I created my first DIY Planner form today!
I created a Rebate Tracker form that lets you keep track of what rebates you have submitted and when you get the money.
You can download the PDF here.
Changing my K1100RS’s bodywork
I got an email from Eddie (the previous owner of my K1100RS) yesterday, with an interesting proposition in it.
He has the bodywork off another K1100RS in Special Edition black and silver that he wants to swap me for my bodywork, the aux fuel tank and the K1 fender currently on my bike.
I’m not really using the aux tank, and am probably not going to do much LD riding in the future, so I can let that go. And I like the looks of the K1 front fender, but I’m not too attached to it.
And I’ve really wanted to get the bike repainted.
So, I said yes. The only drawback is that he doesn’t have a black seat to go with it, so I’ll have a white/grey seat. But that’s fixable.
So the K1100RS would go from this:
to this:
I’d keep the big spot light, maybe, or maybe get a pair of smaller ones… We’ll see.
I’ll miss the distinctive purple, but the black and siver looks pretty nice.
It’ll be kind of like getting a new bike! And taking all the body work off will allow me to give it a good look over and see what’s underneath that needs attention.
Snarky Emails
Hint: When you want your sysadmin to do something for you, I would suggest not sending a snarky email about it to two large distribution lists.
We have a wiki at work. It’s a MoinMoin WikiWiki. It was installed a few years ago, mainly for the sysadmin team to use. It’s been upgraded once, so it’s not way behind, but it’s starting to get more use, since other teams in the company have started to use it.
However it’s slow. It uses a flat-file system to store the data and searches really crawl. And some people think that wiki markup is difficult. So a certain web programmer (we’ll call him “Ralph” to protect the guilty) has been bugging me to upgrade it or replace it.
But what they wanted was both better performance and WYSIWYG editing. The wiki comparison that I was looking at didn’t show any with both of those features.
So I sent an email to the sysadmin and content distribution lists (both pretty big lists) with a survey. It looked like this:
Subject: Wiki Survey
I know people are unhappy with the performance of the Wiki.
I also know that people would like a WYSIWYG interface for adding content (which I think is silly – Wiki markup is not that hard.)
Unfortunately, it would appear that the two are mutually exclusive.
We can get performance by changing to a DB backend, but the Wikis that I have found that use a DB backend don’t have a WYSIWYG plug-in.
So here is a survey.
What is more important to you:
Performance – Faster searching, faster page loads
WYSIWYG editing – ease of content additionPlease use the voting buttons.
And if you know of a Wiki that uses a DB backend AND supports WYSIWYG editing, PLEASE let me know.
Simple enough, and I got some votes.
Then Ralph sent me an email that really put a twist in my knickers.
You can read it (and my responses) after the jump.Continue reading →
Trying to get my shit together again
Time Tracking – Day Planning – Seven Habits
Call it what you will. It’s time to start doing this stuff again.
I have read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I didn’t like it. It’s a little to spiritual for me.
I have a Palm Pilot. I have a Day Planner. I don’t use either of them.
The Palm Pilot was too fiddlily, it’s hard to sync, grafitti isn’t fast enough. (Though I do like grafitti.) I even bought a keyboard to use with it, but I don’t.
The Day Planner was a pain – having to move items on the To-Do lists by hand every morning. And I don’t have enough meetings to really need a calendar.
But I’m in the familiar downward spiral again where I feel buried under stuff to do and I can’t get any of it done. My desk is a disaster at work and at home. My life feels unorganized and I can’t remember to do stuff.
So I’m going to try again. I’ve done two things so far – I’ve ordered a copy of Time Management for System Administrators and I found the DIY Planner Project site.
The Time Management book is likely to be more of the same, but maybe reading it again will give me the kick in the pants I need.
The DIY Planner stuff is cool. The site has tons of good content and PDF versions of all the Planner pages you might want. And if they don’t have the one you really need, they have the templates and objects available for you to create your own.
I think it’s time for paper again. The PDA stuff just doesn’t seem to work for me and doing it on the computer (even on a laptop) is very difficult. You can’t really carry it around very well and if it’s not with you, then you don’t use it. Plus Outlook sucks for To Do lists and the like.
I’m going to print out some of the DIY Planner pages and try to go that route again.
My biggest problem is that I’m lazy. Because I’m lazy, I procrastinate. That’s why my desks are such messes. Instead of dealing with a piece of paper, I just put it on the desk.
Bad habits. Time to try and lose some of them again.
They say it takes 21 days to create a new habit. Let’s see if I can go the distance this time.
Chocolate Roulette
Russian Roulette game – with chocolate bullets!
This is a game with twelve chocolate bullets. Eleven have a nice creamy center. The twelfth has a hot chili pepper in it!
The RIAA is at it again
RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use
Fuck you RIAA!
Time to write your congress-critters again.
Sigh.
Can we just drop a nuke on the RIAA headquarters?
Computer shopping!
Well, I spent a lot of money last night and this morning.
On Monday, SlickDeals posted this deal.
