I'm three months behind on mortgage payments to IndyMac Bank. It's not that I'm intentionally missing payments, but rather I simply don't have the money. I'm also behind on my other mortgage, with Wilshire Credit Corporation. Wilshire has called me several times over the past month, inquiring about payment. When I explained that I'm having trouble, and asked for an address to send my personal financial statement to, they provided it to me.

IndyMac on the other hand, doesn't have a human call me. No. Instead, they have a machine call me every few days:

"This is IndyMac Bank calling on an important matter. Please call us back at 1-800-781-7399, between the hours of 7:00am and 8:00pm, Eastern Standard Time.".

No repeating of the number, not even a "Thank you"! This morning when they called, I just happened to be near my computer and ran over to it to jot down the number. I promptly called them back, hoping to speak to a person who could give me an address where I could send my personal financial statement.

After the initial annoying menu options, I choose the option to speak to a representative. It then tells me my account information has been located based on my phone number. How is that possible? My caller ID is blocked. I am then asked to enter the last four of my social security number for security purposes. I enter the numbers and am told to wait for the next representative. Then I hear this:

"I'm sorry, we're unable to take your call right now. Please try back later."

And the call drops!

So I wait 15 minutes and call back. This time, I don't even hear the friendly message telling me to call back. This time, after I'm told to hold, the call just drops!

I have nothing against police officers. In fact, I applaud them for their service to the community. But when they are given a detail to direct traffic for the increased volume of pedestrians, on an afternoon when the Lowell Spinners is playing at the Edward A. LeLacheur Park, they really need to use a little more of their intelligence.

The reason traffic in big cities doesn't come to a griding halt is because traffic and crosswalk lights control the flow of pedestrians and vehicles. Now imagine what would happen if all the crosswalk lights stopped traffic to let pedestrians cross, as long as there were pedestrians waiting to cross. In other words, pedestrians always had the right of way. It would be impossible to commute with a vehicle!

There I sat, in traffic, watching two police officers direct traffic. Wait, they weren't directing traffic. They were directing pedestrians. The same people walking on foot who I passed 1/2 a mile back were walking by me and allowed to cross the intersection in front of me. There was a 1/4 mile of traffic backed up in either direction. It wasn't like there was a constant flow of people crossing the road either. The police officers would see people about 30 seconds away and let them get to the intersection and cross. Then they would see more pedestrians and the pattern would continue.

Please. Traffic needs to move too. That 300lb person 200ft away from the intersection can wait 30 seconds to let 50 cars go by! 😡

All I can say is thank god humans don't direct traffic in all intersections.

Why do people use the damn urinal without flushing it? I mean seriously, I don't want to be breathing in the raunchy smell of old, richly yellow urine while I'm taking a piss. Its not that difficult to press the little lever on the urinal when you're done shaking off your stuff.

Please, flush the damn urinal! 😡

I wrote this in response to a post in a forum about how Man vs Wild is a hoax. I thought I'd post it here, since my rant of a reply became a lot longer than I anticipated.

The BBC canceled Man vs Wild in Europe. It's still going to play in the US.

The article about it being a hoax has been over played. It's not a hoax. True, the camera team assembled a life raft on the island before filming it to make sure it would actually float and be relatively safe (they floated out into an ocean with sharks, I would have done the same!).

The other thing that was overplayed is that he stayed in a hotel a couple of times while on one of the islands (they never said he stayed in the hotel instead of outside... he probably stayed in a hotel the first day they arrived before going out on the adventure). And even if he stayed in a hotel a few times, WHO CARES? Good for him. He could use a couple of comfortable trips. People love making up things and overplaying news when the details are not clear. Don't believe everything you read!

He states in the beginning of every show that "a camera crew will follow me". Obviously the camera crew has protective gear and tents. Where do you think they sleep when he sleeps in a tiny hole in the ground during a blizzard? Every time he starts a fire, he's using nothing but flint and his knife... even when its raining! I don't see him using matches or a lighter or showing us the fire without showing him lighting it!

The thing about Man vs Wild is that Bear Grylls can take risks that might be necessary in a survival situation, but that he would never do alone simply to get it on video. That's what makes Man vs Wild exciting.

On the other hand, Survivorman is unique in the way that he must carry all his camera equipment with him. Every single camera angle you see he had to setup beforehand. When you see an angle of him crossing a river, you know he had to cross it a second and third time just to get his camera back. It's also unique in the way that you know if something goes wrong, he really is alone (of course, if something went really wrong, you probably wouldn't be watching it on TV -- that's TV Reality).

