I caught this video via a link from a +huffington post article I was reading and I have to say, this is a fantastic idea! Especially since Congress is in no way involved with naming storms. After seeing this video, I encourage everyone to go to the website and sign their petition.
Friday, 30 August 2013
Tuesday, 27 August 2013
Or, How I had Dinner with a Muslim Family.
It was a hot day -- a really hot day. However, the clouds were rolling in, the air was cooling down and I was on a mission. Camera in hand, I'd decided to head up to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, formerly a superfund site and now I hint of Colorado from ages past just north of Denver. The idea was to capture the sunset as it lit up the golds and greens of Colorado's plains and perhaps, if the gods were kind, to catch a brilliant light show among the clouds.
Unfortunately for me and the three or four people who look at my pictures, the Refuge closes at 6PM and the Sun doesn't set until closer to 9PM.
:sad face:
So where to, that was the question.
I decided to head south, dreams of dinner possibilities filling my head. Pizza? A burger? Go healthy and have some oatmeal? I didn't have to worry about my dog as he was gone on his own adventure with my roommate and that's when it hit me: Cherry Creek State Park! There's a lot of places on the park where dogs are forbidden and since I usually have Rufus with me, I don't traverse those locations frequently. In fact, I can claim to have been to some of those locations only three or four times in the more than a decade I've lived within walking distance of the park.
Instead of dinner, I decided to go to the park, head over to the lake and catch the magnificent light on the gaggles of geese that float along the reservoir where dogs aren't allowed to range. I pulled into the park, drove around to the parking lot I was looking for (I'm not a Stormtrooper) and parked the car grabbing by camera, bag and tripod before heading towards the location I sought.
It wasn't too log before I passed a couple of picnic areas. We all know the kind: the ones with permanent tables and benches, paint fading, seats worn and a little grill off the to the side requiring the barbecuers to bring nothing but charcoal and food with them for an afternoon of fun with family and friends.
At the picnic area a family was enjoying the warm summer evening. I immediately identified them as Muslim based on the head scarves all the women wore, even the children in the jeans and t-shirts. A man was grilling at the grill and I said "Hi" to him as I passed. He greeted me back and I thought nothing more of it as I passed him and his family. Then I heard him ask, "Would you like a taste?" in his heavy accent.
Did I just hear that? I spun around and the man was looking right at me, "Would you like a taste?"
I was caught in a conundrum. Being worldly as I am, I knew there was some sort of culturally acceptable answer, but I wasn't sure if it was to accept or graciously decline. In hopefully what was only seconds, but hat felt like minutes passing, my mind raced as I tried to recall anything at all from my cultural classes in college. I realized I didn't know the right course of action to take. If I accepted, was that an insult to a cultural nicety that was mere show? If I didn't accept, would he and his family take offense?
Finally, I erred on the side of caution: if he wasn't sincere would he have asked?
I smiled and told him I would be glad to accept a taste. As I clicked my dSLR into my tripod and set it down he apparently prepared a plate of food for me. 'A taste' didn't turn out to be a small sliver of whatever they were eating, but a whole plate full of lamb chops, cooked over a fire, and some watermelon. He then cleared a chair for me next to him and poured me a cup of fruit drink before handing me a bottle of water.
For the next hour I talked with him, thanking him for inviting me to join his family and learning about them and their lives. They were from Kuwait and were on a holiday in Colorado. They came to see the mountains. They'd been here for a couple of weeks already and still had a couple of weeks in the US before heading home.
I can't recall his name, but he claimed to be the director of sports for a government in Kuwait. I'm not sure if that means for the entire nation or a state within the nation, but he was clear it was not at the city level. His job, he said, was to work with coaches on techniques and training of their athletes. As I'm not really into sports myself, I asked him how he liked Colorado to which he and his wife both exclaimed at the beauty, the climate and the coolness compared to hot humid Kuwaiti summers. It was then I told him of a couple of out of the way destinations to visit if he and his family had time, including the Denver Botanic Gardens which was having a Free Day (today).
While were were talking an old German man and his wife walked past and my host offered him a cup to drink as well. The German man accepted and we all shared stories for a bit longer. The man wanted to get to the other side of the park before the sun set and I realized I was losing all the good light.
Again worried that I was going to offend the man and his family, I excused myself, offering to help clean up or carry anything to his car, which he declined.
I walked along the shore of the lake thinking about the whole situation, reminiscing about my time living in Europe where the culture seemed more welcoming to outsiders and wondered yet again about the differences in American culture of isolationism, even at the family level, and the more accepting nature of many other people.
That's not to say Americans aren't nice to people, or even unwelcoming, but that we're less likely to invite a stranger into our family events than many other cultures.
A little further down the coast I turned around to take a picture where I'd come from, hoping to catch the family just being a family, but they were already clear of the picnic area and presumably on to their next adventure.
