Theodicius
Good. Evil. Bratwurst.

Third debate is now history. From the appearance of the two debaters, it certainly looked like GW thought his back was up against the wall. He looked and sounded desperate when not answering some of the questions. JFK, on the other hand, for the most part looked calm and reasonable while not answering the questions.

I lost count of the number of times either candidate lurched away from the real question in order to answer one they thought they were better prepared to answer. They both raised the art of reinterpreting the question to be about something else to a new high for this campaign. Probably because the moderator was asking tougher questions of both than the marshmallows served up so far. Didn’t someone explain the rules to Bob before starting, that he wasn’t supposed to ask questions that anyone really wanted to hear the answers to?

Best spinmeister? Senator Frist who called Senator Kerry a liar and then couldn’t get his own story straight (was it 10 years, 20 years, or in the time you’ve been Majority Leader?). The way he was falling over his own tongue made me wonder how he ever could string together a coherent sentence. I know he can, for I’ve heard him do it, and do it well. But just not last night.

Best moment? I think this goes to Senator Kerry, during the “what have you learned from being married to a strong woman” question, though President Bush runs him a close second, for his answer to the same question. The President: “To listen to them.” Agreed, GW. You should listen to her, because she’s got her head on straight and is probably the only advisor you have who’s willing to tell you the truth, in every circumstance. The Senator’s winning answer: “We’re probably all examples of lucky men who can be said to have ‘married up.’ Some would say me more than the rest [of you].” A man who’s willing to get into a contest not over who has the best wife, that’s common, but specifically over who’s wife farther outpaces her husband? Now that’s a treasure.

Most interesting observation? That while Senator Kerry occasionally praised President Bush’s decisions and actions, the praise was never returned. To me, that says someone’s so afraid his opponent may actually be going to win that he thinks he’d better not take the chance of pointing out any good in him. Point goes to the Senator for style. Nobody gets points for substance in this debacle.

Who won? Who cares. The people lost. There was less substance in this debate than the others, and this one was the one that was supposed to talk about issues that matter to more people. A pox on both their houses.

OK, this time I’ll give URL’s, because the sites promise to be helpful, they just apparently hate the equipment I’m using. I’m having repairs done to my car, at the moment, which will take it out of action for a couple of weeks. So I need to look for a temporary, and perhaps permanent, replacement.

Dollar Rent A Car has a front page that apparently lets you select the day you want to pick up your rental car. Unless, of course, you’re using Safari. Click on the little calendar image which pops up the current month’s calendar to choose the date, and you’ll see only the first week, no more. If you don’t want to pick the car up until the 14th of the month, you’re out of luck.

Oh, wait, there’s a field containing the date. But don’t be silly and expect to be able type anything into the field. Sorry Charlie, you have to use the little calendar widget. Sorry Dollar, I’m renting from someone else.

Did I want to repair or replace the car? Well, let’s see. I pull up the website for Don Jacobs Subaru to see if I can afford a new Outback. Right there in front of me is a button saying “Build Your Vehicle, Name Your Price”. Ooooh, that sounds tasty. Click. A new window opens with a pretty lady telling me to click the start button, and she’ll come back when I’m ready to talk about price. Click. Nothing. Click harder. Still nothing.

The click/no response continues whether I use Safari or IE5. I know, I’ll fire up Firefox. Click. Crash! Another incident report for Talkback. Sorry, Don, old thing. I’m off to another dealer, one with a website that might actually work (novel concept, that).

Basic site testing should have uncovered both of those glitches, but apparently they didn’t bother with something as silly as checking their work. My mother always uses the same word to describe people who consistently refuse to check their work. “Slipshod.”

Test, my children. Don’t put a whiz-bang in the design until you know it works.

Went looking for a light bulb. Oh, not just any light bulb, but a dimmable compact flourescent. Yes, they exist, despite the fact that everyone up to and including Home Depot tells me they don’t. I know they exist, because I have one, and I want more.

So I find that GE makes one, and I get their list of possible places to buy them. I’ve already tried the over-the-counter places, so I check the web vendors they list.

ARRRGH! It’s really not possible for me to find out. I’m looking for “GE Soft White Dimmable Light Bulb”, which is the only description GE’s website gives for the bulb. So I go to Bulb Man, Bulb Direct and Specialty Bulb. (No links for you, crappy websites all!) All the bulbs are listed only by part number! No description, not even a manufacturer name. Just part numbers! I don’t have a part number, you moronic website! I just know the name of the bulb I want!!

All three of these vendors have lost my business, simply because they didn’t have a clue about how to deal with a customer. I would have purchased a case of those bulbs, at least, considering I can’t find them in any store within 50 miles of my house. But their websites were too stupid to help me find what I was after.

The Storal of my mory is this, my children: When you’re building a website that expects to sell things to people who are not experts in the field, give them more than one way of locating your wares. Had any of those sites allowed me to find the bulb by name, they would have had my credit card number within seconds. Heck, if they’d even included a single sentence of description of the bulbs, without making me click individually on eleventy-one part numbers in a vain hope of finding what I wanted, it would have made the sale. But noooo. It’s just part numbers for you; if you want more, you’re going to have to beg and wait. I’m in the middle of a basement redesign, and I don’t need to spend a lot of time searching for light bulbs; I want them now.

As it is, I’ll go on back to one of the local suppliers and special order a case or two (so that I can have replacements when these burn out, considering how hard they are to find). Am I likely to go back to those web sites? Not very. Their URL’s are indelibly associated with the frustration I felt, so why would I want to go back for another helping of it?

It only takes a little ignorance to lose a customer for life.

As Douglas Adams once said, “I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

Sorry about the absence. Had my head down for a while.