Posts Tagged ‘frustration’

Good week, good times, New York Times

Monday, November 17th, 2008

Last week was a pretty good week.  My week started off with an email from a New York Times reporter wanted to interview regarding a post I wrote about Amazon’s frustration free packaging.  Once I picked myself up off the floor, I emailed him back and told him it was okay to call.  I had a great conversation with their technology reporter, and I went on my merry way.  Seriously, my  heart was beating about 400 miles an hour while this was going on.  I asked for him to let me know when it gets printed, and I thought that was the end of it.

On Thursday, I was super surprised to get a call from the New York Times again!  This time they wanted to send a photographer to my house to get pictures of me and my kids!  I ended up with 2 hours to get me and the kids ready and clean the house.  It went well, I think, and I hope to find out soon when the article will get printed.

I feel incredibly blessed right now even though my mom is teasing about when Oprah is going to be calling.  :)

Bluehost Woes

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

I am seriously upset/angry/frustrated, and I am not sure what other emotions I am feeling either (and no this isn’t about those cicadas that have decided to leave their casings on our swing sets). Instead, this is a post about my hosting company. I have talked a lot of great things about Bluehost. They have always done right by me until now.  I sat through the CPU issues last fall that all of us Bluehost users were getting and being told by support that it was us and low and behold it wasn’t us.  It was Bluehost.

Over the last several weeks, I have been dealing with Bluehost’s ticketing system and phone support.  I have been getting CPU errors daily.  Since I monetize my blogs, it is very important that they do not go down either for 5 minutes or for 5 hours.  It is seriously frustrating.  I have gotten to the point that I can read the Bluehost Error Log and CPU exceeded logs better than their support people!  My frustration lies in that their support is a lot of times less than helpful.

I’m sorry, but I expect your phone people to know more than me.  I also expect them not to have to refer me to the ticket people who take days sometime to answer their tickets.  Also, if they don’t know what the problem really is, they shouldn’t be upselling me to the $20 a month plan.  When I ask if I’ll still get CPU errors since the problem wasn’t fixed, I don’t know isn’t the right answer.  I expect that after 3 weeks we would figure out what the problem is.  I expect your ticket people to read my prior tickets and know that what they are telling me, I ALREADY DID!  (and not close said ticket).  I expect that when you need my license to give me permission for SSH access that the uploader thing works, so your customers aren’t waiting for a week with nobody telling them that you couldn’t open the file I sent!

Granted, along the way, I actually had some extremely helpful support people who forwarded me links and documents to try.  However, my problem still isn’t fixed.  My sites are still going down daily.  At least the phone support person today was kind enough to tell me how to send in my ticket and have it escalated.  Whatever my issue is, the phone person couldn’t even access my file manager without crashing his computer.  I am running 6 WP blogs, so it isn’t like there is anything that is all that labor intensive or any special programming involved here.

I seriously could use some help here Bluehost.  I really want you to come through, but it isn’t looking promising.  I really need somebody to tell me why all my CPU errors look like this:  used  1.06 seconds of cpu time for php5 or this:  used  0.75 seconds of cpu time for /ramdisk/bin/php5  or  this:  seconds of cpu time for PROCESS : php5.  If anybody can tell me how to fix this, I would appreciate it.  In the meantime, I have started looking at other hosting companies, because I can’t let this go on to much longer.  You are costing me money.

To All Employees

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

Effective 1st January 2007


Dress Code

1. It is advised that you come to work dressed according to your salary. If we see you wearing Prada shoes and carrying a Gucci bag, we assume you are doing well financially and therefore do not need a pay raise.

2. If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage your money better, so that you may buy nicer clothes, and therefore you do not need a pay raise.

3. If you dress just right, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a pay raise.

Sick Days

We will no longer accept a doctor’s certificate as proof of sickness.

If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

Holiday Days

Each employee will receive 104 personal days a year. They are called Saturday & Sunday.

Compassionate Leave

This is no excuse for missing work. There is nothing you can do for dead friends, relatives or co-workers. Every effort should be made to have non-employees attend to the arrangements.


In rare cases where employee involvement is necessary, the funeral should be scheduled in the late afternoon. We will be glad to allow you to work through your lunch break and subsequently leave one hour early.

Toilet Use

1. Entirely too much time is being spent in the toilet. There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the cubicles.

2. At the end of three minutes, an alarm will sound, the toilet paper roll will retract, the cubicle door will open, and your picture will be taken.

3. After your second offense, your picture will be posted on the company notice board under the “Chronic Offenders” category.

4. Anyone caught smiling in the picture will be sanctioned under the company’s mental health policy.

Lunch Break

1. Skinny people get 30 minutes for lunch, as they need to eat more so that they can look healthy.

2. Normal size people get 15 minutes for lunch to get a balanced meal to maintain their average figure.

3. Chubby people get 5 minutes for lunch, because that’s all the time needed to drink a Slim-Fast.

Thank you for your loyalty to our company. Remember we are an employer of choice and we are here to provide a positive employment experience.

Therefore, all questions, comments, concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations, insinuations, allegations, accusations,contemplations, consternation and input should be directed elsewhere.

Management