Tag: Personal

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Fixing a refrigerator

Lately I’ve noticed that that the freezer part of our refrigerator wasn’t keeping stuff completely frozen despite cranking down the temperature. What do I know about refrigerators? Turns out, I know enough about mechanical/chemical engineering to be able to understand a diagram of a heat exchanger. I took off the top panel of the refrigerator (a lot of the mechanical stuff is on the top of this unit), looked around, looked at the little diagram showing how it worked, and saw tons of dirt. I figured that before I called an appliance repair person, I’d take a look to see what I could do. I vacuumed out the grill to the condenser and as I did, I felt a blast of air coming from the other side of it.

I said to myself, “holy cow, it can’t be that easy.” Well, knock on wood, I looked in the freezer this morning and the ice pop that was mush last night is much more solid. So, I might just have fixed my refrigerator. I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

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MCI doesn’t know how to listen

After my phone call with the barely English speaking MCI representative yesterday where I hung up on him out of frustration (not being able to understand him and the representative not being able to think on his own were the causes of my frustration), I received an email from Rajmohan at MCI:

We appreciated the opportunity to discuss this matter further with you by phone today, and would like to thank you for allowing us to resolve the issue.

I’m sorry, Rajmohan, but you didn’t resolve anything. No wonder people are moving to VOIP and other carriers as service seems to be going downhill (if it hasn’t already) with many large companies. I’m quite lucky that I don’t have to contact service/support all that often as it would annoy me to know end to have to deal with people I can’t understand and don’t have a clue.

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MCI Customer Service sucks

So after writing my last post, I got a phone call from MCI customer service trying to explain to me that they pay the Federal Excise Tax directly to the government. The guy with a heavy, heavy accent was reading directly from some piece of paper and didn’t really understand what he was talking about. I could barely understand him and it is a good thing that I don’t have to deal with MCI all that often otherwise I’d pull my hair out. I tried to explain to him that the tax had been repealed (OK, not repealed, but no longer collected). He didn’t seem to get this and I just hung up out of frustration. It is completely unacceptable to have customer service representatives that you can’t understand. They need to get a clue and realize that if people can’t effectively communicate with their customers, they’re going to lose their customers.

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MCI is living under a rock

I received my Sprint PCS bill today and was pleased to see the slight decrease in the bill (about $6) due to the federal government no longer imposing the federal excise tax on most telecommunications. For those that don’t know, the federal excise tax was enacted in 1898 to help fund the Spanish American War. I also got my MCI bill (local and long distance) and I asked them when they would stop collecting the tax (they’re required to stop collecting it on August 1). Their response was laughable:

Please be informed that Federal Excise Tax is currently 3.00% and applies to all usage (interstate, instate, local toll, and international). This tax is imposed by and paid directly to the government, and has no connection with the Federal Excise Tax on Airline Miles/Rapid Rewards Surcharge.

I almost asked her what rock she (the responder) was living under, but provided links to articles and asked the question again. I’m so not impressed with MCI’s customer service. As long as I don’t contact them, their service is OK. I like having their Neighborhood plan (which they no longer sell) for unlimited local and long distance; the quality is better than VOIP and it is reliable. The only issues I’ve had is the voicemail indicator wouldn’t stop a few times and when we moved, they made a complete mess out of things by cutting off our service 2 weeks early. Other than that, it just works.

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I’m not a plumber, but…

Sometimes I pretend to be one. This past weekend, I finally decided to fix our toilet that seems to keep running as the flush chain keeps hanging. Since I had to muck with the toilet, I decided to replace the major components. It isn’t rocket science to do plumbing, but it is harder than it looks. I figured I could replace the parts in 30-45 minutes. I open the directions (after the trip to Home Depot), unscrew some of the stuff and then get to removing the bolts from the tank. The bolts were rusted and wouldn’t budge. 2 hours later after using my Dremel to cut them off (without putting a hole in the tank), I managed to get the bolts off and put the toilet back together. I didn’t see any leaks from what I put back together, but the next day, the only part I didn’t replace started leaking…another trip to Home Depot to get that part. This part only took about 45 minutes to replace instead of the 3.5 hours to get the other parts replaced. However, I cheated and gave up installing the “LeakSentry” feature as the little piece of plastic didn’t want to cooperate.

So, after a few days, my toilet isn’t leaking and it was a job well done (knock on wood).

