So my little brother is heading to Arizona State for law school in the fall. I’m both happy for him and this opportunity, and a little sad that he’ll be across the country. But I’ll get used to it – the wife deals with siblings on both coasts and in between, so I can manage. But in his list of things to do, he mentions “Become an Arizona Cardinals fan”. This is where it’s clear that he needs some guidance from his older and wiser brother. I’m in a sort of similar situation. My football team is local (Well, sort of – they’d be local if the Washington Redskins actually played in Washington, but whatever), but my baseball team is not. The Orioles are far enough away that I can’t get to an evening game without leaving work early. But we have the Nationals. There are two important things about the Nationals that I think are nearly mirrored by the Cardinals. One, they’re terrible. They’ve pretty much been at the bottom of the standings since they were the Expos. And two, they have a beautiful stadium. What does this mean? Empty seats and a great place to watch the visiting team. The wife and I went to RFK before the Nats moved to watch the Nats play the Oakland A’s (As a baseball fan, I’ve of course read Moneyball, so of course I have a soft spot for the A’s. Plus they were my team in ’88 before McGwire was a cheater and when Eck and Stewart and Rickey were awesome). We saw Barry Zito before his arm fell off. A friend and I went to a game at RFK and watched Tom Glavine pitch for the Mets. Now, the Cardinals don’t really play anyone cool at home next year – they play the Redskins in Washington, they play in New England – with one exception. On October 12th, the Dallas Cowboys come to Tempe. This is a perfect opportunity. By attending the game as a Cowboys hater, you in effect become a Cardinals fan without disgracing your DC Metro Area roots by actually becoming a Cardinals fan. You’re free to root for the Cardinals, exchange high-fives with Cardinals fans, and generally have a good time rooting for the home team. But you get to keep your football soul. Everyone wins. Except the Cardinals. They never win.
Author: Jon
Watching a little basketball, playing with some computers
So how’s this for a great Friday evening: I’m sitting on the couch. To my left, the windows are open because it’s a gorgeous spring evening. Right next to me on the couch, the wife is napping, waiting for the Celtics game. I have a kitchen full of beer and wine left over from my birthday party last week. We have the ingredients ready for dinner, pasta with tomatoes and asparagus, plus some cauliflower poppers. In front of me is my brand new work computer, on which I’ve just installed Launchy, which everyone should install on their Windows machine. It’s similar to Gnome-Do for Linux and Quicksilver for Mac – I’ve been using Gnome-Do for a while and I love it, and wanted something like it for my Windows work machine. And speaking of Linux, my personal laptop is currently downloading and upgrading to the latest version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron. So, I have sports, food and drink, computer geekishness, and my fabulous wife. I have no idea what more I could possibly want.
Getting back to my life
So I’m back at work after my birthday trip to Paris. There are a ton of pictures here. I haven’t finished uploading them as of right now, but there are about 200 posted, so that should keep you busy. And speaking of busy, I’ve been very busy lately, which is why I haven’t been posting anything. I know it’s the fifth law of the internet or something that anyone who runs a blog non-professionally must periodically go through a slow phase and not post, then apologize and say they were busy. The good blogs don’t do this very often. Anyway, hopefully things are slowing down a little and I can get back to complaining about things. There are certainly things to complain about.
I guess it serves me right for buying a soda
I got a Cherry Coke out of the machine down the hall to drink with my lunch. I don’t drink nearly as much soda as I used to, but every now and then I can’t help it. This time, I should have been more careful in my selection. It wasn’t actually a Cherry Coke – it was a Cherry Coke Zero. That means they’ve taken out all the delicious high fructose corn syrup and replaced it with carcinogens that fool your tongue into thinking you’re consuming something sweet. I know my view on this is a little extreme, but I’d like to see Coke and anyone else who wants to use aspartame and sucralose and all those other non-food products have to put a big disclaimer on the package, like a cigarette warning.
WARNING – this product contains a chemical substance posing as food that is not, in fact, digestible by humans. It tricks your taste buds into thinking it’s sweet, but it is all a lie. Also, there is non-trivial evidence suggesting it causes cancer. If you still think it’s better than high-fructose corn syrup, go ahead and enjoy.
I should be more observant
A friend pointed out that I not only got a picture of the Pope, but the gentleman (And I use that term loosely) accompanying him is none other than our fearless leader, President Bush. Laura Bush is just a few steps behind. You can see the large size here. So that’s pretty cool.
Hey, all you Catholics
So the Pope is in town. Since I work almost right next door to the White House, which is where he was hanging out this morning, some coworkers and I went up to the roof of the building to watch as he hopped into the PopeMobile and drove off down Pennsylvania Avenue and past the adoring throngs. Anyway, there are more pictures here. The view from the roof is pretty good. And there are electrical outlets and benches up there. With the weather getting nice, I might just have to take a laptop up there now and then.
