Intellidick.com - Pure Insanity

Has anyone noticed a steady decline of service quality in UPS here lately? My last few run-ins with UPS have not been pleasant.

The last major item that came in via UPS was a server that I purchased. It was damaged… I know the box was heavy and all but it had obviously been dropped on its corner. It was wet outside that day and I could see the water on the corner so I assume it happened on the way up to my door. No major damage, just the face place. Bummer. The next week the rails for the server came in and the box for them had suffered the same fate. The sad part… both packages were packed by “professionals” at the UPS store and shipped to me in UPS boxes packed by UPS employees. Pitiful.

I recently had to send my Xbox 360 back for service due to my run in with the Red Ring of Death. The UPS guy showed up with the empty box that Microsoft sends you and we both had a good chuckle because he already knew I had a dead console based on the address of where it came from and the fact that it was empty. He smiled and said he’d see me in a few weeks when they returned the console in that same box. Off to UPS my Xbox 360 went and one week later I get a notice from MS saying that it has been shipping back. (48 hour turn around, bravo Microsoft Xbox service center!)

Now I’m excited… I’m ready to have my Xbox 360 again. And here’s where the drama begins.

• 07/02/2008, Afternoon some time - I receive a call from an unfamiliar number. It’s an automated message from UPS saying I have a package arriving tomorrow that will require a signature. I jump online and look at the tracking number Microsoft gave me. Sure enough, it’s my Xbox. Now i’m really excited.
• 07/03/2008, 08:00 - I’m at home, waiting for my Xbox.
• 07/03/2008, 10:00 - I decide to track my package. I get the weirdest message… something is wrong with the label on the package but apparently it has been repaired. The package no longer has a delivery date and says “Exception” instead. Weird, but okay, whatever.
• 07/03/2008, 11:20 - I track the package again. The package is now back to normal status… to be delivered on Monday! Too bad i’m going to be out of town all next week and i’m already sitting on my tail at home waiting for this package. No big deal. I’ll just call UPS and set it up for a “will call” pickup.
• 07/03/2008, 11:23 - I call UPS. I get a really nice lady who tells me that she’ll have someone from the Palatine, IL center call me back within one hour with a status as to when I can pick my package up. Now i’m happy again. Nice lady too.
• 07/03/2008, 11:37 - Marie from Palatine center calls me. Wow! Fast response! Go UPS! But wait… The package never made it to Palatine this morning. It must be on the truck! Marie tells me that she’s going to find out and she’ll call me back. No problem. Now we’re getting somewhere and maybe the web site is just out of date. If a UPS Representative is reading this post, Marie was a really nice lady as well. She really was making an effort to help… read on for the part where the experience goes bad.
• 07/03/2008, 11:45 - Once again, super fast response from UPS Palatine. They’re either really good or really bored. Either way, i’m happy that they’re being so responsive. Marie tells me that the package is not on the truck nor in Palatine and that I can expect it Monday. If nothing else, call her and she’ll put the package on hold in Palatine and I can pick it up when I return. I’m a little angry at this point because i’ve now stayed at home today waiting for them. If I worked a normal desk job i’d have had to have taken off of work and would be pissed that my package didn’t show. But whatever, okay. I’ll figure something out.
• 07/03/2008, 12:03 - I decide to call UPS corporate back and have them track my package. Them not being able to tell me where it is right now is unacceptable. They really need to at least provide me with a current location of the package because it should be in Palatine. I get another nice lady at UPS corporate. I tell her the story and that neither Palatine nor the driver have it and I would like to know the location and expected delivery date so that I can make arrangements for someone to be home to sign for it. She tells me that it’s not a problem and she’ll have someone from the main Chicago center call me. It must be there still.
• 07/03/2008, 12:27 - UPS Palatine calls again. Wait? UPS Palatine? Why would they call me. I was expecting a call from Chicago center. Hmmmmm… Okay. It’s not Marie this time. It’s some other lady that I didn’t catch her name. She was talking too fast and in a very abrasive tone. She “informs” me that she was sitting next to Marie when I was on the phone and that there’s nothing else she can do. She then tells me that my package should go out on Monday and that I need to call by 07:30 on Monday morning if I want to have them pull it from the truck for a Monday will call. I started to explain to her that I wouldn’t be in town but decided to just save it because she’s obviously angry at me for calling again and isn’t going to help me. She was quite possibly one of the rudest customer service representatives that i’ve ever spoken to.
• 07/03/2008, 12:35 - The second time I called UPS, the lady told me that i’d have to call the sender of the package to escalate any further. It was a nice way of telling me to stop calling and that they weren’t going to help me anymore. So, that’s what I did. I called Microsoft. Unlike my first experience with Xbox 360 support, I get a really unfriendly individual with poor english skills. Oh joy… i’m screwed. I explain the situation. The first thing he does it try to give me the UPS tracking number and disconnect the call. I explain that I have the tracking number and I need Microsoft to escalate with UPS. He then proceeds to track the package himself and tells me that it will be here tomorrow. I try to explain again. He tells me he’s going to let me talk to his supervisor. After almost 15 minutes of holding, he returns… no supervisor on the phone. He then trys to give me the URL to get to UPS and track the pacakge. I explain to him that i’ve already done it. He tells me “but the status was updated 10 minutes ago!”. I jump on and check and no, it wasn’t… he’s in a different time zone and doesn’t realize that the web site isn’t updating for his timezone. I explain to him that it’s in central time, not wherever he is. That update was 1h10m ago, not 10m ago. Oh joy… I have one of “those” customer service representatives. We go back and forth for a few mintues with him insisting that my Xbox will be at my home tomorrow. I explain that tomorrow is a holiday and he just does not get it. I guess when you don’t celebrate Independence Day as a good US citizen should, you wouldn’t know that. He tells me that he’s going to go talk to his supervisor again, after another 10 minutes, I hang up.