If he doesn't reach his rendezvous point by the stated time, the crew has to come looking for him. Its very cool to know how alone he really is when you're watching him. But that's not exciting. He can't take great risks and show you cool things that you might need to do in a survival situation. He can't jump into a big pool of quicksand or risk hypothermia by crossing a frozen river, relying only on the pools of volcanic hot water he sees in the distance to keep him alive.

Entertainment is about risk and excitement, which is why Man vs Wild is more popular. Survivorman is more realistic, but who watches TV for realistic things? Anyone who believes a reality show, no matter what kind, is entirely unscripted really needs to get their head out of the dark area its in.

I personally like watching both, because the both have their good points. Man vs Wild is definitely more entertaining and if two new episodes of each were playing at the same time, I'd be watching Man vs Wild.

You can read more about these two shows on Wikipedia: Man vs Wild, Survivorman.

Bear Grylls is no wimp. If you read a little about him I'm sure you'll agree.

Here is the original BBC article I read about the hoax.

A few weeks ago I ordered something from calendars.com and had it shipped to my PO BOX address in Lowell. Whenever possible, I always use my PO BOX because I've had problems with people stealing packages left on the porch of my home address. When placing the order I selected the Express shipment method, filled out my PO BOX address and submitted the order. Everything went through and the form didn't complain that they cannot ship to PO BOXes, so naturally I assumed everything was cool.

Several days later, I discover not only was the package shipped UPS instead of USPS, but the package was delivered to one of my investment properties, 53 Ware Street. Ware Street!? My permanent address is on Cumberland RD, not Ware Street, and the Lowell Post Office is aware of that, so why the hell did they ship it to Ware Street? When I checked the UPS tracking, here's what it said:

CHELMSFORD,
MA, US 02/15/2007 9:39 P.M. DESTINATION SCAN
02/15/2007 7:35 P.M. POST OFFICE BOX ADDRESS. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN AN ADDRESS TO WHICH DELIVERY CAN BE MADE, NOT DELIVERED;THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DELIVERY HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED

Attempting to obtain an address from WHERE? Did they just randomly pick one of houses I own in Lowell? What if I owned 30 houses? Obviously this whole thing could have been avoided by me going to the help section on calendars.com and reading the section on Express shipping:

Question/Topic
Can I ship Express to a P.O. Box?

Answer/Article
Unfortunately, Express orders can not be shipped to P.O. boxes.

But why should I have to do that? The easiest thing to do would be to have the order form simply check if I'm choosing Express for the shipping method and refuse to accept a PO BOX address in the Ship To field. UPS can't be to blame simply because they were given a PO BOX address to ship to, which obviously they cannot do. They did their best to deliver the package. Calendars.com shouldn't have provided them a PO BOX address in the first place.

Seriously, basic error checking like this should always be implemented when you're running a website that claims to have "The best selection of calendars in the world".

Obviously not the best web programmers in the world.

On New Years Eve, I was browsing digg and pressing refresh on the main page. Suddenly there was a new post, about a Verbatim 4GB USB Drive from OfficeMax for $17.98. I quickly ordered 10 of them for $180 from their website. A few days later, I receive this email:

Dear OfficeMax Customer,

This is to advise you that item 21168308 - Verbatim 4GB USB Drive has been canceled from your order due to an inadvertent typographical pricing error on our website. According to the Terms of Use on OfficeMax.com, OfficeMax does not have to honor a price that is a typographical error. We apologize for the inconvenience.

If you have additional questions, please contact a customer service representative at 1-877-OFFICEMAX.

What bull! Lots of other people are pretty pissed too. This shows you what companies can get away with when they make a typo in an online advertisement. They can simply remove the online ad and claim that any evidence you have was simply created on your computer. I'm not saying this is what they do, but they could -- which is why they probably feel they have the power to cancel thousands of orders based on an online typo.

So today I went to show my apartments to a prospective tenant. The appointment was for 7pm, so it was already dark. Come to find out, the electric company turned off the electricity for two of the three vacant units. I called the electric company a month ago and asked them to put the meters in my name. I told them the tenants had been evicted and I didn't want them to turn the electricity off because I would be doing renovations. So I called them again today and asked why the hell they were off. Apparently, they had no record of me calling in and asking to have the meters put in my name. Grrr, I hate incompetence, especially in companies or those who provide a service.

