Plaidophile

The first thing that struck me was how different the user interface was. Apple have yet again disregarded their own UI mechanisms in order to make iTunes look different than everything else. The window control "stoplight" is now arranged vertically, and all of the icons in the app are monochrome and low-contrast. Even for someone with normal vision like me, it makes major parts of the UI a lot harder to see and parse at a glance.

They also hid the AirPlay (nee AirTunes) stuff in a little tiny widget in the corner, which makes it much less clear if AirPlay is available, and they just use a gray vs. blue icon to indicate whether it's active. You have to click on it to learn what your particular configuration is. Considering they're really trying to push AirPlay now, this seems like a curious design decision.

I was also a bit annoyed that when I started it up, it was in "group with album art" view, which I usually turn off, but they've done a bit of tweaking to it to make it actually useful (even though the vast majority of my music doesn't have album art) and so I'm leaving it on for now.

So of course I tried out Ping, and was immediately annoyed by the following aspects:

• It requires your real name, which is tied to your billing account
• It requires your gender, which is of course the binary male/female
• You are only allowed to select up to three genres you like. The list of genres is pretty pathetic and mainstream anyway, though.
• There is no way for independent artists to add a profile (hopefully that will change in the future)
• The "privacy" settings are just "do you want to let people follow you?" and nothing like, for example, "do you want this information to be available?" Apparently, no, they haven't learned from Facebook's bad example.
• The only activity it records is actively purchasing and rating things on the iTunes store. So much for Last.fm-style discovery.

On the plus side, iTunes feels much more responsive and less laggy, and it's obviously they've put a lot of work into handling large libraries better. Hopefully they'll address the "too cool for colors" issue on the user interface, and it's not like you have to use Ping.

Somehow I appear to have gone over the 250GB Comcast bandwidth cap this month, and "coincidentally" my connection has been shut off. According to the handy bandwidth chart I usually use about 100GB/month, which actually surprises me since I don't do a lot of torrenting or online gaming. I suspect this is a result of my new hard drive which caused Crashplan to go crazy with re-scanning my whole disk.

At least I can get online via my Nexus One in the meantime. Sigh.

Annoyingly enough, Comcast was supposed to call me to warn me, rather than just shut me off outright. Meh.

When I was en route to Chicago, the battery in my MacBook Pro began to swell, so bad that my touchpad stopped working and when I opened the battery cover, the battery popped out with a great deal of velocity. So I made an appointment at the nearest Genius Bar (which is annoying to have to do), and when my appointment came up (after a few failed checkins) I showed my quite-round battery to the Genius(tm) who immediately just gave me a new one for free, despite my MacBook being about a year out of warranty. It never hurts to ask nicely (although I was prepared to argue for it anyway).

Also, having previously been dissatisfied with a compact Logitech keyboard and a Wacom Bamboo Touch, I bought the Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad, and while it's weird to spend $140+tax on a mouse and keyboard, these are actually quite comfortable, and I have them on a little Ikea lap desk and it's much more comfortable on my wrists than trying to put up with my horrible keyboard tray. Hopefully this will help a lot. Unfortunately, the lap desk is a bit thicker and squishier than I'd like, so I'll have to try a couple others out, but still, not a bad setup, and altogether costs way less than a proper keyboard tray (and a desk that can hold a proper keyboard tray).

So, I'm finally getting around to reinstalling Native Instruments Akoustik Piano on my MacBook, and I'd forgotten how much of a royal pain in the ass it is.

It's been a while since a self-indulgent blog post about my ongoing woes, and seeing as how that's the whole reason to have a blog anyway, I'd might as well update the three of you who still bother to read it.

I finally got the Zegerid today. Of course the pharmacist was really really worried about giving it to me because of the recent Nexium prescription. At the same time, he thought I should be aware that Nexium is "the same stuff," which it almost is (it's esomeprazole which is a kissing cousin of omeprazole), but it's in a time-release formulation and doesn't have the antacid, and that doesn't actually, you know, help for what I need it for. And of course I'm not going to take them both at the same time.

