The “Break it Down” Blog

Disclaimer: This is a re-telling of my experience with HTC Nexus One support on February 8, 2010 from 9am through 10:30am. I wanted to relay my experience so any potential Nexus One shoppers out there may get an idea of their own experience-to-be if they run into trouble.

I bought a Nexus One 2 weeks ago. Hardware-wise it’s great. Software-wise, Android still shows some of it’s warts from time to time. In a more complete review I’ll clarify warts, but I can sum it up as:

• Not sexy. Still looks like standard Android.
• Stutters/Hickups during animations or transitions

In the last week or so I noticed that on light-background screens (white, light-gray, etc.), I would see a very like “snow” effect on the screen. When I say “snow” here, I mean like the old-school poor-signal-snow you remember from TVs in the 80s, a fuzziness and erratic lighting behavior of the pixels by-the-line:

It was no-where near that pronounced though. You would have to take the snow seen above, and filter it down to 5-10% opacity and THEN lay it over a normal Nexus One screen, and that was what I was seeing. You could sit there watching it flicker.

I showed it to my wife and she noticed it as well.

Discharging the phone stopped the phenomenon for a few mins after bootup, but re-use of the device (reading web, email, tweets, etc.) would make it come back fairly quickly. In under 10 mins. The behavior seemed like some kind of electrical build-up, who’s to know for sure.

I decided to call HTC Nexus One support to get a replacement unit — I’ve had issues like this in the past with Apple, Microsoft, Mitsubishi… a fair share of disparate manufacturers. I expected to talk to an associate, run through a few basic troubleshooting steps then be authorized for an RMA – at which point they would either cross-ship me a new phone or overnight me a return box and within 4 days have a replacement.

That’s not what happened…

While I did receive a human to talk to in under 5mins, his name was “Dave”, we spoke for 45mins. We troubleshot the phone problem by pulling the battery and restoring factory defaults among a few other things.

When it was clear this wasn’t going to cut it, “Dave” informed me that because I was outside my 14-day return window (he clarified that he had counted the days) I could send it in for repair, at shipping-and-diagnostic costs to me ($28 for diag and at least $10 for shipping). At which point an HTC tech would assess and call me with cost to fix whatever was wrong.

I informed “Dave” that today was the 14th day — this was not planned, it just happened to be — at which point we both pulled up our calendars and re-counted the days manually until he agreed with me.

I figured, OK, now I was going to get the replacement process that I expected here — instead “Dave” informed me that I can still pay to ship and have the phone diagnosed for 2 weeks or return it. I had to ask specifically: “What about getting a replacement?”

ASIDE: This process felt unnecessarily complex to me – I have a phone I like, I bought it 14 days ago, and it’s busted. I want a replacement and you can have this busted one back. Why have we been on the phone for 45mins and you have yet to offer this solution? My personal take is that Dave was being slightly combative for his own reasons, but who knows.

“Dave” filled me in that I can get a replacement cross-shipped to me with a $529 charge placed against my credit card that will be refunded in 10 days if they receive the phone and determine the cause of the defect to be a covered one; e.g. I didn’t drop it in the toilet or something.

I’m not OK with this – what stops them from decided in 14 days that the problem with the phone is “not covered” then I have a $529 charge on my card stick for another Nexus One? How long of a fight is it going to be to get that cleared up?

I’m not asking HTC to give me two phones at once, just send me a damn replacement in under 2- weeks. According to “Dave” this wasn’t an option, and all returns had to be vetted by a tech. So what if my tech doesn’t see the error I report or doesn’t use it long enough to induce it? Them I’m 2-weeks without my phone AND get the same damn one back.

I’m starting to feel a lot like this by now:

theoatmeal.com Comic

NOTE: At this point I got the vibe from “Dave” that either he was being intentionally difficult to dissuade this process or just didn’t like me. Regardless of his personal preference, I had hit my limit with how stupid this process had become. HTC’s support seems to all start from the same premise: The customer is wrong, therefor every option they provide you puts you in the hotseat with the bill. There is no mea-culpa or attempt at rectifying your situation quickly. Every option offered put me out either $529 and trusting them to not screw me or 2-weeks without my phone and POSSIBLY getting the same one back if the tech doesn’t determine there is any problem. That is what I mean, their policies all stem from protecting HTC first and foremost, which drive legit customers like me crazy because it makes my life much harder for no reason.

