This post was going to start off as a bit of a stupid people rant, but a few people redeemed it from frustration and dragged it into entertaining.  Possibly, the sheer ridiculousness of the entire thing brought it to the ‘funny’ category too.

Yesterday, I got this email:

From: Katlyn Fergus
Sent: July 7, 2011 5:40 PM
To: pnc_ach (pnc_ach@mail.rmu.edu)
Subject: Activation code

I have not received my activation code?

Thanks

Katie Fergus

My initial reaction was, “is this some sort of phishing scam?” Then I looked at the To line, and that means that either I’m somehow BCC’d on this email or that someone has my Robert Morris (rmu.edu) email on a stupid group email distribution. Sadly, it was the latter, and what ensued was ~120 reply all circle of choas and mayhem. So many Hall’s rules of Social Order were broken.  It didn’t stop until 7:01 PM.

0 replies from Katie Fergus

3 men asking if there are any single ladies

1 man asking if there are any single men

9 People replying “stop replying all!”

3 people replying more than once to “stop replying all!!”

31 people replying all requesting to be removed from the email list.

2 people replying all requesting to be kept on because they liked getting all the emails

18 people simply stating they were confused, not sure why they were getting the email(s), or asking why they were getting the email(s)

4 People placing (undeserved) blame on PNC and/or Katie Fergus

8 ”IT Guys” explaining (or attempting to explain) what was going on and what needed to happen to fix it for everyone

2 Actual RMU IT guys sending the same exact message explaining what the problem was and that it would be fixed soon.

5 People replying with reference to needing more activation codes, getting Katie her activation code, or saying they don’t need any activation codes.

1 Suggestion that you should have to pass an I.Q. test to gain access to the reply all button  (I wish this had a facebook like button)

3 “Shout outs” to friends or people on the email distribution

1 porn site registration confirmation email to pnc_ach@mail.rmu.edu

Some of the funnier replies:

WAIT!  EVERYONE STOP FOR A SECOND!

People still use blackberries?!

We must have the activation code

RMU SUCKS!

Poop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUZUImChHJE (I thought for sure this would have been a Rick Roll)

I like turtles

There are some crazy things going on in Montana politics right now.  Something about tea party, republicans, blah blah blah.

here are just a few:

1.  Legalize hunting with hand-thrown spear (Senate Bill 112)

2.  Create fully-armed militia in every town (House Bill 278)

3.  Allow legislators to carry weapons in the Capitol (Senate Bill 279)

4.  Create an 11 person panel with authority to nullify all federal laws (House Bill 382)

5   Allow guns in schools (House Bill 558)

6.  Eliminate educational requirements for persons seeking job of State Superintendent of Schools (HB 154)

7.  Lift nuclear ban for purpose of building a nuclear reactor in the Flathead Valley (House Bill 326)

8.  Withdraw the United States of America from the United Nations (Senate Joint Resolution 2)

9.  Eliminate all state incentives for developing wind power (House Bill 244)

10. Omit Barak Obama’s name from the 2012, ballot because his father was born outside of America (House Bill 205)(this guy was on CNN this week)

11. Compulsory marriage counseling for people seeking a divorce (House Bill 438)

12. Give sheriffs authority over the federal government in terror investigations (Senate Bill 114)

13. Legalize hunting with silencers (House Bill 174)

14. Lift the prohibition on carrying concealed weapons in bars, churches and banks (House Bill 384)

15. Eliminate law that requires landlords to install carbon monoxide detectors (House Bill 354)

16. Require the federal government to prove in court that the National Parks were lawfully aquired. (House Bill 506)

17. Officially designate the “Code of the West” as the “Code of Montana” (Senate Bill 216)

18.  Declare that global warming is good. (House Bill 549)

read more :  http://mtcowgirl.com/2011/02/17/nutjob-bills-in-the-montana-legislature/

Here’s an example of one of my peers in my masters degree program.  We have our first group assignment, and groups were chosen by the professor.  Granted, there was some confusion on how to use the online system and communicate to multiple people, but this is the email she sends out…

hello all I have made this list for us as I have so many email address’s coming I’m not sure no more who they belong too.

please only use my Comcast  email as I am getting double emails and this is already to confusing .
also please tell me in one email what you need me to do as I have so many emails right now I don’t know which one to use to do the assignment. or what I need to do within the assignment project

That was a big WTF for me.  Even bigger though, was the (seemingly random) image that was attached to it:

WTF indeed.

