So I wanted to send some money to a cousin who is having some financial challenges. When I was younger, the logical thing would be to use Western Union to wire money; but that is no longer the best solution. It could be, but Western Union has the worst web design on the planet, so online transactions never work (tried eight separate times this morning), phone transactions are predictably horrible (Western Union is not alone in this, but they are no better than the worst phone menu fiascos) and even in person they fail to get the job done. Aside from all that they are really expensive (12% for “Money in Minutes” to any Western Union location, or 5% for “Economy” which can only send money to a recipient’s bank accounts… Uh, Western Union, my bank only charges me $10 to wire any amount to another bank account. Wake up and smell the coffee, oh, and my bank’s website actually works!
Western Union: Epic Fail
I ended up sending money the old fashioned way, putting a check in the U.S. Mail. What a waste of my morning, sure wish I could bill Western Union for the wasted time.
By worst web design:
1) requires non-standard crappy browsers, neither Safari nor Firefox worked on the Western Union site
2) captcha is illegible most of the time
3) site frequently causes the session to reset, forcing you to re-enter the same information again and again
4) credit card transaction fails frequently
5) whole site crashed after I’d entered all the information for the 8th time - gave up
I just cut my tab feed for washingtonpost.com because their site has resorted to pop-under advertising.
Pop-up advertising is annoying as hell, but at least it is honest and ethical.
Pup-under ads hide in the background, behind your main browser window and try to trick you into clicks and options that are less than honest.
The Post stopped being a really reliable source for news some time ago, so it is no great loss, but the pop-unders is a last straw. Axed.
Update: Gah, turns out that the International Herald Tribune (iht.com) has started this same disgusting pop-under activity. Axing the IHT hurts more as they have been an excellent source of news from a European and South Asian perspective. They are affiliated with the New York Times; I wonder how long it will take NYT to go all slimy too? This makes two sources of news cut today… not a good day.
John Gruber has an excellent and very sarcastic article poking a little fun at the recent hype about the possibility that someday there may in fact be a virus for Mac OSX. The fact is well known and common sense, but why is there repeated story after repeated story about new Mac viruses (there are no actual viruses yet), and such hysteria?
We are all watching the security nightmare Windows users experience every day. Thousands of viruses a year, hundreds of malware programs that illegally rob cycles and memory from unsuspecting user’s computers, and that there is a possibility of one on the Mac is news!? Yes it is possible. Someday it will happen. Trust me, we are watching and learning from the Windows security nightmare. Very smart people are ready to stop the first Mac virus when it appears… some day. Sigh. Guess it must be a quiet news week…
On a lighter side, Apple has a really spiffy and poignant ad campaign about this very issue and about why years ago I switched from Amiga and Irix to OSX and not to Windows XP. Check them out for yourself, they are very funny, even if you prefer those Windows machines: http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/
Oh yeah, and to engage in “post mortem equine floggery” - once again (and for many years now) Apple’s own website requires no cookies, no Java, no JavaScript, and no ActiveX to work - meaning you do not have to lower the security of your browser to visit their website and conduct meaningful business. Hurrah… I sure wish other merchants would figure that out, perhaps they’d get my business then.
Saady Khan has an informative post over at Spicing it up!!! 
- The Rain Machine that lists many ways you can update your own blog’s template and design. Thanks Saady!
I added an Atom stream/feed to my blog, and submitted it to the LeftyBlogs web log index hoping to see a little more traffic.
I have to figure out how to automatically, or at least more easily, put content into my sidebar - modifying the template at blogger every time is a PITA (pain in the arse). I really like the book and music lists I see at tsuredzuregusa and Liberal Rage, and I need to figure out how to get the Search field into my design such that viewers can search my blog easily. Blogger offers a great NavBar with search, but I don’t like what the NavBar does to my site’s appearance, so I want it inside the sidebar of my blog.
I continue to wrack up a debt to my good friend Anthony who added more graphical elements and design suggestions for me.
My niece, Christina, is now publishing poetry and blogging via blogger - she’s doing it anonymously for the moment. It has been a really nice visit with my Mom, her beau Ralph, and the nieces visiting from Rome and Camden, New York. I spent veteran’s day thinking of several veterans I have met, but mostly of Harvey Yuh, who was a supervisor of mine when I was stationed at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, packing parachutes for Harvey, who had been in some firefights in Vietnam and told me how terrifying it was. Thank you, Harvey, for revealing to my mind some of the true horrors of war.
Decided to revise the blogger template for a prettier design taken from Point of Focus. I am curious what various readers think of it. I know - the comments stopped working (update: they work on new posts, but not old ones), I have to figure out why. My good friend Anthony helped me out by drawing up some dragonflies to replace the default butterflies - because dragonflies are cool, and there are lots of them by our pool every summer.
My Mom, her boyfriend, and two of my nieces are visiting from New York State this weekend and for Veteran’s Day. It is going to be a hectic and fun-filled weekend. My the nieces have grown… they are lovely young ladies now, and it is harder and harder to call them by the pet nicknames I dubbed them when they were babies: Squishy-fish and Snuggle-bunch (Silly-stinkpot and Cutie-pie are not visiting me at this time). I gather Ikea and the Container Store are on the list of pilgrimages this trip, as are some of the monuments in Washington because of Veteran’s Day.
