At Great Wolf Lodge today with the kids. A nice place to get away, close to home, and I’ve no complaints about the room or the waterpark.

By the time we got into the restaurant we were starving, and noticed that they were carrying around Thrasher’s-style buckets of french fries. We thought we’d get a couple buckets to share with our burgers, sandwiches and such. It would be fun to eat fries from a bucket, kind of like it’s fun to drink tea from a mason jar.

But as in many things today, all is not what it seems. Our buckets arrived, and before we could get two people set with fries, we hit bottom - a false bottom lined with bowls. We can’t complain about the price of the fries - but they were deliberately deceptive.

It was a lie. It made us think about what other corners they were cutting just beyond the kitchen door. The burgers were fine and the waitress did a good job, but this silly little lie stuck with me. The labor is the major cost of any restaurant and it would have cost very little to fill the bucket and keep the promise. Perhaps they’ve determined there was much waste? But in that case, they should just stop using the buckets completely and just put the fries in a standard container. Then they would have kept the promise for a little container of fries.

Everything you do is part of your marketing.  Even tiny promises can’t be broken.

As much as the decor, logo design, uniforms, and clean tables contribute to it, so does your little lie that saved $0.20 worth of french fries.

Ok, folks - I pose a challenge to the geekdom out there. How to disable, permanently, these obnoxious speaker boxes that are attached to every friggin’ gas pump I’ve been to in the last 6 months. The MUTE buttons are worn out (”dimple collapse”) so you gotta sit there and listen to the bloody things go on, incomprehensively, about worthless crap inside the stores. It was some brilliant marketer’s idea - I can hear it now “We need to bring people into the store from the pump, ’cause that’s where the profits are. ” I know a few out there think it’s a great idea. Muzak was bad enough, but, it was in the distance, and didn’t drown out your cell phone or NPR on the car radio. And next it will be video, where we’ll need a different solution (I am so absolutely sick of TV everywhere I go - yes I own a universal TV-off keychain. ) And finally, Google Gas Pumps will surely be next.

How about an opt-out feature where I can pay you five freakin’ bucks for a year of peace and quiet? It’s unlikely. Nielsen media reports a 70% brand recall for gas station TV. Damn, that’s good. But I wonder how many are remembering the brand so they can avoid any product annoying them at the gas pump. “Never, ever buy friggin’ Dr. Pepper again.”

So I call out to you, the Hardware Gods of the Interweb….

I figure if we can mess with the electronic voting systems, we should be able to fk with these things a bit.

So, electronics wizards, how do you disable them without opening them or beating them with an object or getting electrocuted (and starting a large fire.)

Electronic pulse?
Handheld High Output Laser?
Freon-freeze+ gentle tap?
Secret series of keypresses? (that would be ideal!)

All ideas welcome.

Required Disclaimer, Of COURSE I am not condoning vandalism in any shape or form. This is just an academic discussion.

I must admit, Donato’s franchise has great pizza. But when it comes to trusting their online ordering environment, they leave some things to be desired. Below find the email that came to my house after ordering online. We knew it was “real” because it came shortly after the order was placed. But Donato’s made two errors. Make sure you aren’t making them in your business.

• Donatos doesn’t use their own domain name for the feedback link, prompting Vista mail to flag the message with a phishing warning. In a world where trust is a critical part of branding, this is just foolish. My family is very advanced when it comes to the web, but many customers would just delete the message without reading it.
• Donatos sends our usernames and password in plain text in the message. You just don’t do this, especially with all of the other personal information in the same message. My family uses different passwords for our sensitive accounts such as online banking, but I am absolutely sure this isn’t the case for many customers. This means the Donato’s password may have been used for more lucrative purposes, such as paypal, etc. We all know that keylogger exploits can do worse damage, but at least they require an infection and many have basic protection.

One thing that gets me flamed inside is to see perfectly able-bodied people using disabled parking spots without the right. When I see it, it’s all I can do to not say something. This idea of a sticker struck me as a good one.

Probably wouldn’t do any good.

If you truly need a permit for your disability, check these instructions on how to get a disabled parker permit.

