Zhanga: September 2009
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009 (9 comments)
I went to the local bike shop on Sunday to get a bike. After some lady gave me her sales pitch, I saw one I liked, but she was still building it so I came back two hours later. When I came back, I took it for a test ride and it felt pretty good. It also had a ridiculous climbing gear that could probably get me up a 60 degree hill, which could be useful in this city...
After the test ride, I took it back shop to pay for it. I picked up a helmet, lock, and pump for a total of about $900 + tax (which is a deadly 9.5%). Here's where it got fun...
After I finished signing for my credit card transaction with the lady who sold me the bike, some guy in the back started taking off my pedals and telling me they don't come with the bike. I still haven't completely figured out what's true and what's not, but at the time the guy claimed no bikes come with pedals. I didn't buy that line and told him that while I had never bought a road bike, the crappy bikes I bought before did have pedals, and if they were going to show a rack of bikes with pedals and sell them to me without mentioning it at all, they can't just take them off after I pay.
He insisted that I had to pay the $16 for the pedals because they were only there for the test ride and everybody has their own preference in pedals and blah blah blah. I asked if they could just give me the pedals since that's 1.6% of the cost of the bike and surely they're making plenty of money already. No go. At this point I got pretty pissed, not because I'm too cheap to pay another $16 on top of a $990 purchase, but because that's deceptive and wrong. Attempting in vain to use logic, I asked if he thought it was ok for a car dealer to remove the wheels after you test drive and pay for the car. He countered by asking whether I think cars should come with GPS. In hindsight, if all the cars on the lot had a GPS unit, then I test drove it with the GPS unit, then I said I wanted that car and then I paid for it... well yes I do expect it to come with one. At the time I just said GPS isn't essential to a car but pedals obviously are to a bike.
After a few more rounds of useless exchanges, the girl at the counter started apologizing profusely and said it was all her fault. So I said ok, I will buy the bike and pay your price for the pedals, but I don't want the $50 helmet and whatever else I picked up. The dude stopped talking and walked away.
As I was completing my transaction, the guy randomly came up to me again for no reason and asked if I thought bikes should come with shoes and a helmet. I looked at him and walked out without any of their merchandise.
End result: some manager called me 30 minutes later and told me I could have the stupid pedals. Though I may have thrown away my pride by walking back into the store today, at least it's a nice bike... (and despite that guy being an asshole, $800 for that bike is a whole lot better than I could get at any of the bigger bicycle stores around here)
Somewhat related: I once bought a 99 cent pair of really crappy speakers that came in a little crappy cardboard box that had a picture of these speakers being used with a PC. The fine print read: "Computer not included."
There's probably a good reason for the disc brakes: it's always wet here.
1:38AM
Thursday, September 17, 2009 (2 comments)
Random thoughts for today...
I just got spam in Chinese to my Duke address trying to sell me moon cake ingredients like red bean paste. Seriously. It was addressed to a bunch of other Chinese-sounding names at Duke, too.
...
Apparently, Microsoft employees can drive like morons too. I was at a red light, waiting to turn right onto a road that had three lanes in the direction I was going. Behind me was some guy in his SUV which I'm sure is sportily utile for getting him to and from work in this affluent suburb of Seattle. Anyways, perpendicular traffic at the time had the green left turn arrow, which normally would be a good time for me to turn right on red. Except there's this big sign that says yield to U-turns, and about half the people in the left turn lane were making U-turns. The SUV guy was highly impatient, stomped on the gas, and went around me to my left. In the process, he almost hit somebody trying to make a U-turn and made that guy brake pretty hard. In the end, macho SUV man ended up one car in front of me in the parking garage, where we idled in line waiting to pass through the entry gates.
...
Yesterday, I was in a meeting. A white guy and an Indian guy were talking while we waited for everyone else to show up. Some of the more senior white people walked in, and the Indian guy said, "Too many chiefs." At that instant, some Indian guys walked in, and the white guy observed, "Too many Indians." Clever.
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I just got an email from MS security telling me that a cougar was reportly sighted on main campus. Maybe it was actually Apple's next operating system... that's one of the few cats not yet used in their retarded names like "Snow Leopard." Or maybe the sighting was really just a 40-something lady taking advantage of young, vulnerable software developers?
...
I just got a copy of my renter's insurance agreement. It covers my personal property and some other random stuff. Insured causes of property loss include "Aircraft, including self-propelled missiles and spacecraft." Well, good to know that I'm covered when aliens attack.
Wait, no... I just read a bit more and war isn't covered. They also threw this line in: "Discharge of a nuclear weapon shall be deemed a warlike act even if accidental."
