Let me tell you my story about what happened today.

I signed a 2 year contract back in January ‘07, and bought a Razr. It had been working just fine until a month ago when I noticed it started randomly dropping calls (even when it reported having four bars in a densely populated area). I have about a month and a few days before I am eligible to upgrade to a new phone, and so I figured I could stick it out (sometimes it worked fine).Then this past week, the Razr would just randomly shut off on its own (even did this during one or two conversations). Finally today, it seemed to die…at least when it wasn’t on a charger. So I broke down and took it into my friendly local Verizon store.

After explaining the situation, and asking them to resolve the issue, the tech support guy told me that they do not fix phones (anymore), and that my phone was fried (he had tried to install a system update, but said that my onboard mini-USB was flaky, which prevented the update). My only options were to either purchase another Razr refurb for $50, or upgrade to a new phone….Then I got a bunch of mixed hoopla from him and another sales associate about how I would only get a $50 credit instead of the $100 credit that was written on the contract I originally signed towards an upgrade. This was either because of their new two tier plan ($50 credit for less than $79.99 per month plan, $100 for $79.99 or more), or because I was upgrading early ($50 new every year, $100 new every two years), I got both answers, but not any consistency. Frankly, the people I interacted with were pretty jerkish. I decided to walk out and try a different Verizon store across town.

My hunch was correct, I walked in and told them about my issue. I mentioned the fact that I had come from the other store, and told her what they had said. She immediately handed me off to the manager, Kenny. Kenny looked at my phone, and told me I had the two options the other store had first mentioned. I questioned him on the $50 upgrade credit, and he said it was the two-tier policy change that Verizon recently made, and I reasoned with him about what I signed in my original contract. I also mentioned the fact that the people at the other store had been jerks, and that I had heard that the people at this store would treat you right. He still did not budge, but he did take my old phone to see about an update. While I was waiting for the update to occur, he mentioned to me that he made a note on my file to go ahead and give me the $100 credit when I did come into upgrade (”since apparently you didn’t know about the new policy” were his words). A few minutes later, he let me know that they were unable to upgrade my phone, so they were going to give me a new refurb to last me the last month, for free, since I was having all this trouble. Just 10 more minutes of waiting, and downloading my contacts from Backup Assistant, and I was on my way. Thanks so much for the help Kenny! You are awesome!

My advice, if one store is harassing you, try another one. Be sure to tell them that the other store were jerks, and that you heard that the people at this store would treat you right. Be polite, firm, but realize that these are people too. And be sure to give them accolades when they do go out of their way to help you.

P.S. Users can also use this website to submit comments about what Verizon can do better: https://www.survey.verizonwireless.com/vzwsurvey/

Microsoft just decided to pull off a ridiculous PR stunt with their “Mojave Experiment” this past week.

Apparently the word-of-mouth campaign that us techie people have initiated without any real organization has informed all of our non-geek friends of our innate dislike of Vista. Yeah, everyone knows that Vista is crappy, from the media, from us IT people, from actual users.

Microsoft decided that our friends needed a second opinion.

Their answer was the “Mojave Experiment” where they talked to 140 non-Vista users about their thoughts on Vista, and then had them “test-drive” the “newest” version of Windows, Windows Mojave. I’m guessing that Microsoft hacked their own system to replace all occurrences of “Vista” with “Mojave” for these purposes.

After watching the intro video, click on some of the other faces to get different *select* reactions. Also, be sure to check out the “facts” where Microsoft propagates what a truly awesome product Vista is, and tells us *some* of the stats and methods used in this experiment.

According to the site, they used an HP Pavillion DV2000, with 2GB of RAM…that is all the info given about the computer used. Let it be known that base model specs only come with 1GB of RAM, and use integrated graphics card, but I would bet that they upgraded to the Nvidia GeForce Go 7200 for this model, if not a higher end card. But you don’t get the kind of hardware you need to run Vista on a brand new computer. You know they probably maxed out the notebook as much as possible, installed the O/S without all the extra junk you get on a new computer these days, ensure that all the correct drivers were working before allowing the users to test spin it.

Tell me, do you really think they would let the test users experience awful tasks such as hooking up external devices to the computer for the first time, trying to configure a network, installing new software (thank you UAC!), or try to run multiple high performance programs (i.e. Firefox…or, ahem, I mean, IE7 and Adobe Photoshop and AIM, er, I mean, Windows Messenger, and Outlook, etc) all at the same time. See if there is no slow down there.

