Fish cleaning a manatee:

Manatee with caustics! (Hey, that’s at least graphics related.)

A manatee getting a belly rub:

And, of course, You Have to Eat the Rope:

Have informational ads in multiple languages to inform the public on how to open the rear doors.

Haven’t we figured out doors already?

1. I was googling for information on how to order 1099-MISC forms, and came across this helpful page.  Go to that page, and then click on the link to order some forms.  Go ahead, click on it.  Ooh– that link won’t work in your pedestrian little web browser, will it?  No– that link is only for people who are accessing their web help from inside QuickBooks 2009.  They have successfully broken hyperlinks.
2. How’s this for planned obsolescence?  My copy of QuickBooks 2006 will no longer be able to send email after May.  If I upgrade, I can still send email.  Oh.  I guess the spec for sending email over the internet must be changing in May, right?  Huh.  Or maybe I’m shutting down my own SMTP server in May?
3. Okay, let’s upgrade.  They’ve got some big discounts for upgraders.  Huh– they have even bigger discounts for first-time buyers, to the extent that they cost exactly the same. That doesn’t stop them from requiring your license number to purchase your upgrade copy, however.

Ah, well.  Not such a huge hassle for filing my taxes.  Oh– except that these are only the problems I’ve hit in the first 10 minutes.

A day later, I received an email:

Your case has been reviewed and has been updated by a NETGEAR representative.

To review or update your case please log into the NETGEAR portal at https://my.netgear.com/myNETGEAR/

So I went to the site, typed in the (correct) login information, and was denied.  That’s odd.  Well, I’ll have it send me a new password.  “Your new password has been sent to (my email address).”  Wait… wait… wait… no password.  (Yes, I checked my spam filters.)

So I opened a new ticket (sans account), roughly paraphrased:

I’m unable to log into your support site with login information that previously worked.  When I request a new password be sent to my email address, it claims it sends a password, but I receive nothing.

Since I’m unable to log into your site, please send your response to (my email address).  I will not be able to read any responses posted to your support center.

In fairness, I knew exactly what would happen.  At this point, I was simply doing it for the expected irony.  (Hmm, if it’s expected, is it irony?)  Nevertheless:

Your case has been reviewed and has been updated by a NETGEAR representative.

To review or update your case please log into the NETGEAR portal at https://my.netgear.com/myNETGEAR/

Muffin Cat is king of all muffins

This is a test product.

UPDATE: I am testing Wordpress shopping cart plugins for some clients.  I enjoyed the test image enough that I decided to make the post public.

Thank you for registering your product with Netgear, you have the following options

1. Update your profile
2. Register a new product
3. View your registered products
4. View your service contracts
5. Activate your support card
6. Online Support Submissions

NETGEAR Service portal

edit my profile my registered products register new product view service contracts activate support card online technical submission

I guess I want to… activate my technical submission for my service card?  Or something?  I decided to click “Online Support Submissions”, and got the following new options:

My online technical submission history

Total cases found: 0

Click here to log a new online technical submission request.

Click here to log a new presales support request.

*Click here to give us feedback on your support experience.

Click here to log a rebate related inquiry.

I’m not contacting support, I’m logging a new a new online technical submission request!  Well, that’s what I clicked, anyway.  I don’t think I requested that anyone submit to me, technically.

Now, iTunes will not launch, forcing me to use Winamp.

It’s pretty hard to argue with that.

(BTW: “Use Winamp Search as my default search engine”!?)

Question: How do I check a checkbox in a Word form?

Answer: Double-click, then select “checked” from the menu.

Question: If this is a feature of my application, should I still ship it?

Answer: No.

I hadn’t been paying too much attention to this round of fires, since even though I’ve got friends and family down there, I’m used to the “oh crap everything is burning down” news from down there several times a year.  However, I am hearing about some friends of family losing their homes and property in the fires– this looks like a worse year than usual.  As these photos from a friend show, the fires got right up into the inhabited areas.