Shafnitz

Downgrade iTunes to Fix Slow Backup/Sync Issues

2010-05-07T10:19:00.010-07:00

Update: Thanks to J-Wo, I've added some steps that should make syncing Apps much easier. New steps are in Italics. I've also removed some steps that are no longer applicable.

Like many people on the interwebs, I recently updated iTunes to the newest version (9.1.xx). After doing so, I was faced with a handful of issues that made syncing with my iPhone a miserable experience. Before 9.1, my total backup+sync time each day was about 3-5 minutes. After updating, I was looking at 30-40 minutes for a backup+sync, which is completely ridiculous. On top of that, I was also having issues with iTunes crashing completely when copying certain songs to my iPhone. The only workaround to this was to uncheck those songs to make sure they didn't sync with my phone. Not really an acceptable "solution" in my book.

Fortunately, I have solved both of these problems by downgrading iTunes to the previous version (9.0.3, in my case). The downside is, the process is going to take up a good portion of your day. The upside is, iTunes is back to being functional.

I would suggest reading the full article before following the instructions, just to make sure you really want to go through the trouble. In my experience, it was totally worth the time and effort it took, but not everyone is the same.
DISCLAIMER: I take no responsibility if something goes wrong or this process doesn't work the same way for you as it did for me. I'm simply giving instructions based on my experience. Your results may vary.

Notes:

You will retain your play counts, dates, etc.
You will LOSE the Date Added dates for all your music. They will be set to today's date. (You'll see why later.)
~~You will~~ ~~LOSE~~ the locations of all of your icons on your phone. You may want to take screenshots of each page, or make some other note as to where your icons are on your phone so you can put them back the way you want. No longer applicable. Thanks J-Wo!
You will not lose the data for your apps, even though at one point in the process iTunes will tell you that you will.
I make no promises as to whether or not this process will work 100% for you. It worked for me just fine.
BACKUP your iPhone or iTouch before starting this. If something goes wrong, you should be able to restore without losing anything.
iTunes will see your iPhone/iTouch as a new device when this process is over. There will be some cleanup work to get syncing back to normal again.
This process uses some steps from the official Apple KB for re-creating your iTunes database, found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1451.
These instructions are for Windows. The MacOS process may be similar, but I don't know.
This walkthrough isn't for everyone. I'm assuming you know where some things are located, such as your iTunes Library files, Mobile Applications, etc. I won't be specific with locations of files, since they will be different for everyone.
If you use Smart Playlists that reference other playlists, you may need to fix them after this process is over. You may want to remember or note which playlist(s) each Smart Playlist references.
I don't sync anything on the Info tab of iTunes (Contacts, Calendar, etc.) with my phone, so I don't know how those will be handled. Ensure that you've backed them up however you need to, just in case.
The instructions are based on my memory of an event from a couple of weeks ago. I'll try not to forget anything, but I apologize if I do. If there's something you notice missing while following my steps, please feel free to let me know in the comments and I'll try to add it.
I'm repeatedly emphasizing caution, but there really isn't that much of a risk. If you backup your iDevice and your iTunes library files before doing this, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. If something goes wrong, you should be able to re-install the version of iTunes you're currently using, restore your library files and/or restore the backup of your iPhone/iTouch and be in the same crappy position you are now, without losing anything.

If you still want to proceed, continue reading.

Backup and sync your iPhone/iTouch.
Disconnect your device until instructed to connect it again later on.
Backup your iTunes Library.xml and iTunes Library.itl files by copying them to another location on your computer. Your My Documents folder is a great place. You may also want to backup your iTunes Library Extras.itdb and iTunes Library Genius.itdb files. I did not.
Copy your iTunes Library.xml file to your Desktop.
Delete your iTunes Library.xml and iTunes Library.itl from your iTunes Music folder (or wherever they're located for you). I also deleted the iTunes Library Extras and Genius .itdb files. I don't know if this is required or not.
Rename your "iTunes\Mobile Applications" folder to "iTunes\Mobile Applications Backup"
Uninstall all iTunes related software: iTunes, Apple Application Support, Apple Mobile Device Support, Apple Software Update, Bonjour and QuickTime.
Reboot your computer, just to be safe.
Download iTunes 9.0.3 from this website: http://www.oldapps.com/itunes.php. (I don't run that website, nor can I vouch for them 100%. This is where I got iTunes 9.0.3 from. If you have another way to procure an older version of iTunes, feel free to use it.)
Install iTunes 9.0.3 using the file you downloaded.
Run iTunes. This should create blank iTunes Music.xml and iTunes Music.itl files in your iTunes Music folder. Browse to your iTunes Music folder to verify they were placed there.
Optional: If iTunes didn't put the new xml and itl files back in your iTunes Music folder or if you want your iTunes database to be in a different location than the default, close iTunes, hold down the SHIFT key and run iTunes a second time. This will let you let you specify a new location for your database. Be sure to use the Create Library button so that we are starting with a blank iTunes database.
In iTunes, click the File menu and choose Library > Import Playlist.
Browse to and select the iTunes Library.xml file on your desktop. With this file selected, click the Open button. Your old iTunes data will begin importing back into your fresh iTunes database. This process may take some time depending on the size of your iTunes library. Once it's done importing, it will then go through the process of scanning all the music to make sure everything still exists. If you haven't moved the location of your actual music files, it should find everything. There will not be a pop-up status box for this portion of the import, but you'll see the progress at the top of iTunes. I would wait for this entire part of the process to finish before proceeding. I have about 10,000 songs and it took nearly an hour for the entire import/scanning portion to complete.
You will notice that your Applications tab in iTunes is blank. Double click each application (.ipa files) in your "iTunes\Mobile Applications Backup" folder. They will automatically be moved to "iTunes\Mobile Applications" and show up in iTunes.

House Cleaning:

Smart Playlists:
Once iTunes is done scanning everything, you'll notice the little warning icons next to many of your Smart Playlists, if you have them. This is because as it imports the playlists, other playlists that they were referencing may not have been imported yet. You'll need to edit each Smart Playlist and correct the missing information. If you followed my Notes above, you should have made a note of this information and fixing these should only take a few moments each.

~~Applications:~~
~~iTunes didn't add my Applications back to my library for me, but it's not an issue. Move all the files in your Mobile Applications folder to another location. The first time you sync your device (~~~~not right now~~~~), you'll be able to copy the Apps from your device into your Library.~~

Ringtones:
If you had Ringtones in iTunes, you may need to add them again. Simply browse your music folder for the Ringtones folder. You can move these files elsewhere (if necessary) and then add them back into your library.

From here, things in iTunes should look pretty good. The only difference you'll notice (besides the lack of crashing :P) is that all of your music has today as the Date Added date. This can affect functionality of Smart Playlists, but wasn't a huge issue for me. Make sure things are looking good to you before proceeding. Any major problems here might indicate a step was skipped. If something did go wrong, you can delete the new iTunes Library.xml and iTunes Library.itl files and start over from step 10 above.

Syncing:

Before connecting your device, I suggest going into Edit > Preferences, then to the Devices tab and checking the box Prevent iPods and iPhones from syncing automatically. This will allow you to be sure of a few things before the sync process starts.
The first time you connect your device, I believe iTunes will say something about syncing this device for the first time and that your content will be replaced. If it says that, don't worry. Since we told it not to sync automatically, we can get things setup before the syncing begins. At this point iTunes may perform a full backup of your device, which may take a long time (but fortunately not nearly as long as it would in iTunes 9.1). In my case, it didn't replace my earlier backup, so I had two backup options to fall back on. If it doesn't perform a backup, you can force it to by right-clicking on your device in iTunes and choosing Back Up.
Once the backup is finished (if applicable), click on your device and then view each tab to make sure that nothing is enabled for syncing (everything should be unchecked).
After the full backup is complete, iTunes will recognize all the apps installed on your iPhone and will verify that they are installed in iTunes. With your device selected click the Applications tab, it should show all your synced apps as checked and any that are not currently on your iPhone are unchecked.
From here you can begin enabling the different items you wish to sync and specifying the various settings for each (Apps, Music, Podcasts, Pictures, etc.). As you enable the different items you wish to sync, iTunes will warn you that the content on your device will be removed and replaced with the content from iTunes.
Once everything is ready for syncing, feel free to click the Sync button. If you have a lot of content to sync, this may take a while as the content is removed from your device and then added again.

You're Done!

At this point, everything in your iTunes library and on your iDevice should be pretty much back to the way it was before, but without the pesky hour-long backups.

Again, if something didn't work right or your missing data, you should be able to restore your device or go back to iTunes 9.1 and restore your backed-up iTunes Music.xml and iTunes Music.itl files.

If these instructions helped you at all, or you think something needs clarification or changing feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Schaff-Blog Will Be No More

2007-12-25T22:19:00.000-07:00

This will be my last post on Schaff-Blog. It's been a fun ride, but I now have a new outlet for my game-related blogging. I am starting up a new website with a couple friends: Xbox Overdose. The website will contain news, reviews, deals and more all related to the Xbox 360 and future Xbox consoles. The site is currently "live" but we aren't officially launching until January 1st. Feel free to poke around now though, as much of the site is functional. We hope to add and tweak a few more things before our official launch.

On a related note, our family blogging will now take place on our new website: SchafferFam.com. Heather and I will both be blogging there from now on.

Xbox Overdose

Part 5: My Xbox 360 Repair

2007-12-07T15:32:00.000-07:00

Part 1: My Experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support
Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair
Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats
Part 4: My Xbox 360 Repair

Just wanted to give an update on the 360 repair situation...

As I stated in my previous post about this situation, I received my repaired 360 a while back and my controllers would not sync with it. Brilliant! So I spoke to my contact (Sean) and he said I would need to have my 360 repaired once again. I had to wait another 4 (business) days for a coffin and once I got it, I shipped my 360 back to them ASAP. Once it was on it's way, I spoke to Sean again and asked if I could get expedited shipping once they were done with it. He said they can't do that. Fortunately they were pretty quick to repair my 360 and it was scheduled to be delivered on Monday, November 26th. I would like to mention that for the first time in history, UPS delivered something early. I received my 360 on Wednesday the 21st.

I excitedly hooked everything up and hit the power button, and.... NOTHING! It wouldn't turn on. My heart sank for just a moment. Then I hit the Eject button and it turned on. I felt much better after that. I then noticed that the faceplate on it was not the same one I had before. The only reason I knew that was mine had a ding right next to the front USB ports. This one had no ding. So I pulled the faceplate off and hit the little power button inside and it turned off and on. Thankfully, it was only the faceplate causing the power button not work. I get all my settings back the way I like them and I was up and running. I start browsing around and making sure everything works and all looked good.

I then login under Heather's profile, just to make sure my downloadable content is still working. Problem! She cannot play any of my Xbox Live Arcade games. Confused, I check the back of the console to see if the serial number is mine or if I got a refurbished 360. The serial number is the same. My console did not change. I sign back in as myself and unplug my network cable. I am also unable to use any of my premium downloadable content unless I'm signed in. I tried calling Sean, but he was going to be out until the following Tuesday. He told me he was going to follow up with me on Tuesday anyway, so I just waited for his call.

Tuesday came around and I got my call from Sean. I told him the problem with the power button. He said he'd ship a faceplate out to me. I told him about my premium content situation. He put me on hold for a few minutes. When he came back he said I would need to recover my gamertag and then re-download the content from my download history. I have a lot of premium content, but if that's what I need to do, I'll do it. He then said he could send me a free game or accessory. He offered Project Gotham Racing 3 or Viva Pinata. I had no interest in PGR3 and I already have Viva Pinata. The accessories were: remote, 64MB MU or wireless controller. I decided I could sell the controller to my friend Victor for $40 and then I would buy the 512MB MU, which I've wanted to get for a while. So anyway, I got home that night and I did as he asked. It took nearly 2 hours to recover my gamertag. I then re-downloaded a few arcade games. This didn't fix the problem. The content is still unusable unless I'm signed into Xbox Live. I called him back the next day (The 28th) to report my findings. He said he would need to escalate my issue to Xbox Live support and they would give me a call to fix the situation.

Several days later, I received the faceplate and controller he sent me. I was under the impression that I would be getting a brand new controller. Instead I got a dirty, used, gross controller. I'm assuming it was a refurb or something, but it was nasty. It was dirtier than any of my controllers that I've been using for almost 2 years. Honestly, it looked like it was pulled straight from one of those Xbox 360 kiosks at Best Buy. I was pretty disappointed. So I gave Sean a call back the next day (a week after our previous conversation) and told him my feelings about the controller. I told him I would be happy to ship it back, but I didn't want to keep it. I also stated that with what I'd been through with support so far, I felt I deserved better than a dirty, used controller. He said he could send me something else, but the only things he can offer are PGR3 or Viva Pinata. Neither of those interested me. He then brought up Forza 2. That's at least a relatively new game, so I took that. I also told him that it's been a week so far and I have yet to hear from anyone at Xbox Live regarding my content issue. He assured me that they were aware of the situation and they should be contacting me, but he doesn't know their time frame.

So, at this point, I'm still waiting to hear from them. Hopefully they don't take too long to get back to me. I'd like to be finished with this whole ordeal, since it started back in mid-September.

