Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Slowly Killing Myself
January 20, 2006

Berta has now been gone on a work trip for two days, leaving me with the kids.

It’s not as horrible as I could make it out to be. I could, for instance, mention that Abby handed Riley one of the soft sugar cookies (those things will be what truly killed me in the end), and he proceeded to rub the icing into the brand new couch. Or the NFL-style tackle “hugging” of the 1-year-old by his older sister, bouncing his poor noggin off the living room floor. Or the screaming fits that ensue whenever I try to use the bathroom. (Yes, please consider how awful it would be if every time you went to pee, someone stood outside the door and wouldn’t stop screaming, and then when you came out, acted as if nothing odd occurred.)

Contrary to all that, there are a whole lot more fun things we’ve done that Berta’s been away than there have been things to complain about. Abby and I have been building a volcano (I hope to have photos of the completed work online when it’s done), and talking about how to add money. Tomorrow, we’re planning on learning how to play Blackjack while the last bit of paint dries on the Volcano.

Riley has his own little quirks. He’s been getting up in the morning and insisting on watching TV while wrapped up in two of his knit blankies. Not one. Two. Fortunately, he doesn’t want to watch TV all day. He’s kind of self-regulating. When he’s done, he climbs down and starts grabbing toys to play with. In the evening, he’s not that interested in TV at all.

But no, that’s not what’s killing me.

eBay Fedback
January 19, 2006

Should I feel obliged to leave positive feedback on an eBay item that was shipped without incident or special attention?

I recently placed an order for an MP3 player from Creative Labs. Their entire refurbished sales department operates through eBay. They’ve sold hundreds of refurbished items, so their reputation for successful transactions is not hurting. Plus they’re a giant corporation with a generally good reputation. So why would they send me an email asking for feedback?

We noticed you have not left feedback for item number 5828610064, Creative Zen Micro 5 GB Black MP3 Player w/ Warranty, and we were wondering if there was a problem with the transaction. If your item has not yet arrived or if you are experiencing any problems with it please let us know.

We also encourage you to leave feedback for us as you feel appropriate.

Well, ok, they’re concerned that something didn’t go well. And that’s good. That’s a sign of good customer service. But since they’ve done nothing that I would complain about and nothing out of the ordinary that I would rave about, I would only feel comfortable giving them neutral feedback. And really, that’s not what they’re looking for. More to the point, being a large corporation, they probably wouldn’t care as much as any of the smaller sellers that would prod me into giving them the thumbs-up/thumbs-down feedback.

Firefox Extensions
January 18, 2006

Here’s another post in the guise of informing readers of something that is really for my own edification.

I’ve got a handful of Firefox extensions installed that I find useful. I tend to try out an extension and then not like it and disable it. But this short list has stuck with me, and when I consider upgrading Firefox the availability of these plugins are essentially what times my upgrade.

No More Feeds for WordPress?
January 17, 2006

Let’s do away with the doom and gloom: In spite of recent context-deprived accounts, WordPress isn’t anywhere near ditching any of its feed formats. But what is all this talk about removing feeds from our favorite blogging tool? Let’s have a rational look…

WordPress currently supports four standard feed formats for syndication: RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0 (aka RDF), RSS 2.0 (aka RSS2), and Atom 0.3. All of these feeds are at least vague implementations of XML, and allow applications (feed aggregators) to gather data about your posts without actually visiting your site. This can be done because these formats are machine-readable - that is, a computer/server can be configured to automatically visit your feed and parse out the data that it provides into usable chunks.

There are certain problems with the feeds that WordPress provides, and whether these really are problems depends on your perspective. But let me tell you what I see from a coder’s point of view, and why you should consider listening to my argument.

Not Good With People
January 16, 2006

It’s true - I’m not good with people. I get frustrated very quickly. Well, that’s not the whole pciture. I get frustrated with people who don’t try to understand why I would be frustrated.

I’ve worked at a couple of fast food jobs. When I was living in Johnstown, I worked at a Little Caesar’s. Here at home, I works at an Arby’s for a while. At both places, I learned to use the register. I would take customer orders, relay them to the workers preparing the food, take money and give change. Part of this job is obviously interaction with a person - the person paying - and that simply wasn’t for me.

I never really thought that I was bad at it. I actually consider myself a pretty good conversationalist with people that I regularly speak with. I guess I’m just not used to dealing with all sorts of people with different methods of making menu choices. The manager at the Little Caesar’s made sure that I didn’t often work at the register. It’s not like I was scaring away the customers, it’s just that I like efficiency when ordering.