Category Archives: BUSINESS

Broadband, BUSINESS, RANDOM REVIEW, TECH, WHATS GOING ON

RANDOM REVIEW REVISITED: Sprint Overdrive

Read the Sprint Overdrive review here.

After purchasing my Sprint Overdrive about a year and a half ago, I was a pretty happy camper: I could access the Internet from pretty much anywhere, even in the hole in the Internet that is my hometown of Odem, Texas.

Two problems eventually arose, though. The first being that my income took a pretty nasty drop (like to zero) and so I came to rely on my Overdrive as my sole source of internet.  While it served that purpose fairly well, I couldn’t help but notice the less expensive alternatives that were popping up courtesy of pre-paid providers such as Cricket and Virgin Wireless.  After my employment situation stabilized, I wondered if it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to ditch Sprint and use a prepaid device for those few occasions when I needed internet on the go.

Overdrive with "battery critical" message

He's Dead, Jim

The second thing that happened was that the Overdrive stopped working completely.  Turning on the device resulted in a “Battery critical. Charge Immediately” message appearing on the screen, and after a few seconds, the device would turn off on its own.  Upon first seeing the message, I plugged in my charger and the device reported an 85% charge.  I let it charge completely, and the message appeared.

I went to a Sprint Store and they did offer to repair the device for $35, which seemed reasonable.  Despite that, I decided not to repair it because of the fact that I was not using the Overdrive enough to justify the $60 a month expense.

While it is pretty lame that the Overdrive did not even last long enough to cover the 2-year contract I signed to get it, the bigger story here is that $60 a month for the service is too much for the few times that I actually used it.  My current job doesn’t pay as much as the one I had when I bought it, so I’m cutting back where I can now.

While Sprint has apparently been kind enough to cancel my contract (as far as I can tell, I’ll know for sure once my next bill comes in) I will probably end up getting a 3G USB device from a prepaid provider.  Sure, it’ll be slower, but it also won’t be as expensive, and I won’t be tied down to a contract.  I could also get a new Android phone, but I’m not too sure I want to stick with Google’s wunderkind.  That’s a blog for another day, though.

In conclusion, the device worked great while it lasted, but be sure you are going really NEED an always-there fast internet connection before signing a 2-year contract with a provider for a 4G device.  If you have to think that question over, then you just might be just fine with a prepaid 3G device.  The operative word, of course, is “might,” though, I’ll let y’all know how that works out!

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Books, BUSINESS, CREATIVE, One Sheet Stories, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Writing

Sheet Happens

I recently published my first e-book: “One Sheet Stories” on Smashwords.com. It is a collection of five very short stories, each of which fit on a single sheet of paper.  I’m not making a big fuss about it yet, I’m waiting for it to be approved for inclusion into their Premium Catalog, which would put it on the iPad Bookstore, Sony Reader, Nook, and lots of other places it will be easier to find.

It was surprisingly easy to do, or at least it was after reading over their style guide a few times to make sure my Word doc survived their affectionately named “Meatgrinder” program.  I had fun putting it together and now I can get to work on future books.

I’m also going to work on this website, so if things look weird the next time you drop by, well, that’s just me kicking the tires on some new themes.

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BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT, WORK

Microsoft Outlook Sends Its Condolences

Should I send a "thank you" card to the server?

This came with some flowers that were sent to me by the company I work for.  I appreciate the gesture (Lord knows my apartment could use the greenery) but would it have been that hard to put just ONE person’s name on the card??

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BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHATS GOING ON, WORK

So Long, And Thanks For All the Laughs

Today is the last day at my job.  This is usually a cause for celebration, but in this case I’m not one hundred percent sure that I will be going into a better situation next week.

On paper, everything sounds better: a chance to start over in my preferred field, more money, and the opportunity to work with some good people I worked with in the past.

As much as I like to harp on the fact that I have never worked in a workplace where software development was done “the right way,” I am just as much to blame for my atrophied skills.  While I have dabbled in programming after-hours here and there, I never really dived into it as much as I probably should have.

Despite years of programming experience, I will be starting my job next week as an entry-level programmer.  In fact, the possibility exists that I might be reporting to some of the guys I was ‘above’ in the past.  That doesn’t bother me much; it could be argued I have been starting over every few years with each new job that I’ve jumped to.

