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Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

It seems I have a post that keeps being resubmitted.
I’ve deleted over one hundred instances of the damn thing.
God I hope that’s done with.
I don’t know what the hell caused it, but I’ve disabled the post-via-email script for now until I can figure out what’s going on with it.
Probably spammers.
Shoot them all.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m starting to get feedback from other blind and visually impaired users of customerservant.com, and it seems as if, though I’m used to dealing with sites that aren’t as accessible as I’d like them, and so I hadn’t considered that this one was a huge problem, it apparently is a huge accessibility challenge.
I think we’re going to have some huge problems further down the road, given that Web 2.0 is the latest rage, and it seems everyone wants to make their applications web-based.
I don’t see this going anywhere but more and more graphical, which will present problems for screen readers unless something comes up that allows for them to be a little more interpretive of dynamic web content.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I can’t sleep, so I decided to get up, turn the TV on in the living room, and make rice crispy treats.
Not the usual thing you do at 3AM in the morning.
But I was going to do it later today anyway, and this just means they’ll be done cooling, and the chocolate they’re smothered in will be all nice and solid, and they’ll be sitting in the fridge tempting me to eat them.
I’ve managed to get some of my coworkers addicted to them, and I promised I’d make them some more this weekend.
And no, you can’t have the recipe.
The weather wasn’t bad here on Shabbat, although the mosquitoes were out in full force last night.
I ended up taking my dinner outside and eating it out there.
I made a tomato sandwitch and a salad.
I had forgotten how good tomato sandwitches were.
It’s been years since I’ve had one.
That tomato’s going to be gone in three days.
This week I should actually have a paycheck that’s very close to normal.
With the exception of coming in to work late two days in a row two weeks ago, it should be the full amount.
I had almost forgotten what it was like to see a normal one.
I still haven’t heard any word on what’s going on with my robbery case, but I’d really like to go and burn the jail down as long as Michelle and her hoodlum buddies are still in it.
I’ll feel a whole lot better once this goes to trial, and if they all get sentenced to forever in prison, and it’s done and over with.
Now back to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m sitting here at my desk, and I can’t seem to get situated.
These chairs are just the other side of comfortable, so it’s hard to find a position that’s good enough to stay in.
I’d leave and go outside, but it’s hotter than Hell out there.
I was out there eating my lunch.
I may go out and check my messages as an excuse to go out and get some air, even though the air is pretty non-existent, and there’s enough humidity to last for the rest of my lifetime. I’m really sleepy, and I shouldn’t be because I actually got eight hours’ sleep last night. I’m currently reading Harry potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in order to try to pass the time.
I’ll be glad when this evening gets here and I can leave.
Next week will be seven months with no work, excluding the speratic tasks John gives me to do, which are greatly appreciated.
Just maybe, sooner or later, I’ll become productive again.
But then, Hell might freeze over too.
Mr. Frodo is such a moron for allowing this to continue.
No, never mind, it’s all the sighted people responsible for causing this problem and allowing it to continue who are morons, and, although it’s hard to admit, in the grand scheme, Mr. Frodo is pretty insignificant.
He’s just the closest idiot.
Apparently we have yet another referral training thingy to go through.
We did the second part Wednesday, and it was a fine example of the kind of effort that gets put into being negatively productive I’ve ever seen.
I didn’t say unproductive, I said negatively productive.
There’s productive, then unproductive, (which means you’re not doing anything either way), and then there’s negatively productive, where you deliberately waste more than twenty minutes of your time at someone else’s behest, just because they want you to.
That’s been the referral training.
Every last word is in the information system we have, so there’s no point in anyone getting together for four hours at a time, three different times, to read through it.
And while I’m at it, the company needs to offer training on how to speak proper English, or at least something that resembles it.
Sunt is not a word, sent is.
It’s not a consonant thing, it’s a constant thing.
How exactly is it that people manage to get through high school not knowing how to speak their native language.
Morons, every last one of them.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

From Lazer Brody

This is not an easy subject; I didn’t want to deal with this in public, but after having to advise a heartbroken Baal Tshuva in the USA what to do when
a blue-blooded Cheder Rebbe molested his beloved child, we can no longer remain quiet.
First of all, a child molester is the lowest form of villain. If he carries an appearance of being religious, such as a warped cheder rebbe, he’s lower
than low by causing chilul Hashem, a defamation of Hashem’s name, for which there is no atonement. The minute he lays a hand on a child – or on any other
human – he gets the judgment of “rodef”, literally “chaser” or attempted murderer. Any person has the right to kill a “rodef” on the spot. By molesting
a child, the villain is literally maming the child’s tender soul for life.

