November 6, 2003

Image of the Day: Striped Bug

I'm cheating today. The weather's been too miserable and dreary outside as to actually point my camera at anything worthy.

So I'm substituting with a happy pic of a striped bug. I took the image a few years back, in Guatemala, and I have yet to figure out the name of the critter (if an alert reader happens to be in the know - by all means, pass it on....). Mostly though, I was intrigued by its neat striped wing, and so I decided to make that the focus, rather than the whole bug.

And in an entirely different universe - David Pogue poignantly comments on the woes of modern-day customer service (especially by phone companies) in a NYT Circuits bit today.

Boy, could I add on to that. From an AT&T service rep telling me that the long-distance charges on my phone are originated by my "surfing websites that are, say, located in Europe or Australia" (that's when I still had dial-up), over MCI screwing me out of promised rebates, to Handspring refusing to cover my PDA while still under warranty.

It's a sad, sad world we live in - where large companies get away with ripping off their customers, one dime at a time...