Recently in Grumpiness Category

When these appeared on WRIfolks' desks last month, people said, "That better not be this year's bonus," and laughed.

Let's just say nobody's laughing any more.

Dear Merchants:

If your only hope of achieving profitability for the year depends on my getting up at 3:00am on the day after Thanksgiving to spend money that I don't have on consumer electronics devices that I don't want just because you drop the price a little, then you are well and truly [censored].

Perhaps you should try harder to turn a profit every month of the year, not just in December.

Thank you.

One of the more annoying 'features' of Windows Vista is the cheesy semi-transparent window borders - apparently implemented on the theory that the topmost window isn't really the one you want to see.

Windows Vista: Microsoft's failure to distinguish 'possible' from 'advisable'.

The other day, I had a Notepad2 window maximized, and some other window - I forget what it was - sitting on top of it, when I noticed some stripes in the topmost window border. This was a little odd, because Notepad2 windows have plain white backgrounds. A bit of experimentation revealed that the window border was showing me the desktop underneath the Notepad2 window.

Way to go, 'softies. Not only did you waste a few developer-years on a feature that's cheesy, annoying & completely useless, you didn't even implement it correctly.

Any message in one's inbox that has the word 'Snopes' in the subject line is a chain letter, and can be safely disregarded.

Two items:

1. The other day, I received a clinic bill for $42, for something I had already paid for. (It was on my last credit card statement: already cleared, already paid.) On page two of the statement, they admit to having recevied a $42 payment from me, on the same day as the unpaid $42 expense - but they're not sure that my $42 payment was intended to cover the $42 expense, so they'd like me to send them another $42, just in case. Nice try, chimps.
2. Recently, WRI switched to a new administrator for our flexible spending account program. The new administrator has just a few new requirements that must be met before they'll fork over the cash; specifically, for physician visit copays, they apparently require an EOB document. Apparently they neglected to pass this requirement along to the doctors, from whom we have never received any EOB documents. I faxed them the usual paperwork (which for the last eighteen months has sufficed), just in case; but I am not hopeful.

There seems to be a variant of Murphy's Law at work here: if there's any possible way for these companies to screw their customers, they will.

Meanwhile, over on Facebook I have:

• Two group invitations;
• Two (lil) green patch requests;
• One knighthood invitation;
• Two my city invitations; and
• One tinyadventures invitation.

Supposedly, there's a way to block application spam on Facebook. Perhaps I should find out how....

Option #1: let the kids watch videos on the Apple TV.

Problem #1: the kids lose the remote, then throw a fit when they can't watch Cars for the thousandth time.

Option #2: let the kids watch DVDs, either on the television, or on the computer.

Problem #2: the kids render the DVDs unplayably scratched and/or smeared, then throw a fit when they can't watch Monsters, Inc. for the thousandth time.

(Also: when I'm king of the world, designers of DVDs will wake up one morning to discover that every single device or appliance that they use - televisions, toasters, toilets - will play two minutes of unskippable commercials every time they try to use it. Yes, that's a cute animation you've come up with for the main menu on your DVD. No, I don't want to sit through it every [censored] time Sam wants to watch the movie.)

Dear Cow-orkers:

Is it too much to ask that, before committing your code, you make sure it compiles?

Apparently so.

After an entire day of stonewalling, around 5:00pm the T-Mobile order-status page finally coughed up a UPS tracking number for the phone I ordered yesterday.

Then it was UPS' turn to stonewall. No such package, said the UPS shipment tracking page.

After two hours of that, finally UPS acknowledged the existence of my package - and revealed that my phone, which I ordered yesterday before the 6:00pm overnight-delivery cutoff and for which I paid extra to get overnight delivery - is still in Dallas.

Thanks bunches, T-Mobile & UPS.

Dear Senior Developer:

Parameter validation is good.

Parameter validation works.

Consider using it sometime.

Thank you.