Exiting a Bus

I'll probably go back and write about previous IPTPYA episodes, but here's a fresh one for today.

The procedure for exitting a bus is rather complicated (I'll write more about other experiences later). But today all the stupidity of Vancouver mustered itself into one lady in a spectacular manifestation of misfiring neurons. Today we got to ride an older bus. These buses don't have advanced door opening technology like a pushbar (which, if repeatededly and violently shaken will eventually trigger the door opening switch normally triggered by a single push), no, these buses have a large 30 point font in clear yellow on black letters on both doors at eye level that reads: "STEP DOWN ON TOP STEP TO OPEN DOORS".

Let's dissect that. STEP DOWN. As opposed to stepping up, or sideways, or backwards, or remaining immobile, clearly indicates a step in a downward direction is required. But required for what? ON TOP STEP. Ohh, now as a reasonable person, I interpret this to mean that I need to step onto a step, as opposed to standing in the aisle waiting for something to happen through telepathy. TO OPEN DOORS. Ahhhh, so all this only applies if I actually want to open the doors. So what I'm getting out of this is standing in place probably won't open the doors. I need to move my footsies somewhere.

So, the bus stops and the lady is standing in the aisle directly infront of the door. As a bonus, the big green light above the door turns on, indicating that the doors will open on command. And two big white lights also turn on, illuminating the 30 point yellow on black font. Or rather, would have illuminated them if it wasn't the middle of the day with a clear sky. She stands there, staring at the door for a second, then leans forward, skillfully avoiding losing her balance and grabs the door handle (which is actually a handrail after the doors swing open), and starts violently shaking it. Nothing happens. Now, this is actually an impressive gymnastic feat. There are two large downward steps between the aisle and the door, to lean forward and grab the door without losing balance and accidentally stepping on the TOP STEP would take a lot of skill. I doubt I could do it without practicing. Over time the shaking becomes more violent until it climaxes when the green light turns off and the bus starts moving. Then the yelling starts. "Bah Doos! BAH DOOS! BAH DOOS! BAH DOOS!". (Translated in to English, that's "Back Doors", I think.)

I'm surprised the driver could even hear her over the racket of the engine and the violent door shaking which upon climaxing showed no signs of relenting. The driver stops the bus.. the magic green light and two white lights go on.. again.. and the driver yells back "You have to step down on the top step".

Pause. Pause. Violent door shaking. Complete foot immobility. BAH DOOS! BAH DOOS! At long last the three chimes sound indicating that all the doors are about to open, and the driver manually opens them. She storms off the bus in a huff. The kicker is she had a monthly bus pass dangling from her neck validated for the past several months, she's clearly a regular customer of the transit system, but apparently not a regular customer of logical thought processes. I guess we should thank her ineptitude for holding all of us up for a good minute of entertainment.

So to recap, when your attempting to exit a bus, the aisle is an IPTPYA.

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Inappropriate Places to Park Your Assstronomically unintelligent keister

What is IPTPYA? Inappropriate Places To Park Your Ass. I live in Vancouver, and while I'm sure every city has its fair share of idiots, they seem to congregate around Universities. Vancouver has two of these institutions. I'm not just talking about students either, I'm talking about people, in general, who have somehow manged to avoid being eliminated by natural selection while simultaneously demonstrating they have only evolved enough logic and common sense to triumph over the turnip table of the local produce store in a battle of the wits.

One subtype of these people are my pet peeve. I'm a person that likes to get where I'm going without being held up for no good reason. I don't speed or drive dangerously when in my car, and I don't bump into people or shove I'm walking/running, and if there's a traffic jam, whatever, I'm fine with that. But it's the people who impede traffic (either vehicle or people traffic), the ones that are completely clueless to their surroundings, that don't even notice they're creating an impassible obstruction, and that can't fire the 3 required neurons to figure it all out, that really annoy me.

"I am constantly amazed by the lack of common sense and general awareness in University students". I started using this phrase back in undergrad. I noticed many of my fellow students didn't seem to be "all there" mentally. Just little things like on a perfectly flat section of street on a clear day: look left, look right, look left again, then step out on a quest to cross the street directly infront of the bus that is no more than 20 meters away. Oh, but then, hearing the horn and screeching brakes, look at the bus, and then stop. Deer in headlights. Do i keep crossing or do I go back? I know, I'll just stay here for a few seconds and think about it. IPTPYA.

These are their stories as witnessed by me.

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Making Drupal exist in a subdirectory

I have a confession: I am a bit of a neat freak when it comes to my files. Clutter annoys me almost as much as compressed files that extract themselves into the current working directory.
I set out on a quest today, to upgrade Drupal AND to make it happily exist in a subdirectory on my server, BUT, to make it appear that it exists in the root directory.