My experience has always been that people who say “money doesn’t matter” either have more than enough of it or not enough.  I’ve been in both situations, and while I won’t be making quite as much as I did last year, the ends will have an easier time meeting now.

The company I will be working for is a subsidiary of one I used to work for (and absolutely hated). Both companies share the same office space, so I will see some of folks that I used to work with in the past.  I’m looking forward to that, but on the flipside, some of the folks that I didn’t get along with are still there too.  I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

What sucks is that the only bad thing about the job I’m leaving was the job itself The temporary thing sucked too, but I can’t begrudge them for that.  I leave behind the best boss I have EVER worked for, and I’m not just saying that because I’ve had a bunch of crappy ones in the past.  Unlike the taskmasters, micromanagers and bullies I’ve dealt with, Susanne sees the human side more than anyone that I have ever worked for.  That sounds like an odd thing to say, but trust me, there are too many managers out there that see everything (including people) as numbers and nothing else.  Frankly, I’d rather be “that guy that brings in cookies every so often” than Employee #867640-2.

My co-workers are a bag of mixed nuts which is a very good thing.  Too often, people get ‘assimilated’ into their workplace to the point where they start to act alike, turning the workplace  into a weird cross of 1984 and The Stepford Wives.  I try to buck the trend wherever I go.  Its not like I can stop being me for 40 hours a week, or even want to.  The workplace I am leaving has a great bunch of folks that aren’t afraid to be themselves and a boss that lets them do just that.  As crazy as it sounds, they are real people and I will miss them dearly.

Best of luck to all y’all.

It was fun.

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BUSINESS, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, Videogames

Five Reasons I Think The Nintendo 3DS Will Succeed

Following a successful launch in its native Japan, the Nintendo 3DS will drop into American gamers’ hands this weekend.  I think it will be as equally successful on this side of the Pacific for the reasons below.  I don’t claim to be an analyst, own a crystal ball or have my future self sending me cryptic hints, this is just one player’s opinion.  Admittedly, I have a vested interest in the success of the 3DS, as I will be getting one myself this weekend, so take that for what its worth.

Its not just about the 3D: The Nintendo DS is seven years old, and in terms of its polygon pushing abilities, it was almost dated from day one.  It certainly lacked the graphical oomph of the Playstation Portable and succeeded partially due to the unique games that its touchscreen made possible.  While the third dimension is the hook to get people to buy the 3DS, the biggest improvement will be found in the system’s improved graphical punch.

The 3D Is Nice, though: Nintendo got everyone’s attention at last year’s E3 with just two words: “No glasses.”  While the Big N is routinely panned for being behind the curve in the graphical arms race, the cutting edge display of the 3DS does work as advertised.  While its launch line up does appear to be lacking, the 3DS’ “killer app” is the 3D itself.  At SXSW a few weeks ago, I was not surprised to see fellow attendees being very impressed with the unit’s capabilities at the Capcom booth.

3D is the “Big Thing” right now- Like it or not, 3D is currently very popular, partially thanks to the wave  of 3D movies in theaters.  While folks are willing to shell out a few bucks more to see a movie in 3D, they are less willing to shell out big cash for a 3D TV set and glasses.  While the 3DS’ price point does seem high, it is in the right neighborhood for a new hardware platform and I’d wager that gamers will be willing to pay for the privilege of playing games in 3D.

Enough about 3D, How About Games Players Want: One reason we don’t see many shooters, racing games or 3rd-person action games on the Nintendo DS is that the system just doesn’t have the horsepower to handle them very well.  The 3DS, on the other hand, is powerful enough for action games such as Super Street Fighter, Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell to be produced for it.  Whether hardcore gamers are willing to give Nintendo yet another chance remains to be seen, but at least this time around, a Nintendo system has the ability to play core games, unlike its underpowered predecessor.

Its Not Just About Games, though: In addition to games, Nintendo has announced that Netflix Instant Watch will be available on the system as well as a ‘short form video service’ that will allow the viewing of 3-D movie trailers and other content.  In addition, an eShop should be coming this summer for classic game purchases and exclusive 3DS games.  The 3DS will also (finally) feature MP3 support in its Sound application.  While none of the above is reason alone to buy a 3DS, they are nice little extras to have and enable users to get more use out of their system.

