Annapolis, Peace, Lott

Is it just me, or is it hypocritical of George W. Bush to ask others to make compromises in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, when he fails to seek a compromise on issues far less important (on a global scale, at least) such as the operation in Iraq and a national health-care for poor children?

I'm all for peace talks between the two sides in the conflict (I had advocated for the now-universally accepted two-state solution back when it was still deemed treasonous to do so), but the ongoing media campaign the administration is running makes it sound more like a photo-op and political maneuvering than an real attempt to solve the problem. Listening to the analysis from guests on NPR explaining the different motivations of the attending parties helped me notice this. What I don't understand is why they would all go into a process which they expect to fail. It seems very short-sighted and sure to backfire. Unless they have plans to blame the other side, which we've seen (perhaps rightfully so, but the blame continues) against Arafat following the previous series of talks years ago.

I don't see the US solving this problem. The people here in the States are too complacent. Half don't understand the true importance for world peace, the other half refuse on religious, national, or self-serving grounds. Democrats don't know how to do anything right, Republicans are terrific making the wrong things happen. The Republicans would surely lose even more seats in congress in the upcoming elections, if only there were a third party candidate to take them back for the American people, and the world.

Speaking of hypocrites, new is that Trent Lott is going to retire. Not when his term ends, but just a little before, beating the deadline for the new "cool down" period during which ex-congressmen cannot work as lobbyists. His retirement is attributed to the loss of his home during hurricane Katrina, but he won't work to the end of his term (read "the cool-down deadline") to serve his even less well-off constituents and neighbors.

Printing queues to hard for Microsoft to get right?

Is it me, or is is still impossible (as of Windows XP/SP2) to take a document sent to one printer and move it to another?

I've got a printer at home that I used to connect to my work laptop (the last bastion of Windows in my home). Now it's on the file server (a Linux box, of course) and shared over the network.

But I only just configured that networked printer this morning, after I had mistakenly sent a print job to the old queue for the previous USB connection.

The job is sitting there in the queue. It's not store in some kind of USB buffer or anything- it's just waiting in the queue. Taking those bunch of bytes and putting them in another queue should not only be easy as hell to code, but should be something that the guys at Microsoft have noticed and needed by now.

Just one more way Windows makes life easy for us, I guess.

A conversation with Dell

I just got off a chat with Dell customer support. I'm not going to provide comments and leave you to learn what you will from it. I've removed my email address for obvious reasons. Enjoy.

5:38:04 PM		Michael K	Initial Question/Comment: Please stop sending advertisements
5:38:09 PM		System	You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat
5:38:09 PM		System	Connected with CU_Rep_Mylyne
5:38:35 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	Welcome to Dell Sales Chat. My name is Myles . Ill be your personal sales agent today. What may i help you purchase?
5:39:02 PM		Michael K	Stop sending me advertisements
5:39:05 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	You can also email us at us_dhs_chat_reply@dell.com. We are available from 8am-11pm CST, Monday-Sunday. Rest assured that we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
5:39:31 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	sure im gonna put a note on your profile .
5:40:06 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	but in order for me to do that i need to get the phone number so i can pull up your account and put a note on it .
5:40:25 PM		Michael K	You don't have an account for me. I've never purchased a Dell, and I never would.
5:42:07 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	alright im sorry for that .
5:42:42 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	well request to stop sending an advertisement to you .
5:42:58 PM		Michael K	What?
5:43:01 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	will there be anything else i can help you aside from that ?
5:43:03 PM		Michael K	Use punctuation
5:44:32 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	oh im sorry for that we are kinda having volumes of chat right now , and im sorry for the error .
5:45:14 PM		Michael K	"kinda"? Are you eleven years-old?
5:46:32 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	oh im sory michael for that .
5:46:52 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	will there be anything else i can help you ?
5:47:05 PM		Michael K	Yes. Stop sending me advertising material.

5:48:02 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	yes michael
5:48:54 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	are we still connected ?
5:48:58 PM		Michael K	"Yes Michael" what? Are you going to stop? Have you already removed me from your mailing list?
5:50:17 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	yes just put a note on it

5:50:31 PM

Michael K

Put a note on what? How could you possibly have done that if I haven't given you my full name or email address?

5:52:13 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	it shows here a last name kaan?
5:52:34 PM		Michael K	No
5:52:58 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	is that the one ? may i have your last name please or email address
5:53:15 PM		Michael K	MYEMAILNAME+gamesforwin@THISISWHEREIGETMYEMAIL.com

5:55:13 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	may i have the copmplete address please
5:55:27 PM		Michael K	That is the complete address. What are you missing?
5:55:38 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	i mean complete address please ?
5:55:48 PM		Michael K	Again, I ask. What is missing?