According to the site, which you can verify for yourself, most of the users were completely surprised that what they were being showed was actually Vista. I am guessing that like I said, these users were probably allowed to do simple tasks one at a time like play a card game of Spider Solitaire, check their Hotmail email, and type up a simple document, without any heavy duty testing that might happen in a real world environment.

But this guy, though the site calls him a skeptic, probably shows these true colors of this PR stunt.

Claim: “Windows Mojave really is Windows Vista.”

Response: “But why is it faster?”

He saw through these phonies. Obviously, these experimenters weren’t playing quite fair as I have stated.

UPDATE:
A couple of other thoughts I had: Why is the site created in Adobe Flash? Why not use their own Silverlight? I’ll tell you why. Because they want people to actually see the videos and people don’t want to have to download another plugin to view the website. I don’t have Silverlight.
Also, which version of Vista did they actually show users? I guarantee you it wasn’t Vista Basic, even though that is the prime operating system that comes on new computers now.

So just got back from the whole Bible Bowl trip to Johnson Bible College and Atlanta, GA.

Let me take this time to remind myself and what few readers I have that I absolutely hate the Bible Bowl website. Its ugly (don’t even ask me about the new Bible Bowl logo) and it constantly times out because of crappy programming. It frustrates me that I was going on there to get a link to the Johnson Tournament and Nationals so that I could reference it here for your enjoyment…but I can’t even get that!

Ok…end of tirade. I guess I will just tell you about my team and you will have to just accept that I am telling the truth.

At Johnson Bible College the team that I helped sponsor and quizmaster for was from Townesouth / Kernersville (one of two teams at JBC and the only team at Nationals from North Carolina). They ended up placing 3rd in the Round Robin, and top 12 in the Double Elimination. Afterwards, we drove down to Atlanta and stayed in the Marriot Marquis (which by the way did not have free wi-fi, no fridge or microwave…but it was a very tall building with lovely room service by Zozima). Nationals begins with a test, which one of our players placed 5th on, and then the first couple days are full of Round Robin Pod competition, which they placed 3rd in. Then, the last two days are full of intense Double Elimination. We were seeded pretty high, so ultimately, we ended up with 3rd place (again) which put us at 3rd in the Nation! Congratulations guys!

But other than competition, we did a few other things. I was able to check out Johnson’s Media Department, which has more equipment and better facilities than Milligan. It was pretty cool to see. In Atlanta, we went to the Underground and got our hair cut…so now I am short and spikey.

So now I am back home after an intense 10 days. It was fun, but I am glad I am back home.

I’ll post some more topical posts soon.

Yeah, we all hate gas prices, especially these days. I can remember when gas was 89 cents… of course I still had quite a few years till I was able to drive… and that’s not really saying much for those people out there who can still remember when it was a nickel.

However, I had to fill up my tank again today, and my Dodge Intrepid came to a whopping almost $60 for a regular tank of gas. That got me to thinking about the good ol’ times. Those times when I can remember filling up for only $21. Those times when I did actually think it was a crime that gas actually was posted at $1.79.

Ah… yeah, well these are the times we now live in.

As I was scouring the internet today, I stumbled across a couple of humurous articles based on this issue of rising gas prices. It just seems that some people are actually resorting to (surprise surprise!) stealing gasoline. I have wondered about that lately, what if someone decides to steal my gas out of the blue.

But maybe if that happens, and I find a way to refuel my vehicle once again, then just maybe a stranger will help me out.

But it saddens me. I had desired and dreamed about taking an awesome road trip this summer. Probably out west. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

Well, maybe instead I should just make a permanent move to southern California and invest in one of those new hybrid cars that actually run on hydrogen.

Or maybe I’ll just stick with my car I’ve had. She’s been a good one at that. Yes. My car is a she…her name is Caroline.

Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do. At least until magic happens.

Yesternight, I called a friend up to see what he was doing. Not surprisingly, he was playing World of Warcraft. He asked me to come over and save him from himself. I came over, yet he did not stop playing. So I sketched out this idea, based on the idea of Demotives.

Today I found some time to put it in real digital form. I am posting it here for your enjoyment.

A Demotive