Digital

I'm not an HTML guy. I don't code web sites. But I do use them.

The web site for benefits for the company I used to work for -- not the blue one, the other one -- is pretty slick. It's got numbers like what my 401(k) is worth, and where I can go if I want them to make a projection of how much they'd pay me if I said start tomorrow. All of that is pretty good.

It's also got a page where it lists contact information for me. This is where it gets, um, sticky. Down at the bottom, it's got Preferred Contact Method, and it says EMAIL. True enough, but there's no email address listed. So, I think, maybe I should make sure they have the right one. I click on UPDATE INFORMATION, and I get a page where my home address is completely blank. But they do have an 'alternate address' which just happens to be my home address. Uh, okay. Maybe the idea is, they already know it, so if I'm saying UPDATE, maybe I wanted to give them a new one. Personally, I think that's dippy -- application? I'll tell you when I want you to make assumptions for me -- but it gets better. There's a place to say what my phone number is, and it's blank. Can't have that, I think, so I click to update it, and it asks if this is an alternate or a mobile number. It's neither, I think; what the hell is going on here? And where do I tell it to tell me what they think my email address is? Enough of this.

So I go to the Contact Us, and I fill out the form to ask the question, and I hit Submit, and it tells me that There is an EJB error, try later. Now I happen to know that EJB stands for Enterprise Java Beans, and I even know what it is, but, you know? I just want this stupid thing to work. So, I call them. And after fifteen minutes, the woman I'm talking to concludes that she has no idea why this isn't working, and she has to pass the question to the System Administrator, and it'll be about a week till they get back to me.

Ah, computers.