For those of you who have issues with typing on your standard, more traditional keyboards, seems manufacturers are finally starting to listen. There’s a large number of new keyboard designs being tossed about, and some of them seem quite… well, unusual. Of course, I have absolutely no clue how they’d effect someone with serious enough hand issues that typing in general becomes problematic, but you can’t solve everything with a new invention. I like their idea for a potential one-handed keyboard, though.
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Now this is an interesting perspective on technology.
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At the end of the day, Greyhound only mildly pisses me off.
After Wednesday’s rather lengthy song and dance that got me absofuckinglutely nowhere that would be considered anywhere near productive, I pretty much prepared myself this morning for an impressive round or two of fisticuffs over the whole bus ticket incident. But when I got to the station, for the first time *evar*, there was actually no need to bloody anyone’s nose. I walked in, paid for the ticket, got the ticket, promptly wtfed at their apparent need to swing by the Buffalow airport on the return trip only, and walked out. And then proceeded to nearly give Jessica (samari76) a heart attack, but that’s just my style. So as it stands right at this particular moment, barring any future complications between now and the said date at the said time, t minus 7 days, 3.5 hours until go time. No, I’m not counting down at all. Honest. Greyhound, you aren’t quite the epic failure you make yourself out to be. You’re just heading that way.
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For the folks among us with a House addiction, and a torrent client.
house_mdtv. Also known as a syndicated account that will post torrents as they come in of new episodes of the series. Is an RSS feed of tvrss.net, for the curious.
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My one and only bief with Greyhound. Bitching and moaning ahead.
Surprisingly enough, it’s not to do with accessibility. It may or may not have anything to do specificly with customer service. But it’s largely to do with their technological issues, of which they have a shitload. One that’s been hanging around on the long term since at the very least my first attempt at getting myself from here to there is their decided inability to do, like, anything while using the Canadian version of their website. Specificly, when it comes to purchasing tickets. Up until my second attempt to do so, they decided it would be real fun to show me exactly how very broken their purchasing system actually was. Only at that point, it was broken from both my end and theirs. For example, you could see half of your trip (the half *leaving* the Ottawa terminal), but you couldn’t see the return. But, if you went to the US version of same company’s website, you could easily see both sides of your round trip. You just couldn’t pay for them with a Canadian creditcard.
I was under the mistaken impression earlier this afternoon that such malfunctions had been corrected. I could schedule both ends of the round trip, and could even go so far as to see how much such a trip would cost me. I didn’t want to try purchasing it at that point, though, since Jessica (samari76) didn’t yet know what she could take off from work. Well, we found out today she does in fact have at least some of the time I’ll be there off from work, so I thought I’d go ahead and pay for the ticket. Not quite.
As said, I could schedule the trip, I could see how much it cost me, and it even gave me their little disclaimer about how tickets won’t be honoured for anything other than the date they were purchased for without a $15 admin fee to change said date. I gave ’em my creditcard number, and it all appeared to be halfway decent. Until I went to actually submit the purchase. Then their ever so helpful “we encountered a problem and your purchase could not be completed” error message came up. Well crap on a goddamn cracker. I thought we had this conversation already, Greyhound. Honestly.
I called their local office, thinking maybe I could bypass the online system altogether and go through that way. Way to oversimplify things, James. They tell me to either call their main line, or take a run into the station and pick it up that way. By this point, my usually not hard to piss off self was getting just a tiny bit pissed off. I decided, since I was here, to go ahead and call the main number… worst they could say was no, right? Wrong. Instead, they blamed my creditcard for not being able to purchase the ticket, saying they didn’t get the authorization from said card. Say fucking what now? After dumping copious amounts of my tax time earned money on my card, it’s *still* declined? I don’t fucking think so.
I called up Visa, and by this point I’m about ready to tear someone a new asshole. Twice. They tell me the charge *did* go through, and there’s an authorization code here to back that up. So now it’s on. Somebody’s blowing smoke up my ass, and I have a sneaking suspicion (no idea where it came from) that it’s a Greyhound Canada employee. I called their customer service number, and pretty much got another clueless wonder. This one, at least, had the brains to confirm they hadn’t even processed my ticket order. She told me the charges I was told were there should be cleared inside of 24 hours. I’ll believe that when I see it. In the meantime, I still have no bus ticket, and may or may not have been charged for one. Sorry, greyhound. You just screwed up huge.
I thought about just saying fuck it and flying to Rochester. Only one problem. West Jet doesn’t fly there, and Air Canada wants upwards of $500 minimum to fly there. I’ll say this much though. If Greyhound can’t get its shit together and soon, I’m halfway tempted to pony up the extra cashola and book a flight. It might be more expensive, but at least I’ll get there without needing to drop kick half a dozen people first.
Update: I have a ride to the station on Friday. Here’s hoping I actually get to come back with a bus ticket.
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Writer’s Block: Divided Self
No. Hells freaking no. What you see online is almost exactly what you see in person. Worse in some ways. I’ve been accused of having very little restraint… see a moron, nail a moron. Sometimes, I epically fail at the whole diplomacy thing, choosing to instead go for the blatantly honest explain it in less than 5 minutes answer. Not always the best decision, I’ll admit. They’ll get over it.
ETA: Had to reread the question… it’s what I get for being half awake and writing LJ. My answer doesn’t look quite so contradictory now.
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Things I learned that manage to surprise me.
In list format, because lazy is me.
