Saturday, December 1, 2007

More things not working

Thanks for the comments to my previous post. I found a setting so that the program will ask me before downloading an update. And, I took Andrew's suggestion and re-installed.

Today, I decided to make a list of things that didn't work right.

When trying a new web application, it failed with a nasty stack trace including the information, "Unable to find class for xyz.jsp" (name changed). Ok. But, where did it look? Why not give more information?

Leaving the office building, I hit one of the four exit doors and it was stuck. The one next to it was too. That's fine because after hours I need to swipe a badge to get it. Still, shouldn't you be able to get OUT? Well, the other two doors worked for getting out. After they closed, I turned around and tried opening them. That's right, they both open just fine.

Then, I need to cross a busy intersection, in two directions, to get to the opposite corner. The pedestrian lights don't operate automatically. You have to hit a button. That's fine, but the button to cross East is 15 feet away from the button to cross South, and I have to do both of those. That's a lot of steps to hit the buttons. Then, when I hit it, I just miss the green light for the cars. It doesn't work, even though there would be plenty of time. Apparently a pedestrian has to hit the button BEFORE the light changes. So, I wait to cross the other way first. When the light changes, there is the little chirp for blind people. But it is the WRONG CHIRP! Good thing I'm not blind, or I might have started crossing the wrong way and been hit. Having crossed, I race the extra 15 feet to get to the other button and get it in time. But the crosswalk leads directly into construction, so I have to take a big detour. Again, good thing I'm not blind.

Got home and my cell phone gave another little chirp. Oh yeah, that's right. It had been chirping like that the whole time I was trying to work on the web application. But, there wasn't anything I could do to get it to stop, and the charger was at home. Now, it's plugged into the charger, but I will most likely forget about it, and if I don't get the ONE chirp when it finishes, it will sit there for days maybe.

Well, I'm just going to have to deal with cell phones needing to be recharged.

But, somewhere, someone probably cares about doors not opening and opening when they shouldn't. And someone probably cares about blind people getting hit by cars. But, I don't know who it is. Who does one report this kind of thing to?

2 comments:

Josie said...

I would call the city and ask who deals with pedestrian crossing signals, and then call that department and tell them about it. And your building probably has a maintenance department to deal with the doors. I like at the library--we have a facilities link on our intranet, and if things are wrong with the building, we just have to type "facilities" in our address bar and then fill in a form to report the problem. Good luck! Love Myrna

Anonymous said...

Where is your Christmas post?