Archive for beware: rant ahead
May 14, 2008 at 2:23 pm · Filed under beware: rant ahead, she's a photographer too
I’ve been eying the Think Tank Photo line of Urban Disguise bags for quite some time now.
A while back, I bought a new camera bag to accommodate my new SLR, but the fit still isn’t quite right. It works, but it’s not ideal. It’s so bulky, and a little awkward. I could never find a way to justify laying out that much money for a camera bag, as the Think Tanks are not cheap, but with my lovely gift card I received from my employer I decided to take the leap (after doing a ton of reading and research on them of course) and buy one of the bags.
I got on the Think Tank website and tried to order it on Monday, using my American Express gift card. It denied my card, stating the billing address was incorrect. The message it gave me stated that my order WOULD NOT BE PROCESSED, and therefore, I assumed, my card not be charged.
I happened to know the card was actually mailed to my boss’s house, so I tried to run it with his address for billing, and it denied again, this time without a valid reason given but still stating no order was actually placed.
So I went to Amazon, and ordered the bag, AND a remote (YAY!) through a camera store selling through them. Amazon rejects the card. I update the billing address to be the address the card was sent to. It rejects again. I emailed customer service, who said the order still had my billing address on it, and customer service changed the address to my boss’s address. They said it should work, but to get back to them if it did not.
It did not. And I got back to them! And what I got for a response is basically that I was out of luck, because it denied for an unknown reason that time and there was nothing else they could do.
Bastiches.
I decided to use money out of my checking account to pay for the purchase and then use the card for expenses like gas and such to replace the money. I had already put a tank on there and a lunch one day (forgot my wallet at home that day, but had the gift card, ha!) so I hopped on American Express’s website to check my balance.
And there I see a charge from Think Tank.
Excuse me?
I called their customer service line, but they did not open until 9am Pacific Standard which would be 11am my time. I’m impatient, so I decided to email them instead and see; my email had no response come 2pm so I decided to call again.
The sweet chicky on the phone tells me that basically it places a temporary hold on the money that should release within a few days, and that they’ve experienced this before.
I said thanks, and let her off the hook, since I doubt there was anything she could do to make me happy in this situation, but my immediate thought was that, “Well, damn, if you can place a hold on my money so I can’t spend it anywhere else, why didn’t you just run the fucking charge fully and let me have my bag?”
>.<
Needless to say, I’m not a happy customer. At least that explains to me why it was probably denied at Amazon; the purchase I was trying to make there, plus the hold, is more than the balance of the card.
Okay. I’m done bitching. Thanks for reading. 
March 2, 2008 at 11:48 pm · Filed under beware: rant ahead, i chew my steering wheel and i enjoy it
What is going on at Facebook?
I used to love it because I could go there to get away from the crap that is Myspace.
Recently, more and more of the applications at FB require you to spam out 10 or 20 application requests to friends before they can be in use.
And lately, I’ve started getting friend requests from random strangers.
That bothers me. It never used to happen at FB. Ever. In my time there up until the past month when they’ve started I’ve had ONE “random” friend request, but it was a young man living overseas who shared my last name. It’s not a massively common name, so I could see why he’d be seeking out others. We messaged briefly and he was a nice guy, but I still denied his friend request.
I’m quite personal on FB, shedding all anonymity on that one site alone in all the internet.
At Myspace, you’ll get friend requests from people all over the place, who have never met you. I’ll say again, that bothers me. Why would I want to give you full access to my profile if I don’t know you? Why would I want a link to you in my social networking profile when we’ve never spoken a word?
The most recent weirdo on FB is a little too persistent for my tastes. Albeit, I have a low tolerance for such things given the situation.
So I get a friend request from this man. He has male pattern baldness and thick glasses in the photo attached to his request. I look at his profile. He’s a fry cook in a faraway state, marked as Married and has photos of about six kids that all by the looks MUST be his. I do a little math and figure out he is old enough to be my dad.
I message him. “Hi. Do I know you?”
He sends back something to the effect of, “no but i was sumwhere it sayd to ad ppl to chat.”
Call me a bitch, but I pretty much won’t talk to you online if you chat like that and can’t prove to me you’re intelligent otherwise. I know some folks just don’t type well and then don’t take the time to correct their typos. My mate is one of those. Does it annoy me? YES. But he can still carry on a conversation like that. I know some ppl lik 2 talk n chat speak, that’s okay too, sometimes; as I said, if I know you’re intelligent to carry on a substantial conversation in your hindered language, then I’ll still talk to you.
I looked over the guy’s profile again. The lights are on, but no one’s home.
Click.
Message thread deleted. Friend request denied.
That was several days ago.
In my FB inbox today I find a new message, something like “i want to tho wanna chat?”
NO. You nit wit. I denied your friend request, therefore, it no longer shows as pending, so you KNOW I denied it.
You disturb me.
Go back to the Myspace from whence you came!
Get outta my Facebook!
