So what’ll it be, Jesus? Christmas, or Easter? You can’t have both. I know you’re just in it for the extra presents (everyone knows that people with birthdays near Christmas get stiffed), but fucking shit — whether you came back from the dead or not in the first place (and you didn’t, because that’s impossible — but supposing you might have), you’re dead as a doornail now. Considering this, you probably don’t merit even one birthday party a year.

I really don’t think that it’s fair that your worm-eaten ass gets to inconvenience those of us that choose not to form deep personal relationships with corpses (seriously, people, that’s pretty morbid) by closing down everything but IHOP multiple times per year. All I got to do today was sit around and stew about my ruined weekend plans.

Could you bastards at least arrange to hold your borrowed pagan fertility festival on the same day each year? For those of use who aren’t Christians (or at least, for me), it’s pretty easy to lose track of the precise date, on account of it holds absolutely no meaning whatsoever.

Here’s the only tip that matters: have a blog that doesn’t suck. Then make money as an afterthought. Preferably by supplementing your excellent content with more excellent content, in a form that people might potentially pay for.

Or just do as everyone else does… Have an entire blog entirely about making money with your blog, for other people with blogs about making money (with your blog). Have fun with your little optimization clusterfuck of optimal lameness, and keep your shit off of the rest of the internet. Thank you.

I dunno. Do you really want readers who are lame enough to stick around as regulars to read your PayPerPost BS, anyway? I don’t like lame readers. I don’t have a terrible lot of readers, but the ones I do have are typically not idiots, or at the very least, are smart enough not to make stupid comments. I could never tolerate the kind of reader who might actually believe that I was motivated to try out such and such a software package on my own, or that I’m seriously looking into a vacation at some dumbshit resort. Or worse, to know that it wasn’t the case, and read with interest anyway. You dopes with sites like this might not be lying, but at the same time, you certainly don’t come off as genuine, and reading your textual diarrhea makes me textually vomit (as seen here).

Bleh bleh. Fuck, I can’t wait until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own stupidosity. Does anyone visit any of those sites with any regularity, other than people trying to do the same shit? Oh, wait. I might be doomed to deal with it a little while longer, until people smarten up (riiiiight). Because while you’re looking for regular readers to visit on a regular basis and comment with regularity (and they will — but only because they want the regular return traffic), what you really want is organic traffic. In other words, hits from people who are probably looking for something other than your dumb shit site, but are too dumb to find it, and miss their target. In which case, your entire website is a giant hunk o’ spam. Shit they weren’t looking for, and don’t want. They might stick around, because like attracts like, but the ones that click your ads are looking for a way out. Hopefully one that leads them to what they were looking for in the first place. Please delete. Your niche-garbage is polluting my internets with stupid. And ugly.

I have one freakin’ block of ads on my site, and I use it to cover the whoooole $5 that my hosting costs (in fact, I’ll probably start taking it down after I reach that point each month), and I really do hope that the majority of you are using an ad-blocker, because really, I only want the people searching for vagina and fucking vagina and penis fucking vagina and gay penis fucking vagina (what?) etc. to see the darn thing. If I knew that any of you regular readers were stupid enough to move their mouse-cursor anywhere near it… (hm, is it against the rules to tell people not to click my ads? I’ll have to check into that…)

I liked the internet better in 1994.

How about we start calling this shit what it is, though. If making money is the first thing on your mind… if you’re picking a “niche” specifically because you think it will earn you cash… if you’re optimizing things for search engines first and regular, intelligent readers second (or as often seems the case — not at all)… You’re not monetizing, you’re blogetizing. And I don’t like you.

Fashion Pony, originally uploaded by www.DaveWard.net.

Dude tried to centre the buckle over his fly, which is wrong to begin with. And then he missed.

I will laugh at you if you do this, because it makes you look like an asshat. It puts your entire outfit off-kilter, even if someone doesn’t necessarily notice exactly why.

Especially if you don’t match your belt and shoes.

Whatever.

In searching for photos to explain this complaint, every single person that I found doing things the stupid way was male. Why is that, I wonder. Pay attention, ya doofs!

