Comedy of errors

Snow brings a tree down which brings down the phone and power lines to my house on Fri 18 Jan. Fire brigade arrive and call power company (Western Power Distribution) and BT to advise of situation. Mother-in-law calls BT next day (Sat 19 Jan) to report our line down for us, BT inform her line will be fixed by Thurs 24 Jan.
Same day the tree is removed, Western Power arrive and re-connect power and BT revise their estimated time of repair to be 29 Jan. The days pass and a BT engineer arrives to 'make the line safe', before leaving.
The 29th arrives and another engineer arrives to fix the line, only he can't because BT will need to apply to close the road to repair or re-site the poles. Fast-forward to 2nd Feb. BT engineer arrives at just gone 8am and informs us a crew with new poles and equipment are on-site to do the pole work. As soon as they've finished they'll ring him and he'll be back to fix the line. I watch the pole workers doing their stuff until early afternoon. BT engineer returns at 3.30pm to see if the pole work has been done. He wonders why they didn't call him to let him know they'd finished, but as he knocks off at 4pm he can't start it now.
He'll be back tomorrow to fix the line. True to his word he arrives on Sunday 3 Feb at just gone 8am and informs me that he just needs to get an assist and he'll have the line fixed. At 9am he lets me know that he can't get an assist so will have to come back tomorrow. He arrives the next day (today) and has a hoist with him. Only he can't use it because he needs some temporary traffic lights as he'll be working on a stretch of road that has double-white lines.
I wonder what's next?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Same here in Scotland. Phone line was cut by a snowplough on 22-Jan. After messing about talking to India and getting no useful info, a few days later I spotted a BT van and asked the engineer, he said they had located the fault but couldn't get access because of the snow, I said the folks in the area who were affected could easily help digging out snow but he wasn't interested as his manager was sending him on another job. Talked to India again, got told there was very bad weather, I said no the snow has melted, I am a few hundred yards from the fault and nobody has been anywhere near it for days. Anyway to cut a long story short it is now 4th Feb and still no working phone line. Having to use mobile phone, at expense, to get internet. Being in the country, we get rubbish service from BT as it is, paying the same price as folks in town getting proper broadband where we are lucky to get 0.5meg on a good day, ironically the mobile phone 3G data transfer is twice as fast as the BT landline, but this is getting beyond a joke. Why can BT not treat people as adults and give them details rather than some faceless call centre worker in India who is very good at saying sorry, but no use at anything else?
If Mr Bean did a sketch on BT customer support everyone would have a better real-life example of incompetence and comedy.

Similar Messages

Comedy of Errors from Customer No Service

I ordered a CPO Droid X when my latest new every two came up. This was to replace my Blackberry Tour.
The CPO Droid X I received would randomly lock up and or reboot.
I called your tech support and the kind person said she would send another one out as I was within the 14 day grace period.
I received the replacement phone and it still locks up and reboots but here's my issue. I received my next bill and y'all added $214 in charges for new equipment. I called the cust service line again and the agent said that it is standard practice until the other phone is received. She said to check online over the next couple of days to see that the charges were removed.
They haven't been.
I called back after a week or so to verify you had received the bad phone back. Was informed that the phone made it to the warehouse and that they hadn't credited the account yet. This CS person said they would make note of the issue and call me within a week if I hadn't heard back from anyone by then.
No call back.
In the meantime I ordered a accessory kit for the phone. Car and home dock, car charger, hdmi cable. All the good stuff. The car dock would not charge the phone. I called your CS and the rep ordred a replacement car dock. I inquired about my credit (for the bad phone) with this rep who said that the warehouse had the phone but no credit yet. They were going to keep an eye on the issue and call me back.
No call back.
I opened the package that was to be my replacement car dock and saw that y'all sent another home dock.
I Called CS again today to talk to the 5th rep now who ordered the correct (hopefully) car dock. I inquired with this rep about my $214 charge and he told me y'all sent a brand new phone to replace my bad one so I would likely have to pay for it. This was never mentioned at any other time, in all the other 4 conversations I've had with your company. I did not ask that a new phone be sent to me, just a working one. The first rep made no comment to me that I was going to be charged $214 for a phone that was to be free with my new every two and the promotion you had going at the time for the CPO droid x.
I would like to speak to someone who can resolve this issue. I have been a loyal customer for many years. I am a tech support person by trade and cannot understand the lack of communication your CS people have had with me. If someone is going to be charged for something you should tell them then and there so that they may make an informed decision whether or not to proceed. I recommend your network to my users where I work due to how reliable it is every day. We use all the major carriers but I lean toward VZW for it's reliability. After this experience though I may need to rethink that.

