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Why are you telling me this?

March 7, 2010

We are in the process of trying to get health insurance. During the interview process I was asked some questions that I didn’t know the answers to. I needed to follow up with my doctor and get back to them. No problem.

I call my doctor’s office on Tuesday and speak with a lady who is very pleasant on the phone. I explain what I need and she says, ‘No problem. Come in to the office on Thursday between 9 and 2 and I’ll get you everything you need.’ Excellent!

Thursday morning I show up at the doctor’s office at 9:20. The place is empty except for 2 ladies doing paperwork behind the reception counter. I’m greeted by one of them who I recognize as the lady who answered my phone call on Tuesday. I explain who I am and she remembers exactly what I need. She hops up, runs to the back where the patient files are and begins looking for my file. 5 minutes later she returns asking when my last visit was. Armed with this information she heads back again for another 5 minutes or so.

Before getting there, I fully expected to be there for about 30 minutes. So a 10 minute delay at this point isn’t bothering me at all. I’m thrilled that there is nobody else in the office and I’m basically getting all of their attention.

She returns a few minutes later stating that she can’t find my record. She punches some keys on the computer for a minute or two, but finds nothing to clue her in as to where it would be. She takes down my cell number and tells me she’ll call me when she finds it. This really isn’t what I wanted to hear. I’d really like to get this taken care of. But, assuming she does actually find it in the next few hours, I’m not going to complain. I assure her it’s no problem, I thank her and I head to the bagel shop before heading home.

As I’m paying for my bagels my phone rings. She has found my file and I can come back anytime. Excellent, I say and thank her again. I grab my bagels and head back to the doctor’s office.

When I get there a second time, the place is still empty. Perfect. She hands me a stack of copies (about 20 pages) of some of my records. I ask a couple questions about them and she realizes that she forgot a couple. She quickly copies those, we add them to my stack and I thank her again telling her how much I appreciate the effort, etc, etc, etc… And as I’m turning to walk away she says, “You are lucky you got me. Anybody else would have charged you a dollar per page.” I thank her again and I walk out.

I needed the information she gave me. Had she told me ahead of time that it was $1/page I would have paid it without a second thought. But instead, she made a choice to not charge me. Maybe it was because I was pleasant the entire time. Maybe it’s because she made me leave the office and come back. I don’t know why, but she made that decision on her own. I did not ask for free copies. So why then, after I have already thanked her at least half a dozen times did she feel compelled to tell me that she did me this extra’ favor?

Sometimes people confuse me…

Filed Under: Ranting Tagged With:

Get rid of what's stopping you

August 18, 2009
Sceen Shot

Hey don’t look now, but this is my 3rd blog post in 3 days. No, I didn’t crawl out from under a rock. No, I wasn’t in a coma. What was stopping me from blogging, you ask? Well, it was my blog.

At the beginning of August we had a group of friends over, including Mr 4th Place himself, Craig. Craig and Ashley were in town from North Carolina where they moved for some crazy reason. But, I digress. Apparently one of the ways that Craig keeps up with what is going on in Vegas is by reading the blogs of his buddies in Sin City. He made it quite clear that I have not been much help lately as my updates have been fewer and far between. I looked back and sure enough, Craig was right. Being right did NOT help him finish higher than 4th place in our poker tournament this time around, but again, I digress.

Sceen ShotI really enjoy the process of blogging. I love writing, I love researching topics when needed, I love telling silly stories. One other thing I love is messing with my site. Before the last time I updated my site template, I searched for quite a while to find a theme that I liked. I had settled on one of the themes from Woo Themes called Busy Bee. I loved the graphics that went along with each story. I felt they were an exciting part of the post and enhanced the visitors overall experience. But, over time, I found that those images had a totally different effect on me. They were stopping me from blogging. So as much as I loved the layout, it was time to say goodbye to Busy Bee.