Actually just that turned out to be easy, Drupal even provides a guide that conveniently assumes you don't have any other content in your directory. I mean, you've got Drupal, why would you want a /photos directory that's not "inside" Drupal? Or a /files directory that Drupal doesn't manage? Stop being silly.

It turns out, though, that what I wanted was also quite easy, but piecing together the bits and cutting the cruft took excessively long.  But that's a typcial computery solution: A simple solution and a long and winding road to find it.

So, let's begin.

1. Put Drupal in a subdirectory. Mine is called drupal-5.7


2. Add a .htaccess to the root of the website to rewrite incoming requests to Drupal:
   

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule ^$ drupal-5.7/index.php [L]
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ drupal-5.7/$1 [L]

   
   Now, I'm not a .htaccess expert, so I may be slightly wrong in how exactly this works. The first RewriteRule directs the server to redirect all requests for "/" to Drupal's index.php, so drupal is what you see when you just type the base URL. The .htaccess inside the drupal directory can further rewrite this.
   The two rewrite conditions are for the next rule, !-f and !-d mean that only do this next rewrite if the file(or directory) doesn't already exist. I have /photos on my server that I don't want rewritten to /drupal-5.7/photos/
   The final rule simply appends the prefix drupal-5.7/ to the request, and sends it off. Drupal further rewrites this when Tidy URLs are used.


3. Delete /index.php, we don't want the server to find it.


4. Make sure you don't already have any existing files/directories that are inside the Drupal install. For example, I already use a /files directory, so does Drupal, so I renamed Drupal's to 'dfiles', and changed the config accordingly (Administration -> File System).

Cake. It all works as far as I can tell.

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3kg to go

I would just like to point out, that I have gone through almost 20kg of flour in 4 months.  :) 

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S M R T

 

Devon thought I should take the CBC IQ test just so we could flaunt our geekiness and what not. So here it is, the same score I got back in highschool... go figure... Apparently i'm not so good at the English thing...

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Research About

I’m a PhD student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in electrical and computer engineering. My supervisor is Dr. Guy Lemieux and I’m studying in an area called Spatial Computing. Specifically, how to split a computer program up among a million-ish very small processors, and have it do useful work.

The rest of this is just a placeholder, until I write more.

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Ode To Whirlpool (Updated June 21)

Oh Whirlpool, how do I love thee.. let me count the ways...

*crickets*

So, let's see, let's go way back to the beginning of December 2006. Safeway puts 10kg bags of Five Roses flour on sale, 2 for 1. Now, I rather enjoy baking and flour is a somewhat necessary component, and Five Roses is all I use, and the Christmas season is coming up, and I have family in town, and my grandparents were going to be here for New Years.. so what the heck.. I'll buy two 10kg bags of flour.

Then the fateful day, December 6, 2006. I've got bread rising on the counter ten minutes away from going in the oven, my oven (a Whirlpool Gold gas range, absolutely love it) takes 10 minutes to preheat.. Temperature.. 400.. Bake... On.. BANG. Now, that last noise is distinctly not part of the preheat cycle. Indeed, no gas at all in the oven.. the igniter isn't even on. But the stovetop still works, and the oven light works, and all the electronics, just not the oven.

Well, that's a bummer, emergency call to my Aunt and nip over to her place to bake the bread. Then the process begins.. Calling Whirlpool.

I'm informed by Whirlpool that the earliest they can get someone out to look at it is the 11th.. Unfortunately, I'm out of the country from the 11th to the 17th.. So, they'll come on the 18th.. between 8am and 4pm. That's a rather large window but every company seems to operate like that, so whatever.. if I can get my oven fixed by then that's great, I can still do Christmas baking.

December 18th, 9am-ish. I get a call from the technician stating that he'll be at my place between 4 and 6pm.. I protested because I had evening plans, and after 4pm is outside the already rather large window of 8am to 4pm. But, I'm told that if I wanted to reschedule it would be 3 to 4 more days for his next available timeslot in the day.. wtf? Fine, whatever, I'll cancel my evening plans.. And I'll just sit here and twiddle my thumbs all day too because I cleared my daily schedule too.

So December 18th, 5:45 pm, guess who shows up.. yup.. Good thing I didn't just push back the plans to after 6.. because he spent half an hour looking at my oven.. and eventually arrived at the conclusion that "it's broke".. it needs a new control board.. 2 to 3 weeks to order one. $300. And was gone around 6:20. Charming.

So, all my Christmas baking plans.. kaput.

