Complaint Hub

I had some frozen cherries in the freezer at work to eat with my oatmeal in the morning, and someone stole them.  I was looking forward to oatmeal with cherries today.  But they’re gone.  Now I have to eat plain oatmeal.

A coworker tells me they sent out a notice a long time ago that they were going to clean the fridge, but I never saw it.  So I suspect that those jerks threw out a half a package of organic frozen cherries just because there might have been a little bit of cherry juice on the bottom of the freezer.   I hope they’re happy with themselves.

They didn’t open my polling place on time! They know that DC is mostly Democrats, and they’re trying to steal the election again!

I’m just kidding. The polling place at 14th and Columbia NW was just slow to open the doors this morning, and the wife and I decided to come back later. It’s not like they knew this date was coming. I can understand how they might forget that there was an election this year and not get the polling place set up in time. As they say, never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity. Or, in this case, ill-preparedness.

Someone actually came out at 7:10 to put a sign on the door identifying the building as a polling place, and as of the time we left, the doors were still locked - you had to get someone inside to let you in. Not a problem when the polls are late to open and the line is bunching up around the door to escape the cold, but it could be a pain later.

There was one lonely guy outside with a “Demand the Vote” sign. As I’ve said, while I would like a congressional representative or two, I feel that I can’t complain too much about DC’s lack of representation - I knew full well what I was getting into when I moved here.

Update - a neighbor reports on the Columbia Heights neighborhood forum that my polling place was running smoothly at 8:15. So I should have no trouble voting when I get home.

Symptoms: Metabolic Syndrome Is Tied to Diet Soda - New York Times via Serious Eats

Researchers have found a correlation between drinking diet soda and metabolic syndrome — the collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels — and elevated blood pressure.

I hate diet soda.  Not only does it taste terrible, but it’s really bad for you.

I’ve cut out most of the soda from my diet.  And the less I drink, the less I enjoy it.  So I guess that’s good.  But I always drink the regular stuff.  I’d rather high-fructose corn syrup than some carcinogenic artificial sweetener.

An Ad With Talking Pandas, Maybe, but Not With Chinese Accents - New York Times via Consumerist shared in Google Reader by Mike

Still, “if I offended anybody,” Mr. Gupta said, “believe me, I apologize.”

That is NOT an apology. You DID offend people, and by not acknowledging that you did, you are not apologizing.

Even more ridiculous?

Mr. Gupta said he planned to keep running the other Salesgenie commercial, featuring an animated salesman named Ramesh who speaks with an Indian or other South Asian accent.

The reason, Mr. Gupta said, was that “more people seem upset about the pandas than Ramesh.”

So, let’s summarize. These clowns made two commercials based on caricatures of ethnic groups. But people only really complained about one. So, they issued a fake apology and kept running the one that people didn’t really seem to mind.

I’m not sure what this says about American feelings towards people who are “Indian or … South Asian”. Are we still mad about outsourcing and blame anyone with that kind of accent? That’s kind of sad. In some sense I’m surprised we aren’t more mad at the Chinese, since the ‘toys with lead’ incident is more recent than the explosion of outsourcing. But I guess some people are still serving “freedom fries”, so who knows what grudges the American public will hold on to.

My real problem here is SalesGenie’s response. Anyone can say or do something offensive - it could be accidental, or poor judgment, or whatever. It happens. The real judge of character is what you do to fix it. The very first thing you do is you stop whatever you did which was offensive. They did half of that. The next thing you do is make a sincere apology. They didn’t do that. Finally, you take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I don’t know if they’ve done this or not, and I’m not really inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

BP’s Profits Lag Behind its Oil Peers « Earth2Tech

And while BP has made suggestions that it’s been moving away from the company’s renewable energy division, weaker profits could mean an even paler shade of green for BP.

Well, that sucks. I go to BP whenever possible because of their reputation on environmental issues. Pretty disappointing to see that their competitors, who seem to care very little about the environment, are making record profits again.

Note: I changed the title of this post from “BP maybe . . .” to “BP may be”. I’m not sure that the first choice was actually incorrect, but I do think that this way is better. Your views may differ, and feel free to correct me if you want. I may or may not listen to you.

I just spent the last 15 minutes stuck in an elevator. This is the second time I’ve been stuck in an elevator in this stupid building.

I went down to G2, where Target is, so I could pick up a few things.  I took them back down (via the stairs) to G3 and put them in the trunk.  Then I got on the elevator to go back up to my floor, and nothing happened.  So I used the emergency call box, and some nice woman on the other end asked me to press some buttons, which did nothing.  So she called the building maintenance people, and they came pretty quickly and opened the door.  I suspect I could have done it myself - I pried the door open a little bit without too much difficulty.  But I’ve seen Resident Evil.  I’m not messing with an elevator unless I don’t think someone is going to come get me.

This wouldn’t be a problem if you could use the stairs.  You can walk freely on the stairs between G3 and G1.  You can enter the stairwell from any floor, but you can only exit the stairs on one side at the lobby, and on the other through G1-3.  You can’t go from G1 to the lobby.  It’s ridiculous.  I would walk most of the time if I could, and I do, when I’m going down.  But going up you can’t walk.

I hate this building.  And all elevators.

Nothing ever happens in sports the way I think it will, or think it should.  I didn’t really want the Patriots to win, but I would only root for the Giants if they were playing the Cowboys, and even then it’s not a guarantee.