So, there you have it.  I am sure there are just as many reasons for the 3DS to fail, but I think Nintendo will be able to pull off a successful launch.  Following that, we should see some big games drop for the system by the end of the year to maintain interest and reel new players in.  I should be posting a review of the system and/or whatever game(s) I decide to buy here sometime next week, so stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

Agree? Disagree?  E-mail Eduardo “randomizer9” Soliz at edsoliz@gmail.com

The author received no compensation for this post.

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Broadband, BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, Uncategorized, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

Five Things I Learned From My DSL Debacle

So after the smoke cleared, I got my DSL turned on and AT&T got another customer…well for now, anyway.  It only took a trip to AT&T’s website, 2 customer service reps, one angry tweet, 3 techs, two social media team people, three executive escalation people, about a dozen voice mails, about twice that many phone calls, and seven days.

For my trouble, I’m getting my first month of service free, which I think is fair enough.  I’m just happy that the switch got flipped, and hopefully things will be hunky dory from here on out.  I also learned a few things:

  1. Just use the phone already! I should have just called back the next morning, despite the terrible experience I’d had with the first CSR.  Its just quicker, especially considering..
  2. “The Power of Social Media” is worthless if the people answering the tweets don’t have the power to DO anything. Awhile back, a friend of mine had a problem with Netflix that he tweeted about.  Someone from the company got in touch with him fairly quickly and got the issue resolved.  Thus, when I got a response from AT&T’s social media people, I got excited that someone was going to get something DONE about my problem.  Sadly, the only thing the social media mavens that answered my angry AT&T tweets did was tell me to wait for a phone call that would come at some indeterminate time.  Of course, once I got past the social media d00dz, I found out:
  3. Just because they’re “executive escalation” doesn’t mean they want to talk to you. I don’t think I’ve ever played as much phone tag as I did with the executive escalation gal. Part of it was because of my job, which entails answering phones, and part of it was because of the phone system at AT&T, which did not put me through to the person directly.  Whenever I had time to speak, I had to leave a message and hope that she called me back before I got busy again.  This is hardly efficient, especially considering that…
  4. Competence is not “expected behavior” This was not the first time I had ordered DSL service from AT&T.  I had expected the positive experience I’d had before to be repeated.  Sadly, this was not the case; the smart people I’d spoken to years ago have probably either been laid off or hopefully, moved on to bigger or better things.  As for me:
  5. I may just be too patient.  I probably should have thrown in the towel after the social media dweebs told me to wait 48 “business hours” for a phone call but I was desperate to get back on the intertubes and I wanted to see this whole thing through.

So I now have sweet, sweet, internet and life is good.

Aww, crap…

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Broadband, BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

GAME OVER. Press Start To Begin!

Evening of Monday March 8, 2011.

I left a message with the Executive service person in the morning letting her know that I’d had enough and was going to cancel my order.  We still had plenty of folks out sick, so work soon began in earnest.  Oddly enough, I got a call from a AT&T tech during my morning break.  After asking me if I had my own modem plugged into the phone jack (being repeatedly asked that question was another annoyance) he was going to get everything set up outside.  I reluctantly agreed.  After all, I had nothing to lose, and I wasn’t exactly clamoring to deal with Time Warner Cable.

I had to make a trip to the bank during lunch, but before I took off, I left another message with the Executive gal letting her know that I was going to give it one last shot before packing it in.  The morning had been busy and I was feeling a little frazzled, so I drove the few miles to the bank with the windows open and the radio on.  Arriving at the bank, I discovered that Executive gal had called while I was on the road.  I didn’t feel like leaving another message so I left the phone in the car while I went to take care of my business and have some lunch.  Of course, during that time, she had called again.

We played phone tag for the remainder of the afternoon.  I don’t know if it was the long day I was having or the constant stream of apologies that got thrown my way, but I did not want to talk with her.  I had planned on leaving early to see if my connection was working, I had just enough time to get home, check the modem and leave a final message with Executive gal.  That plan got shot to heck as I ended up getting stuck on two consecutive long calls with two irritating customers. It was past my usual time to go home and I was pretty beat.  The trip home was longer than usual, thanks to an accident that had occurred less than a block away from my apartment which totally hosed things up.

Being stuck in traffic is one thing, but being stuck in traffic just a few blocks away from home is maddening.

