Assorted Monday links

[yendi]

1. Kathryn Cramer has more patience for dealing with power-abusing self-important morons on Wikipedia than anyone else I can think of.

2. How to beat carnival games.

3. Google Earth now has a built-in Flight Simulator. And I suck at it as much as I do at any flight simulators. All planes should work like the ones in the assorted Capcom games like 1942.

4. I'd been away from IF for a long time, so I'm pleased to see that there's a damned fine new OSX client, Spatterlight. It handles TADS, Z-Code, Hugo, and a bunch of other formats.

4.5 Also, holy shit -- Inform has changed a lot. As in, I might be able to muddle my way though it now.

5. I finally made my first trip to Russo's (yes, my link dump is over a week behind), where I discovered that I love Longons!

6. Most useful link I've ever gotten from a videogame magazine: IDEA - The International Dialects of English Archive. Clips of English being spoken by folks with almost any accent imaginable.

7. I've raved about Adam Roberts as a writer before (both this year and back when I was at Bookslut). He also writes some damned great stuff online, like this post.

8. The book that will win every sf award ever.

9. Forget the VMAs. "Dick in a Box" won the Emmy!

10. Finally, it seems that DHL's take on customer service is the exact opposite of UPS and Fed Ex's stance. As in, DHL seems to actually like and respect customers. Color me impressed.

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Wow, most of my DHL experiences are like "We'll deliver this sometime today, and if you're not here, we'll leave it in the gutter on the street and drive over it on the way to the next stop."

[eilonwy.livejournal.com]

Precisely my experience, too. And they never *ever* leave a note on my door saying they tried to deliver and left it elsewhere, unlike FedEx and UPS, so if I can't get online it's a guessing game as to whether something's shown up.

[jenphalian.livejournal.com]

As a somewhat indifferent shipping manager (about 10% of my last job involved shipping stuff), I found that DHL were the worst at customer service. They lied about guaranteed delivery times, were indifferent to my woes when they lost packages, and had the ugliest packaging. Seriously, I hate yellow and red.