New Technology, same old crap

Remember when VHS was popular? Then DVD came out as the new thing and slowly started to infiltrate the video stores and everyone was happy because you didn't need to rewind them or fast forward through all the stupid previews? Well I just paid good money for the newest and best? in video Technology, the 3D Blu-ray disc. Of course now this also includes the 2d Blu-ray disc the old format DVD disc and a digital copy you can use to get the video through Itunes. Blu-ray discs also come with built in online features that automatically get and store content on your Blu-ray disc player. The result? It takes 45 minutes to load the stupid disc and then another 30 minutes to get to the actual movie on the disc. And unlike good old fashion analog you can't just fast forward. You have to do a combination of fast forward, skipping and slowing. It takes a magic formula of remote control button pushes to finally get to the movie and if you mess up? well just start right back on over fella, cause your screwed! So now my daughter and I are watching the old DVD format of the movie Tangled because the Blu-ray version taxed my patience to the limit for today. I commit therefore to not purchase another Video disc of any format here forthwith. Digital content is all you need and how many commercials and crap do you see when you watch the digital format? that's right none....for now. Someone needs to find the master of content for Sony Blu-ray and force him to watch looped previews that are 5 years old until he goes insane and stabs his own eyes out. k I feel better.

How Hard is good customer service?

According to some companies it's really hard apparently. I recently purchased a Toshiba computer it was small and lightweight and had loads of power the perfect computer I thought. After having it home for 2 days the thing started giving me error messages that it was overheating and the fan wasn't working and it was now shutting down. Needless to say this was really upsetting me. I called customer service and was slowly connected with a dude named Abu from somewhere in the India,Pakistani region where goats outnumber people. He began by telling me that I had a software problem and should try to completely restore the computer, though I knew the fan wasn't turning and the computer was quite hot(apparently Toshiba's customer service gurus think that a Fan is somehow software). Anyway after spending 5 hours waiting for the thing to reload and having the same problems I quickly returned it to the store for a full refund before the 7 day refund period expired. Today I found out that Toshiba just recalled that piece of crap computer and 40,000 just like it. How many times did Abu make these poor unsuspecting customer reboot a computer that was no good??? Toshiba should be sued for wasting so much time if all 40000 were forced to reboot taking 5 hours that's 200,000 man hours!!!

Contrast that with the Company Apple. I now own almost entirely Apple Computing products, for a variety of reasons but seriously one of the biggest is I can call and talk to a fairly articulate English speaker from somewhere in Cupertino California and they understand me and I understand them. Now somebody out there may question my ability to understand Abu from India, maybe I don't speak English well myself.? and that could be but I do speak French and have conversed reasonably well with some bizarre french/English dialects, and frankly it's my customer service and I don't want to have to spend 30 minutes trying to help Abu spell my name properly ok!? (J-o-e, it's not hard).

Well I learned two valuable lessons from this little experience; Know who outsources their Customer Service, (in fact we should start a list of companies that do and do not outsource their customer service I can't find a list so I will create on here.) Secondly you definitely get what you pay for, insourcing costs more money but makes for happier customers. Even Wal-mart insources.

Greasy Blues

Behold a picture of a scratched CD. A scratched CD caused me severe heartache a few days ago.
My stupid iPod nano busted a couple months ago out of nowhere. This means I have to either engage in thoughtful reflection by my own accord or I have to be entertained some other way. Obviously thoughtful reflection is boring so I have to find some other way to keep my brain happy. So I have been keeping my old collection of CDs (compact discs for those of you born after 1998 ...) in my car. When I was coming home from work, I inserted an old favorite: Stevie Ray Vaughan. What, you didn't know I was a huge fan of Texas Blues? In high school I tried converting some of my friends to Stevie Ray Vaughan but they just laughed at me. Stupid idiots.

Anyway, it had been a very long time since I had last been enveloped in greasy blues music so I decided to revisit those good old days. I skipped to track 6 (from the "The Essential Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble Album", Disc 2), "Little Wing." Some of you will not have heard of Stevie Ray Vaughan (known as SRV), but I truly hope that you have heard of Jimi Hendrix. Jimi originally wrote "Little Wing" and this is SRV's version. So amazing.

Here is an embedded YouTube video of the song. Because most of you won't care to listen to it all, I at least ask you to listen from 3:00 - 5:00. I doubt anyone will feel engulfed in the music like I feel, but just give it a shot.

Back to being negative: the first few minutes of this song on my CD kept getting interrupted by annoying skips. I had to fast forward through much of it. About 3:00 in it stopped. I started getting really into it and pretty much forgot I was driving down the highway. I even forgot the CD was scratched. At 4:40 it starts getting really greasy and I started yelling in my car. I know that sounds weird - and it is. But then it started to freaking skip! I was so mad. I was kicked out of my musical bliss. The worst part is that I haven't taken the CD out of my case for who knows how long! How did it even get scratched? Almost all of my CDs are like that. I don't get it.

Maybe I should just go buy a new iPod or something. They seem to make everyone happy. I don't have the money though. Anybody looking to buy someone an iPod?

Stupid CDs.

Are you kidding me??!!

Yesterday, as I drove home from a long day of work, I started thinking about my goals to write something everyday. I thought, "What am I going to blog about today?" Although the day was long and hot, it was very productive and nothing really bothered me. I really didn't know what to vent about ... until I arrived at the following intersection:

This intersection seems to be the most confusing intersection for people in Rexburg. The only exception might be the new crosswalk installed on 2nd W. That will certainly be blogged about some other day. Anyway, back to this cursed intersection. Notice that the intersection has train tracks running alongside the the street that runs north and south. From the perspective here, there are (or should be) 3 lanes: two left-turn lanes and one through/right turn lane. What confused people here?? Well, looking at the picture - where would you most likely stop if you were waiting for a red light? Would you go past the railroad tracks or stay behind them? It is clear that most everyone stops on the other side of the tracks while waiting for a red light. Of course, it is pretty unclear in this picture where you should stop ... I don't see any thick white lines indicating where you should stop.

For a number of months, however, there has been a very thick white line painted a few feet to the west of the rails (just about where the shadow is projected from the railroad caution lights). Does that line indicate you should stop? Yes. To top it off - there is a large sign on the righthand side of the road that says "Stop here on red" with an arrow pointing at the thick white line. Any confusion? Hopefully not.

When I come to this intersection about 20 bagillion times a week, I always stop at the white line. Some people do the same. Most do not. Let us now return to my voyage home yesterday. I approached the intersection in the far left lane and stopped at the white line and noticed a minivan close behind me. He didn't really like that I stopped there I guess. What he did made my blood boil. It was ironically at this moment that I thought, "I don't have anything to blog about today ..." A manly minivan driver swerved to the right, drove across the tracks and past me, then swerved to the left in front of me on the opposite side of the tracks. My jaw seriously dropped. I couldn't believe it! It made me so mad. I almost honked and waved my fist ... but didn't. To make it worse, the next intersection we came to, he blatantly ran a red light.

If you are wondering what state he was from ... it was Washington. Oh, and he had a BYU "Y" sticker on the bumper. If you find him, tell him I want a word with him.