You could get a Compaq computer with a monitor and three(!) printers for $300 after rebates. That’s a pretty good deal. The only bad part was that there is only 256MB of RAM in the computer – but that’s pretty easy to fix.
I looked at it and then asked Leslie if we could buy it. We seriously need to upgrade the computers in the house. We are running on a bunch of old, tired, hand-me-downs.
She agreed that we could buy it, and agreed that I could buy the CPU and RAM needed to finish building my PC that I started about a year ago. (Long story there…)
I was supposed to buy the Compaq on Wednesday (payday) and then wait until next payday to buy the CPU and RAM.
Yesterday I looked up the Compaq deal and they said it was unavailable in my area. Out of stock. Damn, missed it. So I jumped the gun and ordered the CPU (2.4GHz P4) and RAM (1GB 3200 DDR) instead.
Today, I looked at the Compaq deal and it was available again! Oh no, now what to do?
So I was naughty and ordered it. :-O
So… The only thing left is to tell Leslie… Better buy her some more chocolate. 🙂
Oh, and I’ll need to get more RAM for that Compaq.
onsale update
Well, I got a response back from onsale last night:
Dear customer!
I am asking for an apology regarding on what happen and what you
experienced with us. I understand that it is really disappointing.
Nevertheless, I would really feel the same way if I was on you shoes.I suppose that there was just a miscommunication between you and Onsale
and we are really sorry for that.Apart from it, hope you also understand that there are really things
that are inevitable and are out of our control. Like for example, emails
sent that are not that reliable sometimes because of system error.
However, our email department is trying their best as well to do their
job and help out our customers to the best that we can.Sir, I hope you would still consider our company, Onsale in your next
purchase. Should you have any orders in the future, I, personally be
very glad to handle your account and assist you through your order. By
then, I will do my best to be of better service to you!Please don’t hesitate to call me on my extension XXXX.
Thank you and have a great day!
About what I expected.
Best web site ever?
The Calvin and Hobbes searchable database at Transmogrifier.org (a great domain name!)
onsale followup
I was ready to let the OnSale issue drop and just not order from them again.
And then yesterday I got a response to the email I sent them on Feb 2nd. Ten days earlier.
This cheesed me off enough that I decided to send them an email explaining why I won’t be shopping there anymore.
To: support@onsale.com
Subject: Attn: Customer ServiceI would like to let you know why I will not be ordering from OnSale, PCMall or MacMall again.
Order #XXXX
Account #XXXXOn Jan 25th I placed an order for a laptop backpack on the OnSale web site.
On Jan 26th I received an email stating that my order had been entered.
Later on Jan 26th I received another email stating that my order was being processed.
That was the last email that I received from OnSale until Feb 12th.
On Feb 2nd – one week after I placed the order – I checked my order status online to discover that it was still ‘in process’. I then sent an email to orders@onsale.com to find out what the status was.
I got no reply.
On Feb 10th – more than two weeks after I placed the order – I checked the status on the web site and it stated that my order had been canceled.
So I called the customer service number to find out what happened to my order.
I have to admit that the hold time was reasonable and the service representative (Juan?) was pleasant and helpful.
I explained my situation and the representative told me that there was a problem with my credit card and that you had sent me an email about it. Since I did not respond to the email within 48 hours, you canceled my order.
I never got that email. Nor did it appear in my spam folder.
The representative asked me if I wanted to reorder the item. Since there had been a rebate on the item that required it to be purchased before Jan 31st, I did not wish to reorder it.
I thought that that would be the end of it.
Then, to cap it off, yesterday, Feb 12th, TEN DAYS after I sent the email inquiring about my order, I got an email response:
> CC DECLINED..CUSTOMER HAS BEEN EMAILED 01/26/06
> ——-
>
> The credit card used on this order declined. You were emailed and the
> order was systematically cancelled after 48 hours.
>
> If you still want this item, please enter a new order or all a sales rep
> at 888-760-0300
>
>
> Michael Stewart
> WEB Response Rep
> PC Mall / Mac Mall
> FAX 310 630-5194
> email: michaelst@pcmall.comFirst off, in case no one ever told you this, email is unreliable. It is not guaranteed to get there, nor is there any guarantee on it’s delivery time.
Second, why ask for a phone number on the order form if you are not going to use it to follow up if there are problems with the order?
Third, why was there a 10 day lapse between when I asked for information and when I got a response? On the Contact Us page, it states:
> We can effectively manage support needs via e-mail with a maximum
> 24 hour response time. Please e-mail us at: support@onsale.comI realize that I sent my email to orders@onsale.com, not support@onsale.com, but still, ten days?
I admit that the order was only for $30, and that perhaps I should have followed up sooner, but there should have been no problems with my credit card – I use this card online all the time – and I should not have to follow up on every order I make.
So, my first order experience with OnSale will be my last. And the fact that PCMall and MacMall are related to OnSale also means I won’t be ordering from either of them.
So, now we wait (want to take bets on whether it’s ten days?) to see if we get a response.