I guess I’ve been swimming in bad karma or something lately. First, I broke the nice set of Sennheiser HD515 cans I use at work leaving me with the craptacular closed Aiwas I’d used before seeing the light. Then, I broke the belt clip on my cellphone. Fortunately, superglue seems to have solved both problems.
Then, I realized my Thinkpad wasn’t charging like it should. Everything indicated it was charging, but the battery meter kept getting lower. I pulled the AC from the back and reinserted it and the resulting sparks and burnt electronics smell tipped me off that something was amiss. Turns out I had 3 weeks or so left on my 3 year warranty, so I called up support (Monday) had it shipped out the next day (Tuesday), they had it in hand end of the next day (Wednesday), were repairing it the next (Thursday), and according to online tracking have fixed it and should be shipping it back out today (Friday). Assuming it comes back fixed, I’ve been pretty pleased with the overall experience. Added bonus: the support center I talked to was in Atlanta and not India. Seeing as I’ve had this thing for 3 years now and this is the first real problem I’ve had (well, ignoring the part where my cats chewed on the AC adapter), I’ve been quite pleased with the build quality on this machine. Beats the pants off the Dell I had that broke a keycap off the keyboard in less than a month…
On a sadder note, Merry sort of knocked over my external hard drive while it was running, and it sort of ended up running upside-down until I noticed it, and shortly thereafter it started making a weird siren noise and refused to spin up. And since hard drive manufacturers have been pushing capacity/performance/price as hard as they can, they’ve had substantially more reliability/quality control issues than when I first got into computers (I’ve had drives that ran close to continuously for 5+ years before I retired them when I needed more capacity). Now most of them have 1 year warranties if you’re lucky, and mine ran out in January so I’m out of luck.
Maybe all this has been happening since I’ve been so frustrated at work. Who knows. Just seems like a lot of bad juju all at once like this.
Rachel and her roommate Tammy (who’s a hoot btw) came down Friday night to catch the show at the Canopy Club featuring The Living Blue, Tractor Kings, Dark Country, and The Dolphin. We showed up some time during the Dolphin’s set and all I have to say is weird. I couldn’t really tell whether they were playing something or just getting setup and making random noises on-stage. We elected to wait out at the bar until after their set was over.
Thought Dark Country put on a pretty good show, but I would’ve liked to hear a bit more (they were only able to play a handful of songs). Hopefully I’ll get to hear more from them in the future… perhaps an EP?
I’m not quite sure what I think of the Tractor Kings. I will definitely say I was impressed to see one of them playing a 12 string acoustic guitar as a part of their act. I might have to check out more of their stuff to see what I think. Seemed like fairly subdued music compared to the other acts, but maybe that’s just me. Guess I should also check out the old 57s (er, I think that’s what Tammy said they reminded her of… not sure since it was kinda loud in there).
I’ve seen the Living Blue previously, and they fit with what I’d remembered. Clearly most of the people there on Friday night had come to see them play as they swarmed around the stage when they got started. I will say I thought their show I caught at Cowboy Monkey was more entertaining (perhaps because it was a more intimate venue and the place was comfortably packed).
Good stuff overall. Was kinda fun getting to hang out with Rachel and Tammy in their natural habitat so to speak.
<rant>
Although a lot of their associates clearly don’t think very highly of CU… sort of reminded me of all the Chicago Bears fans who had the nerve to come down and ruin our poor little town for a weekend (several times over the course of a season while the Bears were playing at our stadium while theirs was under repairs/construction) and then to have the nerve to complain about everything (there’s too much traffic… well duh you guys were the traffic, it smells bad… well duh you’re in farm country, etc etc).
