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Cranky Post
Nov. 1st, 2013 06:37 pmCranky Event 1: The ATO Over a month ago I contacted the Australian Tax Office to get a GST statement from some years back. They dutifully dispatched said document and told me I would receive it promptly. After it did not arrive, I telephoned them and asked when it had gone. "Oh, we've sent it to a post-office box". "Which one?", I inquire. "We're not allowed to tell you." I suspect that it was my former tax agent, whose address I had already deleted from my records. I am more that slightly horrified however that the ATO cannot tell me where they've sent my tax records.
Cranky Event 2: Murdoch University I have received a less than optiomal grade for my research project on Free Content Provision in higher education. However I believe I have been marked incorrectly. The tutor has marked me down for not using the APA referencing system (which I hate) even though the Study Guide says that one can use whatever referencing system the writer desires. The tutor also complained about my "out of date" references when over 90% are from the last twenty years. The most cranky part however is that they complained about the word length being short because they believed I was enrolled in the 6-point EDU 444 unit when in fact I'm in the 4-point EDU 4441 course which has a lower required word count.
Cranky Event 3: Net Registry I manage around fifteen websites, some for myself, but also for around a half-dozen clients. Recently the upstream provided decided to change their nameservers, which is fair enough sometimes you have to do this. But after making the change, they simply appended the new nameservers to the old zone file, resulting in a number of sites going offline when they turned off their old nameservers. Having manually edited of the files it seems that most are back online, although one stubbornly refuses to resolve. Thanks guys!
Crank Event 4: Ebay Once upon a time Ebay used to have a very sensible policy that sellers could be reported to posting items in the wrong category. Apparently that policy no longer exists, presumably because it takes up too much administrative time. So now buyers have to suffer people posting the absolutely wrong things in the wrong places. Especially if the category is ambigious, like "roleplaying". So instead of being tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, you end up with people posting "pretend play" items (like dolls) and sexual roleplay items. Because according to Ebay little girls and sex toys are in the same category; roll 1d6 loss of Sanity, you arseholes. Fortunately, you can block stupid sellers through an advanced option, but because Ebay has a laissez-faire policy my list has become very, very long - and apparently there is actually a limit on how many sellers you can block. Ebay's helpdesk, a complete joke at the best of times, has been a miserable failure on helping me with this issue.
Cranky Event 5: Map Projections A small number of people have been posting that old chestnut about the Mercator Projection somehow representing cultural imperialism because it is "biased" towards making Europe and North America relatively bigger than their area and Africa smaller and that the Peters Projection should be used instead. This is an unfortunate projection of the viewer's own ignorance. The only bias the Mercator has is towards having straight lines ending up where you intended - and if one wants to complain about unequal area projections, try google maps. Holy crap, look at Antarctica! Personally, as a balance between area, shape, and direction I prefer HEALPix and the mad genuis of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion map.
I don't often do personal catharsis, but there it is. At least #1, #2, and #3 may be resolved in a positive sense. I suspect I will be waiting for a while for #4 and #5.
Cranky Event 2: Murdoch University I have received a less than optiomal grade for my research project on Free Content Provision in higher education. However I believe I have been marked incorrectly. The tutor has marked me down for not using the APA referencing system (which I hate) even though the Study Guide says that one can use whatever referencing system the writer desires. The tutor also complained about my "out of date" references when over 90% are from the last twenty years. The most cranky part however is that they complained about the word length being short because they believed I was enrolled in the 6-point EDU 444 unit when in fact I'm in the 4-point EDU 4441 course which has a lower required word count.
Cranky Event 3: Net Registry I manage around fifteen websites, some for myself, but also for around a half-dozen clients. Recently the upstream provided decided to change their nameservers, which is fair enough sometimes you have to do this. But after making the change, they simply appended the new nameservers to the old zone file, resulting in a number of sites going offline when they turned off their old nameservers. Having manually edited of the files it seems that most are back online, although one stubbornly refuses to resolve. Thanks guys!
Crank Event 4: Ebay Once upon a time Ebay used to have a very sensible policy that sellers could be reported to posting items in the wrong category. Apparently that policy no longer exists, presumably because it takes up too much administrative time. So now buyers have to suffer people posting the absolutely wrong things in the wrong places. Especially if the category is ambigious, like "roleplaying". So instead of being tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, you end up with people posting "pretend play" items (like dolls) and sexual roleplay items. Because according to Ebay little girls and sex toys are in the same category; roll 1d6 loss of Sanity, you arseholes. Fortunately, you can block stupid sellers through an advanced option, but because Ebay has a laissez-faire policy my list has become very, very long - and apparently there is actually a limit on how many sellers you can block. Ebay's helpdesk, a complete joke at the best of times, has been a miserable failure on helping me with this issue.
Cranky Event 5: Map Projections A small number of people have been posting that old chestnut about the Mercator Projection somehow representing cultural imperialism because it is "biased" towards making Europe and North America relatively bigger than their area and Africa smaller and that the Peters Projection should be used instead. This is an unfortunate projection of the viewer's own ignorance. The only bias the Mercator has is towards having straight lines ending up where you intended - and if one wants to complain about unequal area projections, try google maps. Holy crap, look at Antarctica! Personally, as a balance between area, shape, and direction I prefer HEALPix and the mad genuis of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion map.
I don't often do personal catharsis, but there it is. At least #1, #2, and #3 may be resolved in a positive sense. I suspect I will be waiting for a while for #4 and #5.
