the pictures I take, mostly so friends can look at them. It's my server, my bandwidth. It's not my fault that Google (or whoever) found it for you. Maybe the Pinz pictures were useful to you, maybe not.

Thing is, the Internet is a virtually unlimited resource, that's essentially free. What's “worth” posting? There's plenty of porn, so at least there's that. I've found reasonably good information about buying a car, lately. Plenty of entertaining stories. Some news. And there's lots and lots of worthless junk like my site. It doesn't have to be worthwhile. It doesn't have to have a purpose. It's a place for me to test php, and to scrawl whatever I want in a tiny little corner of the massive bathroom wall we call the internet (or occasionally “The Internets”).

I have a group of friends who put on an internet radio show. Pretty much full time, 24/7 I believe, tho sometimes it's just automated random play. They play whatever the hell they want, or talk about whatever the hell they want. Is it a waste of bandwidth? Sure. So what?

Personally, I'm a lot more perturbed by spam, popups, viruses, and other unwanted nasties on the web, to worry and/or complain about the volume of useless material here.

In any case, thanks for visiting!

Update:

Fixed. And I re-added your comments, tied them to this thread, and added paragraph dividers, something my program doesn't seem to do properly yet. At some point I should probably fix dates, as well. (shrug)

Okay, actually I don't. I like the interface and having all my music in one place and how it works with the iPod. But there's the problem. ITunes only works well with the iPod, and vice versa. I wouldn't own a different portable player, but if I did I would want it to work with iTunes instead. And vice versa.

As a matter of fact I do have a different portable player – my cellphone. Which I'm using to type this blog entry actually. It happens to play mp3s, after a fashion (biggest problems being it uses Real player which has a slick but awkward UI, and it requires a different set of headphones with a tiny stereo plug.) But of course it doesn't synch with iTunes, unless someone makes a plugin.

Then again, if iTunes and the iPod interface protocol were open source, maybe Apple wouldn't have done so extraordinarily well selling the little bastards.

I don’t watch a lot of television, tho I’m sort of fascinated by them. I’ve actually owned a lot of televisions over the years, and nearly all of them I got for free – people upgrading, getting rid of broken (relatively easily fixed) sets, even a few that I’ve found sitting next to dumpsters that worked perfectly well – yay, obtainium! For a while I’ve had a “Tower of Television” (idea courtesy of Mikemikemike) with a stack of them, all running and connected to cable. But at the moment I only really have one (well, okay, two, but the other is a little tiny 13″ in the bedroom), a 32″ Sony I got from my brother-in-law, which had a fine tube but a transistor (or something) out somewhere; for $100 repair, it’s been a great set, though it’s heavy as hell any time I need to move it.

I haven’t been connected to cable for over two years, actually, and I’m sure I haven’t missed it. I do subscribe to Netflix (fheald at obtainium dot org if you want to add to my “friends” list) and I even rent dvds of series – Deadwood, Carnivale, even Lost – which I imagine is a lot better without commercials.

In any case, in the process of creating our living room, we decided we needed a TV armoire. So I popped onto Craiglist and (after a few days) found a nice one – real wood furniture, good drawers, etc. Measured it and the TV, figured it would be a tight fit but should work. We u-hauled it home, dragged it into place. Then tried to hoist the TV into place and…it didn’t fit. Measure again – TV 28″ tall, armoire just over 28″ tall. Try again, no joy. Apparently the TV was just slightly large enough to not quite fit.

But we liked the armoire better than the TV, so darn it all I had to buy a new one. Out to Best Buy, old-fashioned tubes aren’t very expensive. I was going to buy a Sony, just because. Becke liked the Toshiba, but I’ve got this feeling that Sony is a little better quality. But then as I was walking to checkout, I got to thinking about what Sony does with their DRM and proprietary stuff – the latest squabble involving CDs with rootkit code is just typical of their conflict of interest between content and devices. Sony’s always made really great devices with good ergonomics and visual appeal, but lately they’re always crippling them in the intrests of protecting the content and maintaining their revenue stream. Their boomboxes are nice but they don’t have a place to plug in my iPod, their cameras use a proprietary memory chip, and they keep trying to foist off ATRAC and minidiscs. Even their Palm series used special sync software that didn’t work with Mac. The TV of course had none of these, and had all the connections of a regular TV. But I decided, F- ’em. Got the Toshiba. Sony doesn’t care about me or my money, but at least I won’t have to look at the thing and think I’m financing their empire.

