In case you are wondering why people no longer look to you for news, this is why. Some blowhole closing his twitter account shouldn’t make the front page of cnn.com.

It didn’t take long and I found a site that looked like they had a good deal on the filters. Though from pictures on other sites, I wasn’t sure how many filters were in each package. Their picture showed two, but others I had seen showed one so I needed a bit of help. So I emailed their customer support. Here was my message:

From: matt@xxxx.com
Received: 6/9/09 9:06:15 PM PDT
To: sales@car-stuff.com
Subject: I’ve got a ques

From: Matt Patterson
Phone No.: 515-###-####
Message: I’ve got a question about Item #H420101. How
many physical filters come in a package. There are two
filter carriages that I need to replace and I’m wondering
if this part will have the necessary filters to replace
everything, or do I need to order 2.Thanks,Matt Patterson

Simple, straight forward, I thought anyone would be able to answer it in a matter of seconds.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a response until today, a full week later. And the response was less than impressive. Here it is:

On Jun 16, 2009, at 12:39 AM, Raymond wrote:

Greetings!
This is to acknowledge that we are in receipt of your
email sent days ago. We regret for not being able to
respond to your message via email. You may contact us at
1-800-262-0795 for us to be able to further assist you
about your concern.
Please accept our apology for this inconvenience.
Thank you for your business.
sales@car-stuff.com
www.car-stuff.com
“Your Discount Auto Parts Source”

Wow, you acknowledge that you received my message and have done NOTHING with it for 7 days. Thank you very freaking much! And, I can call you to get my question answered because clearly, you could give a rats freaking ass about responding to email let alone pick up the damn phone to call me.

I’m pretty sure that this company has faced some economic down turn and they may not have the staff to take and fill all their orders anymore. You know, the good problem to have. But an auto-attendant message 7 days later, insulting as it is, basically telling me that you could give a crap about my business is NOT going to help you out.

So, I thought I could give them the decency of a call and go off on some lowly schmuck that answered. Or I could blast them in an email. But I thought, let’s fire back at them with basically the same email with a bit of a twist. Mature? Probably not. Did I feel better and make a point without lacing my email with a slew of profanities that would make a sailor blush, yes! Here’s my response.

Raymond,

This is to acknowledge that I am in receipt of your email sent several hours ago. I regret to inform you that I am unable to do business with your organization due to your lack of customer service. A simple response to my email in a timely fashion, much like this email, or a call to the number provided in my original inquiry would have easily won the business. So while my order was going to be relatively small, it has unfortunately been placed with one of your online competitors.

Regretfully,

Matt Patterson

Customer service matters people. A simple response to my message, a quick phone call would have won my $30 order. Don’t insult me by asking a week later to give you a call because you can’t figure out how to service your customers, current or future. In the economic down turn that just about everyone is feeling, especially the auto industry, its going to be the companies that can figure out how to stay lean while providing top notch customer care that will rise to the top.

FYI…my order was placed this morning, a confirmation email has been sent and an order tracking email has been shipped from the competitor. Its simple and straight forward. That’s why the other company has my business and Car Stuff does not.

Customer Service Matters!

This attribute specifies the different options that are enabled for the user or contact object. This attribute is a bit-mask value of type integer. Each option is represented by a bit. This attribute is marked for Global Catalog replication.

source

Unfortunately, in my searching I found not only the technet article, but I also found this

Here a sample of some of the code that you’ll find….

if strOptionFlag = "" then
objUser.Put "msRTCSIP-OptionFlags", "16"

‘If user not enabled then do not enable OCS
if strOptionFlag = "0" then
objUser.Put "msRTCSIP-OptionFlags", "0"
‘If user is enabled for Public IM then keep Public IM enabled and enable RCC
elseif strOptionFlag = "1" then
objUser.Put "msRTCSIP-OptionFlags", "257"
‘If user is enabled for RCC then keep RCC enabled and enable Enhanced Presence
elseif strOptionFlag = "16" then
objUser.Put "msRTCSIP-OptionFlags", "272"
‘If user is enabled for RCC and Public IM then keep RCC & PIM enabled and enable Enhanced Presence
elseif strOptionFlag = "17" then
objUser.Put "msRTCSIP-OptionFlags", "273"
‘If user is already enabled for RCC and Enhanced Presence then keep settings
elseif strOptionFlag = "272" then
objUser.Put "msRTCSIP-OptionFlags", "272"
‘If user is already enabled for RCC, PIM and Enhanced Presence then keep settings
elseif strOptionFlag = "273" then
objUser.Put "msRTCSIP-OptionFlags", "273"
end if
end if

