Right now, with my primary job, I work from home most of the time. I telecommute so that means I have absolutely zero commute to worry about. When I do go up to Tahoe, to the regular office, I stay right next to it (within a few minutes walking). When I lived up there the farthest there was to commute was about 2 miles. In short, I’ve never had a serious daily commute.

Until this week.

Sure, I’ve commuted into the “office” previously, but this is the first time I’ve done it an entire week. Really I think it only gets easier, more autopilot. The first few times going in I was uber paranoid about missing BART, rushing my mornings, etc. Now I know better and take my time.

Really the hardest part about this entire process has been the schedule. See, I’m not a morning person. The blog gets posted at 10 AM because that is when I typically wake up. Now, with commuting, I’m in the office by 10 AM rather than just waking up. That means I have to get up at 8 and preferably catch the 9:02 BART to make it in to San Francisco by about 9:40. Getting up that early (yes, it is early for me gorram it) means I can’t go to bed at my accustomed 2 AM. Well, I can, but I’m half-zombie the next day, and I prefer to be able to get stuff done rather than slowly suffering/shuffling through the entire day.

It may seem odd to say but at this point in time I actually enjoy having a little time on BART each day. It gives me time to read, or in many cases, like this morning, write. They make all sorts of fun things (like audio books) for those that commute. Since I’ve never had a commute, I’ve never really had any particular time to enjoy those sorts of activities. Of course, by the time I’ve been doing this for a few years, I’m sure I’ll be tired of it and ready to go back to having no commute.

The biggest downside to a commute is the length of the day. If I’m getting up at 8 AM into the “office” at 10 AN, out 6 PM and home finally by 7 PM.
Between walking in SF and driving to/from BART, my total commute time is about an hour. Makes the day that much longer, but fortunately with BART, one can sleep, and there is never any traffic.

Right now, this work and commute isn’t a regular thing, it just so happened to need my attention for the entire week. It has been an interesting view, for someone like myself who’s never had to commute before. I’m fortunate in that I now know what to expect, should I work full time at a job that requires me to commute a fair distance. As long as it is mass transit like BART, it is A-OK. As much as I relish playing on my Motorcycle, if I had to drive every day… that wouldn’t be nearly as cool.

The reason I bring this up is that recently I was contacted by one of my friends.  Just by my knowledge of said friend, I knew from word one that they wanted something (or maybe I just have a 6th sense for this stuff now).  We carried on a brief and light “conversation” for a bit, before I finally got the “Can you do X please?” request.  In this case, it wasn’t computer related, but I knew it was coming none the less.

This irritated me a bit.  Not that they asked, but because it was so transparent that they wanted something.  So first I want people to converse with me, then when they do, I kinda wished they didn’t.  This is something of a conundrum to me. It boils down to the fact that people do a very shitty job of concealing their ulterior motives for calling.

I’ve talked with John about this and he too has experienced this same thing. His preference was that people would “cut the BS and just tell [him] what [they] want”. Apparently, the person or persons who call him only when they need something tend to dick around a bit, something that he finds frustrating as he would prefer to find out what they want and as expediently as possible cease contact.

So why bother wasting the time of your local IT friend, and probably irritating him/her?  If you’ve got a tech request, just come straight out and ask them.  If they are anything like me, they are probably willing to help because in most cases the problems aren’t too terrible. If you ask a big favor, consider paying them in one form or another (food, money… etc).  Also, consider calling them once in a while just to say hi, with absolutely no mention of needing tech help, they’ll actually remember it when you next screw up your computer.

These days, there are dating sites for just about every dating preference. There’s CougarLife.com for older, successful women looking for younger men. For those with a religious preference, there’s JDate.com for Jewish singles and ChristianSingles.com for Christian Singles. And if you are just looking for a hookup, well you can always head to Cragislist.

For a more generic (read: much larger) dating pool, I recommend (and use) the following:

1. eHarmony
2. OkCupid

In the past I have also used:

3. PlentyOfFish
4. DatingDNA
5. Geek2Geek

The list above is in chronological order. I started using eHarmony awhile back, during a free President’s Day weekend and to date, it has had the best quality of matches. However, it is the only paysite on this list. Thus far, I would say it has been worth it. I’ve only had one less than exciting experience, and that was with a woman who was severely geographically disinclined.