Alright, this memory is going to be a little graphic, but i have to live with it, so I’m going to share it. With an opening sentence like that, how could you not read more?

So while I was at pitt, I lived in Lothrop Hall. Lothrop Hall had disgusting bathrooms and the stalls did not offer much for privacy. If I remember correctly, it may have even only been a sheet in front of you. Either way, it wasn’t be best place for a #2. The Cathedral of Learning however, had an awesome 2nd story bathroom. It was very hard to get to, so it made it typically pretty sanitary, but it also had the longest hallway of stalls that I think I’ve ever come across. There must have been 15 stalls on either side. You don’t want to pick the close ones, because those are for people that had emergencies, and you don’t pick the ones all the way at the end, because that’s too obvious and frequented. Somewhere in the middle though, you find the perfect balance of cleanliness and privacy. The problem is, others, 1 gentlemen in particular, thought the same thing I did.

So I sitting in one of the right side stalls, doing my thang. Every once in a while, someone will walk by, but that doesn’t bother me. It’s only when a dude takes the stall directly across from me that I’m a little perturbed. I hear some strange noises. I peer through the crack in my door to see what’s up. This skinny black dude is sitting on the toilet, with the door open, stroking his wookie. WTF. I don’t know what his logic was with the door, but when he’d hear someone coming through, he’d shut it, at least enough to prevent seeing what he was doing, but then he’d open it back up again.

I tried to ignore it. I don’t know what triggered it, maybe he didn’t see me at first, but he got up and came over to my door and knocked on it. I didn’t respond and kept my head down. He was peaking through the cracks at me and I think he mumbled something, but I have no idea what. I think he was crazy. After perhaps a second knock, he retreated back to his stall, I assume to continue his work.

What he probably didn’t realize was the implications of his actions. He’s stuck with me now. There’s no way I’m leaving the security of my stall. I have my cell phone and my vocal chords if he tries anything. I’m there for the duration.

I have no idea if he finished his deed or not, but he did end up leaving after a while. I gave it a good buffer time before I left. I thought he might be waiting for me outside, so I chose a public and quick exit.

I never returned to those stalls, I think. If I did, I remember thinking to never go back during that same time frame. Too much privacy has tainted it.

I hate dress socks.  Why do I have to wear them?

Because that’s what society says is normal and acceptable to be considered “dressed up”?  Not good enough.

Because they’re dark?  How about I got a pair of WHITE dress socks in a variety pack.  WTF???  When would I EVER want to wear white dress socks???

With shoes and pants that fit right, there’s like a 0.01% chance that anyone will even ever see your socks.  Why are they so important?  Some people treat their socks with as much attention as they do their ties.  Who cares?

Dress socks are so thin and they provide no cushioning, especially when you’re wearing uncomfortable dress shoes.

One of the biggest problems I have with dress socks is that they are so tight and, when worn correctly, they stretch up on your shin, restricting circulation and airflow so my feet get super sweaty and anxious for freedom.

I walk about 1.2 miles to work and then a big hill back home in the afternoon.  That blows.  When I step in the door, one of the first things I do is rip that crap off my feet.

White, cotton, ankle socks is where the love is.  comfort, air, easy to put on and take off, easy to bleach and keep brilliant white and they last a long time.  Dress socks get worn out in the heels or toes so quickly.

In high school, I had a friend who loved to wear dress socks.  Even played soccer in them.  Chris Tchinsky.  Maybe I need to ask him what the appeal was…

WTF is up with trash bag sizing?  Why can’t we have standards here?  My whole life, I’ve struggled with the trash bag being too small and falling into the can, and then all the grossness builds up as it falls between the bag and wall and to the bottom of the can.  Either that, or the bag is too big and you end up either filling over the capacity of the can which causes garbage to topple to the floor or you end up just wasting potential storage capacity of the bag.  It’s ridiculous.

WTF am i missing here? I went to dictionary.com, typed in “bousy” and it said it wasn’t a word. Then i googled for “bousy” and it came up with a result on dictionary.com

WTF

Avis customer support has exhausted my patience, so I’m considering this the final chapter.  If Avis is your cheapest rate when you go to rent a car, take a second to think about the risk you might run of having to deal with customer service.  I am not going to be a loyal Avis customer anytime soon.

