April 2009 Archives

9:16 call 1-800-967-2346
9:18 get Tarik on the phone, explain problem
9:22 after he tries to talk me out of it, I get transferred
9:23 new person picks up
9:24 The moment I say the word "cancel" she hangs up
9:25 dial again
9:28 new person, woman answers
9:29 transferring
9:30 answer. This woman sounds competent
9:31 confirming address to her again
9:32 trying to talk me out of it, wants to sell me a home radio if I'm not listening to it in the car
9:33 she's telling me it's still live through July 6
9:34 will send me a letter within 2-3 weeks of cancellation (after July 7)
9:34 hang up

OK, now the background: I've been through the process of canceling XM radio before, and it was pretty painful. They really played all the dirty tricks on me: endless transfers with occasional dead ends, repeated confirmation of account numbers and mailing addresses, hidden phone numbers, etc. I wouldn't ever do business with them again, but Mary really liked having the radio, so a year or so later when we got a new car we signed up again. That car's since been replaced with a minivan, and the radio (which was permanently installed in that car) is no longer being listened to.

A recent web search of other people's experiences showed that as of recently the XM clowns were still doing the same kind of stuff. So I was not at all surprised when the "Cancellation Department" hung up on me this morning the moment I uttered the word "cancel."

However, I was surprised that I had to speak to only four people this time and dial only twice over the space of 18 minutes. (We'll see whether the charges on the credit card really do stop.) The first woman in the cancellation department had the "f*** you and your f***ing family" attitude the moment she answered the phone, but the second one was very bright and cheery. So maybe it's just luck of the draw.

Anyway, boring live blog. But I guess that's a good thing.

I've used Picasa for a couple years now, and I still don't get it. Here's my workflow:

1. Take pictures with camera.
2. Stick SD card from camera into computer.
3. Import pictures from SD card to home fileserver.
4. Browse, edit, remove red-eye, torture relatives with more pictures of kids, etc.

But here's where it breaks down. At step 3, Picasa asks me where I want to save the pictures. I must type a directory name; it won't store them in the root of the directory specified in Picasa preferences. So in effect, I must supply metadata to describe my new pictures, and I always end up typing "pictures I took in the last few days" or more likely "asdfasdsdfs."

Can you imagine how successful Gmail would have been if it popped up a dialog forcing you to type a label name each time a new email came in? Or even worse, a single mandatory label to cover all email that had arrived in the last 24 hours?

Picasa, it's your job to organize my pictures for me. Don't make me do it for you!

This wouldn't be such a problem if I could type the nonsense directory name, do the import, and then immediately see what I imported. But no, Picasa doesn't know about pictures it's imported until it re-scans watched directories. This means it can be minutes after the import before I actually get to see my pictures. By then I've usually switched to another task (like writing a griping blog post about my photo-management software) and I forget to return to it.

It's possible I've totally missed the Zen of Picasa. Perhaps because it came from Google I expect it to act like other Google products: it should be a giant funnel for unorganized data, and it should magically present that data in a sensible fashion. Instead, Picasa refuses to accept unorganized data, and it briefly (but at a critical time) loses all knowledge of the newest data I've entrusted to it. I don't get it.