Rants

A couple of articles have caught my attention recently and I feel like I have to remind myself, as well as others, that its ok to clock out.

You know, not work. Spend time with the family. Enjoy a walk in the woods. Bike down one of the many trails that I’m sure your community (and tax dollars) has created. Walk the dog, catch a film, grab a beer with a buddy. I could come up with thousands of things to do other than work.

I’m a Mediacom subscriber. They’re the only cable modem choice in town and DSL just doesn’t have the speeds that I want out in my area. So, for internet, they’re the best option I have. They have a customer portal that is less than impressive. In fact, every time I use it I want to cancel my account. It annoys me that much.

Why I hate the Mediacom portal

1. One of my biggest pet peeves is that I cannot setup my credit card to be charged on a monthly recurring basis through the portal. They can accept a one time payment, but not recurring. In order to set up recurring payments, I have to call a customer support representative. When you call them, they cannot take your information either. Uh…what? Instead, they send you a form to fill out and send back in. If the process is to fill out a form and send it in via snail mail, let me DOWNLOAD THE FREAKING FORM ONLINE!!!!!
2. I can however place a one time payment at any time. However, you can place a one time payment multiple times and the owed amount never gets updated. For example, I apparently paid my bill online multiple times last month. So this month I owed a pathetic amount of $11.08. Which I paid several hours ago. Yet, when I go back to look at my balance, lo and behold, it appears that I still owe $11.08. Maybe I should pay it again.

As I was checking in today on the latest tech news, I found out that Twitter has announced that they are building their own data center.

Death to the fail whale they are calling it. Maybe so, but what really got me was this.

Twitter will have full control over network and systems configuration, with a much larger footprint in a building designed specifically around our unique power and cooling needs.

I recently ordered tickets online for a Broadway show that’s coming into town this fall. I was expecting the price to be fairly pricey seeing as this is a pretty hot show and its the first time that it is coming to our town.

There are some fees that I don’t really care about. Restoration Fees to keep the facility looking nice and operating well is fine by me. However, $4.75 for the convenience of ordering via the internet?!?! PER TICKET!!!! Are you freaking kidding me! If anything, it should be EASIER for me to order via online. Sure I get that there are costs for hosting, bandwidth and software. But c’mon, that has to be cheaper than additional phone lines, personnel, benefits, overtime, etc.