Mostly Harmless

I decided to go see X-Men III (again) last night when the fire alarms went off. I figured, correctly, that everything would be resolved in a couple of hours and that I didn’t need to be here for that to happen.

After leisurely checking the movie schedule and cleaning my glasses I headed to my car in the underground garage. Which was where the fire had been…

I park my car about one foot away from a cinderblock wall. On the other side of that wall is a place you can store a burning dumpster, if you are so inclined.

By the time I’d arrived there was just a lot of smoke and fire extinguisher residue and water. Nothing happened to my car (yay), but now I had another reason to get out of the building: I wanted to get my car way the hell out of the way of any fire department shenanigans that might go down 6 feet to the left of my car. I drove through a smallish patch of thick smoke and out to freedom.

The X-Men did their thing. The firemen did their thing.

When I got home the dumpster had been rolled outside and the car next to mine was only slightly wetter than before I’d left — so I avoided some pesky water spots, at least. No word yet on the cause of the fire.

WTF #1: What sort of fast food joint closes their drive through lane hours before closing the actual restaurant? I’ve gone to Boston Market a couple of times recently, sometime around 6-7 p.m., and the drive through was closed. The first time someone walked over to the mic and told me it was closed. Seems like she could have spent another 10 seconds taking my order and we’d have been done but, no, I had to drive around the building and go inside to order.

They have a neon sign in the drive through window (20 yards from where you’d place an order) that says “Drive through OPEN.” You can’t see that sign until you’re committed to the drive through lane and then have to drive around the building. And with the sign off it’s difficult to see. They should light the sign up when it’s _closed_ (because you’d assume that it’d be open if the store is open), and the sign should say “Take your business elsewhere, the guy that knows how to hand food through a window went home at 5.”

Ironically(?) Boston Market is owned by McDonald’s, who has a number of 24-hour drive through windows around here. (But, you see, the restaurant is not open 24 hours.)

So the next time I’ll have to go to Burger King or something. But I’ve got a long-standing pseudo-boycott of BK because of that anti-McD commercial that they did with Sarah Michelle Gellar 30 years ago…

Anywho,

WTF #3: Something made me think of that stupid text crawl at the beginning of all the “Lost” episodes. The one that says something along the lines of “you are a SAP if you are so befuddled by your TV, and life in general, that you can’t figure out you may need to adjust your TV if you are hearing things in Spanish.” I mean, sure, you run it 1-2 times, maybe three, but not every episode over the last 2 months of the season.

Here’s a thought. On the SAP broadcast why don’t you say, in English, “Hey, you need to adjust your TV if you want the English audio,” hmmm? Then you don’t need to spend 2 minutes running that text crawl for the people who understand the concept of the “SAP” logo.

#3b: I have a suspicion that the big “you can buy this episode at the iTunes Music Store” banner they show near the end of every episode of “The Office” (and “Scrubs”) is partly there to irritate people into getting a copy of the show without that stupid banner taking up 1/3 of the screen. Unfortunately for them there are better copies, with no banner, elsewhere on the internet.

WTF #2: (I’ve not yet felt the need to escalate this into full-on “RANT” mode, but I will if Newegg doesn’t come through on the RMA.)

Here’s the thing: wrapping a 1-square foot piece of bubble wrap around a bare hard-drive and throwing it into a box with another bare drive, a router, and some packing peanuts is NOT HOW YOU SHIP A HARD-DRIVE.

The drive that didn’t lose its protective layer of bubble wrap(!) survived the trip. The other drive was sliding around in the box, in the general vicinity of its 1-square foot of bubble wrap (which was not securely taped around the drive). The dead drive has a chunk of plastic broken off near the SATA connectors but the connectors are undamaged. Not that it matters because the Clicks o’ Death that the drive makes when it’s powered up make that a moot point. (Or a “moo point,” which is like a cow’s opinion – it just doesn’t matter… “it’s moo” (tm Joey on Friends)).

My concern is the warranty disclaimer on the RMA form that says “any physical damage” will void the warranty. So does that include improper shipping on their part? I think not. If they think otherwise they should know that all of my future business will go somewhere else.

I can only assume that the broken drive got that way by (a) hitting the other drive, or (b) being dropped before it was ever put in the box. The shipping box is not banged up at all, FYI. If it’s (a) what’s the life expectancy of the other drive?