I'm sorry to learn about the problems encountered surrounding the purchase of your phone. This should not have happen and in my opinion this should have been resolved already. I will send you a PM. Please reply and include your contact number. I will call and resolve this issue.
ChaunceyM_VZWSupport
Follow us on twitter @VZWSupport

Error code :12052 while updating software

I have tried to update my software through Nokia Ovi suite.
In that Process at time of preparing for installation an error is notified to me stating above error
"error code 12052" displaying some information lost connection.
I tried OTA in this process an error message of " No free Space" is displayed...
I have removed My memory card and also deleted everything in phone Memory upto how much and user is allowed to delete even then it is displaying "do free space delete some elements"
There is nothing in phone other than previous OS and default folders, which cant be, deleted then how can i delete them... What kind of software you people are making????
How to Update my phone and at timeusing suite for update it is seriously making a comedy of "error code 12052"
please inform me kindly as soon as possible...
" If not I gonna file a case on Your Software product in Consumer Court"

Hi shelter,
Have you tried doing a reset on the phone? If you haven't done it yet, please try to do it. Just go to Menu > Settings > Rest. fact. sett. > Settings Only. This will not delete any personal information that you've saved on the phone. However, it will return all customized things you've done on the phone, for example, changing wallpapers. ringtones, etc. By the way, it will ask you for a security code and the default code is 12345. However, if you have personalized it, try using your own code instead.

Error-handling in PKGBUILDs is far from perfect

Hi, PKGBUILDs should die on failure, rather than just continue regardless of errors. Here's a little rant:
Why is it acceptable for ./configure to fail? Or make install to fail? Or the installation of just about any file? They could fail for lots of reasons, such as expecting a non-existent directory to exist, just being badly-written, or disk corruption, or running out of disk space. I see this lack of error-handling both in official packages and in the AUR.
Failing on an error is a fundamental part of programming, and BASH makes a mockery of it. And then Linux developers seem to get brainwashed by BASH into believing that mixing important and non-important errors together, then just ignoring all the errors, is an acceptable programming practice. It's not - it's a comedy of errors (excuse the pun).
SourceMage handles this problem by having one huge command constructed with && at the end of each line, so at least will fail on error.
Gentoo is using its custom die command more often these days (|| die), but my proposal is in limbo, presumably because "SpanKY" overrules every other dev (little bit of Gentoo politics there ).
The current practice of make || return 1 is correct, but || return 1 should be used far more often - example (notice the looped use of install, and the annoyance of having to check $? after the loop). "More often" includes make install even if it's on the final line, both for consistency, and so it is not forgotten to be added when further lines are added to the end (e.g. to install the license/documentation files).
I'll place this on flyspray after a bit of feedback.
Edit: I'll distro-hop instead.
Last edited by brebs (2008-04-21 13:55:33)

I'm as guilty as anyone in this. However, I always use it on the initial "configure" and "make install" lines where there is a lot of output. I tend to miss it when installing individual files at the end (e.g. Licences, icons...) because I can see if they failed from the output.