So I finally got a new scrip today, for Nexium (the purple pill), which my insurance was willing to cover. My cost after insurance was still $42 for a one month supply. The cost before insurance was $180! Zegerid looks like it costs over $200 for a one month supply. That's insane!

At least that costs me less than the (not at all effective anyway) OTC version ($20-$30/week depending on brand) but why does the prescription version cost three times as much for what is basically the same medicine plus a time-release capsule?

At least this is just a once-a-day pill. My prescription also only covers two more refills, so maybe the intent is that I take it for three months and then I'm done with it since supposedly the ulcer-causing bacterium will actually be gone by then, and my doctor will be able to suggest something else for maintaining the acid reflux.

So it turns out that while my doctor was on vacation, his fax machine wasn't working, so he never got the request from Walgreens to get the full authorization for the prescription. And of course Walgreens never did the followup on their own, because why should they care? But when I had called Walgreens they said that my doctor was "taking care of it" when my doctor had no idea there was anything to take care of.

Meanwhile my ulcer is back in full force (even with taking the OTC version of the medication, paid for completely out-of-pocket of course) and I'm miserable. I got very little sleep last night, and apparently it'll still take a few more days to get my insurance to clear the prescription.

So as we all know, Amazon provides free shipping for orders over $25. They also have many items which are just barely below $25, such as the Star Wars Trilogy ($24.99), which does not qualify for Super Saver.

They also have many cheap items, such as Charles Leonard Inc. Ruler, 0.06 Inch Increments, 77556) ($0.29) which can be used to push an order past the $25 threshold in order to get free shipping.

Sometimes these items are backordered, and in order to provide items more quickly, Amazon will split an order and eat the shipping cost (which is usually around $3.90 per shipment).

Today I received a rather large box which contained the following:

• A cheap 10-gram wooden ruler
• Plastic packing bags
• A receipt for a $0.29 ruler + $3.90 shipping - $3.90 super saver discount

Suggested alternative to Amazon (which I can now post publicly seeing as how I don't work there anymore): For orders which are $24 or up, offer super saver shipping as an option where the discount simply brings the total price down to $25. I'm sure people would rather pay $1 for shipping than waste natural resources and peoples' time just to save some money.

(The somewhat-ironic thing is that they ended up shipping the Star Wars DVDs with another order anyway. I suppose that their total cost and impact was the same, though, since if it hadn't been for that other order they probably wouldn't have split the order. Still, seems silly.)

So, because of my ongoing stomach issues, my doctor had put me on an acid reducer, and gave me a week's worth of samples, but he said to not bother filling the prescription if it didn't help while I still had samples. A week went by, and my issues cleared up very quickly, so I filled the prescription. The pharmacy, however, had trouble filling it, because insurance denied the prescription — they wanted me to either use a different (cheaper) acid reducer, or get a specific statement from my doctor that the one he prescribed me for is the one I have to take. The pharmacy can't just change the prescription because the closest generic formulation isn't quite the same, so legally they have to get permission from my doctor to change it.

Of course, this week my doctor is on vacation, so I get to wait a whole week for him to get back.

Meanwhile I'm just taking the OTC version of the same acid reducer, but the lower dosage and isn't nearly as effective, and my ulcer is coming back. And of course the OTC version is just as expensive as the prescription version, and isn't covered by my insurance.

So I get to pay out of pocket for a while until my insurance and my doctor can work this all out. Meh.

So, back in Seattle, I used Progressive Auto Insurance for my car insurance. When I moved to San Francisco, I sold the car and (of course) canceled the policy.

For my new car, I was going to go with eSurance since I'm friends with Erin, but Progressive's rate was way lower for a much higher level of coverage, so I decided to go with them again. So I bought the policy, and then tried registering for the website, and discovered that my old user ID was still in use. So I tried logging on to that ID to see if I could add my new policy to that account, but I just got a "Sorry, we are unable to process your request at this time" error — ostensibly because there was this account with no policy, so their backend didn't know what to do with it.