Sometimes I wonder if I pay too much attention to relatively-pointless details. But then I figure, I don’t really have anything major to complain about, so I’d probably be pretty out of luck for a hobby. Plus, menfolk. The womens, they will notice these things. You will lose points.

Now… out into the city, to inaudibly click my tongue and invisibly shake my head at people on the train.

You now have no excuse for ever saying this to me again, Internet.

I prefer to use their web chat service for support for several reasons. a) No thick accents to deal with, b) I can easily save a transcript, c) if I get transferred to a second person, they can see my full transcript, so I don’t have to repeat myself, d) I still have to wait on hold, but there’s no elevator music. I already went through this process once, and had a “hit” sent to my box, which did absolutely nothing. The analyst tells me that it could take 15 minutes to work. Which is BS, because I’ve gone through this 77 times. The box resets almost immediately — it’s the loading of the menu and guide that take time. I mention that my box was doing nothing, but get booted from chat anyway, and told to contact them again after those 15 minutes. So now I have to do it all over again. I’m number 34 in the support queue. Kill me.

**UPDATE**

I’ve had a lot of hits to this entry with search terms that seemed like others were having the same problem. I began to suspect what was wrong immediately, and 5 or 6 chats and phonecalls later, it was finally verified and fixed. The installer hadn’t added the serial number of the new box to my account, so the signal was blocked. No one at Comcast suggested this to me, I had to suggest it as a possibility to them instead, so you might want to ask about this, if your symptoms are similar. A few of the agents I spoke to were able to see that the serial number wasn’t registered, but pretended that they weren’t able to fix it from their end, or that they’d need to send a tech. Not true, they were just clueless. Call back until you get someone who knows what they’re doing (it might take you a while!)

Shorter description of the symptoms of this problem: Upon first connecting the box to your cable outlet, everything will seem to work perfectly. After the box communicates back and forth a bit with Comcast (I was able to get the menu loaded and On Demand running before I had a problem), all channels may begin showing a message reading “Not Authorized” and “For ordering information, press info”. If you unplug the box and plug it back in, all channels will probably show the “This channel should be available shortly” message, because Comcast will not allow a signal to be sent to an unauthorized cable box.

I hope this helps somebody! Good luck!

This needs to stop. Somehow.

1. USCIS
2. NSLSC/OSAP
3. UPS
4. Comcast
5. Microsoft
6. Dell
7. Capital One
8. Wells Fargo
9. Wal-Mart
10. AT&T

Cable went out today. After checking all the connections in our apartment pointlessly (because this shit is never our fault), I concluded that it must have been some Comcast-related asshattery. It wasn’t that we hadn’t paid them (for once), so I walked over to the laundry room, where the incoming line to our apartment building is split.

Seems that Comcast had been around to physically disconnect one of our neighbours (I helpfully reconnected them), and that in doing so, they’d also unplugged the transformer belonging to the main signal amplifier for every cable line connected in that room. Thanks for that! At least they hadn’t completely removed it.

Infinitely more satisfying than calling Comcast, and getting a tech to come out sometime between tomorrow at 9am and never. Especially since I can pretty much guarantee that tech would say “I don’t know what’s wrong with it, we’ll have to get one of the techs that actually has some training to come take a look at it — in a month”.

Die die die die die.

You’re welcome, neighbours.

I’ve been getting eleventy-seven of these for the past month or so. My spam filter still hasn’t caught on. Kill, kill, kill.

Oh, also… I’m back in Chicago for the foreseeable future. Not that I’m psychic, so I can’t foresee very far into the future at all. In fact, I can’t foresee at all. So rather, I’m back in Chicago for the time being, and will be here in from now on with a probability of 1 for the present, and declining at a rate that I don’t know enough about anything to determine towards a probability of 0 at some time in the future. Or something. Whatever. Hi again, Internet.

Why is it so hard to get something delivered?

Why have I had to complain about this 87 other times on this website? (I’d add appropriate links here, but my site is down at the moment, so I’m posting this by e-mail in hopes that it will show up eventually.)

Delivering packages is pretty much the only thing that FedEx and UPS do. You’d think that a business that does one thing would be able to do that one thing reasonably well, and would hire people who have at least one or two of the rudimentary skills required to do that one thing, including:

The ability to count (so I probably shouldn’t be getting calls asking me “I’m at 3943, but I can’t find 3943 1/2″, since anyone with half a brain should be able to figure out that it’s probably somewhere between 3943 and 3945).

