Democracy for 15 Minutes a Day [Soapbox]

I'm getting fed up with the SS and all the corruption in politics. I guess that's why I came up with this idea.

I figured you can spend 15 minutes a day to improve democracy. I'm not sure how it works in other places, but in California you're given 15 minutes of break for every four hours of work. If you have a full time job, you get two of these breaks. So I thought you could use 15 minutes or one break to write your representative. You could write your Senator or Representative or both.

You can work on your writing Monday through Thursday. On Friday, you can send it off. Some provide e-mail addresses and some don't. If you fill out the web form on their page, you'll get an e-mail and you can use that e-mail next time. You can save what you write in a Word document or a plain text file. Once you have their e-mail address, you can just e-mail them using something like Gmail and save your draft there. You can just CC or BCC the other two Reps. You will have to provide your name, home address and such so they know you are one of their constituents. Copy & Paste is your friend if you're not using some kind of mail program or web mail.

Just be careful your employer isn't monitoring whatever it is that you're writing. They might not agree with you and may take action. Yes, I know it's illegal, but if people didn't do thing because it's illegal we wouldn't have crime and Skilling wouldn't have gotten a 24 year sentence.

I don't know how much help it'll do with special interests spending ungodly amount of money. Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Unless you're going to go shoot up some people in Washington, I suggest you write. Err, I mean type. (I'm not condoning or suggesting that you take to arms or violence. I'm more of a make love not war kind of a guy.)

I just thing everyone should be more involved and keep vigilance over democracy. At this rate, either Kim Jung-Il (김정일), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (محمود احمدی نژاد), al-Qaeda (القاعدة) or some other yahoo will do us in. For just 15 minutes a day you can help save our democracy.

HP Actually Cares

I was a little surprised by my phone call with HP last Monday. It seems they actually care in the end. It's just sad that it took so long. Their customer service sucks, but on the top of the customer service food chain are people with power who can get things done and want to do right by the customer. At least the person I talked to was professional, courteous, understanding, and generally nice. It was rather refreshing after talking to the script monkeys at HP and Circuit City to take care of things. The top of the food chain is also very speedy. In the end, I did take care of things in the worst possible way for all involved, but that's what happens when companies have bad customer service and/or slooooow.

In the end, I ended up with a somewhat positive image of HP and somewhat negative image of Circuit City compared to before all this.

Free Phone Call

Well, sorta. If you don't know already, Future Phone offers free phone calls to places around the globe. You just call their number in Iowa and use their system to call whatever phone number you want in the countries they are connecting to now. You just pay for your calls to Iowa. If you have free weekend and nights or something similar for your phone plan, you can make free calls during those time to Iowa and have them route the calls.

I guess it's a loss leader. They say they'll provide this free service until 2010. The conspiracy theorist in me says that it's the NSA making things easier on themselves by funneling all the calls to one location.

At Least HP Has A Good Website

Well, even if HP does have sucky support, they do have a good website. It's easy to navigate and use. It beats the stuffing out of Disney or Sony website.

To be honest, HP did have a good institutional support. It may still be good, but their regular customer support SUCKS.

I guess even a big company can't do everything right. Well, maybe they can't do everything right because they are so big.

HP Should Change Their Name

HP shouldn't stand for Hewlett-Packard. It should be something like Hopelessly Phucked or something. I'm getting sick of calling HP. (╥_─) I received yet another driver CD. This was after giving the support guy the part number for the correct CD and having him repeat it back to me. I don't know whether they are incompetent, stupid, or what. May I'll just have the whole thing replaced by the retailer and have them deal with HP. I guess I'll give them a call. I really hate incompetence. (╥_─)

Is Outsourcing Cost Effective?

Since I wrote that inane blog, I feel better. (^_^)

I recently purchased a product and had to call customer support because one of the CD's was defective. After half an hour and a transfer later, I was told my replacement CD was on the way. I had a sinking feeling they were going to send the driver CD rather than the CD that needed replacing. I had a hard time with the support agent since he had a thick accent. It probably added 5-10 minutes to the phone conversation.

The CD arrived quickly. It came overnight via one of the major delivery companies. Of course, they sent a driver CD. I had to call them back, spend twenty more minutes and endure two transfers. I had to give them the part number to make sure they sent the right CD. If I hadn't done that, I'm sure they would have sent me another driver CD and incur more cost and more frustration for me.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's faced this issue. After you tally all these mistakes, do you really save any money from outsourcing? What about the erosion of good will due to bad customer experience?

(In case you're wondering about the product... It was on sale dirt cheap and the quality is surprisingly good. It came from the same country as one of my x's. Go figure. (@.@))

おいしいケーキ屋

かわいい女の子がバイトしているなおいしいケーキ屋はないかな。

Disney Promotes Thievery

There's a new Disney commercial that seems to promote thievery. (@_@) It makes it look fun!! \(^_^)/ It's the commercial with a little girl in a witch costume that flies around Disneyland. While flying through the park, she steals some guy's candied apple. She seems to be enjoying her ill gotten gain along with the process of stealing the candied apple. (Maybe she'll make a good rogue.) I think they are setting a bad example for kids. I also find it odd. I'm sure Disney makes a boatload of money from video sales. If piracy = thievery and thievery = fun, then piracy = fun. (You can apply the formula in many different ways. It's just transitive property of equality.) Odd message from a media company. I guess they got sick of the MPAA or something. Go figure.

WaMu SUCKS, Mkay.

I've had one account or another for about six years at WaMu. You'd think they 'd know how to spell my name by now. NO! (X.x) They don't know how to spell my name. (T_T) Also I can't resolve issues over the phone. (╥_─) I have to go down to the bank repeatedly to get things straightened out because they can't follow simple directions. (-_-#) I just found some hidden fees. (╥_─) They didn't disclose the fees when I opened the account. They told me after the fact. It was very nice of them. (@.@) The department that handles the matter is closed. Hopefully, I can get them not to charge those sneaky fees when they open tomorrow. Anybody have any suggestion for a decent bank with a lot of ATM's and great customer service?

I also had an occasion to talk to MasterCard customer service and the lady that I talked to was great! (^_^) She was nice. She did talk to the lowest common denominator so it took a little longer to get the information out of her, but I guess they get a lot of idiots calling them. I was surprised to get such nice person at a big company. Generally speaking, I find big companies have lousiest customer service.