DHL is, far and away, the worst delivery courier among the international courier companies. Far and away. I have had repeated problems with this company.

My current problem involves the shipping of a condenser dryer. I ordered the dryer over the ‘net from a company I haven’t used before, but which got good ratings on consumer information web sites. When I heard from the seller that DHL was the shipper, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. The dryer was actually in town a week ago, but with the Easter vacation, it’s just been sitting around. Today I get a call from DHL asking if they could deliver it tomorrow. Sure, I said, no problem. Then the guy asks me if it’s just to be delivered to the first floor. No, I said, I live on the third floor. Is there an elevator? NO, No elevator. Well, the guy says, our deliverymen only have a contractual obligation to deliver items to the first floor.

*sigh*

(I paid 300 kroner, or about 50 bucks, for delivery, BTW.)

I explain to the guy that I cannot help carry the damned thing up, as I’ve got an injured back (this is the truth). The guy asks whether or not I can get anyone to help carry it up. I say that I cannot, which is not precisely true. The guy says he’ll call the driver and ask whether or not they will carry it up. The driver will not, as (he claims) the dryer weighs 65 kilos (about 143 pounds). I tell the DHL dispatcher that I’ll call him back.

First I call the closest store where dryers are sold, Expert, and get a price on the dryer from them. To get it from them, it would cost 876 kroner more (about 140 bucks), but they would deliver it up to the apartment. OK, so that’s a no-go.

Next I call customer service at the place where I bought the dryer, Elprice. He says it shouldn’t be a big deal to carry it up, as it’s light. “It’s 65 kilos!” is my response. He thinks that sounds wrong, so we each look up the actual weight in the Siemens catalogue. The weight is 43 kilos (around 95 pounds). The customer service guy then asks if I’ve asked if the driver can help me carry the thing up–yes, I have, and the driver said no. He suggests that I try to get the driver to help me, or that I try to get neighbors to help me and pay them off with a bottle of wine or something. There’s nothing he can do. The dryer was shipped directly from the Siemens factory, and Siemens has a deal with DHL in Norway–his company has no say in whether or not DHL is used as the deliveryman.

So, essentially I’m screwed. Worker’s rights are considerably more important than consumer rights in Norway, this incident being a perfect example. There is truly nothing I can do. Despite my messed up back, I’m going to have to carry this blasted thing up the stairs. Imagine if I were a frail old lady or wheelchair-bound–what then? I shouldn’t have to rely on neighbors to carry large heavy objects up to the third floor when I pay 50 bucks for shipping, but oh well. Life in Norway, ought to be used to it by now.

I call the DHL dispatcher back and tell him to go ahead and deliver the dryer tomorrow. I ask when it will be delivered. The dispatcher cannot say, and the best he can do is request that the driver call me half an hour before he comes. I knew the answer to that question before I asked, actually–this is not the first time I’ve had trouble with DHL. Instead of rehashing my previous troubles, I’ll just quote my complaint letter here:

The package with tracking number 8001541085 was shipped on the 19th of November and was first listed as being “With Delivery Courier” on November 23rd. On the 23rd, 24th, 25th, and 26th I have stayed at home to receive this package. Your customer service agents were not able to provide me with an estimated delivery time, so I was not able to run errands or get anything else done outside the house. Your customer service agents also assured me that even though the package was scheduled for delivery on previous days, *this* day it was with the courier and should be delivered. Even after 1600, I was instructed to wait at home to receive the delivery since the couriers had been delayed and were continuing to deliver in overtime.

So I’ve waited now, for four days, and still my package has not been delivered. I leave the country on Monday the 29th. I will not be home to receive this delivery anymore, and I did inform your customer service agents of this fact on several occasions. Supposedly they contacted the courier to inform him of the importance of delivering the package by today, but to no avail. What’s the problem, are your Norwegian couriers not prepared to deal with a few inches of snow? I simply don’t understand how this could have happened.

This delivery, tracking number xxxxxxxxxxx, will have to be rescheduled for delivery to my husband’s workplace, since I will be out of the country and he does not have the option of staying home. The package contains his Christmas present, which is no longer going to be a surprise for him since the customs invoices will list the contents of the package. This is simply added insult to injury. Regardless, the delivery must be rescheduled to be shipped to his work address, which is as follows:

Johannes Brodwall
xxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxx Oslo
Norway

His mobile telephone number is xxx xx xxx.

Please send an e-mail confirming that delivery has been rescheduled to this address.

