y.st./source/pages/en/weblog/2015/04-April/04.xhtml

<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'title' => 'Cricket has been not been delivering the rebates they have promised',
	'body' => <<<END
<p>
	I tried to log into Patreon today to check and see if Josh Woodward has responded to my $a[URI] inclusion request.
	However, Patreon refuses to allow me to log in! Patreon&apos;s log in form is some sort of hacky JavaScript mess and won&apos;t submit my log in credentials.
	No error is returned, the form simply doesn&apos;t do anything.
	I tried disabling JavaScript in my browser to make use of the no script fall back option, but it turns out there <strong>*is no*</strong> no script fall back option.
	I have submitted a request for help through Patreon&apos;s Web contact form.
</p>
<p>
	At work today, I was manning one of the cash registers.
	Someone paid using one of the Cricket Wireless rebate cards.
	I said <q>Oh, so those do exist.</q>, and mentioned how the one Cricket promised me still has not arrived.
	She told me that many people she knew had not been getting theirs, and some even received letters denying their rebate requests, despite their requests being valid.
	She continued that she had needed to call up Cricket and demand the card, as they had not sent hers either.
	In other words, Cricket Wireless is lying to people, getting them to buy new devices under the premise that the cost of them will be rebated, but then they are refusing to actually follow through.
	That&apos;s a pretty dishonest way to make money.
	I held back yesterday when talking about Cricket.
	I wrote up a paragraph about why I am leaving them, but thought better of it, and dropped it from my weblog entry.
	Perhaps I should post that paragraph though, which is still saved to my hard drive.
	If it comes to it, I will get very noisy about this.
	I will post about all the issues with Cricket here in my weblog and continually poke them on Twitter about their actions.
	I will not be trampled on.
</p>
<p>
	The Cricket Web interface claims my rebate card was mailed to mo on 2014-10-24.
	However, it still has not arrived.
	That was several months ago, and is more than enough time for the card to make it through the mail.
	I reached out to Cricket support through the Web interface, as I&apos;m really not big on telephone conversations.
	Web support said they could not help, and redirected me to telephone support.
	I was told to call 888 326 6178 and choose option 3.
	Option three was not listed, so I just followed the prompts.
	The automated system told me that to reach a representative, I would need to call back Monday through Friday, 7 to 19 Central time.
	I guess I&apos;ll call back in two days.
</p>
<p>
	I checked on my Visa card to see if the card had been canceled and replaced yet.
	According to their records, I made the request on 2015-03-13, but there has still not been a response yet.
	I will give them until the tenth or eleventh, which is when my mobile service officially ends.
	If they have not yet responded, I will walk into the credit union again and explain the situation again.
	If they claim that they cannot mark the card number as compromised, I will ask that they cancel the card altogether.
	Last time I spoke with them in person, they said I have to call a telephone support line to cancel the card.
	However, it cannot be legal for them to require me to stay attached to a credit card simply because I do not have a telephone.
	I will demand to speak with a higher representative if I have to, but I will not submit to requests that I validate the broken telephone number system.
	Unless you are my employer, you do not have the right to require me to have a telephone.
</p>
<p>
	Since recovering my Discover account, Discover has not been allowing me to update my user name or password.
	They won&apos;t tell me why, but having dealt with their tech support in the past, I&apos;m fairly certain what&apos;s going on.
	It&apos;s likely that I recently changed my email address on record with them.
	So I will wait.
	Once things are cleared up with my Visa card (be that by marking it as compromised or by canceling the account altogether), I will try again with Discover.
	Best case scenario: everything works at that point.
	Worst case scenario: I&apos;m stuck with an outdated user name and a password that, while still secure, is shorter than it could be.
	Honestly, I don&apos;t really lose much.
</p>
<p>
	It appears that $a[GNU] Social is hosted on Gitorious.
	As Gitorious is vanishing in May, that could be bad.
	It&apos;s likely that arrangements to move elsewhere are already being made, and even if they are not, it&apos;s unlikely that the $a[FSF] would allow the project to vanish.
	I&apos;m not sure how much of a hand the $a[FSF] has in the project&apos;s development, but it&apos;s one that they seem to care about.
	At the very least, they would grab a copy of the code and put it on their <code>non-gnu</code> site until a new maintainer is found.
	However, to be safe, I think I&apos;ll keep a copy of the archive as well.
</p>
<p>
	NotMaple of <a href="ircs://irc.volatile.club:6697/523Volatile">#Volatile</a> told me about a social network offered over $a[Tor] called <a href="http://torbookntnjusnqd.onion/">TorBook</a>.
	I was going to join, but it seems the site requires registrants enter a sex and a date of birth.
	I don&apos;t mind entering a birth year, andI suppose I don&apos;t mind entering my sex, but an exact date of birth is too much.
	No good can come from entering my full date of birth.
	Most likely, this is used for some sort of feature that draws attention to users&apos; birthdays, and I prefer to ignore my birthday.
	Birthdays are no more than the anniversary of the day you were born, and anniversaries are completely arbitrary.
	I prefer to ignore all anniversaries, especially those relating to myself, unless there is some technical reason why the anniversary isn&apos;t meaningless after all.
	For example, the anniversary of a domain name registration becomes its renewal date.
	At that point, you aren&apos;t so much observing the anniversary itself, but instead something that still has meaning and just so happens to fall on the anniversary.
</p>
<p>
	At the end of the day, Patreon finally allowed me to log in, though I&apos;m not sure what changed.
	Josh Woodward just released a new song called <a href="http://www.joshwoodward.com/song/TooManyValleys">Too Many Valleys</a>, though it seems my $a[URI] and I were not included in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBDiqsp1iUw">YouTube description</a> (which had been the promised reward for pledging $10 $a[USD] per song.
	I&apos;m sure this was just an oversight though, and I have <a href="https://www.patreon.com/creation?hid=2125208">written to Josh Woodward about it</a>.
</p>
<p>
	Today, I <a href="/a/canary.txt">speak my mind freely</a>.
</p>
END
);