The ability to follow simple directions (so when I tell the genius who can’t figure out how to find 3943 1/2 to go past 3943 and try the very next door in the courtyard, I probably shouldn’t get another call 10 minutes later from an entirely different street) (and okay, maybe 3943 1/2 isn’t as straightforward as other addresses — but these guys spend all day every day finding addresses — they should at least be able to figure out that 3934 1/2 N Janssen Ave is not located anywhere on N Greenview Ave).

The ability to read (so I probably shouldn’t have to write a note that says “our buzzer is on the bottom” when our buzzer is clearly labelled to begin with, but when I do it anyway because I have experience with delivery drivers’ limited mental capacities, I probably shouldn’t be sitting in my living room all afternoon listening to absolute silence only to later on find a missed delivery tag stuck to my door, and to be told upon calling the delivery company and asking them to check up on things that the driver explained that no one answered the buzzer — no shit, Sherlock, you didn’t press it).

Hm. Um. Yeah. That’s about all they need to know, as far as I can tell. And yet, they could hire a monkey and get better results. Dear Bob, and they trust these retards to drive company-owned vehicles? If they can’t match “G” on a package to “G” on a label next to a doorbell, is it really safe to assume that they can understand the meaning of a stop sign?

Maybe I need to give up and just leave a sign that says “Dear UPS / FedEx — Get fucked. Just take the damned thing back to the warehouse. I’m sick of playing your little game. We all know I’m going to end up picking it up there eventually, anyway. I will be complaining about you to your supervisor (again) this evening. Have fun with that. I hope you die horribly.”

Seriously, why do they bother sending drivers, when seemingly nothing ever gets successfully delivered to anyone?

If you’re using a Chicago Card, do NOT select $30 (or $10) as your refill amount. You’ll be giving up free money if you do.

Back when I got my Chicago Card, I selected $20 as my refill. After a few months, I decided that resulted in too-frequent charges, so I moved it up to $30. Today, I finally noticed on my account history, that I was only receiving a $2 bonus for those $30 refills. Wait a second…isn’t it supposed to be a 10% bonus? That’s what I thought all the ads and marketing said when I signed up…current marketing says $2 bonus for every $20 value added. Maybe that’s what it’s always said, and I didn’t realize it. Who knows…

So, the options are:

Refill $10 Bonus $0
Refill $20 Bonus $2
Refill $30 Bonus $2
Refill $40 Bonus $4
Refill $60 Bonus $6

I replied:

How is $2 for every $20 different from 10% when they don’t stipulate anywhere on their website that the $20 must be loaded at the same time? Seems to me, it ought to work out to the same thing, unless they plan on clarifying their wording.

And this is still fucking pissing me off. No, really. How is $2 / $20 different from 10%? I mean, the only thing I would assume from reading that is maybe they would wait until, say… you put $10 on your card twice. Not that they meant they’d give you a $2 bonus for every literal chunk of exactly $20. But if you load $10 twice, guess what bonus you get? A big, fat zeeeeero. Fuck, shit, piss. Yeah, this probably means I lost out of a whole… not very many dollars before I caught it. But, still.

Pretty lame, Milhouse.

Thanks.

This is one of the reasons I’m so obsessive about not allowing any of my socks to fall on the floor while I’m loading or unloading the machines…

The internet has just told me that the most common romanization system for Chinese is Hanyu Pinyin. Apparently, the Wade Giles system is also kinda sorta still around. I didn’t know which system the spelling of “feng shui” came from, but this conversion table has informed me that both syllables are the same in both systems. So, it shouldn’t matter, and I’m assuming (I could be wrong… reading takes effort) that “feng shui” is a correct rendering using the Hanyu Pinyin system. And, according to Wikipedia:

In its final form Hanyu Pinyin:

• was used to indicate pronunciation only
• was exclusively based on the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect
• included tone marks
• embodied the traditional “initial sound”, “final sound”, and “suprasegmental tone” model
• was written in the Latin alphabet

So, why the crap is “feng shui” pronounced “fung shway”? Especially considering the first point.