Do I have a right to be angry? I think I do. UPS called me and said I needed to be here. I stayed home and waited, only for them to say that something is wrong with the label. It made it all the way from Texas to Chicago before somebody noticed the label? It was supposedly illegible. Funny… it was legible when they used it to look up my customer record for my phone number. My other concern is that they can’t find the package and aren’t willing to help me track it. I wonder who’s kid just got a repaired Xbox 360. Only time will tell but it bothers me that UPS employees know the box and address of repaired Xbox 360’s that well. Even the UPS Corporate lady made a joke about it.

Maybe i’m over reacting here but damn… what an annoyance. A total array of cluster f*** just to get an Xbox shipped from Texas to Chicago. Time to find a new shipping carrier.

I’ve recently watched the following movies…

• Blade Trinity -http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0359013/
• Stealth - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382992/
• The Illusionist - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443543/
• Next - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435705/
• I now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762107/

After watching all of these movies, I only have one thing to say… Jessica Biel is hot. Most of the movies suck in one way or another, but yeah, she’s hot.

Closing it down and then returning a few hours later to find it still sitting in my process table taking 120 megs of memory. I love that. I closed it… it didn’t listen. The task tray icon is gone, it should be closed… it’s not. The main window is gone, it should be closed… it’s not. I especially love when I go to restart Outlook and it won’t because the old process is hung up and I have to go to task manager and kill it. That just makes me happy.

Thanks again guys, I didn’t like that memory anyway. I probably needed to upgrade… 4 gigs just doesn’t seem like enough for some reason. Especially for a 32-bit OS that doesn’t allow me to use it all anyway.

Do I seem angry or just beaten down after years of this. And yes, it’s patched up to the maximum. It’s Outlook 2003 on Windows XP. I don’t do any crazy stuff to the PC. It’s a work machine, totally standard installation. Nothing exciting at all.

Oh well… another day, another piece of crappy code. Tune in soon for my discussion on Linux ATI video drivers and display corruption!

After 5 years of fighting, I think i’m ready for a new desktop PC. When I built this PC, I decided to dump a ton of money into it. Here are the original specs.

• ASUS A7M266-D Motherboard (Dual Socket AMD)
• 2 AMD Athlon MP 2100+ Processors
• 1 GB PC2100 ECC DDR Memory
• 64-bit PCI Compaq RAID controller (don’t remember the model # anymore)
• 64-bit PCI Intel PRO/1000 Dual Port Ethernet adapter
• 2 15K SCSI 36GB Seagate Cheetah drives
• Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti 500 (Top of the line in consumer graphics at the time)

This thing was amazing. Very fast machine at the time.

5 years down the road, the RAID controller has died and been replaced by an Adaptec with more cache. The video card died and was replaced by a GeForce 4 Ti 4600. Both of the original processors went super nova and had to be replaced. I’m running MP 2600+’s now. (Which the board doesn’t correctly recognize because of their stepping) Everything is now in a different case with better cooling and has a new power supply. So with the exception of the motherboard, RAM, HDs, and Ethernet cards, it’s all been replaced.

Two days ago… it died again. Apparently the fan went out on the video card and took itself out in a matter of hours. No warning for me of course, I run Linux and it’d be too simple to send me a desktop alert and shut down gracefully. I’m sure there is some kind of super-techy alerting system that I neglected to wire up in Linux, but that’s another rant altogether. I was actually looking at the monitor when it died… no warnings, nothing.

So now i’m faced with the decision, repair it again or just replace it. I’m so sick and tired of fixing my PC. I can’t begin to explain my total disgust for this machine. When it runs, it’s still a great performer and does whatever I need it to do, it’s just that it doesn’t run that often.

Oh well, I guess i’ll join the masses and just buy a pre-built machine with a nice 3-year on site warranty! Just kidding, I’m sure i’ll build again. I’m just perturbed with the whole thing right now. The thought of some high school kid coming over to try and help me fix my PC just makes me want to gag, so yeah, i’ll most likely build.

