Common Folk Collective » Frustration

Sigh Files

DCDan — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 22:40:52 +0000

Sigh, when how one looks is the focus of the press are actors are compelled to have plastic surgery and sites like usually progressive Gawker participate, it should make me want to throw in the towel, but instead, I think I want to double down.

Renée Zellweger’s New Face Is Too Real by Amanda Hess.

On the Perfect Crime

DCDan — Sun, 24 Aug 2014 12:15:59 +0000

Stephen Dubner from Freakonomics says “So what’s “the perfect crime”? It turns out that if you are driving your car and run over a pedestrian, there’s a good chance — especially if you live in New York — that you’ll barely be punished. Why?”

I’d argue being a cop killing a black male is probably just as easy.

Your Email Signature

DCDan — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 19:46:56 +0000

You know the email signature that you often see something along the lines of:
“Disclaimer: This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately if you have received this email by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. Finally, the recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.”

It is complete bullshit and you should treat it as such. If you’re sending confidential information in an unencrypted manner you are goddamn negligent and it’s not my fault you don’t understand the technology you are using. Could you imagine if you put the same disclaimer at the end of phone messages or conversations in general?

Well apparently the some of the employees at Goldman Sachs aren’t very tech savvy and have used what I imagine is their immense legal department, shit tons of cash and market influence to convince Google to literally delete a message out of someone’s inbox.

This sets a horrible precedent for Gmail users as Google is now willing to delete messages from people’s inboxes without their knowledge.

If you misaddress an email the protocol should be to send a follow up message saying “Hey, I fucked up and sent you a message I shouldn’t have, it contains information that I’d rather not release, would you be so kind as to ignore/delete it and as an apology I’ll buy you a fancy dinner.”

Not really.

DC Taxi Cab Protest

DCDan — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 16:08:49 +0000

Today DC Taxi Cabs are staging a protest by causing traffic slowdowns in D.C.

Their main complaints are about services like Uber and Lyft.

Uber will drive people out of NW on weekends
Uber does not discriminate by race when picking people up
Uber will drive people to SE and not claim they are off duty when asked
Uber never claims the credit card machine isn’t working

A local taxi driver, who requested to only be identified as “Schlechter Mensch,” complained “First they moved from the zone system that I could use milk a few dollars out of people who didn’t know better, to the meters which have such high fees Manhattanites think I’m ripping them off. Then I’m not supposed to talk on the phone the whole ride.” He told me while clipping a passing cyclist and throwing a cigarette butt out of the window.

Taxi drivers in DC, whose moral compass ranks right up there war profiteers and oil executives, will likely keep on complaining about this to every unfortunate rider.

Find more information here

Everything Happens for a Reason

DCDan — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 13:51:13 +0000

Are you tired of vapid motivational messages? So am I.

The Revolution Will Not Be Monetized

DCDan — Tue, 03 Jun 2014 22:10:09 +0000

With apologies to Gil Scott-Heron:

The Revolution Will Not Be Monetized
You will not be able to stay home, blogger.
You will not be able to plug in, log on and sign out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on facebook and tumblr,
Skip over Hulu commercials,
Because the revolution will not be monetized.

The revolution will not be monetized.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Geico
Online with limited commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Obama
live tweeting and streaming on YouTube,
with Bill Gates and Zuckerberg sipping five hour energy
drink from a SXSWi sanctuary.
The revolution will not be monetized.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
TED Conference and will not star Natalie Portman and Steve Wozniak or Colbert and Stewart.
The revolution will not give you six minute abs.
The revolution will not get rid of spam.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner,
because the revolution will not be monetized, blogger.

There will be no pictures of you and Derek Jeter pushing that Living Social deal down the web on the dead run,
or trying to slide that LCD television into a stolen healthcare plan.
CNN will not be able to predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 tweets*.
The revolution will not be monetized.

There will be no pictures of pigs tazing down
people in the YouTube replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs tazing down
people in the YouTube replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Houston being
run out of LA on a rail in a tragic death.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Russ
Feingold strolling through Madison in a Red, White and
Blue liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

The Voice, Real Housewives, and Glee
will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Don finally gets down with
Jane on Mad Men because people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be monetized.

There will be no highlights on Tumblr
news and no pictures of Occupy protesters
and Michelle Obama blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Miley Cyrus,
Kayne West, nor sung by Alicia Keys, LMAFO,
Bruno Mars, Toby Keith, or Bon Iver.
The revolution will not be monetized.

The revolution will not be right back after a pop up ad
about a white list, white hardware, or white people.
You will not have to worry about Intel inside,
solutions for a small planet, or thinking different.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not give you wings.
The revolution will not save you 15% on car insurance.

The revolution will not be monetized, will not be monetized,
will not be monetized, will not be monetized.
The revolution will be no podcasts blogger;
The revolution will be live.

Two Security Fails

DCDan — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 17:14:06 +0000

Today I encountered two security fails.
1) When chatting with Sprint customer support they need your account PIN to update your records. After the conversation is over they email your transcript with your PIN sent in the clear.
2) When signing up to pay a travel fee to gain entry to a South American country they confirm your signup by sending you your username and password in the clear.

Good job!

What it Really Means CVS Edition

DCDan — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 16:13:09 +0000

I’m not a big fan of CVS. At peak customer times every store seems to have 10 people stocking shelves filling the aisles with bins with only one person working the register creating a line of customers twenty people deep. CVS recently announced they will no longer sell tobacco as a move to become more of a health store. As the article points out they still sell a lot of very unhealthy products in their store. My cynical guess is that they found that they weren’t making a lot of money cigarettes and they didn’t work well enough as a loss leader. This move has more to do with getting a marketing bump while eliminating a marginally profitable product than it has anything to do with creating healthier customers.

Annoying Trend of 2013

DCDan — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 01:35:06 +0000

A trend that took hold in 2013 is putting overlays over the screen that will block your access to the page unless you give as a ransom your email address or access to your Facebook account. I treat my email address and access to my Facebook like a daughter in high school and to those sites I say.

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

How to Lose an Easy Sale

DCDan — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 13:45:00 +0000

Anyone who knows me, knows that I complain often and loudly about the fact that I live in the capitol of the richest and most powerful nation in the world yet I have to settle for shitty DSL with no option for FiOS or a cable modem. While I understand that FiOS involves infrastructure changes, I can’t say the same for the much hated Comcast (my local cable monopoly) Comcast simply doesn’t want to string a cable to my building. Despite my sole shitty option, I on a regular basis get ads for FiOS and Comcast Business services.

This week I got a letter in the mail touting Comcast Business Services I went to the website http://www.cant-wait.com/ to find out more info and for a mere $109.95 a month I can get 50/10mbps which is literally more than 10 times faster than my current connection. My hope is that if I’m willing to pay for business level Comcast they might be motivated to add me as a customer. So I filled out a form on the site and got an email letting me know that I would be contacted by a rep within a few hours. This is who the rep reached out to me (name redacted)
Did you need services??
XXX XXX, Business Services Executive Comcast Business Services – Northeast Division 676 Island Pond Road, Manchester, NH 03109 Office: 888-895-2988 Option 1, ext XXXX / Efax 800-317-XXXX Direct office # 603-628-XXXX business.comcast.com
Earn $100!!!! Refer another business to Comcast and it's yours! Please call 603-222-7799 for more details. Technical Support: If you are having trouble with your service please contact 1-800-391-3000 for 24/7 assistance.

I’m contacting you for a service that runs over $100 a month and your response looks like something that I’d expect to see on Yahoo! Answers. That’s a pretty solid way to ensure all of the complaints about your shitty customer service are likely true.

Yep this is all I get.