</rant>
What’s the deal with stupid people getting union secretary gigs in Universities? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met some great and helpful secretaries in my time. But so many of them are just so useless! I’ve been dealing a bit with one in the business office for our department trying to place orders for my students in senior design. Here are my two experiences so far:
1. Took a couple of days to get my first order placed. Some of this lag (ie an hour or two) was me trying to figure out what all info they really needed on the form. Apparently they’ll order stuff off the web, but want you to write down the company’s address and phone number and such anyway (not like they could possibly look that up the same way I did on the company’s website). Get a call a while later saying there’s been some problems with the order. Drop by there to find out she’s leaving for the day at 12:30 (and it’s 12:15 and I’m in a hurry). For some reason that she wouldn’t explain she couldn’t order from the website I’d given her and had to order through a distributor. Not sure why she couldn’t order it… I gave her the web address that led directly to the product, and there’s an “add to cart” button prominently displayed on that page, but I’m figuring maybe she’s using a corporate card and they want her to go through a distributor or something. So she’s randomly selected Cabela’s outdoor goods and tried searching for the part I’m ordering and has the good sense to ask before submitting the order. It’s a good thing too since I’m trying to get an OEM GP S sensor and Cabela’s (being a consumer store) only carries the little handheld GPS units with lcd displays and so forth. I’ve got to go so I tell her I’ll find a distributor that carries it and place the order again the next day when she gets back into the office. Find 1 place in the US that carries it and they want $70 more for it than the manufacturer. So I figure I’ll press the issue the next day and ask why she can’t order it from the site I give her. I sort of watch what she’s doing and it’s clear she’s only entered the blah.com part of the address (instead of going directly to the link I’ve given her) and cluelessly tried to search around their site for the part in question. She apparently had better luck that day since she actually found it and confirmed it was the right thing and actually placed the order.
2. Second order hasn’t been much better so far. I’d grabbed another form on my way to meet with one of my groups. Filled out the info and tried to drop it off at the office. Turns out they’re out for the day by 4:30. Not really surprising I guess, but you’d figure a big office that has to have at least 5 or 6 secretaries might be open till the end of the business day. But there’s a drop box outside the door for purchase orders so I stupidly drop it in. Haven’t heard anything in the following few days so I assume there haven’t been any problems and I’ll be notified when it arrives. Go to double check the order’s been placed after meeting with a group yesterday to find out she has no idea what I’m talking about (not entirely true, she tries to tell me baout the order I’d placed 2 weeks earlier). I confirm that the drop box is where I should put orders when they’re closed and she says she’ll double check the box. Turns out they only do a cursory visual inspection of the box to see if it has anything and don’t actually bother to open it unless it is overflowing with orders (only way I can see that they’d notice there was anything in there without actually checking). Sure enough my order was still sitting in there from when I dropped it off 5 days earlier. In theory the order’s been placed… now.
3. Guess we’ll wait and see. Don’t have high hopes that my third encounter with this woman will go any better than the last two. I can understand having an off day, but it seems to be the only kind she has.
Was just down to the basement in CSL to buy a soda only to find they’ve jacked the 20oz price up to $1.25. Lame. They don’t provide us with free espresso-based beverages, they don’t provide us with a convenient places to buy espresso-based beverages, and now they’re mugging us on the sodas. How are grad students supposed to work into the wee hours without a cheap source of caffeine? 
Might have to just start bringing my own.
I hate stupid people. I can accept that the population at large is generally clueless about all things tech, and so I have a fairly high tolerance level when they do annoying newb things. The people that really tick me off are the ones who are clearly in a technical field (say, a whole bunch of people in academia on a FPGA research/education mailing list), and are clearly clueless about very basic concepts such as email…
The trouble all started this morning when some Computer Science and Engineering associate prof at Penn State (funnily enough he got his PhD from a Florida institution…) accidently tacked the address for the aforementioned massive FPGA-related mailing list as a CC on a email intended for some prof about his proposal for an upcoming conference. This email was clearly intended for members of the program committee, but ended up being sent out to I don’t know how many hundreds of people. I can forgive that as a relatively honest mistake (not sure how he managed to tack on a completely unrelated address, but I suppose it could happen if you weren’t careful). The real problem is the flood of idiots on the mailing list that feel the need to reply to the entire list asking why they’ve received this email… Someone a few hours ago posted “hey, this guy screwed up, not meant for this list, please stop replying about it.” But it keeps on coming. And there’s this stupid .gov address that keeps marking some of the messages as quarantined and proceeds to send yet another email to the list letting everyone know that it didn’t like that email…
Now if I can only figure out how to get off this damn list… I didn’t actually subscribe to it… went to a conference with the guy that runs it and he automatically added all the attendees, and I think it’s more of an old school distribution list than a full-on automated mailing list. Hasn’t been too bad in the past, but this is just ridiculous.
