Rancid-Tea

Why Is It Easier To Submit A Complaint Than A Compliment?

A recent post on Violent Acres, describing her frustration in trying to give positive feedback for a Starbucks employee, reminded me of a similar incident I had at a local Target. Normally, at the Target near our apartment, the cashiers are either painfully slow, talking to each other while ringing up your stuff, avoiding eye contact with you at all costs or all of the above. It’s downright unpleasant to check out, but sometimes you just have to buy toilet paper and shampoo, so you find yourself waiting in line while your cashier seems to be struggling to remain conscious as they ring up your items, and bag them, one… by… one…

On this particular evening though, we were met by a vivacious, cheerful, polite and efficient cashier, who said hello to us, rang everything up in a timely manner, and then thanked us. I was almost in shock, having adjusted to the machine like cashiers. I walked straight over to the courtesy counter and waited patiently in line. Once I got to the front I told the girl behind the counter than I was very impressed and that the cashier had given us the best service we’ve had at that particular Target. She sort of grinned and said something like “that’s good.” I asked if she could pass it on to the cashier’s supervisor and she replied

“I don’t even know her name.”

“But surely you could look it up off of my receipt,” I insisted, as I handed her my receipt, and pointed to the correct lane.

“Well, not really. You could fill out a customer comment card though”

“But if I don’t know her name, would it ever get back to her?”

“Probably not.”

Frustrated, we left. Maybe she was promoted, but I haven’t seen her since then. Perhaps I should have left a Customer Comment Card about the courtesy desk employee being unable to help me. That probably would have gone straight to management and she would have been given a verbal warning or something, but it’s not her fault that the system is designed for complaints.

Places to live

I found a website today called find your spot.com that asks you a series of questions and then recommends places where you might enjoy living, based on climate, geography, and other factors.

Where did it pick for me?

1. St. Helens, OR
2. Astoria, OR
3. Hot Springs-Hot Springs Village, AK
4. Heber Springs-Greers Ferry Lake, AK
5. Bremerton, WA
6. Salisbury, MD

I couldn’t see myself ever living in the south, so that about leaves the Pacific Northwest and someplace near Boston… I’ve entertained the idea of living near Seattle for a very long time, so that sort of makes sense.

The website is kind of an interesting tool anyway, and it could be very fun to try out and see if you’re living near where it thinks you should, or if you don’t know where you want to live.

WTF?

I was looking at my stats for no particular reason over my lunch hour and found that one of the search phrases that led someone to my site was “chemically castrating your husband.” If someone is chemically castrated, are their testicles destroyed, or is it like a vasectomy? If it’s the latter, it might not be such a bad idea, on the other hand, I don’t think that someone running that particular search is in the healthiest of mental states, and should possibly consider a tubal ligation or something.

Bread

Since moving to the cities, Ethan and I have been buying whole grain bread. I was thrilled to have some flavorful, moist, whole grain bread in the supermarket. Unfortunately I happened to look at the label of the bread we’ve been buying, and found that it has (woot) high fructose corn syrup. Now I don’t want to eat the bread anymore. We found two alternatives that we’re going to try. They’re both kind of dry. I don’t understand why healthy bread has to cost twice as much and be unpleasant to eat. If I had a bread maker, I might consider just making my own bread. Then we would know exactly what is in it (do I really need added niacin?) and make it whenever we needed it. I think I’m a little too lazy to make it from scratch without mechanical help.

Updates

I tied up all of the loose ends (I hope) and updated my site again. Now there is a settings area for those logged in. When viewing a post there is a next and previous link. The link structure in the archives is (hopefully) better; I laid them out as a calendar. Responses are handed differently too, so if say, you mess up on a CAPTCHA, you don’t lose all that you typed. Now that I’ve mentioned them, I’ve added CAPTCHAs to responses for those of you who are not logged in. Why? I’ve been getting SPAM responses. I went from gettings none to getting 40 a day. Woot. So now you have to enter an extra word. It’s not that bad though, and if it bothers you, register. If you register, you get to see the other skin too. There is one other skin in the works right now, and, as usual, countless ideas for skins, most of which will never be anything. I think the rest of the changes are behind the scenes, but important nevertheless.

Absolutely The Best Text Editor Ever

When I began working on websites in college, I often pined for Dreamweaver. Everyone who worked in web design seemed to use it. It was this magical program that was way too expensive for me, but must be so wonderful, after all, if it wasn’t the best, why did everyone use it, and why was it so expensive?

In the meantime I used a not-so-legal copy of Homesite, and that worked fine until I started using PHP… Then it became problematic. It was meant for HTML and couldn’t do anything with the PHP. Later, I found a neat program called DzSoft PHP Editor. It was meant for writing in PHP and could even display my pages for me. I did have to pay $20 or something for the student license, but that was nothing compared the the several hundred dollar price tag of Dreamweaver.

I continued using the DzSoft editor for awhile, but the main drawback was that I wasn’t always at my computer, and I only had the one installation of the software. When I was using a computer at work or at school, I had to use notepad. If you’ve ever used that for anything, you know how much that sucks.

While I was working at Info-Link, JessiGurr turned me on to Notepad++ and it is by far the best text editing program I’ve ever used. I still have the DzSoft editor, but I use it very rarely (like, once every 6 months) and I probably only have it because I paid for it, and can’t justify letting it go. I’ve also since been able to use Dreamweaver, and found it lacking.

