Monthly Archives: October 2008

Double Dose of Ranting

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EverQuest released a new expansion.  Frankly I’m not really bothered and may not buy it.  However, Grete is kinda interested so I said I’d get it for her account.  This is the first time we’ve not pre-ordered, and enthusiasm is low (Grete’s pretty down at the moment, so her general EQ mojo is low anyway, hopefully she won’t beat me when she reads this), but I said it would be fine to get it for her account.

So I log on to the Sony website, go to the account management page and try and buy the expansion.  I get a dialog which asks me to fill in our post code, select a secret security question and a secret answer.  Never seen the page before, no prompts telling me why it’s showed up.  The drop down list of secret questions is empty (other than the default entry of ‘please select a secret question’).  So I try ignoring it, but it wants me to select something, I try answering a random question but it still wants me to pick a question.

I can’t pick a damn question.

I search, in vain, for some way to update it via the profile, but it’s not there.  So I go to the Sony help site which if anyone’s tried to use it, knows how terrible it is.  I finally opt for Live Chat, and get a form to fill out with 6 questions and a box to describe the problem which I fill with a couple of paragraphs of text, and then click ‘go live chat’, at which point I get a popup telling me live chat is disabled due to maintenance.  Why the hell did it let me fill the form in then, stop me before I put in the effort.

So I finally go to the e-mail help and rant about the problem and the stupid site.  Maybe they’ll fix it, maybe they won’t, but since we were already just on the edge of maybe buying it and maybe not, if they don’t fix it without a lot of hassle they just lost another sale.  This is typical, in my experience, of Sony.  They make everything as hard as they can, so you have to fight to spend your money with them and they still make you feel like it was your fault.

Gahhh.

Second rant.  I e-mailed a shop that sells miniatures and said specifically and clearly ‘are you able to order this particular miniature for us’.  The reply was waffly and didn’t answer the question, but commented on some vague notion of them not getting that mini in the last delivery and ‘maybe being able to sort it out’.  The mini in question can be purchased direct from the supplier in the US, and we said that to the folk in the shop when we were in there at the weekend (before this e-mail), but they said the supplier’s customer service was bad and it can take ages to arrive.  So, I replied to this vague e-mail saying ‘on Saturday you said it would be quicker to order through you’, and the reply to that was ‘it will be if it arrives before the end of the year’.  WTF does that mean?  Why can’t they just answer a basic and simple question.

Q: Can you order this mini for us?

A: Yes, it will take 2-8 weeks or
A: No, we don’t do specific orders, if it arrives as general stock we can let you know or
A: No, but I’m sending a full order in for re-stocking and it’s listed, should be here in 3 weeks

or anything else, other than totally vague randomness.  This is a niche hobby with low turnover and a small market, you’d think they were keen to retain any direct customers they could get.  I was polite, clear, concise.

So I bought it over the web from the US supplier, and they shipped in 24 hours after I placed the order and sent me a nice e-mail to tell me so.  I’ll pay the $16 shipping charge on a $7 purchase to get service from someone who’s clear, concise and polite (I actually bought another two mini’s, to take it up to around $12 worth of mini’s, but that’s not the point).

In this day and age, I get very frustrated when technology gets in the way of simple purchases or when people can’t, don’t or won’t answer a straight question with a straight answer.  It’s my money, they either want it, or they don’t want it, but I’m not going to fight to give it to them.

Probably really bad of me

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What motivates you to do better?  Knowing you can still improve?  The pure challenge?  Knowing there are people who can generate better stuff than you but that it’s within your reach?   Totally internal drive?  You don’t need to do better, you just do what you do and see how it turns out?

I’ve covered this in other blog posts, but basically, I’m easily discouraged.  If I find that something I can create isn’t very good when compared to everyone else I’m prone to be discouraged.  It’s odd because I’m really not competative in the normal sense, so I’m not sure where it comes from.

