Inner Solace

To people visiting my site and ‘liking’ my posts

If you are not a spammer, please continue as you were.

If you are a spammer, and/or are attempting to exploit this community by ‘liking’ peoples’ posts in a hope that they will click on your link, and go to your tumblr site which has been loaded with scripts which redirect them to porn and repeatedly refresh the location to more porn and ads and popups:

I hope you catch a disease or are subject to afflictions and conditions which don’t kill you, but will make your life uncomfortable and unpleasant due to any or all of the following:

• Warts - Either on exposed parts of your body or bottom so that it makes it unpleasant to sit.
• Boils and pustules - As above. If they weep either visibly or enough so that wet spots appear on your clothing and then dry so that your clothes stick to the boil so when you pull the fabric away it also rips the top of the boil off again, all the better.
• Acid reflux
• Papercuts - On the knuckles of your hands or feet
• Mosquito bites - As above
• Food allergies - The ones which cause the back of your throat to itch where you can’t scratch and all you can do is continue to swallow repeatedly or make that air biting face dogs make when they’ve tasted something unpleasant, in the vain hope that the motion will alleviate some of the irritation.
• Pimples - Just on the inside of your ears or nose
• Tooth sensitivity to hot and cold that Sensodyne and other similar toothpastes and mouthwashes won’t be able to assist with
• Carpal tunnel syndrome - Not because you’re a physical wanker, but because you’re a true wanker at heart for drawing traffic to your site in this ultimately tosser way

I also hope that every cat you see hisses at you, dogs bark and snarl at you as you pass, and that rodents will sneak into your home and take a whizz and dump on your pillow.

3 Mobile Rant #2

Just under two weeks since I was told it would take 48 hours to unlock my phone.  Nope. Not unlocked yet.

Called up and was on hold for 20 minutes (using my call credit).  Was told that the phone was in fact, not unlocked.  I asked them if they could promise me they wouldn’t put me on hold again while we resolve this. I was told that they promise, but “please wait while I transfer you to the iPhone department”. Fuck. Really.

So I was put on hold again.

I completed the call after 50 minutes.

After I was picked up again they confirmed (again) that my phone was not unlocked.  They wanted to put me on hold while they checked on this and I said no. I will not be put on hold again. You can put me on mute, but I refuse to go back on hold.  At least I’d know they’re there and I’m not sitting in some limbo queue. Especially when I’m already miffed and have to hear about how 3 is the magic number and that I could save time waiting by looking for my answers online.

The guy returns and says he’s not sure why but he’ll resubmit the request to unlock my phone and I should get a text within 48 hours.  I asked him what would be different about this time than last time? What guarantee does he have that it’d work this time around and I wouldn’t have to sit through the queues again for what is apparently a simple request? I managed to make arrangements for him to call me in two days.

He also asked me why I wanted to unlock my phone.  I asked him why that is relevant.  He said that’s one of the fields on the form.  Well, I wasn’t asked this last time I called. But it didn’t seem to affect the last request because it seems like the request wasn’t actioned, not that it was rejected for insufficient information.

I told him that I was told it was unlocked but when I went overseas I discovered I was unable to use other SIMs and that I didn’t want to use 3 Mobile roaming because the costs are prohibitive.  He asked me where I was travelling to. I asked him again, what difference does that make? He said that they have agreements with carriers which will allow 3 Mobile users to make calls while they’re overseas.  I asked him, at roaming rates? He said yes. I said well I just said before that I didn’t want to use 3 roaming because of the high rates.

What I wanted to say was, were you even listening before you prattled off script? No.

So, the first guy lies about promising not to put me on hold, the second doesn’t pay attention or can’t remember what has been said in the last 10 seconds.

While I was on hold, I also noticed a 3 twitter (@3Mobile_help) dedicated to social media help.  They put messages each day saying that they’re available, but either they don’t receive any queries, or they don’t answer them. They certainly didn’t respond to mine.