Nope, not a new phone number – fortunately, although there is a story to go along with that as well – but I finally made the switch from Sprint to Verizon. For 12 years with Sprint, all the way back to the “Pioneer” program (flat rate, 35c a minute, no monthly fee sounded great back then even if there weren't any towers) I've been putting up with their fair-to-poor coverage areas because their prices tended to be better than the rest – as well as the usual inertia. But the last straw was moving in to our house in Mt. Washington – about three miles from downtown LA – and not being able to get coverage. Often my phone would ring and I couldn't answer it – usually it just switched to analog roaming mode and the battery would die. Of course it didn't work well at work either, in the Arco building, tho it had been working okay in the new offices. It had gotten so I was used to not being able to get through an entire conversation without the phone hanging up on me. I even started using the (shudder) land-line phone (cordless, of course, but). Everyone I've asked as reported best coverage from Verizon, so that's who I went with. Wish these phone companies would learn that my #1 priority from a cellphone is being able to make and recieve calls – which means I require great reception and great battery life.

Of course, I still had a contract period with Sprint, for which the customer service people wanted to charge me an early termination fee. But I'm told in the store that that fee is waived if you can't get service at home, tho CS won't tend to admit it. Apparently it's a catch-22: if you want to cancel your service because of bad reception you can, but you'll lose your phone number. But if you go to another carrier to switch numbers, you get cancelled automatically and there's a termination fee. In any case, after calling support several times and visiting Sprint stores several times in search of a better solution, I dropped in to V and they got it moved in minutes. Called Sprint and they wouldn't waive the fee unless I had a store person make a note in my account. Which, amazingly, they were able to do. So until I get the bill, the assumption is I'm off the hook, so to speak.

But while I was at it, I decided to make the leap back to Palm and get a Treo 650. Tho it will never equal the Newton, the Treo is a damned good phone (as far as I can tell by 2 days worth of field testing). The phone works reasonably well (despite the tiny buttons), the bluetooth headset is great (tho it seems to sound pretty bass-intensive, and the controls – or lack therof are a little hard to decipher). But here's the thing: the phone sync's with my Mac. Not only that, but after some fiddling, it does it wirelessly, over bluetooth as well. So for the first time in my history of phones and cellphones – I can actually move my contact list from the phone to the computer, and back! Which means now I've got to actually go back and clean up my address book, and move all the contacts from my old phone on to the computer, manually.

It also takes pictures – fairly poor 640×480 resolution – and plays MP3s – not as well/as many as an ipod. Keeps a to-do list, if I bother. If it'll remind me of my mom's birthday, which I always manage to forget, it'll be worth it. And there are even some advanced applications – like one that records calls (if you have the space on tiny memory cards) or runs Skype to do VOIP calls; there's a (optional, haven't bought it yet thank you) navigation package that hooks to GPS as well. All in all seems to be a clever bit of kit.

So, finally the SBC DSL is up and running. Still considering moving to DSL Extreme or someone more reasonable, or at least different, from SBC.

Haven't gotten any TV service yet. Will probably end up with Dish Network, at some point – for now I'm using Netflix and Greencine for movie rentals. Both of which work remarkably well with the exception of recently released TV/cable shows (like the latest season of Deadwood and Carnivale) and movies that were never released on DVD at all.

No real point in this blog entry, but I fixed a bug in the way my server was set up and testing to be sure it's still working. It was being a cranky with quote characters all of a sudden due to a minor change to ether PHP or mysql or both.

SBC Customer Service
10/20/2005

I would like to file a formal complaint with regard to my residential install. I cannot find an email address or phone number for complaint filing/resolution.

Summary:
I'm trying to get a phone line installed, and your installers keep flaking, and appointments keep getting screwed up, and my install keeps being pushed back. This is unacceptable customer service.

The long story:
I've moved in to a rental house that was just rebuilt. There are no inside wires in the house; there is no demarc/MPOE box on the house; the phone pole is directly in front of the house and there's a bare wire hanging from it that I'm told used to be the house's wire.

On Monday 10/10 or Tuesday 10/11 I placed an order for new residential phone service, including DSL. I did not place an order for inside wiring at that time because I needed permission from the landlord. An appointment was scheduled for Friday 10/14. I was told that I didn't need to be there for the outside wiring.

