steve cooley presents

I won’t be giving Joe Escobar any of my business anymore. Recently we brought in two rings for resizing (to make them smaller) and they wanted to charge us $85 a piece! Even after I gave them thousands of dollars, specifically to purchase a Canadian conflict-free diamond that I special ordered from them, and now they want to nickel and dime me in this economy… incredible enough. But! It was the delivery of their demeaning lecture about the quality of work done on the rings is what really pisses me off. Educate the customer, but don’t be rude about it. Don’t make the customer feel bad. I thought this was the most basic concept to run a business!

My wife was left feeling bummed about the experience, and I’m completely livid about it. I don’t know how they can be so completely conditional with their level of customer care and maintain their business. I’m not a big spender, so I know I can’t leverage any kind of reversal of their staff’s incredibly rude behavior. But, I can tell you about it and I also won’t give them anymore of my business.

Technorati Tags: joe escobar

File under: “PEOPLE UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT”

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1403369.html

Many Mormons believe they are being unfairly targeted and compare the anti-Mormon sentiment to a witch hunt.

“This is not fair – a lot of people wanted this passed, not just Mormons,” said Lynnette Black of Sacramento who rallied in support of Eckern in front of Music Circus last week. “We (church members) worked hard and within the law. It’s very hard to see this attitude toward Mormons.”

West, spokeswoman for the church, said the Mormons were part of a coalition that supported the ballot measure.

“We’re only 2 percent of the population,” West said. “We feel we’re getting too much credit.”

IRONY ALERT!! WOOP! WOOP! WOOP!

They wanted to unfairly discriminate against a minority class of citizenry, now they don’t feel like it’s fair to be the TARGET of that kind of sentiment?

The REALLY ironic thing here is that while prop 8 will likely be overturned in the courts, the self-selection and identification of these people as homophobic hate mongers will last forever.

Technorati Tags: bad judgement, irony, mormon, prop8, LDS

Wow. Check out all the big ticket hate mongers and homophobes. http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pe2023SzWXxE8wYX5qWeoIw.

Despite what the talking points say for the measure (and I have read them), this ballot will officially discriminate against a minority class of citizens. That is very, very dangerous territory to walk into. Once you legitimize discrimination, who is next? Who will be targeted next if this law passes? Maybe you!

I was originally spurred into action when I learned that the Church of Latter Day Saints of Utah (utah!) has been sending in big bucks to pass this measure in California. Big, as in Millions of dollars. Aside from the obvious hypocritical nature of this (any church pushing a law legitimizing discrimination and hate), I think it’s a bad road to head down. Then I saw parents making their young children hold up yes-on-8 signs at the corner of my community center, and that really pissed me off.

I wish everyone on the above list would go read this post: http://californiamormonon8.blogspot.com/2008/10/view-from-california.html It’s extremely well written and thoughtful. Here’s one passage:

I know that the “Yes on 8” campaign has created deep divisions within Mormon families. As Mormons, we are obligated to search ourselves, to ask if our relationships with our family members are loving and appropriate. Do we reject or deny our family members because they are gay? Is the zealousness of the “Yes on 8” campaign an outlet for our own feelings of shame, revulsion, disappointment, and failure in having gay children or family members? Some of the leading Mormon figures with the California Mormon “Yes on 8” campaign have gay children. Does God want us to sacrifice our relationships with gay children and relatives in order to serve Him? God led Abraham to Mount Horeb to teach him that child-sacrifice, a common practice among pagan peoples, was no longer warranted. It was no longer acceptable to Him. Henceforth, only God would sacrifice His son, Jesus Christ, to atone for the sins of the world. Now, after that great and atoning sacrifice, the only sacrifice we are asked to commanded to offer is that of a “broken heart and a contrite spirit” (3 Nephi 9:20). Do we sacrifice our gay children to impress God?

Don’t fall for the suggestion that this proposition protects anyone. It strips civil rights away from a whole class of citizens. It protects no one, and I’d argue quite the opposite. Hatred, meddling, and discrimination are no values I believe this state should be about, which is why I’m voting no on 8.

Vote NO on proposition 8.

Technorati Tags: 2008, california, no_on_8, noprop8, politics, prop8, prop8no

Good golly.

Technorati Tags: bad judgement, liar, mccain, palin, politics, unfit

• They’re constantly trying to tell you how great their service is. That’s an instant warning sign that it’s not.
• >3x industry rate for domain registrations
• They charge you for basic services that the industry otherwise gives away for free.
• You must talk to a human to get an “auth code” to move your domain.
• 12+ minutes on-hold time to talk to a human.
• I just got faked out where the phone rang and then went back to on-hold music. bastards!
• Annoying as hell automated sales pitches while on hold. “need a website? talk to our rep about blah blah blah”
• Smooth Jazz version of “that’s the way love goes” is the only song they play on hold. Over and over. 12+ minutes. That’s reason enough, in my opinion. Never attack your customers with an ear worm.
• “Don’t leave!” sales tactics after being on hold. Recently I went through this process and got suckered into taking a cheaper rate and staying at register.com. Now that I have to renew other domains I’m seeing the errors of my ways.