January 4, 2008 at 6:39 pm · Filed under beware: rant ahead, office space
I know I’m a tad rare being a female working in a technology field. There are in truth a lot more women in IT than people seem to think…. but the men still outnumber us.
One thing that has happened around my office since I moved into IT that I have been totally blindsided by is female coworkers from around the building hinting that they think I should date the guys in my department.
Don’t get me wrong… I adore the guys I work with. There are three, and I’m lucky that I would gladly call each one of them a friend. But, first of all, I’m in a serious relationship already and everyone knows that. Second of all, that is NOT why I’m here. I didn’t enter a dominantly male field to “land a man.” I’m a professional, thank you kindly.
It just pisses me off, and disgusts me, really, that these women have nothing better to do than speculate if I would make a good match with the men I work with.
They see us together, cutting up and having a good time (because there’s no other way to be at work if you ask me) and they just assume that there is something beyond friendship there. Most of my friends in my life outside work are male, too, so I’ve dealt with this before, I’ve just never been trapped in an environment with the harpies. I can’t comprehend why a huge percentage of women can’t understand there is such a thing as platonic friendship between opposite sexes. The guys might as well be female as far as I’m concerned; I don’t give a shit what gender anyone is. All I care about is the core personality that makes them them and allows me to enjoy their company. I’ve got friends of both genders, even if the females are more rare, and of all sexual orientations, and I love them all for who they are. They could be genderless aliens for all I care.
It is not my fault that two of the guys are single and lonely and everyone knows it. I’m not single, nor am I lonely. The first two times it happened my reaction to them was to state, “THAT is NOT why I am here,” because frankly it’s none of their damned business what the status of my romantic life is, but I realized quickly that they don’t seem to understand the concept of being professional, of desiring to have a career somewhere. I got tilted heads and squinty eyes in return to that remark, so I chose the other tactic, to remind them I already am in a relationship.
But it keeps happening. I found out today it has even happened amongst women at one of our other divisions when I wasn’t even there.
Talk about fucking livid.
I have to find a way to handle it better. I snapped at the last woman who made a remark about it last week. The only other thing I can think of to stop the situation is if I started wearing a ring on the finger that symbolizes commitment in our culture, but I’m not marrying Boyfriend any time soon. We have too much growing up to do.
Maybe I’ll just make my desk area a shrine to him, lots of photos everywhere, and go buy myself a band and stick it on my ring finger. And tattoo his name on my forehead.
I mean really. Is it that hard to mind your own fucking business, anyway?
November 19, 2007 at 12:13 am · Filed under beware: rant ahead, i chew my steering wheel and i enjoy it, office space
The ex-Evil-Boss, she still haunts me.
It’s just… gaahhhhhh! I… frustrated… must… paintball… her stupid house and her snooty husband!!! And shave her head and tattoo the Number of the Beast on her bald scalp!! And hide her cake make-up stash so everyone would see what she REALLY looks like under there!!!
Okay. Not really. I’m not that kind of girl.
But if there were one person on earth who had the power to make me want to injure small, furry animals…
It’d be her.
Def-def-definitely be her.
October 23, 2007 at 9:05 pm · Filed under beware: rant ahead, i chew my steering wheel and i enjoy it
I’ve had it with these damn idiot drivers. HAD IT!
I propose a method of taking care of them:
Every driver that can prove they are at a defined intelligence level or above is issued a paint-ball gun and several colors of neon paint-balls. Each color is related to a type of driving offense.
Everybody goes out on the road as normal.
Then, every single idiot that talks too much on the cell phone, changes lanes too much and too suddenly, cuts people off, drives under the speed limit in the passing lane, runs red traffic lights, tries to hit small furry animals and children in the street, stops in the middle of the fucking road for no apparent reason, or exhibits any kind of lemming behavior may have their car pelted with a neon paint-ball. (I even think the inconsiderate assholes who don’t give an acknowledgment after I go out of my way to be polite on the road to them should get popped with a color.)
Time will pass… but it won’t take long for this part…
Drivers will become tagged with their idiocy by all the pretty colors on their vehicles!
Any vehicle with more than three colors on it: the Driver gets a suspended license for several months, and then must take and pass with flying colors a specially-created city street AND HIGHWAY driving test!
Any vehicle with more than 35% of the surface area covered in paints: the Driver gets his/her license revoked permanently!
Make the stupid, rude, inconsiderate, inattentive, rotten-headed little bastards ride public transportation!
I’m tired of fighting them every day. T-I-R-E-D! You hear me? I’m done with it.
Nobody’s a perfect driver. We all make boo-boos from time to time. But some make a lot more boo-boos than others. To me, it’s kind of like having a medical license… You fuck up every now and then, but are good most of the time, and folks will look the other way. You fuck up every single day, multiple times a day, and people will start noticing and want to take your license Away… and will probably get away with it, too.
Look out, idiot drivers. Me and my paint-ball gun are coming after you.
I mean it.
