Claudette > Hello Jonathan_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Claudette. Please give me one moment to review your information.
Claudette > I see here that you have a concern or problem with your bill, I understand the trouble that this has caused you and I want you to know how sorry I am for the inconvenience.
Claudette > As your service representative today, I want you to know that your satisfaction is of my topmost priority and I assure you that we can resolve this issue together on this chat, Jonathan.
Claudette > May I ask for you to kindly elaborate your concern for me?
Claudette > Thank you.

Jonathan_ > Sure
Jonathan_ > On Jan 23rd I paid 281.30
Jonathan_ > Was my understanding that that was because I missed payment for December
Jonathan_ > So I was paying for the previous and current bill
Jonathan_ > Look up my account this morning to pay my bill and the total due is 281.30
Jonathan_ > Total (previous + current) due 01/21/2011 $281.30
Jonathan_ > The hell?

Claudette > Thank you very much for the details and the information.
Claudette > I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you, Jonathan.
Claudette > No worries and let me help you with that today. Let me pull up your account and see what I can best do for you.
Claudette > Since your account protection is a top priority to Comcast, I need to verify some information for us to be able to check the account. Can I please have the Full Name registered under the account and complete Service Address? Also, please provide me your complete account number or the last 4 digits of your Social Security Number.

Jonathan_ > ***************************************

Claudette > Thank you very much for the details and the information.
Claudette > Please allow me to borrow two minutes of your time to check and verify the account for you. Would that be fine with you?

Jonathan_ > ok
Claudette > Thank you so much, Jonathan.
Claudette > Let me have two minutes to pull up your account. While I am doing this, please allow me to share with you features of some Comcast service. While waiting for your account to pull up, I will share you a feature of Comcast that you can truly benefit. Do you know that Comcast is introducing XFINITY? XFINITY is the new brand of Comcast ‘s technology platform, products, and services: XFINITY TV, XFINITY Voice, XFINITY Internet and XFINITY Triple Play or XFINITY bundled services. XFINITY marks the beginning of a whole new era of innovation and change for Comcast. We’re transforming the customer experience and giving you more choices, more convenience and more control over your entertainment, information and communication needs. To know more about XFINITY, go to XFINITY.com/home.

Claudette > Thank you very much for patiently waiting. I really appreciate your patience with me.
Claudette > I am now in your account and let me go ahead and check on your bill records and charges.

Jonathan_ > ok

Claudette > I have checked and I am so sorry, James, I see no double charges on your account or bill. What I see here is that your balance was $281.30 because you had a unsettled previous balance $140.65 and then been added up to your current balance.

Jonathan_ > Name’s Jonathan, but what was the previous unsettled balance of 140.65 from?
Jonathan_ > My account was current a month ago.

Claudette > Oh I am sorry, Jonathan.

Jonathan_ > There couldn’t have been two billing cycles between Jan 23rd and Feb 15th.

Claudette > Let me check.Claudette > I see here that your $140.65 previously was for your December with due date 01/15/11 while your current balance $140.65 as well was January Bill with due date 02/13/11. The previous $140.65 was not settled thus was included on your next bill $140.65 as well.

Jonathan_ > How was it not settled? I paid it all off 3 weeks ago

Claudette > May I know the date and the amount of the payment please?

Jonathan_ > I don’t know the due date, but I paid 281.30 on Jan 23rd

Claudette > Okay and let me check.

Jonathan_ > which is what your website said i needed to pay
Jonathan_ > Confirmation Number: **********

Claudette > No worries, Jonathan and let me inform you that you do not have any pending balance not since you already paid. I am sorry if I did not inform you.
Claudette > I was referring to the reason why your bill got $281.30.
Claudette > now*
Claudette > I am so sorry for the typo error.

Jonathan_ > right
Jonathan_ > but your website is telling me I need to pay 281.30 right now
Jonathan_ > Total (previous + current) due 01/21/2011 $281.30

Claudette > Please disregard that, Jonathan and the web site is not currently updated with what is going on with your bill in our system. Rest assured that your balance is now $0.00 and you do not have to pay for anything currently.
Claudette > I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.

