Marc's Musings

I've got Gas

Natural gas, that is. Because of this fact, Nicor (my gas provider) needs to inspect the meter--some requirement from the federal government as part of the "Federal Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act." They are nice enough to send me a letter that states they would like to set "up an appointment at a time convenient for [me]" (emphasis mine).

So I call them up. It takes her forever (ok, probably about 3 minutes) to bring up the appointments "screen"--mental noite, they need a new computer system if it takes that long. The conversation proceeds something like this:

CS: Are mornings or evenings better for you?
ME: What are the definitions of morning and evening?
CS: We have appointment windows from 8a-noon, 8a-5p, and noon-5p.

At this point I'm thinking, well a 4 hour window isn't all that convenient, and noon-5p doesn't really seem like evenings to me...

ME: It depends on the day.

The screen finally comes up...

CS: Our first available morning appointment is Thursday, May 31.
ME: How about a weekend?
CS: Oh, we don't do weekends, it's Monday through Friday only.
ME: I guess we have a problem then--I'm not really available during the week.

The conversation pretty much finishes up at this point. They need me to be around so that they can be in compliance, but they aren't willing to do a better job about getting here when it is truly convenient for me? I'm not planning on taking a half day off of work so that they can inspect my meter...

I guess when I get another reminder I'll have to try again to get a weekend appointment.

Domain problems ...

A couple of weeks ago I had to move my server to a new location due to some network reconfigurations. Physically moving the box and reconfiguring everything should be easy, however I ran into some issues.

My former domain registrar (register.com) is stupid.

In the past if I needed to change the authoritative name servers (sometimes referred to as DNS Glue records), I would login to their portal using some computer generated username/password that I have to look up every time, and execute the change. I go to login and I get this:

Hmm... Ok. It's been a little while since I have logged in, let's see what their new interface looks like.

*click*

clickety-clickety

Oops:

This is beginning to seem like one of those lame blonde jokes. Obviously something is terribly wrong here, so let's give them a call. I call them and apparently since I registered the domain through a partner, I have to contact the partner directly, and there is nothing that they can do to help me out--other than give me that partner's phone number. This is new, but supposedly they had a policy change and assigned control to all of the partners.

As I work my way through phone jail system number 2, I finally talk to someone. I think the conversation went something like this:

Me: I registered my domain through register.com and they told me that you have control over it. I would to make some changes to it.
Tech: Hmmm... I have no account here for you, and no record of us ever having the domain.
Me: ...
Me: Uhhh, so how do I change stuff?
Tech: Well, I can try to release it back to register.com so that you can change stuff through them. That will take a few days. I have no way to create an account for you for this domain.
Me: Ugh. How did you guys get control over it?
Tech: A year or so ago register.com had a database crash and lost some of their registration data. They went to an older backup, and then anything that had a partner assigned to it--even if that partner had already released it--was assigned back to the partner.
Me: Ugh.

I could go on with more boring details and whatnot, but that's the gist of it. The only thing that I ask you to do is repeat (and follow) this pledge:

I state your name will never, ever, ever register a domain through register.com.

I feel better now.

Hotels.com deceptive advertising

This is the tale of a disappointing experience with Hotels.com that was the only scar in an otherwise excellent weekend. Approximately a month ago, us and 4 others planned a "mini" ski trip to the huge Rib Mountain in Wisconsin, more commonly known as Granite Peak. Ok, so it isn't huge, but it's one of the bigger runs in the midwest. Our planned weekend: president's day as the teachers got it off.

When we first started talking about it, there were hotel rooms galore right in Wausau, WI. About a week later, there was nothing to be found in the non-smoking, 2 beds category. I pulled up hotels.com and did a search in the area. Lo and behold there was a hotel listed in Mosinee (about 10m away) that had 2 rooms, both with double beds and non-smoking:

Sweet. It's pretty close. It's got an ok rating, and we're really just going to sleep there anyway.

So I book it.

Fast forward to this past weekend. We get to Granite Peak, it's really cold. We ski/board all day. It's still really cold. We hop in our cars and drive down to the hotel. Finally warming up, we check-in, get the keys and head up to the rooms. I walk in and am confronted with a wall of stale smoke. Blegh. Other room--same problem.

Head down to the front desk to find out that they are full for the night (big surprise) and that the room was booked by hotels.com as a smoking room. After talking to the lady behind the desk, we figure out that we can move to a non-smoking room for the next night, and they would send someone up with commercial grade febreeze. This is about all I can hope for since the room was RESERVED as smoking by hotels.com.

There is obviously some sort of confusion here, so I send an email to hotels.com's customer care group. Monday morning I get this response:

Thank you for your email. Please be advised we are unable to guarantee any smoking preferences since it depends on the availability of those types of rooms. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. I hope you will allow us another opportunity to better serve your future hotel. Have a nice day.

Bwah? I look back at my original booking confirmation, and at the hotels.com site, and nowhere can I find that when they advertise a non-smoking room that it is only a suggestion and that you probably won't get it unless the hotel is empty. In fact, the only thing that mentions it is the confirmation that I received the day prior with a little (*) at the bottom.

My response:

If you are unable to guarantee smoking preferences, that should be stated up front. Instead when I go to book a room, it lists rates for non-smoking, with no disclaimer stating such. The only disclaimers for this particular hotel are (as copied directly from your reservation screen for this hotel):

* Rates do not include applicable tax recovery charges or our service fees.
* All rates are for double occupancy per room, and are quoted on a nightly basis unless otherwise specified. Some rates may require special identification. Taxes and Fees are not included. Extra people, children, roll-away beds and incidentals may be subject to additional charges.

Additionally, I was unable to find any text relating to this anywhere on your website. The only reference I see to this is in the reminder email that I received approximately one day before my scheduled arrival. This is very poor business practice. I will be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and never using hotels.com nor recommending it to anyone in the future.

I am still awaiting a response to that email. At this point, it is very unlikely that I will use hotels.com again--and probably not expedia.com, either.

7135 Saga continues

As some may know, about a month ago, when I was in Seattle, I started having issues with my cell phone finding a signal. It would search and search and search and every once in awhile tease me with a signal until I picked it up and tried to make a call. This is no good for a cell phone.

I called up Verizon (they never stop working for you) and explained the problems I was having. They sent out a new (to me--it was refurbished) handset overnight (props go to them!). This handset had the ugly large antenna that VZ switched to shortly after I got my first one, and Graffiti2 (yuck!).

I turned it on, and it could barely find a signal. I knew this was going to be a problem so I let the customer service rep know about it, and she told me to try it a few days and sometimes they find their signal after being on (yeah, ok, I believed her to humor her, but RF is RF, it doesn't magically get better just from being on).

I have used the phone over the past week, dropping calls in places that normally had weak signal, but not no signal with my old handset. I can't even think about using it in my neighborhood anymore, let alone my house. I even switched antennas from the two phones and the old shorter antenna got a better signal than the newer twice as long antenna.

I called them up again this morning and spoke to a nice tech guy that didn't have me go through the usual hard reset, activiation sequence only to find that it wasn't any better. He decided to send me yet another replacement unit. Let's hope this new one is better.