Plan for Ben Garney

.Plan Time Again!

Now that I'm not working on Big Secret Stuff (at least for the moment...) I can do more frequent, enlightening .plans. It's a good feeling.

I have two things on my plate that I want to share. The first is about the future of Torque documentation (an update on TDN's status), and the second is a tale of personal woe, tragedy, and betrayal (why you shouldn't use DHL). Bear with me.

Sneak Preview of TDN



The above is a shot of part of what you see when you enter TDN. You can click on the product images to go to documentation for the relevant product. Each of those "hub" pages links to specific articles, tutorials, reference guides, and so on. Depending on where you go, different sets of documentation are presented - so if you go to the T2D page, for instance, you'll see documentation on the core Torque functionality (scripting, memory manager, resource manager, etc.), as well as a lot of Torque2D specific information. TSE, on the other hand, will have that same core documentation, as well as a bunch of stuff shared with TGE, and its own references for terrain and other goodies.

Access will be restricted by what products you own. So some pages will be accessible to T2D, TSE, and TGE owners. Some will be limited to only T2D people. Other pages (especially scripting and artist documentation) will be accessible to everyone.

In general, if you can see something, you can contribute to it, too, since the site is wiki-based. We want to keep TDN as open as possible for people to contribute to, without compromising the quality, accuracy, and usefulness of the site. For now, we're probably going to restrict editing by default to people who own at least one product on the site. (Exceptions will be made; we just want to have some idea of who's editing things.)

And, best news of all, today is when we start opening the site up to associates. The first few people are already starting to post docs; soon we'll be bringing more onboard. If you're interested in helping out, please e-mail me at beng AT garagegames DOT com. I have a list of people who've volunteered already, but getting a second ping is a good way to bring yourself up the list, because it shows you're still interested. :)

DHL: Don't Use 'Em

Now, onto the more sordid half of this post, where I will explain why you should not use DHL to ship anything. (Note: no relation to the fine folks at MaxGaming and their game, Dark Horizons: Lore. I'm talking about the shipping company with the yellow vans.)

When I went to GDC, in early March, I left a bag at the hotel. The hotel was awesome, and when I called to ask about it, they shipped it to me right away. Via DHL.

Naturally, when I hadn't received it by April, I began to grow worried. On April 7, I received a call indirectly, from a fellow at the Portland airport who had found my bag, apparently lying around. So I had the pleasure of calling DHL and telling THEM where the bag they were supposed to be shipping me was.

They went to pick it up and proceeded to lose it again, this time without giving me the tracking number or any other way of figuring out where it went. They filed a search but never got back to me on it. And another a week later, again without ever letting me know if they got anywhere with it.

So I file a claim, but I never received the paperwork to finish filing it. I call them up after several weeks with no forms, and have them FAX a set to me.

Feeling suspicious at this point, I both fax them the forms, and send them a copy by registered mail, with the request that they contact me within ten business day. I received notification the mail was delivered (notification courtesy of the USPS) on May 26. Nothing. I have my finals for my class, which distracts me for a week or two. Then, June 20, yesterday, I received notification of a LATE FEE added to the bill for my still undelivered package.

So it's been over three months now, and I still haven't been contacted by a single DHL rep about the issue. The guy in charge of regional sales came by to the GG offices last week to try to sell us DHL shipping; he gave me the number of the local shipping hub, which was phenomenally useless, as lost packages are shipped to the DHL headquarters in Arizona, and they only keep the last month's data in the local systems.

Now, before I go on my long slog through their customer service department, I'm upping the ante. Right now there are several hundred people on the GG site. I expect a fair number of them read .plans, especially employee .plans. And it seems to me that it's probably not a good idea to ship with a company that won't even return phone calls.

Maybe they'll refund me the nearly one thousand dollars worth of clothing, toiletries, and other personal items they lost. They have a liability cap of a hundred dollars, but I think I've gone well beyond the kind of situation that that applies to. If they'd lost it once - that'd be fine. But losing it twice, failing to return calls, being unable to even mail me my paperwork properly OR deal with it once I get it in - that's just ridiculous.

With that, it's off to the phones for me. Maybe I can come back here and post about how they managed to make a last second save. I hope so. I'm getting sick of having to wear the same three pairs of pants all the time.