Less than a month and its already broken

Dear BT and Forum users,
I am not very happy with my BB service right now and have come on here in the hope that I might get more that platitudes and fob offs.
So... a few weeks ago my husband finally gave into the sales calls and agreed to have Infinity installed. Our reason - not so much faster internet but in the hope we might get a consistant service.The service we had before that was tempermental at best and we were sick of having to reset the router every other day. (in hindsight we should have just gone with an alternative ISP).
It was installed a couple of weeks ago and worked well until last Wednesday, since then the service has been a comedy of errors. To start with my husband confirmed from the outset that they problem was not coming from inside the house but the customer service operator insisted on booking an engineer.
We agreed to the Friday morning appointment. I booked the morning off work (using annual leave) and the engineer didn't show up. My husband called at 12.30 (they won't take calls from me as I'm not on the bill) and he was assured the appointment was booked in. Shortly after 1 I took a call at the home to say the "system" had lost the booking and the engineer wouldn't be coming.
I said I was in all day, he could come now but that was clearly off script and the call centre operative wouldn't enterntain the idea (annoyingly there were 2 BT vans in my neighbourhood that afternoon). Instead they wanted me to rebook another 4 hour appointment. I couldn't stop in Saturday and wasn't going to lose more leave. I said I would discuss the options with my husband.
What followed that afternoon was a series of coversations with them, some with me at home and some with my husband at work offering the same options and us giving the same response. I don't know if the operatives weren't talking to each other or didn't understand but it was really irritating. In the end they said they would call my husband at 4pm. They called some time after 5 and said the would try the exchange first and call us Monday morning if they needed to access the property.
Saturday 8.30 the engineer called to say they were on their way, we had the time so we waited. He arrived and was in the house all of 15 minutes before confirming the problem was in the exchange (all that time wasted for that!). We got a call Sunday to say they needed a new part at the exchange then today my husband got an undecipherable voicemail and a text saying the service will be fixed in the next 72 hours. He has spoken to them this evening and we're still non-the-wiser as now there's a fault further up the line.
Whilst all this is going on we have tried to find out if they expect us to pay for the Infinity and BT Vision whilst the services are not working. All they will say is they won't look at refunding losses until the issue is fixed. I realise they can't give us a total but it was a pretty straight forward question - am I paying for this non-service. One operator has said I can have £10 to cover the missed appointment (I value my time and annual leave a little higher).
In all honestly the loss of internet and BT vision is frustrating but what has really dissapointed me is the lack of customer service. No one in the call centres seem to have a clue what's going on (we've had so many versions of what's wrong) and are too tied to a script. There's no sense of inconvenience - I'm supposed to be ready and waiting for 4 hours at a time but they will fix it sometime in the next 3 day.
Right now I'm not even sure its worth waiting to get this fixed.
I'd love for someone to come on here and fix this for me but I'd settle for a little peer support/shared experience.
Thanks
L

OK, so I was being a little optimisitic. We're back online (yay!) but now the bill is just more of the same. Apparently we have to wait 48 hours before they will tell us how they are adjusting the bill I understand that they cannot confirm the problem si fixed yet because of some internal policy but they won't even tell us how much they would calculate as of now - a pretty straight forward question.
So with that, we threw in the towel... said if they can't asnwer a simple question we were off. Of course when I told then operator this he said he's put me straight through to his boss and then left me on hold for over 20 minutes before I gave up!
Called back to leaver dept. to be told we have to pay £200 to cancel (funny they could give us that figure pretty easily). I don't know what was said when he signed up but I am going to be investigating this further. We've had the service less than a month and its been broken a week.

Upgrade paths from cs5 to cs5.5

Hello,
I just got off the phone with customer service. I upgraded from CS4 to CS5 in late December. I would like to upgrade InDesign from CS5 to the 5.5 version. I was told this isn't an option because I own the suite.
This perplexes me since I have purchased many, many single items from Adobe in the past--from Pagemaker 3 pretty much on. Is it really true that once I went to CS2 I abandoned my rights to upgrade individual products?
It seems a bit unreasonable, after spending $600 at the end of last year, that now, three months later, I need to spend another $400 just to update one program. Am I missing something?
I am posting here because the representative I spoke with had a really, really hard time understanding English and I'm not sure he even got my question. It took him over a half hour just to find my account and verify that I had a registered version of Design Premium. He told me that part of the problem was that I have purchased so many Adobe (and Macromedia) products over the past 15 years that I now have four accounts and that it was not possible to consolidate all my software under one single account. This also sounds very odd. HELP!
Thanks!
Ruth

I looked into crossgrading. The whole thing was a comedy of errors. My new custom built super-charged PC developed an un-diagnoasable software error, and then got stolen after being sent in for repaired. At the time, it seemed like my best option was to start the migration from Windows, buy a Mac laptop, get software to run on it, yet still keep my Windows options open in case the PC was found. I was using a backup PC to keep work on schedule.
I used one of my Macromedia cross-platform suite products to upgrade to the Mac CS3 suite. So it wasn't as expensive as it could have been. In hindsight, yes, I should have just abandoned the PC and crossgraded. But I was very fearful after all the computer issues I had encountered that I would have problems with one or the other of the two computers and I felt I needed some redundancy just to ensure I didn't have more downtime.
I'll look through the Adobe site for a license transfer form. When I called several months ago, the agent, made it sound like these were very difficult to come by. Or perhaps, the agent just didn't know. I've ran into this several times with Adobe. One agent tells you one thing, another says something entirely different. Customer service is lacking in my opinion.
Ruth