I was all but ready to collapse into bed for a quick nap.  Before doing so, I half-heartedly checked the modem again.  This time, I was greeted with four solid green lights and a fifth one that was blinking green.  They finally freaking did it.

HALLELUJAH!

I hastily plugged in my laptop, opened up Firefox and saw an AT&T error page.  Aww.

The error page provided me with a number to call.  I hesitated for a pretty good while before picking up my cell phone, steeling myself for another craptacular experience like the one I’d had just a week earlier.  The prize was finally within reach, I hoped that I didn’t get the same idiots that I had spoken with the week prior.  I didn’t.  Instead, I got a gentleman from India, who called himself “Ed.”  Go figure that one out.

As an aside, I’ve always wondered:  do those folks pick names out of a hat before signing in to their phones?  I just picture a bunch of people in India sitting at their desks practicing their new names before work begins.  “Ed” got lucky, I remember speaking with a less-than-convincing “Gladys” some time ago.

Moving on, I let “other Ed” walk me through the process, and except for one  hiccup that was my fault he got me on the tubes and I was now a happy geek:

Not bad at all!

I plan on calling Executive Girl in the morning to let her know that everything got done and that I would be hanging around with AT&T for awhile.  For all the aggrivation, I will be getting a free month out of the deal and look forward to being “always on” again.  I’ll probably do one last wrap-up post after this, but for now I will bask in the glow of the sweet sweet internets.  Thanks for pulling it off in the end, AT&T!!

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Broadband, BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH

Freaky Friday

Afternoon of Friday, March 4, 2011

The last thing on my mind today was AT&T.  The “other important call” I had scheduled to take during lunch was a phone interview.  My current job is a temporary one; so technically, I could get the old heave-ho at any time.  I’d been burned in the past by being overly optimistic, so I decided to be overly pessimistic and assume that each day at work might be the one where I turn in my badge.

The day started out well enough: I got up, got ready for work, checked out the nice new H-E-B near my apartment, and stopped for a bite of breakfast and a blog update before the workday started.  I was feeling pretty good: this was going to be the first payday I’d had in awhile, and I was looking forward to seeing that direct deposit drop into my virtual wallet.

I logged onto my work computer and decided to take a quick peek at my bank balance before getting started.  I was disappointed to see it was about the same as it had been a few days before.  That meant I was going to have to wait for the check to arrive in the mail.  I shrugged it off, but at the same time I hoped that it wouldn’t take too long.

As I started work, I noticed the guy next to me was sounding pretty rough.  I could hear him constantly coughing, and he soon went home sick.  I also noticed that we were quite busy and sure enough, I soon learned that there had been a few people that had called in sick.  This did not bode well for my lunchtime plans.  Sure enough, about twenty-five minutes before lunchtime, I got a call from some idiot who kept me on the phone for an hour.  My heart sank as I felt the cell phone on my hip ring once, and then twice.  Needless to say, I was in a bit of a mood when I finally left for lunch.

I ordered and then sat down to check my voicemails and return calls.  Sure enough, the interviewer had called at 12 on the dot.  I left a message on her voicemail then listened to the AT&T gal’s message.  She wanted to try to reschedule a time for a tech to come out.  I was confused and asked her why the tech had to be there.  As it turns out, because my phone line was currently unused they could not automatically assume that it worked.  The last time I had ordered DSL, I actually had a landline so they knew that it worked to a certain degree.

oh.

It would have been nice if someone had TOLD me this sometime over the past three days: the tech didn’t write it on the note on the door, the idiot CSR didn’t say it even though I kept bringing up the self-install thing, the 2 social media reps were as useless as a knife in a soup-eating contest and the first executive whatchamacallit only served to bounce me to the second executive whatchamacallit.

I had to go to Mount Doom and back and talk to all those people just to find out something that should have been posted on the order webpage or put in some phone guy’s script or computer screen.  That is just plain nuts.

The Executive phone person asked when she could schedule someone to come out.  I told her about the whole ‘can’t miss work’ thing and she told me that their installers don’t work on weekends.  Glorious.  She said she was going to try to get someone out on Saturday.  Feeling cooperative, I told her that I would call the apartment to see if they could let their tech in while I was out of work.  She asked me to leave a message when I got a decision.  The apartment people said yes, but I was really unsure about doing that so I left a message with her saying that I needed a weekend appointment.