Dell again
Wow. Another email from Dell. The best part are these consecutive passages:
. . . I will provide you the information.
As a Customer Care I am unable to provide you the information . . .
Please don’t think that my anger here is because Dell has outsourced their customer service. I truly don’t care if the CSR is in the United States or India or the moon or anywhere else. I don’t care what his or her first language is. The only thing that’s important to me in a CSR is being able to fix my problem, preferably in a minimal amount of time. That’s it. Hence the anger. None of the people who emailed me could fix my problem. What’s even more exasperating is that each of them has chastised me for asking my question to the wrong person. It’s a little frustrating to be directed to talk to a person who tells me that he or she is not the person who can help me. Anyway, I’ll get a computer eventually. And I still hate Dell.
Dell is fired
I’m trying to purchase a computer from Dell. Well, that’s not exactly true. My new employer (Started the new job today, went very well) buys from Dell. The process is that each employee builds a computer at Dell.com, then emails the boss with the specs, and he buys the computer through the corporate account. Sounds simple, right? Well, first of all, Dell doesn’t let you just email specs. I can’t imagine why not – surely they’d be happy to let kids email specs to their parents, or perhaps they’d even be prescient enough to foresee my situation. But no. They let you save, and they even let you tag to del.icio.us and all sorts of other social sites, but apparently that’s just to the initial start page for the computer, not the customized version. So, I thought I’d just get one of their online chat CSRs to help me. Again I failed. Or, rather, Dell failed. They had no chat representatives available. Do they let me get in line and wait for the next one? No, they force me to resubmit my request. I tried about five times and gave up. So I was directed to email them. This steaming pile of crap is what I got in return. Their response was much longer, but that’s the only part that wasn’t boilerplate gobbledygook. Next I tried calling. I hate calling companies. If I’m calling you on the phone, it’s because your website failed. Anyway, I was greeted by loud music and an unhelpful robot voice that refused to give me a person. I tried a different customer service number, because I think I might have gotten the wrong one the first time (I don’t remember why I thought that, but it made sense at the time). This time I got another unhelpful robot, but this one gave me a person. Hooray! Until I asked her my question. Turns out she was tech support. I have no idea how the robot got me to tech support when all I wanted was customer support, but that’s neither here nor there. She transferred me to the correct CSR, who said a great many things, none of them helpful. So I gave up. I’m going to ask someone at work tomorrow. And I’m going to continue to tell everyone I speak to about computers to avoid Dell.
Dell 1, Me 0
Dell Says:
Dear Valueless Customer, Because you selected “Pre-Sales/Sales Question” as your Issue Category when you submitted your inquiry, Dell’s automated response system is sending you the following information on how to obtain product specific information. Dell does not currently offer e-mail support for pre-sales questions. However, there is a lot of information available on our web site and other contact alternatives. This document provides information on the subjects listed below in the table of contents.
My reply:
This is one of the least helpful emails I’ve ever received. It’s really a shame that a company that built itself on fantastic customer support has stooped to automated messages such as this. If you don’t offer email support for pre-sales questions, why in the world would your website direct me to email you? I hope you appreciate the absurdity of your position here. I don’t need anyone to respond to me on this issue. I have resolved it myself. The only reason I’m at your site at all is because my employer uses Dell products, so my work computer will be a Dell. I have owned two Dell computers, but will never purchase another one for my own personal use due to your woefully inadequate customer service.
And Dell again:
Thank you for contacting Dell. I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you and I understand that you wish to place an orderunder the existed account. I will provide you the information. As a Customer Care I am unable to provide you the information and I request you to contact our Sales department at 800-284-3355 and place an order. I once again apologize that I could not assist you. The case number for this interaction is [unimportant]. Please email me for any additional support and I would be happy to assist you further. Thank you for choosing Dell.
Another race, my personal best
The fifth annual Race to Stop the Silence took place yesterday. I ran it last year, too, finishing in 55:04. This year, I reached my personal goal of a sub-50-minute finish, coming in at 49:38. There are more pictures here, thanks to the wife. She and the mother-in-law and Phil came to watch on a brisk early morning, and I was glad to put on a good show. The course was moved from West Potomac Park to Anacostia this year, and I wasn’t expecting much. But the course wasn’t bad. It was a 5K course, two laps, which wasn’t ideal. And I was afraid it would get crowded. But with only 428 runners (I finished 166th overall), it didn’t get too bad. I don’t have any more races scheduled for this year. I’d like to get a pace time under eight minutes (This one was 8:01) as my next goal. Maybe I’ll find another one before it gets too hot.