And giving the MVP award to Eli was just stupid.  He had a bad game, then a good fourth quarter, assisted in large part by an absolutely spectacular catch by David Tyree.  But the difference in this game was the Giants D-Line, and I would have given the MVP to Justin Tuck, with his five tackles, two sacks, and a forced fumble.

The Patriots offensive line, great all season, looked terrible yesterday.  And thus it follows that Tom Brady looked terrible, which as usual will remind no one how dependent a quarterback is on his offensive line.

Anyway, I can’t wait for the next few months of Eli Manning talk.  That’s going to be awesome.  At least Shockey was hurt.  That’s the one bright spot here - the Giants went on their playoff run without that clown.

My two favorite sports teams, the Washington Redskins and the Baltimore Orioles, are both looking to shoot themselves in the foot.

First we have the Washington coaching search.  There are rumors they want USC’s Pete Carroll, a doubly-confirmed NFL failure.  Don’t people realize that coaching in the NFL is different from coaching in college?  Didn’t Snyder learn anything from Steve Spurrier?  Carroll is a very good college coach.  He was a very bad NFL coach.  He would be a disaster in Washington, although that would go right along with Dan Snyder’s past history.  But Snyder has fired the coordinators, probably pissed off the team, and will likely end up with another flashy failure at head coach.

And the Orioles.  I get that they’re rebuilding.  It’s come at least five years too late, but I get it, and I’m thankful for it.  But why would you trade Bedard?  He’s 28.  He could be the ace of the staff for 5-7 years, maybe more.  He is the ONLY player on the team that you absolutely must keep, as far as I’m concerned.  And they want to make a deal with the Mariners that centers around a young outfielder with moderate power (His home runs were up in 2007 in the minors, but his doubles were down, and he doesn’t get on base much)?

I’ll grant you that George Sherrill, the reliever said to be part of the deal, had a disgusting season last year (0.99 WHIP, park-adjusted ERA+ of 183, K to BB of over 3).  But Bedard is, by far, the best player on the Orioles.  Why would you give him up?  Do you WANT Seattle to win their division this year?  Is that your goal?  Is Angelos getting a cut of their playoff revenues?

I think Angelos and Snyder want me to move to Boston.  That’s the only logical explanation.

ESPN - Zorn top candidate as O coordinator but no Fassel deal yet - NFL

Snyder may take a few days to consider his options. If he decides not to wait until after the Super Bowl to expand his list of candidates, the job could very well go to Fassel, who compiled a 60-56-1 record in seven seasons as the Giants’ head coach (1997-2003), and who led the club to a Super Bowl XXXV appearance. Fassel, who most recently served as the Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator before being dismissed from that job midway through the 2006 season, was also a head coach candidate in Washington in 2004 before Snyder coaxed Gibbs out of retirement.

Please don’t hire Jim Fassel to coach the Redskins.  I’ve gone on record time and again as saying that I don’t want failed head coach Gregg Williams to be our head coach, but he would be infinitely preferable to Fassel.  Williams actually seems to be getting the hang of this whole “defensive playcalling” thing lately.  He hasn’t been big-blitzing on third down and getting burned so much.  The Redskins don’t miss tackles like they did a few years ago.  It’s taken him a while, but the defense has actually looked pretty good lately.  Which would be a dumb time to change coordinators.

However, I would greatly prefer him to a guy who may have taken the Giants to a Super Bowl (In which they were blown out), but barely compiled a record above .500, and apparently totally lost control of his team in the season before the Giants fired him.

Why would you want that guy to coach your team?  If he had a long and illustrious career, and one really bad season that led to his firing, I’d say go ahead and give him another chance.  But that is clearly not the case with Fassel.  Let some other team give him his second shot.  He’ll fail there, and Snyder will save a few million dollars.

I don’t understand why NFL teams keep going back to coaches who fail.  If a guy is merely average at his job, and then does such a bad job one year that everyone around him hates him, why in the world would you hire him to do the same thing for you?  The Ravens had the right idea when they hired him at a lower level (Offensive coordinator), but then they fired him, too, because he wasn’t very good at that, either.  At this point, I would consider hiring him to fetch coffee for the real head coach, but that’s about it.

Now, I know that it’s really hard to be a Ravens offensive coordinator - they’ve never had a quarterback in the history of the franchise.  But when your entire job is to make the offense better, and you can’t do it, you should not be getting promoted.

Anyway, I hope we get someone else.  Someone who doesn’t have such a track record of failure would be great.  And I don’t much care for bringing in anyone from the Seahawks to coach our offense.  Although I suppose that anyone who can get a winning offense out of Hasslesuck probably knows a little bit about football.

Featured Windows Download: Make Documents Readable Anywhere with Docx2Rtf

The latest editions of Microsoft Office might have made some welcome interface and functionality improvements, but the newer .docx file formats can leave your co-workers (and your other computers) struggling to open its files.

I guess my stubborn refusal to run Vista longer than it took to download and burn the Ubuntu 7.1 cd meant that I missed Microsoft’s new file format, .docx.  The above article on Lifehacker about how to deal with it was the first I’d heard of this wonderful, wonderful, super-awesome, customer-focused idea.  I mean, the people who use Office have been just clamoring for a new file format to meet their needs.  Now that most MS Office alternatives can deal pretty well with .doc files, of course we need a new format to once again throw interoperability out the window.

And of course, since so many people use Windows and MS Office, it will become the new standard.  And then the open source community will toil away and update all the software to deal with .docx.  And then Microsoft will undoubtedly come out with some other format, and we’ll start all over again.  I don’t know how this benefits anyone but Microsoft.  It certainly doesn’t help consumers.