And yes, this is just my side of the story. If you want to read their side of the story, well… Their website doesn’t seem to mention this little outage yet, nor does their public forums. Weird.

Anyway, here’s what happened: around noon April 12th, one of my VPS servers goes down. I open a ticket, then a few minutes later notice the system status indicates a possible hardware problem and some services are offline. No problem, we all have hardware failures once in a while.

4pm, “we’re currently experiencing major issues… in all locations”

April 13th the system status is updated with a (Resolved) tag, but I’m still down. File an update to my ticket, they’re still having issues and are documenting things in another location. Fair enough, although the “resolved” was a wee bit misleading.

April 14th/15th We’re still down, absolutely no sign of things returning, I move my services elsewhere and request a refund. Technical support says to contact billing.

April 17th I get a new “account activation” message, apparently Santrex.net threw out all of their customer data and started over after being down for 5 days.

Over the next few days I’ve exchanged several emails with their billing department, and apparently this is an acceptable level of service, and they’re standing behind their “we might not actually provide the service we sell, and we don’t offer refunds” clauses in their terms of service.

Seriously? A week of downtime plus 100% data loss, and a refund is too much to ask?

It was also nice that they took the time to yell at me for opening a second ticket formally request cancellation, after I followed their instructions to cancel service. Thanks for that guys.

Luckily, this is why god invented credit card chargebacks, Visa will stand behind a consumer when they purchase something and the seller doesn’t bother to deliver.

First off, for anyone who has never been to an Apple Store to get service on a broken Apple product, let me give you a bit of warning: Apple sells so much defective gear that you apparently need an appointment just to return your expensive doorstop to get a replacement pre-doorstop. Who knew?

Anyway, a message to Apple: FedEx and UPS are different companies. No really, they are.

After having flown to another city to go to the Apple Store and having been turned away by said Apple Store, I complained to Apple’s phone based support until they offered to send a replacement phone and was told I just had to put the broken phone in box with the prepaid shipping label for return.

The instructions contained within the box included a toll free number to call to arrange pickup, the number was answered by a friendly UPS rep.

Unfortunately the return shipping label said “FedEx” so UPS wasn’t able to help.

I found a FedEx’s phone number on the tubes, and was told that despite the fact that I already had a FedEx delivery truck coming later this week, I didn’t have the right colour label for pickup service. FedEx then instructed me to take the package to some location near the airport, approximately a $35 cab ride away.

I called Apple, and was again advised to call UPS, after I explained that the return shipping label wasn’t a UPS label, the Apple rep seemed confused and didn’t know how to proceed. I suspect he was really a software program, and had I been able to see the screen, I’d have seen the “sad mac” logo at this point.

I ended up shipping the phone at my cost via Canada Post, $15 for a tracked and insured shipment; this seemed smarter then $70-round-trip cab fare or wasting any more time or effort.

Since buying the Xbox 360 I’ve been gaming more then I expected.

For me, I play games for the (and I know this will be a shocker) gameplay. I’m not generally there for the storyline; I mostly just play games that involve killing things, if I wanted a story I’d go find a book or watch TV (okay, bad example) or watch a movie (okay, worse example, but you get my point)

Sure, there might be some underlying “rescue the hostage” or “save the world” or “kill the terrorist” plotline around some good gaming, but it’s usually as well thought out a plot as goes into most porn. Porn generally has better acting too, incidentally.

I don’t get emotionally involved enough in the hostage’s well-being to care whether I rescue said hostage or not, my only real motivation to not shoot the hostage is that it usually ends the game if you do.

Now don’t get me wrong, story isn’t all bad. I enjoyed BioShock which had more of a storyline then most of the games I’ve played in the past, I really enjoyed Fallout 3 too so I’m not entirely story-adverse, but when it comes to brainless shooters, the story just isn’t usually a focus.

What ruins a game for me is when a game makes me sit through multiple cut scenes or witless dialog (I’m looking at you Gears of War) over and over without offering a way to skip them after failing and restarting a difficult mission. I get it, I screwed up the mission and now I have to try it again, but do I really need to be punished by watching the damn cutscene again and again?

I can live with a game making me sit through the story once, but especially for “boss-levels”, put the damn checkpoint AFTER the cut-scene; I don’t need to see my AI(*) companions peeing their pants and discussing how the upcoming enemy probably smells as bad as he looks cheesy.

Is that so much to ask?