OkCupid has been the most enjoyable to use. They have a great method of getting you to spend more time on the site. Rather than you having to answer hundreds of questions up front (as eHarmony does), you are able to answer them over time and new ones get submitted by other users. Plus, you can compare your responses to prospective matches (presuming they have answered the question publicly). They also have quizzes (created by both staff and users) which cover all sorts of topics, from your personality (with comments on what your match’s personality) to which Thundercat you would be. I’ve met a few people from this site and have made a couple of really great friends through it; you can look for a wide variety of matches, be they casual encounters, relationships (short or long term), or just friends. Lastly, they also have a great free iPhone app.

PlentyOfFish doesn’t really do it for me. I never really got into the site and the one time I met someone from the site, we didn’t really have much in common. I still have an account, but rarely login to check it. The site is poorly designed and searching leaves a lot to be desired. When looking at the people who have viewed your profile, you are only shown pictures and thus have no idea where they are from. Seeing that a bunch of women in SoCal have checked out my profile doesn’t help when I am in Northern Nevada.

DatingDNA has an interesting concept, but seems to have biffed it on the implementation. Basic premise: you meet someone at the bar and give them your DatingDNA number (rather than your phone number). They then sign up and you compare your scores, thereby removing/minimizing the influence of alcohol on choosing your dating partners. I have not now, nor do I ever plan to give some girl my DatingDNA number (I never bothered to memorize it anyway). They have a free iPhone application that offers some very basic functionality. Initially they gave you access to everything, but then they decided to create a paid version to give you full access to the site. Regardless of which you use on your iPhone, you can go to their website and access all the features there.

Finally, we come to Geek2Geek. As I mentioned before, horrible site, don’t use it.

In conclusion, I fully recommend that anyone curious about online dating check it out. OkCupid is probably your best place to start since it is free and easy to use. Be warned though, females inevitably receive unsolicited requests for fornication/naked pictures. Mark the message as spam and OKC does a pretty good job about taking care of it. eHarmony helps prevent that by not allowing users to send direct messages to other users without some other form of communication first.
Lastly, if you have any questions about dating sites, online dating, or well, anything in general, feel free to post it here and I’ll be happy to respond.

Jon and I are currently at Fanime. Jon went last year (and the year before that), and as I previously mentioned, he convinced me to go this year.
I flew down to meet Jon (and get my motorcycle back) yesterday and after an enjoyable dinner we headed back to his place to finish final preparations.

If you are in the San Jose area, we both encourage you to come on down and stop by; we will be there for the whole show. The show is fairly inexpensive and a single day pass is between $25 and $35 depending on the day.

I had my own graduation 5 years ago. Friends and family came up to see me. We had an enjoyable late lunch at Jason’s Beachside Grille. I moved between the 2 booths and long table we had, talking with my guests. I didn’t feel any disconnect; for most of these people, I would be seeing them again the very next day. I presume that I didn’t feel the disconnect because I wasn’t leaving town, changing jobs, or even changing houses.

My job remained the same, although I was officially made a full time employee and given an official title. My lease wasn’t up, so I didn’t consider changing houses. All in all, not much changed for me after graduation. Maybe that’s why I never felt the sense of loss that so many graduates feel.

So many of my classmates stayed in the area after graduation that most of us didn’t really think it was the end. When people did move away, it was usually quietly. You wouldn’t find out about it unless you actually looked for them, and by then they were already gone. No going away party, no final night of drinks or gaming, they were just gone.

Maybe it was different for me since I already had a job and didn’t have an egregious amount of loans to pay back. I knew some classmates who were not so lucky, either losing their job right before graduation, or coming out with enough loans to mortgage a small home.

Or maybe I’m just a heartless bastard who doesn’t care about the people around me.

Eh… could go either way I suppose.

• Compiling Asterisk 1.6.1.4 on Ubuntu 9.04 x64 — By me – Last “dated” August 2009. Obviously Ubuntu 9.04 is a few versions out of date now… To be fair, it would have been a great guide, as it had every single step needed to get Asterisk up and running. Alas, it will probably be purged.

