Predictions

I think all of the people who have been saying that they predicted the iPhone are pretty funny. It’s one of those things that, if you’re a geek like me, can kinda’ foresee simply by watching the available technology and wondering aloud “gee, I really think it would be cool for me to have my phone and mp3 player in one converged device”. In fact, it’s exactly what happened a few years ago right before the Treo and Blackberry devices came out – “It would be so cool to have my calendar and phone on one converged device.” Bingo.

So I went looking for anything that *I* had predicted on my blog. On 1/22/05, I predicted that someone was going to make an iPod-based media player for TiVo’d shows. I was right. Happened about six months later with the video iPod.

Ha!

(there are times I really wish I knew how to program so I could self-fulfill some of my ideas)

Anyways… if there’s anyone reading this who has a lot of money to burn and wants to make a guy REALLY happy in the middle of the year, I would love an iPhone.

Tired of Bad Service

In the last 48 hours, I’ve had two more instances of really bad customer service. I don’t know what’s going on, but service people must be trained to treat their customers like idiots, or push back just to make the bulk of them go away. I’m not going to tolerate either.

[A quick note: I was a Network Admin in a former life and I’m still very comfortable with technology and poking around to try to make things work.]

First was Vonage. I’ve had the VoIP service now for almost two years. Generally speaking, I’ve enjoyed it and it’s worked pretty flawlessly. But lately, I’ve had problems with dropped calls and “missing” dialtone. I’ve rebooted the Vonage “phone adapter”, reconfigured my network, even tried new phones. I’m also not using any interior home phone wiring (which can mess things up if not done correctly). Everything on the network is fairly new, too. At this point, I decided it was time to contact Vonage for assistance.

Their customer service site doesn’t include a phone number. You have to fill out a website form and click submit to wait for someone to respond. It’s pretty thorough, asking all sorts of questions about configurations, setup, model number, etc. So I was hopeful of a good response.

This wasn’t was I was hoping for:

Subject: [vonage.com #9236055] Other
From: service@vonage.com

Dear Jeffrey I. Gordon,

Thank you for contacting Customer Care.

We understand from your email that you are experiencing issue with call drop.

We apologize for any inconvenience may have been caused.

We recommend you to perform the steps given below to resolve your issue:

1. Simplify the configuration (Remove any routers, hubs, switches, or home wiring).

2. Please ensure that your devices are well ventilated and clear of any other devices that could cause interference.

3. If you use a Surge Protector, swap it out. If you aren’t using one, we suggest you to purchase one.

4. Make sure that you are using a DOCSIS 1.1 or later modem.

5. We request you to reboot all your devices by following the steps in the web link given below:
http://www.vonage.com/help.php?article=3D425=20

6. Check whether all wires and connections are solid and free of damages.

We hope these troubleshooting steps would assist you in resolving the issue. If you still experience the same issue then please revert to us with the following information so that we will try our extreme effort to resolve the issue soon.

We need you to run following tests on your side and send results to us via attachments.

1) THE BANDWIDTH TEST: Please run these test when the computer is connected directly to the modem and also when it is connected to the Vonage router. Please give both the results.

The bandwidth tests help us to ensure you are getting enough Upstream and Downstream bandwidth to use the Vonage service. Please click on UPLOAD SPEED TEST, then click on SMART TEST.

http://testmy.net

2) TRACE ROUTE (TRACERT): Trace Route is a utility that records the route through the Internet between your computer and a specified destination computer. It also calculates and displays the amount of time each hop took. Trace route is a handy tool both for understanding where problems are in the Internet network and for getting a detailed sense of the Internet itself. To run a trace route,

Click on START –> RUN
Type in CMD (For older windows versions, type in COMMAND)
Type the command tracert yahoo.com

3) Please let us know whether the phones are connected directly to the router or to the home wiring.

4) Please give us the vendor name and model number of all the devices that is connected in your network.

5) Please let us know how have you connected all the devices.

If you have any questions now or in the future Vonage Customer Care is eager to assist you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Please visit our help center at http://www.vonage.com/help.php or send us an email from our Contact Us page at http://www.vonage.com/help_contactUs.php. You can also call us Toll Free at: 1-VONAGE-HELP 1-866-243-4357.

Sincerely,

Vonage Customer Care

> [jeff@.net – Wed Jan 03 15:54:49 2007]:
>
> Phone Adapter:
> Linksys RT31P2
>
> ISP:
> Time Warner
>
> Router Make and Model:
> Motorola S85101
>
> Telephone Make and Model:
> Motorola MD7081
>
> Description of Network:
> Wall -> Router -> Phone Adapter -> Computers & Phone
>
> Description of Problem:
> I’m having random issues with the phone adaptor dropping calls.