30 day (total 12 hr) duration failed attempt to give verizon MORE money for a new phone

I cover family phones and mifi devices in 3 states: TX, MD and CA. My brother is long overdue for a phone upgrade and we finally decided to do it. He lives in TX and I'm in CA which means that to VZW one of us must live on the face of the moon because no matter how hard I have tried to buy him the new phone and sign a new contract the effort has failed. 1st I set it up, gave him the authority per phone consultant and he tried to walk into a storefront and go through the process. The people he spoke with were entirely unable to compute the concept, refused to take his money and gave him no guidance about how to proceed. We tried this approach twice. Next I called VZW and authorized everything on my end (2nd time but 3rd try) and after a good hour of discussion with "whoever", he went back to the store. It is as if none of my conversations with VZW had ever taken place, Nothing was documented and my hour(s) of hold time and discussion were simply wasted. Contact with VZW must have just been blather with another know-nothing respondent. Tried yet again using the online ordering option and my account access was closed for fraud (???) because my brother lives in TX and I'm in CA. Notwithstanding, VZW autopayments went through, they were happy to take the possibly fraudulent money. Crazy. Now I'm deeply into long conversations with VZW phone respondents using reference numbers and requesting supervisors (so they say) and the first one of these was guaranteed to work-- no question about it-- promises to personally follow through, etc. No phone sent to my brother. Nothing. So I called again, repeated all the steps with double triple checks of credit card numbers (none of which were ever invalid as demonstrated by the charges that went through without difficulty) double triple checking addresses and which numbers are connected to which phones.... From VZW profuse apologies and promise to overnite phone-- gee whiz--- about 28 days late. Today I have an email saying that phone won't be sent until I press a button and authorize/accept the agreement. Which I did verbally on the phone previously and which I also did by punching a bunch of things into the phone service I was transferred to precisely for this purpose. In fact, I was carefully instructed to do this immediately so that the phone COULD be sent right away. So today no overnited phone will arrive. After placing another 2 calls to VZW today (the first was simply cut off) I was told a supervisor would call me in 48 hrs by someone who seemed to take a little bit of pleasure in reinforcing multiple times that no one could get back to me today. Huh? I've got to say that in all of my years dealing with incompetence and lies (this is what you call a promise that you know will not take place VZW) this has been the worst experience ever.
Not incidentally, I am responsible for the business phone operations for a large organization and will make sure that we are no longer VZW customers when the contract is scheduled for renegotiation. If VZW can't deal with family plans why should I trust them with our corporate account? Shocking degree of ignorance, indifference, inefficiency and poor management strategy demonstrated consistently-- among other things. VZW should assume that the way individual customers are treated may impact the bottom line in much bigger ways than it might appear.

this I also understand and fundamentally approve of.
However, we sorted out these issues (multiple times) and the charges went through at the various addresses, in other words the money WAS pulled, but no activity was forthcoming. You can't have it both ways. Fraud you shut down. Money accepted should equal services provided and the equipment that it has paid for. This was a comedy of errors that became unfunny after about the 5th phone call and 10th email. No one is laughing in my household anymore.
As you suggest, I like my services to be protective. However, I do not like talking to people on the phone who make promises they can't/won't deliver on. In particular I do not like paying for things that are then denied me due to system failure of any kind. When that failure is pointed out repeatedly, and corrections are "guaranteed: and nothing changes I'm stupefied and enraged.
Errors happen. I'd expect that once maybe, twice on occasion when there is a good explanation. Multiple times over 30 days. Unacceptable.
Thank you for your interest.