On Thursday 10/13 I called to make note of the fact that there was no outside wire to the house (so I knew they would need to come to the house to do the install). I may have also placed an order for inside wiring at that point (I don't recall when I first placed that order). I verified that I didn't need to be there for the outside wiring. I was told that an install truck was already scheduled to be there.

I'm told (by a contractor that was working at my house) that on Fridday 10/14 around noon, the installer showed up, looked at the wire hanging from the pole, and left. There was no explanation; there was no hang tag left on my door, I didn't find out till I got home that night. I assumed I couldn't get anyone until Monday, although I now realise I should have called that night.

On Monday 10/17 I called to reschedule the install. We scheduled an outside wire install on Wednesday 10/19 – I was told it would be an all-day appointment but I did not need to be there. And we scheduled an inside wire install on Friday 10/21 – I was told it would be an all-day appointment and I _would_ need to be there. I carefully verified all this with the customer support person.

On Wednesday 10/19 (yesterday) at around noon, I was told by my contractor that the SBC installer showed up, could not get into the house, so he (his words) “wasn't going to do half a job” and he was pleased that he didn't have to do any work at all, and left. Apparently somehow the outside wiring install got combined with the inside wiring install, without notifying me, the customer who needed to be there. I supplied SBC with my cellphone number each time I called to make an appointment. I work 20 minutes from home and can be there if called. My girlfriend arrived at the house a few minutes after the installer left. If he had started on the outside wiring we would or could have been there to let him into the house. Remember, I was told repeatedly, and verified, I did not need to be there for the outside wire install! The installer did not leave a door tag, and SBC made no attempt to contact me.

On 10/19 at 12:53 I called SBC to find out what had happened. After explaining the situation to customer support, I was transferred to some other department (“one call”? “once and done”? “one day”?), and told that the installer _had_ installed the outside wiring and that the phone line would be activated that night. I am able to do some telephone wiring, so I could have “hot-wired” a line to the MPOE until the inside wiring was complete. I was told that the 10/21 inside wiring appointment had “disappeared from the system” and that the next time for an inside appointment would be 10/25. So we scheduled it for then.

I arrived home on 10/19 to find that the outside wiring had, in fact, not been done. The bare wire is still hanging from your pole. There is no wiring box on the house. So I called SBC (cellphone), explained the situation, and sat on hold for half an hour. At some point the customer support person came on to tell me she was still on hold with the dispatch office, then put me back on hold, or dropped my call, I don't know, but I got dead air for 10 minutes. Total call length: 35 minutes.

Up until this point I had been patient and accommodating with your customer support people. I understand that mistakes happen, and that scheduling is difficult. But at this point my patience ran out.

Not knowing whether I was still connected, I hung up and called customer support back. The first person attempted to connect me or message the woman who had been working on my account – apparently she was still working on it. Eventually I was transferred to, apparently, an engineering supervisor. I explained the situation AGAIN (she had the notes on the screen right in front of her), and she determined that no, the outside wiring install had not been done because the installer did not have access to the house to do inside wiring, and the new appointment for 10/25 was for inside wiring only, the outside wiring had to be done first, and the soonest I could get an appointment was 10/27. She was unable to expedite, or otherwise do anything at all about this problem aside from basically scheduling a brand new install. Which we have done. I will once again ask for the day off work to meet with your installer, as I did for the original 10/19 install. I also asked for a “supervisor callback” which I was told would happen in “24 to 48 hours”.

At this point, I guess I have to wait, take more time off work, and hope that the next installer doesn't decide to abandon the job for no apparent reason. Until then I have no phone service and no internet service. (If at this point you have any way to expedite my outside wiring install, I would appreciate it, but I suspect this is not possible.)

To summarize, here's what went wrong:
-your original installer decided for some reason not to do the install.
-somehow the second outside install and the second inside install got combined without notifying me.
-the second installer decided not to do the outside install because he could not do the inside install at the same time.
-no attempt was made to contact me.
-no attempt was made (or possible?) to expedite the correction to this problem.

I am a customer in good standing, with a relatively simple but full-featured account I'm trying to get installed. I have no other choice of local wiring provider, so I depend upon SBC to provide this service. I elected to have you do the inside wiring, and DSL, because I believed that would be the most convenient. I even ordered Dish network through you, so you got a commission from me for that. I repeat, this is not the way a good customer should be treated.

Please contact me if necessary.