So, you can first see that while they appeared to have read the subject line of my message, they never read any of the information that they actually already requested I send them.

I responded with a rather curt e-mail to each of their questions, mostly pointing them to where I’d already answered their questions and then repeating my request for more substantial assistance. Their subsequent response was to change the port on the adapter. Still doesn’t work. I guess I’m going to use that phone number they provided. Hopefully it’ll yield better results, but I’m not full of a lot of hope.

Generally speaking, I have found that technical support assumes that the customer is a complete moron. I mentioned earlier that I was formerly a Network Admin not to sound cool, but to indicate that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to technology. So going down a flowchart of “possible” problems doesn’t amuse me when I’ve already tried them all and I’m looking for some serious help.

My experience in the last day with eBay is a prime example. I’ve been an eBay user, according to my profile page, since March 3, 1999 and I have a feedback rating of 195. So I’m not exactly a newbie with respects to the ins and outs of eBay. I noticed the other day, however, that I wasn’t seeing all of my auctions won on the “My eBay” page. Regardless of the setting (whether I looked for those completed last week, last month, etc, I would always be missing at least two of the auctions. So, being the geek that I am, I tried different configurations (as stated before), different browsers (Safari and Firefox), even different computers and underlying operating systems (Macs and PCs). Heck, I even tried once from the Apple Store to see if somehow some old setting was blocking things. Alas, I finally sucumbed to sending a request for help to eBay.

Again, like Vonage, there’s not an immediate way to call… you have to use their form.

Subject: My eBay isn’t working correctly
Date: Sat, 06 Jan 2007 19:23:55 PST

My Account, Registration, and Password > My eBay for bidding, billing, or selling > My eBay isn’t working correctly

Message: Hi! In the last few days, I’ve noticed that My eBay seems to not be working correctly. It’s not listing all of the items I’ve won (for example, items 190066036927 and 300066082398 are missing from the list, as well as several others).

Additionally, I received an e-mail notice today about a relisted item that I had neither bid on nor watched. I get the feeling that somehow “My eBay” isn’t quite tracking things properly.

Please help. (Oh, FYI, I’m on a Mac, using both Safari and Firefox and I’ve had this problem with both… and it shows up while using a PC and Internet Explorer, too).

Thank you!

~Jeff

I have to admit, eBay was quick to respond:

Date: Sat, 06 Jan 2007 20:48:34 -0800
Subject: Re: GS=C00315 My eBay isn’t working correctly [#US ?01 ] (KMM66898596V45289L0KM)
From: eBay Customer Support

Dear Jeffrey,

Thank you for writing eBay in regard to the items you won not appearing
in your My eBay.

In this case, please make sure that you are viewing the correct time
period for items sold in the “Won” section. I see that the viewing time
period for items is currently set to “Last week (Dec 24)”. This means
that the “Won” section will only display your transactions for the last
week. This can be easily corrected.

1. Click the “My eBay” tab located at the top of most eBay pages. You
may be asked to sign in.
2. Click the “Won” link on the left side of the page.
3. In the “Period” drop-down list to the right, click the down arrow and
select the period of time that covers the items that you’re looking for.

***Note***
Make sure you’re viewing the correct time period for the item in
question. For example, if you sold an item 35 days ago, it won’t appear
if you are only viewing items that you sold in the last 31 days.
Currently, the longest period of time you can search is 60 days.

It is my pleasure to assist you. Thank you for choosing eBay.

Sincerely,
Vincent K.

eBay Customer Support

But again, the response was essentially “you’re an idiot… change the settings and all will be hunky-dory”.

I’m tired of this kind of crappy, Tier 0 response. I wish there was a way to indicate to the customer support agent that you’ve got some level of technical training. A password or secret handshake that would let them know that you’ve got things setup correctly, tried all of the standard technical support procedures, and that you’re only calling because you’ve really hit a dead end. This password would bump you automatically to a second or third tier of support… heck, even Disney does this in a way that’s not offensive to everyone else [their call processing system simply asks whether you’ve visited recently, and if so, more than x number of times in the last specific time period – based on that, they route you to an agent ready to treat you with a commensurate level of care. People who are newbies get a LOT of suggestions and help in terms of planning and explanation. People who are experienced get great service, but it’s not tempered at all, and they make suggestions with the understanding that you’ve probably already “been there and done that”.]

Anyone wanna’ let me know the password?

Starbucks

Tina and I visited San Francisco this past week. In the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero Center was a display with those ceramic town buildings you can buy at a variety of shops all over. There were McDonalds, a Krispy Kreme, standard houses, storefronts, social services (such a police and fire station).

But boy were there Starbucks’. Several, in fact. More than 3, actually! It was incredible. In one instance, two of the Starbuck’s locations were only one building apart. We thought it was someone’s social commentary on the proliferation of Starbuck’s stores in the world.