Top 15 or 20 mistakes I made installing Windows XP using Boot Camp/Leopard

There are pitfalls installing XP in Boot Camp. I'm pretty sure they are mostly covered somewhere on the Apple Bootcamp Support page. Here's what this Windows virgin found in the past few days installing XP on my MacBook Pro running Leopard. By all means, feel free to correct or add to my comedy of errors.
1) First run Software Update on your Mac to make sure you are working with the newest Mac software and firmware. If you are obsessive, run Disk Utility afterwards and restart. (I did this)
2) Follow the instruction in Apple's Boot Camp Installation Guide pdf to the letter. Don't skip anything. Don't assume anything. Print it if you can't run it on another machine during the Windows install. (I looked at it, not well enough.) Read #3-7 before you start the install.
3) Run Boot Camp Setup Assistant to "preformat" a Windows partition. 5 gigs is too small a partition and means more work later since XP eventually used up 5.6 gigs of my 32 gig partition (26.4 gigs free after a fully updated install of Win XP Service Pack 3 + anti-virus software + Adobe Reader + one app). (I avoided the too-small partition by dumb beginner's luck but see #4)
4) If you mess up your Windows partition and decide to start over, restart in Leopard and use Mac's Boot Camp Assistant to remove any inoperative Windows partition. If you are obsessive, run Disk Utility afterwards and restart. Then use Boot Camp Assistant again, as in #3 (I got to use this feature, too.)
5) Use the right Windows software. Win XP Service Pack 2 does install and can be updated after you have a solid XP installed with driver. Before you update, read #8-10. (I managed to buy the right XP software)
6) During installation, with the Windows Installer, you must reformat the Windows partition created by the Boot Camp Assistant. Don't get fancy and repartition: just format. Read pp. 13-14 of the Apple Boot Camp Installation Guide pdf. The Windows NTFS format using long, slow, careful reformat takes a looonnng time, long enough to make me think the installer was hung, except the cursor was blinking. (I did this but only after I tried to install the dumb way, without the Win installer reformat. If you don't reformat, you'll see a black screen, "Disk Error" with a flashing cursor at the top. Time to refer to #4.)
7) When Windows reboots after a successful install of XP SP 2, immediately eject the Windows install disk using Windows and immediately insert the Leopard Disk to install Windows drivers. (I did this. Some report problems with this step, but it worked for me.)
8) When you restart in Windows, run Windows Update to install everything except Service Pack 3. Mouse around the update feature a bit. If you don't update to SP 3, there is an optional install of a new IE 7 and an XP update that fixes some installer issues. (I did the optional install before I figured out #9 and tried to install SP 3 a couple of times. See #10 for what happens if you try to install SP 3 before #9.)
9) Using IE 7 in XP, go to the Apple Boot Camp page to download and install Boot Camp 2.1 Update For Windows XP. This installs on the Windows side, not in OS X. ( I did this, throwing caution to the wind and choosing "Run" when the download options of "Run" or "Save" appeared.) When BCUpdateXP.exe opens, the installer asks you to choose repair/update or uninstall. Choose repair/update. I think the machine needs a restart.
10) Now install XP Service Pack 3 using Windows Update. If you try to install XP SP 3 before the Boot Camp 2.1 Update for Windows XP, you will receive the following error message:
"There is not enough disk space on C:\WINDOWS\$NtServicePackUninstall& to install Service Pack 3. Setup requires a minimum of 4 additional mebabytes of free space or if you want to archive the files for uninstallation. Setup requires 4 additional megabytes of free space. Free additional space on your hard disk and then try again. Error Code 0x8007F003." It's a lie, assuming you set up a large enough Boot Camp partition at the outset. Both Windows and Disk Utility will tell you the size and available space of the Boot Camp partition.
Like I said, everyone is welcome to add the next 5 or 10 ways to mess up. Without Search, this forum is rough.

Because I created FAT32 partition using Boot Camp tool few days ago I installed my custom copy of Windows XP with SP3, IE7 and WMP10 integrated using nLite (for WMP10 integration use RVM Integrator). I did not use Boot Camp tool this time - I just booted CD using Option key. Then I installed Boot Camp 2.0 drivers you can find on Mac Disk 1. After this I installed Boot Camp drivers 2.1 update. In Add or remove Programs I checked drivers - I uninstalled old drivers which call identical, but you can skip this. Everything works fine BTW it is better to format your partition to NTFS - you have much less disk errors, you do not waste time for disk errors scans during Windows startup, your data are much more safe. If you need NTFS write permissions use great tool Paragon NTFS for Mac OSX or open source NTFS driver.
Message was edited by: limo79

How do I migrate a vs5 catalog to vs9 catalog?

