Top Twitter Peeves

Time for another bracing round of what pisses me off about Twitter. Woohoo! These peeves highlight the problem between signal and noise, signal is worthwhile, usable content, noise is shit.

1. Bots - Yes, including the Slut Bots with the sexy avatar pics and drivel in their Twitter streams.

2. Feeders - people who post literally nothing but links to their blog and blog posts.

Craw-Struck

Today I'm introducing a new semi-regular feature at Intellectual Poison called Craw-Struck. You know how sometimes things get stuck in your mind and you can't shake them? Well, that's craw-struck. It isn't necessarily bad but it tends to be something annoying you.

Today's Craw-Struck moments:
- The old man at the stop light stopped too far back to trigger the left turn arrow so the lights cycle twice before the horns started and he drove through a red light. My guess is that's unlicensed and oblivious.
- The teacher that comes into the computer lab and automatically switches on both sets of fluorescent lights even though the room was plenty bright enough with just one on.
- The impatient teacher who waited weeks to tell me her computer was broken and then pestered me about it every day until it was fixed.
- The trio of boys who did almost nothing but chit chat through the class despite repeated warnings to get to work.

What's sticking in your craw today?

A Brand New Day, The End of the Domains by Proxy Nightmare

I feel like a weight has been lifted, a curtain pulled back and sunshine is streaming into my previously dark life. This morning I finally obtained access to my Domains By Proxy account (cue the angels singing and release the doves) and, in ridiculously short order, canceled their "service" and saved myself a good chunk of money.

The hoops they had me jump through were exhaustive, repetitive and annoying.

But, once I found out that Domains by Proxy is a GoDaddy owned company, it all made sense. You see the CEO of GoDaddy is a guy by the name of Bob Parsons and Bob Parsons is a douchebag so it makes sense that any company he controls is going to behave in a distinctly douchebaggish manner.

But, also upon finding out that GoDaddy owned Domains by Proxy, it steeled my resolve to end the "service" once and for all as I have a pretty firm rule about giving money to reprehensible asshats like Bob Parsons.

In the end, once I had access, it was very easy to cancel the service and I'll never make the mistake of signing up for an internet company without making sure it isn't affiliated with GoDaddy.

The Continuing (and Incredibly Aggravating) Saga of Domains By Proxy

I have been trying, on and off for a couple of years now, to get the privacy listing removed from my domain. I usually start the effort at the 90 days out from renewal mark and am so deeply frustrated and pissed off that I give up and suck up the extra yearly cost.

But not this year. This year I've been doggedly pursuing the company, Domains by Proxy, to get my login information (which is old and completely lost) so that I can finally cancel the unnecessary and unwanted service.

Domains by Proxy, by the way, is owned by the asshats of the internet, GoDaddy.com led by asshat extraordinaire, Bob Parsons. GoDaddy's claim to "fame" is the use of big breasted women in their Super Bowl commercials.

Everytime I finish jumping through one of their annoying hoops, they put up another one. Because they need to verify my identity, I had to send them a scanned copy of my license. Only they rejected it the first three times because they claimed the resolution wasn't high enough. I ended up emailing them a full color hi-res copy. Keep in mind that I wasn't able to actually fax this stuff from my house since we no longer have long distance on our POTS line which added a whole other level of complexity to this hassle.

Once that hurdle was cleared, they set up another one. This time I had to try to remember the fake company name I'd registered the site with originally. I had no idea so I took a couple of wild stabs in the dark and got it on my second try. I was thinking the path to access was almost complete but I was very wrong.

Now they needed me to send them a copy of the business license for the fake company. But fake companies don't have business licenses and I was and am unable to provide them one. Which meant more emails, more negotiating and more forms to fill out and fax back.

Just this morning I sent them the declaration that the company is not a valid company. And, like every other correspondence, they can take up to three business days to respond which inches us ever closer to the renewal date for the domain.

But I am going to be dogged about it this time. Primarily because I found out that Domains by Proxy is a GoDaddy company and it bothers the hell out of me to know I'm putting money in an asshat's pocket.

You will not win this time, Domains by Proxy! I will defeat you. And the reason I will not give up is because of Bob Parsons specifically.

Because I Feel Like Kvetching

I think I'm going to just complain for a little while. Maybe it'll make me feel better and maybe it won't. Either way, there will be words coming after these words, maybe a helpful graphic or two and even one of them hyperlinks (is an internal link called a hypolink?).

Things that annoy me:
Being asked the same thing five times in a row by kids who aren't paying any attention to the kid who just asked the exact same thing two seconds ago.

Support techs who don't support and ignore pointed emails.

Not having more coffee in my travel mug.

Not having an extra five hours of sleep this morning.

When the Skyrates server decides to not function in the narrow window of time I have between waking up and having to leave for work.

Needing to pee but being too lazy to walk all the way to the staff bathroom.

Finding out that a hard drive has died and my day will involve the sheer delight of taking apart and fixing an Apple eMac (one of the most annoying computers EVER to take apart and get at the stupid hard drive).

Wearing shorts to work in the expectation that it will be hot later today and freezing until it actually gets warm.

There are more, plenty more, things that are grinding my gears but I need to go get my tools out of the car and start dismantling. Oh well, at least I can play music while I work. Here comes a little Central Services - I Work For the Government Now to get the groove going the right way.

The Pain in the Ass of Domain Registration

The thing about trying to create a new website is that, no matter how clever your domain name, someone has already freakin' registered it. Absolutely no matter what.

And, if you happen to have initials like mine (ECO) then forget about it. Pretty much any combination of my initials and anything resembling photography has already been snapped up by environmentalists or domain-wranglers.

So, once your first tier of ideas has been rapidly exhausted (and let me tell you, I LOVE going to a domain that I've thought of and finding nothing but ads and links, no website whatsoever) then you start making compromises to see if you can retain a mote of the original idea and wit.

And then you end up with a gobbledegook mash of letters that means nothing to anyone but you.

Which means I'm back to the drawing board, AGAIN. I had a great name this afternoon but, to come close to it, I risk completely losing the concept behind it. Maybe not but I think I'll approach it with a fresh(er) mind in the morning.

Stupid domain-name-wranglers and their stupid computer generated domain registrations.

Pet Peeve

You know what's really incredibly annoying when surfing the web and reading news? When a site refuses to load up because the damned advertising server is down or busy or puked on itself. I understand that advertising drives the internet and all but it seems to me that timeout settings are about thirty seconds too long.

If your ad can't be served to a news page in under 2 seconds then skip it and just load up the news. Serve it up after the news is loaded, I don't care but don't you dare make me stare at a blank screen while the loadbar tells me adclick or doubleclick or whatever is off on a coffee break.