Category Archives: Rant

07/28/11

Did you bother to test this?

My feedback to Apple regarding Mail.app in Lion:

Seriously, wtf? How could you not notice:

1. Emails I delete from the inbox come back after a few minutes. I’ve deleted the same messages 4 or 5 times now from my inbox. I guess you figured my delete key doesn’t get enough use already?

2. Still haven’t fixed the Snow Leopard/Exchange issue where Mail.app stops downloading emails after some random period of time requiring me to restart Mail.app. The good news is I can really tell my boss I didn’t see that important email! Thank you for being my excuse!

3. Can’t quit Mail.app. Yes, it just hangs every time. Have to Force Kill it. This is great since I’m restarting Mail.app 3-5 times a day due to #2.

4. When it starts back up, it often presents me with a random email I recently sent acting like I didn’t actually send it. It’s in my Sent Mail folder… did you send it or not? It’s a mystery! We all like mysteries right?

5. How many times do I have to read an email before you mark it read? You seem to have chosen to use a random number generator for that. I guess this was designed to mess with people with alzheimer’s or something?

Outlook and Thunderbird are looking really good right now.

10/9/10

Dear Google Recruiter

Dear Google Recruiter,

I’ve been contacted by a recruiter at Google every 3-6 months for the last 4+ years or so and I’ll tell you what I tell all of them:

I have no interest in interviewing with Google ever again. I expect to be treated professionally by companies and for them to be honest with me in their communication, but that did not happen when I went through your interview/hiring process. This is not negotiable and you only get one chance.

I also tell every recruiter at Google to please put a note in your HR database to not contact me any more. Obviously that never happens or doesn’t work, because you still contact me. Honestly, I’m not sure why this is so hard to accomplish for a company which specializes in storing and retrieving information, but I do find it rather annoying having to explain myself over and over again. Hence, I’ve decided to create this post so the GoogleBot will add it to your database for you.

Have a nice day,
Aaron

UPDATE: I posted this after being contacted by a Google recruiter and so I replied with this link. He replied back, was very apologetic and promised to update their records to indicate I did not wish to be contacted again and apparently that actually worked. Success!

04/15/08

Ticketmaster is more evil then I thought

So here’s the email I sent to my season ticket holder account representative:

Hi [name redacted],

I’m very upset at what can only be seen as deceptive business practices by the Sharks partner, Ticketmaster against their best customers- season ticket holders.

My wife and I are going to be out of town for Thursday’s game so I went to sell our tickets last night on the Sharks Power Play Ticket Trader. Here’s what I finally figured out this morning:

1. Tickets I sell aren’t actually sold at the “posting price” which I enter, displayed on the confirmation page or in the confirmation email. After looking for 5 minutes, I can’t find anywhere in the process where Ticketmaster actually states the actual dollar amount the tickets will actually sell for.

2. Ticketmaster uses an intentionally convoluted and misleading algorithm for determining the actual sale price and how much profit they make:

If a ticket is sold, you will receive a credit for 90% of the ticket’s Posting Price. The “Posting Price” is an amount that you will be given the chance to designate subject to a minimum and a maximum reflected during the posting process. The tickets then will be listed for sale for 115% of the Posting Price. If the tickets are purchased, the buyer will pay that increased amount plus an authentication and ticketFast® fee.

3. Ticketmaster only explains this in a popup window under the misleading title of “How much can I sell my individual game tickets for?”.

4. Ticketmaster then intentionally hides your own tickets for sale when you search for tickets to buy so that you’re less likely to become aware of this slight of hand on their part. I literally had to use a different computer to see my own tickets listed for sale because when I looked for my own tickets they were filtered out.

The reason for this is quite clear- Ticketmaster is intentionally misleading season ticket holders to artificially raise ticket prices by %15 (the difference between the “posting price” and actual “sell price”) in order to make higher profits.

I understand that Ticketmaster should be compensated for the Sharks Power Play Ticket Trader service, but doing so in such an underhanded and deceptive way does not treat season ticket holders or the people who purchase tickets fairly. I can only hope that SVSE and the Sharks were not aware of Ticketmasters policy. I trust that SVSE and the San Jose Sharks organization do the right thing for season ticket holders and all the fans wishing to buy tickets to Sharks games and force Ticketmaster to stop their deceptive business practices by:

1. Clearly showing to people who wish to sell their tickets the actual selling dollar amount and how much Ticketmaster is actually charging.

2. Removing the filter which prevents people from seeing their own tickets for sale.

Regards,
Aaron Turner Sec 203, Row 7, Seats 5 & 6

04/15/08

SSL = Secure Sucky Layer

I upgraded from Apache 2.2.6 to 2.2.8 and found out it broke compatibility with SSL certificates requiring an intermediate signing certificate. Without getting too techno-babbly, cheaper SSL certificates ($30/yr vs well over $100/yr) that you buy require a slightly more complicated SSL configuration on the server- a so-called “intermediate certificate” so that web browsers will know to trust the website. And as of 2.2.8, Apache apparently broke that functionality, so now I’m hosed. Continue reading →

07/30/07

LGA: Security Theater

So I was flying out of LaGuardia, NY (LGA) this morning on my way home to San Jose, Ca (SJC). After checking in, I was directed by the nice woman at American Airlines to take my checkin bags to the x-ray machine.

There were a lot of bags piling up at the machine and 2-4 TSA agents processing the bags thru the x-ray machine and loading them onto the conveyer belt to the plane. What struck me odd though was that none of the TSA agents actually sat at the x-ray machine console to examine the x-ray images of the bags!

I watched for about 10 minutes as the rest of my party went through the long lines to get their boarding passes. Every few minutes one of the TSA agents would press a button on the computer to restart the x-ray machine and/or check off a form on a piece of paper. He or she would sometimes look at the computer screens for a few seconds, but anywhere from 5-15 bags would be processed in between… hardly enough time for the TSA agent to be able to examine the bags for any dangerous items or contraband.

07/19/07

Safety without Freedom is worthless

After reading Mortimer Zuckerman’s editorial, Putting Safety First I’m both saddened and angered. You would think that someone of Mortimer’s position would be more well versed in both the facts and history.

Considering that your chances of dying from a terrorist attack is far less then being killed by lightning, fire, drowning, murder, car accident or even an asteroid strike it’s hard to justify giving up those freedoms and rights which make us uniquely American.

Personally, I would rather listen to some of the great Americans who shaped our country then people like Zuckerman who would use the threat of terrorisim as an excuse to give away our rights of free speech, free association, due process of law, privacy and most importantly the separation of powers between the three branches of government.

People like Benjamin Franklin who said, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Or as President Franklin Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself— nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Will we as a country cower in fear, squander our freedoms away for an ounce of safety or will we stand up for our unalienable rights and continue to pass on that gift to our children as our parents and grandparents gave to us?