“College students arrested for not paying tip”

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The practice of putting a mandatory tip on the bill for a large party has been fairly standard for as long as I’ve been going to restaurants. But bumping this mandatory “gratuity” up to eighteen percent, as was done here and as I experienced myself a couple days ago, is ridiculous — I give servers a fifteen percent tip for good service (which, in my opinion, I should be able to expect from any business without the extra bribe), and the server in our case didn’t earn more than ten percent. And to add insult to injury, the credit card receipt included a line for an “additional tip.”

(I briefly considered putting a negative number there, but instead just put a very large zero. If I’d been on my game, I would have written “don’t eat lead” instead.)

“Security firm chokes sprawling spam botnet”

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The last paragraph is particularly heartening:

FireEye researchers said the key to dismantling the giant ring was a coordinated effort that worked in multiple directions all at once so that bot herders didn’t have a chance to counteract. “As it turns out, no matter how many fallback mechanisms are in place, if they aren’t all implemented properly, the botnet is vulnerable,” they wrote.

Phone Gripes

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Why is it, pray tell, that every time we get a new phone number, we also somehow inherit one place that insists on calling it repeatedly, telling us that we owe them money?

When we moved into this house eight years ago, we got two telephone numbers (a home line and a business line). We immediately started getting automated calls from a collection agency on both lines (presumably for different people). We tried ignoring them at first, then repeatedly calling the company to tell them that those people didn’t live here and that we’d just gotten these numbers. They would cheerfully assure us that they’d updated their database, and then we’d get another automated call. If I remember correctly, it was a couple months before they actually stopped.

When GoddessJ got a new cell phone, it was a you-store-it place that kept calling, trying to tell her that her storage unit’s rental was past due. It was several months of irritation before she finally got that straightened out — it turns out they’d misread the phone number.

When I recently broke down and got a cell phone (on a pay-as-you-go plan, because I very rarely use it), it was calls from a collection agency again, both automated and in person. “Craig” (or “Greg,” we couldn’t tell which through the accents) apparently owed them money, and they were sure that he was hiding behind our new cell number. I leave the cell phone off almost all the time, so I’d get messages from them (alternately threatening and cajoling), which I had to spend my expensive minutes to listen to. I finally left the cell phone on and caught one of the calls, explaining to the person at the other end that there was no Craig or Greg here.

They kept calling (which I suppose I should have expected), and yesterday I called them back to explain it again, this time adding that if they continued, I’d file a police complaint for harassment. The fellow at the other end assured me, several times, that he had updated the file and removed our number from their database. End of story, right?

Wrong.

This morning I’d left the phone on because I was expecting a business call, and what do I get but a call (Caller ID blocked) from a person asking for Craig. Again. I flew off the handle, demanded to know if it was the same company (it was), and generally got very irate with the fellow… he immediately apologized and claimed that it was a mistake, that he now saw that I’d called them yesterday, blah blah blah. So much for the insistence that our number had been removed from their database.

I don’t know whether this one has finally gotten the message or not, only time will tell. But it’s enough to drive a computer enthusiast to being a Luddite.