Unfortunately, as you say … many community leaders are not aggressive enough against this cancer. By not acting and protecting children from molesters,
those leaders are “standing on their blood”, a severe transgression of Torah. Here’s what we do over here, with iron-fist rabbinical approval:

The minute a molester (or potential molestor) is identified, he gets a “house call” by 2 or 3 good ol’ boys with long payis and very big biceps; they don’t
lay a finger on the villain, but put a good 10 pounds of fear in his heart and inform him that he must do the following: 1) Tshuva; 2) Resign immediately
from the cheder, and to never teach children again; 3) No severence pay; 4) To stay put, so he doesn’t move to another town and begin molesting children
there. 5) Pay damages to the injured party; 6) Mandatory counseling and emotional rehab. The villain then falls under close scrutiny, and if he even looks
at a child, somehow bad things begin happening to him. Such a system prevents Chilul Hashem and is usually adequate.

If however, the villain tries to hide behind his “meyuchas” relatives or weak rabbis, or fails to make tshuva, we turn him over to the police. Child molesters
in Israel get 18 years in the slammer. I used to be the Rav of a prison – I can tell you that the other inmates hate child molestors, and make their lives
unbearable. As such, the fear of a stint in an Israeli prison is also a deterrent. Yet, not long ago, one second offender that didn’t heed a rav’s warnings
was sent up the river for the full 18; he went to jail with a cast on his right arm, too.

Although the thing I love most is “Kiddush Hashem”, and the thing I hate most is “Chilul Hashem”, protecting the life of a child comes before Chilul Hashem
considerations. Hashem is willing to have His holy name erased to make peace between a husband and wife – all the more so to guard the life of a child.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslev teaches that not all rabbis – especially in these times before Moshiach – are not exactly worthwhile. If your local rabbi doesn’t
come down like a ton of bricks on a child molestor – or seek the aid of others that will – don’t have faith in him.

Parents – look for the early warning signs! Don’t ever let your child stay after school alone with a teacher, and beware of a teacher that seeks to be alone
with a child. Teach your child about the sanctity of the body, and that no one is allowed to touch it.

Yes, this abomination is in the tradition of the Flood Generation. May Hashem wipe these villains from our midst.

May we merit to talk about happier subjects always, yours with blessings, Lazer Brody

I’m very glad to read pronouncements like this when it comes to horrors like the sexual abuse scandals that have erupted over the last few weeks.
Rav Lazer has not only refused to shrink from or apologize for anyone’s despicable behavior, he has called a spade a spade.
Rav Lazer, may you merit many blessings!