I was just taking a moment to reflect on the fact that I just got an email alert from my fish tank. It was informing me that the pH inside of my Calcium Reactor was a touch too high. And to make it even more geeky, I got the email on my BlackBerry.

So anyway, special thanks to Neptune Systems for making the AquaController III so that I can get an email when my pH is a bit off.

For you fish geeks out there, the AquaController III really does rock. It’s a great tool for managing your Aquarium while you’re out and about.

I’ve been running with Ocadia for a while now and it’s been a good friend, but it’s time to upgrade. Wordpress 2.3 broke the theme (notice the broken tags). Ocadia isn’t even listed on the compatibility list for Wordpress 2.5, so I take it that means I need to upgrade.

How about somebody linking me to a fitting (and free) WP 2.5 compatible theme, eh? I’m also looking for a Coppermine theme as well if somebody runs across one of those that matches somewhat.

They finally did it. Rock Band got a new free download, the ending song from Portal. GLaDOS finally gets to take another shot at me by making me play that song over and over again on Expert. Call me a geek or whatever, but hey, i’m Still Alive.

Well, I was “still alive” until Microsoft took my Xbox 360 away from me. I suppose GLaDOS finally get her way and just blew up my Xbox so I couldn’t finish the song. Little did she know, it’s still under warranty.

Well folks, I got hit tonight. I was about to kick into some Rock Band and there was an update out for my Xbox 360… I downloaded it, rebooted, and the console worked fine. I grabbed my trusty guitar and went after it. Two songs into it, the game crashed and locked up the console. Okay, bad sign, it’s never locked up like this before. I reboot, it comes back! I hit the button to start Rock Band, the game freezes at the opening screen… console lucked up complete again. So now i’m thinking that it must be that the update broke Rock Band. I’ll be angry but I know they’ll fix it soon so no big deal… right? Oh wait, the console locked up again, this time at the green Xbox 360 boot screen. That’s not good. Not good at all. One more reboot and it finally happens.

Red Ring of Death.

The feared “General Hardware Failure”. I’ve checked the power supply, it has a green light and should be good to go. I’ve pulled all of the cables and reseated them. I’ve removed the hard drive. Nothing. It’s dead. No more Xbox 360 for me. Fortunately, i’ve never cracked the case and Microsoft has extended the warranty of the console. Oh well, if i’m lucky, i’ll get an updated premium console with the HDMI output. That’d be nice.

Anyway, thanks to Microsoft for ruining my night (and my successful Expert career in Rock Band!)

As I read through the news, I constantly see articles about authors who are pissed off about someone taking their works and distributing them in other countries. Here’s the deal guys, you can’t publish something exclusively in one country and then get upset because someone from another country got a hold of it. Here is why I say that… The days of exclusive paper publishing  are dead, digital distribution is here. If you write a book and only release it in the US, somebody will scan it and send it over the wire to their friend in Germany… especially if it’s a series. The Harry Potter book is a perfect example, there was a story about a 16-year old kid who got a hold of the English version of the book and then translated it to French… in a matter of days. The author got upset because this wasn’t the “official” distribution channel (read: She didn’t get paid). I understand her right to get paid for her works, but she should stop listening to the meatheads at her publishers office and release her works onto the world, all at once. Give everyone who wants it the opportunity to have it, legally. Stop forcing them to pirate it in order to get a copy at the same time as the US does.

Millions and millions of dollars are dumped into advertising things like this to make us want them. They advertise them to the point where it’s social status to not have it on the first day. Do they actually sit around and wonder why people riot when they can’t get them? It doesn’t sound like rocket science to me. You advertise something enough that it gets a social status with it (like the iPhone) did, then you do a limited quantity, limited market release? Then you sit around and wonder why people rioted to get a copy? Yeah… totally not rocket science here people. If you don’t want to release it world wide and in enough quantity for a large percentage of the early adopters to get one, then STOP ADVERTISING IT EVERYWHERE you monkeys. You can’t get us all excited about it and then not give it to us.

(Time to rant hardcore) One more note. Parents, stop buying this crap on the media’s time line for your kids please. Make your kids wait and earn their things. Make them understand the value of working for what they want. If they want a new toy or something, put a value on chores and make them do chores until such time as they have enough “credit” to get what they want. But if they do their part, don’t back out on them. Make sure that if you promise something, you deliver it. Stop giving it to them freely and teaching them incorrectly. They don’t “deserve” to have it. It’s not their “right” to have it, it’s their “privilege”. Just think, you could be the mean parent that makes their kid work for everything they have but ends up as an adult with a true appreciation for everything that they’ve worked so hard for. Maybe your kids can have parents who care enough about them to teach them the value of things and not let the media and market teach them that an H2 is the most valuable thing in the world because of the “hummer” name on the side.

If your comment starts with “So, I was watching Star Wars Episode III last night…”, just stop and cancel the comment. (You should also disconnect yourself from my internet, but that’s another story.) We don’t want to hear your comparison of the article to the relationship between Han Solo and his Wookie. No really, it’s not that clever. We don’t care. Please… stop.