* I use the “I” in AI only for clarity since their intelligence is usually lacking.

Literally the day I wrote my last post about texting while driving I watched a scene play out that reminded me drivers aren’t the only one that shouldn’t be texting on the road.

It started off like this: I’m walking to the grocery store, close enough to the one and only traffic light en-route that I’m already watching the lights to know to either speed up or slow down to avoid having to wait. I see this rather frail looking lady push her walker into the street and start to cross without even glancing up to notice the opposing direction has the green light. I’m thinking she’s old, doesn’t have much time left, and probably just doesn’t have time for traffic lights anymore. Luckily for her, the oncoming traffic was happy enough to park behind their green lights and wait it out (or maybe they just didn’t want a gooey mess to clean off their grills)

I’m not certain whether she was oblivious or just didn’t care, but I am certain that obliviousness is the only explanation for the young woman who walked right past me and started to cross the same crosswalk from the opposite direction as the old lady. This young woman had her nose buried in what appeared to be a Blackberry. Had it been an iPhone maybe she could have been using a silly “augmented reality” app that could have shown her the world around her through the iPhone’s pathetic camera, but as it was, I did see her glance up and notice the lady with the walker before wandering aimless into the street crossing against the light.

It occurs to me that I walk while texting a fair amount too, and although I always put my phone down while crossing streets, I’m also probably less aware then I otherwise believe myself to be. I’m quite sure that the younger woman had no clue at all that she’d walked out in front of oncoming traffic, or how easily she could have ended up squished if a vehicle happened to blast through the intersection in the other lane.

I still say it’s more of an issue for drivers, but the risks are higher when you’re not surrounded by a crash-tested crumple-zoned metal framed box.

I'm txting while driving

Dear genius: Pay attention to the road when you’re driving would you please? If you’re turning off the road into a restaurant parking lot you’re probably not so hungry that you don’t have time to look around a bit first, nor are you that important that your text message can’t wait the 9 seconds before you’re parked.

If you forget to look whether or not there is a pedestrian on the sidewalk that you’re crossing, at least try to not look like your underwear has a fresh brown stain when I knock on your windshield as you almost hit me, mmmkay?

As it turns out, you’ve completely misunderstood the point of turning gadgets off. Don’t feel bad, even the airlines get confused about this one.

Once upon a time the law made sense, as portable electronics started to appear it wasn’t an unreasonable fear that said electronics might interfere with the aircraft, and especially with home-made, modified or damaged transmitters, it’s not impossible.

However, consider this: If your portable electronics were a threat to airliner operation or safety, do you honestly think you’d be allowed to bring them onboard even if you crossed your heart and promised you wouldn’t cause everyone to die?

If this was a real threat to safety, why don’t you have to put your electronics in baggies while going through security — That would make as much sense as having to put liquids in their magical anti-explosion zip-top bags. Why haven’t The Terrorists put together a plan to bring 72 mobile phones on a plane all at once and caused a crash? This would be a win-win for any terrorist, lots of people dead PLUS one phone for each of their virgins!

The whole “turn it off” has almost nothing to do with RF interference of electronics onboard or operational safety of the aircraft itself, but rather, it’s simply to get passengers doing what they’re actually supposed to be doing during time and safety critical moments of the flight.

In the event of some sort of an emergency, passengers need to be just a bit more aware then your average 13 year old playing the final level of his favourite game on whatever passes for a gameboy these days, take-offs and landings happen to be the most dangerous parts of a flight, superseded only by the fat guy in the window seat who is still polishing off the leftovers of his chili (with extra beans, because why wouldn’t he?) from the front of his shirt.

Boarding is annoying enough with airlines boarding back-to-front or front-to-back rather then window-to-isle; the last thing I need when getting to my window seat is some asshole in the aisle seat who is too busy in Excel calculating how much it costs everyone on the plane and the airline for those extra 15-45 seconds it takes him to pick up his laptop, power adapter, laptop bag, external battery, wireless mouse and transmitter, USB memory stick, headphones, and the 14 sheets of paper he’s balancing so that I can clear the aisle and not look like the idiot blocking everyone behind me.

It’s hard enough getting this same business asshole to put his laptop away before landing, you let him keep tweaking his powerpoint presentation right through the landing and he’s going to be blocking everyone else picking up the power cord he dropped trying to put away his laptop after the doors were disarmed rather then getting off the plane (not to be confused with getting the plane off)

Since the law is already in place limiting electronics it’s just easier to keep using it to achieve the same result then to have the law updated to reflect the actual modern concerns.

