Category — Technology

Its official.  I hate AT&T.

I received an email from AT&T Premier services today (the branch of AT&T that handles corporate accounts) with an advertisement pimping a new sale on the Blackberry Bold.

“Great!” I thought, as I’ve been wanting one of them for quite some time, but have been put off by the $399 price tag they slapped down on us corporate types.  The new price?  $199 – exactly what I expected it to be when it launched back in October.

So, I figured that going in to the Premier website to do the upgrade would be easy.  I logged in, saw the upgrade offer – it showed my price at $199 and I was good to go.  Well, adding it to my cart gave a $399 price tag.  WTF?

Well, no big problem – I’ll just call them and talk to someone on the phone about it.  Finding the number to call was pretty easy, but I then sat on hold with them for 59 minutes before I gave up.  The horrible 3 minute muzak loop was boring into my poor abused brain.  The stupid voice over platitudes about how important I am to them was really wearing thin.  It was official, I was pissed of at being kept on hold for just under an hour with no option to leave my name and number, no option to be told how LONG I would be oh hold, etc.

Well, I hung up, and that’s when the real fun began.  On the contact page (that I used to find the phone number) – there was a link for providing feedback on “How they can make Premier better”.  Hmm.  That’s about what I need right now, a little venting on how they can 1) make their website work properly in the first place and 2) not keep me on hold for an hour with 3 minutes of brain numbing acoustic diarrhea.  Here’s my letter to them:

Subject: Phone Support
Comments: Your site asked for feedback on how to make premier better. Well, NOT keeping me on hold for 56 minutes (and counting) listening to the same horrible muzak the entire time would be a good start. Your phone queue also doesn’t say how long I might have to wait until someone can take my call. Knowing that would be very helpful. This treatment from a phone company? Very ironic and quite annoying. Well, 59 minutes into it, I’ve hung up. You’ve lost my $400 upgrade business. I’d much rather keep my old phone that put up with this. Sorry, but you asked. -A

Well, I felt better. For about 5 seconds.

UNTIL, I received the email in my inbox stating that my message to AT&T was bounced back.  WTF?  My Site Experience Feedback is Undeliverable!??

Your message did not reach some or all of
the intended recipients.

Subject: Site Experience Feedback
Sent: 3/2/2009 5:46 PM

The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:
icare@cingular.comon 3/2/2009 5:46 PM

The e-mail account does not exist at the
organization this message was sent to.
Check the e-mail address, or contact
the recipient directly to find out the
correct address.

< bspmx01.cingular.com #5.1.1 SMTP;
550 Invalid recipient <icare@cingular.com> (#5.1.1)>

Does anyone else find it the least bit funny that the email address icare doesn’t exist at AT&T?  I must admit that did make me laugh.  But, my jokularity was soon replaced by a seething anger and a fueled hatred.

• Treat me wrong once (mess up your website).  OK.
• Treat me wrong twice (not answer the darn phone).  SIGH. OK.
• Treat me wrong THREE TIMES IN RAPID SUCCESSION (ignore my feedback!)?  Well, you can just go #$#@ yourself.

Yup.  AT&T is officially on my crap list until further notice.

Check out his awesome Multi-Touch display from Stantum!

Now, this is a screen that I would use!

Did you see how smooth that was!?  Can’t wait for that screen to come to a phone!  Eat your heart out Apple…

Compiz Fusion provides some of the best computer eye candy I’ve ever seen!

With features like this, its amazing to me that Linux hasn’t taken over the desktop.  Well, OK, I admit – no its NOT really amazing to me…  What IS amazing though is that Microsoft doesn’t have these kind of features in their OS.  Windows 7 is at a buzz level, and whats the big notion in window managment there?  Essentially a reworked (multi-step) tile capability.  WTF?

At least Windows XP had a Power Toy called Virutal Desktop Manager that was available directly from Microsoft, but Vista only has half-baked utility called Desktops that won’t run many popular programs and turns off Vista features like Aero.  Again I say, Microsoft, WTF?  And you wonder why people don’t upgrade to your latest OS’s…  Yes, security is more important than eyecandy, but people BUY eyecandy.  UAC is not cool.  Window bling, fling and sling ARE cool.  Add some to Windows 7, would ya?

I’m sure some would say that a lot of this stuff is needless bloat, and that all of this bling isn’t necessary and simply provides more stuff to go wrong.  Well, I suppose that could be true, but if that is the case, then Aero is the same thing.  We spend SO much time at our computers these days that they should be FUN to work with, as well as easy to use and intuitive.  The features provided by Compiz Fusion allow multiple methods of doing things, all of which are useful and interesting, and never boring.  That’s the key, IMO.  Provide multiple ways of doing things so that it seems more natural to a greater audience.  It also allows them to mix it up now and again, as they get bored with doing things certain ways.

Ah well, the truth of the matter is that no matter how well you do something, if it ends up being used by a lot of people, SOMEONE is going to call you an idiot.  Just like I’m doing to Microsoft. 

Anyway, to see a bunch of videos all about what’s new in Windows 7, take a peek at the great video below from Chris Pirillo, one-time aka Lockergnome.

Playlist URL, for those that want it: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B8347888698A06C8

Sweeeeeet.

This is probably not what someone had in mind for whatever change they were making at Facebook.   Unless of course it was malicious, in which case it probably WAS what they had in mind.

Either way…  OUCH.

Facebook is looking a bit pale today.

Have you ever used Wikipedia? I do – all the time.

If you don’t contribute articles, information or services to them in direct proportion to your usage, please consider giving a small donation to help them stay afloat and advertisement free.

Wikipedia has changed the face of collective global information. While it certainly has some flaws, the overall benefit to humanity is quite considerable. Do your part and pitch in where you can!

Well, it was bound to happen one day – I got a drive-by virus.

A friend of mine was moving an older program from one PC to another and didn’t have the disk any longer and asked me if I still had a copy. No luck there – so, I figured I’d search the net to see if you could buy old copies of the program on the cheap. A few Google searches later had me browsing a couple of link-trawler sites that didn’t provide much useful information.

One site – I believe it was oldapps.com, I really can’t be certain – left me with a little present that I won’t soon forget: a brand spanking new copy of Virtumonde (aka Trojan.Vundo.H).

Unfortunately, that present was left with nary a blip on my screen.  Minding my own business, I suddenly got an authentic Windows message stating that my Windows Firewall was no longer active. You know that sinking feeling you get in your gut when something horrible has just happened and you start to slowly comprehend the far reaching ramifications of what you have just witnessed? Yeah…  I wish I could say that I felt that way and immediately disconnected my PC from the net, but no luck. I was a real Noob, and actually thought, “Dang Microsoft, when are you going to straighten out your crapware once and for all?”.

Seriously, I thought Windows Update had pooped the bed or something…  I simply re-enabled the firewall, and everything was fine. No harm done, right? Ahem…

I kept browsing around, and then got another Windows Security Center message saying that my Virus protection was no longer active…

WTF?

NOW you can queue the sinking feeling…

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