Letters From Home

(No, that’s not me in the picture, I just found it appropriate)

I always like to read the directions.  I’m weird that way.   To me, it’s a lot easier to use some new gizmo or
software if I’ve already read through the instructions before I begin.  This is why I love printed manuals and loathe help files.  If something I’m trying to learn only comes with a manual in electronic form, I almost always print it out so I can read it more efficiently.  Help files are rarely as helpful as they need to be.

But sometimes even the printed manual doesn’t tell you enough.

Yesterday I spotted something that I wanted to take a picture of, using my fairly-recently-acquired camera phone.  I duly pressed the button and looked at the screen and realized that if the picture was going to be useful at all, I would have to zoom in on the subject (which was across the street).  However, no way could I discover how to zoom in.  Grrr.

So I went home and dug out the manual, and lo and behold it didn’t tell me how to zoom in either!  It wasn’t till I got through a couple layers of FAQs on the manufacturer’s web site that I found out that you can’t zoom with the default resolution on the camera phone.  You have to switch to a lower resolution.

This is doubly annoying because the default settings disable a very useful feature AND the manual doesn’t tell you so.

I used to write software manuals that translated programmer-ese into English.  I think this is why I have little patience with instructions that are non-instructional.  Thbft.

photo credit: Stefaan Christopher

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I have had many, many opportunities to be rude to bill collectors over the years.  Way too many, in my estimation.

And not once has a bill collector been calling for me (this household has never attracted the attention of bill collectors and as long as I have anything to say about it, it never will).  It’s either one of my relatives or else it’s a wrong number.

One of our phone lines is listed under a name that does not actually belong to anyone in the household (perfectly legal to do this, btw).  It’s an initial and a last name with no address.  Funny how many people with that first initial and last name are deadbeats, and funny how the collection agencies go trolling through the phone book and insist the deadbeat gave them the number.  Yeah, and if I believe that they’ve got a great line of credit they can sell me.

I just dealt with another one of those dirtbags and told her quite firmly that this number did not belong to anyone on her list and the calls had better stop, pronto.  But when I asked her how she got the number to begin with she said “Thank you” and hung up on me.  I think the debt collection act prohibits that kind of behavior.  I need to look it up.

I certainly don’t mind being rude to a bill collector from time to time.  I just wish I had fewer opportunities to do so.

photo credit: jdawgd40

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You know what? I’m pissed.

On February 22, I had the winning bid on a 5th gen iPod that was described as “cosmetically in mint condition.” The seller wanted an exorbitant amount for shipping, but I lowered my bid to take that into account and I won.

When the iPod arrived, it was anything but mint. It had obviously been opened, and not gently, had Best Buy stickers on theback, and was scratched and worn. And the worst part? The high-priced shipping amounted to dropping it loose into a thinly padded mailer and leaving it to the tender mercies of the post office.

Needless to say, the iPod that had been partially functional when it was put up for sale, was totally dead when it arrived.

I emailed the seller immediately. Told him I wanted my money back. Told him I wanted to return the iPod. No answer. I waited a week for him to reply and then I filed a complaint with eBay and PayPal. And then I waited some more. It was nearly two weeks later when PayPal told me they’d decided in my favor and gave me my money back.

In all that time, I heard nothing from the seller. I waited another week, and then I put the iPod up for sale, with an honest description and honest shipping charges.

Yesterday, the seller emailed me and asked when he was going to get his iPod back. I told him that he had waited too long ot ask that question and I considered the iPod to be mine.

Today, he said he’d given me my money back and he wanted the iPod back. I repeated that he’d had plenty of time to speak up before now and he hadn’t, and asked him why he wanted a dead iPod back if not to put it up for sale again with another bogus description?

I guess now I wait to see what happens next.

photo credit: nirbhao

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Although I have been using computers since 1969 (well, if handing a stack of punch cards to someone else to feed into a computer can be called “using” it, of course) and online since 1983, I still prefer to get my news from the daily newspaper and from weekly newsmagazines rather than from online sources.

Thus, when the newspaper we’ve subscribed to for years fails to deliver, I get annoyed. The Monday before the election we got no paper, despite the fact that we called them on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Every time we were assured that they’d “send one right out.” Every time, I said “That’s what you told me the last time I called.”