So, in summary, I feel the Xbox Support system is in pretty bad shape. I will say, however, that Sean has been great. He has always called me back exactly when he said he would, he was always very helpful and professional and he always got things done as fast as he could. I understand that certain things are out of his control, so I can't fault him for some of the crap that's happened since he started helping me. Microsoft needs to find more employees like Sean if they want to improve their support situation.

New Blog

2007-12-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

So, Heather and I have been doing the blogging thing on separate blogs for a while now, but I figured it was time to consolidate. This blog will be dedicated to gaming stuff from now on, and the personal and family stuff will go here: SchafferFam.com

Part 4: My Xbox 360 Repair

2007-10-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

Part 1: My Experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support
Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair
Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats

So, here's where we are as of right now. After getting in touch with my very own RSS rep (Sean), I shipped my console out to be repaired. It arrived at the repair center in McAllen, Texas on the morning of Thursday, October 18th. I waited a couple business days to hear back from Sean that they were processing my repair. I didn't get a call from him by Monday evening, so I went ahead and gave him a call. He's off on Mondays, so I left him a message. The next morning I got a call back from him. He said they were just waiting to ship my console. I was a little confused about what he meant by that, so upon asking for clarification I was told that my 360 would be repaired and shipped by the end of the week. I was shocked! This was awesome. I know he wasn't able to promise me an expedited repair, but it sounded the repair center was going to get the job done. He said I would receive an email notification as soon as it shipped. Sweet!

So I continued to wait the rest of that week. I hadn't received a shipping notification by Saturday the 27th, so I gave him a call. He said it shipped on Thursday the 25th and didn't know why I didn't get a confirmation via email. He gave me the tracking number. It took them exactly one week to get it repaired, which is pretty good compared to other stories I've heard. So, according to UPS, my 360 would be here by Tuesday the 30th (today). Low and behold, I saw the UPS guy at our door as I was driving away this morning. Everything is finally working out!

So I get home from work tonight and hook everything up. Guess what!? My controllers won't sync. I kid you not! I have 4 controllers. and tried every single one of them. I even checked the instructions they gave with my console to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong. None of them will sync. So, I called and left a message for Sean. Anybody want to bet I have to ship my 360 back to them? Looks like I'm back at square one.

Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats

2007-10-16T08:52:00.000-07:00

Part 1: My Experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support
Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair

So, I wanted to write up some stats, similar to the guy over at Achieve360Points.com about my experience with Xbox Customer Support while trying to get my Xbox 360 fixed. You can read my story here: Part1, Part 2. So here are my stats:

Calls made to 1-800-4MYXBOX: 10
Number of reps spoken to: 10
Number of supervisors spoken to: 3
Repair orders placed: 7
Reference numbers given: 6
Times I verified my information: 13
Promised callbacks: 3
Promised callbacks received: 1
Days after first calling before shipping my 360: 27

So there you go. Not nearly as bad as the situation over at Achieve360Points.com, but definitely not excusable.

Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair

2007-10-14T02:19:00.001-07:00

Part 1: My Experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support

So here is an update to this recent post.

On September 28th, after I made that post, I made another call to Xbox Support. I asked them for the status of my repair. Low and behold, there was no pending repair order. Big surprise, right? I explained that I've been trying to get this repair since the 18th and told them I would like to speak to a supervisor again. After waiting on hold for a good 20 minutes, I had to hang up. Something came up and I wasn't able to wait any longer. Believe it or not, I actually received a voice mail from the supervisor about 30 minutes after hanging up. I decided not to try and call back that same day, since there was no number given in the voice mail that would get me back to that specific supervisor. I was surprised to get another call the next morning from the same supervisor. I explained my story again to Georgia. She apologized for everything and told me that she was going to be taking care of my repair personally from that point. She said I couldn't use any of the boxes I had received so far because they had tracking numbers that wouldn't be associated with any repair order and she didn't want my 360 to be lost. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they lost my 360. Anyway, I explained that I've already been trying to get this fixed for quite some time and now she expected me to wait another week for a new shipping box to arrive. She said there was nothing else that she could do. I asked for an expedited repair and she said she had no control over that because the repair center handles the repairs. She did promise me that she would take care of everything personally and she would contact me that week and every step of the way to make sure that everything was happening as planned. I told that this was exactly what I wanted to hear and I really appreciated her help.

Jump to Tuesday, October 9th. I never received a single call from Georgia. Surprised? I actually was a little bit. She seemed pretty sincere about wanting to help me. Like I mentioned before, I've worked in a call center. If there was an escalated customer that was promised a call back by a supervisor, I promise you, that call back was made. If it wasn't, they would get a warning and if it happened again, they would be fired. Anyway, back to my story. I called Xbox Support that night to see what the status was and ask why Georgia hadn't called me back yet. They said my repair order was submitted on Wednesday the 3rd of October. This was strange because I'd spoken to Georgia on the 29th. Why did it take her four days to submit my repair order? They didn't know. They also didn't know why she didn't call me. I told them to send her a message to call me as soon as possible. When I asked how long before I would get a call, they said within 48 hours. Fine. My repair order was submitted, so I should be getting my box any day and hopefully Georgia will finally call me.

Thursday, October 11th. No call from Georgia. I call Xbox Support again. There is no pending repair for my console! After explaining everything (the Reader's Digest version) to Vanessa, she tells me she will submit my order and then transfer me to a supervisor. After submitting my repair order, she is about to transfer me when she says that she got an error message. My guess is it's the same error that Amy had received and promised she would get fixed so that my order would be submitted. Vanessa says that she'll have to let her supervisor handle this because there's nothing she can do with that error. After being on hold for 10-15 minutes, I get transferred to the supervisor, Paul. Paul tells me that he's going to turn my case over to their "Elite" or "RSS" repair team. This way, I will get a single person handling my repair order. I will be given a phone number that will allow me to contact this person directly and they will be in touch with me every step of the way. This sounds familiar. Paul verifies all of my information and asks if it's OK for this "Elite" rep to contact me on Monday. Nope. I'm not waiting four more days just to get a repair order started. He says that they can contact me tomorrow, the 12th instead. That's much better. He asks for a two hour window that would be the best time to contact me and I tell him between 12pm and 2pm.

Friday, the 19th. I was shocked and stunned when I got a phone call at 12:30 from Sean. Sean is the "RSS" rep that will be handling my case from now on. After verifying my information once again, he informs me that the repair order I submitted online back on the 22nd is still active and that's the reference number I should use for my repair. Wait, what? The repair order that disappeared from my service page a day after I submitted it? The one that I never received a confirmation e-mail about, so I never got the reference number? The very same! Fantastic! He then tells me that I can just use one of the boxes I already have, I just need to write the reference number on the box. At least I don't have to wait another week for a box to show up. Anyway, I ask if I can get my repair expedited. He says he can't do anything about that. He gives me a phone number and extension that I can use to contact him directly.

So that brings you up to date on the situation. We'll see how things go from here and I'll be sure to keep everyone posted. While I'm on the subject, Kotaku just made a post about someone who is having similar problems with Xbox Support. His situation is worse than mine, but that doesn't excuse anyone. Fortunately, this person runs the website Achieve360Points.com, so they can bring more publicity to this kind of thing than I can. You can read their story here. I like the statistics he has listed. I'm going to go through my notes sometime and post some statistics of my own.

Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats

Baby Ezra Update

2007-10-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

So a little update is in order. All our friends and families already know this, so it's not going to be news. Our baby Ezra Mathew was born back on September 30th. He came about 5 weeks early. (About 5 1/2 if you go by our Dr's due date.) Heather posted on her blog already with some details, so I won't repeat those here. Currently he is still in the NICU and doing very well. They took his IV out a couple days ago, so he's getting all his nutrients through feeding and the tube going down his throat into his stomach. The more he eats on his own, the less he has to get fed through the tube. The quicker he gets the hang of that, the sooner he'll be home. It's really the only thing left keeping him there. We started getting help from the occupational therapist yesterday. She was really helpful and hopefully we'll get some more help from her. Anyway that's the story so far. I'll try to keep everyone updated. In case you were wondering, he is the cutest baby I've ever seen.
Here are a couple pictures:

Baby Ezra

2007-10-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of baby Ezra. Most of you already know he came 5 weeks early, so he is still in the NICU. He's doing excellent, though. Hopefully we'll be able to bring him home soon.

My experience with Microsoft's Xbox Customer Support

2007-09-28T10:17:00.000-07:00

So as stated in a previous post, my Xbox 360 died a while back. In case you were wondering, I still haven't been able to send it in for repair. You're probably thinking to yourself, "But Matt, isn't your 360's problem covered by Microsoft's extended 3-year warranty?" Why, yes, it is. "Well, then shouldn't you just have to call them up and get a repair request started?" You would think so, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, however.

My 360 died on Tuesday, September 18th. I called Xbox Customer Support that afternoon to get my repair started. I got lucky the first time I called because the person on the other end spoke English. I would not be so fortunate in some of the calls that followed. They took my serial number and information and said I should get a shipping box within 3-5 business days. He gives me my reference number. After the call, I checked the new Xbox Service website and saw that my 360 was listed and a repair was pending. Perfect!

Two days later, I check the website again and strangely enough, the status now reads "No repair pending." Odd, I thought, but maybe they're just having issues with the website. So I give them a call again. This time I got to speak with someone in India. English skills were not so great. Now, I'm not trying to make a racial thing out of this. I'm sure someone will still be offended, but I don't care. The bottom line is, if the majority of your customers are English speaking (which I believe is the case for the Xbox 360) wouldn't you want to make sure your customer service could communicate with them? This guy could barely spit out a complete sentence. On top of that, they don't even try to hide the fact that their support is in India. The hold music was Indian Hip-Hop! Are you kidding me? But, I digress. This topic could be a whole post on it's own. I'll suffice it to say, I sympathize with Dell customers. Anyway, back to my rant. Well, back to my first rant. So the language barrier made explaining the situation difficult, but the representative was helpful and setup a new repair order for me. I had to give him all of my information again, from the very beginning. I needed to repeat my address multiple times, again due to the language barrier. Then he gives me a new reference number. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell me why my first one magically disappeared and he didn't make any effort to try and find out. Even with my repeated inquiries as to why I needed to setup another order, he would simply say, "I'm sorry for the inconvenience" over and over. He promised me, however, that this time my order would be fine. He lied.

The next day, I still was unable to see my repair as "pending" on the Service website. So I figured I better check again. I called their support. I hung up on the first person that answered and the second time I got someone who spoke English. Note to Microsoft: This is what people will do if you continue to outsource your Customer Support to India. This representative said that he could see my order in the system and he didn't know why the website wasn't showing that. He said sometimes it takes 24 hours to update the website. Fine, I think. I'll check back tomorrow.

The next day, still nothing. This time, I figured I'd give it a shot using their online tool for requesting a repair. I stepped through all the options, filled in all my information, yadda, yadda, yadda. After all was said and done, the Service website showed "Repair Pending." Fantastic! Things are looking good, right? Wrong!

Monday, I check again. "No repair pending." What in the world is going on? I called their customer support again. I don't know what the odds are, but once again the person didn't speak English. I stayed on with him because I was going to ask to speak with a supervisor anyway. After about 5 minutes of explaining what I had been through up to this point, he explained that my repair request was canceled, but he can submit another one for me. I tell him that I've already done this multiple times and submitting another request won't do any good if it's just going to be canceled. He doesn't know why it was canceled and he doesn't seem to care about my frustration with dealing with their Customer Support. Finally, I ask to speak to a supervisor. He asks me to hold while he gets one on the phone. 5 minutes later he comes back and says that no one is available and asks if I'd like to continue holding. Obviously I would, so back on hold I go. This time, about 10 minutes. Back he comes saying still, no one is available. Would I like to wait or would I rather he have the supervisor give me a call back. Now, I work for a company that does a lot of customer service. I've worked in several departments in the company that speak with customers on a regular basis. When I was in the Support department, we would promise callbacks from a supervisor within one hour. That seems reasonable to me. Back to the story. I ask him how long before they give me a call back. "24-48 hours," he responds. I laughed and told him I've already wasted a week trying to get my repair order placed. I'm not going to wait two more days just to talk to someone about it. I will continue to hold. Another 10-15 minutes goes by and he comes back. This time he has his supervisor on the line. Not really, though. He had to put me on hold again to bring the supervisor on the line. But that's not important. So from here I spoke with Amy. Fortunately, Amy spoke English very well and she was quite helpful while I was on the phone with her. I explained the situation again. She apologized for the inconvenience, but never offered anything in the way of an expedited repair or anything like that. Finally, after voicing my concerns, her only resolution was to submit another repair request. She verified my information again and submitted the request. She gave me yet another reference number. Luckily, I kept complaining about what I've had to go through so far, because just before she thought she was done with me, the repair request gave her an error. Apparently, it wasn't able to validate my address. I verified that what they had was correct. It better be after all the times I've had to give it to people. She put me on hold while she looked into the issue. After quite some time, perhaps 15 minutes, she came back and said that there was nothing that she could do. She would have to escalate this to another department that would be able to fix the address validation issue and submit my request. I ask her how long this is going to take. She said 2-3 days. I remind her that I've already spent a week dealing with this. She apologizes again, but says there's nothing she can do about it. She says that someone will contact me once the order has been placed. Fine, at least they know what the issue is now. They should be able to fix it, right?

