Author: Jon

A complaint about me

Yeah, I know, if I complain too much about me, it will create a self-referential vortex and suck everything in the Universe into a black hole of complainingness.  But I had to share this.

I’ve probably complained about my computer before.  A quick search turns up nothing, but I must have mentioned the utter hatred I have for my Dell laptop.  I had a Dell desktop in college that was great.  I used it for years.  Then I bought an Inspiron 9100 that has been nothing but trouble.  The fan runs all the time.  The power supply is almost as big as my cat.  The DVD-RW broke.  It’s slow and clunky and just generally irritating.

This morning, I took off some panels on the bottom, looking for the memory sticks.  I wanted to see if I could buy a cheap stick of 512 MB and speed the stupid thing up, or if I’d have to replace the 256 MB sticks in there already.  Sure enough, the computer has two slots and two 256s.  Not surprising.

But the first panel I pulled off housed a fan.  It looked dusty, so I pulled it out to clean it off.  Imagine my surprise (Although, truthfully, I shouldn’t have been surprised, and this is why the complaint is about me) when the vent between the fan and the outside world was completely clogged with dust.  I don’t mean it was a little dirty.  I mean it was blocked.  If that vent was the only source of air in the room you were in, you’d die.

The fan on the other side of the computer was in the same condition.  I cleaned out the dust, restarted the computer, and voila!  It’s quiet again.  And it runs faster.  Not as fast as I’d like, but nearly as fast as a P4 3.2 gig processor with 512 MB of RAM can be expected to run.

So, now I feel a bit dumb.  Here I’ve been complaining about how crappy my computer is, and all it really needed for a significant performance boost was a quick cleaning.

I’m sorry, Dell.  You probably only deserve 40-60% of the hatred I throw your way.  If the computer continues to perform adequately, I might even take you off the Never Buy List.

Disaster magnet

The guy who lives upstairs in my building must be protecting my car from harm. Since moving into the building in January, he’s had his convertible top cut. He had a window broken. He’s been ticketed numerous times, and towed at least twice. And last night, a hit-and-run left the whole side of his car smashed.

Now, some might argue that he has a parking spot in back that he doesn’t always use. Some would probably have a point. But I like to think that his car is a little magic talisman that attracts minor disaster, leaving my car protected from all evil. Well, I have had a few bumper taps from people parking. But that’s an accepted part of living in the city.

I worry about what’s going to happen when the new condos at the Columbia Heights Metro station open up. It’s already crowded here, and that’s undoubtedly going to make parking a nightmare. Zipcar gets more appealing every day.

Capital One fouls off strike three to stay alive

Capital One may have saved themselves. I called on Friday to find out if they had started the process of sending my title. The first person I spoke to didn’t know much, but eventually I was transferred to a woman in the titling department. Seems to make sense, since I was, in fact, calling about my title.

She gave me the usual, “Oh, it’s going to take three weeks” speech that I’ve heard before. But then she asked if I’d like a request for temporary registration or something like that. I’ve forgotten exactly what she said, but I have it written down at work. She told me they could send that out in 72 hours, and that would let me get some sort of temporary registration so I don’t get ticketed.

Now, I’m not sure why no one told me this the first time I called. Well, the first time I called they thought they’d send the actual title in 72 hours, so maybe that’s why they didn’t share this option. But certainly the person I talked to last week could have offered this. And it remains to be seen whether the DMV will accept this. It was already 3:30 PM when I found this out, and I figured that the DMV phone line would be hopeless at that hour on a Friday. But first thing Monday I’m going to find out if this will help me. If so, Capital One may safely reach base this time, but not without a stern look from the manager.

My motto for life

xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – By Randall Munroe

The world is so complicated – the more I learn, the less clear anything gets.

I love xkcd.  Three times a week, this guy makes me laugh.  You know when someone makes a comment about something, and you hear it, and you think, “OMFG, that is EXACTLY the way I feel, but I’ve never been able to put it into words!”?

Well, I get that feeling reading xkcd at least once a week.  If you are not reading this webcomic regularly, you are not truly an internet geek.  You probably are also not prepared in the event of a velociraptor attack.  Remember, they do not know fear.

A quick question

Someone out there keeps coming here by Googling “tilapia” within complainthub.com.  I know you’re in California, whoever you are.  Do you want a tilapia recipe?  I have a few.  I’m happy to share.  And may I suggest a site such as del.icio.us for your bookmarking pleasure?  It’s easier than doing the same, tired Google search 14 times in the past 30 days.

Who are you?  Do I know you?  Why are you fascinated with tilapia?