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

T as in trackback, and this post is open.
If you have something you want others to see, take advantage of the space by linking to this post and sending a trackback.
Now’s the time to be a link-whore.
Just add /trackback to the end of the permalink of this post.
Linkfest Haven has more open posts.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I crashed FF again while trying to publish the last post.
That just proves the stability point.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I guess the referral training doesn’t start until 13:30.
So I’ll fiddle around till then.
I’m in a very vicious mood today.
I hate this place, and most of the people, and the rules, and everything associated with this hellhole.
I was supposed to be on vacation this week, but my sweetheart got the “Needs of the Business” treatment from his boss, so that got nixed.
Meanwhile his boss will get to take his Memorial Day weekend off.
I hope it really sucks for him.
My ‘Net connection’s down at home, so I still have to deal with that later on.
I hope to get that fixed tonight, otherwise I’ll have two tons of email to go through.
Wait, I’ll have that to do anyway, since I haven’t gone through my email in at least two days.
This week’s dragging on, probably because I was looking forward to a break spent with someone who’s actually intelligent, capable of really deep conversation, and just plain fun and a genuine pleasure to be around.
Corporate America sucks.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I had forgotten that any form of protest is practically illegal around here.
I had taken to not wearing my badge in protest against my current situation, but apparently that’s unacceptable.
I’ll have to find something else.
It’s better than just accepting the idiocy that passes for management in this case.
I’m off to referral training for the rest of the afternoon, or most of it.
Yeah, that’s highly illogical too, since I can’t get into the damned system, but, once again, it’s the rules.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I was surfing down the XM dial, trying to find something to listen to, and I came across one of the most horrible pieces of auditory trash I think I’ve ever heard.
It was on the hits channel, and it was the tail end of a song.
The “artist” was spelling out the word “bananas” as if that was supposed to be something novel or insightful, I think.
Or maybe the point of pop music is to make sure there’s as little meaning and insight as possible.
Maybe that’s what they have to do to make sure they sell hit records.
And it seems to be getting worse and worse.
If you comb through the music of the 70’s you’ll find a lot of good stuff, as you will with the 80’s and even the 90’s, although I think the good started to be seriously outweighed by the bad by the mid-90’s.
But even now, if you really dig, you can find something worthwhile on the albums being released today by the most popular artists.
You just have to have a lot of patience, as in the patience of Job.
Is it just me, or does music seem to be getting worse by the decade?
I’ve even gone through some of the music of the 80’s and 90’s, and none of it seems as bad as the crap coming out today and being forced down the throats of the listening public by the record industry and the big radio conglomerates.
This doesn’t speak for the occasional anomalies, like Vanilla Ice, but I think it’s generally accurate.
I shudder to think of what pop music’s going to sound like in twenty years.
God help us.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I’ve finally got the site working with Firefox.
I’ve started using it a little myself, and it works, with the exception of some hangups it seems to have with Jaws.
I do like the tab functionality though.
And the cool thing is I got the errors (and there were quite a few of them) fixed in a week.
Client’s development team, you really bite hard.
You’ve had six months to fix the accessibility issues with your kloogy software, and you haven’t done a thing.
I went through thousands of lines of code, (thanks Yaakov and Heidi), and got the problems fixed.
You guys are total slackers.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m working on making the site accessible to Firefox users.
Unfortunately, that has turned into a huge nightmare.
Not only do I have to go through each line of code in the theme’s files, I also am going to have to go through the lines of code in each of the plugin files in order to figure out what code it’s generating, and what the errors are in that generated code.
I’m further along than I was over the weekend, but given that I have no idea how many more errors are going to be generated, I don’t know how much closer I am to getting the site accessible for FF users, to say nothing of other browsers.
I’ll keep working though.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I was out grocery shopping last night, and rode past a car with a bumper sticker that said: “My child was inmate of the month at the county jail.”
I didn’t think people here would even be able to resort to that level of ghettoness, but I guess I was wrong.
I really have got to find a way to either get the hell out of here, or figure out how to stop convincing myself things can’t get any more backward, ghetto or redneck than they already are.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

This would be entertaining if it weren’t maddening already.
I’m finding that more and more of the site I used to visit here at work are being blocked.
I understand that’s their job, and I suppose I’m technically violating the company’s internet usage policy.
It’s kind of difficult though when your only objective is to come to work and see how hard it is to keep yourself entertained for eight hours a day due to not being able to work.
I’d like to say this situation won’t drag on much longer, but I honestly have no idea.
Hell, it could drag on for a year and I wouldn’t be surprised.
I wonder if people in other corporations are actually as incompetent as they seem to be in this one?
Not all of them, mind you, just most.
Even some of the aggregatos I was using to get information for posts is blocked.
I suppose as long as they don’t block all of them, I’ll still have access to info.
If they do eventually block them all, the number of posts will drop dramatically.
At some point I need to finish uploading the rest of the Livejournal entries back up to the site, and then back up the database.
I hope to get that done this weekend.
I also hope to get the new theme working as well, because I really think the site needs a new look.
I’m just bored with the one that’s up now, but I need to make sure the new theme’s going to work with Firefox, and that’s proving difficult.
There is limited support for Firefox with Jaws, but not enough that would allow for a lot of testing.
I suppose as long as they don’t block Newsgator, I’ll still have access to some news.
God, this post is extremely random.
Definitely won’t end up in the top ten.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