• Review: Le Whif — By John – Last “dated” August 2009. Well there is no time constraint preventing John from finishing and publishing the review on the Le Whifs… I think the items themselves have long since been consumed/spent and probably isn’t worth ordering more.
  John’s note: I originally was waiting for more to arrive, since I had gotten a few emails indicating more (different flavor, new design, that sort of thing) were on the way, for free – I presume because I was one of the early birds who preordered. However, nothing ever showed up. You don’t need to give me free things, but if you say you are sending me stuff and then don’t… I will become less thrilled about you/your product.

• Fixing Echo in Asterisk — By me – Last “dated” August 2009. Well the entry is a total of 3 command line entries… not exactly an exciting start. Plus it isn’t something I’ve futzed with recently, so I probably wont remember the process well enough.
• How much is your account worth? — By John – Last “dated” November 2009. It was a follow up piece to a news story titled “Amazon’s EC2 brings new might to password cracking“. The original piece is quite interesting and John had some good math to support his commentary on it. Though it is kinda “old news” now, will anyone care about a response to a 6 month old article?
• Fight in the Clouds: AWS vs Rackspace — By me – Last “dated” December 2009. Just before the holiday season I had been playing with Rackspace cloud (and had long since been a user of AWS Cloud). I had meant to write a review/compare/contrast. Right now the entry is 4 words, and last I checked Rackspace cloud still sucked. It really wouldn’t be much of a compare/contrast piece, more of a “Hey look at all this cool stuff Amazon can do; Rackspace can’t do any of it”. So probably not gonna happen either.

It’s not that we’re lazy, we just find better things to do. In my case, for basically every blog post, I sit down and write out the entire entry tits to ass in one night. I rarely need nor want several days worth of entries (Editor’s note: Except for when one or both of us are going on vacation.). So when I start a draft, it is to have a placeholder for an idea, one that would be later filled – which is why most of my back drafts (not backdraft nor Kurt Russell) are almost non-existent content. John, on the other hand, tends to write large pieces, but generally doesn’t have the time to complete them in one sitting. Really, he’s a slacker with a bunch of back content that needs finishing. Maybe we should have an all John week?

I spent the last week up in Tahoe. When I’m up there, I actually need to be in the office at a proper time, so I have to get up at 8 AM. That’s fine, but I don’t easily get off one schedule and on to another overnight (it’s kind of like jet lag). So I have to drug myself (Editor’s note: Jon is talking about regular OTC medication. Disclaimer: Jo(h)n/Snowulf is not providing any suggestions/recommendations on what you should do if you have trouble sleeping.). Sometimes too much drugging, sometimes not enough… and then things start going sideways. Of course, just as I start getting used to it, I get back home… to resume my normal sleep schedule.

Unfortunately, my schedule is broken. I find myself tired at strange times, and not tired when I should be. Attempts to medicate have, so far, only managed to push me into sleeping through my alarms. I’m hoping to get off the meds and get back onto a regular schedule, but it is quite frustrating in the mean time.

Most problematic is the days with too little sleep. I’m an angry bastard most days. Then you compound a lack of sleep, which is an instant recipe for me being grumpy… I am anger incarnate. So far, today is looking okay; let’s just hope you don’t catch me on a bad day…

Then again, given the popularity of my Vitriol articles, maybe you would like to catch me on a bad day.

Being located in different parts of the country, we flew separately. My brother made it down without incident, alas I was not so lucky.

I was flying US Airways and was scheduled to go Reno to Phoenix to Philadelphia to Cancun, leaving at 6:34 PM on a Friday and getting into Cancun at 12:53 PM the next day. Not the most exciting series of flights to be on, but it was what I had to work with at the time. What actually happened was that the flight from Reno to Phoenix was repeatedly delayed. Initially, this was not a problem as I had a 3 hour layover in Phoenix. However as the delays continued to add up (some of which occurred before boarding, some after), I started to stare at the clock a bit more. Eventually we depart Reno (a little over 3 hours late) and are on our way to Phoenix.
In general, I only ever fly Southwest Airlines, and my experience with them has always been that they will bend over backward to take care of you, including (but most definitely not limited to) holding your connecting flight for you. My many experiences with Southwest were the reason this next part was particularly jarring.