Anyway, after looking around the interwebnets and seeing a lot of very impressive painted mini’s I was feeling discouraged.  But, and this is why it’s bad, I found a huge site with thousands of posted pictures (rated by the site members) and I don’t truly suck.  I’m about average.  I can cope with being about average and not sucking.

That’s something I can build on.

edit: Oh, and the site has a lot of display quality mini’s for sale (rather than gaming style mini’s which tend to be generic) and for some reason, the ones that are out of stock tend to be the half-naked female characters.  You’ll never guess the general demographic of mini painters ….

A month with WordPress

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It’s just over a month since I left Blogger and started running my own WordPress site.  I’m not new at hosting sites, I have several (some phpBB, various custom stuff, previous goes at CMS’s) and I’m comfortable with apache and mysql.

Here’s a few random thoughts about WordPress.

  • Easiest, cleanest and best ‘default settings’ install of just about any web-app I’ve installed.  Really impressed with the ease at which it goes on, and how it works out-of-the-box without having to worry about any settings.
  • Solid and robust plugin architecture.  It’s a constant battle when you host your own sites to keep the number of plugins down while still adding some stuff to the site which makes it easier to use.  WordPress handles the plugins really well, I’ve not had any conflict with each other yet and I’ve not had any cause any weird issues.  I’ve added one or two that I think really add some value and I’ve added a few that are just fun stuff for me (like Pull Quotes).  Overall I’m really impressed, and the automatic one click upgrade for plugins rocks.
  • Because WordPress is popular, there are a lot of templates and I was lucky enough to find one which is basically bullet proof and ideal.  I usually have a lot of problems with templates and CMSs, either having to do a lot of customisation or losing out on features because the templates are old.  This isn’t really a WordPress ‘good point’ since it’s the template designer who’s done the hard work, but I guess the popularity and template system in WordPress helps.
  • The actual process of writing posts is pretty easy.  Sometimes I find the editor a bit clumsy, and having to flick between HTML and Visual editing mode for the more complex post styles can be annoying.  The built in media manager seems powerful and I’m probably only just scraping the top of that but it does what I need (allowing me to upload images and then including them in posts without having to FTP them to my hosting provider and work out a URL).  Compared to Blogger it’s far more flexible and powerful.
  • I like the pages feature – I felt it was a major issue that Blogger didn’t provide a built-in method of including non-dated pages/posts.
  • Managing posts / tags and categories is a pain (in 2.6 you have to edit a post to change the category / tags).  I think they’re changing this in 2.7 or later.  But, a simple plugin fixed this for me anyway and made it a lot easier.  Blogger’s tagging / category feature was reasonably limited and although I don’t think I’m benefiting yet fully from WordPress’s tagging / category system it is far more flexible.  I love the tag to category and category to tag feature, which has saved me a lot of work in restructing the posts.
  • Overall page views are down a great deal since leaving Blogger.  This is party because of the (bizarre) popularity of my posts on my thumb pain / tendonitis and party because the site doesn’t rank as highly in Google for other random topics.  Generally, I don’t mind.  This is a personal blog for me to vent and my friends to read, so how highly it ranks on Google isn’t an issue.  I could have spent a lot more time with the redirection from the Blogger blog, sending visitors to specific posts on this site, but I decided it really wasn’t worth it to preserve the people reading about thumb pain.
  • I think i already blogged about the fantastic seamless import of Blogger content into WordPress.  If not, it was fantastic.
  • I like trackbacks.  I like sending pings when I link to another blog.  Part of the reason why I left Blogger was a lack of trackbacks / pings.  If I link to someone’s blog I want them to know it, so they feel like their blog is valuable and being read.  Even if they don’t display the pings / trackbacks on their site, it’s just a nice easy way of letting people know they’re being read.
  • I never did find a plugin that worked as well as the Blogger blogroll one (which shows the last post in an rss feed you choose, for each entry).  Which is a shame.  There are some, but they seem over complex.

Overall, I’m more than pleased with the move.  I feel more in control of how the blog looks (even though I’ve hardly touched the template I’m using) and I have direct and immediate access to the content (I back the mysql database tables up each night).  WordPress itself performs flawlessly, and there aren’t any major features that I wish it had.