Little did we realize that it was merely a true representation of the number of Starbuck’s locations within the city of San Francisco. They were EVERYWHERE! Every block seemed to have one. Sometimes they were really only one or two stores apart. We even found a few locations literally across the street from each other.

Most humorous, though, was the fact that this carried over to other geographic regions, too. Such as Terminal A at the DFW airport. They were no more than 100 feet from each other.

Totally insane. 🙂

Wireless Devices

I’ve been using a Palm-powered device for years. I started with a Palm III.

It was a cute little Palm, monochrome screen and I bought it at Fry’s in Palo Alto, CA on my first business trip of my life.

It’s predecessor was a Sharp Wizard that I’d been using all throughout law school.

It was filled with calendar and contact information. I thus taught myself Graffiti by manually entering the data into the Palm III in the hotel room and while riding in the car.

The III lasted from about 1998 until almost 2000, when I got a Palm V.
When I saw the Palm TungstenT in 2002, though, all bets were off. The T was so cool, with a sliding mechanism that allowed the screen to become larger when needed.

I finally upgraded to the Tungsten T3, a slimmer, more powerful version of the same concept.

But I’ve been lusting after the Handspring (now Palm again) Treo for a long time. The Treo was one of the first “converged” devices, one that combined the Palm organizer with the benefits of a cell phone. EVERYTHING was finally on one device. But the original Treo was a bit bulky. I had the chance to play with one early on in their release, so I knew that this would eventually be great… it just wasn’t quite what I wanted (besides, it had a monochrome screen again).

The Treo kept a pretty brisk release schedule.
First the 180,

then the 270

(and in keeping with a “degrees” theme, they released a 90 that didn’t have the phone capabilities).

And when they released the 600, I KNEW it was ready. By the time of that release, however, the Blackberry had taken the world by storm, and I had already owned two Blackberries by the time Nextel and Cingular both combined the Blackberry wireless e-mail system with phone features. Now there’s the 650.

So now anyone that wants a converged device has a dilemma… Treo or Blackberry. Of course, in the last 2 years, Microsoft has added their $.02 worth, too – with a slew of Windows Mobile (remember its predecessor, WindowsCE?) powered devices by Sanyo, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, etc. So the dilemma is compounded by these Windows-based devices, too.

But I’ve been using the Palm for a long time and like that OS. It’s been completely designed as an organizer – which is exactly what I use it for. Easy to use, cleanly defined… almost simplistic. Perfect for me. Thus, even the addition of all these extra players really didn’t cloud my judgement.

What IS a problem, though, is the wireless CARRIER differences. And all of this has been setup to talk about these differences. THIS is where the real decisions need to be made – THIS is where you can make a deal or go broke – THIS is where you need to pay attention. So let’s look at the carriers for the Treo devices (there are 2, almost 3, now available: the 650, the 700 and now the 680 – not yet quite released). Know in advance that the 700 has about 4x the memory of the 650, a faster data transmission capability (EVDO rather than 1XRTT) and a little bit better camera. Everything else is about the same, but you can read a lot of reviews elsewhere. The 680 will be out soon, but it’s not yet available, so we’ll not really talk about it here.

There are 4 carriers in my market that supply the Treo. In alpha order: Alltel, Cingular, Sprint/Nextel and Verizon. First, forget who your current carrier is (mine’s Alltel) and look just at device costs and wireless plans.

Alltel is selling the 650 for $249 (after all discounts) with a 2-year service plan. You then can pick any of their national freedom plans for voice, and you pay $29.99/mo for unlimited data. The limiting factor here is slower data speed (the 1XRTT standard rather than EVDO), but as a CDMA phone, it’s good almost everywhere.

Cingular is selling the 650 for $299 (after all discounts) with a 2-year service plan. You then can pick any of their voice plans and you pay $39.99/mo for unlimited data. Cingular offers XPress Mail (similar to the Good Technology product) to connect you with your office e-mail system. Cingular has a decent network, but their data network isn’t as robust as others.

Sprint/Nextel has the 700 for $399 (after all discounts) with a 2-year service plan. You pick any of their voice plans and pay $39.99/mo for unlimited data. The trouble here is that you’re limited to Sprint/Nextel’s network. If you walk off their network, you lose connection.

Verizon also has the 700 for $399 (after all discounts) with a 2-year service plan and you pick a voice and data bundle. Verizon’s data network isn’t super, either… and they aren’t able to do anything with data separately from voice (although the bundles are a good idea).

All in all, given the fact that I’m with Alltel, I decided to take the slower device and stay with Alltel. Got one for Tina, too.

God I love my Treo. The lust was worth the wait.