Vector Security – still cool

A comment on this post, wondering how I liked our Vector security system, reminded me that I said I’d update everyone with a review after we’d had it for a bit. I suspect the guy who left the comment works for Vector, but that’s okay. He didn’t try and flood my site with spam or anything, so I think the comment is acceptable. Anyway, we have no complaints. We haven’t asked much of the system, and we haven’t had an alarm, but the system has never done anything it wasn’t supposed to do, nothing has broken, nothing has malfunctioned. I suppose the real test is what happens if someone tries to break in, or if we accidentally set off the alarm. Luckily, neither of those things have happened. So, after almost two months, I would still recommend Vector Security. I’d recommend them even more if they got around to sending us our referral bonus since some of our upstairs neighbors signed up on our recommendation. Edit to add: I’ve disabled the comments on this post. I’m not really comfortable hosting this discussion, so I’m not going to allow it to go any further. I still have had a fine experience with Vector, but others clearly haven’t. If you’re considering them, I recommend you do a little research about your local office and see if they’re a good fit for you.

Mexico, brothers-in-law, school

It appears my brother-in-law (one of them, anyway) is back in Mexico City. You can tell this because he’s blogging again. He goes down there to study atmospheric chemistry, but spends all his time talking about Mexican facial hair.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, I’m not sure I’d read his blog if it were primarily about atmospheric chemistry. Not because I don’t think it’s important, but because I know nothing about it. Complaining about the DMV is really more my speed. And something I am intimately familiar with.

Although, whenever I talk to people with post-graduate degrees (Which my wife’s family has about a million of) I start thinking I should go back to school. I’m not sure it makes a whole lot of sense for me, though. I have a B.A. in math, and all my professors always encouraged us to go on to grad school. But while I enjoy learning, I was never a particularly good student. I did well here and there when I really got into a class or two, but I was never the type to do those things that you need to do to succeed in school, like my homework. I got away with it for a while. My ninth-grade Spanish teacher graded us 1/4 each on homework, participation, tests, and quizzes. My test and quiz average was about 98% (It may have been higher – I think she gave a lot of extra credit, and I knew the Spanish pretty well), and my homework and participation average was about 40%, so she gave me C’s. She even kept me after class once to give me a speech to the effect of, “You know the Spanish. If you would put forth even a minimum effort to actually do the work assigned, you’d be getting A’s.” It didn’t work.

So, I generally ignore the urges to go to grad school, and they go away. Maybe I’ll go get a PHD in something weird when I retire. I think that would be fun. I would definitely call my professors “Sonny” and refer to my classmates as “whippersnappers”.

Just stop drinking the water

Does your office have a water dispenser that takes one of those giant jugs of water?  The kind where you have to take the top off the jug, lift it up, and flip it over to refill the dispenser?  Our office does.  I’ve been here not quite two months and I’ve refilled the dispenser about five times.  I know I’m not drinking that much water.  Plainly people are choosing to not get water rather than refill it.

I understand it’s tough to refill.  But I can do it, and therefore most of the rest of the office should be able to do it, also.

Honestly, a better solution would be what we had at my old office, which is a filter for tap water.  That would solve this problem, and be better for the environment.

But, since that isn’t going to happen, it would be really cool if the other people in the office would just do their share of the refilling.

Strike two already

I called Capital One again today to make sure someone got the fax. Apparently the company that deals with titling for Capital One is on the West Coast, and no one is answering the phone yet. The CSR I spoke to was a little snotty with me. It’s not my fault that, while the first person I spoke to two weeks ago said the title would be mailed in 72 hours, this one told me that Capital One doesn’t even have a record of my request for 72 hours, and the whole process takes three weeks. So, even if I had started this process the day we moved, I’d barely have enough time to register the car in DC within the 30-day period that DC requires.

It’s more trouble than it’s worth to refinance my car loan through someone else, but this is likely the last time I deal with Capital One. The process to get the Blank Check loan was great, and they gave me a better rate than the dealership could, but once they had the loan, they haven’t been terribly helpful.

Thats one strike, Capital One

Capital One is stupid. Because the DC DMV is totally insane and requires that the original title to a car be sent to them before they will allow you to register it, I called Capital One, who hold the lein on my car. I asked them to send the title to the DC DMV. They said, “Sure. We’ll send it within 72 hours.” I thought, “Great. Now I can register my car and not get a ticket.”

It wasn’t great. About a week and a half goes by, and the DMV still doesn’t have my title. I called Capital One again. I got a very different story this time. “Oh, you have an electronic title, you have to fax us the form from the DMV.”

What?

I love when some CSR tells you, “Oh, you are in this situation, therefore you have to jump through this hoop”, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and aren’t you stupid for not knowing. Even better is that they didn’t bother to tell me that they weren’t going to send the title without the faxed form. Never mind that they have contact information for me – they sure find me when they want to try and sell me something. They just figured that I’d notice eventually.

So I’m waiting some more. Hopefully my wife will be able to bat her eyelashes at the nice police officers down at the station on V St. and get me another temporary parking permit. I have faith in her. And I’m going to call Capital One tomorrow and make sure they got my fax. I asked them to expedite it because they already screwed it up. I can’t imagine that they’ll listen, but there’s always hope.