Lovely Christmas comes and goes, and on the 29th I phone the technician (almost 2 weeks, he should have some indication about where my part is) .. He says.. we have no idea where it is, it'll be well into the new year before we get it. Huh.. customer service eh? New year plans.. bye bye.. sorry everyone, but I can't cook anything for you... and ham and freshly baked rolls on the stovetop just, I don't know.. it lacks something...
So, here is letter number 1. Sent to Whirlpool on the 2nd of January.

January 2nd, 2007.

To whom it may concern,
 
 I am writing this letter to convey dissatisfaction with my recent and ongoing
 customer service experince with Whirlpool.
 
 On December 6, 2006 my gas oven (GW395LEG) made a "pop" sound, and stopped
 working.  I called Whirlpool customer service and was informed the first
 available technician timeslot was the 11th -- one day after I left the city
 for a research conference.
 
 The next "working day" timeslot I was in town was a week later, the 18th,
 where I was given a 8am to 4pm window.  At 9am the technician phoned to tell
 me that he would arrive after 4pm and before 6pm.  I had already
 cleared my schedule for that day, and was then forced to cancel my evening
 plans as well due to the short notice of the change.
 
 At 5:45pm on the 18th the technician arrived, spent half an hour with my stove,
 and declared that I needed a new control board.  It would cost $300 + labour +
 tax + site visit charge, almost half the cost of the stove, and would take
 three weeks to order.  I live in a major urban center, Vancouver, I find
 it astonishing that there are no parts within three weeks of this
 city.
 
 On December 29th, I contacted the technician for a status update, and was told
 that it would be well into the new year before the replacement part arrived.
 
 It has been almost a month since my oven became inoperable (stovetop still
 works thankfully), and during that time I have been unable to do any Christmas
 baking, cook Christmas dinner, or entertain guests on New Years.  To me, as a
 customer, a month (and counting) to repair a vital kitchen appliance is
 unacceptable.  I could have ordered a new stove and had it installed by now.

Sincerely,

So, that's that. On the morning of January 11th, 2007, I receive a call at like 6am (wtf, these people.. Vancouver PACIFIC TIME.. hello!).. anyway.. somehow I missed that call. They left a message.. we got your message, your part has just arrived, call us and we will arrange a time for it to be installed.

Hey, great.. I have no idea if that letter actually did any good, but all I need is a technician for about 10 minutes to install a circuit board (note: I could do this myself.. but it's a gas appliance, so you have to be a Canadian gas certified technician to open it up.. even for installing circuit boards).. so I call back and get to wait on hold for a while.. And get someone.. explain my situation, explain that YOU called ME to get an appointment ASAP. "Well Sir, the first available appointment we have is on the 22nd of January..."

Now, I'd just like to skip ahead for a moment.. there's a spot on their "Whirlpool Service Quality Survey" for "Following your call for service, how long before the technician arrived?".. the choices are "Same day", "next day", "2-3 days", or "4 or more".. somehow... "4 or more" doesn't seem to capture the fact that they wanted me to wait 11 more days for a service call. 11!. Ok, fine, book that day for me..

Then I call the technician directly he says.. it'll be really fast to install it, I'll call you if I get an earlier time available.. Great.. that means.. "go away". I call whirlpool again on the 13th, and ask specifically for the person who called me.. unfortunately they can't connect me to anyone by name.. and regarding my service call, "that's the best we can do.". But they do provide me with one other tidbit.. "Sir, I see that your part was ordered, then somehow the order got cancelled, and the part was ordered again. But it's in now."..

Well, that sorta accounts for the delay, and I guess as a good little customer I'm just supposed to laugh that off ? You're fscking looking at proof that I've had to wait longer than I should have had to for this part.. and now you're telling me 11 more days is the best you can do... Somehow I resist the urge to make a comment about the best they can do being pretty lousy.

So, the days go by with me without my oven, and two 10kg bags of flour sitting there mocking me.. Which brings us to January 22nd, 2007 and a standard window of 8am to 4pm for the technician to show up and perform (what turned out to be a 10 minute repair from the time he walked in my door to the time he walked out).. You'll never guess who called at 9am.. go ahead.. guess.. I dare ya.. "I'll be there sometime between 11 and noon". Hey, great.. I can still make it to campus.

While we're playing guessing games, guess who doesn't show up between 11 and noon, and guess who calls at 1pm.. I'll give you a hint, the conversation went something like this: "My day got busy, I'll be there around 2:30.".. No? still can't guess.. well.. I've give you another hint.. it's the same person who called around 2:30 to say "I'm still busy, i'll be there between 4 and 6pm.". At this point I objected and pretty much demanded that he show up before 4pm.. because I had evening plans.

