Software, Interrupted

I had a few minutes today and I went to the Verizon store on Van Ness to see if I could get the new Blackberry Curve that just came out. After standing there for 9 minutes (I checked on my existing BB) someone finally asked if they could help. Here is my experience as verbatim as I can recall.

"Did you guys get the Curve."
"Yes."
"Can I get one"
"What is your cell #?"
"Does it matter?"
"No."

Then he bounded off to the backroom to return without the Curve.

"Yup, we have them."
"Can I get one?"
"What is your cell #?"

I give him my number and he tells me that I am not eligible, I have only had this phone for a year and 2 months.

"Can I change my plan and get it?"
"No."
"How is the camera."
"It's Ok like the Pearl."
"This is why people get annoyed with cellphone carriers."
"This is how the wireless industry works in the US."

Thanks for the lesson in mobility and economics. There is nothing more I enjoy than having a moron in a bad tie give me life lessons. I spared us all the heartache of explaining to him that I spent several years in mobile and telecom.

There are few things in life more infuriating than dealing with cell carriers. I am sure I will never hear from VZW on this--or RIM for that matter, whose 9000 I just blogged about earlier today!! That's it. Both companies suck and you deserve to be publicly flogged. I won't do you any favors until you do me a solid.

As for the Van Ness store, I have bought things there in the past and the experience has been fine. This time I had to stand there sweating while some morons behind the counter shouted to each other their Facebook status. The company and the manager of the store should be embarrassed with the behavior.

You can't make this stuff up.

For those of you who have young children you know that you need some kind of bedtime ritual to get the kid to go to sleep.

At our house we watch the Goodnight Moon show that we Tivo'd from HBO. I should have bought the DVD a few months back instead of just now but we figured it would always be in the Tivo!

This 30 minute masterpiece does an amazing job calming the savage beast. But today we got quite a surprise when the Tivo deleted the show on it's own and doesn't show it in "Recently Deleted Items" or offer a way to search for deleted items. So now the damn thing is just gone and we had to wrangle the kid to sleep after reading her a book. (Yes, I know we should probably do that anyway, but the video is magic.)

So, who's to blame? I don't know. I checked the Tivo forums and read that HBO is now expiring programs from people's Tivo boxes, and I don't trust Comcast a whole lot so I am sure there is collusion in there somewhere.

I am incredibly annoyed and honestly feel like my rights as a consumer (especially one who has owned 3 Tivos and pays a whopping cable bill) have been trampled. I am sure there is some explanation but it's infuriating. There is nothing in my contract with Tivo (or Comcast) that says they can delete material on my Tivo that I continue to pay a subscription for.

Having been a *very* happy Tivo owner for about 7 years this is the first time where I have been so pissed that I want to throw the thing out the window. I guess I will go check out MythTv.

I know it's only January 1st, but Zed Shaw, creator of Mongrel, a hugely popular library and web server for Rails has posted the rant of the year already.

This is that rant. It is part of my grand exit strategy from the Ruby and Rails community. I don't want to be a "Ruby guy" anymore, and will probably start getting into more Python, Factor, and Lua in the coming months. I've got about three or four more projects in the works that will use all of those and not much Ruby planned.

This rant is full of stories about companies and people who've either pissed in my cheerios somehow or screwed over friends. I can back all of them up from emails, IRC chat logs, or with witnesses. Nothing in here is a lie unless it's really obviously a lie through exaggeration, and there's a lot of my opinion as well.

It's possible that he's a maniac but he might also be from New Jersey considering his willingness to fight on a whim. We need to get this guy on Open Season ASAP.

via Techcrunch