In the past I have been known to take my laptop to lunch with me and type out a blog post over a burger and fries. But, what I recently realized was that since I needed to also create a header graphic, which usually requires poking around Flickr or Google, I wasn’t always able to complete a post. Instead I would put off writing the post until after work. But, by the time I’d get home, I’d have dinner, maybe watch a little TV and the momentum I had for writing the post had left me. If I sat down and tried to write it the next day, the story just wasn’t there. The moment had passed and that post was lost forever. And yet somehow, I didn’t immediately realize how it was impacting my blog. That is, until Craig pointed it out.

Here we are with a new theme. I still have the ability to add graphics to my posts, but, they aren’t required. The hurdle has been removed and hopefully I can get back to writing on a regular basis. So far, so good.

Take some time and figure out what is getting in the way of your productivity. Spend a little time removing the obstacle in your way. You’ll be glad you did.

Filed Under: Blogging, Ranting Tagged With: ,

The week the universe crapped all over me

May 8, 2009
bad-week

Ahh, Friday evening. The week is finally over. I’m usually happy for the week to end, but this week has been different. As the title so eloquently put it, this week has been less than great. Here’s a recap.

On Monday morning I headed out to the truck to take the kids to school and head to work. As I got in I noticed that the glove compartment was open. My son had already got in on that side of the truck so I asked, “Was that open when you got in?” He confirmed that it was. As I said, “That’s odd”, my eyes locked on the spot where my Sirius satellite radio used to be sitting. My mind does the quick 2+2 math and comes up with the correct result. Somebody broke in to my truck. I did a quick bit of inventory and found that they took nothing out of the glove box, but took my Sirius Satellite radio, a watch (relatively inexpensive, but will be tough to replace) and my sun glasses. What they missed was the $200 tripod sitting under the seat in the back and a paycheck stub that had all my personal information on it. Neither of which I normally keep in my truck, but happy as hell to see them both sitting there after the incident. No windows broken and no forced entry means only one thing, when I got home Sunday evening, I failed to lock the door. Thankfully they didn’t do any damage to the truck. I’ll chalk this up to my own stupidity. Though, I’ll likely get an alarm installed this weekend just in case.

When I got to work I made a call to Sirius to tell them to pause my account because my radio had been stolen and I didn’t want the thieves getting the satisfaction of using it. But, since I had purchased a lifetime subscription a few years back, they are unable to do so. But, they were nice enough to waive the $75 transfer fee once I get a new unit to transfer it to. So, at lunchtime I grabbed Todd and we headed out to Fry’s. I knew exactly where to go inside Fry’s because I had just purchased my now missing radio from them a few short weeks ago when I got the truck. When I got to the aisle, it seemed that the universe was actually smiling down on me for just a minute. The display sign holding the radios I was buying said “$20 mail-in rebate”. Sweet! I grab one and head to the checkout counter.

The nice lady rings up my sale and I hand her my card. She says, “Debit or Credit?” “Debit”, I say. 30 seconds later she says, “I’m sorry, it appears my debit system is down. Is Credit OK?” Not that it’s any big deal to me how they charge it, it still pointed to the fact that things are not going my way. She completes the transaction, I sign the receipt and she says, “Have a nice day.” I reply, “Thanks. Can I have my rebate form?” She says, “One didn’t print out. Let me check on it.” She returns a minute later to explain that there is no rebate on the item I purchased. I tell them their sign says there is. They, in turn, send somebody to take the sign down. I see no point in arguing at this point. I grab my purchase and head for the door realizing that the universe had to be laughing after setting me up and pulling the rug out from under me so swiftly.

Monday evening I tried accessing my website and it took 45 seconds for the front page to load. After a long slow decline in customer (that’s me) satisfaction, I decided it was time to leave my current hosting company. I had already set up an account with MediaTemple a few months back, so now it’s time to move the rest of my sites over. This is a big chore. There are a lot of moving parts and a lot of things can go wrong. I moved two sites over fairly easily and got them up and running within an hour. After the great success, I decided it was safe to move over this site. Sure enough, I got the site moved over in about 30 minutes. Everything was working smoothly so I went ahead and updated the DNS to point to the new server. This can take anywhere from an hour to 48 hours to propagate. During that time, it’s not uncommon for some email to go to the new server and some to go to the old server. The following day the amount of mail going to the old server had been drastically reduced as expected. But there was one problem… no email was going to the new server. I check with MediaTemple and find out that they had an entire grid of servers go belly up causing mass outages. They were in the process of fixing things, but some people were still experiencing issues with email. Great timing for moving my site, huh?