Bye bye register.com!

Technorati Tags: register.com

[rant]

php|architect is spamming me. I made the critical mistake of signing up for a free webcast of theirs like 4 years ago, and every effing month since then I get a commercial spam email from them promoting their for-pay content and books, and they provide me with no opt-out mechanism.

I’ve asked them to remove me easily 3 or 4 times.

I’m sure I’ve informed you three times now that I do not consent to you sending me email. Check it out:

http://www.cauce.org/archives/79-Anti-spam-bill-Introduced-into-Canadian-Senate.html

8(1) Every person, other than an indi-
vidual, who contravenes subsection 8(1) is
guilty of an indictable offence and liable
(a) for a first offence, to a fine not ex-
ceeding $500,000;

Now, I acknowledge this isn’t a law yet. I hope it does become a law soon. I’m going to remind you that I do not consent to you sending me email. We do not have any current relationship. You are willfully continuing to email me without my consent and without providing a mechanism for me to opt-out.

I don’t know what they are thinking. This is no way to run a business. What planet do they live on where that attracts friends with this behavior?

Sure, I could set up an email filter. It’s more about the principle in this case because I can actually trace the source back to a physical location and organization. Beyond that they’re trying to make money promoting a free technology that I hold close to my heart, their willful disregard for peoples common right to non-communication could tarnish the brand of PHP. So it’s pissing me off that they’re being so stupid. Just freakin’ unsubscribe me already.

[/rant]

Technorati Tags: boycott, php|architect

You need to watch this.

Read more about this disgraceful disregard for public opinion and Scream at the FCC now. I don’t care what your voting persuasion is, nobody should control all the media in any market. What would you do if the other side got control? How would your voice be heard?

Technorati Tags: consolidation, FCC, media

yuck. Tastes fishy.

A for effort. D- for taste.

Technorati Tags: omega 3

Mark Pilgrim’s list of Ubuntu essentials for ex-Mac users:
Cory Doctorow:

Mac guru and software developer Mark Pilgrim recently switched to Ubuntu Linux after becoming fed up with proprietary Mac file-formats and the increasing use of DRM technologies in the MacOS. I’ve been a Mac user since 1984, and have a Mac tattooed on my right bicep. I’ve probably personally owned 50 Macs, and I’ve purchased several hundred while working as an IT manager over the years. I’m about to make the same switch, for much the same reasons.

Thank GOD! Maybe we can start a paypal donation account for his laser tattoo removal fund.

Oh, hey, that’s 120V flowing right up my arm…

Wow. Funny how I’ve been working with some fairly dangerous shit in my workshop lately, and knock on wood, haven’t hurt myself in a long time. Then i go and accidentally plug in my powerbook power supply wrong ( missed one side … ) and get a niiiice shock up my hand, arm, and down to the metal stuff in my pants pocket on the same side. The LED flashlight in my pocket was on for a good 10 seconds after the brief second I was acting like a capacitor, I could see if through the material of my jeans…

Oof. We live in a dangerous world.

well, The maxtor drive that was in the LaCie case I bought died, which had the server on it.� Thankfully, I had a 2 month old backup on my other server.� Still, what a drag. Fuck maxtor and LaCie. Make better products, folks.

So, for the price of a new ipod , I now have two 250 gig hitachi SATA drives RAID’ed together, and an external case for the SATA drive that was in the server to begin with.� Sigh…� ok, so what did I do over the last two months?�

Anyway, now I have more hard drive space, mirror raided together… that should give me a big boost of uptime.� Now if a drive fails, I know I’m not completely dead in the water…� when the Maxtor drive arrives, I’ll figure out how to get SuperDuper on a regular timed backup schedule.

sigh.. gotta install gallery2 again, migrate all 10k photos over from phpix again… gotta install the furbaby site again.� Gotta get my processing stuff up.. again…

Busted tees on the left, jerkass on the right. One of these is a biter. Boingboing has both of these companies as advertisers. I wonder if anyone else has noticed?

Technorati Tags: busted tees, jerkass, boingboing

Final official 2005 california election results here. I sure am glad we’ve been made to pay $55 Million for this total void of future former governer Schwarzenegger’s leadership. Ah, just so you know who he is, there are ten photos of him on his california state page homepage. And one headshot of his wife.

Folks, that ain’t bipartisan opposition to Miers, that’s a fracturing and splintering republican party. Rush limbagh pondering early retirement (please do), because a listener accusing him of selling out to the bush administration… this is where the party turned ugly.

Technorati Tags: politics, supreme court