As we pull into the gate, I watch as the plane next to me has its chocks removed and backs up from the gate. I remember thinking to myself, “I bet that’s my flight”. As we had arrived right as it was scheduled to depart. As I exited the aircraft I was proven correct. We had parked right next to my connecting flight and it would have taken me less than 15 minutes to get from where I was sitting on my previous flight to where I should have been sitting on my next flight.
I, along with my fellow passengers, was pissed. I joined the queue for customer service and after 45 minutes in line (it now being after midnight) I am told that I will be moved onto a different flight the next day going direct from Phoenix to Cancun (yay!) and that they have agreements with the local Crowne Plaza Hotel to offer us at a reduced rate.
That’s right, I need to pay for my own hotel for the evening. And the flight in the morning leaves around 6 AM, and since it is international, I need to be back at the airport 2 hours ahead of time. Some of my fellow passengers have opted to sleep in the airport. I opt to go to the hotel (and pay what feels to be an exorbitant fee for what amounts to a couple hours in a room), and the customer service agent lets me know that there is a free shuttle that will take me there (wonderful). I then ask if I need to go get my checked luggage to get some clothes out of it. She tells me that not only do I not need to, it is not possible. This seems odd to me, but what do I know?

Off I go to the hotel, sleep for 2 hours, wake up, shower, can’t have breakfast at the hotel (kitchen doesn’t open till after I am supposed to be at the airport), take the free shuttle back to the airport, go through security, find an open shop and get something resembling a breakfast. Then, a bit of wonderful, very exciting news: I’ve been upgraded to first class.
Yeah, that’s right first class on an international flight. And let me tell you, it was nice! Free meal, free dessert, free headphones, free booze, free movie(s). Basically, everything you might have to pay for in coach, you get for free in first class (or at least that’s how it was back then). It was a very enjoyable trip down to Cancun and I felt like the whole business the night before was totally worth the upgrade to first class.

I land in Cancun and my brother meets me there in the terminal. We wait as the luggage gets unloaded. The carousel spins up and… after a while it spins down… after everyone else has their luggage. Uh oh… turns out my bag was lost/left in Phoenix. I then have to go through the process of explaining what my bag looks like to the local US Airways agent. Telling them where I will be staying (they asked for my room number as well, which I of course didn’t have as I had yet to check into the hotel). I gave them all my info and they said they usually get the bag found within 2-3 days. We’re only staying in Mexico for 3 nights so I am a bit perturbed by this news.
At this point I form a new rule for traveling: If you are checking bags, make sure you have at least a day’s worth of comfortable clothing on your person.

Fortunately, my brother and I were roughly the same size so I could use some of his clothes, and the hotel gift shop took care of the rest of the necessities. My bag did eventually show up and the trip was in no way ruined, but it did end up costing me a bit more since I had to buy new clothes from the resort. Also, no free upgrade on the way back to the states (if I wanted to pay for the upgrade it would have been around $600 to $1000, don’t recall exact amount), but such is life.

In summary, Southwest good, US Airways, not so much, which is probably the reason why I generally feel that if Southwest doesn’t fly there (at least inside the US), it probably isn’t worth visiting.

Alas, nothing! Well, not nothing exactly, as the screen would flash and it would show mostly black, except for some really colorful sections radiating from the aforementioned scuff marks, which with the TV on were all black and sort of in a fist shape. At this point, I can’t help but think that someone has punched my TV. After a moment of wondering who would punch a TV, I realized I needed to figure out who it is I should contact. First, I email woot, and ask the obvious question (“Did you ship me a broken TV?”), they inform me that they did not. Then I have to decide between FedEx and Magnavox (the latter for some sort of repair service). I opt to talk to FedEx first, which is what led to the hijinks that inspired this post.
Friday 19 March 2010
Call claims, speak to a nice young woman named Ashley who walked me through the process and informed me that someone could be out tomorrow (Saturday) to inspect it. Since the package is at my office I ask if we could do a different day so that I didn’t have to hang out at the office all day for just this. Not a problem, she says and tells me the inspector will stop by on Tuesday (since it was FedEx Home and they operate Tue-Sat). She also asks me what I want to happen to the TV after the Claims process, do I want it shipped back to woot or to come back to me. I say ship it back to me, so that I could try and get it repaired after they are done with it (ideally with the money they send me), in the hope that this is a fixable issue. She gives me a confirmation number, emails me something, and provides a fax number that I need to send various documents to, which I promptly do.

