“Unconventional”
In my life, I have seen many bad websites. I have seen many terrible websites. I have even seen websites that, were they publicly known, could likely become the cause of WW3.
But rarely I have seen pages that are so fucking terrible that there are not even words for it (except perhaps ‘oh my god, fifteen minutes and the page still isn’t done loading’, which actually sums up many of the shortcomings of this particular website).
Comic
Occassionally, there is a comic that just stands out above the rest of the comics I read every week. Occassionally, they are just extreme awesomeness. Todays xkcd comic is stunningly simple, yet true, and awesome. It’s been open in my browser all day (and that is something a comic can be proud of here).
It arrived
Well, I’ve finally got the parcel I mentioned in my previous post.
The box:
The actual content of the box (it was nearly impossible to get the picture sharper, the thing is very small):
For reference, I’ve added a pencil in this picture:
And then, I’m not even going to use it. I made a little mistake with the part number, giving me these instead of a slightly different one (which is the only one I can use).
Shipping madness
Admittedly, two posts within 24 hours is kind of a lot for me. As you may have noticed I have no schedule regarding posts on this site whatsoever, and I just post something whenever I feel like doing so and have a subject to post about. It turns out that that just happened twice in a relatively short time.
Anyway, here’s the deal. Recently, I ordered a load of small parts. As my order was large enough (>€20) shipping is free, which I think is a great policy; now if I forget to order something at one point, I’ll just place a second order, maybe add some extra stuff so it’s at least €20 (spend €10 on stuff and pay a final of €20 with shipping, or just spend €20 on stuff and get shipping free is an easy choice) and be done with it; instead of making sure I added all the correct items. Just because making sure everything is 100% OK is kind of a big deal with >400 small items.
It turns out that they only had 1 piece in stock of an item, however I ordered two. Out of >400, it was the only item that they didn’t have right away, so they shipped out everything else and the last item would be delivered later when they have it. Note that we’re talking about a very very small item here, priced at about € 0,70, and the ‘you might loose it between the coins in your wallet’-kind of small. You’d expect the second one to arrive by regular mail in a bubble-wrap envelope or something. As the first parcel came in, I found the first piece and discovered that I accidently ordered the wrong part number, so that first part goes on the shelf and I don’t really care about whether or not I still get the second one.
I placed a second order with the correct part number, and a couple of other things where I accidently ordered too few, and that follow-up order came in last Tuesday.
Just after I came back upstairs I noticed I have an e-mail. Apparantly they still shipped that one, € 0,70 part to me.
In a ~€ 8 parcel.
Since the shipping cost’s on them, I do sometimes wonder how companies like these ever make profit. I might even make a picture of it when it comes in.
This kind of reminds me of this TDWTF article (however while searching that one again I also came across this forum thread which is infinitely more brilliant, especially the post from a guy named ‘Cyrz’).
Bandwith
As this article (Dutch) says, the American internet provider Cox Communications is planning to loose a lot of customers. If the network is busy, they want to give a lower priority to p2p-traffic. The FCC will probably deal with it quickly, so this company is acting stupid in at least four different ways:
- First, they are giving themselves a bad name and a bad reputation. Existing customers who are faced with this policy will leave, and new customers are scared off at the idea that they pay for an x amount of bandwith but won’t actually get it if they use too much of it.
- They know, from the example of Comcast, that the FCC will deal with it quickly enough and that this new policy of theirs won’t last long. That makes the previous point, and the next one, even worse.
- Therefore, all they are really saying is ‘Hey look guys, our network sucks. It can’t handle it if everyone actually uses what we are promising they can use.’ Of course, that will be equally bad for their customer base as #1.
- Cox Communications? Seriously guys, what the fuck is that name supposed to mean? That name even implies that they support p2p use, for downloading pr0nz0rs.
Americans, sometimes… 
Possibilities
Here’s something that I’ve been playing with in my mind for a while, but so far I never really found the time/will to write the article. Click the more link to see the full article; I have decided to make it into a separate page because the numbers are fucking up the layout of the homepage otherwise.
CAPSLOCKDAY!
TODAY IS OCTOBER 22ND, INTERNATIONAL CAPSLOCK DAY!
FOR THE OCCASION, I’VE MODIFIED MY COPY OF WORDPRESS TO SHOW ALL POSTS AND COMMENTS IN UPPERCASE ON OCTOBER 22ND. ALL POSTS (EXCEPT THIS ONE OF COURSE) WILL TURN BACK TO NORMAL ON ANY DAY THAT IS NOT OCTOBER 22ND.