This has been a comedy of errors. Received a new computer for Christmas with version 9 Elements loaded on it. My new computer has a new directory for photos than my old computer. Tried to migrate my version 5 catalog to the new computer and was thinking I could just reconnect my files, but when I did that they all show up as offline. Bring up properties and they show the old directory path from my old computer. Reconnecting did not work and re-indexing also did not fix the problem. Help!!!! I have of 6000 or more pictures that I will have to re-tag.
Also, how can I change the properties so that I can see the ribbon bar? The little arrow drop-down sucks.
Thanks,
Jeanne

Use back up & restore to move your catalog.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/402/kb402894.html
The missing ribbon is probably due dpi scaling.
Go to the control panel and check dpi scaling under Appearance or Display.
It’s not uncommon to see a setting of 125% or higher to improve screen readability but PSE9 requires a dpi of 96 or 100%
’t.
Whilst the Editor Menu will appear at 120% the Organizer Menu won
Try a setting of 115% or 116% otherwise 100%.

N95 suddenly not reading sim card

Hello I woke up this morning to find a comedy of errors with my n95 - after 2.5 months of perfect operation (bar a few resets) and with the latest firmware - the **bleep** thing refused to turn on despite leaving it on with the charger plugged and with full battery the night before. After several frantic attempts and battery reinsertion the phone burst back into life, but attempted charges came up with the message "phone not charging" this eventually went away but now the main problem.
The things not reading ANY sim card I put in it, these cards work in any other phone I put them in. Has the handset cocked up and needs to be sent back or is there some option I have not tried?

Does it ask for a pincode from cold start (switched off)?

Cannot make changes or remove password from sheet.

I have a spreadsheet in the newest version of Numbers.
The size is approximately 20 MB
I cannot edit the spreadsheet in any way on the Mac because the whole application crashes.
I can (slowly) edit the file on iOS devices, but the changes do not always save.
I had originally placed a password on the file, but decided to remove it. After I do this I get an error on iOS devices that "Spreadsheet cannot be opened".
This is a comedy of errors. Has anyone else seen this or have a Decent suggestion? Is there any way to get Apple to look into this mess?

I have "restored" my Nano via the button in iTunes and it correctly loaded everything back onto the Nano. There was no change in the problem I'm having. When viewing the contents of my Nano in iTunes everything is gray and cannot be deleted and I cannot add content to the Nano.
Switching the lock button on the Nano has no affect but I do see the lock on the display go on/off so that appears to be working properly. All functions of the Nano seem to be working properly. I can play music, pod casts, shake to shuffle. It's just not working with iTunes.

My latest CC Installation experience

Just some comments about my recent experience installing CC. I already have CC on other machines, but decided to do a complete installation from scratch on a brand new iMac running Mavericks 10.9.2, to see if the process had changed/got better since previous installations. I am based in Sydney Australia.
All other software I installed on the iMac worked quickly and as expected, including over 4GB of updates for Apple OS and software. My internet connection is reliable and did not interrupt any of the other installations. The Apple software, in particular, downloaded incredibly quickly - about 2 hours for all 4GB. Microsoft Office updates were a bit slow but all done within 30 minutes. Microsoft's "Flip4Mac" wmv components for Quicktime was very slow to download, as was a CUDA driver from NVIDIA.
But the CC installer was fraught with delays, mis-steps and problems. All Adobe downloads were excruciatingly slow - from the outset with the initial CC Installer (30 minutes), and then much worse with the applications themselves. The After Effects download failed 4 times, and had to re-start the download from scratch on 3 of those 4 occasions. When it failed part-way through a download, it would just wait for user interaction rather than restarting the download.
After several hours of watching this comedy of errors, I decided to just download standalone installers of After Effects and Photoshops. Googling "Adobe CC standalone installers" takes you to
Download a free trial or buy Adobe products | Adobe downloads
You use the "Try" button for each application on this page to go to a specific download page for the application trial. But the "Try" buttons on many of the applications on this page are dead links: in particular, After Effects and Photoshop.
And so, the only thing left was to babysit the CC application manager for hours. Eventually it took 9 hours for After Effects to download. After that, it took another 3 hours for Illustrator, Bridge and Photoshop combined - much more acceptable time frame, but also kind of slow.
We commonly see complaints about the install process over in the After Effects forum, and I've generally been fairly dismissive of them, but I've got to say this has been an eye opener. If my experience is common, it's no wonder people get annoyed.
Was the process slowed by the forums downtime over the past two days? (It shouldn't be, I imagine.) Is there a problem with the Adobe download servers (Akamai, I believe?) and their speed capabilities? Is this problem location-specific for Australian users? And can someone address the dead links on the Downloads page?