I notified “Dave” that I just wanted to return the damn thing. It became more about principal… HTC would create a much better experience in this processes by just copying what others are doing, I’m not doing to justify this company-first customer support.

REMINDER: I’m not talking about replacing a phone I’ve had for months. I’m talking about a brand new phone I’ve had for 14 days that has a hardware malfunction in it.

“Dave” said OK and promptly started to rattle off policy garbage about charges and process and then… hung up.

The line didn’t go dead, my phone was fine… he just hung up.

I decided “Well, he confirmed a contact number with me twice at the beginning of the call, so I’ll just wait”.

No surprises here, “Dave” never called back. So I called them back and after a short wait got connected to a very nice associated named “Chris”.

When I explained what happened, “Chris” tried to lookup notes from my call and found none. She then put me on hold and went over to “Dave”’s desk to ask him why there were no notes from a 45min call. “Dave” told “Chris” that his “system has a problem and he couldn’t save them”.

Really? “System problems“?

I think hanging up on customers when you decide you don’t like them and erasing pending support tickets so it doesn’t look like you left a ticket hanging open to your supervisor is probably not definable as “system problems” — this is all speculation on my part as to what happened. But sudden-disconnect + “no saved notes” + “no open ticket for call” from a 45min call suggests to me this is exactly what “Dave” did.

Anyway, I told “Chris” I just wanted to return the Nexus One and within 4mins had that process taken care of.

At the moment I’m returning an electronic pre-printed FedEx shipping slip for the return package. Why the hell couldn’t “Dave” have offered this in the first 10mins, let me ship them back the phone, and while they triaged it, cross-shipped me a replacement? This would have avoided the $529 temporary charge against my card as well as them having 2 phones out at once.

That’s the thing missing from this process and what infuriated me. Instead I got the full “suspicious support tech” treatment that wasted a good portion of an hour.

Customer Support really is a post-sales entity. In my case, I don’t need a Nexus One or anything else HTC puts out bad enough to encourage more of this.

George Thiruva, over at Gadgetopolis, has put together one of the most confusing examples of math I’ve ever seen and came to the conclusion that Google’s unlocked, $529, Nexus One is only $49 when coupled with T-Mobile. Here’s a snippet:

So, the real cost of an unlimited everything plan is $99.99/mo for subsidized phone buyers. Compare that to the $79.99/mo plan for unsubsidized buyers and that’s a $20/mo savings. Over two years, that’s a whopping $480 savings.

Now, that $480 savings is $130 more than the $350 savings you get by selecting the $179 subsidized purchase option.

So, when you think about it, the $20/mo discount to unsubsidized phone buyers is effectively a rebate against the up front cost of the phone.

So, $529 – $480 yields a final purchase price of just $49!

The same math applies to family plans too. A subsidized unlimited everything family plan for two is $179.99/mo, but only $139.99/mo when you buy a couple of unsubsidized phones. That’s $960 off for two line family plans over two years!

I read and re-read his math twice, and can’t follow it. I reminded me of these math puzzles my dad used to give me when I was little to drive me insane… they were mathematical impossibilities, and I was 9… it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Anyway, I’m sure George has a point in there somewhere, but I’ll go ahead and simplify this mess in the following way:

Costs of Nexus One’s-ses on T-Mobile

• Unlocked
  • $529 – Purchase Price
  • $80/mo – Talk + Unlimited Data/Messages
  • $12/mo – Taxes and crap fees.
  • 2 Year Total: (529 + (92 x 24)) = $2737
• Locked
  • $180 – Purchase Price
  • $80/mo – Talk + Unlimited Data/Messages
  • $12/mo – Taxes and crap fees.
  • 2 Year Total: (180 + (92 x 24)) = $2388

That is the amount of money that will be leaving your pocket over a 2 year period to own that phone. That is your cost for the phone. I have no idea how George mixed and matched numbers together to come up with “Google Nexus One is $49″ — even if you subtract those two-year totals, you end up with $349, which is exactly the subsidization difference (from $529) that T-Mobile is eating to keep you locked in for 2 years.

Maybe I missed something, but that article made my brain cry.

Above is my Mitsubishi WD-65831, the first (and only) HDTV I’ve ever bought. I built my home entertainment system around it after researching HDTVs for months. I looked as plasmas, LCDs and like everyone else, waited for SEDs. Having it contributed to a lot of popular content on this blog over the years for folks owning the same, or similar, sets.