Tuesday 23 March 2010
Inspector turns out to be the normal FedEx Home Delivery guy, who is picking up the package and taking it back with him. I tell him that I was expecting an inspector and he says that he’s supposed to deliver it back to base and they will inspect it there. I ask him if I need to try and pack it back up like it was originally packed and he says that is unnecessary, that I should just try and shove all the packing materials in there. I do as requested and then he asks me to seal the package, “just so nothing falls out”. I go and grab some packing tape and run it over the top seam once and then he takes it away, carrying it slightly better than when he dropped it off.

Wednesday 31 March 2010
I get a letter from FedEx Cargo Claims. It states:

March 25, 2010

ATTN:
my name, address

Case # my case number
Tracking/Barcode Label # my Tracking/Barcode Label
Reference/Claimant #
Amount: $300.00 USA
Ship Date/Received Date 03/19/2010

Dear FedEx Customer,

Thank you for submitting your claim for the above-referenced shipment. After carefully reviewing your documentation and the shipping records, we are unable to honor your request for a claim.

We inspected the shipment and found that it was not adequately prepared or packed for safe transportation. A copy of the damage inspection report is included for your records.

Correctly packing, taping and labeling your shipment can help ensure it arrives on time and in good condition. You can find packaging guidelines for preparing future FedEx shipments at www.fedex.com/us/services/packageshipment and in the FedEx Service Guide.

If you would like a copy of the FedEx Service Guide, please call 1-800 Go FedEx 1.800.463.3339. FedEx information is also available at fedex.com and http://www.fedex.com/us/claimsonline.

Thank you for shipping with FedEx. We appreciate your business, and hope you will continue to count on us for reliable, high-quality delivery services.

Sincerely,

Tina Havelka
FedEx

The attached “damage inspection report” was a bit lacking in information. It listed the Shipper (WOOT INC) and the Consignee (me) and that it was shipped in a corrugated carton, containing “1 FLAT SCREEN TV” that was “CRACKED”.
The last two lines being:

Shipper Instructions: AUTOMATICALLY RETURN TO SHIPPER
Disposition of Package: COMPLETE ORDER RETURNED

At this point, I am assuming the TV made its way back to woot, but I have no idea. I suppose FedEx could have just kept and I wouldn’t have known. The biggest thing missing from the “damage inspection report” was the reason behind their refuting my claim. I see NOTHING that indicates the basis for refusing my claim.
Did FedEx not find it acceptable the way I packaged it up in the 2 minutes I had to give it to the Inspector who turned out to be the Delivery Guy? Maybe if I had known ahead of time to package it up like it was when I first opened it up it would have passed muster. Or maybe if the Delivery Guy had said that it needed to be packaged in the same way it was shipped. At this point, I have absolutely no idea.

I know it is stereotypical for insurance to screw you, but I have had a number of pleasant interactions when making claims with my own insurance company (Car/Motorcycle Insurance – go with Progressive they are wonderful), and have never felt screwed over.
This however was complete crap. I get a letter with no information stating that they aren’t paying anything and I have to assume that the TV went back to Woot. Did it? Who knows? Not me!

I did a little googling today and found that I am not the only one that has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous FedEx fortune. This isn’t terribly shocking (any claims department is going to have some people angry at being denied, be they legitimate denials or not), and a number of people reported similar instances of FedEx denying their claims, though I didn’t see much more information than “I was denied”. This is part of the reason that today’s blog post was NOT labeled Vitriol, as I decided that it would be more useful to others if I wasn’t swearing throughout.

Final Thoughts: DO NOT USE FEDEX for shipping anything electronic or fragile. You need documents shipped? Probably not a problem, but why chance it, there’s always USPS and UPS. If you happen to ship something and the insurance won’t pay, what’s the point?