Yesterday was day 3 and still no phone call and no updated status on the website. But guess what! A shipping box showed up at my door the day before. So now I have a shipping box, but no valid repair order. Since I need a valid reference number, there's no point in shipping my 360 to them. Based on my experience so far, they'd probably lose it. So, I give Customer Support another ringy ding. This guy speaks English, but sounds pretty new. That's fine, I was extra patient with him while he put me on hold to look things up and find out answers to my questions. So again, I explain everything up to this point. Someone was supposed to call me back by today and I haven't heard anything yet, but I have a shipping box now. What do I do? After putting me on hold for a really long time, he came back and said that there was an issue in their computer system that was causing the problem I was having. That issue has been fixed, so my repair should show up soon. How long? 1-2 more days. I explain that it's been a week and a half at this point and everyone just keeps telling me to wait. I ask him if there's any way to expedite my repair, since I'll have wasted 2 weeks by then. He puts me on hold and checks and tells me there's nothing they can do. Fine, I'll give it another day. Side note: When I got home yesterday, there was yet another shipping box sitting on my doorstep. Anyone need to buy a brand new Xbox 360 shipping coffin? I'll probably have dozens of those things show up in the next week.

So that brings us to today. Still no order pending on the website. My 360 is in a shipping box waiting for a reference number. I will call Customer Support again today and escalate until I get a guarantee that it's OK for me to ship it in.

Feel free to leave your own horror stories Xbox Customer Support in the comments. I have a feeling I'm not the only one...

Part 2: My Xbox 360 Repair
Part 3: My Xbox 360 Repair Stats

digg this

Problem Solved

2007-09-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

So, I am much less bummed, as of yesterday. A guy I work with, who's initials are Victor, made a deal with me. I bought a new 360, using Heather's discount, of course. Victor is making payments to me and once I get my 360 back, he gets the new one. So, he gets a 360 at a killer price and I get to participate in the Halo 3 madness of next week. Everybody wins! I'm pretty stoked, especially after seeing this video released by Bungie, showing off some of the new features in Halo 3 multiplayer. It's pretty awesome.

The Day My 360 Died

2007-09-19T09:00:00.001-07:00

Somehow, I knew this was going to happen. I've never pre-ordered a game in my life before Halo 3. For the past few weeks, I've had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that my 360 was going to die right before Halo 3 came out. Well, yesterday was the day. Exactly 1 week before the release of Halo 3. My 360 gave me the infamous red wink of death. Fortunately, Microsoft stepped up their game back in July and extended the warranty for this specific issue to 3 years. So I won't have to pay anything to get mine fixed. On the bad news side, there is no way I'm getting that thing back before Halo 3 comes. The support technician on the phone said they're at a 2-4 week turnaround time on repairs right now and that doesn't include shipping the console back and forth. So I'm guessing I won't see my 360 for about 3-5 weeks from the time I ship it out.

On the positive side, I see this as an opportunity to get stuff done around the house before the baby comes. We want to paint the baby's room and some of the baby furniture, so now I have no excuse for putting it off. I am pretty bummed about not being able to play Halo 3, however. Feel free to donate a 360 to me, if you feel inclined.

Halo 3 Believe

2007-09-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

OK, sorry. One last Halo 3 post for the day. This is pretty cool. You can do a flythrough of the Monument diorama. They put an insane amount of detail into this diorama. Throughout the flythrough, there are interactive features such as videos and biographies. Just look for the little blue icons that show up everywhere. Also, you can hit the screenshot button at the bottom right at any time and it will turn that view into a desktop wallpaper.

Halo 3 Believe

Halo 3 Diorama Documentary: Monument

2007-09-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

I know, lots of Halo 3 stuff, but hey, it's a pretty cool ad campaign if you ask me.

Second Halo 3 "Believe" Ad

2007-09-14T13:36:00.001-07:00

New Halo 3 Ad: Museum

2007-09-13T15:29:00.001-07:00

Super-fun Puzzle Game: Bloxorz

2007-09-13T15:26:00.000-07:00

This game is a blast.

Bloxorz

The Only Mario Level That Plays Itself

2007-09-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

Hey, two posts in one day! The last video is funny, this one is pretty cool. If you're a geek, like me, you'll probably like it more than the average person.

The Only Mario Level That Plays Itself - Watch more free videos

Stranger Rodeo

2007-09-10T15:09:00.001-07:00

Since I can never think of anything interesting to write on my blog, I'm just gonna start posting funny/interesting stuff I find on the Internets.

Look at that horse

2007-09-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

Amazing, isn't it?

Some Picture Updates

2007-08-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd post a few pictures since we're sort of getting settled into our new place. It still seems like we have a ton of stuff to do, but I guess it's mostly just junk in the office.
Here is the view from our balcony:

And here is a shot of our new HDTV:

This thing was a steal! It was a $750 TV and we paid about $300 for it. Heather deserves all the credit for finding this deal.

Best 5 Second Video on the Interwebs

2007-08-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

I know it's been forever since I've posted something. Sorry, but this isn't going to be any kind of an update. I just really needed to post this video. Best 5 second video on the Internet, hands down. I laughed so hard I cried and it got funnier every time I played it. I give you the Dramatic Chipmunk:

Buying a house

2007-06-12T17:04:00.000-07:00

So Heather and I have been looking at buying a condo for a little while now. With a baby coming, our apartment is just too small. If we rent a bigger place, it's going to cost about as much as a house payment would be on a bigger place. So we decided the best move is to stop wasting money on rent and try to buy our own place. We've been looking at a really nice complex in Eagle Mountain. Last week we went out there with my agent (it sounds cool saying that) who's a friend of mine from work. We looked at 4 or 5 units in the complex while we were out there. We really liked a couple of them and decided on one. The next morning we made an offer and to our surprise, they accepted. We have been so excited since then. Until yesterday. A small (read: relatively big) wrench got thrown into the works. It turns out that the loan we've been approved for requires at least a 5% down payment. Now, you can call me naive and I'll agree with you. I've never bought a house before. I didn't see anything that said a down payment was required. 5% of the loan we're looking for is $7,000. It turns out I don't have $7k in any of my pockets and neither does Heather. So, needless to say I was a little bummed yesterday. All hope is not lost, however. After talking to my agent, he says that 100% loans do happen. Now might not be the best time, though. I've been reading that a lot of mortgage companies are a extra careful right now, because in the past year there has been a record number of defaults on home loans. Anyway, another option is to take out a personal loan at a bank and pay the down payment off with that. I'm even considering a website called Prosper. I discovered it on one of my favorite websites, Lifehacker. Prosper essentially facilitates person-to-person lending. You post a request for a loan and someone else out there can decide to give you the money according to the terms you agree on. It seems pretty interesting. Anyway, that's the situation we're in. If anyone else has any suggestions, I'm definitely open to them.

Xbox Rewards Challenge - Rewards Expire?

2007-04-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

So I logged into my .NET account (or whatever Microsoft is calling it these days) to find out when my Xbox Live Gold subscription expires. When I logged in, I had this nice little message waiting for me:

So, it turns out the points given away in the Rewards Challenge expire after 30 days. Here's the information they give you when you click on the "Learn About Expiring Points" link:

When do my Microsoft Points expire?
Purchased points don't expire. Any points you get through promotions can have expiration dates. Typically, points expire within thirty days of the date you get them. To view any points in your account that have expiration dates, go to the Billing and Account Management page, sign in with your Windows Live ID, and then click Microsoft Points under Stored Credits. If you have points that are expiring in the next thirty days, you can click View expiring points to view the points and their expiration dates.

I don't remember them mentioning this in the past. Also, I redeemed these points on March 31st and they expire on April 22nd, so that means they expire 30 days from the time Microsoft made them available to redeem, NOT 30 days from the time you redeem them. The funny thing is, Microsoft never told me I could redeem any of my rewards from the Rewards Challenge. I only found out through one of the many gaming blogs I read. I'd imagine there are a lot of people out there that don't even know the rewards are available right now. By the time they find out the points will have expired. Seems a little shady to me, Microsoft.

Update: It looks like I jumped the gun on this one. The 200 points that are expiring aren't from the Xbox Rewards Challenge. They're from another promotion that I participated in. It was the Xbox Live Arcade Trivia where I won 1,000 points. Shortly after winning I purchased Alien Hominid HD (great game, by the way, but super hard) and that used up 800 of those points. The remaining 200 are the ones expiring soon. So the good news is, people that participated in the Rewards Challenge don't have to worry about their points expiring so soon. The bad news is, Microsoft is still giving away expiring points. I guess we'll find out soon enough if the Rewards Challenge points are going to expire at some point too.

Encore!

2007-04-05T22:47:00.000-07:00

Ok, just one more of these videos. This video is much better quality than the last one. You can actually see what's on the screen this time. This time around we're playing Surrender by Cheap Trick. Enjoy!

We Rock Hard

2007-04-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

So, last Friday I played Guitar Hero II for the first time at a local BestBuy. I was hooked immediately. So hooked that I went to Walmart at midnight a couple nights ago to get the game as soon as it was released. Well, it turns out that I'm not the only one who is having a blast. Heather is loving the game as well. We decided that since we both loved playing it, it would be even more fun if we could play it together. So, we picked up a second guitar yesterday. Now, behold as we rock hard to Possum Kingdom by the Toadies. Heather plays on Easy and I'm only good enough for Medium right now. The video quality is pretty bad. I'll have to work on getting some better quality video on here, but this gets the job done.

I finally got a new camera!

2007-03-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting a new camera for a couple years now. I reached a point where my old Point and Shoot digital camera wasn't enough for me. I wouldn't consider myself a pro by any means. I like to call my self an "advanced amateur/wannabe pro" photographer. However, I've been ready for a Digital SLR camera for a while. Well, my new camera arrived today after a week of torture and continual refreshes on the UPS tracking page. My very first DSLR camera is the Nikon D50 DSLR camera with the 18mm-55mm kit lens. Sure, it's low end as far as DSLRs go, but it's got the performance and most of the features that the high-end cameras have. I got a killer deal on the camera too. $475 with the lens. Why so cheap? It's a factory refurb. So far the camera is perfect. It looks brand new to me and seems to be in perfect condition. Definitely a great deal, since the kit retails for about $600 new. If you're looking to break into the DSLR realm, I can't say enough good things about this camera. Unfortunately, there aren't many interesting things to shoot here at my desk, or else I'd have some samples for you. Check back later and I might have something. You can also take a look at my Flickr page which I should be better at updating from now on.

I made it!

2007-02-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

I'm sure there aren't many people that still come here, since I haven't posted in so long. And if there is anyone that still comes here, you probably don't care. But I'm going to post this anyway.

I finally completed the very first ever Xbox Rewards Challenge. It was a lot of work (more than I had planned), but I was able to finish the challenge of increasing my gamerscore by 1,500 points. I win the following prizes: XBLA Game: Contra, Old Spice gamerpic, 200 MS points, Old Spice t-shirt, and Fuzion Frenzy 2. All together, it's about $60-$70 worth of prizes. Not bad. I won't go into details about why it was more work than I had hoped. Needless to say, the program wasn't launched in the best manner. I can think of a number of things they need to consider for next time. So, Microsoft, if you're reading this, post a comment and I'll get back to you. :)

Ryan Shupe & The Rubberband

2006-12-22T00:11:00.000-07:00

So we recently saw Ryan Shupe & The Rubberband at a Christmas show that they participate in every year. Seeing them reminded me that I had this sweet video of them playing live back in September of 2004 and I decided I should upload it and share it with the world. If you've never heard of these guys, check them out. They are one of the most talented bands I've ever come across and they put on the best live show I've ever seen. Here's the video, enjoy!

Be a cheapskate gamer

2006-11-04T00:05:00.000-07:00

So I've had my Xbox 360 for a while now and I've come up with a few ideas (read: schemes) for getting games and accessories for cheap. Here are my suggestions:

Scheme #1: Cheap games
Make sure you look for sales. I know this sounds obvious, but there's more to it, trust me. For example, CompUSA currently has last year's 2K sports games on sale for $9.98-$14.98. Pretty good deal right? It gets better. I just purchased NBA 2K6 ($15) and NHL 2K6 ($10) at a local CompUSA and they took an additional $4 off the former and $2 off the latter because they were "on sale." As if the prices weren't good already. You can't get either of those games for those prices even if you buy them used. Now as good of a deal as these are, they are only part of a bigger scheme. If you have an FYE store in your area, give them a call and see if they're doing any promotions on trade-ins for Xbox 360 games. Unfortunately their website sucks, so don't plan on getting any information there, you're going to have to talk to a real person. Sometimes FYE will do a 3 for 1 or 4 for 1 trade-in promo, meaning you give them 3 or 4 of your games and you get a brand new one for free. Doesn't seem like that great of a deal if you just paid $60 for each of those 3 or 4 games. But, trading in 3 or 4 $8 or $11 games? Not too shabby. That could get you your copy of Gears of War for as low as $32. If you're lucky, they might even be doing their 2 for 1 promo. I got in on this a while back and scored a copy of Madden NFL 07 by trading in Kameo (eBay, $20) and Madden NFL 06 (eBay, $20). GameStop and EBGames sometimes do the 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 promos, but theirs are usually very limited. Last time I saw the promo on their website, the disclaimer said they wouldn't accept: Last year's sports games, Kameo, King Kong, Perfect Dark Zero and a few other games. Their little "disclaimer" pretty much counted out half of the 360 games available at the time.