I am extremely displeased with the quality of service I have received. All the customer service agents I spoke to were very polite, but your system seems to provide them with very little information regarding delivery times and problems. Because of this, shipping packages with DHL is potentially too much of a time-waster for me to attempt again. Unless this problem is resolved quickly and to my satisfaction, I will not be doing business with your company again.

That package did finally get delivered to Johannes at work, where the courier requested that he pay cash to cover the customs outlays. (Serious carriers like Fed Ex and UPS send a bill afterwards, no big deal). Johannes didn’t have cash, so the courier had to haul out one of those old-fashioned carbon paper credit card thingies. And I never heard one word back for DHL in response to my complaint letter. God, I just love customer service in Norway!

So, I was talking to my old friend Bethany last night, and we got into talking about politics a little. Bethany describes herself as “ultra-conservative”, and she’s a member of a Pentecostal church (her dad’s the preacher there). She reads my blog (Hi, Bethany!), and based on the stuff I’ve written, has wondered if I think that half of all Americans (that would be the half that voted for Bush, I guess) are idiots.

I’ve been thingking about this lately. What do I think about the conservatives (rather, the “conservatives”–”conservative” meaning pro-deficit-spending and pro-intrusive-government as opposed to actually conservative, meaning small-government, socially-libertarian)? The evangelicals and fundamentalists? The people who voted for G.W. Bush? I definitely disagree with them on a wide range of issues, and I definitely think that lots of their ideas about how the world should be are downright nasty. And I do talk about them being idiots, all the time. Realistically, however, I know that Americans are not divided into red-staters and blue-staters on the basis of intelligence. I have known an awful lot of conservatives who are just as intelligent as I am (heh). There are lots of really smart people who are working to enact policies that I find to be completely abhorrent. On what basis could they possibly justify their political preferences?

I think the main reason people vote “conservative” is because they have a significantly different perception of the world than us liberals. In particular, our choice of news sources and our ontologies strongly correlate with our political leanings. The Daily Howler touches on the first in today’s post about two Americas: what you believe about a situation is going to be heavily influenced by the information you get about that situation. Liberals and “conservatives” rely on frighteningly disparate sources for their news. It might make sense to be for the war in Iraq if your sources tell you that Saddam was in on 9/11. It would definitely make sense to be against removing Terry Sciavo’s feeding tube if your sources tell you that she is responsive and conscious. As for the second, your religion or lack thereof can potentially have a major effect on your ideas about politics. If you believe that Jesus will come to this earth again when the Jews’ land is restored to them, it makes sense to be in favor of the neocons’ policies on the environment and the Middle East. If you believe that human life is sacred, it makes sense to view abortion as murder. (Think about how Northerners reacted to the enslavement of black people, for example–when liberals saw humans being abused on such a large scale, they did everything they could to correct the injustice.)

I don’t know how Bethany voted, and I don’t know her specific opinions on many, if not most of the seriously divisive issues in politics today. I don’t even know if she’s a conservative or a “conservative”. We know each other’s general political leanings, so we know we’re liable to be in major disagreement on a lot of these issues. But we’ve been friends since the 6th grade, and I know she’s an intelligent, educated, and thoughtful person. When I’ve asked her questions about her religion, she has always been able to give thorough, reasonable answers about why she believes and behaves as she does. She may be ultra-conservative, but she’s definitely not an idiot. I’ve always felt really thankful for our friendship because it’s given me a look into a world I otherwise woudn’t have known much about. I think if liberals and conservatives actually talked to each other more–about why they believe what they believe, as opposed to butting their heasds together about specific political issues–there’d be a lot less rancor in our national political dialogue.

Maybe I’m being unrealistically optimistic, though. Bethany, in any case, thinks I’m off my rocker.

The Alchera Project

I found out about The Alchera Project from my friend Joy, who’s been writing from their prompts for a while now. I have to admit that having a blog hasn’t helped me with writing my thesis (so far!), but I am enjoying the writing itself. In school I was always considered a good writer, but writing’s never been something I’ve enjoyed. So, this is an interesting new development for me. The Alchera Project is really nothing more than a less-tacky-than-average blog meme, but a lot of the topics they give are interesting to think about (for me, at least). We’ll see how it goes.

So, this week is the Easter week here in Norway (and everywhere else, I imagine). Most Norwegians take off the whole week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday are legal holidays, as is “Easter Monday”, the day after Easter Sunday. The quintessential way of celebrating this holy week, if you’re a Norwegian, is to go up to your cabin in the mountains and ski. Alternatively you’ve got “bypåske”, or “City Easter”, which means you don’t go anywhere, but stay in town and enjoy the vacation by checking out the city sights.