I went back to work after that.  Things were still busy, and with about an hour and a half to go in the day I took a break to check my voicemail.  I got two messages, the first was from the Executive girl asking me to call a “DSL Specialist” to verify the appointment and answer some questions he would have for me.  The second message was from that guy.  He had already attempted to call me but I had been too busy at work to pick up. I called the guy’s number and got a message saying he had already left for the day a half-hour ago.  Seriously??

I left a message anyway and also left a message with Executive girl letting her know I had just missed the boat because DSL guy had decided to pack it in early for the weekend.  Yeah, that’s the kind of day I was having.

Game Over.  Bueno, bye.  Sayonara.  Thanks for playing.

I had all I could stand and I could stand no more.  I figured the next time I got called back I would be telling Executive girl I give up.  Un-frakking believable.  Executive girl called back and she was very apologetic, even more so than before.  That’s saying something, because every time I spoke with her she started by apologizing for the delay and their lousy phone system.  It says something about the phone company when they have to apologize for their own phone system.

After kissing my feet for way longer than necessary, she told me to call DSL guy back.  She assured me that yes, this time he would be answering.  I called him, and to my surprise, he answered, asked me if I had a modem plugged into the phone (I did) and told me a guy would be coming on Saturday morning to get everything fixed up.  Yeah-yeah, sure-sure.

Well, here we go again!

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BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT

Save Me, Telephone Superman!

Evening of Thursday, March 3, 2011

I think I’m over being “mad as hell” with AT&T.  Instead, I’ve decided to ride the crazy train and see where it takes me.   Besides, I’m no worse off now I was before.  Should all else fail, I can always go to the competition.  On a certain level, it’s even fun watching AT&T stumble around like a drunken brontosaurus.

At this point, I’m supposed to be waiting for Telephone Superman to get in touch with me so that he can get my apartment hooked up to the tubes.  Realistically, though, I think what’s going to happen is that he’s going to ask me a few questions and then either schedule someone to go out to my place (which brings us back to square one) or apologize profusely and THEN schedule someone to go out to my place.  Either way, I’m boned.

I have an hourly job right now.  I don’t have any vacation days at that job right now, so taking days off means not getting paid for that day.  I literally cannot afford to take time off during the week, and on Saturdays, I am busy attending or helping out with various nerd gatherings and events, and on Sundays I have band practice.  My busy schedule is why I wanted to do the self-install.  Besides, the installer has no reason to enter my apartment unless things are really borked up.

Now if the tech came by, flipped the switch, saw that something was borked up and had to do something inside, somebody should have TOLD me that by now: the installer could have written something on the note he left, the nimrod CSR I spoke to should have seen it on his screen, and I’ll even go as far as to say that the guys responding on Twitter should have seen that SOMETHING was screwy after seeing me unleash some “nerd rage” on the tubes.  That’s water under the bridge, though.  I figured I’d give them a few days to call and once my patience runs out, I’ll just nuke it all and give Time Warner a ring.  Luckily (or unluckily, perhaps) I am a very patient person.

Now if Phone Dude didn’t flip the switch at all because I wasn’t at home, he screwed up.

At about 930 in the morning yesterday, I got a phone call.  It was a person from AT&T’s Executive Service something-or-other.  She apologized for the inconvenience and told me that someone would be calling me back to get things taken care of…within 48 hours.  Grr.

Luckily it didn’t take that long, I got a call in the afternoon (that I missed) from another person somewhere within AT&T’s secret underground lair.  It was another gal who should be THE person to get things squared away, but I couldn’t just call her, I had to leave a message and once I did so she would call me back within a hour.  Yeah, that’s convenient!  The problem here is that my job is answering a tech support line:  if my cell rings while I’m helping a customer I can’t pick up.  I left a message at five hoping that she would ring me before a customer did.

“Eduardo’s Dumb Luck” kicked in, so of course, my cell rang when I was on the line with a customer.  Luckily, the customer was on hold, so I quickly answered.  The Executive Customer person asked me if I had some time to discuss the problem (gee, its a shame it isn’t written down somewhere, like say, a blog!) which I obviously didn’t, so I asked her to call me back during my lunch break today.

Of course it wasn’t until after I ended the call  that I realized I was expecting another important call at that same time.

Crap.

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