It was a hot day -- a really hot day. However, the clouds were rolling in, the air was cooling down and I was on a mission. Camera in hand, I'd decided to head up to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, formerly a superfund site and now I hint of Colorado from ages past just north of Denver. The idea was to capture the sunset as it lit up the golds and greens of Colorado's plains and perhaps, if the gods were kind, to catch a brilliant light show among the clouds.
Unfortunately for me and the three or four people who look at my pictures, the Refuge closes at 6PM and the Sun doesn't set until closer to 9PM.
:sad face:
So where to, that was the question.
I decided to head south, dreams of dinner possibilities filling my head. Pizza? A burger? Go healthy and have some oatmeal? I didn't have to worry about my dog as he was gone on his own adventure with my roommate and that's when it hit me: Cherry Creek State Park! There's a lot of places on the park where dogs are forbidden and since I usually have Rufus with me, I don't traverse those locations frequently. In fact, I can claim to have been to some of those locations only three or four times in the more than a decade I've lived within walking distance of the park.
Instead of dinner, I decided to go to the park, head over to the lake and catch the magnificent light on the gaggles of geese that float along the reservoir where dogs aren't allowed to range. I pulled into the park, drove around to the parking lot I was looking for (I'm not a Stormtrooper) and parked the car grabbing by camera, bag and tripod before heading towards the location I sought.
It wasn't too log before I passed a couple of picnic areas. We all know the kind: the ones with permanent tables and benches, paint fading, seats worn and a little grill off the to the side requiring the barbecuers to bring nothing but charcoal and food with them for an afternoon of fun with family and friends.
At the picnic area a family was enjoying the warm summer evening. I immediately identified them as Muslim based on the head scarves all the women wore, even the children in the jeans and t-shirts. A man was grilling at the grill and I said "Hi" to him as I passed. He greeted me back and I thought nothing more of it as I passed him and his family. Then I heard him ask, "Would you like a taste?" in his heavy accent.
Did I just hear that? I spun around and the man was looking right at me, "Would you like a taste?"
 |
| I cannot remember their names. I'm a terrible person. |
Finally, I erred on the side of caution: if he wasn't sincere would he have asked?
I smiled and told him I would be glad to accept a taste. As I clicked my dSLR into my tripod and set it down he apparently prepared a plate of food for me. 'A taste' didn't turn out to be a small sliver of whatever they were eating, but a whole plate full of lamb chops, cooked over a fire, and some watermelon. He then cleared a chair for me next to him and poured me a cup of fruit drink before handing me a bottle of water.
For the next hour I talked with him, thanking him for inviting me to join his family and learning about them and their lives. They were from Kuwait and were on a holiday in Colorado. They came to see the mountains. They'd been here for a couple of weeks already and still had a couple of weeks in the US before heading home.
I can't recall his name, but he claimed to be the director of sports for a government in Kuwait. I'm not sure if that means for the entire nation or a state within the nation, but he was clear it was not at the city level. His job, he said, was to work with coaches on techniques and training of their athletes. As I'm not really into sports myself, I asked him how he liked Colorado to which he and his wife both exclaimed at the beauty, the climate and the coolness compared to hot humid Kuwaiti summers. It was then I told him of a couple of out of the way destinations to visit if he and his family had time, including the Denver Botanic Gardens which was having a Free Day (today).
While were were talking an old German man and his wife walked past and my host offered him a cup to drink as well. The German man accepted and we all shared stories for a bit longer. The man wanted to get to the other side of the park before the sun set and I realized I was losing all the good light.
Again worried that I was going to offend the man and his family, I excused myself, offering to help clean up or carry anything to his car, which he declined.
I walked along the shore of the lake thinking about the whole situation, reminiscing about my time living in Europe where the culture seemed more welcoming to outsiders and wondered yet again about the differences in American culture of isolationism, even at the family level, and the more accepting nature of many other people.
That's not to say Americans aren't nice to people, or even unwelcoming, but that we're less likely to invite a stranger into our family events than many other cultures.
A little further down the coast I turned around to take a picture where I'd come from, hoping to catch the family just being a family, but they were already clear of the picnic area and presumably on to their next adventure.
 |
| An Android Shot of the Sunet After I left the Family |
Friday, 23 August 2013
This week I had a chance to sit down and watch two recent zombie movies. Oddly enough, both movies were based on books. The first movie, Warm Bodies, based on the book Warm Bodies, by Isaac Newton and World War Z, loosely based on the graphic novel, World War Z, by Max Brooks.
While I am a fan of the supernatural style books, movies and TV shows, I've never really been a fan of the zombie genre which, for some reason, seems to have been popular for the past couple of years with pop culture phenomena like The Walking Dead, Zombieland, the Resident Evil (movie) franchise and even the comedy, Shaun of the Dead.
