Sam's L33t Journal

ITA's company dinner cruise was nice and relaxing.

The vegetarian tasting menu at Oleana is amazing.

The movie Primer is amazing if you love time travel stories and being confused. Which I do, apparently.

Ames is still awesome.

My first batch of beer (which I'm helping ODan and EHawk make) seems promising, and is now in bottles. Will be carbonated and done in two weeks or so.

We might have a new housemate for the end of the month, fingers crossed.

Bouldering after a few weeks off is a pain (specifically, in the hands), but I was able to pull myself up a v0 (and almost a v1) after much effort.

A non-crackpot published a paper allegedly proving P!=NP. It's interesting, but still probably not correct.

Don't know what's up with this story, about Google being in back-room anti-net-neutrality talks with Verizon. What the hell, Google? I hope they're up to something clever...

Ted Stevens is feared dead in a plane crash. If it's any comfort, he died doing what he loved.

Bank of America inadvertently charged me for someone else's check. I talked to online support, who told me to call check fraud (not 24/7), who (after determining the cause of the error) referred me to standard customer service, who pushed the issue to their error resolution department and told me to wait two days. It's a good thing the check didn't bounce (and that I had enough to not inadvertently overdraw on something else as a result). Still, I feel like the money should be restored to my account as soon as the error is confirmed, I shouldn't have to wait while they sort the rest of it out.

A woman raped and robbed at gunpoint in a paid parking garage at the Stamford, CT Marriott Hotel & Spa filed an anonymous lawsuit against the hotel, alleging negligence. The hotel's response:

1. Alleges that the woman herself was responsible. Evidently, the paid parking garage of a Marriott hotel is the sort of place where one should be taking exceptional measures to ensure one's safety, and walking from your car to the hotel with your children is something you just shouldn't do.

2. Violates the woman's privacy by subpoenaing acquaintances unrelated to the incident (presumably as "character witnesses", (hopefully) unwilling accessories to the victim-blaming highlighted in point 1).

In light of the above, it would be a good idea to avoid Marriott and affiliated hotels* until they realize that they should spend some reasonable amount of effort on keeping hotel grounds safe and that being misogynistic jerks, even in the course of a legal defense, is unacceptable. If you do decide to change your hotel-related decisions based on this story, it might be a good idea to tell Marriott, too.

(Story via here and here.)

* That includes the ones with Marriott in the name, but also Renaissance Hotels & Resorts, Ritz-Carlton, Bulgari Hotels & Resorts, Courtyard, Fairfield Inn, SpringHill Suites, Residence Inn, and TownePlace Suites.

ETA: ( Marriott's Response )

Olin College, by consent of the remaining former directors of the Franklin W. Olin Foundation and a majority vote of the College Trustees, has amended the Founding Precepts of Olin College, item six, to reduce the Olin Scholarship by 50% starting for the class of 2014 (entering in Fall 2010).

I would like to say that I totally called the current crisis in my letter to President Miller back in 2004. I wish I had taken a less alarmist tone in that letter, maybe if I had, it wouldn't have been ignored. But let's be honest, it probably would have been ignored anyways.

What really saddens me isn't the abandonment of the founding precepts or the charging of tuition (although that's plenty sad, too). It's the lost opportunity to respond to the crisis with an experimental, innovative, radically creative solution. By responding with a conventional business solution, the administration has dealt a real blow to the Olin ethos, one that will likely remain even if scholarships are eventually restored.

Early Olin was a risk, and the students who signed on reflected that. Now, as the memory of that time begins to fade from the minds of the student body, Olin is in a critical time of transition. But just when leadership was most needed, the administration has wimped out.

Quoted verbatim from an email to their customer service:

Since you were unable to reach an advisor earlier, to help you with this I have included the instruction as to how to reach an advisor through Alex [the bot]. Once you call us at 1-888-322-1122 (or *vm on your virgin mobile phone):

1. Press 1 to choose English
2. Press 6 to ask a question
3. Press 7 to select troubleshoot
4. Press 1 and then Key in your Phone Number
5. Press 2 and you should reach a live advisor.

Note that the bot does not mention the numerical options (poor voice recognition is the way of the future!), and if you have a problem with something other than making calls, you basically have to lie about it if you want to talk to a human (say "no" to "do you have problems making calls?" and the robot will spit out a canned answer with no option to continue if that's in fact totally unrelated to your problem).

Hey, Virgin Mobile, if your email tech support has a form letter about how to circumvent the front-end for your phone tech support, you just might be doing something wrong!

(Prior to my angry email, I tried the advice of gethuman, but their instructions appear to be out of date in this instance. Also, I wrote this post while on hold.)