This was back in 2006.

One of the things I’ve been noticing in the last year or so is that the picture seems dimmer or at least dim enough to annoy me. The picture never struck me as blindingly-bright on this TV, so it wasn’t a night-and-day difference, just something I thought I sensed.

I would clarify that I’m a fan of bright displays. I like LCDs that “pop” and blow out my retinas. I cannot stand looking at professional calibrated plasma panels in “THX movie mode” that you cannot hope to watch in anything other than a pitch black room.

I’m not saying calibrators aren’t important, they are, but you need to know what you like. I like bright pictures with sharp colors that dance around the screen and take me on a magical journey.

That being said, the other night we were watching the Lost premier and noticed during the cave scenes that we could barely make out any detail. I took the remote and boosted Contrast to max (63), but it was already there and then bumped Brightness up to 24, it had been down at 12 or so.

I also tried to turn on/off Dark-Detailer and the other settings, but we just couldn’t get the power out of the picture we wanted.

I’ve owed this TV for 4 years and never had to replace the lamp, I’m still on the original one. So I figured it was finally time.

I headed over to the Mitsubishi Parts website to order a replacement lamp. Unfortunately in the WD-XX831 series that I have, the lamps are $259 where as in the newer models, WD-XX833 or 835 or newer, I forget, they revamped the lighting system to use cheaper $99 lamps.

So I placed the order and a few days later got the lamp, I popped it in the TV, fired it up and boom… that sucker was bright.

I don’t remember the original set being this bright out of the box or it’s very possible I’ve gotten really used to a dim picture, but I’m thrilled with the improvement in performance out of the TV now.

If any of you are using a DLP-based television, and beyond year 3 or so with your original lamp and think the picture looks dim, you might give a new lamp a try.

For the Mits WD-owners out there, it’s an excellent boost if you are feeling like the picturing is dimming on you.

Overall Thoughts on Mitsubishi HDTVs

The prevailing wisdom now when chatting HDTV with folks is LCDs. If you are willing to pay, Samsung and Sony for quality and if you are on a budget, picking up a Vizio gives you a big price/performance bump.

Mitsubishi doesn’t come up that much anymore, at least in the HDTV-street-gang circles I roll with.

These TVs really made a name for themselves back in 2006/7/8 because you could get a huge TV, relatively inexpensively, that simply wasn’t an option in other technologies — plasma or LCD.

That’s not the case any longer, 65″ LCDs are becoming more common, albeit still a bit pricey. So Mitsubishi has continued to take what they are good at (huge, high-quality TVs, for cheap) and push that envelope.

Looking at their site now you can buy a 82″ Diamond 837 Series TV for $3400 from Amazon (NOTE: The Mitsubishi DLP line was the last DLP TVs that Costco carried, up until a few weeks ago. Now it’s all LCDs with some Plasma).

I’ve loved my TV as long as I’ve had it, no real complaints. Power-up takes a bit too long, and the RF input isn’t ready to receive input for 10secs after power on, which is lame to hold your Universal remote pointing at the TV so it changes inputs when ready, but really, that’s it.

That being said it seems like Mits doesn’t really know what it’s long-term plans are for TVs. Thin is sexy, not technical marvel.

They have their Laservue TV announced 2 years ago and still prohibitively expensive to be nothing more than an R&D effort sent to market to recoup costs. Also the performance, from folks who have seen it in person, report that it’s nice to look at, but no-ones face was melting off in amazement.

I wonder what their longer term TV plan is, they’ve had “3D capable” (120hz) displays for over a year now, possibly 2, and they may hop on that bandwagon… cheap 3D TVs for when Avatar comes out on Blu-ray.

I hope they keep competitive though, they have some excellent tech in these things.

Update #1: Reviews are trickling in for BioShock 2 and IGN’s in particular specifically address the much better story telling experience and a lot of my gripes mentioned below. Hurrah!

I recently got re-interested in the BioShock universe when I decided to read up a bit more about the world of Rapture and the characters in the game and what was actually going on — something I never got a great sense for while playing. You can read my thoughts in the article “BioShock Story – Taking a Second Look“.

You figure that by finding out the entire story, twists and turns and all, you would ruin a game. In this case it made me realize how rich the story was that the BioShock team had created — and I wanted to play it.

I pulled up my Steam account, bought BioShock 2 (which came with a free copy of BioShock 1) and sat down and played through it. I just finished the game about an hour ago and here are my thoughts.

