Saw this over at Slashdot.. its a link to the discussion on a question posed by one of the readers.. lots of lame comments to sift through.. but there are a few “gems” in there.. here’s a sample:

Don’t forget to vote with your dollars as well. Support companies that don’t ship work overseas, and don’t purchase products or services from those that do. I know that it’s not always practical, but an honest effort will go further than apathy.
It may be a little more costly, but no one said defending principles or even freedom would come cheap.

Exactly which principles or freedoms are you defending by not buying from companies that use overseas workers?
The freedom to deny people in other countries jobs? Or the principle that the rest of the world owes American residents something?

How cheap is it to defend useless isolationist policies that will cause the US to sink into an economic rut and become a backwater, third-world economy? Anschluss didn’t work last time round, and it won’t work this time either.

Its been really hot over here in Taiwan.. yesterday, it was probably about 80 degrees F by 7:30am, climbing to what felt like 150 degrees during the afternoon.. while I was waiting to board our shuttle, the driver was telling me the reason its so hot is because everyone is using their air conditioner.. and since the air conditioner displaces warm air with cold air, it makes all of Taiwan warmer.. although I’m no metorologist, I’m sure weather is related to other factors, more than the fact people use their air conditioners .. as a consequence of the heat and humidity, body odor has once again become an issue.. walking by a few BO carriers yesterday.. I made the observation that BO is able to be detected by my nose from up to two cubicles away.. or about 20 feet.. someone with some marketing skills should really consider making it a lifetime career to market deodorant to Taiwanese nationals.. and while they’re at it, market orthodontic/dental services, toothbrushes, mouth wash, and toothpaste .. I saw a delivery guy yesterday.. he had a cap on his front tooth.. one of those caps that goes on the back of the tooth, you know? Anyhow, the thing about it though, was that the front tooth had pretty much decayed away.. and the only thing left was the silver cap.. but since it was a backside facing cap, it just looked like he had a hollowed out tooth.. it looked weird.. reminded me of a pirate’s tooth or something.. I dunno ..

General | 1 Comment »

Nothing really specific to say today.. really I just wanted to let everyone know about a search engine that “crawls” for blogs.. its at www.feedster.com.. its pretty cool in that whatever you search for, it will search for in blogs.. well, anything with a “feed”, which is predominately blogs.. here’s what they say about themselves:

So What is a “Feedster”?
In the world of weblogs or “blogs”, the term “feed” refers to a “RSS Feed” which is an XML based data format that allows a blog’s contents to be accessed via another program. Since we were building a search engine for blogs, we made one that indexed “feeds” and the result was Feedster!.

What we do is really very simple — we make a search tool that allows users to tap into the ever growing world of weblogs. Every day people use Feedster to look for information, monitor what’s happening in the world and more.

Of course if I’m searching for something serious like “how to fake a fever“, I’ll still use Google.. but just to give you an example, I entered ‘hsinchu taiwan’ into Feedster and I found this guy’s blog, 35togo.. he’s one of those photo bloggers.. but anyway, anytime you’re looking for someone’s personal opinion, its a perfect search engine for the job.. it is a little slow though..

At work, we’re facing some issues that may force us to delay our “go live” date again.. I don’t remember if I wrote about it.. but a while back, we had decided to delay until May 1st.. at the time, the consultant PM (henceforth known as ‘The Dick’) blamed us (the expats) because he said we didn’t take care of our issues, which would allow the project team to get sign-off from the users, which would’ve allowed the Dick to proceed with his data conversion, which would be our first step towards going live.. at the time, the expats were all pissed because we felt that the reason we didn’t get sign off in time was because we were basically going over things the consultants had already gone over.. so if they had done a good job in the first place, we wouldn’t be in that situation.. but the Dick is a little moody bitch.. so no one wanted to possibly risk our May 1st start date so we swallowed his bullshit and carried on.. so, about 2 weeks ago, we finally finished our “part”.. the Dick was now ready to begin his first “real” test, migrating data to SAP.. he’s had a month to work on it (while we were busy mopping up his mess) but shortly after he said his migration was complete, the users began to realize that the data migration was crap.. he totally screwed it up.. after some lengthy meetings to discuss the reasons for the failure, he began to “back away” from the whole data migration fiasco.. he simply said, “data migration is not my responsibility.. I was simply a coordinator” .. hmm.. anyhow, without a successful data migration, we couldn’t begin end user training.. so now it looks like we’ll be delaying until June 1st.. when the Dick heard about the possibility of a second delay, he had the nuts to say to us.. “well, me and my people are finished with our jobs.. we’ll be leaving tomorrow then..” .. I got to hand it to this guy though.. he either has really big nuts or he’s just really stupid.. but I’ve worked with numerous consultants back home and I can’t remember any of them telling me that they would be rolling off a project before its completion.. this is just one story in the saga of why Abeam Consulting sucks.. I don’t think I mentioned it before.. but Abeam is also responsible for Winbond’s SAP implementation failure.. Abeam consultants where supposed to “implement” SAP 4.7 there.. only ONE module.. MM (thats Material Management).. of course it needed to be integrated into their legacy systems.. but to make a long story short.. Winbond went live on SAP.. they weren’t able to ship product for one month following that go live date because their SAP was so screwed up.. I didnt research it, but I bet Winbond’s stock price really took a dive that month.. hell, that whole year..