For me, zombies are boring. Traditionally, these undead have been cast as slow brain-hungry bodies that mill about seeking fresh meat, also in the form of brains. More modern incantations of the zombie lore have taken these slow decaying bodies and put them in faster, athletic self-healing roles supposedly to add a heightened scare factor to a world that moves at the speed of planes, trains and automobiles instead of foot and horse of ages past.
Many people have their own theories about why zombies are (supposedly) scary and at least one university is offering a class onthe metaphor of zombies in modern culture. Over the years I've read that zombies are (supposedly scary) due to the inability to escape them, how they overrun homes, businesses, police and the military en masse, and how they are a contradiction to modern intellectualism: without reason, logic or intellect. In fact, most of the zombie genre pop-culture outlets eventually arrive at some scientist or philosopher trying to reason with the undead believing a spark of their humanity must still exist. It never does. (Zombie metaphors)
That doesn't stop Warm Bodies from being popular enough of a book that someone decided to make anecropheliac, um, er, romance movie between a fairly attractive teenage girl and the monotonous life of a teenaged zombie. The core story of the movie was simple: can a zombie, once becoming a zombie, regain any of their humanity?
According to the movie (I haven't read the book), yes. Apparently, with the application of some make-up and the devotion of a pretty girl, a zombie can indeed become alive again.
In World War Z, Gerry (Brad Pitt) travels the globe seeking out the origin of the zombie disease so the very intellectualism to which zombies are the antithesis, can save humanity from a global annihilation.
In Gerry' universe, zombies are fast and they're over running mankind like army ants on the offensive, letting nothing stop them from achieving their goal of devouring any flesh in their path. While they're fast, they're mindless, responding only to external stimuli like hundreds of other predators out there that respond to shiny objects, colors or noise. In the case of WWZ, the zombies hunt by sound, which does make sense.
While the two movies take extremely different views on what zombies are and how to survive them, only WWZ was a good movie. At least in my opinion.
When I watched Warm Bodies, I expected some sort of off the cuff romcomwhere the moral of the story wasn't resurrecting the dead through love, but rather don't fall for the mindless drone. Instead, I watched some sort of feel good movie that seemed more like it was designed to appease younger women who were dragged along to yet another “scary movie” for their date night.
World War Z took another direction. Zombies were swarming the Earth and humanity was dying by the billions. Most zombie films are about the survivors trying to stay alive on the streets but WWZ takes us right into the search for a scientific solution in the form of an antivenom hopefully made from the source of the disease. It addressed the lack of resources when supply chains stop and the need to prioritize those dwindling resources by making unpopular decisions.
WWZ seemed rushed, but at least believable. We want to hope that, in the advent of global annihilation, someone somewhere is trying to discover a solution to the problem instead of just circling the wagons and trying to ride out the swarms of the zombie hordes. While it may seem romantic to be the girl that could cause the dead to come back to life, let's face it, a true zombie would eat the girl, her family and her dog, not play her records.
While I am a fan of the supernatural style books, movies and TV shows, I've never really been a fan of the zombie genre which, for some reason, seems to have been popular for the past couple of years with pop culture phenomena like The Walking Dead, Zombieland, the Resident Evil (movie) franchise and even the comedy, Shaun of the Dead.
For me, zombies are boring. Traditionally, these undead have been cast as slow brain-hungry bodies that mill about seeking fresh meat, also in the form of brains. More modern incantations of the zombie lore have taken these slow decaying bodies and put them in faster, athletic self-healing roles supposedly to add a heightened scare factor to a world that moves at the speed of planes, trains and automobiles instead of foot and horse of ages past.
Many people have their own theories about why zombies are (supposedly) scary and at least one university is offering a class onthe metaphor of zombies in modern culture. Over the years I've read that zombies are (supposedly scary) due to the inability to escape them, how they overrun homes, businesses, police and the military en masse, and how they are a contradiction to modern intellectualism: without reason, logic or intellect. In fact, most of the zombie genre pop-culture outlets eventually arrive at some scientist or philosopher trying to reason with the undead believing a spark of their humanity must still exist. It never does. (Zombie metaphors)
That doesn't stop Warm Bodies from being popular enough of a book that someone decided to make a
According to the movie (I haven't read the book), yes. Apparently, with the application of some make-up and the devotion of a pretty girl, a zombie can indeed become alive again.
In World War Z, Gerry (Brad Pitt) travels the globe seeking out the origin of the zombie disease so the very intellectualism to which zombies are the antithesis, can save humanity from a global annihilation.
In Gerry' universe, zombies are fast and they're over running mankind like army ants on the offensive, letting nothing stop them from achieving their goal of devouring any flesh in their path. While they're fast, they're mindless, responding only to external stimuli like hundreds of other predators out there that respond to shiny objects, colors or noise. In the case of WWZ, the zombies hunt by sound, which does make sense.
While the two movies take extremely different views on what zombies are and how to survive them, only WWZ was a good movie. At least in my opinion.