My Thoughts (from my Brain)

The first time I played BioShock, it was on the Xbox 360 about a year after release. I got almost exactly 1/2 way through the game before putting it down and deciding that I was just bored… no other way to describe it.

The odd part?

1. I loved the story setting – hidden underwater city? That’s Riyad-favorites-101 right there.
2. Dystopian world that has fallen apart – awesome.
3. 1950s setting, perverting our classic romanticization of the period with the twisted reality that the city became – again, awesome.

So what went wrong? Why was I so bored?

Well on the 2nd play-through I finally figured it out — I love the setting and the story of the game, but the combat has the following problems:

1. POV is set “too close”, you feel too zoomed into the frame.
2. Weapons don’t sound punchy, they sound more like you are beating mutton with a bat. There is no *pop* to them.
3. The enemy NPCs are repetitive as all get-out. How many “Lead Butt Slicers” am I going to kill. Even main characters are just the same NPCs with slightly different colored clothing.
4. No satisfying dismemberment.
5. You don’t feel insanely powerful.

But I’ve played plenty of games that had shoddy combat, but awesome stories and completely overlooked the shortcomings because I was so enthralled.

Now here’s the catch…

In BioShock, there are no cutscenes, the combat never stops. You never get to know more about yourself in a cutscene, or the work in Rapture, or Andrew Ryan or whatever… the game never stops and holds your hand as it delves deeper into the lore. It just plays audio clippets at horriblely timed events that you can barely hear over the rattling of gun fire or incessant goddamn chatter of the NPCs.

In the last level of the game, there were half of the audio recordings I had to replay because as I would start to listen some slicer would walk in and start attacking me, and the sound mixing (I balanced audio to give FX/Music 70% and Voice 100%) still blows the voice out, so you can’t hear it.

Also when you are escorting the little sister… she needs to shut her GODDAMN YAPPER. If I never hear “Common Mr. B, Angels don’t wait for slow-pokes. Oh no Mr. B, the Angels are sleeping. Angels Angels Angels… teee-heee, Mr. Beeeeee, Angels slow-poke Angels AngelsGGGRRRRAAAAAHHHHH”.

Anyway, I can’t say I’m excited at all for BioShock 2 at this point. I’m certain it’s more constant battles and not paying enough attention to the amazing world they built for this game.

So What? I liked the Combat, STUPID!

Well that’s good I suppose, but imagine Mass Effect 2 if they had cut out all the dialog scenes, ALL OF THEM, and gotten rid of all the cinematics.

Was it still as fun? Still as engaging? No way.

That’s what BioShock is like, a really rich/incredible world and story to be told, and it’s all done with 8sec audio clips overlaided during gunplay.

I’m almost sad that BioShock 1 got such amazing ratings because it justified the formula they put together for this game. BioShock 2 is sure to follow in the same footsteps, and as a lover of stories, I feel like I’m going to miss out on getting to know Rapture a bit more closely.

It’s so frigging cool…

Update #2: IGN’s Video Review of BioShock 2, final score was 9.1/10

I listed an item on Craigslist recently and received an email last last night from denese Hankins <hankinsdenese@yahoo.com>, about 10pm with the simple text of:

hey

do you still have the item?

“Yes, sure do.” I replied, wondering what the best place to meet this person was going to be. It was 1:41am though, I was having a restless night and figured I’d get through a few more emails before going to bed.

No sooner do I think this than I get a reply from my new friend “denese” with the following:

Dont sell this!

Just wanted to let you know that I was selling a few things on CL just like you. I ended up realizing a lot of people get ripped off, its over-all NOT SAFE anymore to meet people from craigslist. A friend of mine told me about an amazing website and said I should check it out so I did. I made about 4000$ ast month. Its great and the has helped me and friends so much. I’m doing better than my current fulltime job and this is just extra money! If I can do it, you can. Visit http://www.googleandmoney.com

If you need any help let me know! I have no problem giving tips and tricks that I have learned so far.

Good luck with your sale.

At this point I sighed, knowing it was a bot working through the Craigslist listings emailing random people, probably just enough not to get blacklisted, and hooking them into this scam.

I went to the website, it’s that classic “get rich quick” template that all these sites like Rich Jerk and “1 Secret Tip to Loosing Bellyfat” websites all use. The site also notifies me that Google will pay me $7500 a month for no reason, all I have to do is send them $1.95 + $2 S/H to get their “Business Kit”.