Scheme #2: BestBuy Gamer Gift Card
A lot of people already know about this little nugget, but I'll mention it anyway. BestBuy sells lots of different variations of gift cards. The Gamer Gift card is pretty slick because it comes with a $5-off coupon for any video game or accessory. So, go in and buy a gamer gift card and put $5 on it. Walk outside, open it up and take out the card and the coupon. Go back in and buy whatever you were planning on getting anyway and save $5. It's not a huge deal on something like a $60 game or $50 controller, but use it on something like a 1600 Microsoft Points card ($20) and the coupon gets you 25% off. (Note: Do not buy the Gamer Gift Card on BestBuy.com. The packaging is different and doesn't come with the $5 coupon.)

Scheme #3: eBay
Probably another obvious choice, but for this one I'm not talking about games or accessories. I'm talking about Xbox Live. You can find crazy deals on Xbox Live subscription cards on eBay. I got the 12-Month Value Pack for almost $20 less than it retails for ($60+). The value pack comes with 1 year of Xbox Live, 200 MS Points, an XBLA game (usually Bankshot Billiards, cough*SUCKS*cough), a headset and a $20 rebate for any Xbox 360 game. I'm not positive if the $20 rebate is still valid, but it's still a good deal, even without it.

So those are my recommended schemes right now. Hopefully I someone finds this information useful. If you have any other ideas or schemes for getting cheap stuff, feel free to post them in the comments.

Best way to build a resume, ever!

2006-09-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

So I found this website a while back (probably on lifehacker.com) and played around with it for a few minutes. I came back to it recently to give it a thorough run-through and man, is it handy. Never again will I use Word to create a resume. emurse.com lets you create your resume online by filling in fields. You can add and remove sections, change the order of things, etc. It even gives you tips on what type of information to include and what to avoid. After getting your information filled in, you can swap styles on the fly. They have premium styles that you have to pay for, but the free styles look fine to me. All of this for free! As if that wasn't enough, you can even save your resume as a Word doc, PDF, HTML, text file and more. You can publish your resume to their website ([yourname].emurse.com) and they'll even track the views, prints and downloads of your resume for your. For added benefit, when you login they give you job suggestions from major websites based on the information you've entered in your resume. Give it a shot!

Link: http://www.emurse.com

Manage your To Do list in Gmail

2006-09-19T15:37:00.000-07:00

This is actually not something I found on the Internet, but something that I came up with myself. I'm sure I'm not the first one to do this, it's probably been done and blogged about many times in the past. I recently came up with the idea myself and thought I'd share it with the world.

The key to this tip is the fact that Gmail allows you to practically have an unlimited number of email addresses associated with your account. Simply use the following syntax:
[yourusername]+[anyletters]@gmail.com (Do not include the brackets, obviously.)

Here's what I did to set this up:

First, I created a label in Gmail called "+To Do". Since the labels are listed alphabetically, I added the + at the beginning so my "+To Do" list would be at the top.

Second, I created a filter in Gmail:
Matches: to:([myusername]+todo@gmail.com)
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label "+To Do"
So now, any mail that gets sent to [myusername]+todo@gmail.com will automatically skip the Inbox and go to my "+To Do" list.

Last, I added a new contact named "To Do" with the email address [myusername]+todo@gmail.com.

Now, whenever I need to add something to my To Do list, I simply email it to "To Do". I try to put most of the information in the Subject line and I typically leave the body blank unless there is a phone number, address, email address or website associated with the task.

Managing my To Do list this way has some advantages, at least for me. First, I've always got Gmail open in my web browser. In order for a To Do list to be effective, you either have to see it frequently or make an effort to look at it. I've tried using Outlook Tasks and other methods of keeping a task list, but would often forget to look at it frequently. This way I see it all the time. Second, other people can add things to your To Do list. My wife, for example, can use it when she thinks of something I need to do. It's very convenient.

Anyway, I hope this tip was helpful to someone.

Read a book... Even I can do it!

2006-09-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

So, I know I'm a total slacker. I haven't posted anything in over a month. I'll try to do better, but I make no promises. If I don't have anything personal to write about, I'm going to try to post something interesting that I have found the the intarnets.

Today's link is to a website called DailyLit. DailyLit allows you to read a book in small, easy to digest chunks. As of right now they have 165 books available, all of which are in the public domain. (So, calm down all you copyright lawyers, this is legal.) Anyway, I'm not much of a book reader, myself. The last book I read was probably something I had to read in school. But, even I started reading a book today, the first in who knows how long. You pick the book and the time you want it sent. They'll e-mail you a short piece of the book every day at the time specified. If you can't wait for the next piece, they provide a link in the e-mail that will have the next piece sent right away. So far I've read part 1 of 74 of The Wind in the Willows. Perhaps a little childish, but hey, at least I'm reading something.

Link: http://dailylit.com

My very first photo on the Flickr Explore page

2006-08-10T20:47:00.000-07:00

M&M's, originally uploaded by shafnitz.

So, I'm super stoked! One of my photos was just added to the Flickr Explore page! This is the first time this has happened to me. It's pretty awesome, so I had to brag about it. I even took a screen shot to prove it.

Best office prank ever!

2006-08-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

I laughed out loud when I saw this. They really went all out:

Link: Mike gets a new office!

My Favorites on Flickr

2006-08-10T11:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a slideshow of the photos I've taken that I consider my favorites. Hit the Left Arrow button at the bottom to view the newest photos first. You can also visit my Flickr page if you would like to view all my photos. My most recent photo is getting a lot of attention on Flickr. It's pretty exciting.
The script appears to be having some difficulties. If it asks you to either Continue or Stop the script, choosing Continue seems to work most of the time.

A slide show should appear here shortly. It's been having problems, so if you don't see the slideshow, you can click here to view them on my Flickr page.

Update: The slideshow hasn't worked for the past few days, so I've removed it.

New template... again...

2006-07-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

So, I decided to toss out the old template and give this new one a shot. I did some crazy coding last night and started tweaking it to my liking. It'll be under development for a little while until I get everything working the way I'd like. I definitely want to change the way it handles comments. I don't like it going to a generic Blogger page. Anyway, keep your eyes out for the updates. Thanks to Kr5is for finding these cool templates. Be sure and let me know what you think of the new design.

Great List of DIY Tips from Wired

2006-07-27T02:38:00.000-07:00

The most recent issue of Wired Magazine (the cover of which has a creepy picture of Stephen Colbert) features a great article listing all kinds of DIY tips, or lifehacks as I like to call them. This article gives suggestions for making life easier in work, play and everything else.

Link: Wired 14.08: Enter the New Age of DIY

Net Neutrality

2006-07-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

It scares me to think that people like this are making important decisions about the future of the Internet.

If you think Senator Ted Stevens' comments may have been taken out of context, feel free to listen to all of his comments.

Also, you can learn more about Net Neutrality with this video.

Best sign ever...

2006-07-12T22:52:00.000-07:00

I don't usually post twice so close together, but I just realized that I totally forgot to post this picture like a month ago. This was taken on our way back from the Grand Canyon.

A pretty good day

2006-07-10T10:47:00.000-07:00

So this past Saturday was my company's summer party. This year, they decided to have it up at Jordan Commons Theater. Your whole family could come and they gave us the option of seeing Superman in IMAX or Cars. Heather and I decided that Superman would be the best choice. Along with the movie, we were given gift cards for the concession stands and the company was going to be giving away door prizes. Like the Christmas party, you had to be present to win anything. Saturday morning, I wasn't really in the mood to go. I hadn't slept at all that night. At about 5:30am I had given up on sleeping and went out to play some 360. The party was starting pretty early. They wanted us to be there around 9:00am so we could be in our seats by 9:30am when the prizes would be given away. That meant that we needed to leave around 8:30 if we wanted to get there and be close to on-time. I'm pretty sure I was still in bed around 8:10. Heather was up and trying to get my out of bed so we could get ready and go. I was hesitant because I was so tired, but I finally got up and got ready. We got to the theater and the lines for the concessions were crazy, so we decided against that. We went straight into the screen that Superman was showing on and the place was already packed. It was only my company at in that screen and only the lower section had seats available. We found a decent spot that wasn't too close and we started chilling. After a while they started giving away the door prizes. The third or fourth item they gave away was a personal DVD player. Believe it or not, they called my name. This time I was there to claim my prize. It was a pretty good feeling. I felt somewhat better about not getting the LCD TV that I was supposed to win at the company Christmas party. (See: A series of crappy events.) Not a ton better, but maybe 10% better. I don't know what the odds are of having my name drawn at two company parties in a row, but there are at least 350 employees in my company, so the odds can't be very good. Anyways, we got to eat lunch at Sweet Tomatoes, which was really good. Then we drove over to Best Buy and returned the personal DVD player, since they were kind enough to put a gift receipt on the package. I figured we would never be able to use it since we hardly ever travel. I was able to get store credit at Best Buy and bought myself an Xbox 360 game. We've even got some credit left and we're going to buy a new MP3/CD player for our car. After it was all over, I was really glad Heather dragged me out of bed in the morning.

Coolest app ever!

2006-07-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

This thing rocks. Vibe Streamer is an application that lets you stream music from your own Windows computer to a client that runs in a web page. The server allows you to configure groups and users and give access to any shared folders that you want. The client is easy to use and the sound quality is great. I was getting so sick of bringing music with me on a removable hard drive or filling up my work computer with music from home. This is exactly what I was looking for. Great idea and awesome implementation.

Bred for its skills in magic...

2006-06-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago, Heather needed to go to one of her classrooms to pick up some books and supplies. This class of hers happens to be inside a museum on campus. This museum has a ton of real animals that have been stuffed. It was really cool to these animals up close. I couldn't believe just how big some of them really are. We'll have to go back some time and I'll bring my camera. My favorites were the rhino heads and the elephant skull. They were huge. Anyway, one of the coolest things in this museum was the liger. All of you thought that Napoleon Dynamite was crazy, but the liger really exists. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

Cleaning up your workspace for about $25

2006-06-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

So last week I came across a couple posts on Lifehacker, which is one of my favorite websites:
Hack Attack: The Cordless Workspace (sort of)
DIY $8 home network rack

The cables behind my desk were getting completely out of control. I forgot to take a photo immediately before ripping everything out, but I have one from back in January that should give you an idea of what I was dealing with.

Some of the things you see in the picture have been removed since this was taken, but pay attention to cables behind the desk. That's the important part. One thing you can't see is the network equipment that's hiding behind the computers stacked on the lower right shelf. I have a cable modem, wireless router and a network switch all hiding back there. Something needed to be done, and I found my inspiration on Lifehacker.

Here's what I used:

"J Channel" from Office Max - $12. This item is not available on their website, so here it is from Overstock.com so you can see what it looks like.

4 Rubbermaid letter trays (model 74095) from Office Max (they come in 2-packs) - $4 x 2 = $8. Again, not available on their website. Make sure you write down the model number, as Office Max carries many different sizes of Rubbermaid letter trays.

Velcro cable ties from Office Max - $4.50 for a 50-pack. This is available on their website for $4, but in-store was $0.50 more. (Item # 20822371)

Here's what I did:

Step 1: Rip everything out.

I had to disconnect everything. I took all the computers out of the room so I had space to work. After this I had a pile of cables that you wouldn't believe. I wish I had pictures of it.

Step 2: Setup my $8 network rack.

Using the DIY $8 home network rack post, I setup my very own $8 rack. Here's what it looks like:

The whole thing is pretty much self-contained. All of the power supplies for the various devices are plugged into the power strip on the bottom rack. Only the power strip needs to be plugged in to power all of those devices. If the rack needs to be moved, on a few network cables and USB cables need to be unplugged.

Step 3: Attach the "J Channel."

In the Hack Attack: The Cordless Workspace (sort of) post, they used a cable basket from IKEA. This posed a few problems for me. First, we don't have any IKEA stores around here and IKEA.com wanted $20 to ship a $12 item. Second, I didn't have a good place to attach that basket. I used a $12 "J Channel" from Office Max instead. I used a hacksaw and cut the "J Channel" into two pieces. My desk didn't have a convenient place to attach the whole thing, so my wife suggested cutting it.

Step 4: Put all the cables back.

This step was a lot of work. I ran all the cables up or down the posts on the desk until they reached an entry point to the "J Channel." There were a few cables that weren't long enough the run all the way, so you can kind of see them sticking out. I might replace those in the future, but they're fine for now.

Step 5: Tie everything up with velcro ties.

I used the velcro ties from Office Max to tidy everything up. The 50-pack at Office Max contains 25 black and 25 gray ties. I used the gray ties to clean up the cables running up or down a post. Since the posts on my desk are gray, they matched well. The black ties were used to tie cables together that were on their way out of the "J Channel" or to clean up cables that had too much slack.

