Pizza Hut Phone Survey

We almost never get calls from Telemarketers - maybe 1 call per month. So we were disappointed to get a call last week from Pizza Hut. It was a survey. We realized after the call that they must have obtained our phone number from the files of the local restaurant, captured when we placed an order. It is unfortunate that they require a phone number to place an order, and then use it against us by giving it to their Telemarketers. This was annoying, but tolerable.


What really takes the cake is a SECOND call we got a few days later. It was Pizza Hut calling to evaluate the Pizza Hut survey! "On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the professionalism of the survey call you received?" I'm not making this up.

I guess it's only a matter of time until we get another call to evaluate the survey evaluation service.

Avoid Creative Software Like the Plague

A while ago I purchased a Creative web cam and had great difficulty installing the software. The most annoying thing about it was the fact that it isn't just one application. As the installer was running I realized that it was actually running several sub-installers and that, in all likelihood, none of these sub-applications were developed by the same software team or tested together. Well, it turns out the software was a complete mess, crashing my computer, slowing everything down, and not providing the kind of web cam interface I had hoped for.

I finally gave up and decided to remove the software. This involved running 5 different uninstall programs since each sub-program was installed separately. And now, when I reboot my computer, I get an error message because some Creative dll file is missing (V0230Pin.dll). I've had no luck tracking down a way to fix this, and Creative's website support is simply awful.

Lest you think I am over-reacting to one bad experience, my girlfriend recently purchased a Creative mp3 player. Sure enough, the software installer CD installed 5 different programs (with matching desktop icons) several of which didn't seem to work at all.

I will never purchase another Creative product again. I recommend that you don't either.

About The Weather

I went to Weather.com to get a weather forecast. If you have ever been to one of these websites, you know that it takes about 5 minutes to parse through all of the options, ads, and polls so you can maybe get lucky and find a forecast.

But on this occasion, while hunting for the "Forecast" button, I got snagged by a question in the sidebar about the rules of golf. The question was regarding the penalty for accidentally knocking your ball off the tee. I took my guess and clicked the answer button to see the correct answer.

What I got for an answer was this:

Do you notice anything? It's a poll! Since when are the rules of golf a poll? It doesn't even say what the correct answer is. (The white answer is the one I "voted" for.)

Now I need to go to another site to get a simple weather forecast, and then search for The Rules of Golf website to get the answer to my question.

That really rains on my parade.

Verizon Center

Dear Verizon Center,

I want to thank you for having a parking garage directly underneath the stadium, how convenient! Charging $20 seems a bit much for parking at a Capitals game, but I at least felt confident that I would be getting quality service.

I was a little nervous when the parking attendant made me double park and leave my keys in the car, but he gave me a claim ticket, so I know that they understood my concern and were going to carefully inspect the claim ticket to make sure I was the rightful owner before letting me get back into the car after the game.

Here is the part that puzzles me, WHERE THE FRACK WAS THE PARKING ATTENDANT AFTER THE GAME? There was not a single garage employee anywhere to be found when I entered my car and drove off. It seems like you perfected the "give out the claim ticket" part of the job, but failed on the "watch over the car and safely return to proper owner" part.

Next time, I'm leaving with a nicer car...

Diamond Settlement

This will be a fun rant, because it includes three groups that annoy everyone on a regular basis:

1. Lawyers
2. Diamond Retailers
3. Web Designers

So I saw an ad in the paper regarding a class action settlement involving anyone who purchased a diamond in the last 13 years.

I went to the website to print out the claim form. The site STRONGLY ADVISED me to fill out the claim form online. Ok, great. The only problem is that I got the error message: "Your browser does not accept cookies". I got this message in both Internet Explorer AND Firefox, even though I have cookies properly enabled in both:


In summary, a bunch of lawyers are going to make millions of dollars of fees on this class action settlement regarding unfair diamond sales practices, and they don't care that no one can actually file a claim due to a lack of proper testing by their web designers.

Screw you all - I figured out how to print out the claim form! I will be laughing all the way to the bank, 18 months from now, to cash my settlement check for $3.07.