They explain the process as (Screenshot as of 2:40am 2/6/10):

For anyone non-technical out there: The only business Google runs that MAY or MAY NOT disburse money to you is their AdSense ad service. And that requires you to run a popular site that displays ads that advertisers pay you to display. That money comes from ADVERTISERS, not directly from Google’s coffers. The site claims that Google pays you to “post links” and you will suddenly get checks in the mail because “Google monitors everything” — this is a lie. There is no for-pay service Google offers that has anything to do exclusively with link-posting.

Now, moving on through this scam…

Clicking the link to order their “Business Kit” takes you to tryblackbeltprofits.com which directs you to ordering “The BlackBelt Profit System” — they make the form look like an iPhone so you know they are hip and legit.

There is also a pile of money on the desk, which makes you know they are serious:

The best part is if you try and close the page, you are automatically blocked by not one, but two on JavaScript popups trying to get you to try the newly-reduced-price TRIAL:

I think anytime you are dealing with a business that is so super-cereal about what they are doing that they explain it using multiple onbeforeunload JavaScript events and use 9 or more exclamation marks, that basically means they are legit like crazy.

After closing the last JavaScript popup window, you are directed to the order page and that’s when it all becomes clear what this scam is all about:

This is the Video Professor scam all over again (Link 1, 2 and 3) with one minor change: They declare the ripoff on the order page instead of hiding it – which Video Professor did originally. But they make sure to push it down 500px or so below your scrollable view (I’m on a 24″ monitor). Notice how the money and order information is all primarily above that on the right? I bet they are hoping you never notice that box.

So you see, your $4.94 investment using “The Blackbelt Profit System” is going to turn into a $4.97 monthly charge and a $149.95 annual membership fee if you don’t “cancel” in the first 14 days.

I’m going to go out an a limb here and say that any program that makes it’s money exclusively from people’s mistakes, is going to make it damn near impossible to cancel.

There is an 866-number you can call (1-866-445-4241) but given that domains are all private registrations with googleandmoney.com being from an entity in the Bahamas (as of 1:40am 2/6/10) I’m going to guess they will drag your phone calls on for exactly 15 days, at which point, you are no longer eligible to cancel.

googleandmoney.com along with god-knows-how-many-other websites are likely all front-ends that pour into this single “Blackbelt Profit System” scam. The Blackbelt domain was registered August of last year for only 1 year so it seems they are just getting in as fast as possible to see what kind of money they can make before calling it quits and closing shop.

Oh and good luck fighting them on that. Besides no one to talk to, you would be dealing with an out-of-country entity that has your credit card on auto-charge cycles every month and every year.

If I had to guess, given how shady this type of scam is, after the 14 days, what most likely occurs is 11 months of $4.97 charges against your credit card, hoping you won’t notice because it will be buried among so many other charges, and then at the end of the year, the $149.95 “membership fee” will be charged. At that point if you call to cancel, they would just throw the fact that you’ve been using the “membership” all year in your face.

If you haven’t read them yet, TechCrunch did an excellent series on The Video Professor and how the company operates much like this (making millions a year). When you order the “free training CD” that is advertised on TV all the time, somewhere on the site is claims you are agreeing to pay $290 for the entire collection if not sent back within the first 10 days or something — at which point you receive the entire collection in the mail, mostly confused as to why.

I would define a scam as:

A business transaction where one of the involved parties doesn’t fully understand the parameters of the transaction to-the-benefit of the other party involved.

And that is exactly what is going on here with The Blackbelt Profit System scam. The feeder sites mis-represent exactly what it is that you are buying and what you will be doing to make money. The Blackbelt Profit System site explains something else entirely and only makes you aware you are agreeing to a yearly membership and monthly fees in the Offer details at the bottom of the order page.

*** SPOILER *** Tips on Mass Effect 2 gameplay after the jump if you are interested.

[...]

I’ve been on Windows 7 since the RC was released — that coupled with the fact that I’m a blogger makes me an expert, you should trust me and take my word on everything unconditionally — and while I’ve been overall pretty happy (20 tips and tricks, 8GB performance) there have been a few niggles here and there (Windows rot).

One of the more prominent ones I’ve noticed is the poor performance when dealing with large amounts of small files. Before Windows 7 was officially released, generally slower file operations (Copy, Move, etc.) were reported and to some extent fixed in the Beta 2 and RC releases, and a bit more with a follow-up hotfix to the public release. I don’t know if SP1 had additional fixes for file ops or not.