Extremely displeased with 3 service. I can’t say I’ll be renewing my contract when the time comes.

Let’s see if they keep their promise of contacting me in two days.  Otherwise this month’s call credit will be mostly used on ‘customer service’.

Oh and I mentioned my complaint from the first marathon call was not responded to or addressed in any way.  The solution apparently is to keep spamming the complaints form on the 3 site. Am now 80% certain that form is piped to /dev/null.

3 Mobile Rant

I’ve been on hold with 3 Customer Care for 90 minutes now to find out if my phone is locked and if so, to have it unlocked.  20 minutes was in the queue. 10 was the CSR asking me for my IMEI, putting me on hold while he was checking it, the coming back to tell me he’s still checking and he wanted to put me on hold again.

I asked him if I could get a call back instead, and he said no, it won’t take long, just 4-5 minutes.

60 minutes into this second round of being on hold. No returns to tell me he’s still going or to offer a call back. And mostly in silence. The IVR music isn’t working and only plays intermittently for fractions of a second. Sometimes when the music comes back it’s so short that I can’t tell if it’s meant to be a recording or the guy, so I keep calling into the phone “Hello? Are you there?” like some poor sap with abandonment issues.

In my frustration, I have sent three annoyed tweets to @3mobile, and at the 70 minute call mark I sent a complaint email about being left on hold in mostly silence with no progress updates from a CSR.

I got a canned response back from their complaints filter.  It tells me they have sent me “a pdf containing information” (ambiguous) which has been selected based on the content of my complaint.

The PDF wisely suggests that I:

1. Switch the phone off and on again
2. Try a different SIM
3. Attempt to use the phone in another location, like a different room
4. Keep it up to date
5. Figure out if the issue is intermittent or temporary

1. Really? Reboot? You’re going to try that one?

2. Funny that, the issue is that other SIMs don’t work. -_-

3. I took the phone to another bloody country. That’s kind of how I figured out there was a problem.

4. iPhone, iTunes, kind of just happens.

5. Yes it is temporary and intermittent. It only seems to stop working when I try to put other SIMs in my phone.

And I’ve been on hold in silence for so long that I forgot I was on hold and when the intermittent music started again, I jumped.

So. Sad. Panda.

Update:

After 110 minutes, I left the other phone on hold and called the sales line on my mobile.  Got through almost straight away. Really nice guy (name forgotten, sorry!) told me straight away the phone is locked, took my IMEI and submitted the unlock request. 5 minutes (11 including IVR and queue time).

He also went to check my account history to find out who was leaving me on hold for so long, but the [expletive] CSR didn’t record my call contact. *stare*

OH in Subiaco - Why the world is going down the crapper

I was wandering around Subiaco today, killing time after a meeting before I had to head off to dinner with friends, when I overhead a conversation between a shop-keeper and a customer.

They were discussing their daughters and the difficulties they had trying to decide which private school to send their girls.  One has a year 11 girl at MLC and said that when she and her husband were scouting schools they had considered St Hilda’s and PLC but they got the best vibe from the principal of MLC and the general feel of the school and students/parents they had met.

The shop-keeper had expressed her concerns in deciding on a school as well, but had ended up choosing to send her 10 year old to MLC for the same reasons as her customer “despite the rocky reputation of MLC over the last few years.”  And MLC seemed to have a nice distribution of kids from different backgrounds and didn’t appear to have the cliques the other schools had.  Gods willing the year group her daughter enters into isn’t filled with little ass-hats (their sentiment in my words).

They started talking about the other schools like PLC and St Hilda’s, and said that St Hilda’s seemed to have a terrible reputation of girls with anorexia problems. Not surprising, St Hilda’s seems to breed them tall and skinny with a penchant for wanting to get into modelling.

One of them had learned that a number of the year 12 girls at a couple of the schools had breast enhancements. She heard from some other parents that the parents at these schools were inclined to bribe their children with nose and boob jobs in exchange for academic performance.