ALSO, BE SURE TO VISIT THIS SITE ON HALLOWEEN (OCTOBER 31ST). I MAY POST A FUN LITTLE STORY THEN.
WTF
I just noticed this a couple of days ago:
Whoever came up with the current system for naming days of the week was probably a very smart person, who was way ahead of his time. As it turns out, he had a look into the future, and his observations became inspiration for the days of the week:
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday…
Take the first letter of each of the last 3.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought.
Insurance
Last week or so the insurance company charged my bank account for the insurance I have with them. A few days later, they send me a € 50 bill for some medicine. This made me realize yet another time how stupid the whole concept ‘insurance’ is.
Basically you have to pay a company a lot of money each month, just in the hope that they will return your own damn money to you when you need it. And in most cases, they won’t return shit because of the own risk in your insurance policy, or because they are simply too lazy to make a bank transfer.
That does officialy make the insurance business one of the easiest ways of making money known to man. You just charge people for nothing it all (because they were stupid enough to sign a contract allowing you to do so) and if someone is begging you to get his own money back because he needed surgery, you could pretty much just as well roll a dice and give him the money if it lands on 6.
It would in most cases probably be cheaper to just save up like half the money you pay for your insurance every month, and use that if you need health care. Or get your car fixed. Or pay your funeral. Or whatever else people get insurance for nowadays. The whole problem is that the government (or at least mine) thinks it is a good idea to require people to have insurance on certain things.
However, no matter what people say, the simple fact that - at least most - insurance companies make (lots of) profit is definately proof that in the end, we are paying others just so that we can kindly ask them to give our own money back. Which is a fucking stupid thing.
The Story of Roy
Once upon a time there was a very cool triangle named Roy. This triangle was green with red dots on his head and he was 37 years young. He lived in the Land of the Circles, which was somewhat odd, because he is after all a triangle. The Circles thought he was a bit of a strange circle, but then again most of them also thought that in some way that was cool (after all Roy is a cool triangle) and for that very reason he was chozen as the very first triangle-shaped king of the Land of the Circles.
The leaders of the neighbouring countries (Lawn and Plasticthrowawaycoffeecuptreerootjuice, which were both on the east side of the Land of the Circle because everything else on the cubic shaped planet was ocean) heard of this great news about Roy and therefore came to visit him, to have a nice cup of red paint together and talk about the relationships between their countries.
The king of Lawn was a rather fat little man, about the height of a banana, did not at all notice that Roy was actually a triangle. That is because the good man is blind for shapes: no matter what shape an object (or person) has, to him everything is simply square. Because he didn’t notice Roy was a three-angled triangle he gave him a compliment for his four perfect angles. Of course Roy wasnt’ too happy about that, because he, being a triangle, posessed only three angles (however he did sometimes wish he could find a fourth because his mother always said that would look good on his green tie). Anyway, Roy wasn’t very happy about it, but since he knew the poor man is shape-blind he didn’t take any offence.
The count of Plasticthrowawaycoffeecuptreerootjuice however, didn’t take it very lightly. He found that Roy, in all his green-with-red-dotsness really didn’t have more than 3 angles and since he didn’t like the king of Lawn anyway he declared war on Lawn. He explained that Lawn had been doing secret weapon tests in an area very close with their border, that they were doing it was fine with him but he always said ‘Lawn, not in my back yard’.
To get the war over with as soon as he could, the count of Plasticthrowawaycoffeecuptreerootjuice imediatly took out his digital watch with InstaKill function. With a little click he opened the watch, aimed it at the king of Lawn, and corrected the time because the watch was five minutes off. The king of Lawn instantly died and he fell down on the ground, walked in a circle a few times, and stood back up to lie down in his coffin (which really was a small box because an entire coffin would be a waste of perfectly good wood since he was only as large as a banana).
After doing that the count of Plasticthrowawaycoffeecuptreerootjuice apologized for the mess and left for home. He claimed that he still had to tell a story to his children, otherwise they would refuse to go to sleep.
Of course it remained to be a strange fact that the king of the Land of the Circles was a triangle. After a while the press noticed, and Roy was forced to step down as king. A new king was elected, however because the new king was a perfect circle he kept rolling off the throne, and so he was forced to step down as well.
And they lived more or less happily everafter, and they often chose new kings…