At the time I had an inkling that the performance issues weren’t so much that Microsoft’s device drivers had gotten worse, but that too much work was being done to copy, move or delete files. The most likely culprit was updating the system-wide search index with the second culprit being Shadow-Copied files needing to have their revision records updated.

Given that Shadow Copy is optional and must be turned on, I looked at indexing first.

ASIDE: As an Eclipse Java PM in my past life, I had workspaces that contained 100s of thousands of .java source files, so trying to erase or move these took hours — I decided it was long enough to investigate the issue and try and trim down the time.

I first ran into this problem when I tried to delete a set of workspaces I had on my hard drive. Executing the Delete operation hung at the “Calculating…” discovery step of the delete for more than 10 mins before I tried to figure out what was going on:

No files were getting deleted, the damn thing was just counting the files it would delete in a day or two once it was done counting.

I popped open the properties on the parent directory to see what the hold-up was and found out it was pretty huge:

So I did some digging online and found folks suggesting that you disable ‘Indexing’ on directories with tons of files that you want to perform a mass-operation on. You can do that from the Advanced… menu:

This operation itself took about an hour to apply, but given that I was looking at a 6hr delete for the previous operation, it seemed to be worth it:

My guess is that Windows 7 went through and updated the NTFS metadata on every single file contained in that parent directory to flip the switch on indexing. Not sure what Mac or Linux/EXT4 or Sun/ZFS would do in this case or if properties can be hierarchical, but that seemed like a very 1990s way of adjusting file properties.

Once the operation had finished I re-executed the Delete operation on the parent folder and saw the “Calculating…” finish much faster this time, maybe about 3 or 4 mins. The delete operation itself was scheduled to finish in under 30 mins, quite a bit different from the previous estimate of “LOL, you will die waiting” that Windows 7 had given me before:

As far as I know this tip effects directories with tons of files, not necessarily directories with very large files.

If you guys have any of your own favorite Windows 7 tips, let us know!

What’s the surest way to get me to blog about something? Probably asking politely, but the second-surest way is to take random ideas I have in my head about things I like, and then somehow telepathically translate them into a beautiful looking video game that makes me want to leap off my roof and grapple my cat with a broom before crashing through the windshield of my car.

Fortunately, Rico, the star of Just Cause 2 is more talented than I am and the developers over at Avalanche Studios, who refuse to reply to my emails threatening to kill myself if they don’t add co-op, have decided to pitch reality to the wind and create a sandbox game that looks like everything that is awesome about gaming… and physics… and explosions… and destructible environments… and grappling hooks… and parachutes.

Pay special attention about half way in where Rico shoots a propane tank, then grapples it and rides the goddamn thing into space. The fact that someone at Avalanche thought this would be “hilariously fun” is 1 thing, the fact that a lead designer green-lit it and put it in the game makes me want to kiss them all on the mouth:

In fact, if I lived in Sweden, I’d probably camp out in front of their development offices with fresh donuts, trying to lure them out just to give them hugs.

Preston Lee has released a Serial-to-PID Calculator utility for Kindle users. Using this utility allows you to discover your PID so you can share your DRM’ed Amazon .azw files with other kindle users securely — this utility does not remove the DRM from the .azw files:

If you wish to DRM-protect your own personal content for distribution-disabled delivery to peers–such as within a classroom or sensitive work setting–you must know Kindle PID numbers for those devices that you wish to be able to open your documents. This tool is intended to enable secure distribution of your own content ONLY and does NOT provide you with any tools to remove the DRM you apply. By using this tool you accept all responsibilities of doing so, and recognize that this software comes without any warranty of any kind, whatsoever.

The backend implementation of this Kindle utility uses the kindle-drm Ruby gem v0.6 that Lee released today. The source code to the project is available over at github.

I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with eBay for about 8 years now. If found it handy in the past to try and sell more obscure items on eBay than Craigslist when I didn’t think I would find locals that would be willing to pay what I wanted for the item.

In all that time, one absolute thing has always stood clear to me: I’ve always felt like I was getting fucked when it came time to print out shipping labels.

I couldn’t put my finger on it and didn’t know what I was doing wrong. Year after year, ever time I went to ship a package, no matter how detailed the listing had been, I always ended up coughing up more money for shipping than eBay had charged the buyer for.