So, this Tuesday the newspaper had some kind of “press problem” that meant pretty much nobody anywhere got a paper. The canned message said that both papers would be delivered on Wednesday.

Wednesday, we got no paper at all. So we called and they said they’d send them right out.

Today, I called to inquire about the status of the two papers we didn’t get yesterday and was assured they’d send them right out. I’m betting they won’t. If we haven’t gotten the papers by the time I have to leave for class, I’m calling again and this time, I’m going to ask them to at least be honest about it if they don’t plan to send us a paper. Saying “We don’t plan to send you out a paper, but we’ll give you credit on the bill for not delivering it” would be the least they could do.

We shall see.
photo credit: qnr

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I’m probably the billionth person to ask why banks love to take money out of your account at the speed of light, but when it comes to putting it back in, they’re all Scarlett O’Hara clones and they’ll think about that tomorrow.

F’zer accidentally paid the dentist with the debit card instead of a credit card today. He caught the mistake before he’d even signed the receipt and the receptionist said she’d cancel the transaction right away.

I happened to log into the bank web site about the same time and saw that our “available balance” was in parentheses, which is never good news. So I, not knowing what had happened, called the bank, got a very cheerful and helpful lady who explained what had happened (”Your debit card has put $450 on hold”) and immediately transferred money from our money-market account to cover that and make sure we didn’t bounce the transaction.

I just looked at the bank’s web site again, twelve hours later, and that whole transaction is still out in limbo somewhere. Our “ledger balance” shows the balance-plus-$450, and the “available balance” shows the balance-minus-$450. And now, of course, we’re headed into a weekend when heaven only knows what will be done to fix the mistake.

I wonder if the banking system was set up like that deliberately? It’s been going on so long that I have no reason to believe that it wasn’t. Grrrrr.

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You know how it is–get one interesting semi-spam email, check out the link, and they want your email address before they’ll let you see anything. So you give ‘em an address and all of a sudden you’re getting all kinds of similar semi-spam email.

I long ago created a special mailbox to have that stuff sent to, with a fake name. So far, that’s kept the “make money on the internet” stuff separated from the mail I really want to read.

Some of those sales letters are pretty darn persuasive. I remain a skeptic, and I’m definitely not going to shell out the kind of money these people all seem to want. (Funny how the price points are almost all identical, huh?) So what I generally do is look at the sales page (most of which look nearly identical) and save the email that sent me there in a special mailbox in Eudora. I go back and re-visit the site a couple days later to see if it still has any appeal.

You know what? That stuff doesn’t look nearly so enticing the second time around.

Oh, I’ve downloaded a few things and I’ve filled up a couple notebooks with printouts of this, that, and the other, and some of it has been helpful. The really helpful links, I think, are not to sales pages but to the various blogs run by the people who are peddling this stuff. Those are often worth reading not so much for what the salespeople write but for the comments they get. I know that most of those blogs are moderated, so I bet it’d be an eye-opener to see the comments that don’t get approved for public consumption.

Have I found the way to make a steady income yet? No. I do have a collection of e-commerce bookmarks, an AdSense account, an Amazon Affiliate account and a ClickBank account. That and about $3 will get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks if my son’s not buying.

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What I’d like to see, somewhere, anywhere, is the reasoning behind the proliferation of “info-videos” on the internet these days. Seems like everyone who’s got a hot tip to offer, wants to do it via video.

That might be appealing to people who can’t, or won’t, read. Or for people whose reading speed is slower than the pace of speech. It’s also a useful way to deliver information that includes a demonstration of how a particular process works. But for everything else, come on, folks, the written word is much more efficient.

If someone’s explaining something complex, it helps not to have to take notes while they talk away. Far better to have written instructions, perhaps supplemented by a video if there’s some physical process involved that one needs to see to understand.

Have we become so addicted to the boob tube that everyone assumes we no longer remember how to read? How are we going to save and remember the information–bookmark the online video and keep watching it if we forget how something works?

I might well be interested in some of these products people are peddling, but if the only way to get the product is to watch a video, forget it. If you want my attention and my money, folks, kindly allow me to RTFM.

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