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Archive for the 'stupidity' Category
Debate Flow Chart for Sarah Palin
Published 3.October.2008 Sarah Palin , disgust , good things , smiles , steadylife , stupidity 0 CommentsHome Depot Saga Continued
Published 22.July.2008 business lunacy , customer service , disgust , frowns , frustration , home depot sucks , internet , karma , steadylife , stupidity 3 CommentsA few days ago I wrote about my recent experience with Home Depot. This is the update.
We never heard back from Non Stop Delviery about our chairs. My wife called them today three times, finally she got to a manager who told her that they would be ordering a new set of chairs for us and would advise us as to when they’d be delivered. Unfortunately, there was no email confirmation or even a claim number that they gave us. So, I decided to call Home Depot again.
I got a totally different story this time. I was told that I should have never been told to contact the shipper directly. Well, duh, of course not, I was doing business with the Depot, not Non Stop Delivery. I was also told that they’d do a RMA for me on the spot and could offer me a discount on a new set of chairs. Of course, I have to order them from the online group and they’ll be shipped by the same shoddy shipper as before.
I ordered them and the whole thing will end up costing me about 40 bucks less than the original order, which is nice, but I’m still incredulous.
Here are some things that still annoy me:
- The first guy at HD that I talked to said his name was Curtis. Curtis told me his agent id was 13. The woman that I spoke with tonight (who was significantly more interested in helping me from the get go) had an ID that was 6 digits long. Curtis needs to get his sorry ass fired.
- Any business you do with HomeDepot.com cannot be addressed in the store. I asked the agent I talked with tonight if they were two differnet companies. Her initial repsonse was yes. I then asked if they had the same CEO. Silence. Guess they are not two different companies after all. This forced me to do the re-order through Homedepot.com to get my discount. So I’m still looking at 10 to 14 days before my chairs might show up. The original order was on 6 July 2008. I could potentially not seem my order completed before 5 August 2008. That flat out sucks.
I’m going to continue to fight the good fight against HD by making contact with their corporate offices tomorrow. And next time, I’m going to Lowes - or better yet to my local hardware store Clements.
Home Depot Frustration
Published 18.July.2008 business lunacy , customer service , frowns , frustration , steadylife , stupidity 3 CommentsA few weeks ago, we made the decision that it was time to get some furniture for the deck. We had been hemming and hawing on this for over three years (pretty much ever since we moved into the house) and finally settled on a wrought iron set from Home Depot.
Now, since I don’t have a truck, picking up a table and four chairs was going to be a problem. I’ve abused my friendship with folks who have trucks enough over the years, so I decided to cough up the freight costs ($65) and have them delivered.
I ordered them on 6 July. The Depot shipped them on 9 July, from Alabama, via some no name shipper Non Stop Delivery. They finally showed up yesterday, almost. When the delivery got here, I had a table and two chairs. The driver tried to tell me that that was all I ordered. I explained that I’d actually ordered 2 sets of chairs (2 to a box). She called the warehouse, and they said they didn’t have the second set of chairs. So I noted the discrepancy on the receipt, made a copy and took my 2 chairs and table to the deck.
After getting things settled down for the night, I called the Depot’s customer service number. The essentially told me to call the shipper and gave me some phone numbers. The first one went to some dude name Mike’s voicemail. Mike doesn’t even create his own outgoing message, so I assumed that he’d be worthless. I tried the second number they gave me.
I got a hold of someone there who was happy to help me, though at first she told me that the Depot had only shipped one set of chairs. Fortunately, I have the packing slip which shows 2 sets. I told her that I had it and she said she’d call the warehouse.
Two hours later, I get a call back, the chairs are at “a” ware house, but not theirs, in Baltimore. She doesn’t know when they will be at “their” ware house, but when they get there, I will get a call.
So the lesson learned here is, bug your friends for thier truck and save yourself $65 on shipping.
I am constantly amazed at the crassness of some people. I rolled in to use the men’s room in the office today to find the toilet bowl filled to the brim, un-flushed. Now this was at 7:25 AM, the lights were off in the bathroom. I’m guessing that someone left that present last night.
Who uses the facilities and doesnt flush, besides 4 year olds?
Fierce Independence | Hair on Fire >> Latest Emergency for Me
Published 16.May.2008 business lunacy , disgust , frowns , frustration , geek , internet , steadylife , stupidity , work 0 CommentsI have a group colleagues who have a tendency to be fiercely independent until they are stuck in a bind, at which point they suddenly become completely dependent upon the very group with which they’ve attempted to maintain such fierce independence.
It’s been 16 months since we first made the decision to migrate from one vpn vendor to another. The design is complicated to be sure, but the end result is a fully redundant vpn solution that utilized routing protocols to ensure maximum uptime. (Hows that for BusinessSpeak 2.0)
My colleagues across the pond were supposed to install thier new infrastructure by December 31st 2007. Not one set of boxes was installed. We (I) provided ample guidance including complete config templates for the installation. Still nothing.
A few weeks ago, word came down that one of our european offices was moving. We have been agressively migrating off our old platform this year (with breakneck speed and minimal caution in my opinion) and have nearly replaced all our domestic boxes. Word was that the crew across the pond was planning on deploying the old solution again. Management thought that was an exceedingly bad idea since we are actively migrating away from it. Good call on management’s part.
Here’s where hair caught on fire.
I stood up the new boxes and pinned up VPNs in a non-standard inter-vendor solution a few weeks ago for my fiercely independent bretheren across the pond. Now, their main set of boxes is so over taxed because of ridiculously complicated an archaine deployment practices (packets are litterally manipulated 3 and 4 times as they cross the firewalls) and the reliance on 3DES (yes in 2008 they are still running 3DES) on the vpns. The boxes run at 99% CPU constantly.
I’m really surpised they have not caught on fire themselves.
So, not surpringly, at some point you reach the saturation point. At some point the last straw is placed on the camel’s back and it breaks. At some point the ballon bursts because you’ve put too much air in it. We reached that point.
The latest vpn is just too much for these boxes to handle. They’re choking. We know its not an interoperabilty issue or config issue, because the vpns to other boxes from this vendor are working fine from our new site.
So I get a call at 6:30 AM today. They’d like me to look at it. I say, “I’m pretty sure its a problem with the boxes in London. They’re running at 99% CPU. VPN is CPU intensive, especially when you are running 3DES.” I might as well have pissed into the wind. This must be a problem with the new vendor is the suspicion across the pond.
Nevertheless, I’ve convinced nearly everyone that we need to migrate the vpn to the new platform which is currently 99% IDLE in terms of CPU.
Of course it needs to be done immediately.
So I’ve been working up BGP configs and VPN configs since 7:00.
Oh, and its freakin raining again.
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