Moo! The Musings of a Plaid Cow

I got a meeting change notices via my email program (Lotus Notes) this morning. Since it was a meeting I normally attended, I accepted and got this reply back from the organizer:

Note this was a change for last Friday.

Then why is Lotus Notes stupid enough to show me a change to a meeting that has already happened and let me accept it? Don’t answer that. I probably don’t want to know the answer. Apparently his sentiments are similar:

Because, otherwise, it just wouldn’t be Lotus Notes.

The TiVo Support line has an interesting method to get people off the line when they are talking to a CSR. They put you on hold and make you listen to their hold music. Which is a voice that sounds just like the operator you were just talking to, on a 16 second loop. They only have sixteen seconds of information to tell you and they repeat it over, and over, and over, and

At our team meeting at work last week, the team lead indicated that we have be spending money quickly:

Drunken sailor comes to mind.

So this coming week, we will only be doing the “important tasks”. So why have we been doing all of this stuff in the past that isn’t important?

ShoutOn.com, “A Free & Reliable Link Exchange Service”, sent me an email today letting me know I could “Start your high quality, spam free, link exchange in minutes.” I could be one of the “early adapters to use our fully free in-direct link exchange services”. Yes, I could, if I was a complete idiot.

My favorite line was from their “Privacy Policy” in the email:

ShoutOn.com values your privacy. At no time has ShoutOn made your email address available to others without your permission.

Really? How did you get my email to begin with. Oh, that’s right, you made it up and I got it through the catch-all. Anybody have experience with these ShoutOn spammers?

According to the ergonomics training at work this morning: “Select a handtool without sharp edges on the handle.”

You know, I never would have thought of that. That’s nearly as useful as the advice that you take breaks in a temperature controlled environment if you’re working outside in the heat.

If you’re trying to delete a message out of the Lotus Notes Webmail application, be sure to beware of the “the document has already been deleted” error:

If I am trying to delete a message, and it’s already been deleted, don’t show me an error. Just say “great” and get on with life.

VitaCost advertises “24/7 Customer Service 1-800-381-0759″ right on the front page of their website. What they meant to say, is that outside of regular business hours, you can only place an order–they can’t actually do any customer service.

At least they make the phone number easy to find–that should be worth something.

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.

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.