When I’m putting PDFs (or any kind of downloadable file) on web sites, I’m always sure to publish them with a filename which is meaningful, including some indication of the web site it came from. ‘Cos if the average user is like me, they save PDFs etc all over the place, and some kind of identifier makes it heaps easier to find the file later.

(Previous rant)

Trying to hire a car in Adelaide for a single day, a Sunday. I’d really rather not have it overnight, so I don’t have to park it somewhere. As it turns out, it looks like none of the car rental places are open beyond 4pm on Sundays, but the problem with their web sites is how they tell you this:

Budget: “Your return time is after the location’s closing time.” — So what’s the location’s closing time? Surely you’re not going to make me guess? Wait, check the Locations page. OK, found the list of nearby branches. Click on the chosen one. No opening hours shown. … (sometime later) … Wait, if I mouse over the location on the map, it tells me the opening hours! Not that there’s any prompt to the user to say that’s how it works.

Hertz: “Return Date or Time – This location is closed at the time indicated. Please adjust your return or select an alternate location. [DE357]” — But at least there on the screen it’s showing me what the times are.

Thrifty: “Your rental details could not be processed because the return time is outside the opening hours for the return location. The return time has been changed to be the location closing time.” — Better, but why didn’t you tell me the opening hours when I was checking what your locations are?

Europcar: “Your Return Time could not be accepted because the operating hours for our Adelaide City Branch on 10/28/2007 7:00:00 PM are between the hours of 09:00 and 16:00.” Bravo!

Avis: tells as I click through where the branch is and what its hours are, but ignores it for another screen or two. But when it does notice, it eventually tells me everything I need to know in one message: “The Return Location selected is closed at the time requested. The Return Location operates from Sun 08:00AM-02:00PM; Mon-Fri 07:30AM-06:00PM; Sat 08:00AM-02:00PM. The Return Location Service may be available after hours. Please call this number (61) 08-84105727 to contact this location for further details.” — Bravo Avis, you win.

Of course, the aggregator sites like VroomVroomVroom don’t do too well out of this either. Oh well. SimilarlyDriveNow.

I ended up booking with Avis (closest to the hotel) via DriveNow (the best mix of good prices and nice web interface). And when I discovered (after placing the booking) that I’d entered the wrong dates, I went to avis.com and changed them. Neato.

Webform, major financial group. I entered my phone number, only to be presented with an error message:

Contact Number is invalid. Contact Number can contain only numeric digits. There is no need to include a country code.

My crime? Putting in spaces. Heaven forbid that the computer strip them out again.

Have a go at this crappy morgage calculator. Insofaras mortage calculators go, it’s middle of the road. It doesn’t allow for being an investor, which renders it useless to me – I have a substaintial investment income (only matched by my substaintial interest expense), and I’m not trading up from my current house.

But my biggest gripe is how the calculator has been “designed” to only work if you enter a valid, live email address. So this thing turns out to be a marketting tool, not a calculator per se. The address of me@example.com doesn’t work. If you enter an email address that isn’t live, it doesn’t give an error message – it barfs with an ASP error when sending the email fails. WTF? How is J Random User meant to figure that one out? Thankfully, it hands over the results (for what they’re worth) because jobs@google.com is a valid email address. Sorry about that, Google.

I love Snopes.com. It’s an invaluable resource for urban legends. Every time some idiot forwards me the latest fad email, I can debunk it (or, far more rarely, prove it isn’t true.)

I hate Snopes.com. Because they go out of their way to make their site fiddly to use. There’s popups that beat Firefox’s default blocker. If you click through to another site from their pages, it not only opens in a new window, but they try to hide its URL when you mouse over the link.

And they’ve got code that prevents you clicking or selecting on their page — so for instance if the browser gets focus in the address bar, you can’t click back onto the page to get the up/down keys working again. I guess it’s to stop you copy/pasting text off the site:

if (typeof document.onselectstart!=”undefined”)
   document.onselectstart=new Function (“return false”)
else{
  document.onmousedown=disableselect
  document.onmouseup=reEnable
}

… though right-click / Select All works (at least in Firefox). Right-click also works for getting focus back on the page, thankfully.