I used Travelocity.com to book the cheapest car I could find for Kallie and I to use on our flight to California over Thanksgiving.  Avis was the cheapest, but not by much.  We picked up the Pontiac G5 at Sacramento airport on Nov 25th on our arrival.  It was the smallest rental car I’ve ever been in, which put me more in a contemplative mindset as I wondered why I’ve never had such a small car even though I’ve always rented the cheapest before.

The car worked fine until Friday evening in San Francisco.  While sightseeing, I parallel parked but was not able to turn the key to power off the car.  It was if it was locked in the on position.  We couldn’t leave the car running and unlocked to sightsee.  We tried all the obvious things, then called the 800 number listed with the rental docs, and they had us try the obvious stuff again, then we told them we’d just go to the nearest Avis center and return it.  We were near empty on gas, but there was an Avis location in town, not far away.  We got to the location shortly after 5, and it closed at 5pm.  That meant that we would have to drive ~30 minutes to the San Francisco airport.  We got there, with less than a gallon of gas left, I’m sure.

Upon our arrival, I had the 2 employees and a manager sanity check me and they could not turn the car off either.  They said to go inside and talk to customer service to get a replacement car.  They initially said they would have to charge me for returning the car with an empty tank, but since I couldn’t turn off the car, it wasn’t safe for me to fill it up before returning it and they let that charge go.  The desk representative also volunteered a $25 voucher for our inconvenience, and asked her manager to bring the voucher to the desk for us over the walkie talkie.  ~20 minutes go by, the very nice desk rep pages her manager again.  We use the rest room, talk about the car, wait around, until the desk rep then physically goes to the manager’s office to find the manager had left for the day and locked the office with the voucher inside.  When the desk rep came back to us, she said that she would leave notes in their system for our reservation so that when we returned the car in Sacramento, they would give us a voucher for “more than $25″ since we had so much trouble and had to wait.  We got a replacement Ford Focus, and went about our lives.

…until Sunday, when we realize we may have left Kallie’s Macbook under the passenger seat with our only copies of wedding photos on DVD.  We called the San Francisco airport location, and they said they don’t see any notes on a laptop, but the car is at their repair facility off site, and no one would be able to look for it until Monday, but they would have someone call me back once they were able to look.  By 4pm Monday, I hadn’t heard anything back, so I called them again, and they asked me where to look for it, so I said, “in the car”, and they wanted me to be specific, so I said to try under the passenger seat or in the trunk.  They called back after a few minutes and said they were not able to find it there.

Fast forward to Tuesday, Dec 1st at 4:00am.  We drop off the car at the rental location to catch our 6:00am flight.  The receiving employee only has a hand scanner that prints our return receipts and she has no access to a computer or vouchers.  She said that we would have to wait until the desk representatives come in at 7:00am.  So I decide I’ll have to pick this back up once we get home.

I give a phone call to the customer support number.  I explain the voucher situation to them, and they say they’ll send it in the mail to me right away.  Seemed easy enough.  I also called the SF location again to have the search the whole car, thinking it might have moved or we put it somewhere else.  They said they will leave an open case in the lost and found if it ever turns up, but it’s not in the car.

A week or so later, I receive a letter from Avis with a voucher attached to the bottom for $25.  The letter is your basic canned apology letter, but the voucher, at least, had something identifying on it…an expiration date of 12/31/09.  They had given me less than a month to use the voucher.  That’s pretty much insulting, and I said that in my letter to them.  I used the contact form on their site to send it to them.  I could repost it here, but it’s basically the same as this post and carries the same tone.

A few days later, I get this response via email:

From: “Avis Customer Service” <custserv@avis.com>
Sent: Monday, December 28, 2009 10:31 AM
Subject: RE: Avis Rental U142826294 / Case 7737785 (KMM2651002I5371L0KM)

RE:  Avis Rental U142826294 / Case 7737785

12/28/09

Dear Mr. Hall,
Thank you for contacting us through the Avis Website.

In viewing the above Avis rental and your case I find that you have
phoned into our Avis Customer Service Department and the agent that you
spoke with has sent you an Avis Customer Service Certificate.  I do
apologize for the problems that you experienced with your Avis rental
car and if we can assist you in the future, please let us know.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us, and we look forward
to assisting you with your future rentals.

