What you get when my brain crashes…

Gas Tax Holiday: Dumbest Idea Ever

I overheard on the news this morning something about a “gas tax holiday” that someone (Senator Clinton?) was suggesting.

My immediate reaction? That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Let me explain:

First off, giving a “holiday” from gasoline taxes is basically admitting that you’ve failed. You’re basically saying, “I’ve failed to keep gasoline prices from skyrocketing and things have gotten so bad that I’m going to try and give you a tiny break just so you won’t go bankrupt when trying to fill up your new Ford/GM/[insert name of your least-favorite car manufacturer here] Planetbuster SUV.” And while I admire politicians who are brave enough to admit failure, this is sort of a weaselly way of doing it.

Secondly, and perhaps most profoundly, is the fact that this is quite obviously a diversionary tactic, meant to draw our attention away from more important things. It is, quite frankly, an insult to our intelligence. It is basically saying “here’s a brief break from the price of gas, now vote for me!” It is bribery, in the truest sense of the word.

Now, trading favors like this for votes is an old political trick - and everyone’s been doing it for pretty much forever, so nothing new there. What’s different here is how brazenly open it is. Instead of the usual “if elected, I promise to do X,” it’s more like “if elected, I’ll personally write each and every one of you a $100 check - I promise!”

Never mind that the whole idea is basically a panacea. It’s like giving someone a pain reliever when they’ve had their arm chopped off. Sure, it’ll dull the pain for a bit, but they’re still gushing blood from the open wound!

Basic economic theory tells us what to do in a situation like this. If the price of a commodity like gasoline is going up, you can either increase the supply or reduce the demand. So, it’s either find more oil, or make us collectively use less of it. (Hint: a gas tax holiday does neither of these things - in fact, arguably, it increases demand, because everyone will fill up during the holiday, and there will probably be hoarding, people filling up portable containers and stockpiling gas - thus using more and leaving us in a worse position, supply-wise, after the holiday than we were before!)

So, you can see that the idea of a “gas tax holiday” is at the very least useless (and possibly even harmful) in the long term, and worst of all, is a brazen attempt at bribing the voting populace by hitting us all where it hurts - in our wallet after we’ve filled up.

To me, that seems like an incredibly shameful thing to do, and that’s why I believe it qualifies for the “Dumbest Idea Ever” title.

Comcastic “Support?”

Earlier this week, on Monday, I had some Internet trouble.

My ISP, Patriot Media, was recently bought out by that cable company everyone loves to hate, Comcast. On Monday, my Internet stopped working, and so I set about trying to figure out what went wrong.

I saw right away that it seemed as though my local (as in neighborhood) network had finally been switched over to Comcast’s network - the IP had changed to a totally different class A network, and as a further clue, the host name now said “comcast” instead of “patriotmedia.” OK - so why can’t I connect to anything?

I was getting the new IP address via DHCP, so I knew I was at least connected to Comcast - but I could not ping the DHCP, DNS, or Gateway IP addresses I was given. Very strange! So the problem must’ve been on their end.

Ugh. That means I have to call Comcast tech support and probably go through all my troubleshooting all over again.

Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. Even though I’d already done the whole “connect your computer directly to the cable modem” thing, they made me do it again. And again. I mean, I know why they make you do this, and I know that they’re probably told to ignore callers who say “I’m a tech person, I know what I’m doing” (which I did say, in not so few words), but still…

Anyway, they eventually said they’d have to escalate it (duh!) and would it be OK for a tech to call me back on this number? I said sure, made sure they had the phone number right (they did), and hung up.

Several hours later, with no Internet, I was going through withdrawal. Remember, I live on the Internet!

So I called back to get a status report - and they started making me go through the troubleshooting steps again! So I firmly asked for a status report, and they said, basically, “they’re working on it.”

To keep myself amused, I was periodically checking my ‘net connection, resetting my router and cable modem to see if I had connectivity. Finally, after 6 hours, the Internet came back to life and I was able to get back online.

Fast forward to today, and I get a call out of the blue. It was Comcast… calling to see if my Internet was working now.

For those who can’t count, that’s 3 days later they finally called to check in on me.

I guess you could say that this is what “Comcastic” really means - leave your customers hanging for 3 days before following up on something that you fixed 3 days earlier. If they keep using that word in their advertising, well… to quote a great movie, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

UPDATE: I have a follow-up post regarding this issue - and it’s good news!

Verizon and INCREDIBLY STUPID Verification Schemes

Before we begin today’s rant, it is important to point out that the word “elegant” holds a special meaning for software people. Let me quote the entry from the New Hacker’s Dictionary (or the “Jargon File” as it is sometimes known):

Combining simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than `clever’, `winning’, or even cuspy.

Now we can move on to the topic of today’s rant: Verizon. Verizon’s systems that interact with customers are most definitely not elegant.

