Michaewa

I have stepped into the ring several times with Sprint (together with Nextel, apparently) over the past year or so. The root cause was a questionable practice by one of their in-store associates upon the purchase of a new Treo 650 for my wife. It breaks down like this (It’s legal to own it, it’s legal to carry it…wait, different topic).

For Christmas I bought her the phone, but since she uses the phone number (MIN, for all you outsiders) for business, I didn’t think it would be sage to switch it out from under her and have her customers calling into a gift-wrapped box under the tree. The associate says the simplest way to handle it is to set up a ‘dummy’ number, assign it to the new phone, then after the cat is out of the bag she has it switched back over. Sounds simple enough, right?

Admittedly I am less than dilligent about checking the bill, as it is charged auto-magically to my credit card each month, but when I did check it almost a year later I saw that the ‘dummy’ phone number was incurring a service charge every month. Not a huge figure, but irritating all the same.

I call in and let them know about it and they assure me it was a mistake, and they’ll take care of it right away.

Fast forward to April of this year, I’m calculating expenses for taxes, and I notice it is still being charged. I call in again (very cranky - remember, I’m doing my taxes) and grandstand about mail fraud (a trick I learned by reading The Firm), cancelling my account, etc. etc.

The guy then has the nerve to tell me they’ll be happy to cancel it, but there will be a $150 cancellation fee. To start with, that is complete bullshit anyway, but the fact that they swindled me into the line and that it had never had a single call placed made me even more furious. Fast forward about 30 minutes of me being on hold while he talks to his supervisor and he finally relents and agrees to cancel it with no charge AND to credit me for all the ahem…fraudulent charges.

I relented and returned to my taxes, feeling at peace with the world.

Today Jill is filing her expense report, and notices our bill is nearly $175 more than it should have been. I immediately picked up the phone and called customer care (on speed dial by now) and lost my mind. They had charged me a cancellation fee of $150 and tacked on tax of over $20.

So now they claim to have removed that fee as well, but color me skeptical. As a parting shot, I told the CSR that they had to do *something* to compensate me for all the time I had spent on the phone and mental anguish, otherwise I would soon be sporting a ‘Can you hear me now’ visor.

After another fake ‘check with the supervisor’ pause, she grants me a $25 courtesy credit. Somehow I feel less than satisfied.

So please, if you have Sprint service, call up with a fake concern and demand a ‘courtesy credit’ or you will start shopping for a new carrier. Does a company that charges you to stop using their service deserve to be treated any differently?

I had been wanting to upgrade from my fridge for a while and keeping an eye out for a chest freezer to convert. A few weeks ago, I saw an ad on CraigsList for a giveaway one that was plenty big enough for my needs.

I took my friend Ryan over to pick it up and it was redneck central. Within 2 minutes of our arrival a swarm of cabbage-smelling barefoot gypsies surrounded us and watched us struggle to lift the monster into my truck. We sped away and I began the conversion process.

It was rusted and quite filthy, but cleaned up pretty quickly with a little bleach, and a nice coat of black spraypaint made it look very 1990’s. I built a collar out of 2×4’s and attached an outer layer of 1×8’s to that to hold it in place.

I drilled through the hinges as the holes didn’t line up, and once attached it sealed quite nicely with the addition of a little weather stripping under the collar. I attached a thermostat to keep it at 40F, and moved my co2 tank outside with the manifold mounted on the inside of the collar. A coat of stain, a few holes drilled for the taps and I was ready to roll.

It will hold 8 cornies, with a little room over the compressor for bottles, yeast, etc.

I learned how to ‘code’ on an Apple IIe when I was a wee lad, writing programs in BASIC modeled after Zork. Very simple stuff but it laid a foundation that would last several years.

For a very long time I didn’t know anyone who used an Apple product except for the ‘creative’ staff at some local employers and The Mannequin. Then iPods were all the rage and I got one too (two, actually). After about a year of faithful service mine has flaked out on me. It appears to be a hard drive issue, as the sounds it is creating are alarmingly reminicient of an old laptop (two, actually) that had a little data barbeque inside their walls. This site (just the first to come up on Google) lists the failure rate at around 14% based on some sort of random (probably unscientific) testing.

Now to see if it will be worthwhile to take any warranty action to get a replacement.

[Edit: One year warranty. No dice. Thanks, Jobs. I switch my entire musical life to your well-marketed little gizmo, and this is what I get. Sell, Forrest, Sell!]

I just read a disturbing article about the diamond industry - my friend Deets once said that the most accurate way to describe the DeBeers organization was a ‘cartel’ but I thought that was more influenced by his recently paying a great deal for jewlery.

I suppose if you have access to a resource that not many others do, you will go to great lengths to protect your interest. DeBeers has done so in such a masterful way as to enlist consumers like me into their web of deceit - I would have had serious reservations about buying a similar engagement ring that cost 1/2 as much - i.e. ‘What is wrong with it?’ or ‘Does this mean I don’t love her as much?’