After completing this project, I am extremely happy with the result. I now have a very clean and comfortable workspace and I don't have to cringe every time I need to get under my desk for some reason. I highly recommend you do this if your workstation looked anything like mine. My wife definitely approves. Here is the final product:

Poor Mr. Fishy

2006-06-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

I was going to post about our recent trip to the Grand Canyon, but Heather already covered that for me. You can read about it on her blog. I wanted to write about our very first pet: Mr. Fishy. We got Mr. Fishy at the wedding reception (AKA open house) that we had in California two weeks after we got married. My mom and older sister decorated for the reception and as part of the centerpieces, they had fish bowls with blue a blue Beta fish in each. We thought it would be fun to keep one of them as a pet, since we can't have any cats or dogs in our apartment. Mr. Fishy drove all the way from CA to UT with us and did pretty well. We put him in a nice big vase and got some little marble-like stones to put on the bottom of the bowl. He was a great pet for exactly 9 months. A few weeks ago he started acting funny. His color wasn't as vivid as it used to be and he seemed very lethargic. He wouldn't eat as much as he used to and we knew something was wrong. One day a little over a week ago, Heather found him belly-up in his vase. It was a sad day. We said a few words and sent him to his watery grave. Mr. Fishy will be missed.

R.I.P. Mr. Fishy
2005-2006

Even my Xbox 360 has a blog...

2006-05-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

So, this is a pretty unique idea. Someone came up with this website recently called 360voice.com. Basically it uses your gamer information from Xbox.com and posts a blog entry every day as if the Xbox 360 itself was the one blogging. Here's mine: Shafnit'z Xbox 360 can blog.

Back to normal... Almost

2006-04-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

So, I've got the Blog almost the way it was. I've actually learned some cool stuff along the way. Check out the cool scripted nav links on the right. I still have to bring the Album of the Week back, but other than that it's pretty much the way I want it. Still have a couple bugs to work out along the way, but nothing major.

So, while I'm at it, I'll post something that might be of interest. Heather and I went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point on Saturday. She wanted to go really bad, and I'm always up for a photo-op. We spent almost 2 hours walking around Thanksgiving point. The area is huge and they had really beautiful flower arrangements setup all over the place. I've been posting some photos on my Flickr Page and will continue to post them over the next several days. (Note: digital|shutter is down for the time being. The database got jacked up in the move to my new server and I can't update it. For now, I'll be using only my Flickr Page.) Here is one of the photos I took at the festival. They aren't tulips, but I liked the way they turned out. Visit my Flickr Page for more.

Fixing my blog

2006-04-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

So, my blog is back to the template I started with. I jacked something up and now I have to fix it. It'll be some work, and I'll probably have to do it a little at a time, but hopefully I can get back to the way it was.

Fake PSAs from the cast of The Office

2006-03-31T15:50:00.000-07:00

So, I had to blog about this one. NBC has some fake Public Service Announcements (remember "The More You Know?") on their website. Even if you don't watch The Office, these are hilarious. If you do watch The Office, you'll appreciate these even more. Good stuff!

How I Won an Xbox 360

2006-03-21T18:53:00.000-07:00

So, my new Xbox 360 arrived today. Technically, it arrived yesterday, but no one was home to sign for it. Because of this, I was forced to wait in line at the post office behind all kinds of interesting people to get my new toy. It was all worth it, however. Heather will attest to the fact that I walked out of that post office with a huge smile on my face. But, here's how it came to be mine:

About a month ago, I found out about a new service called TextPayMe. It's a service like PayPal, but with a different angle. Using their service, you can send someone money via text message from your cell phone. It's a brilliant idea, and I wish them tons of success. They have several suggestions of situations where the service would be very useful. For example, if you're out with friends at a restaurant and one person pays the bill, the others can pay that person back right then and there. It's much better than IOUs or writing a check. There are several other uses for the service that you can read about on TextPayMe's website. I'm sold on the idea, and will use the service for sure. Especially since it doesn't cost anything to use. But, back to my story. TextPayMe has had a promotion going for a while. Every time you refer someone that signs up for their service, you get 10 TextPayMe points. If you got 360 points before 3/18/06 you got an Xbox 360. Well, last Tuesday, I got my last referral that brought me to 360 points. The next day, the guys at TextPayMe verified my mailing address and today I got my Xbox 360. I've never won anything before in my life. At least nothing I got to keep. So, this was a big thing for me. So, I've got to give props to the guys at TextPayMe. They have a great idea and I hope that they do very well. I also have to thank them for my brand new Xbox 360! Everyone thought I was crazy when I wanted to do this, but boy did I show them! I really do need to thank all my family and friends that signed up for TextPayMe for me. I'm sure they got sick of me nagging them to do it. Thanks everyone!

Cool service

2006-02-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

So I came across this website today called TextPayMe. They basically allow you to send people money via text message from your cell phone. Kinda like PayPal but with a twist. If you sign up now, they'll even give you $5 free. I gave it a shot. It sounds like a pretty good idea and besides, you can't beat free money!

Although it sounds gimmicky, it's actually a good idea in my opinion. Here are some examples of things they suggest using the service for:

No more verbal IOUs!
Split your restaurant bills right then and there!
Pay your team or club dues anywhere and anytime
Pitch in real money instead of IOUs for a shared gift
Settle your roommate's rent and utility bills on the spot
Pay for items with your credit card on Craigslist
Accept credit card payments in any face-to-face transactions
Use TextPayMe as a substitute for cash and personal checks

I can think of several occasions when I could have used this service.

Groundhog's Day and an Oil Change

2006-02-11T23:29:00.000-07:00

I have two stories to tell in this post.

First, last week we celebrated Groundhog's Day. It's officially the first time in my life I've ever "celebrated" Groundhog's Day. A week or so before that, Heather explained to me the things her family did on Groundhog's Day. I couldn't believe there were people that celebrated it that didn't live in Punxsutawney. I realized that day how awesome my wife is. We didn't do a ton to celebrate, but it was way more than I've ever seen anyone do. We pretty much just said "Happy Groundhog's Day" a lot and we had ground hog pizza. Incase you're wondering, ground hog == sausage. I even got a phone call from Heather's mom wishing me a Happy Groundhog's Day. We finally rented the movie and we watched it tonight. It's a great flick, worth seeing any time of the year. Here are a couple pictures from our celebration:

Second, we have been meaning to get the oil changed on our car for the past couple months. We finally decided to do it last week but ran out of time after all of our other errands. We said that we would do it this Saturday for sure. Well, Heather was digging through the ads that fill our mailbox about every other day and she found a place right down the street that had a coupon for the whole oil change and checkup for $15. We figured we'd save a few bucks and give them a shot, especially since they were much closer than Jiffy Lube. This was a huge mistake. There were a few people ahead of us, but that was no excuse for how long we waited. We were there for about 45 minutes before they even pulled our car into the garage. We spent over 2 hours in this place waiting for an oil change. After they finally finished, the manager brought me back into the garage and explained some other things that he recommended we get done on the car. I felt like saying, "thanks, but we definitely won't be getting it done here." I just kept my mouth shut. I just wanted to get out of there. So, that ended up being the only real errand we got done today.

New Flickr page!

2006-01-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

So, I decided to jump on the Flickr bandwagon and setup my own Flickr page. I thought it might get my photos some extra exposure than they're getting now. The new Flickr graphic on the right will display recent additions to my Flickr page. I haven't had a chance to upload all of my photos from digital|shutter, but I should be able to finish doing that in the next few days or so. If you've never been to Flickr before, you should check it out. More photos from more people than you can imagine. What I like most about it is the ability to view a calendar of the most interesting photos. Here's the calendar for this month. If you're new, that's a good place to get started. Another useful feature is the ability to tag your photos. Having tags allows you to find tons of photos on the same topic. Try the sunset tag, you're sure to have hours and hours worth of photos to browse through. You can even view them as a slideshow. Lots of talent out there, that's for sure. Enjoy!

A series of crappy events

2006-01-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

So, I've/we've had a lot of crappy things happen to me/us in past few weeks. I thought I'd just list them all out. It's probably the longest string of crappy luck I've ever had.

12/19/05 - I find out that I should've won an $1,100 27" flat-panel TV at my company Christmas party. Instead it was awarded to someone who's not even a full-time employee. They're a temp. (Note: As we were leaving the party, these were my exact words to Heather: "Watch, the only time in my life I'll win something and I won't be here.")
12/20/05 - My truck won't start. We had planned to drive it to Arizona to have Heather's brother-in-law sell it for us. We were supposed to leave the next day! We already had hotel reservations in Las Vegas and plane tickets to fly home from Arizona. Luckily the day we were supposed to leave, Heather's cousin was able to fix it and we were fine.
12/22/05 - As we were leaving Vegas, Heather got the news that her cousin had committed suicide the night before.
12/27/05 - While seeing the Temple lights at the Mesa Temple with Heather's family, my truck was broken into. They ripped the back window completely off and it was laying on the ground. This broke the hinges and the latch that hold the window on. They tried to steal my stereo, but couldn't. They ended up taking my camera case ($25) that had 8 batteries in it ($8) and my drum sticks ($5). So far I've spent $100 just on the parts. We still have to get it fixed. Just for reference, this happened the night before we were flying home to Utah, the last time we'd ever have to see that truck. Luckily Heather's Dad is going to find someone who can fix it. I'm sure it won't be cheap though. Everything needs to be riveted to the body of the truck. (Note: During the day we got my truck all cleaned up and detailed so it would be ready to sell. While we were doing this, I thought to myself: "What if it got broken into after all the trouble we're putting into selling it.")
12/30/05 - I find out that while I was on vacation, my headphones were stolen off my desk at work. They were nice Sony headphones. Someone just took them while I was gone. It's probably even someone I know.
1/1/06 - One of my hard drives appears to be failing. Lots of the files are becoming corrupt. I'm not positive yet that it's failing, but it doesn't look good. It has a lot of my TV shows on it, things that won't be easy to replace. Also it won't be cheap to replace the drive if it is going bad. (Note: While in AZ, we went to Best Buy with Heather's parents to look at car stereos for her brother. While we were there, her Dad was asking me about hard drives. They had a good deal on a large Western Digital drive. I told him that I was pretty confident with WD drives and that I've never had one die on me so far. My drive that appears to be failing right now is a WD.)

So this is a summary of my past few weeks. Things are starting to look up now, but I'm at the point where I'm just waiting for the next bad thing to happen. And if it does, I'm probably just going to lose it.

On a positive note, our Christmas vacation was a lot of fun. Heather's family got me tickets to the Eagles/Cardinals game on Christmas eve. I went to the game with her Dad. It was awesome! Spending Christmas with her family was a blast. Almost everything in between the truck breaking down and being broken into was great.

Eagles at Cardinals

2005-12-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

The Eagles as they entered the stadium.

A "Yay" and a sigh of relief

2005-12-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

So, as you can tell by my previous post, my week didn't start out to be the greatest. I'm just now getting to the point where I'm not constantly kicking myself for not staying at the company Christmas party until the end. So, Monday was a pretty crappy day. It was followed by another pretty crappy experience. Yesterday morning, Heather called me right when I got to work to tell me that the truck wouldn't start. We were going to be driving the truck to Arizona today (Wednesday) to spend Christmas with Heather's family. Heather's brother-in-law was also going to try selling our truck for us. We have tickets to stay at a hotel in Vegas tonight and we would drive the rest of the way on Thursday. We have plane tickets to fly back the following Wednesday. Everything has been planned for quite some time, and yesterday the truck wouldn't start. My stress level was multiplied by about 10 or so. It was too late to cancel the hotel in Vegas without having to pay for it anyway. We could drive the car, but if we did, the plane tickets we bought would be useless and I don't know if we'd be able to get our money back on those. I'm surprised I slept at all last night. Well, Heather's cousin was nice enough to look at the truck for us last night and wasn't really sure what the problem was. He was going to come back over this morning and look at it in daylight. I got an update from Heather a couple hours ago and it was either going to be something simple and cheap or something really expensive. I figured, with my luck, it was easily going to be really expensive. I got a call from Heather about 20 minutes ago. The first word out of her mouth was, "Yay!" I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Our trip will continue as planned.

My company Christmas party experience

2005-12-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

So, this is officially one of the most disappointing things that have happened to me in a long time. I'm hoping that posting about it will get it out of my head, because it's already driving me crazy.

My company has a yearly Christmas party for it's employees. It's a fairly big company but has grown a lot in the last couple years I've been working there. The company Christmas party used to be a catered lunch during business hours. This is the first year they had a real "Christmas party" outside of work. It was a semi-formal event and there was food, a live band and even dancing. (Heather and I weren't too excited about the dancing.) Well, we got all dressed up and went to the party Saturday night. I believe there are about 350-400 people that work at the company. I'm sure not all of them came, but most who did brought a guest. In my estimate, there were about 500-600 people at the party. On the way in, you filled out your ticket stub with your name to be entered in the drawings for door prizes. As most would expect, you have to be present to win. We went and sat down at a table by ourselves, since I wasn't able to find any people that I spend much time around. The place filled up and they brought out the food. The food was good and so was the dessert. There ended up being several people at the table that I didn't know, so it wasn't all that fun. We ended up leaving shortly after eating. As we were getting in the car, I said these exact words to Heather. "Watch, the first time in my life that I'll win something and I won't be here." Well, I went about the rest of the weekend feeling perfectly normal. This morning, I went to check my work e-mail at home and I had a couple messages from others in my department. They were e-mailing to rub in the bad news. My name had been drawn to win something and I wasn't there to claim it. The something that I should have won was an $1,100 27" flat-panel TV.

