Geek at Play

ESPN the Magazine: You’re cut!

For a while I subscribed to ESPN the Magazine. It’s a pretty well written rag with decent stories and a nice touch of humor. Lately, though, I haven’t had time or desire to read magazines, so I let my subscription (and a few others) expire. As I expected, I got the little set of follow-up letters offering me special pricing if I renew right away. No big deal.

But the last few of their letters have gotten odd. In fact, they’re hostile. I know I paid for a 1-year subscription, up front. I let it expire, and they stopped sending me magazines. I owe them nothing. That’s pretty much how this whole economy thing works with the exchange of monies for goods.

But now they’ve gone too far. They sound hostile, like I actually owe them something. The latest notice includes the words “final notice”, “collect payment”, and “permanent ESPN the Magazine credit record”. So I decided to use their web form to drop them the following complaint/question:

I let my subscription expire on purpose. I paid up-front for a certain number of issues and there was (to my knowledge) no stipulation about renewing. I have been getting increasingly threatening letters from your “Collections Department” which I took to be a fairly rude/clever/harmless way to attempt to get me to re-up.

The tone of these letters has become unacceptable, with talk of some sort of permanent credit record. If this is marketing, it is deplorable.

If there is indeed some actual balance left on some account (I haven’t received the magazine for many months, after the 1 year I paid for), please respond to me via email and enclose a copy of the terms.

I can also be reached on my cell phone at 650-xxx-xxxx.

Thank you.

I think that is fair. I’m willing to play ball here. But you know what? Their fucking web form is broken! They apparently have some junior asshole programmer working on their site and can’t handle a single <textarea> and file it in a database or fire off an email! Apparently, there are “Invalid Characters In Request”. It’s text! Are quotation marks too much? Maybe it’s those nasty backslashes? Nice work, jackasses.

So, this is my open letter to the apparent fucktards in ESPN the Magazine collections. If I missed something or actually owe them money, then I’ll take this down. Otherwise it stays.

Update: I just submitted the URL to this entry to their form, and it succeeded.

Update 2: I just poked at their form a little more, attempting to put a few words in to explain the URL. Well, it seems that their form can’t handle me hitting “Enter”! That’s right, “\n” is an illegal character apparently. Genius. So no complaints in proper paragraph form.

Touch

Tonight I had my first “skin-on” contact of my massage class. It was kind of terrifying. I think I have a reasonable aptitude for touch, but my brain really wanted to “get it right” this first time. By the end of 20 minutes worth of some basic back massage strokes my legs were on fire, my brow was dripping, and my brain was shot. Not to sound too spacey, but there really is a lot more to this stuff than just touching. There is connection, care, and an empathic tendancy to this sort of work.

Granted, there is also homework. Ick.

Bad English

I was eating sushi with a friend the other day. We went to the little place that is right near my new house, which is really good. Honestly, there is nothing better than having a great sushi place less than a mile away. Anyhow, they are good at carving up tasty fish, but their publishing abilities leave something to be desired. Inside the little payment folio we got with our bill was one of the most wacked-out sentences I’ve ever read. After stating that they don’t do the debit-card-thing was printed: “We’re apologized for you inconveniences.”

Seriously, you almost have to try to make that many mistakes in one sentence.

Evicted?!

I’m in Colorado with the Pranger clan having what should be a good time. However, it is all down the crapper now. I just talked to mitchn on the phone and we are apparently being evicted. 30 days notice. 2 well-paid engineers with unreal credit ratings and decade-long employment histories. Evicted.

I was really hoping this would be a place I could spend a lot of time in. I really like it! It’s comfy and roomy, and mitchn and I get along fine. I wanted to have housing-stability, but now I don’t get that. Again, for the 5th time in 6 years, I will be moving house within the Bay Area. Damnit!

Floss!

Just now, for what I believe to be the first time in my life, I finished a spool of floss. I didn’t lose it. I didn’t toss it out when I realized I had inexplicably ended up with 6 spools. I actually finished it: pulled out the last piece.

I shall take this as a minor victory in an otherwise difficult day.

Revenge of the Suck

I keep going on and on about how much I like working for my current company; it really is a great place. But today they did something of dubious value: they took me (and the rest of the engineering team) to see George Lucas’s latest abomination. Really, watching something that horrible as a group was an awful thing to do for morale, especially with some big release deadlines coming up. What were my bosses thinking?!

Seriously, though: I’m so glad I didn’t pay money for that. If I want to see wooden delivery and puppets I’ll glue some googley-eyes to a sock and make it lip-synch to a tape of my 7th grade play.

Update 6/21/2005: I really enjoyed a deconstruction of the Star Wars prequels and the persistent characters therein that I found via American Idle. Very well written!

Lost jacket

The people at my work are a bit “special”. How can you tell? Well, Scot lost his jacket; he thinks he may have dropped it on the way out to his car. Most people would send about 15 words to their coworkers to find out if anyone saw it or picked it up. Not Scot:

I am wrought most sorely vexed over the chance that my jacket may have fallen to the wayside whilst I did perambulate from the edifice in which we work to my automobile carrying several ungainly packages. Should you have encountered it this eve or should you do so in the morning, lying unattended and rumpled, heavy with night dew and abandonment, I should be most appreciative were you to give it succor and aid, bringing it once more into the friendly domain of human/jacket society.

Or you could just drop it by my cube - it’s dark blue corduroyish, with a reddish interior. The jacket, that is - the cube looks pretty much like all the others.

Thank you, and may your own jackets ever bask in the friendly warmth of your attention and care.

I love working here.

Social metric

I’ve decided that there is an easy way to tell if I’ve been “making the effort” to go out and socialize. It can be easily gauged simply by counting the number of discarded MapQuest maps on my floor. Since I live in the Bay Area and the people I know are scattered from Santa Cruz to Salinas to Oakland, there is no way for me to know how to get everywhere.

Right now there are about 5 used maps in my car. I’ve been a busy boy. Now, off to add number six.

SBC sucks

Well, I think I’m officially going to try to avoid using SBC for phone service in the future. I’ve been trying to call today to make some changes to my account (since competition has made stuff cheaper) and they keep saying that they are unable to take my call. Just a recording. All their customer service lines. Great.

I fell

Yesterday was a big day for me. I started by driving down to the Monterey area and jumping out of an airplane with my best friend Liz. Then I hustled back to a dinner party at my neighbors’ that ended up being a Persian New Year celebration (amazing food and lively company). Once that was all said and done, I headed up to SF to go dancing at a psi-trance thing up at the Blue Cube. It turns out that it is pretty amazing how well you can fill your days if you really try to.

On skydiving, it was really a pretty amazing experience. It was marred a little bit by the fact that we had to wait for about 3 hours before going. As expected, people who jump out of planes aren’t real big on organization and scheduling; the “reservation time” we had was fairly pointless. But once it happened, the experience was beyond words. I was mostly dumbstruck as I hopped from a plan and just fell for 60 seconds. It was so unreal that I kind of disconnected from it. Some part of me refused to believe that it really could be happening. Except for some bruising around the shoulders and the fact that I was too big for the harness (and probably for the guy strapped to my back), it went wonderfully. I might have to do it again. Liz, ever the adrenaline junkie, is convinced that it will become her next hobby!

Oh, and it is worth noting that I didn’t bother to tell any part of my family about it until afterward. On the way back to RWC, I called the folks to let them know. I said, “Guess what, I just jumped out of an airplane.” True to form, my father immediately dead-panned, “You idiot”, and promptly laughed.