Say what?

So, we used to call the PLC girls “Prostitute’s Last Chance” but who thought they were that keen on ‘developing their assets’ for that career. Seriously, at that age kids haven’t finished growing yet.

What kind of parent uses plastic surgery as an incentive to get their kids to do better in school?  My first guess is it’s the new money types and cashed up bogans who are earning a packet working in the mining and resources industry in the state.  But wow, way to raise your kid with good values and healthy body image attitudes.

And this is why I am disinclined to send my future kids to private school. At least in this state.  I’ve been through the private school system here, and it’s full of manipulation, intrigue and one-upmanship.  You’d think all of that is character building, but I think there is such a thing as too much character…

Ye of Little Faith

Last month we had an extended family dinner for a cousin who had just announced his engagement.  The ‘grown-ups’ sat at one table and all the cousins (and their partners) sat at the other.  One of the other cousins who usually sits at the grown-up table (delusions of maturity) decided to join us that night, for reasons beyond my comprehension.

He’s quite a character this cousin, whom I will refer to as Cadbury from here on, but I don’t think he even needs the full glass and a half before he’s well and truly past tipsy.  The entire evening he was trying to give us life advice.  How to cook, how to enrich our lives, how to ‘shine’… The cousins don’t usually say much in response to things like this because we were raised to be quiet (and polite, but sometimes that’s the same thing).  So he kept going on.. and on… and ohgodspleasemakehimstop.

Some choice pearls of wisdom that he was so gracious to impart upon us:

“To cook well is to use fresh ingredients. So the trick to doing this is to only buy what you need.” - No. Shit. Sherlock.

“My parents, unlike myself, are flawed. They don’t understand what is important in life.  I do, that’s why I shine.” - Oh really, I thought that rosy glow was the result of the alcohol you have imbibed this evening.

A lot of his advice was only served once he had decided he had accused you enough of not being as wonderful as he was.  He interrogated engaged cousin and his fiancée (CF) about the last time they cooked.  They don’t cook very much and he found this somewhat offensive and began to lecture about quality of life.

He told another two cousins that they look like they have the potential to shine, but they have to love themselves first (or something) and that he doesn’t have that problem at all (obviously).

There was also a lot of “When you get to my age…” the problem is, there’s only ten years between the eldest and the youngest cousin.  And he was wearing my patience sorely thin.  After the nth “When you get to my age” I had to interject with “And how old are you, grandfather?”.

Cadbury dominated the table conversation all evening but things came to a head when he asked CF what she would do if she had only 24 hours left to live (part of the ‘Quality of Life’ lecture).  She replied that she would be at church praying.

He replied “Oh, so you’re Christian?” and she said “Yes.”  Cadbury tried to determine how ‘Christianly’ she actually was by asking her when was the last time she went to church.  She replied “Last Sunday” and he expressed complete surprise because he had expected her faith to be one of convenience.

Cadbury started asking about whether she believes in the gift of eternal life (she said ‘yes’) and tried to establish the strength of her belief.  He said “If God manifested himself in front of you right now, and said that there is no such thing as eternal life, would you still believe in God?”

CF said “Yes.”

Cadbury replied “LIAR!”

I thought “Oh no you didn’t.”

He said “You would believe in God, even if he told you no such thing as eternal life?”

“Yes”

“I don’t believe you.  If God manifested himself in front of me and told me I would have eternal life if I believed in him, I would and I would do everything in my power to achieve it.”

He also said things about how he isn’t Christian because he believes in the strength of his own skills and ability to do or get whatever he wants or needs.  And he expressed his disbelief that people would believe in God even if the promise of the reward of eternal life didn’t exist.

It was around this time that I snapped.

I may not be religious, and I don’t like people forcing their faith upon me, but I acknowledge and respect that people have their beliefs.  I also read about said beliefs because it’s what I do, I read.  And whether it was Christianity, Islam or a potato, if someone says they believe in something, who are you to tell them they’re a liar just because you don’t believe yourself?