My first Christmas tree in 3 years!

2005-11-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

So Heather and I decorated our apartment for Christmas this past weekend. This is the first Christmas in 3 years that I've had a Christmas tree. Here it is:

The main reason I never had a tree for the last two Christmases is that my roommates were all guys. Needless to say, not much decorating goes on when it's just a bunch of guys living somewhere. I'm pretty excited to spend my first Christmas with Heather. We both had fun decorating our place and I'm glad that I'll have a Christmas tree this year. Another thing we've been doing to get into the Christmas spirit is watching Christmas movies. So far we've seen A Charlie Brown Christmas, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol and Santa Claus is Comin' To Town (the old one with the puppets, like Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer). Heather had to break her Christmas tradition of watching White Christmas while decorating the house because Blockbuster was out of it when we went to rent it. We should have it this week though. Anyway, not much of a post, but it's something. Merry Christmas!

Vegas Part 2

2005-11-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

Before I finish my story about our trip to Las Vegas from last week, I wanted to mention that I've now started selling prints of my photos on my photography site, digital|shutter. Payment is made through PayPal, so everything is secure. I'm pretty excited about this, and hope people will want to buy some of my photos.

Also I want to mention that I haven't posted any pictures here from our Vegas trip because Blogger is having issues. It won't let me upload any. I'll keep trying.

Back to the story. The next day was Saturday. We slept in until 10:30 or so. We got ready and headed over to Pick Up Stix for lunch. This place is awesome. After lunch, we headed over to the park where the Annual Bite of Las Vegas was being held. It's a yearly festival that features food and music. Restaurants have booths setup all over the place. You can sample and buy foods and hear great music. They had two stages for music. One was local bands and the other was headliners. We got there with our blanket and chilled on the grass in front of the stage for a while. There weren't a ton of people waiting for the concert, but by the time the last band came out, the place was packed. I think this was Heather's first real concert. She's seen Weezer before, but that doesn't count. We had fun chilling on the grass all afternoon and talking to drunk guy sitting next to us. Everyone in that place was at least one of the following: drunk, smoking or obnoxious. The headlining show started at 2:00PM with Jem. She's a British artist that reminds me of Dido. We tried listening to her album on our drive down to Vegas, but it was kind of boring. It was a lot more entertaining live. They rocked a lot harder and it was more enjoyable. Next up was Josh Kelley. I've been a big Josh Kelley fan for a while. He had a pretty big hit on his first album with "Amazing" but I never really heard any other songs on the radio. It's to bad, because the guy is super-talented. I try telling people that he's kinda like John Mayer, except he writes songs that aren't boring. Anyway, he was awesome live. The guy's vocals are dead on and he's fun to watch. The lead guitarist had pigtails, like Pippy Longstocking. It was pretty awesome. There was also a dude playing the piano that had long curly hair and a full beard. Sweet! After Josh Kelley was one of my favorite bands of all time. Better Than Ezra. This is the second time I've been able to see them live. They came out and rocked it in BTE's typical comedic fashion. Kevin Griffin, the lead singer is a crack up. After BTE was Collective Soul. I've been a Collective Soul fan, since their first album came out my freshman year of high school. I have and listen to all of their albums except for their newest one, I haven't listened to it all that much. This is the third time I've seen them in concert. Let me just say, I've never seen someone as crazy with a mic stand as the lead singer, Ed Roland. He was all over the place throwing that mic stand. It was pretty entertaining just to watch him. Collective Soul put on a good show. They came out and did an encore. As soon as I head that the last song was "Shine," Heather and I started for the car. Everyone at the show was chanting "Shine, Shine, Shine." I don't know why. Out of half-dozen albums that Collective Soul has, "Shine" is probably the song that I like the least. Sure, it's the reason I started listening to them in the first place, but they have written much better music since then. Oh well, to each his own. Needless to say, the concert was awesome. We paid $5 to get into the festival and that included all the shows. It was the best five bucks I've ever spent. Heather enjoyed it, but didn't like her ears ringing after the show. I told her, that's how you know it was a good show. After the show we went to IHOP for dinner. We love that place. Then we went back to the hotel, chilled in the pool and jacuzzi and then crashed. We left around noon the next day and headed for home. We stopped in St. George to see the temple and get something to eat. We got home much later than expect. It probably has something to do with the fact that every road in Utah is under construction all the time, even when it's not under construction. I get mad just thinking about it, but I'm not going to get into that. So, Blogger is still having issues with me uploading images, so none of those for right now. Hopefully they'll get it fixed.

Learn to speak English

2005-10-26T23:04:00.000-07:00

Someone posted some inappropriate comments on my wife's blog yesterday. Feel free to read it for yourself before continuing on with my post. I've already posted a comment as a rebuttal of sorts to this woman's words, but I feel inclined to post on the subject in general. I'll probably end up offending a lot of people, but I probably do that a lot already.

To: Ariyanna Geigen
It seems you are implying that English speaking people are not very tolerant of people speaking other languages? Well, why should we be? It's one thing to be a tourist and spend a limited amount of time in our country. It's another thing to live in our country and still not learn the language. No one can be expected to learn English or any language within a few weeks or even a few months. But if you decide to live in our country, you should be expected to speak our language. If someone is working in our country, chances are they live in our country. And if you live here, you had better learn to speak English, bottom line. I don't know what world you live in, but where I come from, the world doesn't revolve around me. I don't expect the world to cater to my wants or needs. I spent two years in the Philippines and I learned to speak Filipino within six months. Was it easy? No way. Did I want to give up? Of course. Honestly, it was probably the most frustrating six months of my life. I couldn't communicate with anyone. Everyone made fun of my pathetic attempts to speak their language. I couldn't expect everyone to start speaking English as soon as I got there. I had to work hard until I got a handle on it. I didn't start crying because someone was rude to me. That's life. Suck it up and deal with it. If someone is honestly trying to learn our language, fantastic! The problem I have is with the people who have been here for years and don't even try. Everyone expects us to cater to them, because we do. And when we don't we're "rude Americans." Speaking of the woman in Heather's post, I don't know how she got a job in a customer service position. If the majority of people who came into my store were English speaking, I wouldn't hire someone who couldn't speak English. Whoever owns that A&F could have lost a sale because of the communication barrier. Would I expect someone to hire me for a Spanish speaking position? Hell no! Anyone would laugh at the thought. But because we're America, we're expected to conform to everyone else. Screw that. I'm sick and tired of having to wait through Spanish options whenever I call a business. You're in our country, speak our language. No other countries conform to everyone else, why should we? Call me insensitive or a jerk, but I didn't expect people to speak my language when I went to their country and neither should anyone else.

Lastly, in response to your comments about the "hard life," you need to lose the idea that all Americans have it easy and everything is given to them on a silver platter. I've worked my butt off since I was legally old enough to have a job. I stopped "working" for two years to be a missionary in a foreign country. That was probably the hardest work I've ever done and I didn't even get paid any money to do it, in fact I had to pay for it myself. I still work hard to provide for myself and my wife. We didn't get those flip-flops because we won't wear anything that's not an over-price piece of crap. We got them because they were the only option we had. You don't know me and you don't know my wife. Acting like you do makes you look ignorant.

Viva Las Vegas

2005-10-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist, I had to use that title. So in celebration of our two-month anniversary (what we've dubbed our two-monthiversary) Heather and I took a trip to Las Vegas for the weekend. Our monthiversary was actually on Thursday the 20th. On Friday I took a half day off from work and we left for Vegas. I won't expound on the obstacles that we faced as we left for Vegas. I'm sure Heather will go into those details on her blog. We'll just suffice it to say that there were obstacles, and leave it at that. We got to Vegas Friday evening. We stayed at a La Quinta about 8 miles from the strip. It's not the most fancy place in the world, but we liked it. It was nice and it wasn't too expensive. We were excited to find out that Vegas has a restaurant called Pick-Up Stix. It's an Asian food place that has really good stuff. We ate there on our honeymoon in San Diego. I highly recommend the House Chicken if you ever find one of their restaurants. We spent Friday night walking the strip. We watched the fountain show at the Bellagio, it was amazing. I got some nice pictures. Then we went to Caesar's Palace and found the mall inside. We spent most of our time in the mall looking for a place that sold flip-flops. Heather wore some shoes that started hurting her feet. Finding flip-flops in a mall is apparently more difficult than one would think. We finally found some for $18 at Abercrombie & Fitch. They didn't even have them on the floor, we had to ask and they got them out of the back. This is another story I'm sure Heather will go into detail about. We ate at The Cheesecake Factory for dinner. By that time we were both dead tired, I think it was almost 1AM. We started walking back to the Monte Carlo where we parked. Keep in mind that it takes about 10-15 minutes to get through the mall and the casino to get back out to the strip. We walked all the way out of Caesar's Palace and were in front of the fountains at the Bellagio when I realized I left my camera on the table at The Cheesecake Factory. I called them and they said they had it. We walked all the way back through the casino and the mall back to the restaurant (which is at the very end of the mall, by the way), got my camera and proceeded to walk back to the car. We finally got there and drove to the hotel. It was pretty late by then.
I'll add a couple photos to this post later. And stay tuned for the next installment.

Downtown Philly

2005-10-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

So, I've decided not to finish my last story. It would just be another rant like the first, so I'm just gonna keep it to myself. I'll tell you about my recent trip. Last Wednesday, I took a trip to Philadelphia for the annual ADA Trade Show. These things are usually held in a convention center and everyone in the industry has a booth to show off their new stuff and to try to sell crap to dentists and others in the industry. Pretty boring stuff. If it had been a car show or a computer expo or something like that, it would've been much more exciting. I was put in a room with someone else from my company that I didn't know. That could've sucked, but he turned out to be a cool guy. I wasn't going to the show as a salesperson, I was only there for technical support. I spent most of my time standing around. You have no idea how long an 8-hour day can be until you've spent one doing practically nothing but standing. I was pretty much in a bad mood the entire time. The show lasted 4 days and I was ready to leave by the morning of the first day. I didn't want to be there in the first place, I was volunteered for it. And I missed Heather. It was hard being away for that long. But, here are some things we did to entertain ourselves while at the show:

Glued quarters to the floor. This wasn't as effective as it should be. The floors were carpeted, so if someone tried hard enough, they could usually rip the quarter right off the carpet. It was still entertaining to watch people try and fail.
Taped a $1 bill to the tile floor of the booth across from us. Only a few people tried and failed before someone ripped the whole thing off and then put the tape back where it was on the floor.
Threw the mini footballs we were giving away all over the place. One guy even tried hitting a sign all the way on the other side of the building until one of the security officers asked him to stop.
At the end of the last day we took crap that we were giving away and tried to trade for things that other booths were giving away. We got some Trident gum samples, some pens and some other crap. The coolest was the pen that lights up.
Spent a ton of money on food. The company allots you up to $45 a day for food. You can eat pretty well off of $45 a day.
At night if I wasn't out getting something to eat, I was back at the hotel watching episodes of Firefly on my laptop. Great show!

So, that's pretty much it. We were staying in downtown Philadelphia. I have two words to describe it. Ghet to. It was crazy. It actually reminded me of Manila, it was so bad. The last day of the show was Sunday and I got back home Sunday night. The Eagles lost to the Cowboys, that was the bad news I got as soon as I got off the plane. But, I was so happy to come home. I missed Heather so much. It's good to be back.

Dealing with stupid people

2005-09-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

So I've wanted to post about this for a while now, but I just haven't had time to do so. I just need to post a little rant about some of the stupid people I've had to deal with recently. Most of this will follow one storyline. I'm going to try to summarize so it's not too long.