Andrew Yoole the experience you had is not expected. Are you on a managed network? If not I would recommend reviewing Sign in, activation, or connection errors | CC, CS6, CS5.5 - http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/activation-network-issues.html for several common configuration issues which could affect the stability of your download.
As an alternative please see Download New Adobe CC Trials: Direct Links (no Assistant/Manager) | ProDesignTools which provides information on how to download the base installers directly through your web browser. If you continue to experience slow downloads via a direct download then I would recommend utilizing an alternate Internet connection or contact your Internet Service Provider.

Attaching images to a path

I know this sounds rather silly, but I am trying to attach a group of images to a path and cannot figure out how to do it.
I have a bunch of rectangluar images set up in a straight line, some are at diagonal angles and what not.
I have tried using the join command, but it always gives me an error when I try it.
I am trying to get them into a circular path, any help would be awesome.

It does not sound silly.
It is common for vector drawing programs to provide commands to distribute objects in a Group along a given path. It is also common for vector drawing programs to provide for inclusion of graphic objects within a text flow.
Illustrator provides neither.
Cumbersome Workaround:
1. Drag each of your images to the Symbols Palette to create Symbols.
2. Drag two instances of the first Symbol onto the page.
3. Create a Blend between the two Instances.
4. Draw a path.
5. Select the Blend and the Path. Object>Blend>ReplaceSpine. The Blend now distributes its steps along the path. Depending upon the shape of the path, you will now be frustrated by yet another omission in Illustrator: its inability to uniformly space Blend steps along a path. (More about this below.)
6. Object>Blend>Blend Options. Select Specified Steps and enter the number of Symbols minus 2.
7. Object>Blend>Expand. You now have an ordinary Group of objects, but each object is still a Symbol Instance.
8. Select the second Instance. Symbols Palette: Select the second Symbol in your Palette, and then choose the Replace Symbol command from the palette's flyout menu.
9. Similarly replace the other Instances with different Symbols.
Regarding step 5:
One would expect Scatter Brushes to solve this problem, because Scatter Brushes are suppose to be useful for uniformly (and otherwise) distributing objects along a path. But no; Illogically, you cannot use Raster Images in a Scatter Brush. So you think, "AH! But you can use Symbols in a Scatter Brush, just as you can in a Blend!" But, no; illogically, while you can use a Symbol Instance to define a Scatter Brush, the feature will still refuse to use Symbol Instances that contain raster content. "Okay," you think, "Let's use a vector-only Symbol, expand the Brush Appearance, and then use Replace Symbol. Foiled again: Yes, the stupid interface allows you to drag a Symbol Instance into the Brushes palette and define a Scatter Brush. But if you then use the Scatter Brush on a path and Expand Appearance, you'll find that the Symbol Instances have already been released; they are just ordinary Groups.
Now, before anyone trots out some kneejerk defensive reaction to this complete garbage, perhaps based on the notion that some Scatter Brush options would not make sense for raster content, consider:
You can use Symbols containing raster images in a Blend. If you use two different raster Symbols, it will accept the command, and simply refuse to draw the intermediate steps. But as long as you use two or more Instances of the same Symbol, it will draw the blend. It will even scale and rotate the intemediate instances. When you Release the Blend, the key objects and intermediate steps will still be Symbol Instances, so Replace Symbol can then be used to advantage.
So by what logic does Scatter Brush not similarly leave Symbol Instances as Symbol Instances, instead of expanding them? The entire interface gives you no indication whatsoever that it is going to do that. And why shouldn't one expect to be able to use the Scatter Brush feature to distribute Symbol Instances? The two features certainly should work hand-in-hand for a multitude of common practical situations, especially given Illustrator's lame inability to uniformly distribute Groups or Blends along a non-uniform path.
This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about when I point out that Illustrator's interface is so very poorly designed; that its features are very poorly integrated; and that the result is a dizzying plethora of scattered features that can't even do in combination what carefully-designed features commonly do in other programs in mere seconds.
Consider the comedy of errors represented above:
Blend makes no provision for uniform spacing along a path.
Illusrtrator provides no support for inline graphics.
Illustrator provides nothing to simply distribute a group of different objects along a path.
Blend does not give any warning that intermediate steps between different raster-containing Symbol Instances will not be interpolated. So what is a newcomer supposed to think when the results are a Blend with no intermedate steps, regardless of his settings?
By what logic does Scatter Brush not accommodate raster-containing Symbols? This is understandable for Pattern Brush, which envelope distorts it tiles, and Art Brush which stretches its content along the whole length of the spine path. But the options for Scatter Brush are nothing more than scaling, rotating and moving copies--which you can do with any Symbol anyway, even those containing raster elements.
Such comedies are so common in Illustrator that, well, it's not even funny.
JET

