Category Archives: Complaints

DMV

Time to renew the drivers license.
The DMV is one of those place where people like to bitch about all the idiots and sloths who work there. It’s not perfect but the one by me is pretty damn efficient – even if I did have to wait about an hour there.
No, what amazes me about the DMV is not the employees, but the customers. Look around you – look at all these goddamn idiots. And watch out, cause every single one of them drives a car.
It’s a pretty simple process – they give you a number and at some point they call that number and you go to the counter. A nice, clear, easy to understand, computerized voice chimes out “Now serving B276 at desk 9”.
And if no one shows up after a bit, they call it again, and then they will call it again, and maybe even again. Always at least 3 times, sometimes more – and sometimes the person behind the desk will call it out as well “B276! Last call!”. And numerous times while I waited, I would see some 80 year old accident-waiting-to-happen get up on the 4th call and look around like they had just woken up from a nap – confused as all hell as they spin in circles trying to figure out where to go next. I saw one woman do this and she eventually sat back down. 10 minutes later, she is at the front desk complaining that ‘they missed her number’. The guy at the front desk then became my hero as he said “Lady, how can you drive a car if you can’t even listen for a number?” Funny – but oh so true. This old biddy with a reaction time of 5-15 minutes is going to be driving behind you when she rams you at a red light. Then she will stumble out of the car and ask why you hit her.

Despite my praise for most of the workers there, I did manage to get a major crab-ass when it was my turn. I had to take a quick vision test. You look in the big viewmaster they have sitting on the desk.
Here’s approximately what I saw – 3 rows, 4 columns:
1 7284 7284 (blank) 9368
2 1063 1063 (blank) 4926
3 6970 6970 (blank) 2976
She says – read line 1. I read the entire line.
She says “No, no, no! Line 1!” I read it again.
“LINE 1!!” I read it again.
“THE NUMBERS IN THE MIDDLE!!” I read ‘7284’.
Then she sighs and says “Oh, try this one instead.” Translation – I’ve been showing you the wrong screen and I’m too bat-ass cranky to admit it and apologize. She shows me something else, I read it and she says “Ok – you’re done.” Yay, I passed. Thanks, crabass.

Fuck you, Delicious Vinyl

I was originally going to say ‘Fuck you, Youtube’ but then I realized that Youtube is just the messenger.
My Wild Thing / Mystery Girl mashup had ‘content that is owned or licensed by Delicious Vinyl.
As a result – your content is blocked worldwide.’

Let me get this straight, Delicious. That song is 24 years old, it’s already on Youtube by a dozen different people, and it was a remix – but you feel the need to still block it worldwide?
Fuck you.
Van Halen should block your fucking song worldwide on Youtube.

Youtube makes it clear this time

Ok Youtube and Warner Music Group – I suppose you gave me clarity and I should be grateful for that, but all it does is give me more questions.
Using Death Cab for Cutie in a mix had the Warner bot block my mix in 235 (give or take a few – I counted them quickly) countries. I mocked them – saying it would be easier to tell me where it wasn’t blocked.
Well, today I uploaded an old Devo song. And WMG made it quite clear.

As I said – I appreciate the clarity. But wait a minute, does that mean there were countries that Death Cab for Cutie was NOT blocked in? It included Iran, Antartica, and North Korea. But was there a country that WMG said – “welllll, ok – we’ll allow it there. It’s such a small market. It’s certainly no Greenland!”

Oh Youtube and WMG – you’re such a quirky couple. I find your antics so amusing. But I guess I need to check my record labels more carefully. I’ve amassed quite a collection on Youtube and I don’t want them yanking my account. But then again, that’s easier said than done. Warner Brothers / Warner Music isn’t even listed on the label for Disco Dancer. Now I have to know what other companies they bought? I guess I better stick with the Chicago and Detroit tracks for a while.

(Pssst – but you can still listen to the Bonus Beats version of Disco Dancer. That one slipped through their net. And it’s a kick ass jam!)

Thanks Youtube

I uploaded the short ‘MicroMix’ version of Kitty Mix 2011 to Youtube.
Because of one of the songs (but it won’t say which one!), it is blocked in the following countries:

Hey Youtube, maybe after a certain number, it would be easier to tell where it’s NOT blocked.
Since they won’t tell you which song – it’s half guessing game, half sleuthing.
The only place I can view it is logged in as me – and it has an ad to buy Transatlanticism by Death Cab For Cutie.
A quick search shows me that that song is not online anywhere on Youtube. So I guess I will edit that part of the mix out and reupload it to Youtube. Then maybe it will only be blocked in a dozen countries instead of hundreds.

Google Apps transfer procedure is crap

I love Google. I love Gmail. I love Google Maps, Google Docs. Google always seemed to be run by the geeks (a good thing!) instead of a company like Microsoft – run by marketing MBAs. Stuff from Google has always been clean, clutter-free and just worked great.
So their Google Apps transfer procedure is a clusterfuck and a black eye on their reputation. I doubt you’ll hear about it much because I don’t think it affects a lot of people – or maybe you’ll hear about it more once they force the upgrade through in a few weeks (you can upgrade now or be automatically upgrade in a few weeks.)

Here’s my simple setup. I’ve got my leroyskibone.com domain. My leroy@leroyskibone.com email address.
I also have my Youtube account linked to leroy@leroyskibone.com
It was years ago, but I probably setup my leroy@leroyskibone.com email address on Gmail first, then decided it would be cool to use Google Apps for my email, so I setup Google Apps for my leroyskibone.com domain.

Now, as part of the Google Apps upgrade, Google is telling me that leroy@leroyskibone.com is a ‘personal’ account and my Google Apps stuff is not – so I can change that email address to an ‘organizational’ account and transfer over all my information. Cool. Oh wait – I can transfer over everything EXCEPT my email.

So I use one email address for two things – Gmail and Youtube. And thanks to their great transfer process – I would now need one account for each. That’s a pain in the ass. Very ungoogly of you, Google.

The only point of installing Google Apps was to ‘simplify’ and manage my email with Gmail. Now they have made it complicated. So Google Apps is gone. I’m back to having the fine folks at Dreamhost manage my email. But I guess for a day or two, my email is stuck in DNS-updating limbo. It’s a good thing I’m not popular. But where will my daily doses of spam go?