This weekend I tried to pay my Verizon phone bill. It was near the due date, and so I didn’t want to mail a check (so… 20th century-ish) and paying by phone brings with it an irrational $3 fee (always a good business practice to make it harder for your customers to pay you… riiiiiight…), so paying online seemed to be the best option. What the heck, I’d done it before, right?

Well, no.

Since I’ve moved, my phone number has (obviously) changed. And although my online account still works (user name and password logs me in, anyway), there are no phone numbers associated with my account. Apparently, the USER - the CUSTOMER is responsible for this association. Great call there, Verizon.

So I try to associate my phone number. In order to prevent random people from stealing your account, their system will actually call you on your home phone - which seems like a good idea at first glance. (I’ll set aside arguments about how this won’t work unless you are at home with a working phone for now, as they didn’t apply to me.) Apparently, the way it works is their automated system will call you and give you a “temporary PIN” which you then type into the website and that’s how they verify that YOU are actually the owner of the line. What could possibly go wrong?

• Good Idea: Use a temporary PIN to verify the owner of an account
• Bad Idea: Use a temporary PIN that is read by an automated computer voice that uses a lot of the following easily-confused-with-one-another letters: B, D, V, and probably others that I couldn’t figure out because it was a computer reading them to me.

The problem here should now be obvious. Here I was, being spoken to by a computerized voice which read out some random bunch of letters & numbers (which really isn’t a “PIN” in the strictest sense of the word, but whatever), and for the life of me I couldn’t tell whether it was saying “B” or “D” or “V” or maybe even some other letter that sounds sort of the same (and there are a lot). It didn’t even use the standard phonetic alphabet readings, like “V as in Victor” and so forth, so there can’t be any confusion.

In the end, after many different tries of different combinations of letters, I gave up. I could not validate my account AT ALL online, and had to pay BY PHONE and be charged $3 for the privilege of getting my money to Verizon faster.

You can understand why this interaction with Verizon left me feeling like I’d been sucker-punched in the stomach.

For a company as big as Verizon, this is inexcusable. What’s worse is that because it was the weekend (Sunday, to be exact), ALL of their support phone numbers (which are hard enough to find as it is) were closed - except for the automated computer system that can only read you your balance (and take your payment and charge you $3 extra for it).

I’d love for someone to explain to me how, exactly, this is considered “good” customer service?

Let’s break down the transgressions, shall we?

1. Verizon doesn’t synchronize changes to a user’s account with their on-line account - even though they have the information to do so.
2. Verizon uses a computer to read letters & numbers to you without spelling them out using the phonetic alphabet (”V as in Victor” style)
3. When you have a problem entering the “temporary PIN,” a link appears that says (basically), “Having trouble? Contact us!” Which does not take you to a phone number - it takes you to the “let’s hide our phone number from our customers” page
4. Support for the 24-hour on-line system is… only available during weekday business hours?
5. The 24-hour payment option charges customers an extra $3 for the privilege of paying quickly and on-time.

It’s enough to make me think about finally giving up my hard line with Verizon and going entirely with VoIP phone service instead.

If you want 5 ways to lose customers and make them angry, just take these tips from Verizon.

The Trial against the Bad Bunnies

The buns got into some mischief last night - in a big, bad way.

We’d just gotten our new guest bedroom set up - all sorts of nice things (gotta love IKEA), and of course plastic under-bed storage containers to keep the buns out from under the bed (in the most guest-friendly way).

Unfortunately, the very first night, the buns found a way past all the barriers and got under the bed. And while there - well, let’s just say they did some bad things. So now they are in “bunny prison.”

Suffice to say I was NOT happy this morning when woken up to this news. So now the buns are on trial, and the outcome of that trial will determine what happens to them. Will they get their free-roaming privileges revoked? Will they be confined to a cage? Or maybe just kept behind a barrier in a corner of the room? Or will we just improve the bunny-proofing around the guest bedroom?

Let’s see some of the evidence.

Exhibit A: Rabbit Fur

As you can clearly see, this is white rabbit fur. It probably came from Gus, but both of them have white fur.

Exhibit B: The Hole

While under the bed they chewed this hole in a wicker basket kept beside the bed (originally to keep them from getting past the small space at the head of the bed).

Exhibit C: Testimony

Amanda woke me up at 7am this morning (my day off!) and told me they’d gotten under the bed. I came out to find Gus sitting happily under the guest bed. While I was trying to shoo him out, Besty came under the bed from the opposite side, near the head of the bed - presumably this is the way they got in, because I saw no other breaks in the defenses.

Deliberation

I’ll be deliberating on the fate of the buns today. We’ll see how I feel tonight - and how the buns feel after a day of being kept in one corner of the room!

BAD BUNNIES!

Beaten by Rabbits

It’s official - I’ve been beaten by my own pet rabbits.

Google Analytics just confirmed that the bun’s blog is officially more popular than my own. (Although in terms of raw numbers, my blog gets more hits, but that’s mostly just people searching for wallpapers.)

I’m crushed.

I think I may have to have a talk with the little furballs…