Postscript:  Omnistar saw my post and has been very helpful since then.  They told me that because of this they’ve changed the way they deal with these messages in the future and that they didn’t know I was a hosting customer.  They asked me to remove the post below, but I still think there’s value in having it here.  I am happy they’re making things better and wish them luck.

~~~

I set up Omnistar Tell-a-Friend for a client on a hosting service which won’t let us use scripts. The password was lost and when we tried to use the “password lost link” we got a page-not-found, error 404 page (still does.)

So, I send a message to support@omnistartell to tell them it’s broken. It’s a one click-reproducible issue, so I figure it’s an easy fix. I get a tracking number and move on with my day. For 99.9% of all software companies out there that would be enough.

But then I get the message back:

=== PLEASE REPLY ABOVE THIS LINE ===
—– has responded to your ticket which was numbered 1234

The time of the response was: 01-24-2008 17:36 PM
Their response was:
For us to fix this problem we need you to fill out our bug fix form here:
www.omnistaretools.com/bugfix

Please let me know when you have filled out our bug fix form.
–
Thank you for your business with Omnistar Interactive.

The link is to a full length form I need to fill out. Bullshit. Somebody forgot to tell these guys about what it means to be the provider, versus the paying customer. If your software has a bug, and I was nice enough to point it out, then THEY should file the damn bugfix form ON MY BEHALF. And, it certainly wouldn’t have hurt to say “And we’re sorry you had trouble.”

It’s kind of like the long forms you have to fill out when your bags are lost. The airlines should be grabbing you a cold drink and asking what kind of music you like while they fill out the damn forms.

Poorly done.

Just a short post to voice my disatisfaction with Flickr Uploadr. The tool is infuriating. It never, ever works the first time. Despite the fact I’m a Flickr Pro paying customer, it’s almost impossible for me to get images onto the service.

If it fails, you must again enter all of your tags and descriptions before you try again. Agggrrr!!!!

Picasa on the other hand uploads pictures to Picasaweb flawlessly every time. Same computer, same images, same everything.

What’s the bloody difference?

It’s been around forever. So why don’t companies use it?  (yes, even with call centers)

This case was Chase Credit Card Customer Service - (caller ID to the right) and they immediately ask for my credit card number. Uh… okay. Not.

So I look up the number on whocalled.us, and find out it’s Chase bank, and 28 minutes later I learn that it was just a silly charge they wanted to verify.

Oh, by the way, they had frozen my Visa card, and when they called, they did NOT leave a message.  I guess I was supposed to figure it out the next time I used my credit card.  How sweet.

Why couldn’t a company like Chase just turn on bloody caller ID and say “Chase Customer Support”

I removed this post because it simply wasn’t worth it for me to argue the points, and the discussion on Sphinn and this post at piloSEO are probably sufficient.

No wait, here’s another good rant on it.

“Tis the season” …for brain-dead vacation autoresponders.

Is it worth it?

Do you really need to reply to everyone while on vacation?

Chances are you don’t and the risks outweigh the benefits. In this blogger’s opinion. Some autoresponders can be set up in a smart way - such as sending the reply “only once.” But based on my experience, this is the exception. Most just flip them on and bolt, leaving everyone else to clean up the mess. If you were the one everyone depended on to protect the nuclear arsenal today, I could understand, but c’mon.

If you’re thinking of posting one today…think about this:

• Don’t autoreply to spammers: Your reply says a lot about your email set up. It can be used to increase the value of your email address to Spammers, and feeds the SPAM economy.
• Don’t start loops: his still happens, even in 2007. Some email programs are ridiculously stupid, and will auto-reply to auto-replies. Please make sure yours doesn’t. It just saturates the internet with crap, and makes IT managers have to answer the phone when they should be relaxing with family.
• Don’t reply to mailing lists: If you’re on a listserve, you could be sending your autoreply to lots of grumbling people who have no clue who you are .. you become the “wierdo with the autoreply.”
• If it’s broken, or sends tons of replies, it makes you look like a dweeb: Any autoresponder screwup makes you look like a dweeb. Wouldn’t it be better not to send them at all?
• It makes work for everyone else: Many of us get over 200 emails per day. We have to go through it. And we previously had you marked as an allowed sender. So you’re breaking trust, at least on the email side.
• Telling people about your tropical plans is snobbish.  It’s “nice” you’re going to the Bahamas or to Fiji.  But please keep it to yourself on your autoreply.  Otherwise I might just send an anonymous email to the border patrol about some alleged exploits you’re off to take part in on that little tropical island hop*.
• Thieves use autoreplies? Urban Legend? It’s probably unlikely. Keeping your departure and return time ambiguous is a good idea for lots of reasons… LOL. Making note that others may be in the office, but they won’t be checking your email won’t hurt anything. I can find out exactly who you are, where you work, and what brand of toothbrush you use in today’s world, but the chances of thieves using this is probably lower than some warnings make it out to be.
• Voice mail is very different than email and vacation messages are fine there, IMO. If I call you, and I need you, and I wait to HEAR your message, then I asked for it. Details about your absence might help those who REALLY want to reach you, so that’s the place for the info about your fancy trip.

*  C’mon.  I’m kidding.

I thought about how ridiculous this product was. It was a good idea to get all the charge-ables together in a single place. It was not a good idea to do it all on paper and never test the feasibility. But it clearly doesn’t work in the real world. The solution? Shall we redesign it so it really works? Nahhhh…Let’s SELL IT ANYWAY!