We’ll get back to the email saga in a minute… I need to jump backwards to Saturday evening. I think that’s when the actual week of universal crappage started. Somebody sent me a link to a youtube video. When I clicked it, I was able to watch the video, but no sound was coming from my speakers. I messed with it for a few minutes, but had to put it off until Sunday to dig in and find the issue. On Sunday I unhooked all the plugs for the speakers, sub-woofer, etc… Nothing seems wrong, there’s just no sound. To this point, I still haven’t been able to solve it.

Another big load of universal excrement landed on me today at work. It would be too hard to explain the details without turning this in to a novel (too late, I know). But, imagine that you have had a project stop and start several times over a few months. Then, one day after you have completed the project, something changes and you have to put the, now completed, project on hold.

OK, back to the email issues…

When I got home from work on Wednesday and I STILL didn’t have any email in my new account, it was time to contact MediaTemple. I sent them off a support ticket late Wednesday evening and headed to bed. When I woke Thursday morning, there was a response to my ticket. Turns out, my issue had nothing to do with their server outage. As a matter of fact, none of my sites are on any of the services that were affected. My problem was something they like to call “user error.” When I first set up the site on their control panel, it was still pointing to the old server. Because of that, they deactivate email so that if any sites on their servers try to send email to me, they won’t get caught in email limbo. Once I moved my site over, the final step should have been to re-enable email services. I activated the services and 5 short minutes later my email from the week started trickling in.

I will only take partial blame for the email issue. While I understand the reasoning behind the way MediaTemple handles their email services, it wasn’t exactly obvious to the end user (me). Now, it is my fault that I didn’t send them a support ticket on Tuesday and instead waited an extra 24 hours, but, I was actually trying to be nice. They were still in the midst of fixing their server issues and I was trying not to bother them. Sometimes, nice guys do in fact finish last… -sigh-

So, yeah, I’m happy to see this week end. Next week WILL be better.

Filed Under: Ranting Tagged With: ,

The most expensive RSS feed I read

February 23, 2009
tuaw_header

I’m currently following about 60 RSS feeds. Some belong to friends’ blogs, some are news, some are just for entertainment and then there’s a large group that have to do with electronics. In the electronics category, several of them end up talking about newly available gadgets. Seriously, it’s like they know my weak spot.

ThinkGeek with their endless parade of geeky toys, DigitalPhotographyReviews with camera and lens reviews, gizmodo and techcrunch with every bleeding-edge gadget about to hit the market… All of these have the potential to cost me thousands with their eye candy. But, when all is said and done it is The Unofficial Apple Weblog that costs me the most money.

How is that possible, you ask. Camera equipment is so expensive. New gadgets cost a fortune. How is it that all others are trumped by TUAW? 3 simple words: iPhone App Store. Every day when I check Google Reader there is a fresh stream of new apps being reviewed. It’s rare that in a batch of 10 new posts there isn’t at least one app that I want to try out. Sure, these apps only cost a buck here or two bucks there, maybe even five bucks every now and again. But, that is the brilliance in the pricing. “Hey”, I say to myself, “it’s only $2.99.” Zap. There goes three more bucks. “ohhh”, I say, “it’s only $1.99″ Blamo. Another two bucks.

Rinse. Repeat.

Let’s just have a look at some recent posts, shall we?