Jonathan_ > Any idea when the website will be updated?

Claudette > Yes, Jonathan. It will be updated before the billing date which is on 01/22/11. I am sorry for the delay on the update of your bill online.
Claudette > You can try logging in again next week and check if the charge it still there.

Jonathan_ > k
Jonathan_ > thanks claudette

Claudette > But no worries, Jonathan and your account is current.
Claudette > *******customer prematurely wrapped up*******Claudette > It’s been my pleasure to have assisted you. I am happy you contacted Comcast today so that we can help you resolve your issue. We strive to exceed your expectations and hope that you will take a moment to complete the 3 question survey that will follow our interaction, your feedback will help us to continue improving how we serve you.
Claudette > Do you want to watch full TV shows and movies online? Go to  http://www.xfinitytv.com . Thank you for choosing Comcast as your cable TV provider and have a great day! Comcast appreciates your business and values you as a customer. Our goal is to provide you with excellent service. If you need further assistance, you can chat with one of our Customer Support Specialists 24 hour a day, 7 days a week by clicking on the link http://www.comcastsupport.com/videochat. To close this chat, please click the close button at the top of your chat window. Thank you!

Kevin Hicks:

TO: Jonathan Ursenbach – We have received your email dated June 3, 2010, and would like to discuss your comments in more detail. Please feel free to reply to this email or call me at the 800 number below. I left messages for you this morning on the numbers in 5565 and 7382.

AT&T regrets the inconvenience this issue may have caused.

Hope to hear from you soon, Mr. Ursenbach.

Thanks,
Kevin F. Hicks

Me:

Hi Kevin, it’s good to hear from you. Everything in my earlier email aside, my issues with my AT&T service mainly surround the rampant lack of coverage here in San Francisco. Time and time again I have either dropped calls, lack of 3G coverage, forcing to attempt to use the inferior EDGE which never works, or just a complete lack of service.

I am currently paying $167.40 a month for service that is so spotty that I was forced to sign up for a Google Voice account so I wouldn’t lose calls or SMSes. Thankfully my new apartment in the Richmond district has service some of the time, but coverage in my old place in the SoMa district was so terrible that for the last month I was there I stopped even trying to make a call over AT&T and opted to use Skype. This shouldn’t be the way things are.

Yes things are getting better, slowly, but for the time being until the coverage issues are fixed here in SF I don’t know how much longer I can continue pay this kind of money for this kind of service.

Thanks.

KH:

Mr. Ursenbach – I appreciate your quick reply. The comments made in your initial email are very detailed, and are being taken seriously. AT&T is spending over 60 billion dollars upgrading the network to make sure your issues are addressed. In addition, the training for customer service representatives is a subject we feel is extremely important as well. I wanted to make sure you realize that these issues are important to AT&T, and your comments go a long way to facilitate those changes.

I will make sure to pass these concerns up through the AT&T Management chain, and please be advised that AT&T has appreciated your business over the years, and hopefully, in the future.

Again, your feedback and comments are regarded as priceless, and greatly appreciated.

Thanks – Kevin

Me:

That’s cool and all, but what am I supposed to do in the meantime while paying a good amount of money for something that I can rarely use?

KH:

Mr. Ursenbach – After reviewing your account notes and history, I found that you have not contacted AT&T customer care in over a year about poor coverage. Please be advised that if you are experiencing less than satisfactory cell phone service, to contact customer care by dialing 611 from your phone or 1(800)331-0500 and have troubleshooting performed. This is the most efficient way to address your technical issues. However, in some cases, customers living in certain areas may be getting the best service available at this time.

In addition, be sure to call from a different device than the one you are having problems with, and they will be happy to handle your issues. AT&T regrets any inconvenience this issue may have caused.

Thanks – Kevin

FFFFFUUUUUU

So basically this guy is just telling me to deal with it. Thanks for the help, hoss. Also a fun anecdote, since this email exchange my AT&T service has actually gotten progressively worse. Heavy sigh.

