This Blog Has Been Approved for All Audiences
By Brian | June 25, 2007
OK, one more from Jason Bennion. My blog rating:
A “G” Rating? FUCK!!!
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 1 Comment »
Growing Old with the Joneses…
By Brian | June 25, 2007
Quite a bit to comment on from Simple Tricks & Nonsense tonight.
Jason thinks Dr. Jones looks pretty good in this picture, taken this past week on the set of Indiana Jones, Part IV:
Oh yeah? Take a look at this eerily similar picture from 1989:
Arthritis. Why did it have to be arthritis? I HATE arthritis…
(still looking forward to the movie, though…)
Categories: Movie Talk | 1 Comment »
Find the Tie Fighter
By Brian | June 25, 2007
OK, a new internet quiz (hat tip: Jason Bennion)
Find the International Space Station in this picture:
Answer in the first comment below. No fair peaking!
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 3 Comments »
Dell to the rescue…
By Brian | June 25, 2007
Back in February, I bought myself a new PC which included the ultra-nifty 2407FPW 24″ widescreen monitor. When I get back to posting entries in the ISBS Tech Guide (shut up, I will so…), I plan to do an entire entry on this monitor. It is just that cool.
Anyway, last Friday, I’m on the phone with my wife and she says, “Oh, by the way, there’s a grey stripe down the middle of the monitor. You should take a look at that when you get home.” Turns out the grey stripe was a series of alternating 2″ lines of black pixels and working pixels running the entire height of the monitor, just to the right of center. Possibly dead pixels, but more likely some kind of power problem in the monitor itself, since the odds of so many pixels blowing out all at once (and in a repeatable pattern) are fairly low.
I called Dell Technical Support at around 10pm that evening. Here’s roughly how the phone call went:
Me: My monitor is broken (explains the black lines)
Dell: OK, please unplug it from the PC so we can verify that the problem is your monitor, and not your video card. Are the lines still there?
Me: Yes.
Dell: OK, is there another computer you can plug the monitor into, so we can verify that the problem isn’t related to the PC at all?
Me: I have a laptop. Hold on. (finds serial cable, plugs in monitor, lines are still there)
Dell: OK, let me confirm your address and we’ll send you a new monitor. It should be there within 5 business days.
That was late on Friday night.
The new monitor arrived at my house at 9:15AM on Monday morning. I plugged it in, tested it, put the old one in the box it came in, slapped the included shipping sticker on it, and called an 800 number to schedule a pick-up. On Tuesday morning, the old monitor was gone.
I was very impressed with this incident. The CSR on the phone asked me two very logical questions, ensuring that a new monitor wouldn’t have shown up and had the same problem as the old one. She didn’t put me through unnecessary tests (diagnostics, virus scans, etc.) that I’ve seen in the past as part of the standard operating procedure for other support desks. She also didn’t suggest that I send the old monitor back to a manufacturer for repair, pay some sort of service/shipping fee, or even leave my house to deliver the monitor somewhere for shipping.
Perhaps my only complaint was the 5-business day estimate, when in fact the new monitor showed up after 15 business minutes. I understand that delivery dates are hard to predict and they’re hedging with their estimates to keep me happy, but if the part in question was time critical (say, a hard drive rather than a monitor), I may have made contingency plans assuming a 5-day outage. Still, though, no one ever got fired for finishing their work early!
Support is typically a thankless business. It’s very easy for people who have had a bad experience to declare the company insensitive to its customers, while folks who have a good experience declare the company a personalized, free business center. Both parties can find supporting anecdotal evidence to reinforce their impressions (especially in the blogosphere).
At the end of the day, though, what impresses me is an efficient, customer-focused process, as opposed to a dedicated, proactive individual (not that both is a bad thing, of course). The former ensures good customer experiences most of the time; relying on the latter leads to a wide breadth of experiences, ranging from amazing to downright frustrating.
UPDATE: Ironically, it turns out there is one company that did announce a personalized, free business center today. :-)
Categories: Tech Talk | 3 Comments »
Remember when “Get Out of Jail Free” was a good deal?
By Brian | June 22, 2007
The Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel & Casino will pay Paris Hilton $800,000 to host her own Get Out of Jail party. Says Us Magazine’s source, “It was in the works and signed before she went to jail.”