I ended up making a new account, so it's another user ID to keep track of. Then on the new account I noticed you can change your user ID, so I tried logging on to the old account to see if I could even do that — no dice.

I guess I'm just glad they don't tie accounts to email addresses, because then I'd be screwed.

I guess if I ever switch insurance again (likely!) then I will never be going back to Progressive, since I don't want to have to make yet another user account there.

You'd think an Internet company like Yahoo would know better than to do this crap. I tried logging in today and it prompted me to set two password-recovery questions. Its advice on the question and answer is:

Make sure your answer is private, memorable and does not change over time.

And yet, none of the questions allow that!

So, my dentist's office called just now to ask if I could move tomorrow's teeth cleaning earlier in the day by a couple hours. I said I'd rather not, so could I move it to a different day instead? The response: "That would count as a broken appointment and we'd have to charge you a $50 fee," since it's less than 48 hours away from the appointment.

So I guess it's okay for them to want to change an appointment in a way which doesn't work for me, but for me to offer an alternative which works better for everyone counts against me? Is that how it's supposed to work?

I ordered a bunch of music gear. It came in two shipments, both shipped on the same day, and both actually made it to San Francisco on the same day. The same name was on both of them. The same street address was on both of them. Presumably either the same company name or the same floor number were on both of them. AND YET, UPS knew what to do with one package (that arrived this morning) but the other one (which was as far as I can tell in the same truck with the same driver) was rejected because of an "incorrect suite number."

My office doesn't have a suite number, just a street address and "4th floor." Usually, shippers can figure this out. But every now and then, UPS, in its infinite wisdom, decides they need a suite number to continue. And so my stuff gets delayed.

Unfortunately, a lot of merchants don't seem to realize that both company name AND floor number are necessary for packages to get to me, but in this case UPS should have been able to figure it out anyway, simply because there was another package for me in the same batch of packages which actually made it to me.

And of course, whenever I call UPS under situations like this, they claim that they need to hear from the shipper, not from the recipient, because nothing makes things go faster than extra, unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and buck-passing.

So, I needed some stuff fixed around my home, namely my kitchen light fixture and my furnace's flame sensor. I went to Cole Hardware's referral service, and they referred two very good local businesses for that: Brookline Electric and Peterson Heating.

In both cases, the issues turned out to be minor things which I thought I'd ruled out (a defunct switch and cruft buildup, respectively), and if I hadn't been so overconfident in my diagnostic abilities and just went and did those basic repairs myself, I would have saved a lot of money, but that's my own dumb fault. At least I'm supporting the local economy somewhat.

• fluffy: Yay, my Nexus One is out for delivery! Only a few hours before the crushing disappointment of not having an immediate state of bliss.
• fluffy: My Nexus One has been out for delivery for THREE HOURS where IS it COME ON FEDEX
• FedexAl: @fluffy This is FedexAl. Would you like for me to track your package.
• FedexDolores: @fluffy Hello this is FedexDolores would you like for me to check on your Nexus One for you?
• fluffy: .@FedexDolores Yes, I totally need a spammy bot to walk me through continuing to reload the tracking page on a package that I already got.
• FedexDolores: @fluffy Please call 1-877-339-2774 this is our technical assistance number. Our representatives will be glad to assist you.
• fluffy: @FedexDolores I don't think you understand a single thing I said. I have no problems with FedEx, but fuck off if you're going to spam me.

Anyway, yeah, it looks like FedEx is trying their hand at Twitter by having a number of customer service representative idiots who do nothing but search for FedEx and try to improve customer satisfaction by responding to every single message they see about FedEx in a way that only comes across as disingenuous at best and spam at worst. My first assumption was that it was a couple of bots that were trying to get my package tracking numbers so they could divert the delivery. That could still be the case; I would certainly hope they're not legitimate FedEx representatives because if they are, it's pretty damn damaging to them in my mind.