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objectName.delete();

One of the few times where IE actually conforms to the EMCAScript standards is that you absolutely cannot have a function named “delete”. This will work in Firefox, Safari and Chrome (as far as I am aware at least), but will render an undecipherable error when loaded in IE.

dontForgetYour;

No butts about it, all statements must end with a semicolon.

Give me 20 CCs of comma, stat!

When working with JSON objects and arrays, leaving trailing commas at the end of your arrays are going to give you a bad time. Example:

var jsonObj;
jsonObj = {‘first’, ‘second’, ‘third’, ‘fourth’,};

Have fun tracking down that bug in a couple thousand line application!

Var? What var?

All variables that you’re using in functions, objects or classes must be declared with a proper var declaration. Forgetting to do this will sometimes cause your application to do some funky shit, but not always I’ve found. The randomness of bugs like this happening, though, are rare enough to deal with.

So what can I do?

Well the best thing you can do, since IE is notioriously difficult to debug JS applications is to properly lint your code with Douglas Crockford’s JSLint (http://jslint.com). If you’re a PHP developer, or adept at running PHP CLI scripts, soon you will be able to use my JSLint-PHP program (http://code.google.com/p/jslint-php).

Lastly, you can also install Firebug Lite (http://getfirebug.com/lite.html) so you have access to the standard Firebug console, allowing you to run things like console.log().

Hope this helps, and if you have any more tips please add them in the comments.

Today, the public-facing side of our WordPress installation went down. Hard. The admin panel loaded, albeit very slowly, but was still available. At first I thought the problem was Apache acting up, as per usual. Restarted Apache, no change. Time to check the database. Database is good, off to the error logs. Ah ha!

PHP Warning:  fopen(http://th8.us/ttph.php?s…….. in plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this.php on line 29
PHP Warning:  fread(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this.php on line 30
PHP Warning:  fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this.php on line 30

Loading up http://th8.us in my browser and it times out. I try to ping it and still nothing; it’s down for the count. My immediate thought is that this plugin is opening up HTTP connections for every post for people who want to, or are trying to, share posts on Twitter. So I load up the Settings and change the default URL shortener to TinyURL and restart Apache for good measure. Load up the error logs and it’s still coming through. Try to load up the site and nothing. Joy. Time to roll up my sleeves and dive into this code.

I put on a pair of 3d glasses, because apparently this developer has never heard of, or practiced, writing readable and maintainable code, and find this nugget.

// Big brother is watching.
function tt_phone_home($status) {
global $current_site; global $wpdb; $wpv = get_bloginfo(‘version’);
$siteURL = $current_site->domain; $blogURL = get_bloginfo(‘url’);
$title = get_bloginfo(‘name’); $email = get_bloginfo(‘admin_email’);
$description = get_bloginfo(‘description’);
$lang = get_bloginfo(‘language’);
$posts = number_format($wpdb->get_var(“SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = ‘publish’”));
$settings = $wpdb->get_var(“SELECT option_value
FROM $wpdb->options WHERE option_name = ‘tweet_this_settings’”);
$phone = tt_read_file(‘http://th8.us/ttph.php?s=’ . $siteURL . ‘&b=’ .
$blogURL . ‘&v=1.3.9&u=’ . $status . ‘&p=’ . $posts . ‘&t=’ .
urlencode($title) . ‘&d=’ . urlencode($description) . ‘&l=’ .
urlencode($lang) . ‘&e=’ . urlencode($email) . ‘&w=’ . $wpv .
‘&x=’ . urlencode($settings));
}

What the fuck is this shit? tt_phone_home()? It’s sending home our site URL, blog URL, installed version of WordPress, amount of published posts, blog title, description language and the administrator email. Fan-fucking-tastic. Mention of this is nowhere to be found in the plugin readme or FAQ.

If you’re going to have a plugin phone home on every page load, and not tell anybody about it or have any setting to turn it off aside from commenting it out, you damned be sure to make sure that server never goes down, or at least have your file_get_contents() call in tt_read_file() timeout instead of just sitting there opening up connections to a dead host.

Tweet This, go fuck yourself.