9:37PM
Thursday, September 10, 2009 (8 comments)
Today was the Microsoft company meeting, held at Safeco Field (home of the Mariners). Based on seating capacity and how full it was, I'm guessing about 20-25000 employees showed up. I won't bore you with the details, but there was one part that was hilarious. Steven Sinofsky (president of Windows) and some other guy were on stage. They were talking about the various devices Windows runs on, including some super laptop worth $12000 with 2 TB of solid state drives and as much computing power as the pile of 17 netbooks next to it. There was also a machine running a 3 GHz AMD CPU at 5 GHz with liquid nitrogen.
Anyways, after they went through the machines on the table, Steven pulled out an envelope, much like the one Steve Jobs used to unveil the Macbook Air, and said something about wanting to run Windows on this machine. As he said this, he pulled out a Macbook Air from the envelope. The crowd went wild when the other guy pulled out of nowhere a Dell, not yet released, that's fully twice as thin as the Macbook, and looked razor sharp from my upper-deck seat. After they were done talking about the Dell, Steven opened the Macbook Air, causing the crowd to go even wilder — not only was it just a shell, but in the hollowed-out interior he had hidden an even thinner Sony Vaio!
To protect the environment, the aluminum Macbook Air shell was then recycled to eventually be made into actually useful products like Coke cans.
11:28PM
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 (5 comments)
The first day of work, I arrived an hour early and slept in my car because I expected traffic to be awful and thought it'd take over an hour. I averaged like 65mph the whole way and it took 20 minutes to get to the orientation session.
The second day, I reported to my actual work building. Most Microsoft buildings in Redmond (main campus) are short, usually 3 or 4 floors tops. There are some parking decks and a lot of open parking spots, and anyone can enter any of these (you just get towed if your vehicle isn't registered). Unfortunately, the building where I work isn't in Redmond, and there's 7 levels of underground parking. So I drove into the parking garage and saw a bunch of signs saying MS employees must park on P4-P7. Ok so I spiraled around until I reached P3. Between P3 and P4 there was a gate with a long line of cars behind it.
When I got to the gate, I swiped my card... and nothing happened. Unbeknownst to me, the MS badge doesn't open the gate — a special parking pass, issued by the building (not MS) does. So now there was a gate 2 feet in front of me and 50 cars lined up behind me. I backed up, went forward, rinse, repeat, and ended up in two parking spots right next to the gate. Of course I couldn't fix my parking (or have done a better job in the first place) since there were so many cars lined up in a one-lane space backed up behind me. And not only did I park like a douchebag, there was a Porsche right next to me. So here I was, parked right in the middle of two spaces, while a car 10x more expensive than mine was parked perfectly next to me. Great morning of my first day.
As I went up the elevator, I noticed everyone was going to the 2nd floor. Well, I work in the building next door, so I pushed the 1st floor button so I could walk across. Fail. The door opened on the first floor and I started to walk out when I realized it was just a total mess of construction with no clear walkway in sight. I walked sheepishly back into the elevator and got off at the second floor with everyone else.
The next elevator, which went from the lobby to the offices, saw less fail on my part, but just above the top floor button there was a button labeled SEISMIC. I still don't know what it does though I do wonder about it often. One day I noticed that somebody put a piece of paper above it with a note: "DO NOT PRESS!!" I haven't found the courage to tempt fate just yet.
In other news, the government is awesome. I have to get a WA driver's license within 30 days of moving here, according to the law. But to get one, I have to prove I live in this state. There are a bunch of documents I can submit to prove this, but few are relevant to me. E.g. I can submit a utility bill, but I don't pay my own utilities. I do pay for DSL, but they put me on paperless billing without telling me so I probably won't get a paper bill until next month = 45 days after I moved here. They also accept concealed weapens permit, tribal ID, mortgage documents, ... yeah real helpful, thanks.
I also tried to change my name to David on my social security card. Well, apparently, a US passport that says David is not valid proof of my name. They need a name change order from a court. Great. So I have to file a name change petition with the county court for $150, basically telling them my name has been David for forever but I need it stamped by a court. And I can't do this until after I have a driver's license, because the court needs proof that I live here. Then I have to go back to SSA and deal with them. And more than likely, I will have to submit a name change to the DMV for the driver's license I will have gotten 2 days prior.
The only good thing that has happened between me and any large entity (aside from MS) in the past 3 weeks is when I went to the local credit union and asked for 120 quarters, they actually came out with 120 quarters 1 minute later. I didn't know you could do that. And then yesterday, I spent 42 quarters on laundry. Yes, 42 quarters. One run of three washers, and two runs each of two dryers because my stuff was still soaking after the first drying run. I'm going to hate doing laundry.
2:27PM
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