5:58:39 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	it shows different address on the same name .
5:59:39 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	i need the complete address you shows up your profile michael so i can put a note there
5:59:44 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	are we still connected
5:59:54 PM		Michael K	I don't have a profile
6:00:12 PM		Michael K	You do not have my home address
6:00:30 PM		Michael K	Just take the email address I gave you, and remove me from all mailing lists you have
6:00:40 PM		Michael K	It's really not that difficult to understand

6:02:27 PM		Michael K	Not if you're telling the truth
6:04:19 PM		CU_Rep_Mylyne	im so sorry for the inconvinient . but i already put a note that you dont want to recieve an advertisement from us .
6:04:24 PM		System	CU_Rep_Mylyne has left this session!
6:04:24 PM		System	The session has ended!

Conservapedia part II - Banned

So I managed to get myself banned from Conservapedia (see my previous post on discovering it here).

No warning, no reason. Well, not unless you consider "bye" a reason. Some person with administrator privilege figured I wasn't wholesome enough for their site. It wasn't discussed, I didn't get to defend myself, nor was anyone else my devil's advocate. It's just another example of the non-democratic nature of this abomination of the digital age.

I did figure out where I finally got their attention. I'm actually a little surprised that it happened as late as it did. I had made several comments which clearly promoted liberal views. Only one generated a response, and that one was by a rather friendly person, to whom I cannot respond now. The last straw was a rather incendiary remark where I called it an "indoctrination wiki". Apparently, the truth hurts.

This is the revert of my comments on the talk page, where you can still see what I wrote:
http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Talk%3AHuman_reproduction&diff=327133&oldid=327132

Note how they removed not only my intentionally offending comment, but also the comment I made on how the article was too difficult for the target audience. Seems my ideas are collectively unfit for Christian consumption, and that articles shouldn't be improved simply because I said so.

I'll probably be back in a few months. On another account, from a different IP. Your comments and ideas are very welcome.

Oh, Comcast; I hate thee!

So I just got off the phone with Comcast. It's a weekly thing I do, just to make sure I never get nice and stress-free.

My service has been terrible ever since I bought this place in late May. Not a week goes by without having to reset the modem. Often, the television signal disappears, and my MythTV box records a few hours of static. Other times, I lose my connection to the Internet, or specifically, to Comcast's DNS and DHCP servers.

This is actually the first time I called about the VOIP phone service. It's currently down, and keeps telling me to dial a '1' before the number I call; even when I dial 1-800-COMCAST.

Today, I spoke with a nice young lady, who was great at her job, but not very bright and certainly not tech savvy. She asked a couple of questions she already had the answers to, and managed to confuse herself with regards to what the problem actually was. She eventually opened a ticket and said it would take up to 64 for the problem to be resolved. I made a fuss about that, and then I asked about a credit.

The one thing you should always do: ask for a credit to your account. Doesn't matter what you're calling about- just ask for it. Comcast is run so poorly that it seems customer retention is a huge deal (bigger than providing service, that is). I figure they're scared to death that people will complain to the politicians or leave for Verizon, that they'll just give you some of your money back- no questions asked. So ask.

The second thing I had to complain about was more subtle. When I asked for the credit, she said that she can't credit the account now, but they can credit my account after the ticket is resolved. Notice the "can" in the second part. I asked "I'm sorry- I'm not sure I heard that- you can credit my account, or you will?". She replied, "will". I lost it. Not only am I getting crappy service, but I have to keep running after them to get it fixed! I just asked to speak with her manager. She didn't even say anything, I just went right on hold.

The manager was a nice guy. He seemed genuinely concerned about the problems. He actually looked at my service record and quickly understood what kind of customer I was. He dropped his guard a bit and vented about his customer service department not being told what the technicians know and made a couple promises about how they're trying to fix the problems in the system. He didn't even give me a chance to complain about the credit issue at length- he just said he'd give me $15. Not a figure calculated based on the actual service missed, but certainly more than I'd get normally. I was glad to take it. Then he gave me a direct phone number, name and employee ID. Now that goes a long way with me (assuming it's not fake, as they do over at Dell and HP).

So ends another tale of being screwed by the monopoly, but screwed just a little bit less.

As one of my favorite computer game characters says: "The squeaky wheel gets the KICK!"