I hate stupid people. Amanda and I were enjoying a nice dinner at Nitaya Thai last night when this flock of heathens came in. I knew they were heathens because they promptly asked for a kids’ menu. Where do they think they were… Denny’s? Gets worse from there. When they find out there’s no kids’ menu, they’re youngest broodling has the nerve to confront the waitress with a loud, finger-quoted “what do you mean no kids’ menu?!?!?” Good to see kids are being raised to be respectful, well-mannered little mongrels… Then the elder mouth-breathers ask if they serve anything besides Thai food, because they’d really like to eat something that’s not Thai food. The nerve of these heathens. If you didn’t want Thai food, perhaps you should check out a place that’s not a Thai restaurant. I suspect McD’s would be more to their liking… Fortunately they left at that point, which is good since I’d rather not have to listen to them whine about how they can’t get burgers and chicken nuggets and are being forced to experience alternative cultures.
One of those problems I have with some people… completely unwilling to try new things. My folk raised me to at least try new things before deciding I didn’t like them (unlike some people who know they don’t like things before even trying them). Sometimes this works out and I find some new favorite… and sometimes I have a Happy BucketTM experience. But even then I come out with some great stories and can impress some people with my bravery. 
So as of a few weeks ago, they finally got the parking deck close enough to “finished” to open it. By “finished”, I mean the bulk of the structure is there, but they’re still actively working on it. Like putting in the sidewalks around it, putting in the street to the south, actually building up the 1st floor interior (where all the “retail” is supposed to go). Oh, and of course installing the elevators. The elevators is a critical part, because students (such as myself) can only park on the top 2 floors (5th and 6th), and I’m lazy. Now they’ve got it to the point where 1-2 elevators work on the opposite side of the building from where I want to be, and appear to be very slowly working on the elevators on the side I want to use. At least they’ve got the sidewalks opened finally (used to have to walk a block down and back to get to the other side of the parking deck).
But hey. It’s there, and it’s open, and I’ve got a permit. So I can’t really complain too much (better than busing it, that’s for sure). Thing is the 5th floor of the deck is generally all parked up and I have to park on the top of the deck (which will almost certainly annoy me more in winter when I have to dig my car out at the end of the day). I had my suspicions before, but now I’m positive. 95+% of the students parking there live close on campus and are using this as their primary parking spot. Which basically translates to the 5th level of the deck generally being full because the cars only move on the weekends. Clincher is I got into work early this morning (and by early I mean I was walking in with the secretaries at 8AM). First 4 levels of the deck were largely deserted except for the handful of secretaries that have to be here at 8. 5th floor was still packed.
Whole thing seems kinda silly since professors and staff generally only park on the first couple of floors, leaving a couple more reserved and largely vacant while the students are all parking up on the top of the deck. Oh well, what do I know. At least parking is allowing some students to park there.
Got two rants today. First off, what is up with FedEx? I bought something online that was shipped via 3-day FedEx. Estimated delivery is for tomorrow (to hit the 3-day deadline). Well, turns out they had it sitting in their local office this morning before they pack up the trucks for the day’s deliveries. But since I had only paid for 3-day, they decided to leave it sitting on the dock to be delivered tomorrow so that I’d know what I was missing out on by not going with 2-day. Meanies.