Sure, out of context I guess my second tweet could have been seen as a complaint about FedEx, but why would two separate CSRs decide that they need to immediately make sure that I'm happy with FedEx service when clearly I know how to track a package and am just being impatient? Maybe they have real customers who demand to know where their package is down to the street level, or don't understand that delivery takes several hours. But I was just joking at my own expense, which anyone who knows me (from actually being a legitimate follower on Twitter — meaning, someone who saw something I had to say and decided I was worth reading for some strange reason) would have understood.

Twitter is a communication tool, which I happen to use to keep in touch with friends and random Internet acquaintances. To me, it is not a B2B marketing tool or a customer service tool or a way to generate revenue or eyeballs or whatever, and every time some business decides they need to monetize the community assets in order to generate customer-facing goodwill or whatever other bullshit leads to these ridiculous decisions, they only serve to ruin yet another thing that people just do for fun.

Bill Hicks had the right idea.

Two reasons why I'm mighty sore at Chase Bank right now:

First off, a month ago I withdrew some cash from a non-Chase ATM. The non-Chase ATM charged me $3, which I was expecting. Chase charged me another $2, which I was not, what with them loudly proclaiming many times that they don't do that.

Second, and more importantly, they never sent me a "your statement is available" email this month, which is what usually prompts me to pay my credit card bill (the last one I received was on 10/31). As a result, although my payment was due on 12/23, I didn't realize I hadn't made it until 12/24, today. I have gone through all my Procmail logs and have no record of them sending me a statement notification for December (although I have one for every other month). They did send me quite a few "important changes to your online legal agreements" emails but none of those had anything to do with alerts - just stuff like me agreeing not to "reverse-engineer the website" and other such nonsense.

I have a feeling they're going to charge me interest and some huge late fee. I already sent them a customer service message explaining the situation. We'll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, I checked my "account alerts" settings and it looks like somewhere along the line, all credit card alerts got completely disabled. I think they overhauled their alerts system, and didn't bother to reapply old settings. I think there will be a lot of people surprised by massive unexpected late fees. I think Chase will make a lot of money off of this.

Yeah, I know, it should be up to me to know to pay my credit card bill every month, but I've always just used the receipt of the "you have a new statement/payment due" email as a reminder. I guess I should just set this up as a recurring calendar item instead, because no way can I trust a bank to not screw up when their screw-up potentially costs me money.

5:35 PM Wow, this is surprising:

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to assist you today in regards to your request to remove the late fee recently assessed to your account.

Please be advised that I have credited your account for the $39.00 late fee and this adjustment will be reflected on your December billing statement.

Well, then.

Dear Sir McCartney:

While you think you may be speaking in your own interest, anyone who has wanted to download pirated versions of the Beatles catalog has likely already done so, as there are many avenues by which to do that which don't involve an official EMI release. All you are doing by insisting that EMI recompense you for any pirated "leaks" of an official EMI downloadable version is preventing the people who want to buy them legally from doing so.

Love,
A fan

So, about a month ago I ordered a game from eBay, which is the first eBay purchase I'd made in over a year. I never received the game. I went back to the eBay transaction, and noticed to my horror that they had provided an old shipping address to the seller. I had long ago updated my PayPal shipping address, but eBay had also overridden my (newer) PayPal address with the (much older) eBay address on the PayPal transaction as well, and in my haste I didn't notice this.

So, it's pretty unlikely I'll ever get the item. I guess I could try calling the apartment building and see if the package was left with the front desk or something. (Of course it's possible whoever is at that apartment now may have just opened the package instead, but being a Beatmania import I doubt they'd have any use for it.)

Still, screw you, eBay.

One of the many reasons why I gave up on the Sidekick/Hiptop was because I didn't have any reasonable way to synchronize my data between it and other devices. (This particular reason was at the top of the list, although ongoing usability problems and aggravation with not-quite-there features didn't help any.)

So, of course, the worst possible thing happened, and many people (including at least two friends of mine) were lost without their data and any way to recover it. I'm sure that basically none of them had a backup, because Danger went out of their way to make it difficult to keep your data synchronized or backed up externally.

"Cloud" computing as a promise is nice, but in execution it usually means "having all your data held up under lock and key by a single provider." You have to trust that provider to keep your data safe.