There have been several articles in the paper about bypåske. They list all the different stuff you can do during the Easter week, mostly geared towards the ever-noble “barnefamilier”, or families with kids. (I guess so the kids don’t dhrive the parents nuts during the break.) Stuff like Easter egg hunts, museums that are going to be open with special activities, matinees, suggestions for walking trips, etc.

Only one place in all this påske-coverage have I seen anything about going to church. At the bottom of a list of things like opening times of pools and cinemas were listed two religious activities, one of which is some kind of a parade or something (”korsvandring”? cross-wandering?) that ends at a bar where a jazz and blues band will be playing.

The Norwegians just looove their religious holidays. This is a Christian state, after all. They would never want their state not to be Christian, because then they’d have to give up all the religious holidays. Check out this list of legal religious holidays in Norway. (Here’s a link in English that discusses Norwegian public holidays in general, and another one that actually lists all the days. )Ascension day, Pentecost and the day after…I’ll bet that most Americans who actually go to church don’t even know when those holy days are.

86% of Norway’s population are members of the Norwegian Church, and to be a member of the Norwegian Church, you have to be christened in the Norwegian Church. Around 70% of the babies christened in the church go on to be confirmed later in life. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, however, and the Norskies don’t seem to be too hungry: only 20% of Norwegians believe in god and only 3% of Norwegians go to church services on a regular basis. From what I hear, most Norwegian kids choose to get confirmed because it’s a big deal here where you get lots of presents and money and get to have a big party. Looking at Norwegians’ Easter customs, this kind of opportunistic hypocrisy is apparently a life-long and country-wide habit.

My dad sure knows a lot about microphones! I guess that makes sense, given his life experience in bands, setting up PA systems, voicing church organs, etc. Here’s an excerpt from an e-mail he sent me in response to my request for help in choosing a decent mic for my computer. Perhaps it’ll also be of help to some of you out there if you happen to be looking for a computer mic.

The first thing you should look for is a High impedance mic. In general, these are low priced. You may also want to look for one that has a cardoid pattern. This means that you need to have it pointing at your mouth when you speak for it to work best.

If you would prefer a mic that picks up sound from more directions, you should look for an Omni-directional microphone. The problem with this type pattern is that if you have a speaker turned on with the sound going through the speaker, the chances for feedback are much greater with omni-directional mics.

Boundary mics usually have a hemispheric pattern. Not bad, but again they are prone to feedback when they are in close proximity of a speaker that produces the mic’s sound. Most boundary mics are low impedance. Any low impedance microphone is probably not going to work with the computer’s input; unless you add a device called an impedance matching transformer. I have a bunch of these that I don’t use any longer. If you end up with one of these low impedance mics and you need a matching transformer, let me know and I will give you one of mine.

Language Log: Two types of “errors” (again) and it’s all “grammar” (again)

This is an error that seriously, and frequently, gets on my nerves. I guess I come across it a lot due to my involvement in fat acceptance.

Language Log is a great blog for people with an interst in linguistics. It’s pretty academic, though, so it helps if you have a little background! Maybe of interest to my copyediting friends out there?

AlterNet: MediaCulture: The White House Fakes It

Over the past four years, it turns out at least 20 different federal agencies have been involved in producing hundreds – yes, hundreds – of fake TV news segments, many of which were “subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production.”

I have no words.

Salon.com | Former feminist for 2008?

Looks like the Republicans will win the next election, too. Please, Howard, save us!

Excellent post on Pharyngula today:

Pharyngula::An interesting teaching example

I’m working on a new style for the blog…again. Things may be kinda weird for a little while. IE is especially strange today…when I view the page online, it looks totally weird, but if I choose “View Source” and then view that HTML in IE, it looks fine. *shakes head*

Update: There are few things in life I hate more than trying to get a style to work in all browsers. It looks just beautiful in FireFox, Netscape, and IE–when IE is embedded in my text editor! In IE by itself it scoots over to have the left in the middle of the screen. This is simply ridiculous.

2nd Update: Now it works in standalone IE, ForeFox, and Netscape, but not in the IE embedded in my text editor. How does it look on your screen? If it looks seriously weird, please send me a screenshot and some info about your setup. I’m only talking about the main page here–I’m not even attempting to fix the individual entry pages or comments pages yet.

3rd Update: Got the Individual Entry Archive page working–still haven’t touched the comments popups. So many bits of weirdness in this style, given the Javascript layout, I guess. Man, I hate web design. The 10% of the time spent working on creating and implementing the design is great–it’s just the other 90% of the time trying to get things working the same in the different browsers that sucks. Is it this way for everyone, or am I just particularly imept, or what?