Tuesday, March 16, 2004
I hate my mailman.
Really, I do. According to Amazon.ca, my order of a couple of books was delivered on March 12th, that being last Friday. Then it was delivered again yesterday. Now I think "That's funny", because for having been on the supposed receiving end of two orders, I have no more books in my possession than I did last week. So I chalk it up to yet another package I haven't gotten, and go talk to Amazon. ARGH!!!!!
I'm rather pissed off enough to spit about this whole mail situation right now, to the point where I actually lodged a complaint with Canada Post. This is exceptional for a couple of reasons. One, due to my rather large sense of cynicism, I am of the opinion that lodging complaints with large companies, especially government, doesn't work. You will jangle bells at the support end, maybe get the management all uppity about giving better service, but once that demand for quality trickles back down to the people actually responsible for your happiness with a service or product, they don't care anymore and just go about their day. Maybe once in a while things get bad enough and generate enough noise to warrant a fix, but I am doubtful that this is the case in my situation. More than likely, this will continue for a while. (It is of note, however, that lodging complaints with small companies does work, because you're usually dealing with the person responsible. Only by getting in peoples' faces can one get results, so if I start stalking my postal worker, you'll know why.) Second, even if I were of the school of thought that complaining into massive bureaucracies got anything accomplished, I don't tend to complain formally. Sure, I'll bitch a bunch to friends because that's fun, but actually complaining formally is usually too much work for my lazy ass.
The thing about this part is that I'm now rather desperate. I want my movies. I want my books. I want to be able to shop from home. I want to get my job offers in the mail. In short, I want my postal service to (gasp!) serve my my postage mail. Novel concept, isn't it? From the way my conversation on the phone with CP went, it sounds like they've noted the fact that my yapping is not agreeable, and I am listed as an upstart to the Master Mail Computer. Like I said, I have no hopes that this will do anything, but if by the end of the week I don't have all this sorted out, I will be making another complaint. Followed by another, and so on until I start getting things in my letterbox again. Otherwise, I'll just have to boycott my mail entirely, ala Kramer on Seinfeld, and see what they say about that!
Soup!
Makin' soup tonight. This is different from my stew of yesterday, because it takes roughly an eon to make. In fact, it's still cooking over on the stove as I type. Fortunately, I'm going to be tossing all this together with some bread and stuff and end up with a soup sandwich in a bowl, or so the plan goes. It remains to be seen if things will fall into place.
In other news, I'm thinking about subscribing to Modern Tales. It's an online, subscription-based webcomic repository, and since I've started dabbling in actually paying for things I get on the 'net, it's looking rather appealing. I signed up for a Bitpass account recently, since it was only like 5 dollars, and have been reading some pretty decent stuff. I'm all caught up on my Apocamon, which is super-cool, and have read Wary Tales and The Right Numbers as well, both being quite great. Now I have my sights on Kicking Hitler to Death and a few others over at MT, and I think I just might go read them. I mean, I can pay for just a month, read what I want and stop, right? It's only like 3 dollars anyways! Go micropayments!
[Insert roughly hour long break where I go finish and eat my soup. It kicks ass.]
Go soup sandwich! Turned out just as I'd hoped. Anyways, micropayments was my last ramble-bit, so I go on about it. Basically you sign up with Bitpass, and then you can sell your stuff for a quarter. Or a nickel. Or even a penny. Seriously, I think you can even go to sub-cent denominations. It's like the days of "lemonade stand - $.05" when you were a kid. Try flipping some letters backwards to get the whole effect. Regardless, the difference is that on the internet, you can make it up in volume. I mean, if Penny Arcade were able to successfully charge their 30,000 visitors 10 cents each for the privilege of reading Penny Arcade for a whole month, they'd have an extra three grand a month coming in. That's not too shabby. Downside is that that isn't very realistic. Sure, lots would pay, but lots also wouldn't, since it's not as seamless as it could be. If you could just flick a dime at your monitor, it'd probably be a done deal, but as it stands you need to sign up for Bitpass, which basically requires Paypal, which requires a credit card. Got all those? You can be off micropaying for things in about a minute. No? Tough. In an ideal world though, where everybody can just "click!" and whoosh, someone just got a nickel, I think micropayments would be a veritable force to be reckoned with. Apple is doing this to some extent with iTunes ($.99 per song is really rather chump change) but partly because of all the bloody copyright bullshit they need to go through, the service barely breaks even. Still, it's a promising glimpse into the future of internet commerce. Go read some of Scott McCloud's stuff for more info. I recommend "I Can't Stop Thinking!" or the later bits of Reinventing Comics.
Caliente!
Wisconsin has the dumbest quarter ever. It is adorned with the ever-incredible cow, cheese and corn that makes up all that is cool about Wisconsin. And it's not even a man-eating cow, or laser corn or nothing either.
Holy sexual innuendo Batman!!! It's the plucking Rainbow Orgy! I can't believe that this was broadcast to kids, and nowadays even hinting that you might see a nipple is a whippable offense. Censorship, I tellya! It's censorship!
If you watch TV (which I don't, really) you might have seen the Spongmonkeys on the Quizno's ad. They live here. Go watch the kittens, or maybe listen to the moon song until your ears bleed. The viking kitties rock hard tasty abs though.
So that's that. More bitching about my mail and some soup-related nonsense. Be forewarned though, it is entirely probable that I will bitch more about mail in the future. Otherwise, I could detonate. It happens to me sometimes. Like Ger, but different. ¶ 4:58 p.m.