Sincerely,

S**J***
Avis Customer Service Representative
custserv@avis.com

Wow.  First, they’re not going to do anything.  Second, they obviously didn’t read my letter very well if they failed to notice the part where I said I was insulted that they would send me a voucher that expired within a month.  I put about as much effort in my reply as they put in to theirs:

Perhaps you missed the part where I was given less than a month to use the certificate?

I received this reply today:

Case #:7737785
RA#:142826294

Dear Mr. Hall,

Thank you for contacting Avis via www.avis.com.

We apologize for sending a coupon that expires that soon. 
We value your business and as a courtesy we will honor your request to
replace your coupon.

Please mail the coupon to my attention to the addressed noted below.

Avis Customer Service
P.O. Box 690360
Tulsa, OK  74169-0360
ATTN : CASE 7737785

I appreciate your cooperation and await your response.

We appreciate your taking the time to report your experience to us.  You
have helped in a continuing effort to provide you, and all Avis
customers, with the service you expect and deserve.

Warm Regards,
 
K*** L***
Avis Customer Service Representative
custserv@avis.com

They want me to pay for postage and mail them back a $25 voucher that expires by the time it reaches them.  WTF.  I’m not even sure I have the voucher any more, since it was worthless to me.  That’s ridiculous, and that is why Avis can not expect to see my name on their customer sheet any longer.  If their customer service strategy is to make users feel frustrated and eventually just get tired from getting the run around and jumping through hoops and give up, then they’ve succeeded.

This isn’t a How-To jailbreak your iphone.  It’s just some top reasons to jailbreak your iphone, based on my personal experience.  There are a lot of jailbr0ken apps that are used far more than any that I will list, but they’re the reasons why I’m jailbroken. 

Right now I’m on 3.1.2 on my iphone 3G.  Version 3.0 addressed a lot of what OS 2.x lacked, things like landscape keyboard, video recording (on the 3GS), MMS, and copy & paste, and a few others.  There are still a bunch of things that 3.x doesn’t do that the jailbreak community has enabled (reply to SMS messages without leaving your app, tethering, turn by turn directions, google voice, etc). You might even say that the jailbreak community (Shout out to Saurik) even did it first.  It’s hard not to think that Apple wants to offer the features that people are drawn to jailbreak.

There’s a huge library on Cydia of cool apps, like a gameboy and NES emulator, putting your icons in categories/folders, creating blank icons for organizing, or icons that "spring" you to a certain app page.  You can do things like add people to a black list, record your calls, save youtube videos, basically, anything you can think of, someone probably feels the same way, only they have the ability to write an app for it.  If you fancy customization, jailbreaking is worth it.

10.  Unlocking – Don’t wan’t to be on AT&T?  That’s fine.  You can still use your iphone on another provider without the full functionality. 

9.  SSH – This stands for Secure Shell, which can cross the line into geekiness, but basically, you can use your iphone as a big old memory stick.  You are able to copy and manipulate any and all files on the phone.

8.  5 docked items – Why not?  I use my calendar, phone, email, text, and safari all pretty regularly.  Why should I be limited to 4?

7.  Cyntact / ContactFlow – Cyntact takes your existing contact list, and puts the person’s photo (if you have it stored) as an icon next to their name.  ContactFlow takes that one step further, and your contacts are actually stored in a "flipbook" style app, just like you do with albums.  These two apps are certainly dependent on a respectable collection of photos for your contacts, but with googlesync and any of the apps that will sync your contacts with the photos of your facebook friends, it makes it a very pretty addition.

6.  Weathericon – If the calendar icon updates to display the real date…why doesn’t the weather icon update?  Well, now it does.  No more waiting for the weather app to load.

5.  Multiicon Mover -This is one that I’m sure will be implemented in a later Apple firmware.  hold down an icon to get the icons to wiggle like normal, then just tap on the icons that you want to move.  Each tapped icon will then show a little check box letting you know they are selected.  Scroll the page you want them on and press the home button and they’ll all move there.  EASY.  Just as it should be.  No more trying to drag across 4 pages 1 icon at a time.  It’s so simple, it’s genius.

4.  Cycorder - I’ve been able to capture video on my iphone long before Apple released the 3GS, and I can still capture it on my 3G.  Why not use the hardware to it’s full capabilities?

