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It’s a real shame when Nigerian scammers take over a service that is legitimately necessary for others.

We have a friend from work who’s deaf and who recently had to resort to having me call Dell for him in order to straighten out an order. Their TTY line had a pseudo-IVR that ended up forwarding him to a line that disconnected. When he tried the relay service, as soon as they found out it was relay they forwarded him to a number that wouldn’t answer. Apparently Dell’s email and online chat for customer service weren’t of much use, either. But have a hearing person call, and all of a sudden it’s a quick thing that only takes a few minute to fix…and that’s with me giving them delayed answers as I typed in irc to act as relay! Apparently they didn’t have a problem with me, a female caller, dealing with an account with a male name on it and giving them delayed answers to questions like ‘what name is on the credit card’, AND having it shipped to a different address (relatives of our friend), but if I had said the word ‘relay’ it would have been game over! Thank goodness they *did* accept me as a don’t-ask-don’t-tell relay operator or I don’t know how he would’ve gotten through. I was happy to do this, but it’s pretty lame that Dell made it necessary.

See this article about the recent DRM problems they’ve been having. If you’ve got one of the 20 or so defective titles (of which I haven’t seen a list but it includes at least Stranger than Fiction, Casino Royale, The Holiday, and The Pursuit of Happyness), you can call 800.860.2878 and they will take your name, phone number, address, and UPC off the box and will send you a replacement disc.

Glad we didn’t send the player back. I feel certain we would’ve gotten stuck with the shipping fee and gotten absolutely nothing useful done to the player.

Sony, you and your ARccOS suck. Sure, you’re replacing discs. Maybe if you weren’t so anal retentive you wouldn’t be having this problem to begin with. It doesn’t prevent illegitimate use, just pisses off the people who actually bought the damn movie for their own use.

Bravo to EMI for releasing DRM-free music. Now if Apple would sell it in a lossless format, I’d probably even start using iTunes!

As expected, the guinea eggs did not hatch. On the plus side they didn’t break open and when we cracked them open to check, they didn’t even smell bad. So, it was Country Max chicks for Squeaker…Rhode Island Reds since they were sexed (pullets) and a minimum of 6 due to New York state law (dumbest law ever). At least Jon said he’d take 5, since he somehow ended up with 9 roosters and 1 hen!

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