Not to mention this is their freaking engagement party and you’re antagonising the people whose party this is for to satisfy your arrogance and narrow-mindedness.

I also don’t appreciate people treating faith like a reward point system.  You’re not collecting fucking Frequent Flyer miles that you can trade in for points+pay for your very own Eternal Life from the bloody catalogue.

In all fairness, there are people who are actually like that, and I am being a hypocrite with respect to those people for judging them on how they choose to demonstrate their faith.  But how shallow would you have to be to treat the holy text of your faith, the entity you believe to be a Higher Power, for some their raison d’être, the way you treat discount coupons or stamps on a loyalty card?  It just seems so cheap.

I said most of this at the cousin table, and directed it mainly at Cadbury, although without the swearing.  Never have I been so vocal at a family gathering.  And never have I felt as much anger towards any of my extended family as I did that night.

Besides that, what is the definition of eternal life anyway? All faiths have some interpretation of it.  And it’s up to the person who believes to know how they feel about it and what they think it is or means.

Another cousin asked, “If all faiths have eternal life then what makes Christianity different? Why would someone choose it over another faith?”.  This question made me think of when we were asked to upsell products when I was working call centre… It was a very peculiar feeling.

I ended up having to try to explain what I believed (hah) I understood of eternal life and defending faith.  Most of you have no idea what a strange position this was for me.  You know, the one whose relatives have called her a pagan or Godless heathen amongst other colourful and more interesting names.

It’s obvious that eternal life in the Christian definition isn’t physical immortality.  Immortality of the soul or spirit? Perhaps.  It could also be eternal life through reincarnation, becoming one with The Powers That Be, with the universe or your higher spiritual self.  It could be any number of things depending on who you are, where you feel you sit in the Grand Design, cosmic scheme of things or whatever it is you feel most strongly about, or what gives you the most comfort to know or believe.

That might have been a faffy explanation, but there’s just so much that it could be depending on who you are and how you look at it.  I couldn’t possibly articulate how big the question they asked was to them.  It is not family dinner conversation at all. Not in the slightest.

And at the end of my stint on the soap box, at least two of the cousins asked me if I was Christian. I wanted to ask why in the hell do I have to be Christian to read and want to learn more about different beliefs and spirituality?

But that was, and is another rant for another time.

douchebag programmers

The following may not make sense to you if you’re not a developer. I am sorry about that, but I need to vent. :P

So… I’m using this third party library.  At the moment I am invoking its initialisation call inline in each of the pages that needs it.  The call is the same each time, and it’s huge because one of the parameters is a nice long hash that specifies the settings required.

I tried to be a good little programmer and turned this into a function so that I can load it once, and call it as many times as I like without having to duplicate the code.  But it won’t work.  The page starts to load, then it halts, blanks the page then appears to load indefinitely.

After a bit of troubleshooting to make sure I didn’t cause the problem myself, I decided to search the library forums to see if someone else had encountered the problem.  Someone else had.

This someone else described the problem, and explained what had happened when they tried to use Firebug to identify the problem. The primary dev replied, in a tone which could be construed as a little snarky, that the OP should use Firebug.

I imagine that the OP was feeling a bit like myself at the point, frustrated and going a little insane with trying to resolve this problem.  But the OP started getting upset in the forum because the primary told him to do what he said he already did in his previous post.

In response, the primary replied that he knows what’s wrong, but won’t provide the answer because he felt the OP was being rude.

At this point, I started to sob because now the primary was going to be as big of a douche as he felt the OP was being by denying everyone else the solution to this problem.

The thread later described some solutions and workarounds, but reading that response from the primary made me very very sad.

I was reading a magazine article today about a girl who, when she was a teenager, had an accident that rendered her paralysed.

Right after the accident, this girl was obviously distraught, fearful that her life was over, and unable to come to terms with her new situation.  She struggled with the idea of being wheelchair bound and took some time to adjust her mental attitude.  She is now able to feel confident about herself and is able to live independently.