Accent insensitive + Search for 2 non consecutive keywords

Hi,
In APEX, I have a query the search into a list of TITLE (TIT), with or without accents. I cannot search for 2 non-consecutive word in my title and have the result.
Here an example:
SELECT
"ID","TIT"
from   "REGDOSSIERS" "RDO"
where
instr(TRANSLATE(UPPER("TIT"),'ÁÂÈÉÊÍÓÚÜ','AAEEEIOUU'),upper(nvl(:P1_REPORT_SEARCH,"TIT")) ) > 0
TIT
Last name of the resolution
King Henry the Sixth
The Gazette
The Comedy of Errors
La vie enchanté
Le bêtes et les oiseaux1- If I look for: Last Name_, I have this result:
TIT
Last name of the resolution2- If I look for: Last resolution*,
I have NO RESULTS
My Question: How to I rewrite my query to have be able to look for 2 keywords non consecutive in the field,
thanks
Roseline, Quebec, Canada
Edited by: user8772975 on 2009-09-04 10:47
Edited by: user8772975 on 2009-09-04 10:49
Edited by: user8772975 on 2009-09-04 10:50
Edited by: Roseline on Oct 1, 2009 7:27 PM

Hi,
If you know the order of the keywords (that is, if 'LAST' must come before 'RESOLUTION'):
WHERE str LIKE '%LAST%RESOLUTION%'where str is the string with accents standardized.
Now, since you're starting with a variable like 'LAST RESOLUTION', you need to convert it to '%LAST%RESOLUTION%', so say
WHERE str LIKE '%' || REPLACE ( :p1_report_search     -- TRANSLATE would work, too
               || '%'Watch out for the "mother is in chemotherapy" problem.
That is, if str = 'AMY''S ORDEAL WITH CHEMOTHERAPY", and :p1_report_search = 'MY MOTHER', you'll get a match, because str contains the 2-character sibstring 'MY' and the 6-character substring 'MOTHER' in that order.
If that's not what you want, then you can search on whiole words only, like this:
{code}
WHERE ' ' || REPLACE ( str
          , ' '     -- 1 space ...
          , ' '     -- ... becomes 2 spaces
     || ' ' LIKE '% ' || REPLACE ( :p1_report_search     -- TRANSLATE won't work, now
                    , ' % '     -- spaces before and after wild-card
               || ' %'
{code}
This assumes that all words are delimited by spaces.
If you want punctuation or other whtiespace (like tabs) to delimit words, that can be done, too.
Edited by: Frank Kulash on Sep 4, 2009 2:09 PM
Added whole-word example.

14.2 Update [edited for accurate ver. number]

I just updated to 14.1 and watched a video about Hidden Gems with Julianne Kost.
The gem about adding a tree to the image. It simply doesn't work!
1) The instructions are for Mac. C'mon now, PC's are plentiful. There is no Fill dialog on PC using Shift>Delete. Nothing happens.
2) Negotiating past 1), I get to the fill dialog on my own. There is no selections available under Fill>Patterns. Just one weird pattern, essentially nothing I would use.
So something in this update for Windows is seriously amiss, and please, show the key strokes for both OS!

Thanks. Yes I see it. Now here's the comedy of errors:
You have to use the Fill in Edit, not Layers (I generally use Layers for my fill needs, never Edit>Fill. I didn't even realize it under Edit)
The Hot Key says Shift+F5. That brings up "Grow". I don't know that Shift>Backspace was a command.
So now I have the correct "Fill" and it works.
I went back to Julianne's video to be sure I didn't miss anything and I hadn't. She completely messes up the procedure if you do not use Mac. At the very least she should reference Edit>Fill with a parenthetical reference to the correct keys for both OS. Sloppy, inconsistent (she does reference Windows on occasion) teaching, IMO. Assuming too much on the part of the viewer. In most cases, teaching videos do reference the hot keys correctly but in case of the videos in the series in which Julianne presents "Hidden Gems", there is at least one other that makes the same mistake of only telling the Mac side. This borders on hubris, imo.
Evangelist. But then, religious evangelism is often accompanied by hubris.

Comedy of errors

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