I called to setup our internet service through Comcast shortly after arriving home from our honeymoon. I set it up through their website so that I could get in on a special that they had going. After submitting my order, I realized that I hadn't entered our apartment number in the address. They had a number to call for questions and changes, so I gave them a call and explained my mistake. The person I spoke with at Comcast was very nice, got my information updated and asked me if I wanted a technician to come to our location to install the cable modem. I told him no, because I could do it myself and no one is home during the day. He said that was fine and they could either ship the modem to me or I could pick it up at their Lindon, UT office. I told him I would just pick it up, since it's very close to where I work. A couple days later, I decided I would stop off at their office to pick up the modem on my way into work. Since their hours are about the same as mine, I had to come into work late. After waiting in line for several minutes, I was told that they already shipped me a modem and they couldn't give me another one. I was a little upset, but it wasn't that big of a deal. Heather and I took a trip to California for our second reception and when we got back I expected to have a package on our doorstep or in our mailbox. There was no package in either location. The next day I called Comcast to ask when the modem would be arriving. They told me it had already been delivered and gave me the UPS tracking number. I called UPS and they told me the package had an incomplete address and they corrected the address and shipped the package. I asked what address they shipped it to and they told me and address that was nowhere near the one I live at. The only thing it had in common with my address was the city. I told them this wasn't my address and asked what I'm supposed to do. They said that Comcast would have to start an investigation to find the missing package. I called Comcast and explained the situation. They said they would look into it. I told them that I don't really care about the missing package, but I need a cable modem so I can start using my service. They told me I needed to speak with someone at the local office. They tried to transfer me but they did something wrong because I was dropped. Then the person called me back on my cell phone (this was the number I signed up for service with, since we didn't have a landline setup yet) and apologized. They then tried to transfer me again after putting me on hold for about 10 minutes. Keep in mind, I'm still on my cell phone. They finally get someone else on the line and the call is immediately dropped again. I call back again and explain everything one more time. The lady then tells me that there's nothing they can do. She informs me that a technician is scheduled to come out to our location tomorrow to do the installation and they'll bring the cable modem. I don't know where she got this information. I explained that I didn't want to have a technician come out since no one is home during the day. She said there was nothing she could do. So I asked to speak to her supervisor. After explaining everything again, he apologized for the mix up. He said that only the local office could send out a new modem or tell me if I can go pick one up, and the local office was now closed for the day. If the first person I spoke with knew how to transfer a call without dropping it, this could've been resolved by now. So, the supervisor gave me a reference number with all the information I explained to him, so I wouldn't have to repeat it. He told me to call in the morning and they would be able to help me. He also asked if I still wanted to technician to come out tomorrow. I told him no, I never wanted a technician in the first place. He said he would cancel the technicians appointment and apologized again for the confusion. So, the next day before I even have a chance to call them, I get a call on my cell phone. It's someone with the Comcast dispatch. She informs me that they had an appointment for this morning between 9 and 12 and the technician is at my door. I told her I was never supposed to have a technician in the first place. As soon as this call ends, I give Comcast a call at the number I was given. I give them the reference number I received from the supervisor the day before. Sure enough, they can't find that number anywhere. So I explain the situation for the Nth time and explain I'm supposed to speak with someone at the local office. They get a hold of the local office for me and I end up on the phone with some guy named Ryan. Again I explain what's going on and he tells me he's going to have to look into it for me to find out what happened to the missing modem. I tell him that's not my problem. All I care about is getting a new modem. I told him that his options were to tell me that I would be shipped a new modem or tell me that I can go pick one up today or I would give up on Comcast completely and go with another option. He said he could understand that and that he would give me a call back by 3:30 that day with an answer. I told him I would give him until 3:30. 3:30 rolled around and guess what. No phone call. I wait 10 minutes before giving Comcast one more call to speak with Ryan. I explain to the person that I need to speak with Ryan at the local office, he was dealing with my issue and was supposed to call me back. The person checks the local office. Ryan and his entire department have already gone home for the day. I explain everything that happened to the person on the phone and tell him this whole situation is ridiculous. I just want a modem. He says that I can just go to the local office and pick one up. He says he'll put in the notes what the situation is and they should give me a modem. I drive over there as soon as the call ends and sure enough, they give me a modem. So simple math will tell you, that for about every 10 people at Comcast, only 1 of them knows what they're doing.

Stay tuned for Part 2, the UPS side of this story.

And we're back

2005-08-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

So, the wedding is over. We're home from the honeymoon. We're moving into our apartment. I've returned to work and Heather started school today. I'll try to summarize the events of the past week and a half. I apologize in advance for the long post.

The first couple days I was out in AZ, we got some of the final preparations done. My dad got into town on Thursday. (P.S. He bought a brand new 2005 Mustang GT convertible. It's pretty freaking sweet!)

Friday the 19th we had our wedding photos taken. I think they're going to turn out well. I'll post some once we get them back. The photographer was using a Digital SLR, so hopefully I can get the original images to post. If you're wondering if it was hot in AZ, the answer is yes. Very yes. Man, I was dying in my suit when we were getting the pictures taken. Heather looked amazing in her wedding dress. She couldn't have looked any more perfect than she did. I have a few photos my Dad took with my camera.

Saturday morning was the wedding. It was awesome. It was a very special experience and I'm so happy I got to share it with someone so amazing and who I love so much. After the wedding, we had a luncheon at Macaroni Grill. That was a lot of fun. We finally had a chance to sit down and just have a good time for a little while. The most important part of the whole thing was over, so I felt that weight lift off my shoulders. I get stressed out easily and just waiting for something that big to happen was weighing down on me. There wasn't really any reason for me to be stressed, I just worry about something going wrong and it gets to me after a while. At the luncheon, Evan (my best man) gave a great toast. Way better than any of the ones I've given, and I've given several. After the luncheon, we had a few hours before we had to get the reception for photos with the wedding party. We went back to Heather's parents house. We took a nap for a little while and then we had to start getting ready. We had to pack everything for the Honeymoon, because we were leaving straight from the reception. In the mix, Heather mentioned to me that she couldn't find her wallet, but didn't think would really need it for anything. This will be important later on. We got to the reception and Heather got read in her dress while I took some photos of the decorations and cake and stuff.

Everyone showed up and we started taking our photos outside the reception hall. Again, it was a little warm. It was a wise decision having the reception inside an air-conditioned room. The wedding reception went off without a hitch. In fact, the entire day went really smoothly in my opinion. We stood in the reception line for most of the two hours. Heather didn't want to do the cake cutting or the bouquet or anything like that. So at about 8:40PM we started walking around and just chatting with people. Then just before 9:00PM we went and got changed and ready to leave. Everyone at the reception went outside the front door and waited for us to come out. They gave out little bottles of bubbles to everyone, so they were all waiting for ammunition in hand. We had our final goodbye with parents and stuff before going outside. We were bombarded with bubbles. In all the excitement I almost forgot to open Heather's door for her. We got out of there and headed over to the Gainey Suites Hotel in Scottsdale. It's a really nice hotel. I liked it a lot.

The next morning we started getting our things together to leave for San Diego. I scheduled the hotel shuttle service to pick us up at 12:30PM, but I forgot that check-out is at 12:00 noon. I realized this at about 11:45AM. Needless to say, we got packed very quickly. We then had to wait a while for the car service to pick us up. It was very fancy. They picked us up in a Lincoln Town Car. Very nice. During our trip to the airport, we realized the first thing we needed Heather's wallet for. Her ID. We didn't know what to do, without an ID. Apparently, if you don't have ID, you have to get screened at security. So they had to take her aside and go through all her carry-on items and give her a full security screening. It was a hassle, but we survived. We waited for a while and then boarded the plane. It was about to pull out from the gate but returned and we were informed by the pilot that there was a warning light that they needed to get checked out. He said he would let us know what was going on. About 15-20 minutes after pulling back into the gate, they announced we were ready for takeoff and we pulled out. I'm not sure what it was, but we made it there alive, so I guess that's the important part. We arrived in San Diego, only a little late. The weather was beautiful. If I could live anywhere in the country, I'm pretty sure San Diego would be it. Unfortunately, I forgot which car rental service I used, because I booked the car about 2 months before the wedding. I had to call my roommate and have him look it up on my email. We finally got on the right shuttle and headed over to Enterprise. Problem #2, Heather has the credit card in her wallet. The wallet that we don't have. Rental Car companies need a credit card for the deposit on the car. They used my Debit Card, but that meant that they take $300 out of my account until the car is returned. This made it a little difficult when we got to our hotel because they charge the entire amount when you check in. I had to give them a cash deposit and put the rest of it on my card because I was short about $300 by that time. It was a big hassle and I was a little stressed out because of the whole thing. We go to our room, which we loved by the way. We stayed at the Hotel La Jolla. It's a very narrow building and the rooms are only on one side of the building, each room facing the ocean. It's very unique. We were on the 9th floor, which is the best place to be. We had an amazing view of the ocean.

The 11th floor of the hotel is a very nice restaurant that we never had a chance to eat at. But the restaurant has jazz musicians at night, so on the 10th floor, I believe it can be very noisy. The 9th floor has easily the best view of the ocean, which is only a block away. The rooms were rather small, but not too small for us. The were very clean and looked like they've just been remodeled. I was very happy with the hotel all around. We loved it there and plan on going back, possibly for our 1 year anniversary. (Hint: Book far in advance, because it appears to be a very popular hotel. They were completely booked when we got there.) While there, we were able to go to beach, walk the trails along the La Jolla shores, visit the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego, go to Magic Mountain and more.

Heather and I at Magic Mountain on our honeymoon. Yay! (I meant to post this right when I took it, but I couldn't remember the e-mail address I had to send the message to from my phone. Oh well, here it is.) This was on the Goliath. I don't know what's up with the Asian guy in the back, but he looks like he's up to something.

We had a blast. I was pretty sad to leave it and return to the real world, but at the same time was excited to get settled into our new place and start our new life together.

We flew back to AZ on Thursday afternoon. We opened our wedding gifts and spent the night at Heather's parents. The next morning we packed up and left on the 10-hour drive to Provo from Mesa. Long drive, you say? Well, it's nothing compared to the 13-hour drive to California we get to do this Friday. Anyway, we're back in Utah. I went back to work and Heather started school. We're back to the real world now. Sorry for the super-long post, but it's hard to summarize a week and a half. Especially since it was the best week and a half of my life.

It's Friday

2005-08-19T00:32:00.000-07:00

I know, it's only barely Friday, but it's still Friday nonetheless. Heather and I are getting married tomorrow. I'm so excited. She's such an amazing girl, I can't believe how lucky I am. Well, see you all on the flip-side.

The Countdown

2005-08-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

Well, today is Friday. You all know what that means? I have exactly one week left of being single. When I think back to April, when we first got engaged, it felt like it was never going to be here. Even up until less than a month ago, it just seemed like time was going to make our engagement last forever. Well, that's finally not the case anymore. It's so close now, that I can see it. This is such an amazing time for me. I've never been so happy about anything in my life. I'm so lucky to be marrying such an awesome girl. We're both very excited and looking forward to our wedding day.

P.S. We're registered at Target and Bed Bath & Beyond. :)

Evan & Brooke's new baby

2005-08-04T22:02:00.000-07:00

So, I took a trip up to Evan and Brooke's house after work today. Boz and Maegan came with me. They already saw the baby at the hospital the other night, but it was my first time. Let me just say, she is adorable. She's super-tiny, but she has huge feet. Anyway, here is a picture for everyone out there. Enjoy!

So, I'm really bored

2005-08-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

I'm just sitting here at work right now. I have stuff to do, but I'm really not in the mood. I'm ready for my next training group to start on Monday. It's funny because by the end of the two weeks of training, I'm usually ready for that to be over. Also, it's hard to focus with something so important and life-changing coming up in the near future. Only 17 days away (if you hadn't noticed the countdown on the right) until Heather and I get married. But anyway, I really don't have anything to write about right now, but I figured it would eat up a couple minutes. I guess while I'm here I could say that my best friend, Evan, and his wife just had a baby last night. I don't have any of the details yet. From what I hear, she's tiny. I might be visiting them tonight, and if so, I will be posting a picture.

It's all coming together

2005-08-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

So we've got just under 3 weeks to go until the wedding. Everything seems to be coming together. Heather still has several things to do. I've got a couple things to do, the biggest being moving to our new apartment. Hopefully I'll be getting a call within the next week letting me know that our apartment is ready to go. I still have lots of packing to do, but it shouldn't be too much work once I get going. I spent the weekend in AZ with Heather and we got our marriage license. When we went to the County Clerks office, we went to the room where they issue marriage licenses and passports and there was a security guard at the door that was assisting people coming into the room. He was an older man, probably in his 60's. Here's what he said to us, "Marriage license? Well, I'll tell you what you need to do. You want to start by getting one of those forms over there on the counter. Then go over to the wall and take a number. Then get the form filled out and wait for them to call your number." Then he looked at me and said, "And if you change your mind, the exits are that way." And he pointed down the hall. It was pretty funny. When we were finished filling out the form, we came back into the room to wait for them to call our number. When he saw us come back in he said, "Well it looks like she talked you into going through with it..." We just laughed. He was a funny old man.

While I'm talking about my upcoming marriage, I have a few words of advice to give people who have friends that are getting married. Stop asking them if they're getting nervous yet! You aren't the first person in the world to think of that. And even if you were, it's still not funny. If I'm nervous about getting married, I probably didn't think my decision through very well. I'm at the point where I just expect to be asked that question every time my marriage comes up in any conversation. Today was the first time in a while that didn't happen. Someone here at work said she heard I was getting married soon. When I told her it's less than 3 weeks, she said, "That's so exciting. You must be so happy." I was caught off guard for a second. So, I just wanted to let everyone in on that.

The Internet is "baloney"

2005-07-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

Wired has an article titled We Are the Web that takes an interesting look back at the birth of the Internet as we know it and how far we've come since then. It might be a little technical for some, but it's a good read, nonetheless. There's even a section about the blogging phenomenon. One of my favorite quotes from the article:

Any promising new invention will have its naysayers, and the bigger the promises, the louder the nays. It's not hard to find smart people saying stupid things about the Internet on the morning of its birth. In late 1994, Time magazine explained why the Internet would never go mainstream: "It was not designed for doing commerce, and it does not gracefully accommodate new arrivals." Newsweek put the doubts more bluntly in a February 1995 headline: "THE INTERNET? BAH!"