When I watched Warm Bodies, I expected some sort of off the cuff romcomwhere the moral of the story wasn't resurrecting the dead through love, but rather don't fall for the mindless drone. Instead, I watched some sort of feel good movie that seemed more like it was designed to appease younger women who were dragged along to yet another “scary movie” for their date night.
World War Z took another direction. Zombies were swarming the Earth and humanity was dying by the billions. Most zombie films are about the survivors trying to stay alive on the streets but WWZ takes us right into the search for a scientific solution in the form of an antivenom hopefully made from the source of the disease. It addressed the lack of resources when supply chains stop and the need to prioritize those dwindling resources by making unpopular decisions.
WWZ seemed rushed, but at least believable. We want to hope that, in the advent of global annihilation, someone somewhere is trying to discover a solution to the problem instead of just circling the wagons and trying to ride out the swarms of the zombie hordes. While it may seem romantic to be the girl that could cause the dead to come back to life, let's face it, a true zombie would eat the girl, her family and her dog, not play her records.
Tuesday, 20 August 2013
Saturday, 10 August 2013
"What's that? You say you've got a Japanese steampunk novel with mythic creatures, civil unrest, and a strong female protagonist? I'm afraid I missed everything you said after 'Japanese steampunk.' That's all I really needed to hear."
I have a library card. Yes, it's arcane in a world of digital books and eBook readers to visit the library, but I'm a fan of hand held books. Hand held books have a look and feel that eReaders just can't duplicate; they never run out of batteries and no one ever hung they Kindle or Nook on the wall so others could peruse their collection like one would a bookshelf. eReaders just aren't conversation pieces like a spread of magazines on a coffee table or book spines showing from every nook and cranny in your living room, study, office or wherever.
While at the library a couple of weeks ago returning some movies and a book I happened upon this book, Stormdancer. The cover is what first attracted me to the novel but the quote on the cover -- the blurb, if you will -- by Patrick Rothfuss is what made me check the book out and bring it home. (Actually, I needed something to take on a camping trip with me, but I forgot the book at home when I left.)
When I returned from camping I picked up the book and read the first page. Then the second. And then the third. You know how these things go.
I'd never read a Japanese themed fantasy adventure before nor have I ever read a steampunk novel. I know some might consider this next line heresy but I don't particularly care for steampunk as a genre. Sure there are some sexy steampunk outfits out there that the ladies are wearing, but as a genre I just can't get into the hype.
Stormdancer takes place in the empire of Shima, ruled by a tyrannical bully who is so self absorbed he can't see that he's killing his own kingdoms for the sake of personal pleasure. Shima is a land on the verge of ecological collapse as the smoke and byproduct of producing the fuel for their machines chokes the land, plant and animal life are dying out, the people are starving and the waterways are polluted beyond redress. The skies are red, not blue, the rain is acidic and humanity must wear goggles and breathers to avoid eye damage and lung cancer. Our heroine, Yukiko, is the daughter of the emperor's huntsman and accompanies her father to bring back a creature believed extinct the emperor had a dream about one night: a Thunder Tiger. That's what's great about this book, since it's a Japanese-themed story, the gryphon is not half eagle/half lion, but rather half eagle/half tiger. Thunder Tigers are believed extinct by the people of Shima but like the sasquatch and the chupacabra of North America, people spread rumors of sightings in the far away rural and wilderness areas.What really surprised me was the depth of story and the fluidity on which the author writes. Everything flows nicely, the characters are rich and multifaceted. The culture of the island nation is very similar to modern industrialized countries as the move towards modernity comes at the cost of small farms, the environment, health and welfare of the people, the and peaceful relations with neighboring nations.
In the end, as our hero learns that there is a way of life outside that she's always known and as she becomes more cognizant of the evils in the world she's spent her life accepting, a Stormdancer is born. I can't wait to see what the next book in *The Lotus War* brings and how our characters react to the ending of this novel.
Friday, 9 August 2013
[spoiler alert] The ghost of a witch who committed suicide is haunting mothers and forcing them to kill their children in some sort of Satanic ritual. This can only be countered with help from the Catholic Church. The fact of the matter is, I've known a lot of witches (and Wiccans) in my time and not a single one of them was evil, a Satanist or otherwise a terrible person. [/spoiler alert]
Wednesday, 7 August 2013
What a week in tech support, he says in exasperation!
First +Dish Network.
A few months ago, after trial after trial after trial (notice the lack of tribulations) of using +Century Link DSL service, my roommate changed the service provider for our internet to Dish Network who recently entered the ISP game by reselling or repackaging, the Century Link product. The good news, though, is customers who switched to Dish didn't have to deal with Century Link tech support anymore, just their shoddy service.
Over the course of the switch from service providers, there have been a few hiccups, but for the most part everything has seemed fine -- when there was an outage lasting long enough to warrant a call to tech support Dish Customer Service was friendly, courteous and efficient: the complete and utter opposite of Century Link's customer care.
And then Monday happened. Monday morning the internet connection at the house worked fine. I social networked, I job searched, I caught up on the news. Everything was hunky-dory. Then sometime between 2 and three o'clock the service died. Having been away from the computer at the time I can't be sure exactly when it died, but when I tried surfing the internet after 3PM I received a no internet signal notification.
Sure enough, the router had a red DSL light, indicating it wasn't receiving a signal from the wall outlet. It was then I recalled from my morning walk a couple of Century Link vans parked at the end of the street at the local junction box. I rebooted the modem a couple of times throughout the afternoon, but nothing changed.
Did the techs do something?
Since I had other things to do that day, I wasn't bothered too much but when my roommate came home from work she was instantly annoyed. And then angry, but that was after her call to Dish Network's customer service.
According to Dish, they showed no down service in the area and since they are a reseller of Century Link's product, they could perform no trouble shooting on the circuit at all. well, it was either couldn't or wouldn't. The worst part of it was, they couldn't even schedule a testing time (with technician) until Sunday. That was Monday through Sunday. Six days of no interwebz.
Gah!
It didn't help that +T-Mobile doesn't provide very good mobile service to my area, either, so mobile or tethering were impossible unless I traveled at least a couple of blocks away. And once a couple of blocks away, why not just use the wifi available just about anywhere?
So, Dish Network could provide no tech support to the issue without relying upon Century Link technicians who weren't available for nearly a week? Having worked in the industry for more than 10 years I can guarantee that as their customer, Dish Network should have been given preferential treatment or had their own techs assigned to them by the Local Exchange Carrier.
Second, +Sprint
Not me, but my roommate, is a long term Sprint customer. For nearly as long as Sprint's been offering mobile phone service my friend has been a customer of theirs. Not only that, but she, her mother and even her grandparents are all customers under the same account.
Due to our internet being FUBAR'd by Century Link (more on that later) she was looking to tether her mobile internet to her laptop as is allowed by her account and service plan. However, she's never been able to get it to work properly and since it's never been needed she let it fall to the wayside.
But now it was needed. I happened to be in Lone Tree when I spoke with her and she told me she was coming down to the Sprint store there. Apparently, this is currently the tech support guru bricks and mortar store for the area and when 611 support could no longer help her, they advised she take her handset down to this particular location.
Since I was already in the area I beat her there and was greeted by the sales girl on the floor. I explained that I was there just to meet a friend who needed to speak with their tech support specialists. She smiled and walked me over to the "back" of the store where the techs were working behind a counter, cellphones in various stages of repair strewn all about.
I addressed all three technicians at once (and they all looked at me while I was speaking, so I know they were listening), "My friend is coming down with a tethering issue on her Note II. If you guys want to go ahead and research solutions before she gets here, that would speed up things for both her and you guys."
Then they turned away: one guy back to pulling batteries and the other two back to whatever they were doing on the internet that I couldn't see. None of them asked me follow up questions, what version of Android was she running or anything that indicated they were even remotely interested in being proactive.
Okay. Whatever. Maybe they just didn't want to talk to me. Fine.
A few minutes later my friend came in and the same cheerful sales girl brought her over to the tech desk and introduced her to one of the technicians. She told the guy what her issue was and explained the steps she'd already taken with customer support who then recommended she come down to this store and work with the technicians.
I walked away. At this point, it was no longer my business.
A minute or two later my friend came up to me where I was man-handling display models. We talked about this model, that one and a tablet or two while we waited. A another couple of minutes pass by and the technician comes over and asks her to unlock her phone.
She does.
Then he turns around and walks away, not to the technician desk where he's visible but through a door in the wall which closes behind him.
My friend becomes antsy and I ask why (having not paid a lot of attention). She explains that she doesn't feel comfortable, after having unlocked her phone, watching the technician leave her line of sight. He now has access to her entire contacts list, apps, cloud storage, social networks ... everything.
I asked her if she wanted me to say something since I'm much more willing to be confrontational than she is. She said not yet.
After another couple of minutes I finally walked back over to the technician desk and asked, loud enough to be heard by both technicians still sitting there, "Um, where did the other guy go with my friend's phone? She unlocked it and he disappeared. He now has access to her entire mobile life and she doesn't like that one bit."
The technician, the only female of the trio of technicians, told me he just took it into the back to ask another tech a question. I responded by telling her that it was completely unprofessional of him to take an unlocked device outside of the field of view of the customer, especially without informing her first.
Before she could answer, the little guy came back out from wherever he disappeared to. His flimsy excuse was that he wanted to confer with another tech who's personal phone was also the Note II and therefore an "expert" on the device.
I cut him off, explaining again how it was extremely unprofessional of him to take an unlocked phone away from the owner. As though he really didn't understand the problem with taking a an open device outside of the purview of the owner he tried explaining again that he needed to confer with another technician.
It. Doesn't. Matter. I explained again. If anything, he could have asked the other technician to come out to the showroom floor and discuss it there.
He still didn't seem to understand what the problem was and instead tried explaining to my friend she needed to take the phone back to factory settings and re-install all updates. My friend was furious! Why did she need to drive 20 miles out of her way to get the same information from him a technician over the phone could have instructed her to do? Not only that, but he tried treating both of us like we were idiots:
A loss of everything with no guarantee of success? Are you kidding?
If he couldn't explain it properly he shouldn't be working in "tech support." Who was it, Einstein, who said if you can't explain it simply you don't understand it?
Whew!
Needless to say we didn't want anything more to do with this tech or this store. Before we walked out, though, I addressed the technician and the other two behind the counter explaining to them this is exactly why I advised them to research the issue before she arrived for support. The little tech guy tried explaining again that the tech on break in the back has the same phone and should be the expert. He still didn't seem to understand that he should have brought the tech out or looked up solutions on an in-house tech support wiki (or whatever).
Needless to say, I almost switched from +T-Mobile to +Sprint on recommendation from my friend and while +T-Mobile doesn't always get the best service, they're at least competent.
Yes, yes, this is a terribly long post but what's the point? Oh yeah, customer service is a lost commodity these days. People are so used to terrible service it's become expected and the norm.
Fast forward a few more days and the Century Link technician arrives a day early. He says he was in the area and saw our ticket on the call sheet for the following day and decided to knock it out while he was already here. After a couple of minutes he excuses himself saying he will check the end of the block.
About a half hour later he comes back and admits someone disconnected the lines to our place while they were out there on Monday. So, Century Link technicians disconnected a customer for nearly a week and who gets the suffer? Oh yeah, the customer. Why? Because there are really only two names in broadband internet in the area: Century Link and Comcast. Anyone else is just reselling those two services. And as it turns out, +T-Mobile nor +Sprint were viable alternatives to loss of wired service.
Google Fiber, where are you when we need you?
First +Dish Network.
A few months ago, after trial after trial after trial (notice the lack of tribulations) of using +Century Link DSL service, my roommate changed the service provider for our internet to Dish Network who recently entered the ISP game by reselling or repackaging, the Century Link product. The good news, though, is customers who switched to Dish didn't have to deal with Century Link tech support anymore, just their shoddy service.
Over the course of the switch from service providers, there have been a few hiccups, but for the most part everything has seemed fine -- when there was an outage lasting long enough to warrant a call to tech support Dish Customer Service was friendly, courteous and efficient: the complete and utter opposite of Century Link's customer care.
And then Monday happened. Monday morning the internet connection at the house worked fine. I social networked, I job searched, I caught up on the news. Everything was hunky-dory. Then sometime between 2 and three o'clock the service died. Having been away from the computer at the time I can't be sure exactly when it died, but when I tried surfing the internet after 3PM I received a no internet signal notification.
Sure enough, the router had a red DSL light, indicating it wasn't receiving a signal from the wall outlet. It was then I recalled from my morning walk a couple of Century Link vans parked at the end of the street at the local junction box. I rebooted the modem a couple of times throughout the afternoon, but nothing changed.
Did the techs do something?
Since I had other things to do that day, I wasn't bothered too much but when my roommate came home from work she was instantly annoyed. And then angry, but that was after her call to Dish Network's customer service.
According to Dish, they showed no down service in the area and since they are a reseller of Century Link's product, they could perform no trouble shooting on the circuit at all. well, it was either couldn't or wouldn't. The worst part of it was, they couldn't even schedule a testing time (with technician) until Sunday. That was Monday through Sunday. Six days of no interwebz.Gah!
It didn't help that +T-Mobile doesn't provide very good mobile service to my area, either, so mobile or tethering were impossible unless I traveled at least a couple of blocks away. And once a couple of blocks away, why not just use the wifi available just about anywhere?
So, Dish Network could provide no tech support to the issue without relying upon Century Link technicians who weren't available for nearly a week? Having worked in the industry for more than 10 years I can guarantee that as their customer, Dish Network should have been given preferential treatment or had their own techs assigned to them by the Local Exchange Carrier.
Second, +Sprint
Not me, but my roommate, is a long term Sprint customer. For nearly as long as Sprint's been offering mobile phone service my friend has been a customer of theirs. Not only that, but she, her mother and even her grandparents are all customers under the same account.
Due to our internet being FUBAR'd by Century Link (more on that later) she was looking to tether her mobile internet to her laptop as is allowed by her account and service plan. However, she's never been able to get it to work properly and since it's never been needed she let it fall to the wayside.
But now it was needed. I happened to be in Lone Tree when I spoke with her and she told me she was coming down to the Sprint store there. Apparently, this is currently the tech support guru bricks and mortar store for the area and when 611 support could no longer help her, they advised she take her handset down to this particular location.
Since I was already in the area I beat her there and was greeted by the sales girl on the floor. I explained that I was there just to meet a friend who needed to speak with their tech support specialists. She smiled and walked me over to the "back" of the store where the techs were working behind a counter, cellphones in various stages of repair strewn all about.
I addressed all three technicians at once (and they all looked at me while I was speaking, so I know they were listening), "My friend is coming down with a tethering issue on her Note II. If you guys want to go ahead and research solutions before she gets here, that would speed up things for both her and you guys."
Then they turned away: one guy back to pulling batteries and the other two back to whatever they were doing on the internet that I couldn't see. None of them asked me follow up questions, what version of Android was she running or anything that indicated they were even remotely interested in being proactive.
Okay. Whatever. Maybe they just didn't want to talk to me. Fine.
A few minutes later my friend came in and the same cheerful sales girl brought her over to the tech desk and introduced her to one of the technicians. She told the guy what her issue was and explained the steps she'd already taken with customer support who then recommended she come down to this store and work with the technicians.I walked away. At this point, it was no longer my business.
A minute or two later my friend came up to me where I was man-handling display models. We talked about this model, that one and a tablet or two while we waited. A another couple of minutes pass by and the technician comes over and asks her to unlock her phone.
She does.
Then he turns around and walks away, not to the technician desk where he's visible but through a door in the wall which closes behind him.
My friend becomes antsy and I ask why (having not paid a lot of attention). She explains that she doesn't feel comfortable, after having unlocked her phone, watching the technician leave her line of sight. He now has access to her entire contacts list, apps, cloud storage, social networks ... everything.
I asked her if she wanted me to say something since I'm much more willing to be confrontational than she is. She said not yet.
After another couple of minutes I finally walked back over to the technician desk and asked, loud enough to be heard by both technicians still sitting there, "Um, where did the other guy go with my friend's phone? She unlocked it and he disappeared. He now has access to her entire mobile life and she doesn't like that one bit."
The technician, the only female of the trio of technicians, told me he just took it into the back to ask another tech a question. I responded by telling her that it was completely unprofessional of him to take an unlocked device outside of the field of view of the customer, especially without informing her first.
Before she could answer, the little guy came back out from wherever he disappeared to. His flimsy excuse was that he wanted to confer with another tech who's personal phone was also the Note II and therefore an "expert" on the device.
I cut him off, explaining again how it was extremely unprofessional of him to take an unlocked phone away from the owner. As though he really didn't understand the problem with taking a an open device outside of the purview of the owner he tried explaining again that he needed to confer with another technician.
It. Doesn't. Matter. I explained again. If anything, he could have asked the other technician to come out to the showroom floor and discuss it there.
He still didn't seem to understand what the problem was and instead tried explaining to my friend she needed to take the phone back to factory settings and re-install all updates. My friend was furious! Why did she need to drive 20 miles out of her way to get the same information from him a technician over the phone could have instructed her to do? Not only that, but he tried treating both of us like we were idiots:
Tech Guy: we need to reset your softwareAnd it went on like that for a couple of minutes with the tech even admitting it might not fix the actual problem. The tech couldn't properly explain to her he meant the OS, the Android or anything -- he just kept saying "software" and then he couldn't be sure a re-install of her base software wouldn't solve any issues?
Friend: what software?Tech Guy: the software on your phoneFriend (frustrated): what do you mean? An app? The OS? What do you mean by "software?"Tech Guy: The phone's software!Friend: (even more frustrated): You mean the OS?Tech Guy: No, the software
A loss of everything with no guarantee of success? Are you kidding?
If he couldn't explain it properly he shouldn't be working in "tech support." Who was it, Einstein, who said if you can't explain it simply you don't understand it?
Whew!
Needless to say we didn't want anything more to do with this tech or this store. Before we walked out, though, I addressed the technician and the other two behind the counter explaining to them this is exactly why I advised them to research the issue before she arrived for support. The little tech guy tried explaining again that the tech on break in the back has the same phone and should be the expert. He still didn't seem to understand that he should have brought the tech out or looked up solutions on an in-house tech support wiki (or whatever).
Needless to say, I almost switched from +T-Mobile to +Sprint on recommendation from my friend and while +T-Mobile doesn't always get the best service, they're at least competent.
Yes, yes, this is a terribly long post but what's the point? Oh yeah, customer service is a lost commodity these days. People are so used to terrible service it's become expected and the norm.
Fast forward a few more days and the Century Link technician arrives a day early. He says he was in the area and saw our ticket on the call sheet for the following day and decided to knock it out while he was already here. After a couple of minutes he excuses himself saying he will check the end of the block.
About a half hour later he comes back and admits someone disconnected the lines to our place while they were out there on Monday. So, Century Link technicians disconnected a customer for nearly a week and who gets the suffer? Oh yeah, the customer. Why? Because there are really only two names in broadband internet in the area: Century Link and Comcast. Anyone else is just reselling those two services. And as it turns out, +T-Mobile nor +Sprint were viable alternatives to loss of wired service.
Google Fiber, where are you when we need you?
Tuesday, 6 August 2013
When I say I'm a *Star Wars* fan I mean I'm a *Star Wars* fan -- not a CosPlayer or convention devotee, but a fan of the Universe George Lucas created and the cultures that dwell within that Universe. I remember being a kid and eagerly awaiting the answer to the greatest question of the time: was Darth Vader really Luke Skywalker's father?
I remember going to a theater in Satellite Beach, FL that was having a *Star Wars* marathon of the first two movies in preparation of the release of Return of the Jedi. It might have been the first or second time in my life I saw a movie by myself since my mother was less than interested in seeing these films.
I remember watching Jedi in disbelief as Obi-wan Kenobi explained to Luke how Vader was his father, turning the Universe upside down for an 8 (or 9) year old boy.
There came many a weekend afternoon watching the movies in syndication and many hundreds of hours watching them on VHS before George Lucas changed the films. (Han shot first, by the way) And then the changes, the underwhelming prequels, DVD and Blu-Ray.
In between all of those movies re- re- re- releases there were comic books, graphic novels and over 100 good old fashioned novels, many taking place before A New Hope and many more taking place after the Battle of Yavin (ABY).
I've read a lot of them, especially the post A New Hope books. A read Splinter in the Mind's Eye where Luke and his sister Leia make out; the adventures of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian before they ever meet Obi-wan and Luke; books about minor characters from the films, video game characters and characters that are only introduced in the books.
I've read over 60 years of history in the Star Wars universe, history starring the re-establishment of the Jedi Order, the adventures of Rogue Squadron, politics of the New Republic and the Galactic Republic and more. Always more.
Like I said, I'm a fan.
On a whim I picked up a new Star Wars book at the local library: Dawn of the Jedi. Taking place more than 25,000 years before the events concluding with the Battle of Yavin.Starring the Je'Daii Ranger Lanoree, Dawn of the Jedi is the story of ... well, I don't really know. Stranded on a system with habitable planets, races from all over the galaxy make their way in a pre-star drive environment. The Je'Daii aren't a religious sect so much as a they are a police force that acts as judge, jury and when necessary, executioner. Nor are they of the light side of the Force, but rather stuck in the middle known as the Balance.
Lanoree and her brother Dal, both born of Je'Daii and both with Force capabilities are two completely different people which the author tries to explain in a series of flashbacks. In short, Lanoree embraces her connection to the Force and revels in it's mysteries while Dal shuns the hidden power he can sense but doesn't trust. Both brother and sister travel the continents of the their homeworld, visiting each of the Je'Daii temples for instruction in the Force.
In the "contemporary" storyline, Lanoree, a Je'Daii Ranger, is given the mission of stopping a religious cult from activating a technology they believe will destroy their world. As she learns, her brother Dal is the de facto leader of this cult and has assembled ancient technology that might return those who were stranded in this solar system eons before back to the stars.
I was really hoping for more history into the Jedi Order with this book, but was severely disappointed. Maybe the the author wasn't given leeway to delve deeper into the mysteries of the pre-Jedi force users or maybe he just didn't know how to translate the vision to paper. Instead we have a heroine who dotes on her younger brother, who travels with him over land and on foot for weeks on end, each other their only company, but who is apparent'y not smart enough to engage her brother in conversation about his distrust of the Force. It isn't until nearly the end that he explains why he feels like a slave to the will of the Force and turned his back on the power.
The brother/sister relationship just didn't seem real to me.
And then there was the technology. As we learn, this story takes place 10,000 years after these races were stranded in this system. They have space ships, blasters, amazing technology for terra-forming and war. Lightsabers aren't around yet, but droids are abundant.
My main issue with the technology is looking at the history of tech in our world and our time. In the past 100 years we've seen miracles come to life; we've seen the invention of the telephone and it's metamorphosis into the cellular technologies. We've seen computers that took up entire floors of buildings that have less power than the laptop I'm writing this post on. We've launched people to the Moon and back with computers less powerful than my cell phone.
And yet, in 25,000 years the technology of the Star Wars universe is nearly the same. Space ships that can travel in atmosphere and space easily, granted without hyperspace or warp technology; navigation computers, droids, cities built on technology that rivals even the Galactic Civil War, twenty-five eons later.
I was expecting a primitive world, perhaps with airships or ocean vessels, where the proverbial "dawn of the Jedi" was a story of the origins of Force sensitive people: what planet/system they were from or how they came together to form an organization called the Je-Daii. Instead, we get more of the same, just without the political and social tie-ins surrounding the original trilogy.
I'm guessing, at this point, the "dawn of the Jedi" will be the metamorphosis of the Je'Daii into the Jedi Order we all love.
It's sad really. Given Disney's acquisition of the Star Wars franchise and their promise to make more films, this was a perfect gateway into a "new" old universe without having to keep up with a thousand years of "contemporary" history. It could have been a blank slate, if you will, but it's not.
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