Helpful tip for Charter Communications:

If something is wrong with your web site, or you're doing maintenance, please put up a page which says so.

I got an e-mail today which said my Charter bill is due. I went to log on, and repeatedly got the "your username/password is invalid" message, which seemed weird since I was pretty certain I knew the password.

So, I called their Customer Service, and after several minutes on hold with a rep, was informed that they're doing "site maintenance" and will have the site back online in a few hours.

I understand that things go wrong and maintenance is sometimes necessary, but providing no clue to the end user other than a "invalid username/password" message is very frustrating.

I tried suggesting this to the customer service rep on the phone, but he didn't seem too interested in my idea.

Update: It didn't work last night. It still doesn't work this morning. I wonder how many days it will take before Charter fixes whatever is going on..

A guy I met at a training class last week told me a story that sounded rather familiar:

"My brother in law knows a guy who worked for a software company. They write software that banks use. He realized one day that some transactions ended up with fractions of a penny, and those fractional pennies were just being rounded off. So, he changed the software to instead transfer those fractional cents into his account at the bank.

It seemed like a great idea until a couple days later, when he realized that a large sum of money appeared in the bank -- certainly enough for him to get caught. So, he had to write a letter to his boss explaining what he'd done, and return the money to the bank."

The only response I could think of was: "Wow. Did the building happen to burn down, destroying the evidence?"

"No, why?"

"Uh, never mind."

(If this makes no sense to you, you probably haven't seen Office Space.)

It's time for Brian's wife to take over bruppert.com again. Here's a rant on the name "Erin":

Do I sound like a boy, either in person or in type? Twice over the last few days I have been confused for a boy. How many people do you know named "Erin" who are male? I have heard of only one, and that might have been a myth, or maybe a legend...

It seems odd that people would assume that I'm male after receiving an email from me or while trying to sell me something over the phone (and obviously having seen my name in print).

I guess I can understand if the person is totally unfamiliar with the name "Erin", like if the person is from another country. But anyone who grew up in the US has surely encountered bucket-loads of Erins. Or is that just in the midwest? Growing up there were always at least 3 other girls named Erin around.

The guy I spoke to on the phone today (who wanted to talk to Erin about HIS credit card and was very shocked when I told him I was Erin) was plainly from somewhere in the US, somewhere with a southern accent. He also had a heck of a time with my (former) last name. How easy can I make it for you? It's pronounced JUST LIKE IT LOOKS. Give it a confident try, you'll probably be right.

Check out the Ruppert Food Blog that Brian has been working on.

It's not fully functional yet, mostly because he needs to give us logins and passwords, but we're getting there.

Want to read more? See the archive of past stories.