This experience (I curse plumbing work every time I tackle it), reminds me of a Fraiser episode where Niles is talking to the plumber working on the toilet. In Niles’s “I’m better than you attitude”, he considers the plumber just a hired hand that doesn’t make as much money as he does since he’s a psychiatrist. They are talking about their cars and determine that the plumber had the same BMW that Niles had. Niles inquires as to why he doesn’t have it anymore and the plumber responded that it was too small and he got the larger model. (OK, maybe my synopsis isn’t great, but you get the idea.) I have a new found respect for plumbers and while I might not want to pay whatever rate they charge, it is probably better than me doing a plumbing job myself and doing it wrong.

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New marathon pictures!

The image CD I ordered from the marathon showed up today. I’ve put up the pictures for all to enjoy (OK, maybe just me). These images are for personal use only and as such, Action Sports International has granted me permission to put them up here. They have done an amazing job with the pictures and the number of pictures they were able to capture. (There are more pictures, just click on one below to see the rest.)

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So now what?

I’m not sure what to do now that I’ve run a marathon. I spent over 4 months training and that took up a lot of time. Now that I’m not training, what do I do? Get a hobby? Hmmm…I’ve been threatening to get a hobby for awhile now, but I’m a workaholic. Maybe things will change on this attempt; I want to get into model railroads, but it requires space and time; I’m impatient for results (that’s why I write software). I’m thinking that Lego trains might be the way to go as they are easy to put together, easy to customize, and I really like Legos. Now, I just have to commandeer part of our guest room for them.

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Hell on wheel

Today I went back to the cycling class that I haven’t been to since I started training in January. There was a different instructor today who seemed to have a thing for pain. The 1 hour workout made me felt like I haven’t exercised in a year, but then I remembered I ran a marathon last week!

I’ll keep going as well as run a few times a week as exercise is one of the best ways for me to get out of the house and allows me to clear my mind for a short period of time.

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The price to pay for being honest

I’m in the process of selling my old PowerBook and in browsing the ads of others trying to sell the same or similar machine, I see people saying “lots of software” or “loaded”. However, none of them say that the original CDs/DVDs are included which means software piracy. I had one person look at my machine yesterday and he was disappointed that it didn’t have Tiger on it or anything but the stock software. As a developer, I have access to OS versions and use them on my machines as all my machines are used for testing and development which means that I don’t buy OS releases (the rest of my family does buy new OS versions, of course). Tiger is no exception; since I didn’t buy it, I re-installed the OS that shipped with the PowerBook. There is no Photoshop, Office, or any other software that people are selling with their machines.

Does this mean that I possibly won’t be able to sell the machine or will have to sell it at a lower price? Absolutely. Is it the right thing to do? Absolutely. People seem to think that leaving software on their computers is an OK thing to do, but it isn’t. This isn’t much I can do about it…hopefully the PowerBook will sell; the 1 year of AppleCare left on it is probably the biggest selling point.

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Is it time to retire WirelessModem?

Four years ago, I wrote a program called WirelessModem which let me use my Treo 180 as a modem for my PowerBook. This was, in my opinion, needed as the Treo replaced my Motorola StarTac and while I didn’t use it often, I could use my StarTac as a modem (it wasn’t pretty with a USB to serial adapter and a bunch of cable). Over the years, I’ve tried to keep WirelessModem working with the newer Treos, but have had mixed success (USB is more voodoo than it is programming and each device seems to have a mind of its own). Some people still seem to get it to work, but many can’t and I don’t have the time or motivation to touch it. I stopped using a Treo a few years back for a number of factors (they’ve improved tremendously, but I still don’t want to have the option of getting my email all the time…it’s too tempting and increases stress).

Now that Palm has released the Treo 700p, it looks like they finally added the ability to use the phone as a modem via both USB and Bluetooth (Bluetooth support was in there for some of the 650s). So, WirelessModem is no longer needed for the Treo series. In my opinion, it is about time. I’ve always thought it should be built into the OS as every cell phone I’ve had could be used as a modem out of the box, except for the Treos even though they cost more than most phones. When I was at Qualcomm and worked on the pDQ phone (first Palm OS based smartphone), having the phone work as a modem was a requirement. When Kyocera went forward with the 6035 and 7135, they kept this ability. Furthermore, with the 7135, the phone registered on USB as a Communications Device Class (CDC) modem, which meant that no drivers at all were required on the Mac (and other OSes). Not to mention, WirelessModem won’t work on MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

People still buy WirelessModem despite me not being able to support it. Do I completely remove it from my website or keep it? I’m definitely not making a fortune off it and it has served me well over the last few years. I think it has outlived its usefulness.