I had coffee with my boss today and due to uncontrollable circumstances, I'm probably not going to be hired full-time in January 2007, which means I won't be moving to Cambridge in January. I'm still moving, it just won't be when I expected. Instead, it might be sometime early February or even March of 2007. We'll see.

While searching the web for something today, I came across The Original new.gif Tribute Page. It's pretty simple: Back when the web was just getting started, Matt Libby decided to create a tiny GIF image, about the same height as a line of text, which he could use to mark things on a web page that were new. The tiny GIF took off and is probably the most used image in the history of the web. Pretty cool stuff. I almost felt like an Internet archaeologist, discovering a lost piece of Internet history. It reminds me of how quickly sites like Google, Yahoo, Flickr, MySpace, etc., have become common-place names for todays generation of Internet users and how only 8 years ago, most of those sites didn't even exist.

In the opposite direction, towards the future, I read on Slashdot about how Windows Vista is apparently going to use IPv6 to create unique domain names for each Windows Vista computer, to make it easier for computers to share files. I can only imagine the number of viruses that will crop up to utilize this feature. The good thing is that Microsoft may very well be the company that helps kick-start the push towards the whole Internet using IPv6 over IPv4. I'm just happy that I'm moving away from regular computer support and more towards software engineering. I have a bad feeling that Windows Vista is going to be a huge headache when it comes to support.

Also on Slashdot, I read about a guide to camping out on console launch day. I thought it was funny how the author of the guide mentions that he's not crazy compared to the fans who lined up a year in advance for the Star Wars prequels. I'm a Star Wars fan and I'll admit, I lined up to watch Star Wars 1 when it first came to the theater. The line to get into the movie theater started inside the theater in the hallway, and backed out the theater entrance and halfway around the building outside. 🙂

I'm sure everyone has filled out rebates. You've probably also had an experience where you never received your rebate back in the mail. Have you ever put down your PO Box as the address to insure the safest arrival of your rebate check? If you have, you probably never received the rebate at all! All rebate forms specifically note that you cannot use your PO Box as a return address. Why?

Well the only reason that makes sense to me is if the rebate companies are intentionally hoping a certain percentage of the rebates never arrive at their destination and therefore are not cashed. Since they are checks, not money orders, the funds remain in the company's bank account until the check is cashed or deposited. They always put a short expire date (90 days) on the checks, so they know if the check has not cleared after 90 days they can consider that money theirs again. Genius.

Whatever they can do to keep their money!

I visited Apple's developer website to download Xcode, the Apple Developers package that includes all the software you need to compile applications yourself. I was trying to download Putty for OSX using DarwinPorts, however it requires the OSX development tools to be installed. Before downloading Xcode you are required to register for a free ADC account. Since I have a .Mac account, I used my .Mac email address. At the end of the registration I was told to click the link in the confirmation email.

Fifteen minutes go by and I don't receive any confirmation email in my .Mac inbox. This is an Apple Developers site -- you would think sending the confirmation email to an Apple email account would be instant! I tried sending the email to my Yahoo account and within seconds the confirmation email arrived.

Did anyone else get stuck in this? I left home around noon time to grab a coffee in Drum Hill (Chelmsford), fully aware there was a marathon going on today. However, this wasn't like most of the marathons I see happening along the boulevard and in Lowell. Starting from the Aiken St bridge, going towards Nashua along the VFW Highway, they closed all the bridges going into Lowell (and Chelmsford). They allowed traffic out of Lowell and onto VFW Highway, but not in the other direction. So I decided to drive all the way towards Nashua, hop on RT3 and get off the exit for Chelmsford. As I neared the RT113 bridge in Tyngsborough, the noticed the traffic was backed up for two miles. And knowing how messed up the lights at that intersection are, there was no way I was going to wait in that traffic. So I turned around, went all the way back through the traffic I had already been through, took a couple of back roads to avoid some of it, went past my house, then took the bridge into downtown Lowell. There was some traffic that way too, but it wasn't nearly as bad.

I basically spent 1 hour in traffic, in Lowell. There should have been signs, several days prior to the marathon, which announced which bridges would be closed to traffic. Instead, the signs simply said "Expect Significant Delays". That isn't very helpful if they don't inform you how to avoid the "significant delays"!