It's amazing to think about the Internet and how it affects our lives now. This may not be the case for some, but in my opinion, computers have become nearly useless when an internet connection is not available. It has completely changed the way we obtain information and increased the rate at which we are able to do so. Knowledge about anything and everything is at our fingertips. It has also changed the way we communicate. 10 years ago we had telephone and mail. Now, in addition to that we have: e-mail, IM, message boards, newsgroups, VOIP (Internet phones), video communication and probably more that I'm not thinking of. The Internet has become a necessity of life. I have a few friends that do not have internet access at all and some use dialup (which is worse than not having internet access, in my opinion). I don't know how they do it.

Yee Haw!

2005-07-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

It was theme day at work today. As you can see the theme was western. I don't typically dress up for these things, but I already had the cowboy hat, so I thought, what the heck? My costume wasn't nearly as good as some. One guy built an out-house out of cardboard, painted the thing and all. One girl had a costume that made it look like she was riding a horse. I wish I would've taken some pictures. I'll post some if I can get a hold of any, though. This picture was originally taken so Heather could see how big of a dork I am. Then I figured I'd let the whole world know how big of a dork I am.

Heather-ism

2005-07-19T22:15:00.000-07:00

So I'm on the phone with Heather earlier tonight. At one point during the conversation we were talking about my trip to visit her in about 9 days. Here's how the conversation went:

Heather: I'm so excited to see you.
Me: I know, I'm pretty stoked. (This is something I say fairly often, but probably not to Heather all that much.)
Heather: Stoked? You never say stoked.
Me: I say it all the time.
Heather: Like when you stoke the fire?

I just sat there in complete silence. There was nothing I could add to that. After about 10 seconds of dead air, we both started busting up laughing. She's so awesome, she says some of the funniest things.

To Heather: I'm not making fun of you, baby. I love you!

My Sunday afternoon

2005-07-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer for Maggie and Katie: There are a few funny things in this post. Yay!

Story #1: My friends Evan and Brooke asked me if I would help them pick up a crib that was being given to them by Brooke's cousin who lives in Bountiful, UT. Of course I said yes. I'm always willing to help out friends, even though I have a sticker on my truck that says, "Yes this is my truck. No I will not help you move." For those of you with trucks, just an FYI. These stickers do nothing. If anything, I've helped more people move since getting the sticker. But I digress... We got to Brooke's cousin's house and picked up the crib. He's a pretty funny guy. For starters, his name is Loren. A name like that pretty much ensures that the guy will either have a good sense of humor or be a complete social outcast. Luckily for him, it's the former. He gave us a tour of their newly acquired house. It's a really nice place. The kind of place that would go for ~1 million dollars in California. My friends and I always think in these terms, since we're from California. We do this because it reminds us how long it will be before any of us will ever be able to afford buying a house in California, so we don't get over-anxious and decide to move back before we're financially prepared to do so. Just as the tour was finishing, his phone rang and it was his sister (Brooke's other cousin, obviously). I can't remember her name, but it started with an M. He mentioned to her that Brooke and Evan were there. Then he finished his conversation and ended the call. After he ended the call, he pointed out to Brooke that even though he mentioned that Brooke was there, his sister didn't bother to ask him to say hi to Brooke. She just blew it off and that was that. Brooke didn't believe him and laughed as though he was joking. To this, he proceeded to call his sister back to confirm. He started by dialing and trying to hand the phone to Brooke, but she wouldn't take it. Then he just put it on speaker phone. When his sister answered he said, "This is Loren again. When you called a minute ago, I mentioned that Brooke was here, right?" She answered, "Yes." Then he said, "I just wanted to confirm that you didn't bother to say Hi to her, correct?" Keep in mind, that the whole time he's doing this, Evan and I are busting up laughing. His sister laughs at his question, but confirms that she didn't say Hi. Then he says, "Brooke thought that I was the one being the jerk, when in fact it was you for not saying Hi." Brooke's face is completely red at this point. Then he puts Brooke on the spot and tells his sister that she's on speakerphone and Brooke is right there. They both give an awkward "Hello" and he says that's all he wanted and says goodbye. I was dying. It was so something that I'd try to do to someone. Brooke was so embarrassed.

Story #2: We bring the crib back to Evan and Brooke's house. Evan and I assemble the crib. After that we're all sitting on the couch talking about my upcoming wedding. Evan makes one of his trademark jabs at marriage. I think he was talking about how he had the perfect idea for my bachelor party, but it was ruined. Tom Petty had a concert scheduled in Phoenix the night before my wedding, but it was cancelled. Brooke said, "Matt doesn't want to go to a concert the night before his wedding." I replied, "Have you met me, Brooke? I'd do almost anything to go to a good concert." Then Evan says something like, "Come on, it's his last night of fun before the old ball and chain." Then Brooke says, in the stereotypical nagging wife tone, "You tell Matt how great marriage is!" Oh man, me and Evan both lost it. She was ordering him to tell me that marriage is great. And the best part was, she was being serious. After a moment, she saw the irony in what she was saying and she started laughing too. It was a good joke that we revisited several times after that.

Story #3: Not funny, but I have to mention it, nevertheless. I'm driving home from Evan and Brooke's house. I'm on the 15 going southbound. Anyone in this area knows that Utah freeways are under constant construction, and today was no exception. They have at least 20 miles of the freeway lined with the huge orange pylons. Not the skinny ones or the cones, but the ginormous ones. So I'm driving along and up ahead of me one of the construction workers pulls out of the dirt median and into the fast lane, which I happen to be in. There's one car in between he and I. He speeds up quickly enough that he doesn't interrupt the flow of traffic and we continue to drive along for about 5 minutes or so. The whole time, he has his orange lights flashing on the top of his truck. Finally he decides that he's where he wants to be and proceeds to pull back out of the fast lane and into the median. He doesn't slow down to do this, so we were probably going about 60 mph, he simply makes a quick dash to the left trying to cut in between two of those giant orange pylons. As he's doing this, he clips one of the pylons and sends it spinning into the middle of my lane. The car right behind him was close enough that the pylon came flying out after he'd already passed the truck. This means that I'm headed straight for this orange monstrosity. I had enough time to react, but my options were limited. I put on my breaks, but I didn't slam onto them because I'm aware that there's someone following me pretty close. My next instinct is to swerve to the right to avoid hitting said pylon. Just as I begin to do this, I glance over my shoulder and there's a car right beside me in my blind spot. The pylon is still moving to the right at this point, so my only other option is to swerve to the left. Unfortunately, the freeway is lined with these stupid things, so I don't have much room to my left either. I swerved as far as I could to the left but the front passenger side of my truck hits the pylon and sends it spinning into the lane next to me. The car that I almost ran over slams into the pylon and sends it flying back to the left and into the median. This all happened within a few seconds and then it was over. Luckily, I don't think anyone had any serious accident because of it. I was a bit shaken up for a few minutes. Then it turned into anger. I'm seriously thinking about filing some sort of complaint. That would've been quite the lawsuit if there was a multi-car pile-up because some jackass that works construction on the freeway isn't smart enough to know that it's not a good idea to dart in between pylons onto the median while driving at 60 mph. /rant

Me and Kaytee

2005-07-15T17:49:00.000-07:00

Hanging out with Maegan's sisters family. This is Kaytee, Maegan's niece. She's such a cutie.

My work life

2005-07-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

I work at a company that makes dental practice management software, among other dental and medical products. I've been here for about a year and 8 months now. Although it can be frustrating at times, it's a really great job. I don't think I've ever had a job that wasn't frustrating at times, so I can't really complain about this one. I started out doing technical support in one department and I was there for about 5 months. I then moved to another support department and was there for about 3 months. After that I moved to another department that supports "high tech" products, such as digital x-ray equipment and software. After 6 months there, I got a position in our training department as the "In-House Training Specialist." They like to add the word "Specialist" to job titles in this place. I am the person that trains new employees on how to use the software before they start doing tech support on the phones. It's a pretty good gig. Training groups last about 2 weeks long, and that time usually goes by very quickly for me. Our support departments would be considered call centers, so we have some weird things happen here that probably happen in most call centers. For example; we started a new training group this past Monday. There were 12 technicians in this group, which is the biggest group I've trained so far. As of Tuesday morning, we have 11 people left. One girl didn't show up after the first day. Odd? I think so. The first day isn't all that difficult. They essentially spend the first half of the day with HR, filling out forms and watching videos about harassment in the workplace. The second half of the day, I spend a little time getting to know them. Then we start learning some pretty simple things, like the basics of using Windows. This is pretty simple stuff and most people get bored because everyone knows the basics of using a computer and Windows. If you don't, you shouldn't be allowed on the internet and you probably shouldn't be allowed to own a computer either. There's really no excuse. But anyway, we don't do anything that difficult on the first day. As of right now, nobody knows what happened to this girl. She just decided to stop coming, I guess. The temp agency that she was hired through hasn't heard from her either. I always wonder what made them go through all the trouble of finding a job, going to the interviews, filling out all the paperwork and then made them stop going to work after the first day. I had a similar situation in my last training group, but this girl went the entire two weeks of training before she decided not to come back after lunch one day. I don't understand it. Were they shocked when they found out it was a job and that they would have to work or something? I'm not sure what's going on. If anyone has any insight on this phenomenon, I'd love to hear it.

P.S. I've pretty much got my blog template the way I like it. If there are any quirks that you run into, let me know so I can fix them. Thanks.

Blog changes

2005-07-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

So, I'm currently working the template for my blog. I found this one at blogger-templates.blogspot.com. This guy has some pretty cool Blogger templates. Decent templates are kind of hard to find, so if anyone stumbles across any websites that have some decent templates, please let me know. I'm modifying the template that I got from that website, however. I'm trying to make it a little more me. So far, so good. I like how it's turning out. Feel free to leave your feedback, if you like.

Yay for us!

2005-07-08T19:55:00.000-07:00

So I finally get to be with Heather for a few days. I'm so much happier with her around. I planned on taking a picture of her when she was walking out of the gate area, but I completely forgot because I got so excited. I'm really happy I get to marry Heather.

Time, work and a photo

2005-07-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

So Heather's flight gets in tonight at 9:15. I'm pretty much looking at the clock every few minutes, which isn't making the time go any faster. Especially since it's 12:50 right now. I've kept pretty busy at work today so far. I'm getting things ready for Monday. I work at a company that makes dental practice management software. They also have technical support for that software. I started out doing tech support, and last February I got a position in our Training department. When we hire new support technicians, I'm the one who trains them on our software so they can support it. It's about a 2-3 week process, depending on which department they're going to. I'm really glad my next group starts on Monday. My time goes by faster when I have a training group. After I get to see Heather this weekend my training group will start and the time should fly. By the time the training is over, I'll be taking a trip to Arizona to see Heather again. Yay! So, while I'm not one of the few people in the world that can say they love their job, I am thankful for it. Although I really wish I was done with it for today, because that would put me that much closer to seeing Heather.

And here's the photo I was trying to post yesterday. It seems to be working fine now.

Magleby's Fresh

2005-07-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

Gettin' some grub at Magleby's Fresh with Ben and Brittany.

Working hard, or...

2005-07-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

This is me working hard.
P.S. This was posted from my phone using Blogger Mobile.

I'm a blogger

2005-07-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

So, I've never really done this kind of thing before. I'm not much of a writer, to tell the truth. I know several people who blog on a regular basis, one of them being my fiance, Heather. I thought it might be fun, so I'm going to give it a shot. I have a photoblog, digitalshutter that I try to update frequently, although you wont be able to tell that if you visit it now. We'll see how I handle this kind of blog.

So, here's my story. I'm currently living in Utah. I've been here for almost 2 years now. I'm from California and I love it there, but I'm really glad I was talked into moving out here. If I hadn't, I never would have met the girl of my dreams. Heather is going to school at BYU, although not at the moment. She's currently living in Arizona with her family for the summer. She's working and trying to save some money. We will be married on August 20th, 2005. For those of you counting, that's 6 weeks from this coming Saturday. We're both very excited and extremely happy. It's been hard, however, being apart for so long. We planned trips so we would get to see each other about every 3 weeks over the summer. Unfortunately, it's been almost 5 weeks since we last saw each other. I'm happy to say that Heather will be here in Utah tomorrow evening and will be here for the weekend. I get her for 3 whole days! I'm getting pretty excited to see her, so tomorrow is going to be a long day. I tried to add a photo for good measure, but it's not letting me for some reason and I'm giving up.

I'm pretty sure that most if not all of what I post on here will have something to do with her/us.

Welcome

2005-01-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new blog. This is just a temporary replacement for dznet.org, which is down at the moment.

Album of the Week

2005-01-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Here are previous Albums of the Week:

Josh Kelley: Almost Honest

3 Doors Down: Seventeen Days

Jason Mraz: Mr. A-Z

Rob Thomas: ...Something To Be

Dishwalla: Dishwalla

The Wallflowers: Rebel, Sweetheart

Better Than Ezra: Before the Robots