Book 1, Email 0


Well, I finally get the book completed, uploaded… ready to print and start to send messages to folks letting them know about it. And my e-mail host decides to throw a rod.

I don’t know what’s going on right now… but if you are trying to send me e-mail and you get a delay, please send it to jigordon at gmail dot com. I’ll respond as soon as I can.

[OK… everything’s better now. Sorry for the inconvenience!]

In any event, however, go check out the book! 😉

MBA factories

I decided several years ago that I wanted to get an MBA. I researched schools, looked into various programs… found one I liked and went through the process.

I’m now 2/9ths done with my chosen program and I feel that every day I walk out of class, I’ve learned something that I can immediately take back to my work environment. But class is not easy and class doesn’t come quickly. In fact, it’s 2 days per week, almost every week of the year, for at least 3 hours, sometimes a bit more.

What I am now trying to figure out is how an “institution” can offer the same accredited degree program that I’m in… but do it in 2 years instead of three… and do it remotely with only 5, 4-day weekends per year? It just seems impossible to me.

Or maybe it’s the fact that, as the Presidio School of Management so clearly shows on their website, that virtually NONE of the faculty at the “school” have a business background or an MBA themselves. Ph.D’s are good… but I would think that they need to be in a related field. But hey, that’s just me and my JD speaking (where 99% of all law school professors MUST BE lawyers themselves).

So it really ticks me off to realize that MY degree is going to be less valuable because these Degree Factories are pumping out unqualified people with the same degree that I’m trying to earn.

Who’s in charge of this mess?

Keys to the Beandom?

It’s no secret that Tina and I visit Disney on a regular basis. One of the tours we took while we were there was “Keys to the Kingdom” which is essentially a behind-the-scenes look at the Magic Kingdom. It lasts for about 4 hours, includes lots of notable trivia bits and looks at the most secretive of places in the entire park (including the underground tunnels that traverse the entire property).

Two days ago, we were passing through Freeport, Maine, home to L.L. Bean. Tina’s had a purple pullover from there that was bought back in her freshman year of college… and in a manner similar to me going to the Apple Computer Headquarters in Cuppertino, CA, going to L.L. Bean was like coming home for Tina. The pullover itself has acquired almost mythical status… known simply as her “Bean”. It embodies all of the possible Beanness one item could have. She loves it and it loves her back, I suppose.

It’s almost hard to express in words the look on her face and her state of excitement when she realized that there were FOUR buildings that comprise the L.L. Bean flagship location… and that the main one is open 24/7/365! She simply was in awe of trying to figure out what would require a run to the “Bean” to buy a “Bean” at 3am.

I wasn’t willing to find out who visited at 3am, though, so we had to go at a more normal 1pm. After walking through all of the buildings and taking pictures of Tina wearing a giant backpack

(and getting in an even LARGER backpack),

we were ready to go. But not before getting the boot.

And as we walked away from the Bean, Tina simply inquired why they didn’t offer tours of their facilities (including their full warehouse a few miles down the road) just like Disney. “They should have ‘Keys to the Beandom’!”

All I could do was smile.

RandomMoments

I watch a lot of TV and movies. More than I should, I suppose. TiVo will go down as one of the best inventions of my lifetime.

But I’m curious.

Who actually has those perfect TV/movie moments in their life?

You know the ones I’m talking about. Where the guy and girl are sitting together having that instant karmic connection. Where the athlete runs faster, jumps higher, plays longer or through the pain to win the gold. Where the worker gets the big career move that they actually deserve. Any of those.

Because I don’t know where or when they happen. I don’t know anyone who has them – but I know that I don’t get them.

Or… maybe I do.

Maybe the moments in my life are the TV/movie moments for someone else’s life.

Treasure Hunting

I’ll admit that I love contests, game shows, puzzles and any other form of semi-intellectual test that might result in winning some sort of prize. Today’s adventure is the NBC show “Treasure Hunters”.

Over the course of several weeks, real people on real teams are running all over the planet trying to solve clues and determine where to go next to find a series of clues. When they have all the clues, they’re supposed to be able to figure out where to go to win a treasure chest of cash/gold/dubloon or some other similar reward. And, to make things more interesting for those of us “at home”, NBC has added an online component where they’ve been offering a contest to also win a cash prize.

Now, the online puzzles are sometimes fun, sometimes a bit challenging (because there aren’t that many instructions/directions or other clues). But overall, it’s not extremely difficult… and if you do this long enough, you should be able to answer a question they ask at the end of every week’s clue.

I didn’t realize until today, however, that there are folks blogging with the exact step-by-step instructions of how to “solve” each clue. And I just don’t get it. If you were trying to win $250,000, and the entrance “fee” is based on your ability to solve the weekly puzzles, would YOU tell other people how to solve them?

Mind boggling. More so than the puzzles themselves.