But wait, there’s more. NBC will pay her a cool $1 million for her first post-jail interview with Meredith Viera on the Today show. She won’t talk to Matt Lauer, you see, because he made “disparaging remarks” about her. Poor thing…
And here’s the kicker: ABC is pissed off because Barbara Walters spent so much time schmoozing her mother, Kathy, and wound up with nothing for her efforts. NBC’s President & CEO Jeff Zucker sealed the deal with a call to her father, Rick.
I wonder if advocacy groups will be suing The Hard Rock and NBC for equal treatment when their clients are released from jail…
Categories: News and/or Media | 1 Comment »
The best rationale for gambling ever…
By Brian | June 16, 2007
For reasons defying explanation, I get my hair cut at the local salon (where my wife gets her hair done). I’m currently sitting in the chair, waiting for the hairdresser, and listening to the following conversation between three women of, well, let’s say of a certain age…:
Woman #1: Yeah, she gambles so much, all the hotels in Atlantic City give her all this free stuff.
Woman #2: Really?
Woman #1: Yeah…
Woman #3: That’s OK, it’s better than giving all that money to a psychiatrist.
Interesting theory…
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | Comments Off on The best rationale for gambling ever…
Babies….in…..SPAAAAAACE!
By Brian | June 14, 2007
Today is apparently kid-blogging day here at I Should Be Sleeping. Check out this story about a woman in Illinois whose baby monitor has started picking up live video from the Space Shuttle Atlantis:
Since Sunday, one of the two channels on Natalie Meilinger’s baby monitor has been picking up black-and-white video from inside the space shuttle Atlantis. The other still lets her keep an eye on her baby.
Live video of the mission is available on NASA’s Web site, so it’s possible the monitor is picking up a signal from somewhere. “It’s not coming straight from the shuttle,” NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean said.
Summer Infant, the monitor’s manufacturer, is investigating what could be causing the transmission, communications director Cindy Barlow said. She said she’s never heard of anything similar happening. “Not even close,” she said. “Gotta love technology.”
Gotta love it, indeed…
Categories: The World Wide Weird | 2 Comments »
Like taking candy from a baby…
By Brian | June 14, 2007
A massive toy recall could have millions of parents taking their children’s favourite toys away.
On Wednesday, RC2 Corp. recalled about 1.5 million Thomas the Tank Engine wooden railway toys in Canada and the United States, due to concerns that the paint used on them may contain lead.
My kids are pretty much past this stage, but I can tell you from experience that taking away a Thomas the Train toy from a kid who already has one (or, in some cases, dozens) will not be a pleasant experience…
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 1 Comment »
A Bad Start…
By Brian | June 11, 2007
I’ve avoided blogging about the Paris Hilton saga, because I find the whole thing to be nothing more than a trumped up soap opera, starring Paris Hilton as the forlorn victim, and our criminal justice system as the bumbling fool.
That said, today’s episode, in which Paris calls her mother from jail while her mother is coincidentally on the phone with none other than Barbara Walters, who promptly launches into an interview which is then immediately released to the media hounds, contained two rather irresistible quotes. First, Paris on her on-screen persona:
“I used to act dumb,” [Paris] told Babs. “It was an act. That act is no longer cute. It is not who I am, nor do I want to be that person for the young girls who look up to me.”
Next, Paris Hilton on what it’s like to be in jail:
“I was severely depressed and felt as if I was in a cage…It was a horrible experience.”
Well, Paris, it’s like this: you ARE in a cage. That’s the whole idea. So much for losing the “dumb” act for those young girls who look up to you…
Tune in next week, when every activist group you can think of sues the LA County Sheriff to get someone in their group free publicity equal treatment under the law. Future episodes will also include interviews with Paris’ new spiritual advisor, her dramatic release from prison, her declaration that she’s found God, and the launch of her new Ronald McDonald-like home for children.
Oh, and as long as I’m here, one last note: the article I linked to above (from E! Online) is flanked by an add for Paris’ reality show, The Simple Life, with a new episode airing this Sunday at 10pm on E!. Coincidence? No more than anything else in this post, I suspect…
Categories: News and/or Media | Comments Off on A Bad Start…
Yankee Stadium Blogging…
By Brian | June 10, 2007
Reporting live from Yankee Stadium…It’s Bat Day today in the Bronx.
The game started at 1:05. It is currently 1:30, and there are already 3 bats available for sale on eBay.
I have two (one for each kid), and on my way to my seat, someone offered me $200 for one of them. He obviously doesn’t understand the need to have two of anything when you have two children…
Categories: Money Talk, Sports Talk | 2 Comments »