I swear dealing with complaints to big companies goes something like this:

I call them. No one answers, the recording tells to send them an e-mail or fill some form.

No one ever replies to the e-mail or form.

I give them a 1 star review. I'm almost instantly contacted by a customer service rep, whose mandate is to get me take that review down.

#ranting #dystopia

I can feel every muscle aching. Today's surfing session was a game of hide and seek with the rain and the moments of sunshine. #Stupid #weather.

#littleme #ranting

Come on, #microsoft, it's 2025. How hard would it be to make #Outlook themeable.

Imagine using a solarized, catpuccin, nord or monokai theme in Outlook 🤩 instead of the current while-on-black and black-on-white. 😵

Even Win 3.1 had more color schemes than Outlook now. And you were able to add your own ones. In 1992!

#ranting #win31

Earlier today I had a fully functional VPS server, running caddy, which served up 4 web sites, perfectly. The files for those static sites were in folders owned by 'root'. (That becomes relevant soon)

The server also has docker running, so I thought I would install an app there which would provide web analytics for my sites (goatcounter).

I defined the docker compose file, started it up in docker and two things happened: goatcounter refused to run (never got to know why), and my 4 web sites started throwing error 403 (unathorized). They refused to load all of a sudden.

After much struggle, I moved the files for those sites to a new folder, made the 'caddy' user own the files and the 403 went away, but now I am left wondering how goatcounter could have caused that.

I get that caddy needs access to the sites' files, but it was running just fine before and I did not change the permissions on those files. This is the mystery I have no explanation for and it's killing me.

#selfhosting #caddy #ranting

One of my oldest friends (D.) made an alter ego (B.), and the alter and I had a 10-15ish year chat relationship. When D. died earlier this year, I was completely clueless that B. went with him until this past Thursday.

I have been utterly disappointed at D. and confused why he didn't tell me right off the bat. It has been heartbreaking for me. I have been grieving with this off and on all this time, and I think it will take some time for me to stop (if ever). The question of why is bugging me to no end and keeps me circling around.

On the plus side—if there is one here—is that I have the OC that the alter was supposed to have, which is okay and all, but at least it is another guy for my moose to molest [OHOHOHOHOHO!!!]

#rant #ranting

♫ Like the windmills of your mind...! ♪

*Me on the phone to a "Man and Van" company*
Me: "Hello, I'd like to have 2 motorcycles transported 7 miles!"
Them: "Certainly. That will me £169. For each bike"

As you can guess, they didn't get a sale out of this one. Why is it so hard to hire a frikkin' VAN these days?! I need it for less than 2 hours!
#Capitalism #MotorcycleProblems #Ranting

Nowadays, useless #venting #ranting and #drama are trending, yet solutions are #pending.

#Focus.

One of the most repulsive things you can find on the web are marketing disguised as tech blog posts. You search for stuff, then find something that looks like a useful blog post in the topic.

It starts by showing you how to do things you searched for using common tools. Once it has solidified your confidence, it lists the product to sell as the most viable option.

This is unethical. 🤮

For people using search engines, it is annoying and frustrating.

For others who rely on Copilot, ChatGPT etc., it's a perfect trap. AIs seem to be unable to tell marketing and facts aside, and the readers won't see the source, to realize the intention behind the article.

💡 An ideal search engine should downrank sites for posting any form of disguised marketing as delivering such results would undermine the reliability of the search engine itself.

💡 Also, a well working AI would not use such sites as source as to avoid damaging its own reputation.

Strangely, all common search engines and AIs gladly deliver false results, especially if they are paid for it, and most of the users are not aware of it.

The problem is that unbiased search engines and AIs, if they even exist, have a great disadvantage because they have to compete with competitors that make more money by deceiving users. 😤

#searchengines #ai #techmarketing #ranting