3.  StatusNotifier / Intelliscreen – When you have new mail or a new text message, StatusNotifier will put an icon on your lockscreen or up in your statusbar.  Heck, it’ll throw the weather up there for you too if you like.  Intelliscreen takes it even further and creates all kinds of gagdets / widgets for email, stocks, notes, alerts all displayed on your lockscreen for easy reference without having to unlock and go through all the apps.

2.  SB Settings – A quick swipe of the status bar, and you’ll bring up this cute little menu screen that you can customize to have icons to quickly change brightness, airplane mode, process kill, reboot, and a whole bunch more.  SB Settings is one of the most used apps for anyone who jailbreaks.  You can also hide any icons with this (like stocks.  WTF looks at stocks on their iphone?).  SB Settings has a lot of uses and it’s pretty and convenient to boot.

1. Themes / Lockscreens / Fonts - Here we are.  Numero uno.  CUSTOMIZATION, PLEASE.  I don’t want a black background and boring or ugly icons.  There are THOUSANDS of themes to pick from, and a lot of tools to create your own.  It’s so much more aesthetically pleasing to have icons that look like they go together.  I chose ones that match my case; a light blue.  I don’t want a boring old swipe to unlock, I want a pac-man character that chases a ghost, or mock fingerprint scanner that looks legit.  Change the fonts around, and now you got something classy and fun.  No more instutionalized experiences!  

I think that’s it.  If you have any questions, I’m glad to help.  Here are some cool links to check out:

http://cydia.saurik.com/

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jailbreak_%28iPhone_OS%29

www.engadgetmobile.com/category/os-x/

Every time i look at my $75 a month cable bill, I wonder why I pay it.  I was so happy without cable, and if I lived alone, there would be no cable.  I don’t understand why I have to pay so much money for something that gives me commercials.  This opens another topic about why the television was created and marketed the way it was, which really has some interesting literature and documentaries apropos, but this rant is not about that.  It’s just about my recent encounter with comcast.

So I’ve been a comcast customer for over 6 years now in one form or another.  full blown digital subscriber, just basic tv, then to the standard package where I sit now.  All the time, I’ve been enrolled in automatic bill payments with no paper bills mailed to me.  Bliss.  It’s a never changing bill, so i don’t need to look at it, i just expect that much to taken out each month.  So for years this goes on fine.  Back in december, I logged in to change my credit card information.  Still, all works fine, until May, apparently.  In June, I get a "past due" notice in the mail.  WTF?  So i call the number and try to see what’s up.  The representative was utterly useless.  She kept stating the obvious, "No payment was made in May."  And I say, "umm…I know, otherwise I wouldn’t have received a past due notice.  What I need you to do is fix it so it doesn’t happen again."  It’s absolutely ridiculous how inept this person is, and coming from a helpdesk background, I know how things should go here, and this is terrible.  So I ask her to take off the late fee, and she says she doesn’t have the ability to do that.  She doesn’t seem to have the ability to do anything I need her to do, so I ask to speak to her manager, or at least someone with the access to remove late fees.  She says only supervisors can, and they can call me back within a 24 hour period.  So it’s going to be one of those deals, aye?  Whatever.  I leave instructions to call my cell phone and not my home number.

So I log into comcast’s website, and I see that my credit card information shows a credit card that expired in 2006.  WTF?  That’s not my fault.  To me, sounds like someone had a system crash and reverted to a backup with old information.  The last time I changed my info was in december, and it’s been working since then.  I update the information and wait for my call back to get that late fee removed.

Of course, it never comes.  I’m livid.  I do automatic bill payment so i don’t have to deal with crap, now they’re making me take time out of my day to deal with crap that is their fault.  I call them back today, and get some lady who again has this crazy knack for saying things that are utterly useless.  I say that my information was reverted to old information, and I didn’t do anything, so something changed on their end.  She said she doesn’t even have the access to do that, as if I meant SHE did it.  She’s totally defensive at anything I’m saying, and I can see that I will never get retribution for my time wasted with these people.  She was able to remove the late fee pretty easily.  She says that they did try to call me, but they used my home number even though I had left instructions not to use that number.  She said that she could have someone call me back within 24 hours so that I can ask a supervisor why my payments didn’t go through, but honestly, I don’t feel like investing my time, nay, my VACATION, in finding and fixing the flaws in their system.  This is what helpdesk tickets are for.  I open a problem ticket, you fix it.  Don’t call me back until it’s fixed.

So all to appropriately, I don’t expect any calls from Comcast any time soon.