US presidential campaign in D&D format

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Found here, originally from here, and quoted briefly here,

MCCAIN: Oh my god, I did not leave my left nut in a tiger cage in the Tomb of Horrors to spend my Friday nights mopping up after the new kid.

and

MCCAIN: Yeah?  Bring it!  I didn’t spend 3 years in the Abyss with Githzerai hooking my nads up to a car battery to get beat by some Wellesley girl.

Check out the full post here.

Blending

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You can practice something over and over again, but if what you’re practicing is wrong, it isn’t going to help.  I look at the work other people do with miniatures and I lament that I can’t achieve those effects, and yet I know why.  Because I’m not using the right technique.  So, I’m going to try and paint the following three mini’s using as much blending and patience as I can muster.

Vampire Blegh

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I knew as soon as I painted the Vampire’s shirt red, and did the hack-black-wash job on the cloak that I’d ruined the entire piece.  Oh well, now I’m just slapping paint on it to finish it up as quickly as possible.

I’ve never been able to do convincing red-clothing, it’s surprisingly annoying.  Although if I did real blending instead of just wash/dry-brushing it would be easier (in the sense that blending works better with reds, but since I can’t blend well it’s a moot point).

Edit: Updating rather than posting a fresh post.  It’s finished – here and here.

Movie news link sauce with added pepper

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Some links to random movie stories (language and links in some of these pages may not always be safe for work)

Enjoy.

One meme to rule them all and in the darkness bind them

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From Marcos’ Journal,

When you see this, post in your own journal with your favorite quote from The Princess Bride. Preferably not “As you wish” or the Inigo Montoya speech.

So here’s mine,

Vizzini: You only think I guessed wrong! That’s what’s so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha.

I love this quote for many reasons, but I’ve bolded my favourite part, which used to get quoted during our games of Risk.

Bourne 4?

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Although based on the original concept from the Robert Ludlum books, the fourth instalment will follow an original story. Director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon will return, and the movie will be produced by Frank Marshall.

From http://www.empireonline.com/news/feed.asp?NID=23440

If it’s truly as good as the first three, I’ll be happy.  If not, it’ll be a travesty.  Later, I’ll claim that night time is dark because there’s no light.

Oh, and Kevin Smith in space!

Wii Fit & Toys-r-Us

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We got our Wii Fit from Toys-r-Us (not sure if I said that before).  We got it at the time by ringing up a few times, asking when / if they had deliveries.  The day they got a delivery Grete went over and queued with about 14 other people.  They handled that pretty well with tickets and assurances everyone would get one.

Anyway, about 14 days ago we noticed the Wii Fit had a fault.  If you stood in a specific place it would lose connection with the Wii.  It was either being power recycled or the Bluetooth was being reset, or it was causing a short.  It got steadily worse.  We rang Toys-r-Us and first of all they said we’d need to bring it back in, with our Wii (which we didn’t get from them) to test it and they would refund us.

We explained how hard it had been to get one in the first place, and could they not do an exchange when they got stock?  The person on that phone at that time said no.  Anyway, we rang back a day or two later, and this time the (more knowledgeable) staff member said oh yeh, no problem, they would do us a definite replacement when they got stock in, and they never mentioned taking in the Wii to do any testing.  And they said they aught to be getting some stock on Thursday or Friday.

So, Grete (who always gets to do this stuff because I’m a coward) took the Wii Fit in yesterday.  Initially the member of staff she spoke to said they couldn’t promise a replacement, but Grete explained the conversation she had on the phone, and a different staff member confirmed that was possible.  She got a slip of paper and came home.  Today, they called and Grete’s just returned with our new Wii Fit.  We were only without it for a couple of days in the end (although because of the fault, we’d stopped using it anyway).

So, Toys-r-Us, pretty good service in the end, but I think you need to educate your staff more consistently on your policy and processes.