Moo! The Musings of a Plaid Cow

My Director’s Selection for this month in the [Columbia House DVD Club][1] is “Saw V (Unrated) Director’s Cut”. And they offer me three options:

* Buy it now for only $19.95
* Decline it now, pay nothing
* Do Nothing

If they do not hear from me by 02/04/2009, the selection will automatically be sent to me at the regular Club price of $22.95. So why, would anybody in their right mind just wait for the selection to be sent? (Unless they made the wild assumption that it would be the same price whether or not a response was given.)

I’m not sure if this is dispicable, but it does remind me I need to cancel my membership.

[1]: http://www.columbiahouse.com/

I visited my mother-in-law this past weekend–down on the farm in central Kentucky. being from the city, each time I visit I am again surprised when the sun goes down. It gets dark. Really dark. There are no street lights or neon signs to leave the environment in a perma-dusk. The night comes and envelops all.

And it is peaceful.

[Solitary][0] is definitely an interesting TV show. I’m not sure I’ll ever watch it again (we don’t get that channel), but it has an interesting premise: a computer tells you what to do until you want to give up. The final treatment from the final episode involved sitting down after being kept awake for over 24 hours:

* 15 minutes on a small stool
* 30 minutes on a bike seat
* 45 minutes on a bowling ball
* 60 minutes on a 4″ wooden octagon

The only rules were that you couldn’t touch the footrests or the floor. And the first person to give up is out of the game.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_(TV_series)

The online site for my bank has a security feature where they log you out after you have been idle. Maybe.


Back at the end of August, [MenuMaster][0] came out with a new version, though noted it would be free, made the following plea:

> If you’ve bought Menu Master around three years ago and have never paid for it again (we’ve not charged for an update of Menu Master) we kindly ask if you wouldn’t mind paying a voluntary upgrade fee. This fee is completely voluntary, is not required, and Menu Master itself has no knowledge of whether you have volunteered or not. There are no perks to volunteer and we only ask that only registered users volunteer.

I wouldn’t have minded the request so much, *if* they had done a better job with this version. There was only one major new feature in this version: “Added support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard v10.5”. Yeah, support for the operating system that was released 10 months before. You want me to support software that is only available for half of the time I will be using the current operating system? Yeah, right.

[0]: http://unsanity.com/haxies/menumaster

When I [couldn’t get hold of SHPS][1] earlier this year, I dropped them an email on their contact form. Apparently when they say “someone will get back with your shortly”, they mean it can take almost a week (Saturday to Thursday) and they might not be able to answer your question.

**My Question:** How will I know when my return Fax for receipt validation has been processed?

**Their “Answer”:** The validation documentation was received on 1-13-2009, and should be reviewed within three to five business days from the date received.

I have just a few problems with this response.

1. They say “should be reviewed”–no promises here.
2. They don’t say how I will know when it has been reviewed.
3. They reference a document I faxed *after* I asked the question.

Even worse, if they get no response from me (or fail to review what I send), they assume that everything submitted is invalid and will send me a bill–for $1200 or so. I guess its good that I tend to keep all receipts and could actually make the fax–they waited four and a half months to tell me they needed more documentation.

At least they were able to send me a response on the hours of operation: “Our customer service telephone center _[contrary to what may be on our out of office message]_ is available from 8:00 A.M to 8:00 P.M. Monday through Friday, EST.” Maybe I can file a bug report to get the answering machine message fixed.

[1]: http://moo.plaidcow.net/2009/01/behind_schedule

The next time I get a watch, I want one with a screw-in crown. With every watch I have ever owned, the crown will get pulled out and when the watch rubs against my arm, the date will advance until the crown gets pushed back in. And then I get confused because I have no idea what day it really is.

Here’s an interesting IM “conversation”:

(11:55:11 AM) Andrew: it's 5 till noon,
(11:55:15 AM) Andrew: that means its lunchtime
(11:55:19 AM) Andrew: i'll see you down there
(11:55:21 AM) Andrew: no excuses

Uhhh, what if I already ate?

(11:55:27 AM) Andrew has gone away.
(11:55:27 AM) Andrew has become idle.

Crap.

**Question: Do you agree, children with serious behavior problems in school end up as failures later in life?**

The study mentioned in the article, doesn’t seem to do a good job of linking cause and effect. The behavior problems were not the cause of the failure later in life, they were an effect of other forces that later led to a lesser level of success.

_[MyCityDaily][0] opinion poll response for [today][1]._
[0]: http://www.mycitydaily.com/
[1]: http://www.mycitydaily.com/images/011409IN01.pdf

My company has standardized all email on Lotus Notes–it’s a decent groupware solution, it just needs a good email client to go with it. The calendaring portion, popped up a message this morning reminding me of a meeting and provided three buttons of actions to take:

* Snooze – to remind me again in 10 minutes
* Done – to dismiss the alarm and not remind me again
* Open – to show me the meeting notice the alarm is for (so I can figure out where I need to go)

The first two work I expect. The “open” option works like an unemployed professional video game player:

* If the meeting repeats, it will pop up a list of *every* instance of the meeting, asking which one you want the information about, apparently on the odd assumption you might not want information on the meeting that this alarm is for.
* The meeting notice is opened on a new tab in the main window, which is left minimized for your convenience.
* There is no change in the alarm dialog, leading you to question if anything actually happened.

By the time Lotus Notes v15 gets here, perhaps it will “just work”.