- Microsoft can, in fact, make a program that doesn’t die horribly when you try to add something extra to it. They just don’t do it very often.
- Clearly, some people’s definition of accessibility is far different from mine. This is why we have issues, folks.
- I have incredible patience for technology that doesn’t want to cooperate.
- I have no patience for people who don’t want to cooperate.
- even greyhound.ca works sometimes. Now hopefully it’ll work when I want to actually buy the ticket.
- Even when I have plenty of energy, list format is still for the win.
- PS: Job market, I still hate you.
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Dear job market: you need to fuck off now.
On the bright side, I wasn’t left chasing this chick for upwards of a month like I have been other times. On the not so bright side, though…
Good Afternoon,
Unfortunately we have just received word that our client has filled the allotted unilingual English opportunities with them and will only be considering bilingual French and English or unilingual French candidates going forward.
Any candidates who have already been interviewed with Bell will still be in consideration however those who are pending resume review or interviews with our office will not be able to be considered further.
You will remain in our pool of qualified technical representatives and we will continue to consider you for future opportunities with our other clients.
Please keep an eye on our website; Adecco.ca for future opportunities and be sure to check JobBank, Workopolis and Monster and to apply with other agencies as well.
If you have any questions please let me know.
Well, I guess that just leaves me with only one option. Who on that side of the border wants to put up with me for a couple weeks?
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Why linux is for the epic motherfucking win.
From a thread regarding a speech-friendly installer for another Linux distro:
There’s definitely interest. I’d even learn the process for doing that for the sole purpose of contributing. Thanks for looking into it, William.
—–Original Message—–
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of William Hubbs
Sent: March 14, 2009 10:29 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Speakup-enabled ArchLinux install CD, version 2!—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
Hash: SHA1Hi all,
I would like to get this done on gentoo, I just haven’t attempted to coordinate it with release engineering yet. My plan is for our latest version of speakup and espeakup to go stable, then I will work with release engineering to get it put onto our official cds.
I’m not sure how to build a minimal cd myself, but if there is interest, I can ask release engineering about how that would be done for testing.
On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 10:10:59PM -0400, James Homuth wrote:
Careful. Yall are making me consider playing with Arch Linux if only because of its Gentoo-like qualities, minus compiling. This is, IMHO, exactly the kind of CD that particular distro needs. Would anyone mind > if I forward this thread to gentoo’s accessibility project?I loves me some open source community talk, yo. Try doing *that* with Windows, or Mac.
PS: William = team lead for gentoo‘s accessibility project. Also known as the guys who maintain screenreader software’s compatibility with that particular flavour of linux. Also, keep in mind, that entire discussion took place on a publicly accessible mailing list over the course of a few hours. You are not going to get that from Micro$oft.
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Do they not follow the rules by now…?
My cousin IMs me, completely at random. Not with a hello, not with how’s it going or have you heard anything about the job yet, but with fix my computer. Um, say that in my other ear? IM exerpt editted for readability only, because his spelling is absolutely made of epic fail.
him: i got a question about my computer
me: call the manufacturer.
him: thanks
me: np. lol
him: i would buy a new one but they cost money
me: heh.
him: i would get a new one but they cost $$$$
me: yeah.
him: do you know how to set it back to factory setting
him: or wipe it
me: it depends on the model. i’ve never actually done it myself, since the factory settings are usually what i’m trying to get the hell away from
him: ok
him: its running slower then hell and it keeps crashing saying hard were problem
me: then whiping it probably won’t be a whole lot of help. call the manufacturer.
him: i’ll go there on monday and see how much $ it will cost
him: thanksDood. *Not* tech support for $company. Your computer was made by $company. $company knows how to reset the bloody thing. $company has the ability to replace whatever component is fried or frying. And, $company has people who get paid to listen to you whine in that unreadable way you do. Why the hell are you asking me? Thank you for wasting 10 minutes of time I could have been spending doing anything else. No love, your irate older cousin.
PS: You had to know I was going to tell you to call $company anyway. I’ve been saying that since you got the damn machine. You, sir, fail at life.
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I’ve graduated!
Well, sort of. Y’see, I’m slowly beginning my exit from the coughy mchackencough school of hell, and instead I’ve enrolled in sniffle mcsneezy university. What 2 days ago was a semi-irritating chest thing is apparently morphing into a wicked evil head cold of d00m. Same thing happened with the motherling, which only confirms whatever this thing is was obtained either directly from or at the same time as her. Fortunately, this phase of whatever it is I got stuck with waited until now to show itself, as opposed to Thursday, so I didn’t need to go into the interview with a pocket full of tissues and a constant appology. Also in slightly bright-side-ish news, I usually kill colds relatively quickly. So whatever it is that’s making the rounds probably has another day or two at most. Which is just awesome, because while it’s not the cold itself that usually bothers me, it’s being restricted to remain near a source of tissue of some variety that does. I don’t often wind up sick with anything, but when I do, it’s usually one hell of a knockout punch. I think I’ve managed the worst of it though. Now if we can just convince the rest of it to get the hell out of me a little tiny bit faster, I’ll be absolutely extatic.
And, in unrelated news, because this entry can’t *all* be whining about the fact I have become sniffle mcsneezy, I’ve heard absolutely nothing thus far regarding said interview. I was supposed to hear something by end of day yesterday, but that didn’t end up happening. Figure I’ll give them a little bit more time, and if I hear nothing still, there will be a bus ticket purchased, and a girlfriend paid long overdue attention to. As for right now, though? I believe I need a coke.