If I can get this to work, then we’re back in business.
Let’s see.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

It seems as though the folks down at company headquarters have finally blocked access to the admin panel of my site, so that means I may have to blog this way, instead of just logging in and posting.
I hope this actually works.
I’m not sure if this account, which is a web account, is going to allow me to post correctly.
We’ll see.
I should have seen this coming, and actually I’m quite surprised they haven’t done it before now.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

No, that’s not a misspelling.
I meant it like that.
Michelle and her possey were arrested last Friday, and are now in jail.
I went to the police station today to pick up my DVD player.
When I asked the detective how he knew it was mine, he said he was sure it was mine because they admitted taking it from my apartment.
He also told me that Michelle said that they had come to my apartment planning to do what they did, but that they didn’t do it.
Yet, somehow my DVD player magically ended up in their possession.
I also made it a point to tell the detective that I’m not interested in any deals with the DA’s office.
The case will go there because one of the charges against them is possession of stolen goods, and that’s not a federal charge.
The detective said he wasn’t sure how the rest was going to be handled, or if they were all going to be tried together, and he also said that she has other charges pending.
The DVD player still has the sticker on it listing the suspect’s name and address.
I may leave it there as a sort of trophy.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

This morning, when I got to work, I got an email from the client, asking for yet another explanation of the issues involving the db_interface with Jaws.
I wrote out the following:

The problem with the search box delays things considerably.
Without knowing which criterion the member is going to provide, I have to
spend time scrolling through, (and waiting while the screen refreshes and
Jaws refocuses), before I can get to the next option.
This puts me in the position of having to make small talk with the customer
before I can even get the customer pulled up in the system.
As I’m sure you’re well aware, asking for a customer’s ID would not fix
this problem, as what the customer thinks is the ID could be anything from
a social security number to a prescription number.
Furthermore, referrals are also out, meaning that they can’t be done using
Jaws, and I’m sure you’re also well aware that that makes up a huge part of
what we do.
The current state of affairs does not allow me to meet the criteria set
forth by (client name deleted) for acceptable call lengths, which would effect my quality,
which effects my overall rating in general.
That’s a domino effect I’m not prepared to deal with.
I hope this is helpful.
Please keep this in your records in order to prevent re-explanations from
being necessary.

Pretty self-explanatory, right?
At least it should be to people who are supposed to know what they need to about Jaws so they can write accessible software.
Then, this afternoon, I got another email.
Now, they want screenshots of what I’m encountering.
Now, keep in mind that Jaws is a screenreader, which means that it interprets what’s on the screen and speaks it out loud.
I’ve explained time and time again that there aren’t any actual errors, as in, no error messages.
The problem is that Jaws and the db_interface do not cooperate.
So what do they ask for?
Specific error messages, and whether or not things are just real slow or can I just not use the system.
In other words, “We don’t care if it’s really slow, and you have to put up with cranky customers, and you have to try to bullshit your way into keeping them on the phone so you can argue with our kloogy interface, because it’s not our problem and we’re too lazy and stupid to fix it, but we don’t want to say we won’t fix it because then we’d look bad.”
I’d like to do my part to make sure every person involved in this clusterfuck is kicked out of the gene pool by midnight tonight.
This is a complete waste of my time.
And I should have known it was going to come to this.
“We can’t fix it, because, well, we don’t know how and we don’t want to learn, and it’s not our scores at stake so what do we care, so we’re just going to blame it on you and let you deal with it, and to hell with whatever objections and/or explanations you give us.”
These are the people running America’s companies people!
These idiots, and more like them, infest the board rooms and upper management positions of corporations everywhere.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