I require answers. How useful is a system that is meant to indicate pronunciation when the words aren’t pronounced the way they’re spelled in English at all? I realize there are rules for how all of the junk in the system are meant to be pronounced. But why should I memorize those, when instead of having to remember that e is more like u, they could just use a freakin’ u? Is it because u is already used for oo? So why can’t they use oo instead of u? I’m not seeing the logic.

Meh. Okay, okay. Wikipedia explains this thusly:

By letting Roman characters refer to specific Chinese sounds, pinyin produces a compact and accurate romanization, which is convenient for native Chinese speakers and scholars. However, it also means that a person who has not studied Chinese or the pinyin system is likely to severely mispronounce words, which is a less serious problem with some earlier romanization systems such as Wade-Giles.

But that doesn’t lessen my confusion. “Feng shui”, which is still “feng shui” using Wade-Giles, which should make mispronouncing words less of a problem, is still not properly pronounced “feng shui”, and I don’t approve.

I mean, really, I’m sure there is a good reason, right?

Yeah. Answers. Immediately.

(P.S. for you uptight asstards reading this that are going to proceed to tell me what that good reason is… you take me too seriously, and I am issuing you a preemptive STFU. I realize that it is not simple to translate one language into the entirely different written form of a second language that does not contain the same phonemes. Go boil your head.)

(You’re the same asstards that get bet out of shape when people say this shit the way it’s spelled. I dunno, I guess most people probably see the purpose of translating Chinese words into the Roman alphabet is to help guide one in saying the crap.)

(For the record, I don’t pronounce it “fung shway”, because I don’t pronounce it at all. Feng shui is for crazies.)

User Account Control = off. Off, off, fucking OFF.

Why would anyone release an operating system that makes me want to throttle it and those responsible for its existence within thirty seconds?

Bullshit pseudo-sudo crap. Candice smash!

2 ÷ 3 = 0.667 or 0.666…

Asstards.

Microsoft, I hate you.

Fuck it, I don’t really feel like arguing with your fat, lazy ass over the phone, so I’m not going to return your call. I’m glad that I got you in trouble with your supervisor badly enough to have to call me, though.

I know the call would be an argument, because fuck, even your message was semi-indignant and defensive. Yes, Marie, the address on the packages said “#### 1 2 N ####### Ave” instead of “#### 1/2 N ####### Ave”. I’ll give you that one. Without the slash, it could be a bit confusing, I guess. So, one point for you. That’s a problem with whatever system removed characters from the label. I have the same problem entering my address into various computer systems. They don’t like the slash one bit.

Buuuuut…

The labels also included my apartment number. There is no 2W at the entrance you left the packages on the inside of. You could not possibly have buzzed any buzzer with the non-existent 2W label. You should have noticed you were at the wrong place. And 2W is in the same building. You only had to go to the next door.

Okay, I guess maybe you could have thought the 2W was wrong as well, or maybe just missed it, since it’s on another line. I guess not everyone is particularly bright. (And I’m not entirely sure that the apartment numbers are clear on the labels over there, because I’ve never checked. They’re on the box by my door, though. Meh)

Buuuuut…

The labels also included my name. I happen to know that there is no buzzer labeled Payne at that entrance, because I had to randomly buzz up and bug several of my neighbours over there in order to be let in to get my stuff. You had to do the same thing, huh? Pretty goddamn rude, if you ask me. You obviously didn’t even care to find the correct delivery location.

When you didn’t see a 2W or a Payne you should have double checked everything. Maybe called me. Whatever. Anything other than leaving my stuff in some random place, inside the first door you could find with an address that looked KIND OF similar to the one on the box.

Especially since I have never authorized UPS to leave my packages ANYWHERE unattended. Especially not at the bottom of the stairs of a section of the building that I do not live in and have no access to.

Plus, you did it two days in a row. On the first day, I called to complain, and was told that they would contact you to tell you that I did not receive my packages, and to figure out what the fuck had happened to them.

So yeah, you’re just stupid. Fuckin’ asshat.

One point for you because the labels were slightly wrong due to one lost character.

But then minus a billion points for being a rude, lazy, mindless dipshit.

Sincerely,

Me