So I hate to say it, but the flight attendant was right about turning your iPhone off, hit standby, put it in your pocket and we can all get off the ground that much sooner. Put the Kindle away, I don’t need a Kindle from three rows away smacking me in the head during turbulence. Put the laptop away, if your time was actually *that* valuable you wouldn’t be flying commercial anyway. There is plenty of time in the air for all of that, but if you and everyone else can play the game by the rules, put your toys away when told, and pee before putting on your snowsuit, everyone will have a much better flight.

Here we are, two years after Internet Explorer 7 was released, at least a year since Internet Explorer 7 was pushed out as an automatic upgrade, and some ~30% of people are still using it. Heck, we’re all but on the cusp of IE8’s release, and some people are still stuck in the past with IE6!

This upgrade lag is simply unacceptable, especially to all of the web developers out there who are busy creating the content that feeds the monster you the internet.

So what’s the problem? Well, it is a real pain to make sure your Web apps work on five different browsers, but that’s just part of the game. Adding a sixth is a minor annoyance you say? Well actually no, it’s a huge pain! See, you can’t have IE6 installed on the same machine as a later IE version, so I’m stuck using an entirely separate machine that exists only for Internet Explorer 6 just to test minor site changes in IE6.

Not only that, but IE6 “supports” some non-standard features and functions that are not compatible with other browsers, and has a ton of CSS and even JavaScript incompatibilities, so things that should be dead simple in every other browser are a huge pain in IE6. The security vulnerabilities aren’t too much fun either.

For the manager types who need a bullet point list, okay, here it is. There are many reasons to upgrade your browser, but here are the most pertinent:

• Security improvements and fixes.
• Better rendering support for websites.
• Enhanced privacy options.

If you are a web developer you already know many of the headaches associated with Internet Explorer 6, so I’d encourage you to do what you can do encourage users to upgrade.

So, upgrade to what? There are a ton of alternatives to Internet Explorer 6, with the most popular browsers, all available for free, being listed below (in order of my personal preference):

• Mozilla Firefox.
• Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8.
• Google’s Chrome.
• Opera’s Opera.
• Apple’s Safari.

So please, upgrade!

For those unfortunate souls still running Internet Explorer 6, I’ve added a handy annoying reminder to get a better browser. I’m trying to be nice, so I made it only appear on the main page, you can still wander around the site without too much pain, but please, if you see the reminder, it’s there for your own good as well as for mine.

Dear UPS Driver,

Would it be so much to ask that you actually type my apartment number into the doorbell system at the front door?

Twice now I’ve had a UPS driver claim to drop by while I am at home sitting not more then 4′ from the phone where our condo doorbell system rings, and both times nadda all day, then I go look up the tracking number in the late afternoon and find a “customer not available” note. One of the perks of working from home is that I’m nearly always available to receive deliveries.

This time there was at least a sticker on the front door, last time there wasn’t even that.

Oddly enough both days I did have someone else call, last time I had a FedEx delivery the same day and today we ordered pizza, so I know my buzzer works for everyone but UPS.

Sincerely, The Dave.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to love about the iPhone, especially with some of the applications that are making appearances now, but Apple really needs to get some of the basics implemented.

Whenever I complain I always have someone popup to say that it isn’t needed because information just flows between apps. To some extent this is true, it’s one click to call a phone number from an email (assuming it’s formatted correctly, no way to add that missing zero or area code though), Google Maps adds contacts to the address book automatically, etc.

What I can’t figure out is how exactly to flow three 16 digit numbers from an email to a courier’s tracking page to find out when my Christmas gift will be here.

Apple fanbois, enlighten me!

I am currently running an entire virtual instance of Windows Vista (you know, that OS you keep poking holes at in your commercials) and in that instance I am running three different webbrowsers and a mail *server*.

Guess what is using more memory, iTunes or Vista? Now keep in mind one is an operating system and the other is an overgrown music player which Apple has bundled (hmm, wasn’t Apple among those crying about Microsoft’s bundling a couple years ago) with some of their hardware.

Please learn to write more compact code, and for the sake of all that is holy, learn how to use multiple threads so the entire iTunes GUI can be snappy and responsive while it takes iTunes 99% of a 2.4GHz core for over 30 seconds just to connect to an iPhone, will ya?