Feb 23 – Waypoints. Takes your GPS coordinates and records them and allows you to display them on Google map. Nice timing, TUAW. I’m going on a road trip in a few days. This looks like fun. Zing. $2.99

Feb 17 – Colorsplash. What’s that you say? You know I’m a sucker for cool photo apps on my iPhone so you’ll post yet another one that looks like fun? Okie Dokie. Zing. $1.99

Feb 17 – Lux Deluxe. Not content to keep all the fun to yourself, you send me a link to Wired Magazine’s top 10 iPhone games. Hey, thanks for that! Zing. $8.00

That’s just the past week. I could go on and on. But, to save myself the agony, I’ll quit there. But I think you see my point.

It’s too late for me, but safe yourself. Stay clear of this handy RSS feed with solid reviews and day-to-day information about Apple. They are the source of all that’s evil, I tell you. Either that or it’s just a really handy resource for iPhone apps. Curses!

Filed Under: Ranting, Technology Tagged With:

Incorrect info leads to major stress

December 30, 2008

One of the requirements for running WordCamp is a temporary event license. I needed to get this from the businesses license department of Las Vegas. I went to their website and downloaded the form and was quickly overwhelmed. For some strange reason, instead of tackling the issue, I set it aside and let time roll on by.

I made a call to the business license a few days later and explained what I was doing and asked what all I needed. They pointed me back to the website to the form I already had in front of me and said to follow the instructions. Oh boy, this was not going to be easy. The instructions list several different permits I had to get that included getting inspections for waste removal. HUH? What have I got myself in to? Overwhelmed once again, I set the papers aside and let more time roll on by.

Yesterday I got a call from a very nice lady at the business license office here in Las Vegas. She was following up because she knew my event date was coming up and needed to get my paperwork in. I could put it off no longer, I was forced to get this done. NOW! On my lunch break I made several calls to find out what I needed to do and who I needed to pay. Some of these permits were fairly pricey. This was going to hurt. Thanks to my brilliant timing of waiting until the last minute, which just so happens to be in the middle of the holiday season, I have even less time than I normally would. So, in a panic I fill out some forms, leave work early and head home to pick up the checkbook.

On my way home I decided to call my contact at Palace Station to see if she can provide some guidance. I know it’s my fault that I’ve waited so long, but hopefully I’m not overly screwed. As I’m explaining the hoops I’m getting ready to jump through, she stops me and says, “You don’t need to do all that.” Palace Station has all the permits for 95% of what’s on the list. The only thing I need is the temporary event license, sans all the permits. Excellent, this is a good start. I high-tail it over to the business license office and submit my paperwork. As it turns out, there is one permit I do need to attain. It’s a tax permit that is required because I’m charging attendees for the conference. Still, they let me submit the forms with the promise that I’ll get the tax permit and fax it the following morning. We pay our bill and hit the door.

I check our navigation system and it says that the tax building is .7 miles from the business license building. 10 minutes later (thanks to some fun one-way street issues) we are in their parking lot. We find the right room, put our name on the list and find that we are in for a 1 hour wait. During that hour it became clear that every person working in the tax office was overly nice. They were cheery and helpful and got people in and out of there quickly. The experience was not what I was expecting, I’ll tell you that right now! When it was my turn, I sat down at the desk and found that the lady helping me was training 2 people at the same time. She had a big smile, great attitude and had me in and out of there in under 10 minutes paperwork in hand. It could not have gone any smoother.

If I could make one suggestion it would be that the city of Las Vegas create different forms for the different type of event permits or at least provide a set of instructions that can help you figure out what parts are or aren’t required. Running events is not my normal job so I would have no idea that I could skip portions of that form. It would have made for a way less stressful day. Thankfully, I ran in to 3 ladies today that helped me out, set me straight and got me back on track.

Filed Under: Ranting, WordCamp Tagged With: ,

Do the holidays bring out the worst in people?

December 23, 2008

Maybe it’s just the holidays, or maybe it’s just me noticing it more, but people are a assholes. Today while we were out doing some last minute shopping, I was acutely aware of how rude people can be. For example, if you are walking around a shopping center, you normally stay to the right, much like the flow of vehicle traffic. Several times there were people walking up-stream and they are the ones that won’t move an inch to avoid running in to you. Annoying!