We actually have some work-related, non-Jaws-help-quotation news.
Unfortunately, it didn’t pan out.
The client sent a URL for me to try, but the syntax is bad.
They had spaces throughout the whole thing.
I tried replacing the spaces with %20, (you can’t have spaces in URLs), but that didn’t work either.
I learned that you can’t have spaces in URLs way back in my “intro to Windows” (it was actually Introduction to Computers), in my freshman year of college.
If this was passed to the go-between by the actual programmers, then we’re in big trouble.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I promised you all the back story to yesterday’s nasty little shock, and now seems as good a time as any to tell it.
I’ve been sitting on it for the last week or so, because it was just too traumatic to really go out there and tell the world about.
But I figure I should go ahead and put it out there as a warning, because this site’s going to probably get a lot more offensive to some people.
I was robbed and assaulted last Sunday night, (for those of you who are Jewish, the Sunday before Pesach, and for those of you who are Christian, Palm Sunday).
This time, it was at the apartment.
I got a knock on the door at about 11:30 at night, and, being half asleep, was more annoyed at being disturbed than at the fact that there was someone at the door I went out to the livingroom and asked who it was, and a man’s voice asked for me by name.
I opened the door to see what he wanted.
When I did so, the man stepped just inside, and asked what was up.
Someone else walked past, and that definitely bothered me, but in the sense of “Hey, I didn’t give you permission to just waltz on in,” not in the sense that something was about to go down.
I told the man I didn’t know who he was, and I wanted to know who he was looking for.
He told me he was looking for me, and that we were “real close friends”.
I told him again I didn’t know who he was, and that he needed to make sure he had the right address.
I assumed he was just drunk, because other people have come by looking for people while drunk, although never me, and they only knocked on the door before they realized they were at the wrong place.
The man pulled out a piece of paper, saying he needed to check the address.
He had said he was looking for apartment “letter-of-my-building”, and I told him that this entire building was that letter, and he needed a specific number.
He looked at his piece of paper, and said he had the wrong address.
He and his “friend” walked out, and I went to shut the door, but as I did so, the man grabbed me and threw me to the ground.
He put his hand over my mouth so I couldn’t scream for help.
I thought he was either going to rape me or kill me.
He asked if I had any money, and removed his hand just enough for me to say yes or no.
I told him I didn’t have any, and he told me to be quiet, and got up, and took the TV off the stand, and took the DVD player, wires included, with him.
As soon as I got the door shut and locked, I dialed 911.
The police came, took a statement, and did a report.
I also had them call my friend Andrew to come over because I was totally freaked out, and because I needed someone to catalog what was missing.
It also turned out that my cell phone “walked” out, along with my keys and all my identification, and bank card.
The police, and everyone else, think this robbery is connected to the other one I was involved in, the one where an ex-coworker stole $320 from me.
They think she might have been the other person in the place, since she didn’t speak at all, most likely because she knew I would recognize her voice.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Now, I’m trying to deal with it, and that’s where the blog will get very politically incorrect, not like I made an effort to be pulitically correct in the first place.
As a result of this, I’m feeling several emotions, in no particular order: Fear, anger, and a certain degree of powerlessness because of not being able to make any identification.
And, to top it all off, I think the man is here at work.
I can smell the cologne he was wearing, along with the cigarette smoke smell that hung around him.
I think he’s made it a point to cross my path several times today, because he knows I can’t identify him.
Friday, that freaked me out really badly, and I went home and drank a lot.
Today, it really pisses me off.
I really hope the cops manage to get these bastards.
They took my bank card, and tried to use it fourteen different times in one day, several of which were major attempted purchases at 711 type stores, and some attempts to get gas, (which, if my bank account is any indication, they got), and some ATM attempts, even though they didn’t have a pin.
Someone had to have seen them, or gotten video, or something.
I just can’t believe that anyone could get away with something like this.
And if they do, I hope they die a really horrible death or something like that.
I mean, I hope that happens anyway, but I at least want them to know they’ve been caught and will have the book thrown at them.
I think this is one of the lowest crimes one could commit, alomst down there with rape and child molestation and domestic violence, and I firmly believe that they should be punished.
Not by going to jail where they have cable, I mean a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, where they can become prison bitches.
Quite frankly, I’d like to have a hand in their punishment, and death if possible.
I don’t think they have any rights left.
And, in case anyone’s wondering, I’d say the same thing if they did it to someone else.
It’s very clear they used my blindness against me.
Not just took advantage of it, but actively used it as a weapon against me.
It’s really enough to drive a person to the very far right when it comes to oppinions on criminal justice, and I’ll post some articles on that later.
Right now I’m just trying to work through all of this, and I think this is one of the better ways to do it, because this is going to color my life for a while in one way or another.
I think this has been the most difficult post to write.
It’s taken me almost two hours to do it.