My 2¢

So last night I had to replace the power supply in my storage server. It just up and died, but fortunately, didn’t take anything else with it. I really like those power supplies that have the plugs on the back where you can connect specialized cables for only those devices you have. It eliminates lots of extra dangling wires dangling inside the case. No data was lost, and the web server, which was waiting patiently for the storage server to come back up, reconnected with the iSCSI target as soon as it was up.

And You Thought Oil Companies Were Gouging Consumers

We received a sympathy card from our veterinarian in the mail yesterday. It was signed by the staff. I thought it was a nice gesture. Kelsey’s ashes are ready to be picked up. I was looking through a brochure for a nicer urn than the standard wood box that you get and found a nice marble one. I called to find out the price and was shocked to learn that this little marble box cost $233US! A small engraved brass plate was $40US, and a small, round, plastic photo frame is $23! I was told that the urn was made of Italian marble. That has to be why it’s so expensive. Yeah…that’s it. Surely, they’re not trying to take advantage of people grieving over the loss of their pets. We’re going with the standard wood box, and we’ll get an engraved brass plate from Things Remembered for probably $10 and a photo frame from WalMart for about two bucks.

I picked up a Dell 24″ widescreen flatpanel display this week for my Linux multimedia system. It is truly a thing of beauty.

Exactly *when* did not returning calls become an accepted business practice?

So what else is there to rant about today? I could go on about the ridiculous way that gas prices are rising, but that’s been overdone lately. It’s not like it’s not a worthy target for a rant, but everybody has been doing it lately.

I’ve been trying for a month now to contact a contractor who can turn our gravel driveway into an attractive concrete driveway. Only one of them actually answered their phone…the others just go to voicemail. I’ve never received a callback from one of them, despite having left voicemail three times. One of the ones who did call back wanted to come by the house on a day when I was out of town. I asked him if he could drop by the following Friday and he said he’d call me back. He never did. The other one who did call back took my information about what I was wanting and said he might go by my house that evening and take a look. Never heard from that one again either.

Now, I realize that these guys are probably busy…it is summer, after all, and probably the peak of their season…but is that any excuse for not returning phone calls? How hard is it to call back and say “Sorry, we’re booked through the end of summer and could you try again in about a month or so?” Is their business so good that they don’t have to worry about pissing people off and losing potential customers? Well, I really want to get my driveway done, so I’m going to keep calling until someone calls me back.