All I have to say is wow! You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. Are there programmers out there that don’t understand what a bitfield is supposed to be or how to do bitwise operations? That’s like the first freaking class in a Computer Science degree. This is where you learn about Big 0, Binary numbers, loops, variables. If you are a programmer reading this blog and you don’t know what a bit field is and how to us it. Google it, read up, and rid the world of ugly ass code like what I found above.

Now technically what this person is doing would “work” since it is setting the integer with an appropriate number. But wow is this the WRONG way to do it. I’m afraid to see this persons code for when they need to check and see if the RCC bit is set for the user. Technically, they should be able to do a simple bitwise operation and check it something along the lines of:

if(($msRTCSIP-OptionFlags & 0x0010) != 0)
{
// RCC is set
}

I have a feeling that this person is doing for the following:

if(value == 273)
{
X is set
Y is set
Z is set
}
else if(value == 257)
{
Y is set
Z is set
}

This is a very simplistic psuedo-code example. But wow…I’m still in shock that this type of code is out there…and posted somewhat recently in October of 2008!

I really hope I run into this guy some day so I can beat him with the clue-by-4.

Avalanche captain Joe Sakic will be sidelined at least three months, the team said this morning, after he suffered three broken fingers and tendon damage following an accident at his home involving a snowblower.

Sakic underwent surgery with a local hand specialist Tuesday night, the team said. Sakic suffered the injury Tuesday afternoon at his home. Sakic already was on injured reserve with a herniated disc in his back before the snowblower accident.

Sakic reached inside the “auger” of the snowblower to remove snow. The machine’s power was off when he tried to fix it, according to the team. According to the consumer products safety commission, snowblower injuries are common.

source

So after much reluctance, I have decided to take the Facebook leap. I’m already a LinkedIn member, but I figured that Facebook was a different audience and in these times, you can never have too many friends that may open a door for you if one should happen to close. I’m not worried about it, but better to be prepared just in case.

I’m going to avoid the damn apps like the plague so don’t ask me to join your mob, group, warlock society or whatever dork app you have found recently.

But feel free to friend me up.

Now, they are making me a ’sweet’ deal. I can sign up before 11/15 for $1.93 a month for the service which is normally $4.95. Wow, thanks a-holes!

This normally wouldn’t be a huge deal. Sure it would tick me off, but not send me looking for other services. But seeing as I signed up for the HD service 2 months ago and they have yet to fulfill the order, I have to say, we’re definitely looking for other providers. The only service that I really like out of the triple play is the internet service. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be gone by now for sure.

So for any Mediacom employees out there that can do something about this. Feel free to spread the word that you’re about to lose a customer over $24 bucks a year for freaking voice mail. Outstanding work!

However, today re-affirmed why most people hate the french. We have a few domains that are registered with a registrar that is based out of Paris France. We bought the company that used this registrar so this is some of the cleanup that just hasn’t happened over the years.

Today apparently they decided that one of our primary domains hadn’t had its whois information updated so it must be out of date which would put us in violation of the terms of service. Technically, the whois information was still 100% correct. The contacts were are still valid contacts handled by our NOC staff. The contact names, phone numbers and email addresses all still worked as you would expect them to. But since we haven’t made any updates, clearly it must be out of date so they removed the domain from the root servers. No notifications that this was being done, no notice that we needed to update our records, nothing! Another joy of dealing with this registrar, they only do email support. That’s right, no phone support is available. Awesome!

Needless to say, we’re filing complaints with ICANN and will hopefully have this issue resolved shortly. Once it is cleared up, you can bet your ass we’re dumping them. Or, as many of our staff have suggested, threatening to invade their country and expecting their unconditional surrender.

Guy: So you’re a model.

Clerk: Yeah

Guy: So what have you done.

Clerk: I haven’t started yet, I’m still working out the details with Steve.

Technically, I can state the same thing. I’m a model, I just haven’t started yet.