Moo! The Musings of a Plaid Cow

Yikes. Its Plaid Cow Pants.

When the rationale for one of your system requirements ends with “(Idea dreamed up at a workshop.)”, you know that it’s got to be a good one.

If you need to call AT&T Wireless Customer Service (i.e., who you would get calling 611 from your wireless phone), you can also reach them by calling 800-331-0500. This works from any other wireless phone or landline. This is available on their website, but I couldn’t find it without resorting to Google.

If 10 songs into the play list you’re still questioning why it seems all of the songs are out of the eighties–perhaps you are listening to the playlist of “Eighties Music”. (Instead of the playlist “Everything”, you thought you were listening to.)

Next year, I am totally setting Christmas lights to music. And an article from the Orlando Sentinel had an awesome quote about one of the guys that is working on these. “[He] estimates he has spent about $2,000 on his display, but he is avoiding adding the costs up for fear of angering his girlfriend.”

Awesome. Yeah, and pass me a beer.

Occasionally I will start a post because I have an awesome title–and then never get around to finishing it. (Like the series I started on m upgrade to Mac OSX 10.4, Tiger. Would have been useful a while back, but not as much anymore as I just upgraded to Max OSX 10.5, Leopard, and never looked at any of my notes.)

So, here are the best titles that will never see the light of day (because I’m going though and canning the original entries):

• ¡Ay, ay, ay, mi telefono es de el diablo! — On why my Samsung phone sucks. [I upgraded to a RAZR2 V9 this weekend.]
• It Started With a Night of Drinking — How I started buying CDs again after visiting music sharing sites. [Started April 22, 2004]
• The Song Remembers When — How songs I hear on the radio can still take me back many years. [Started March 21 , 2005]
• “Trash IN” — A Fast Food Loyalty Program whereby you save (some) money by bringing in the trash from the last time that you were are at that restaurant. [Presumably to help stop littering.]

Error reporting can be one of the most difficult things bout programming software. You’re trying to tell the user that something went wonky, but not send them into an all out panic. This excellent example (of how not to do error reporting) comes from Microsoft Outlook:

The first issue with this error is that I shouldn’t have gotten it. It comes up at least once a week when I delete the message from the index window while I still have the message open in a separate window and then I try to delete the message from the message window.

• When I delete a message from the index, any windows in which it is open could be automatically closed.
• When I try to delete a message from it’s window, if it’s not where you thought it was, check to see if it moved to the trash. If it is, great, just close the window without complaint. Otherwise you can report to the user that you’re incompetent and can’t keep track of the messages.

And why not tell me which one of the possibilities the actually error is.

• It was already moved
• It was already deleted
• Access was denied

Aren’t you keeping track? Please try to pay attention.

From the upcoming movie Doggie Daycare comes this photo montage of How to Hug a Baby.

May you learn a valuable lesson from it. (And if you do, post a comment to let me know what it is.)

Please, after reading the following image make the silly assumption that the CD’s in your cart can be bought for $3.99, for it is incorrect.

In fact, many CD’s in your cart will be the exact same price as they were before you saw this sale bill, because that is what nice people we are.

After ordering our new cell phones from Lets Talk, they sent an email which said:

If you have ordered an activated phone, please check to make sure the cell phone number assigned is local to your service area. If not, call us immediately and we’ll help you get another number.

By help they mean they will give you the actual instructions for getting a different number:

• Wait until you received the phones
• Call (or visit a local store for) your carrier and change the phone number yourself
• Call our customer support so we can update our records.