3:30 he shows up, 3:40 he's out the door and I have a working oven. Hallelujah!

Anyway, because of the, ahem, poor service, I decide to write another letter to Whirlpool:

January 24, 2007

To Whom It May Concern,
 
 I am writing this letter to further my previous letter, dated January 2, 2007,
 regarding my most recent service experience with Whirlpool.  On January 22nd,
 my oven was successfully repaired.
 
 It has been 7 weeks (almost 2 months) since my original call to Whirlpool
 customer service on December 6th.  I have been without an oven for the duration
 of this time.   This has caused me to be unable to make the simplest of meals
 for my own daily basic needs.
 
 I have been forced to eat out, or increase my grocery bill by purchasing items
 that were microwavable or able to be cooked on the stovetop only.  This has
 been most inconvenient not to mention unhealthy.
 
 As detailed in my previous letter, I was unable to entertain guests over the
 holidays.  I was forced to make alternative arrangements, and tell my family
 the could not come visit me for Christmas and New Years, as I was unable to
 cook a traditional dinner for them.   This is the situation that your
 company put me in, and it has been embarrassing.
 
 The service technician called on both my scheduled service days, December 18th
 and January 22nd, saying that he would be late and outside the 8am to 4pm
 service window. This is unacceptable. I cleared my schedule and missed two days
 of work for him to tell me he was going to come in the evening. If arrangements
 were made for him to come in the evening I would not have had to have missed
 two days of work. My time is just as valuable as his and yours.
 
 I was originally told that the control board required to repair my oven would
 take three weeks to order. I thought this was an excessive amount of time,
 considering the metropolis I live in (Vancouver), however, as stated above it
 has been two months.  I was not told that the item was on back order, nor was I
 told that there would be any delay in service. It is unacceptable.  I
 feel that I have been more then patient and cooperative over this whole ordeal.
 
 In light of the inconveniences that I have incurred from your poor and
 disappointing customer service I feel it is only fair that I am compensated for
 these inconveniences.
 
 Sincerely,

To date (March 7th, 2007 that letter has received no reply). However, on March 4th, I got a wonderful letter in the mail from Whilrpool.. A Whirlpool Service Quality Survey..

Our records indicate that your appliance was recently serviced. The repair work was done by an employee or an authorized Whirlpool Service Center, which is independently owned and operated.

Please help us evaluate and subsequently improve our customer service by completing this survey. The survey is postage paid for your convenience.

Thank you for taking the time to respond and for your continued trust in Whirlpool Products

Uh-huh.. It's only been 7 weeks since I called you until the date my appliance was usable again.. no problem.. I enjoy taking the time out of my life to wait for Whirlpool.. That was sarcasm in case anyone missed it. :p

Needless to say, Whirlpool didn't score so hot on their survey. I resisted the urge to make my own boxes for some of the questions because "Dissatisfied" doesn't quite cut it. Anyway, here's Whirlpool letter number 3.. This letter and the previous letter (which received no response) will accompany the survey in their postage paid envelope .. back to Whirlpool..

March 7, 2007
 
 To Whom It May Concern,
 
 Enclosed please find a copy of my last letter, dated January 24, 2007, which was
 sent to Whirlpool Customer Service and has received no response to date.  I would
 appreciate a response to the concerns outlined in that letter as well as compensation
 for the ordeal and inconveniences I have suffered due to the actions of your company.
 
 Sincerely,

June 21, 2007 Update:

So, I'm on the bus, and I get a call from Vic from Whirlpool. The whole oven ordeal happened so long ago I forgot some of the details, I think I said 4 months without an oven instead of two.. but after 6 months can you blame me for not remembering perfectly.. and I was on the bus thinking about other things.. I've gone through therapy to just put this behind me (and resolved to not purchase Whirlpool ever again).

Anyway, Vic is very nice, he explains that this just got dropped on his desk, and that he has reviewed my file and agreed that someone somewhere dropped the ball. Then he asked "what exactly are you looking for?".

Admittedly I wasn't prepared for this conversation, or to answer that question, but I think it went well, I said "I'm looking for something to indicate that Whirlpool actually cares enough about its customers to say sorry, I'm looking for something to convince me that I should buy Whirlpool appliances again in the future". Vic said, ok, leave it in my hands for a while and I'll see what I can do.

So, now we wait again.. I'm expecting something like.. $50 off the purchase of your next whirlpool appliance or something.. But it's an interesting situation, give too little a token, and you risk offending the customer.. give too much and management comes down on you... It's like chess and it's Whirlpool's move. I never was any good at chess. :p

 

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