And the vultures at Zorba’s were really pissing me off yesterday. I’m not talking about the staff (they’ve typically been great). I’m talking about the other customers. Jeff and I are sitting there trying to have lunch and this guy walks up, puts his bag and stuff in an empty seat at our table and asks if it’d be ok if he put his stuff down there. Ok, weird, but whatever. Then like 5-10 minutes later he gets his food and is like “mind if I join you guys.” Can’t he see we’re trying to have a conversation. How rude. Fortunately the people at the table behind me just happened to be leaving at that moment, so they offered it to him and he took it. Get this. A lady standing near our table waiting for her food (and nosily observing this exchange) proceeds to butt into our conversation with “you ARE leaving soon, right? not that you’re not welcome here…” Yeah. Not that we’re not welcome, but please get out now so she can sit there. How rude. Like the Seinfeld addendum “not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Why won’t all of these people just piss off and let us enjoy our lunch in peace and go find another table. Or get their food to go and sit on the quad if they’re so concerned about where they’re going to sit.
So I have officially sworn off Philips. Not the screwdriver, the electronic manufacturer. I was a little confused when I pulled the dead/flaky CDRW/DVD drive out of Amanda’s folk’s computer last week when it turned out to be a Philips instead of some no name manufacturer. Seemed a little odd that something they made would give out in a year and a half of normal use. Turns out it may be par for the course.
Two days ago, I bought a Philips “play everything” DVD player (Philips DVP642) at Wally world. In the beginning, it was outstanding. Excellent sound quality and it played everything I threw at it (including DivX/Xvid files on CD). Turns out it was just too good to be true. Watched a movie this morning only to have the player quit working at the end. Wouldn’t turn on or eject the disc. Tried dealing with their tech support, but ran into several problems.
- Wanted me to unplug and replug the unit, accomplished nothing. Hence needed a warranty exchange.
- Since there was a disc still in the unit, they directed me to a local Philips repair shop that would remove it for free. Turns out, that place only works on their TVs, and would only remove the disc for a $20 fee. Did it myself in less than 5 minutes (probably wasn’t as delicate with the unit, but who cares because it’s already borked).
- To get a replacement unit, I need to ship them my 2 day old defective one at my expense. In theory, they’ll ship out a replacement within 48 hours of receiving it, which I should then receive in 7-10 business days (read 2 weeks).
- Apparently, this is only available within the first 90 days of purchase. After that, they’ll still exchange it, but you’ll also have to fork over some dough for the new unit.
- If you don’t have your receipt (which you must send them to prove the 90 days bit), they’ll ask for your manufacture date which happened to be within their 90 day period. That’s apparently insufficient though as they will send you a piece of paper stating the same (tack on another 7-10 business days), which you must include in the box when you ship it.
- In light of all of this, I told them I would just return it to the store I bought it from. His pained response, “that’s always your option, sir.” Perhaps he could have even suggested I take it to my local store for exchange considering they were telling me it’d be up to a month before I’d get a replacement through them and at my expense for a player that had died within 48 hours.
- I also tried to get him to note the fact that the service center they pointed to wouldn’t remove discs from Philips players for free, and that they shouldn’t direct such things there in the future, but he largely brushed me off. Suppose I should have asked for a supervisor, but I’m not sure that would’ve helped since a lot of this is company policy.
- As always, the fellow answering their phone had a very heavy accent that made it difficult to understand just about anything he said.
Ran it back to Wally World for a full refund in less time than I spent on the phone with tech support.
What happened to the days where companies took care of you when their product died under warranty? When I had a problem with my Technics (Panasonic) stereo receiver that was still under its 1 year warranty, they told me where to take it to have it shipped to them at their expense. Just walked in, told them it was to go to Panasonic and they took care of the rest. A few days later I had my repaired unit delivered to my door.
So for the time being, I have sworn off Philips products. If this is they’re excuse for reliability/quality control, warranty replacement, and customer support, one of their competitors can have my money.
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