Bluetooth headset this is not. The oral sex light (NSFW) has to be a novelty sex toy. As in, it’s good for a laugh but that’s about it.

Otherwise, like one of the commenters at Gizmodo said,

If you need a light, you are doing it wrong.

(via Nerds Approved via Gizmodo)

A lot of thing pisses me off (I’m an angry guy, don’t you know? ;)) and one of them is bad customer support. Getting bad support grates on me because I have been working in customer support and service for a while. Having been on the other side of the fence, I can empathise with the poor lowly techs who have to take calls or emails from an angry customer, or an ignorant one.

That is why when I have to call in for support myself, I always handle it thus:

• The tech serving me now may not be familiar with the history of my issues, so I shouldn’t show my impatience.
• The tech is a person just doing his/her job so I should be polite.
• The tech may not be able to handle my issue so I should request to escalate it if need be.

And due to my background in customer support, I also make sure I troubleshoot the issue extensively before I have to call it in. To a good tech, I am probably the best kind of customer that they’d want to deal with.

So having said all that, I deem the support to be horrible when the following happens:

• Assuming that the customer is always wrong, and being adamant and arrogant about it.
• Poor communication and mis-diagnosis of the problem, which leads to incorrect suggestions for resolution. And also, when “the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing”.
• Making the customer wait a long time for replies or acknowledgment of a problem.
• Allowing an old problem to reoccur without explaining why, and not doing anything to prevent a future occurrence.

To illustrate this, I will use the recent 2-day outage of my blog as an example. I didn’t know it at first but my blog was shut down due to the massively popular Edison Chen scandal story that I wrote (it had hit 20000 page views one day at its peak) - it was consuming too much resources from the server, slowing it down for all of their other customers’ sites. I had no issue with that because I don’t want someone else’s site slowing mine down either.

But the problem begins thus:

1. Couldn’t access my site. Thought it was the usual server gremlins and I’d submitted a support ticket.
2. First tech said, “we are rebooting it.”
3. Second tech (9 hours later) said, “Your IP is blocked. Send us your IP”.
4. I told them I tried accessing my site from three different geo-locations so it can’t be an IP block.
5. Another 6 hours later, I was told by the third tech (the most helpful one of the bunch) told me that my site was locked down. Now why couldn’t the first tech had told me that?

I was very grateful for finally getting the right answer after a 16-hour wait but I was majorly pissed off by how it was handled. I appreciated the third tech who was polite and understanding about the problem but I feel sorry that he was working in the messed-up system of his company.

In case you are wondering, the web hosting company is Site5. This incident was the last straw on top of other problems, although minor in comparison, that kept reoccurring. And when they had happened, I had to always call their attention to it. A tech company with poor customer service, and which isn’t pro-active about correcting problems does not instill confidence in me.

And yes, this site is now hosted with another company called iMountain. I chose them after doing my research on Web Hosting Talk and found that they’ve got very satisfied customers who write nice things about them. For me, so far so good. I’m happy with their customer service and the faster speed that my site loads at now.

marielito @ flickr

Pity the guy who’s out on a date and him and his female companion bump into one of those roaming flower sellers. What should he do? The flowers are over-priced and if he was going to spend money on flowers, he’d buy proper ones from a florist right? But then how can he not buy when presented with the opportunity?

Meanwhile, his female friend may not even want a lousy looking rose anyway. But then, if the guy can’t even spend $10 on a simple thing like that for her, what does that say about him? Should she continue seeing him? It’s not about the money - it’s the thought that counts right?

So the guy ends up buying the flower. Now she has to hold on to it for the rest of the night, feeling a bit awkward about it. As the night progresses, she begins to feel annoyed by having to hold on to it. Her arm is getting tired. Yet she can’t just throw it away. I mean what would that say to him? His feelings will be hurt!

Ok never mind. The guy sensing her annoyance, offers to hold the flower for her. Now he’s the one feeling awkward. He can’t help but grin at the irony of it. He bought the flower for her, and he’s the one holding it. Fuck. This is stupid. This flower is stupid! But he can’t throw it away. I mean what would that say to her? Her feelings will be hurt!

Screw it. As always, alcohol saves the day. They have a good time drinking, talking and flirting. Before you know it, they had misplaced the flower. The flower that neither of them wanted in the first place, but felt obligated to buy and to have. Ah, now they are happy and having a good time.

Then they see another flower seller walking their way. “Fuck off!” they both yelled out. As the flower seller walked away looking stunned and disgusted, they both laughed. Flowers? We don’t need no stupid flowers.

Hope you are having/had a good boinkfest. It is what we go through Valentine’s Day for isn’t it?

