The bastard who treated me like turd when I was shopping for a car is (drumroll please) Open Road BMW in Edison, NJ.  If you want to be treated the same, just go to any Open Road car dealership for that matter.  I have a friend who is just in the process of going through the same shit as I am writing this; this time it’s in Open Road Honda (also in Edison, NJ).  The difference is, he bought from them anyway; I didn’t.

I warned him repeatedly about my experience, but he insisted on buying from them because they are the only one who has the color he wanted.  I personally would have preferred to be gang-raped in prison.

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In a related note, I also mentioned sometime ago that I sent a letter of complaint to BMW of North America.  I wasn’t satisfied with their response (which basically said that they apologize and forwarded the complaint to Open Road management…really, WTF was that?), so I sent them a follow-up letter in a much nastier tone.  Tonight, I received a response; I gotta hand it to the Customer Relations representative for being patient, but her response is still shitty, nonetheless.  To quote:

“Our authorized BMW centers are independently-owned and operated and solely responsible for their representations, sales, and service policies and procedures.  BMW strives to respond to customers as positively as possible.  Unfortunately, I will not be able to comment further on this issue. Disciplinary action against our dealer network is at the discretion of BMW of North America, LLC and is a confidential matter.”

I highlighted the last sentence which, to me, basically means “We’re sorry but BMW isn’t going to do jack shit about your situation.  We can’t afford to allocate resources to satisfy just ONE complaining customer.  We have enclosed a picture of the CEO’s middle finger to constantly remind you of our arrogance; we suggest to place this picture in your wallet.”

I am so tempted to respond and show them the link to this blog…and CC BMW Germany office.  Maybe that will make some real noise.  But, man, I’m so damn tired.  It isn’t seem worth the effort anymore.

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Like I have mentioned a while ago, I have successfully installed the screen, but i failed to mention that it’s somewhat misaligned.  According to Mr. Fu, this is normal…but my anal-retentive personality forced me to re-install the screen…and i realized it’s not that hard when you did it the…um, 4th time.  I re-installed it and it’s now even better. 

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Buy me.

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I got myself one of those Split Screen for my new DSLR from Haoda Fu.  A word of caution: i found it not-so-easy to install.  I struggled a lot on removing the original screen, struggled so much I was THIS close to give up…and then on my last try…BAM!  scratched the damn screen (!).  I almost cried…literally.  It was a point of no return: I would need to install the new screen. 

I emailed Mr. Fu for assistance and–sure enough–after a few minutes, I got a response with the pictures showing how to remove the original screen and install the new screen.  I managed to remove the original screen, pop in the new screen…and gave myself another heart attack: DUST got on the screen!   AAARRGGGHHH!  I said, OK, I can live with a little dust…I just didn’t want to go through that again!

But when I tested the focusing with auto-focus on, the split screen was off by a mile!  Turns out, I installed the screen backwards!  I wasn’t sure, but that could have been the only explanation…if not, I just blew $1,700 and my sanity.  So I REMOVED it again carefully and used compressed air to remove the dust, invert it, then put in back in.

A sigh of relief: the camera can focus fine, no dust! :-) and screen is so now much brighter. I can focus manually perfectly without having to rely on the camera’s built-in electronic rangefinder. 

I will conduct more tests, but for now (after running a few quick tests…like trying to focus using a 50/1.4 on minimum focusing distance) I say it is definitely worth the money ($72 + $5 shipping as of this writing). 

There is another alternative called Katz Eye, but it’s more expensive.  While I haven’t tried that product, I’m pretty positive that it can’t be THAT much better, considering how good the Haoda Fu screen already is.

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I can’t remember the last time I played it…in fact, I can’t remember where it is right now as I’m writing this.  It will probably end up on eBay.

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Well, read this first.  I, personally, won’t switch to them anytime soon.  The nightmares discussed in /. is in line with the experiences (porting phone numbers, lags, dropped calls, *horrible* customer service) that a few of my friends have gone through since switching to Vonage. 

Moreover, I have a beef with the way they advertise their job postings.  I was browsing their job listings a while back (towards the end of March this year), and saw this post.  It ticked me off the instant I read it; I sent them an eMail about it (my actual eMail below):

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seriously, what the hell were you thinking when you posted this? https://www.cytiva.com/von/Detail_von.asp?von1043

what really pissed me is this part:

“You can take the gang of
four design pattern book back to the bookstore and use the money to buy
a movie ticket”

i, too, as a software developer, hate anyone who follows UML or the
Rational Design Process to the letter.  however, equating the use of
patterns to UML is blatant ignorance or a LAME joke taken too far.

if you cannot see the value of the GOF book, don’t generalize that
somebody who does see the value of it follows UML as if it was
Scientology.  if you haven’t read the GOF book, the examples are Unix
applications–que horror!  not.

you Unix fanboys should need to think before posting these kinds of
stuff.  this is freaking job site, for crying out loud.  if you’re
trying to be a job posting on Craigslist, you failed big time.

oh, BTW, i know at least 5 people at work who can meet all the
qualifications listed on that posting, but they don’t know jack shit
about web development.  and if it’s the same guy who has these
qualifications wrote this website, IT SUCKS.  have you used the back
button while browsing thise job list?  I rest my case.

oh, yeah, i’m typing this on an OSX machine.  you hypocrites.  EVERY
unix person i know HAS an OSX box at home or at work, or both…i’m
sure 90% of your unix employees owns an OSX box whether they
admit it or not.

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Now that I think about it, if VOIP ever catches on (which I’m sure will in the next few months or so) I won’t be using Vonage.  Screw Vonage.

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Meh.

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I just saw the 7-minute preview. It’s official: Brett Ratner ruined the X-Men franchise. What an idiot.

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I would like to apologize to my 6 regular readers for the partial unavailability of the website for the past 12 hours or so.  My hosting provider had to move my crap from their Hong Kong servers to their US servers because my website has gone molasses slow especially in the recent weeks.

I wasn’t particularly happy with the way they handled the server migration.  In fact, they pissed me off a bit…because while I was promised that it would be a 5- to 20-minute process, it turned out to be a few hours. 

This morning, I got an email from them that my hosting services was about to expire in 2 weeks.  After I fired a nasty email to them (complete with the words “f*cking” and “a**holes”) stating that I just paid my renewal two months ago, they explained that I had two accounts–one in Hong Kong and one in the US.  The kicker was they even threatened to have my account suspended because of the use of foul language.  Somehow they found a freakin’ reason to put me in hot water. 

I fired back and told them that as far as I’m concerned, I paid their company for this year and I shouldn’t give a rat’s ass about where the damn account is located–i.e., the migration should have transparent to me.  In the end, they needed to “cancel” my Hong Kong account and “extend” my US account for 10 more months.  Again, I didn’t need to worry about those details.   I understood the situation perfectly clear.  But why involve me in that crap?  That problem should have been handled internally within them.

They completed the migration, I guess that’s what counts.  Whatever.

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Well, not really.  Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence is boring the hell out of me.  Is it me, or is that new camera implementation has just made the game worse?  As you may have noticed, the camera is now “over the shoulder” (a la Splinter Cell) and you can freely set the camera any way you want, as opposed to “top down” camera in the original (and in the past) MGS3.  It’s one of the reasons why I hated Splinter Cell. 

 Also, it seems that the game hasn’t aged well, IMO.  I find that camouflage pointless and annoying.  If this camouflage ever returns in some shape or form in MGS4 (or the just-announced MGS for the PSP), I will fly to Japan and beat the crap out of Kojima.

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