Even still, I typically go out of my way to be courteous to others. As we are entering a store I almost always hold the door for people coming in right behind us. When walking past somebody in an aisle while, we always say “pardon me” as we slip by them as they browse. These aren’t Mother Theresa level acts, but I’m amazed at how it seems we are the only ones in the mall who think to do them.

Tonight while at Ross, we were walking down an aisle that was fairly narrow. A lady with a cart edges her way in front of me and then I have to pull Chris to the side to let the lady pass as I’m certain she’s about to be run down by this lady with the cart. I was so pissed! I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m RARELY the one to start a confrontation. In a situation like this I’ll typically say nothing and just steam about it. But this lady really ticked me off. I made a comment, louder enough for her to hear, I hope, about how Chris was lucky not to have been run over. Chris says the lady said she was sorry as she zipped past, but I certainly didn’t hear it.

After that bit of fun we stopped at the grocery store to pick up the fixings for Christmas dinner. We have a bit of a group coming over, so our basket was fairly full. I headed to the checkout line as Chris went to pick up a final item. As I arrived up front, I stood behind somebody in line just before another lady with a half-full cart pulled up. I then looked up and noticed I was in the 15 items or less line. So I moved over to look for the other lane. Turns out, there were no other lanes open. The lady who walked up behind me zips her cart in front of me in the line. She saw exactly what happened. I was less than 5 feet away. She jumped in front of me on purpose. This time I held my tongue because I knew that if I said anything, it was going to get nasty quick. I couldn’t believe how rude this lady was. Honestly though, I’m not sure why I was surprised.

Listen, if you are going to go out in public, bring along some manners with you, OK? I’m not asking for much. Remember when you were a kid and your mom told you to treat others the way you’d want to be treated? Let’s try that next time you go to the mall, shall we?

Filed Under: Ranting

Photography as a hobby

December 20, 2008

Taking on photography as a hobby has been quite interesting. On one hand, it’s incredibly rewarding personally. I enjoy the final results, I love sharing the photos online and receiving comments about the photos, and I am constantly challenged by the technical aspects of photography (lighting + camera settings + post processing). On the other hand, I’m finding that other people (including friends and family) don’t necessarily see the attraction and therefore have a tendency to give you sideways looks when you pack a photography bag to go to any function.

You have to be ready to take on some ridicule in order to get serious about photography. I have found this especially true when I bring out Bertha. Bertha is 3.5 pounds of awesome. Bertha is my 70-200mm lens that definitely stands out when you attach it to the camera. If I had my way, Bertha would be with me all the time. But, I’ve found that when I go bowling with friends, Bertha isn’t exactly welcomed with open arms. People tend to notice and stare when you have a foot long lens at a bowling alley set up on a tripod so you can take pictures of the ball hitting the pins. But to me, this seems like a lot of fun and a challenge that could help me grow as a photographer.

I’m sticking with it. I don’t know where I want my photography to go in the future. I don’t plan on making it in to a career, but I certainly want to advance my knowledge and talent. Trust me, I’m used to having people stare at me. Need I remind you of this shot of me?

Filed Under: Photography, Ranting Tagged With:

Proof I need new tires

December 17, 2008

I’ve known for a while that I need new tires on my car. I bought my car brand new in June of 06, so the tires aren’t that old, but in Vegas-time, it’s an eternity. Las Vegas is notoriously hard on car tires and car batteries. My two front tires are getting a little bald around the edges, and I’m able to break traction by running over a thimble full of water. But yet, I haven’t gone to get new ones yet and I don’t have a single good reason why not.