I remember taking some comfort in the fact that although the price I paid for ‘my’ engagement ring was exorbitant, it came with an appraisal ensuring me that it was already worth significantly more than I had paid. Of course you can never envision a scenario in which you would sell it, but it was a reassuring thought.

[link to Paul Phillips post]

I read a book on vacation called Getting Things Done by David Allen.

This came out of a few blogs referencing some ideas of his and others on enhancing personal productivity, which seems like a bit of snake oil for our time. One of the core concepts of the book is that you should catalog everything you have to do in a trusted system [read: your most personally effective form of a to-do list] so that your mind will stop reminding you of all the things you have to do.

Another key concept is that for each to-do, you boil it down to the next physical action to be completed rather than dealing in vagaries, and you specify a context for when / how each can be completed.

I drank the kool-aid a little bit, frustrated by my own lack of productivity (I am chronically lazy) and built a little application to help me manage and track all of my personal to-do items (another form of procrastination).

The result is dread every time I look at the list. Seeing everything I have avoided for so long causes me a great deal of anxiety, and makes me want to go outside and gaze into the sky. Hopefully this is not an enduring outcome.

A good name for an exceptional swimmer in their first year of college:

AquaFrosh

We returned last week from a nice visit to the left coast, spending a few days at our old favorite The Albion River Inn where there are no TVs and no cell phone service. It is amazing to sit on your private back deck and listen to the relentless pounding of the ocean. Their chef is a James Beard Award winner, which is apparently meaningful to some people who place a great deal of importance on food.

Some other highlights of that part of the trip were a ride on the Skunk Train, an abbreviated ride due to mudslides closing a tunnel the train normally went through. California has been suffering through some rather wet weather, and our trip was no exception. We had several days of non-stop rain, and not a single day that it didn’t rain at all. We also went to the North Coast Brewing Company which was long anticipated for me after having their ‘Old Stock’ ale last year. They have adjusted the recipe somewhat, and boosted the ABV quite a bit, making it a little more like brandy than a beer. I liked the previous formulation much better, but we still had some great beers, including ‘PranQster,’ their strong Belgian ale, and Red Seal served from a cask - I’m beginning to think that I would love anything served in a cask.

Next we headed down to Sonoma for the balance of the trip, and split our time between wineries in the area there, Alexander Valley, and Napa. We tasted some great wines at Alexander Valley Vineyard (their ‘01 Cyrus is one of my favorite all time wines), Trentadue (where I made an ass of myself by asking why there was the number 32 on the label. Had I taken a bit more foreign language in high school, I would have known that Trentadue means 32 in Italian), and Prager Port Works. This place is run by a couple of aging hippies with a refreshing lack of pretense - their tasting room is bare plywood papered in dollar bills that visitors have signed and covered in cobwebs. Their port was quite tasty, and we ended up buying a bottle of white port to save for a rainy day.

Other favorite stops along the way were Hanna, Lambert Bridge, and Ledson. The opulence of these places is astounding, and makes the claims that running a winery is a ‘labor of love’ seem a little suspect. They wouldn’t build multi-million dollar castles every 1/4 mile just because they loved to make wine…

I snuck in some beer tastings along the way, and had a few that I have wanted to try for a while that don’t make it this far inland.

• Russian River is a pretty famous brewery for their over the top hoppy beers, and their wide selection of belgian ales. I started out with an Erudition, a nice strong golden ale, and moved next to the Blind Pig IPA. The latter was so hoppy as to nearly burn my lips off, and prevented me from tasting any other food or drink for quite some time after. Jill had a Lap Dance (I bet you never thought you’d hear me say that) which was nice and very drinkable. The establishment itself wasn’t what I expected, much more bar than brewery (yes, there is a difference). The crowd was a little rough, although perhaps because of the repeal of prohibition celebrations going on, the dixieland jazz band playing, or the all day happy hour prices on Sunday. Take your pick.
• Anderson Valley was a very unique place, their facility is solar powered at least in part, an interesting story in itself. Their beers were standard to style for the most part but very clean and great tasting. The one that stood out as a bit of a novelty was ‘Cerveca Crema’ which was a very smooth amber ale that after several tastes and unsuccessful attempts to bribe the barkeep we decided tasted a bit like cream soda. A little sweet for having more than one, but very interesting and unique.
• Hop Rod Rye was a hop-bomb as well that was good to try once but not my favorite, I don’t think I’m as much of a hop masochist as some beer lovers out there.
• Pliny the Elder (another Russian River beer) wasn’t on tap at the brewery but they had it at our hotel. This was a toned down version of the Blind Pig and much more enjoyable. Again, I wouldn’t suggest tasting a beer like this before anything requiring a lot of focus by your taste buds, as they will be shocked for quite some time.

All in all a great vacation of financial and gustatory irresponsibility. Let’s just hope California doesn’t fall into the ocean too soon.

Later this week I will be coming to you live from Northern California. There will be on location updates from Russian River Brewery, North Coast Brewing Company, and a host of other swell spots.

Please try to contain your enthusiasm, and let me know if you’d like me to bring anything back.