It was meant to be a story about people who have the strength to overcome huge obstacles in their lives and be able to carry on.  And I guess it was, but the cynical bitch in me got more than a little annoyed about how she came to be in this situation.

As a teen it was popular for people in her group of friends to go driving through the bush, off-road, in a four-wheel drive.  As teens do, they also might go a little faster than they ought to.

What I found profoundly stupid was that she also elected to not wear a seat-belt during these excursions.  Also, there was a point right before the accident when the driver was going a little too fast over bumpy roads and she expressed some concern, but still did not put on her seat-belt.  The accident occurred when they were going too fast over a large bump, and because she wasn’t wearing a seat-belt, she was thrown into the air and her bent head slammed into the ceiling of the car.

The article also mentioned that when she was coming to terms with being paralysed for the rest of her life, there were cries of “Why me?” and “How did this happen?” and “It’s not fair”.

I don’t know about you, but it sure sounds like those rhetorical questions can be answered with “Well, you chose not to wear your seat-belt (which is against the law in this country, where your accident occurred) when your friends were driving unsafely on uneven ground in the bush.”

Jimmy Page criticizes Rock Band and Guitar Hero

runamuk:

poops:

ewokonline:

designinganervousbreakdown:

Jimmy Page claimed that Led Zeppelin would never follow the example of Metallica, The Beatles or Aerosmith and never would give their agreement to create Rock Band or Guitar Hero game about the band. The legendary guitarist said that if fans want to follow Led Zeppelin, they should pick up a real instrument.

“You’ll see if you’ve got a passion to want to play the instrument, and that is a good initiation. From my experience, once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point”, said he.

Jimmy Page added that people can never learn to play music instruments through Guitar Hero and other videogames. “You think of the drum part that John Bonahm did on Led Zeppelin’s first track on the first album Good Times Bad Times. How many drummers in the world can play that part, let alone on Christmas morning?” he said.

Earlier The White Stripes and The Raconteurs frontman Jack White also criticized Rock Band and Guitar Hero: “It’s depressing to have a label come and tell you that Guitar Hero is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music. I do not try to dictate which format people should get their music in, but if you have to be in a video game to get in front of them, that’s a little sad.”

FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES.

YET ANOTHER REASON THAT JIMMY PAGE IS THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING MAN.

SUCK ON THAT, YOU LAZY MOTHERFUCKERS.

(also: I can play Good Times, Bad Times note for note, no mistakes, with one kick pedal, with the stutters, just like Bonzo. My mother made me learn it that way. Jimmy, call me.)

Well fucking ouch. I like Guitar Hero. But I can play IRL too. Jesus.

Now I don’t really like games like rock star and guitar hero, but sheesh. How many people can skate like Tony Hawk? How many people can play football like Thierry Henry or Harry Kewell? That is the whole point of computer games. If some kid plays FIFA and then gets into playing soccer, is that a bad thing? If some kid likes guitar hero, then perhaps that might make him pick up a real guitar. Jimmy Page is a tool, living in the old world. Your species will soon be extinct. Good riddance.

Wow, burn.  Some of us can play musical instruments anyway. We play Guitar Hero and Rock Band beause it’s fun.  And because not all of us have bands, but we can still play it with our friends. It’s a social thing.

I sure don’t expect that I’d learn to be a master guitar player, singer, drummer etc by playing these games.  I do it because it’s shareable entertainment.

I also don’t think it’s depressing that people are learning and experiencing music through this game because if they have enough passion for it, they’ll go out and find a way to get access to the actual instruments themselves.  Think of it as a gateway drug.

What about the fans who can’t play instruments but love you anyway? The ones who listen to your music with pencils in their hands pretending to be the drummer, air guitaring, or holding a brush as a microphone? Are they slack fucks because they can’t be arsed going out and getting real instruments? No, they do it because it’s fun, and they like you.

*sigh*