Today, as you may have read 1000 times by now, it snowed in Las Vegas. This, in itself isn’t exactly newsworthy. The difference today was the fact that South Vegas got snowed on; and it stuck to the ground. Normally the people in Summerlin get to post all the cool photos of their swimming pools and palm trees covered in a few inches of snow. But for us Southerners, we get to see the snow, but it’s a fraction of what they get up North and it RARELY sticks to the ground for longer than a few seconds. But not today. Today around 11:30am I saw the first few flakes of snow. None of it was sticking to the ground for the first two hours it was snowing. Then it started to collect on some bushes. And on parked car roofs. Then the grass and eventually even in the road. By the time I left the office at 5:30, it was still snowing and traffic was a mess.

When I got to my car it dawned on me. I’m in for a wild ride. My car tires are in poor shape and traffic is horrendous. This is NOT a good combo. I’m going to have to drive slow. So slow that I’m pissing off the grannies on their way to play bingo. I have no choice. It’s either inch along at snails pace or risk skidding off the road and picking up a palm tree as a hood ornament.

My normal 7 mile, 15 minute drive home tonight took just over 40 minutes. I slid to a stop twice. I kept it together nicely and got myself and my car home in one piece.

When I arrived at home I pushed the button on the remote to open the garage. It lifted effortlessly out of the way and I pulled in to the driveway. As my back wheels hit the incline, that was all she wrote. I was going no further. I spun my tires once, then twice and then a third time just for kicks. It wasn’t budging. I backed the car in to a spot on the street in front of our house and walked in. My wife pointed out that other people have to drive in the snow, too, and it may be a bad idea to leave the car in the street. This led to me shoveling snow off the driveway. We piled all the snow in one spot and turned it in to our very own snowman.

Tomorrow I’ll be using the wife’s car to get to work. Until the snow has melted and the roads are clear again, my car and it’s bald tires are grounded.

Click here to see some of the photos I took throughout the day.

Filed Under: Ranting Tagged With: ,

Time for the ducks to line up

December 16, 2008

I’m only about 3.5 weeks away from the start of WordCamp. Wow, let me say that again… I’m only 3.5 weeks away from the start of WordCamp. I need to get my shit together!

OK, truthfully, things are all going pretty well. But, that’s been thanks to some things falling in to place quite nicely. Some of that has just been hard work & manual labor, while other parts have been great recommendations by others.

I’m using EventBrite.com for handling the registrations. This turned out to be a stroke of genius. They handle the order taking, they collect all the important information securely, they let you ask additional questions if needed (shirt size, URL, etc…) and they deliver the cash directly to your paypal account. It couldn’t be easier.

After some searching on Google, I found a great deal on lanyards and badge holders at NameTag.com. They shipped my order the following day and it should arrive tomorrow. Sweet.

For the badges themselves, I’m actually still waiting on a piece of artwork from my designer. But, as soon as it arrives, I’m using a printer who I found through Twitter, of all places. Their website is VerticalPrinting.com and you can find Laura on Twitter @VPG_Printing.

Much of the hard work has been made a lot easier by the team over at Palace Station. They’ve really been helpful along the way. Getting the room organized, discount codes and all the extras that come up along the way. Big thanks to Page and Gina!

And finally, lots of help from friends. Doug hooked me up with the contacts for the conference space, Todd is on board to shoot photos and live blog the event, Jeff is in charge of the video and live stream, Brent is taking care of the internet access, my dad is driving in from California to do sound, my sister is coming in from California to help with registration/packet pickup and Dave was kind enough to loan me a projector. I think that’s everybody so far. I’m sure there will be more before the day arrives, but this has already been a great outpouring of assistance and I’m thrilled to have friends and family so eager to help! I hope they realize this is NOT a paying gig. ;)

I currently have a list of “last minute things” to get done that is on my iPhone and I look at it daily. I’ve been plucking items off the list and I’m feeling pretty good that everything is going to click in to place like a well tuned machine.

If I can get the shirts ordered by Friday, the printing ordered by the middle of next week, I’m going to be in the clear. I think those are the only things outside of my control that are outstanding. Everything else can be done locally. The weekend following Christmas is gonna be a busy one.

See you all there. Right?!?

Filed Under: Ranting, WordCamp Tagged With: ,