So why is it so awesome? What makes it preferable to other editors?

1. It’s free. Not only is that cool to begin with, but it means that every time they come out with a new update, I can just download it, and not have to pull out a credit card to do so.
2. It’s open source. Because of that, it has new updates all the time, so I don’t have to wait years between new versions. Also, other developers have created extensions for it, so I can add things like a file browser (two to choose from!) or different language capabilities if I wanted to.
3. I can change virtually any setting! If there is something I don’t like, I can change it, and if I download a new version, it remembers what settings I chose before.
4. It’s super fast. It handles very large files and many files much better than any other program I’ve tried.
5. It monitors the files you are working on to see if they’ve changed. This can be very helpful when I’m at work and Tim and I are editing the same files. I get an alert that says ‘this file was modified, do you want to reload?’ Dreamweaver can only tell you if the file you are editing was opened by someone else using Dreamweaver. It’s also helpful when I accidentally download a file instead of upload it, and overwrite my changes. When I get the aler, I can just say ‘No’ and then re-save the file.
6. It supports multiple languages and user-defined highlighting. I can use it for CSS, plain text and PHP. Less program switching means faster work!
7. I can edit two files side by side in the same window. Very, very helpful when comparing two copies of the same file to look for changes (especially since I can synchronize scrolling!)
8. Every time I download a new version, I find even more useful features than before. Also, every new feature I find turns out to be useful
9. There is a portable version! If you have a flash memory drive, you can install it directly onto that, and then take it with you wherever you go. You don’t need permission to install software on the computers you’ll be using, it just runs off the stick!

Since I find myself so attached to this particular program, I thought I would give it a good review. Also, I don’t remember if I ever thanked Jessi for introducing me to it — thank you Jessi, it rocks. If you do any programming at all, I recommend trying it out, you just might give up all other editors!

Woot

Today Ethan dyed my hair, after letting my roots grow out for waaay too long. Quite some time ago, I ordered new ‘body quality’ henna, which cost about the same as the stuff I had gotten before. The only difference is (it seems) that the henna is ground much more fine, almost like flour. The hair henna I bought before was more grainy, like sandy mud. We finally used the new stuff today, and it was much, much nicer. It took ethan less time to put it in, because it spread more easily, and it took less than 10 minutes to rinse out. With hair quality henna, it took several rinses, each with some conditioner and combing before it was all out. Also, it would leave the shower full of grit. Yum. This was much cleaner too. I think that it colored faster, and so I was able to do my eyebrows. If you are planning to use henna for your hair, get the body quality stuff. It is well worth it (especially when you get it for the same price!).

While we were waiting for my hair to finish so I could rinse it, the power went out. I thought that was a ‘living out in the country’ thing, but apparently not. It wasn’t just our building, the light at the major intersection right by our apartment was totally out. It was only out for a half an hour or so, and without the TV, Internet or anything else to keep us occupied, Ethan and I played some Mastermind. We hadn’t played in a long time, so it was fun to brush up on it.

Later, when it cooled down, we went for a walk through Minnehaha Creek park and we even wandered in the creek for a little while. There were little fish that were biting our feet. It was a short walk, but it was pretty fun.

Finally, I’ve been doing some more work on the site, and I’m almost ready to switch to the new stuff. I might even do it tomorrow.

Benadryl

Sometimes I have trouble sleeping and I’ve found that a couple of Tylenol PM (or the generic) help me fall asleep quickly and sleep through the night. I don’t really like the idea of taking the acetaminophen though, since I usually just need to sleep, and don’t have any aches and pains. Since the ‘PM’ ingredient is Diphenhydramine HCl, the same stuff in Benadryl, I thought I would go to the pharmacy and get some of that.

Since Benadryl and its generic counterpart are sold in different forms, I decided to do some price checking. Sold with acetaminophen it was $9.99 for 100. As an antihistamine, it was $10.99 for 100 and as a sleep aid, it was $14.99 for 100. All three listed Diphenhydramine HCl 25 mg as the active ingredient. This means that for the same medicine you could be paying 50% more, just because you wandered to the wrong aisle. (All prices given for generics, you don’t want to know how much they overcharge for a name brand). Ironically it would be cheaper to buy more ‘PM Pain Reliever’ but I paid the extra dollar to get it without acetaminophen (can anyone explain why the combined pill costs less than the generic benadryl on its own?).

Soylent Green

Yesterday Ethan and I watched Soylent Green. I have to say that it was a very poorly done movie. I know it was made in the seventies, so the deck is stacked against it already, but it was really one of those films that would probably be more enjoyable if you read the book. The description of the film actually contained some rather important information that wasn’t actually IN the movie. If I hadn’t known already, I’m not sure I’d have understood that people ate Soylent. I’m certain they didn’t mention that it was called soylent because it was supposed to be made of soybeans and lentils… I might still read the book though.

SPAM

Yesterday I got two SPAM responses. If this is chronic and does not pass, I will have to implement my captcha. I already have one for becoming a member, but that doesn’t stop bots from posting stuff about porn… I’m also tracking IP addresses, so if there is any consistency there, I will start blocking some of them. Grrr.