General, Stuff that Sucks, Work | 3 Comments »

Ok.. so I tried to order a wallet for my wife for our anniversary.. little did I know my online shopping experience would turn into a close encounter with the Bitch from Hell.. I like to think I’m a pretty patient individual.. I’m typically not ill-tempered and I try to be very cordial and polite during phone conversations. But, you know.. I take enough shit at work during the day that when I get off my lazy ass to call a retailer/vendor as an unhappy customer, I expect to be heard.. so I was a little shocked when the BFH tried to tell me that I was wrong and that I did in fact receive her email correspondence.. for the record, I sent two emails to Coach.com, both of them expressing discontent with NOT being contacted by anyone within the “24 hours” promised on their website. So I find it odd that the BFH would think we were exchanging email correspondence. In any case, our phone call went a little something like this..

after verifying my billing and shipping address..
BFH: “I see, we’ve tried to contact you twice and this is your first time calling in, correct?”
Me: “Well, yes.. but I’ve never been contacted by Coach”
BFH: “Yes you have, we’ve had email correspondence..”
Me: “Yes, I’ve written twice from the website, but I’ve never received any reply”
BFH: “But you have received replies, we asked you to call in.. in fact, I wrote the second email..”
Me: “I’m sorry, but I’ve never received any reply otherwise I would’ve called sooner”
BFH: “Well, anyway.. you received two emails from us.. your order was pending verification..”
Me: “You might want to make sure your emails aren’t getting bounced by Hotmail as spam.. because I didn’t receive anything”
BFH: “Maybe you have restrictions set on YOUR account, because you were emailed..”
Me: “Well, you know what? I’m calling today to cancel my order..”
BFH: “Fine! Was there anything else?”
Me: “No.”
BFH: [click]

Ok, now.. after she hung up on me, it still didn’t really occur to me that she was being a bitch.. but seriously, I didn’t receive any email correspondence.. when I wrote a second time, asking for an update and saying I was upset that I did not receive a response within 24 hours after my first email, you would think the BFH would’ve gotten a clue that I’m not receiving her emails.. furthermore, their own damn question/comments form on their website asked for my daytime phone number.. whats that for? so they can call me at ungodly hours on weekends to ask me how I’m enjoying my wallet? I would think any responsible customer service department would’ve called me to make sure the order was legitimate, especially after 10 days. What pisses me off even more is I placed the order on April 2nd at about 9AM ET, I paid an arm for shipping and then paid an additional leg for priority overnight (since, for some unknown reason, “Priority Overnight” is defined as “2-3 days”).. so what the hell? I wanted Priority Overnight, I sent in two emails saying I did not receive any updates or replies, and they had my phone number, which made it so easy for the BFH to just pick up the damn phone and call me, at least leave a damn message..

To recap.. Coach.com sucks because:

1. They hire crazy bitches from hell to handle customer service phone calls
2. Their email system is superior and never fails
3. The bitches they hire think they know email systems like they know crazy
4. Coach.com must follow Martian days since Overnight to them means “2-3 earth days”

For the record (and to prove I’m right and the crazy bitch is just plain crazy), my Hotmail does have restrictions on it.. here they are:

Spam detected by Bigfoot in the subject will be automatically deleted.
mortgage in the subject will be automatically deleted.
free in the subject to my Junk E-Mail folder.
rates in the subject will be automatically deleted.
refinance in the subject will be automatically deleted.
sex in the subject will be automatically deleted.
guaranteed in the subject will be automatically deleted.
debt in the subject will be automatically deleted.
penis in the subject will be automatically deleted.

So unless the bitch was trying to get me to refi, buy v!@g@r@, enlarge my penis, help me get out of debt, or offer me the wallet for free in exchange for sex with Bigfoot, I did not receive her damn email..

Coach.com sucks and so do BFH..

Stuff that Sucks | 2 Comments »