A Random Act of Blogging

Something like this maybe…

Create your own image in a South Park character.

Humor

Thanks to Dunstan over at 1976design.com and to Cheah Chu Yeow over at redemption in a blog for bringing Nice Titles to my attention. This is some cool stuff. You may ask what it is. Try hovering over a link in one of my entries and you will see. If a title has been placed in a link then nice-titles will pop-up a modified window that displays the link information. I know, for those non-geek folks this is probably no big deal. But I thought it was pretty cool.

Site Notes

Hooray for Dell for figuring out that Customer Satisfaction is more important then the bottom line. According to FOXNews.com Dell is moving its technical support center out of India and back into the US. This move is stemming from customers who are complaining about the quality of service they are recieving. The main complaint is the fact that the customers can’t understand what the technician on the other end of the line is saying. This isn’t because the customer doesn’t know “geek speak”, this is simply due to the fact that the technicians in India have a thick accent that is hard for us feeble Americans to decipher. Another common complaint is that the technicians are reading from a script most of the time…. and if you you’ve ever had any sort of computer troubles, you know the answer to your problems can’t come from a script.

I wonder if this will be the beginning of a trend. I’m not saying Dell controls the computer world and that everything they do, everyone else will do also (we know that job belongs to our friends in Redmond). But they are a significant player and if their customers are complaining, I’m sure other large companies may be facing the same problems.

This will be interesting to watch.

News

I need to vent a little and what better place to do it then on the Internet with my whole audience (I think 4.5 people now) listening or reading. Installshield is really pissing me off right now. Not necessarily the company itself, so don’t think I’m bashing them, but their program is really getting under my skin. One of the responsibilities of my job is to design the installation procedures, which, for the most part, has been going well. But, then I upgraded our installation software and it has been giving me nothing but trouble ever since. Scripts that used to work, don’t any more, which is the most frustrating part. Now, I am too deep into this project to cut ties and revert back to the old install and the deadline is approaching fast. I’ve been in contact with InstallShield technical support, but I am lucky to get more than one answer a day out of them. I fear that they have contracted their tech support over seas and there are time differences……

Looks like I just got another email from them, I guess I better quit bitching here and see if it is anything that will help. I’m sure I’ll be back for some more venting… till then, thanks for reading.

Random Thoughts

So this guy in California went a little berserk when a spammer wouldn’t leave him alone. I don’t know about you, but I’m not quite to the point of rage as this guy was. Read on for the story… iWon – News

News

Just thought I would throw up a quick review of a new coffee shop that opened up here in Salem on Wednesday. My wife and I had the pleasure of going on Saturday night. Its called Dragonfly Coffee Co. and it is ran by a small group of entrepreneurs, one of which I work with. This is her third job I believe, two more than I would like to have. Anyway, it is a very nice little shop. I enjoyed it greatly. I had a 20 oz mocha, complete with the jumbo “Friends” mug and some of the best Tiramisu I’ve ever had. The tables are all hand-created by another one of the owners/workers there. They all consist of very cool mosaic and tile work. Anyway, if you get a chance to stop in and check it out I highly recommend it. It is on the corner of 17th and State in Salem, OR. Obviously I’m NOT the best review writer so you may not get much info out of this, but trust me its good, just go.

That’s all for now.

Reviews

As you may or may not have noticed… I added Skoobie to my site. This is kind of experimental for me. Go ahead and let me know what you think. Click on some links. Check it out. If you like it click on the Skoobie link and sign up.

blogging blogging

Here is a disturbing image for those of you who enjoy an ice-cream cone every now and then.

Images

Thanks to Cheah Chu Yeow we now know how to get rid of that little virus known as Windows Messenger. Read on for the skinny…
redemption in a blog: How to really kill Windows Messenger

Computing

For all of you out there wondering what to get that geek of yours for Christmas. Scientific American has the answer. (If site takes a while to load, it is because of the phenomenon called the Slashdot effect. So please be patient.)

Scientific American: Top Sci/Tech Gifts 2003 — 25 great holiday gifts for science lovers of all ages

I browsed through here and found a couple I can’t live without, such as, this and this.

Enjoy and Happy Holidays!!

Random Thoughts