Really, I do. According to Amazon.ca, my order of a couple of books was delivered on March 12th, that being last Friday. Then it was delivered again yesterday. Now I think "That's funny", because for having been on the supposed receiving end of two orders, I have no more books in my possession than I did last week. So I chalk it up to yet another package I haven't gotten, and go talk to Amazon. ARGH!!!!!
I'm rather pissed off enough to spit about this whole mail situation right now, to the point where I actually lodged a complaint with Canada Post. This is exceptional for a couple of reasons. One, due to my rather large sense of cynicism, I am of the opinion that lodging complaints with large companies, especially government, doesn't work. You will jangle bells at the support end, maybe get the management all uppity about giving better service, but once that demand for quality trickles back down to the people actually responsible for your happiness with a service or product, they don't care anymore and just go about their day. Maybe once in a while things get bad enough and generate enough noise to warrant a fix, but I am doubtful that this is the case in my situation. More than likely, this will continue for a while. (It is of note, however, that lodging complaints with small companies does work, because you're usually dealing with the person responsible. Only by getting in peoples' faces can one get results, so if I start stalking my postal worker, you'll know why.) Second, even if I were of the school of thought that complaining into massive bureaucracies got anything accomplished, I don't tend to complain formally. Sure, I'll bitch a bunch to friends because that's fun, but actually complaining formally is usually too much work for my lazy ass.
The thing about this part is that I'm now rather desperate. I want my movies. I want my books. I want to be able to shop from home. I want to get my job offers in the mail. In short, I want my postal service to (gasp!) serve my my postage mail. Novel concept, isn't it? From the way my conversation on the phone with CP went, it sounds like they've noted the fact that my yapping is not agreeable, and I am listed as an upstart to the Master Mail Computer. Like I said, I have no hopes that this will do anything, but if by the end of the week I don't have all this sorted out, I will be making another complaint. Followed by another, and so on until I start getting things in my letterbox again. Otherwise, I'll just have to boycott my mail entirely, ala Kramer on Seinfeld, and see what they say about that!
Soup!
Makin' soup tonight. This is different from my stew of yesterday, because it takes roughly an eon to make. In fact, it's still cooking over on the stove as I type. Fortunately, I'm going to be tossing all this together with some bread and stuff and end up with a soup sandwich in a bowl, or so the plan goes. It remains to be seen if things will fall into place.
In other news, I'm thinking about subscribing to Modern Tales. It's an online, subscription-based webcomic repository, and since I've started dabbling in actually paying for things I get on the 'net, it's looking rather appealing. I signed up for a Bitpass account recently, since it was only like 5 dollars, and have been reading some pretty decent stuff. I'm all caught up on my Apocamon, which is super-cool, and have read Wary Tales and The Right Numbers as well, both being quite great. Now I have my sights on Kicking Hitler to Death and a few others over at MT, and I think I just might go read them. I mean, I can pay for just a month, read what I want and stop, right? It's only like 3 dollars anyways! Go micropayments!
[Insert roughly hour long break where I go finish and eat my soup. It kicks ass.]
Go soup sandwich! Turned out just as I'd hoped. Anyways, micropayments was my last ramble-bit, so I go on about it. Basically you sign up with Bitpass, and then you can sell your stuff for a quarter. Or a nickel. Or even a penny. Seriously, I think you can even go to sub-cent denominations. It's like the days of "lemonade stand - $.05" when you were a kid. Try flipping some letters backwards to get the whole effect. Regardless, the difference is that on the internet, you can make it up in volume. I mean, if Penny Arcade were able to successfully charge their 30,000 visitors 10 cents each for the privilege of reading Penny Arcade for a whole month, they'd have an extra three grand a month coming in. That's not too shabby. Downside is that that isn't very realistic. Sure, lots would pay, but lots also wouldn't, since it's not as seamless as it could be. If you could just flick a dime at your monitor, it'd probably be a done deal, but as it stands you need to sign up for Bitpass, which basically requires Paypal, which requires a credit card. Got all those? You can be off micropaying for things in about a minute. No? Tough. In an ideal world though, where everybody can just "click!" and whoosh, someone just got a nickel, I think micropayments would be a veritable force to be reckoned with. Apple is doing this to some extent with iTunes ($.99 per song is really rather chump change) but partly because of all the bloody copyright bullshit they need to go through, the service barely breaks even. Still, it's a promising glimpse into the future of internet commerce. Go read some of Scott McCloud's stuff for more info. I recommend "I Can't Stop Thinking!" or the later bits of Reinventing Comics.
Caliente!
Wisconsin has the dumbest quarter ever. It is adorned with the ever-incredible cow, cheese and corn that makes up all that is cool about Wisconsin. And it's not even a man-eating cow, or laser corn or nothing either.
Holy sexual innuendo Batman!!! It's the plucking Rainbow Orgy! I can't believe that this was broadcast to kids, and nowadays even hinting that you might see a nipple is a whippable offense. Censorship, I tellya! It's censorship!
If you watch TV (which I don't, really) you might have seen the Spongmonkeys on the Quizno's ad. They live here. Go watch the kittens, or maybe listen to the moon song until your ears bleed. The viking kitties rock hard tasty abs though.
So that's that. More bitching about my mail and some soup-related nonsense. Be forewarned though, it is entirely probable that I will bitch more about mail in the future. Otherwise, I could detonate. It happens to me sometimes. Like Ger, but different. ¶ 4:58 p.m.
