Misc. Ramblings

Choson Chosen

Many misguided people hate immigrants. They find them strange and are afraid of them. Perhaps out of this fear and hatred, they treat them as animals. As if immigrants were less than human.

But 100 years ago this month, a small ship docked in Honolulu Harbor. It came from a cold and mountainous peninsula bringing a hardy people eager to make a better life for themselves and their families. They came knowing the work was back breaking harvesting of sugar cane. Work done in the hot sun and the cold rain.

During that time, there was no safety net. They left behind their wives and families. They left the communities that had nurtured them. Their temples, their schools, and their culture. They came with the clothes on their backs and a willingness to work hard.

They came motivated in one of two ways. Some intended to make their fortunes, or what they would consider fortunes back home, and return. Others intended to stay and were willing to do any kind of labor to support themselves and save enough to bring their families to the land of opportunity.

The determination of those first ones have paid off. Today, the descendants of these first Korean immigrants include the present Hawai'i Supreme Court Chief Justice, the Honolulu Chief of Police, and the mayor of the island of Hawai'i.

To those who would bar immigrants from coming here, remember, we were all immigrants at one time. So have a little kindness and understanding in your heart for those who come after you because all they want is the opportunity to better their lot in life and are not afraid of hard work to achieve it.

Aloha!

Mapped Out

Sometimes, programs try to make things so convenient that it becomes impossible to do what needs to be done. Let me explain. I've been banging my head working on two web-related projects. The first is adding a site map to our Judiciary intranet site. NetObjects Fusion has a tool to create what they call a map but what it actually produces is the same information that is in the auto-generated menu. That is, it lists the html pages, but not the assets linked to on those pages. These assets, in the form of Adobe Acrobat files, are what I want included.

So far I've been unsuccessful in finding any OpenSource utility that will build such an index or site map. It seems everyone wants to map the html, but not the links on each file. If anyone out there has suggestions send mail to the usual place. Mahalo in advance.

The second thing is incorporating a table created in MS Office into the site (Before you ask, no, I didn't create the table). As many of you know, MS creates rather crufty HTML. So when you save something as HTML, or even try to just copy and paste something, but especially a multi-column table you will have problems. I'm trying to get NetObjects to make the columns fluid by using percentages for the column widths. Unfortunately, it is not allowing me to do that. Further, it won't allow me to edit the underlying HTML. Sigh.

Aloha!

Goeth Before the Fall

Sometimes, taking a good value to extremes can be bad. Confidence, for instance. Being confident of who you are and your abilities is a Good Thing. As long as it is based on actions that are worthy of such acclimation. But what if being confident about something keeps you from doing your best?

Since last Friday, I've been fighting a battle with our "local" telephone service provider - Verizon. I had two things I wanted to change about our service. While I fully appreciate the possible consequences of throwing two changes at someone who is overworked and underpaid, Verizon likes to tell us that they provide "outstanding service" (I had to listen to this every time I called them).

The first thing we wanted was to stop, or at least reduce, the number of telemarketing calls we were getting. The second was to switch long distance carriers to the one offered by Costco.

In order to do the first, we wanted to enable Verizon's Call Intercept (CI). Below is some information on the service from the Verizon site:

Screen calls - even from anonymous callers.

Call Intercept screens unidentified calls and lets you handle them however you like. Fewer unwanted calls means more peace and quiet for you at home.

How Call Intercept Works

• This automated service works with Caller ID service.
• Unidentified callers that typically show up as "Anonymous," "Out of Area," "Private" or "Unavailable" on your Caller ID display are prompted to record their identity before your phone rings.*
• Once the caller records his or her identity, the service alerts you with a unique ring and displays "Call Intercept" on your Caller ID unit.
• When you pick up the phone, Call Intercept plays the recording and then gives you several options for handling the call.

Additional Benefits

• Unidentified callers who don't record their name hear a pre-recorded message stating that you do not accept unidentified calls, and then are disconnected.
• Use of a four-digit Personal Identification Number (PIN) that you choose allows friends and family to bypass the screening process. When Call Intercept is bypassed using the PIN, you hear a unique ring and "Priority Call" appears on the Caller ID display.
• If no one answers, Call Intercept will allow the caller to leave a message on your answering machine or Home Voice Mail service.

This sounded as close to what we wanted as we could get, short of having our own PBX. So sign us up. The second, switching to another long-distance carrier, was supposed to be automatic once they inputted the correct PIC code (Primary Interchange Carrier code).

Both were supposed to occur within 24 hours. Saturday, no change. I call Verizon and the person I speak with says all of the changes have occurred. But they haven't, I try to explain. Well, they say, the long-distance change will take as long as it takes for Costco to make the change. On the other hand, the CI is already in effect. Hmmm. Okay, it's possible I don't know what I'm doing so I decide to wait until Monday.

Monday comes and no change. Okay, I can call Costco about the long-distance, but the CI is not working because I can see that we are still getting such calls. So I call Verizon again. The service representative says, in so many words, that I must be mistaken. That if I will only listen to her, I will see how things are supposed to work. I try to explain to her that I know how it is supposed to work because I can read the information above from their web site. While I am trying to say that, she interrupts me and goes into her spiel again about how the service is supposed to work. By this time, I am offended by her not only interrupting me, but also repeating something she has already told me (as if I did not understand it the first time and if she but repeats it again, surely even a dunderhead like myself will see the light).

So, not believing me, she called our number to check if CI was working. It was not. So she called the local repair office and was told I would need to call the mainland to have them check. I did so, and this representative calmly confirmed that no, CI was not working. Nor would it until the local office actually put an order in for it. Sigh. It seems that the original representative never inputted the request for the service in the first place. Double sigh.

The mainland representative created a conference call between her, me, and the local business office. With everyone on the line, I confirmed I wanted the service. The business office representative created the order number based on this request. And the mainland representative enabled the service. This last part was done in less than three minutes.

There's an old saying about how the customer is always right. In this case, I was. But because the second representative was apparently so sure of what her computer system was telling her (that the service request had been inputted and completed), that she was blind to the truth and therefore could not provide "outstanding service."

The long-distance change? That took place yesterday. Without my having to call anyone.

All Wrapped Up

I'm home today nursing my semi-annual cold. It seems I always get something around this time of year. Maybe its the weather or maybe it's something else. But in either case, I'm home doing not much of anything. I doubt I'll be feeling much better tomorrow but feel free to check back just in case. If not, have a great weekend everyone.

Aloha!

*****

Not yet.

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