I was really incensed by this 2 years ago when I went to sell off about 10 pieces of hardware from a desktop computer I was dismantling. I actually took the time to weight each part in it’s box as well as measure the dimensions before listing it just to make sure eBay charged the buyer the right amount. I figured “hey I can’t go wrong here, eBay/PayPal is integrated into UPS and USPS and they have the dimensions and weight, this will be dead on”.

NOTE: When you enter the shipping method, weight and package dimensions, eBay tells you how much shipping will cost before the listing is posted. It is all automated, no way to get it wrong.

So fast forward to current day and I just got done selling a few things on eBay, one item was 8×8x4 and weighed 6lbs (I listed it at 8lbs to compensate for margin of error). eBay told me the shipping would cost $15, so I listed the item and the winner paid that. When I finally go to print out the shipping using the integrated seller tools, eBay decided that shipping was now 67% higher ($25) that I would have to pay out of pocket:

What the hell… I told eBay the weight, dimensions and carrier method (USPS Parcel Post, the cheapest service USPS offers) 5 days ago, and now the cost of shipping is 25% higher? I smell shenanigans…

I decided to go directly to USPS.com and price out the same package. What I found out was that USPS Priority Mail, the fastest method USPS offers, was 60% cheaper than eBay’s calculation:

I went with the USPS.com purchase and sent the package, but this confirms my long-time assumption that eBay has been dealing in shenanigans when it comes to shipping fees. If the real cost of this package was $18 (or less, since eBay was instructed to price out Parcel Post) where is that extra $10 going? USPS doesn’t need it, and I’m sure eBay and USPS have a mass-discount deal arranged for directing people to use USPS… so let’s say eBay/PayPal’s cost for Parcel Post was actually more like $10 or $12… where is that 100% markup going since it’s coming out of my pocket?

And before you say “Yea, but you compared different shipping methods!” I also calculated the cost for “Parcel Post” (exactly as eBay had) using the dimensions and weight and got an evencheaper quote:

I declare shenanigans all over this…

It is interesting that instead of transparently passing this onto the buyer, eBay saddles the seller with this burden? And what can the seller do, eBay already passed the policy that sellers cannot leave feedback on buyers. So if I found this shipping cost too high (and it’s eBay’s fault) and I decide to cancel the transaction, the buyer will give me negative feedback.

All I’m seeing right now are a bunch of hidden policies and functionality in eBay intended to spur shopping (buyers), increase revenue and leave the sellers with the tab for the whole thing. I also realize this punishing behavior may have a lot to do with the fact that I’m a small-time seller on eBay. I’m sure mass-listers and the big-box stores that were recently allowed to start mass-listing on eBay don’t experience this as they would pull their listings in no time flat.

For anyone experience the same thing, I’ve had better luck using Craigslist and Amazon Marketplace.

I don’t have anything intelligent to say about this other than trying to spread it’s visibility.

In a 2003 survey, 30% of female veterans reported being raped during their time in the military with 71% reporting being sexually assaulted. A previous 1995 survey showed 90% of female personnel reporting sexual harassment.

News Junkie Post added more details to the issue from the BBC and television covering the issue as well with a horrifying quoted from one of the women interviewed for the BBC’s program:

Everybody’s supposed to have a battle buddy in the army, and females are supposed to have one to go to the latrines with, or to the showers – that’s so you don’t get raped by one of the men on your own side. But because I was the only female there, I didn’t have a battle buddy. My battle buddy was my gun and my knife.

and then:

At least a rape ends. It’s the day-to-day degradation that eats at you. None of my friends who were raped on active duty reported it. Or if we tried, we were told to shut up for ‘morale.’ Working with your rapist on a daily basis isn’t a lot of fun, believe me.

There are similar reports coming out of defense contractor camps like Jamie Leigh Jones’s reported gang-rape during her time at KBR.

So far the result of these issues have been Sen. Al Fraken (the comedian from SNL) solely pushing through an amendment to the defense spending bill that would allow access to US courts for rape victims. There were 30 senators that voted against the amendment.

Like I said, I don’t have anything intelligent to say on this subject that others can’t say much better and more eloquently, just wanted to do my part in drumming up awareness — this was something I wasn’t aware of until I read through the linked stories.

Pretty awesome real-world algorithm guide for cracking any padlock out there — not that secure for folks in-the-know: