Recently in News Category

Okay, it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged anything. My recent foray into Facebook and Twitter have stolen focus from a lot of things I would have put in the blog. Additionally, I’ve been neglecting the photo albums. I need to retire some old ones, and put some new ones up.

Recently I finished Rework by the guys who started 37signals. I read it on my iPhone and Kindle for PC, which was an interesting but overall pleasant experience. Putting my phone down at night, and then opening up the PC app at work during lunch the next day and having it go right to the page I was on is amazingly awesome.

Anyway, reading it inspired me to build some sort of software thing in my spare time. So I have been putting some hours into an idea from a friend and coworker, Allen Monroe. He is a bottomless “idea-guy” resource, which is great and inspiring in it’s own way. We also had some of our internet offerings go viral in the same week. He created a parody of Google’s super bowl ad, and I submitted a story and some code to The DailyWTF.

It’s been fun, but it hasn’t moved me toward my personal 2010 goal of contributing something to a Open Source Software project. I’ve been reading a fair amount of code lately, trying to find something to contribute to. If anyone has any ideas, please post in the comments.

Recently at home we’ve been trying to focus on getting more exercise. We bought a nice NordicTrack elliptical and set it up in the basement. I’m finding that changing one’s lifelong habits is a difficult thing. Especially with so much TV to watch :)

With the weather oscillating tantalizingly between Spring and Winter, Jakki and I are very excited to do some camping this year, especially since we now have a big truck and can pack ridiculous amounts of Glamper paraphernalia. The next stop is Trailerville!

The band I’m in (I hesitate to say ‘my band’ since I did not form it), has been having a lot of fun, and with Spring coming on, we are looking forward to many opportunities to play. I’m also working on getting them set up with some kind of blog thing so we can communicate with our fans better.

So to wrap up this quarterly update (and to try to motivate myself to do a better job of posting regularly): please stay tuned and keep in touch; I will endeavor to do the same.

I just found out today (via Felicia Day on Twitter, strangely enough) that they are making a movie of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. It’s got Catherine Keener, Max Records, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, and James Gandolfini in it, and it’s directed by Spike Jonze (director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation). Check out the trailer here. When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite books my mom read to me. Now they just need to adapt A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse To Me.

I have gone through and culled out the best of our pics of La Paz. It’s the newest album on the left, or just click here. We had a blast and can’t wait to return! Muchas gracias to Paul & Kristi for putting us up in their nice casa, and driving us around to see the sights.

We’ve had quite the dumping here in the Inland Northwest. 22 inches last time I measured, and it’s still coming down. Jakki had a hair-raising commute home this morning, and she got stuck just a few blocks from the house. Emelie and I walked down to dig her out, and got stuck again just two doors down. Finally we got to our cleared driveway and got the car in the garage.

Later on, the news they mentioned that all bus service was suspended because of the storm and the fact that the snow removal teams can’t get a handle on it. I posted some pics in our photo gallery. Note the abandoned U-Haul in the intersection. That’s never a good sign.

Since we are effectively snowed in, I’m working from home, although the internet keeps going up and down. We have plenty of food, and since we had the trees pruned this fall, I’m not worried about the power going out. The new furnace is keeping us nice and warm as well.

Yesterday Jakki and I became proud owners of EA’s Rock Band (Special Edition) for Wii. We bought it at Wal-Mart. There was only one package left and the box had a bit of damage; but I thought, “Hey, it’s Wal-Mart, they’ll take it back if anything is wrong.” Right? Wrong! The trend I’ve noticed is that manufacturers are now putting documentation inside the package that forbids you from dealing with the store you purchased the item from, and forcing you to deal directly with the manufacturer. Such was the case we discovered upon opening Rock Band. Upon further inspection, it appears some hapless fork-lift driver tried to drive through a stack of Rock Bands and impaled the one destined for us. The drumset component was totally destroyed. After some choice phrases, I quickly logged onto EA’s support website (as provided in the “Thou Shalt Not Deal With Thy Store” insert). After a miserable experience with some poorly crafted PHP pages and a 3-5 day “Express” service, I’m out a $125 deposit (insurance that I will indeed send the broken unit back). Wow.

This is not the first time I’ve noticed such a trend. We purchased a Hoover FloorMate from BestBuy a few weeks ago, and in it’s package was a similar “Do Not Go To Store, Do Not Pass Go” insert. Fortunately for us, the FloorMate was intact.

The part of this I find disturbing (in addition to the 3-5 day wait for replacement and the $125 deposit), is that the manufacturers have lost faith in the level of customer service that the stores that carry their merchandise provide. Is it that the Wal-Marts and BestBuys of the world have gotten so big, and their profit margins so “wafer thin”, that they can no longer provide the level of service that customers have come to expect from the manufacturers? I see this as a failing of the free market economy because of two reasons:

1- If the manufacturer is going to force the customer to deal directly with them for “customer service”, then what stake does the store have in treating their merchandise like it was their own?

2- How can the manufacturer ever hope to provide a level of customer service better than a place I can drive to conveniently?

Despite these market forces aligning against us, and Big Corp. trying to keep us down— Jakki and I played late into the night. She on vocals and me on guitar/bass, our band, “The Analogues”, made it into Act IV.