Check out this cute Japanese girl (probably of mixed heritage) with the big manga eyes, just staring at the screen. All of which is fairly innocuous. Though very meaningless it’s also harmless. But when you find out that this video and other similar ones on her Youtube channel have been viewed more than a MILLION times each, you gotta say WTF?!

Yes, I realised that I have just been sucked into watching it and spreading it, and thus increasing her mind-boggling popularity on Youtube. She may be a fake persona (Encyclopedia Dramatica, words slightly NSFW) and she may not be Japanese or live in Japan, but damn if it isn’t mesmerising!

Whatever it is that she’s trying to do, I think she’s partially succeeded.

It’s always good to know the person behind the bar. You get served quicker, you get recommended drinks and sometimes they make them stronger at no extra charge. To build up such a relationship with a bartender, Simon and I have the routine down pat.

We’d make our way around the pub or a club, getting drinks from as many different bartenders as possible. Once we meet ones who we consider friendly and who give good service, we’d go back to them for more.

One thing that we notice is that male bartenders tend to be the most friendly and unassuming. They are therefore the easiest to become familiar with. The worst bartenders are more often than not female, especially the pretty ones. I can understand that they’ve probably been hit on and had to deal with jerks the whole night, but they chose the job so the least that they can do is deal with it and not show attitude.

The most annoying would be when I’d wait patiently at the bar, seeing other people being served before me even though I was there first, and yet still being polite and holding a smile, and have a surly looking, pouty-face, sook of a bartender come up to me with an exasperated look, making it seem like she’s doing me a huge favour.

Then there are those who has selective friendliness - you’d see them all friendly to a bunch of people next to you, and then turn to face you with the most anal-retentive look. All within a turn of her face which is quite amazing to watch.

I mean, you are behind the bar to serve drinks. You’re not there to judge how good looking I am, or how rich or classy I seem. That’s a job for the door bitch and if she had let me in, then I don’t see why I should cop an attitude from you.

That is why we absolutely love female bartenders who are the opposite of the above. The ones who we don’t mind tipping now and again are the ones who always smile and look happy to see us, who asks us what we’ve been up to, and who knows what we want without us saying it.

It’s a two way street of course. Having been a waiter, I believe that you have to be a good customer first before you deserve good service. But the staff turnover in the industry is high so, like going after a woman, one shouldn’t waste time on a bartender who doesn’t reciprocate.

Typically my page views per day hover around the 500-550 mark. If I hit 600-700, that’s a good day. But the morning after I wrote about the Edison Chen sex photos scandal, this was what I woke up to:

Along with the expected visitors from around Asia, I also got visitors from the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and Europe. I guess I underestimated the number of Chinese people who are actually interested about the news, which first broke about 2 weeks ago. And yet, people are still searching for the photos! Check out these search terms that landed people on my site:

And this was how many times the post was read:

Holy smokes! And the traffic is going to go even higher because Friday isn’t over yet. Now it’s #3 #1 on my list of all-time most popular posts! While the other posts had slowly creep up the list as people read and commented on them, this Edison Chen one got up there in less than 3 days!

It’s so big news that it’s even got CNN talking about it yesterday, which probably caused a lot more people to go google it.

The glorious Internet age eh?

(via The Dark Knight @ Warner Brothers)

It has been revealed today that Heath Ledger died from 6 kinds of drugs: 3 kinds of anti-depressants, 2 kinds of painkillers, and 1 common ingredient in over-the-counter cold medicine or sleeping aid.

Among the drugs found in his body were two widely prescribed narcotics: oxycodone, the main ingredient in the prescription drug OxyContin, and hydrocodone, the principal pain reliever in the prescription drug Vicodin.

There were also three anti-anxiety medications: diazepam, the generic name for Valium; alprazolam, commonly known as Xanax; and temazepam, sold under the brand name Restoril and often prescribed as a sleep medication.

Doxylamine was also found in his system. It is an ingredient in some over-the-counter sleeping pills, and some non-prescription cold medicines that contain decongestants.

Ledger’s deadly cocktail - Heath Ledger - Entertainment - smh.com.au

The amount of each individual drug in his system was low enough for the medical examiner to rule out suicide. It still makes you wonder though. Yes, the drugs could have been prescribed by different doctors who are not aware of other drugs that he may have been taking. And Heath may not know the dangers of mixing the drugs. But why take two different kinds of painkillers, three different kinds of anti-depressants, and sleeping pills in the one day? Surely, you don’t need to be a pharmacist or a doctor to know that that is an excessive amount of drugs.

If it was a suicide, it would have at least made some sense. As it is, it’s a senseless waste.