Polarization

March 6, 2007

I donno, I was just thinkin’ less purple, more green. For spring, ya know? That, and I’m becoming unhinged towards my existing branding, the whole “brown and ambiguously-purple” thing. Purple is out, green is in. Next in line is hot pink, but I wanted to ease ya’ll into this thing slowly. Imperceptibly slowly. Perhaps so slowly that it will never actually happen, which is a recurring theme of mine, so much so that one might even call it a branding effort.

Last night while waxing my snowboard I sliced a good hunk of skin off my knuckle. While scraping down the base my hand slipped, and the back of my finger slid clean across the edge of the board. It was a pretty good gash, one that took its sweet time to stop bleeding, but everything seems to be fine and clotted now. I actually had to dig out a Band-Aid (also known as an adhesive medical strip) for this one, which is a rare thing for me. I don’t even keep Band-Aids in the house, but luckily my backpacking first-aid kit was near the surface and I managed to find a couple in there.

I had my backpacking gear strewn all about my living room, for as chance would have it, Kate and I are going backpacking down in Zion National Park the week after SXSW. Our plan is to take two days driving down, spending a night in Salt Lake City in exchange for a few cases of Full Sail brew, take a day to explore the main canyon of Zion, and then spend the rest of our time exploring the backcountry.

When I went backpacking in Zion back in 2002 with Wuda Wooch! we had so many people that we had to split into two groups. Our group explored the Right Fork Trail while the other group went up Coal Pits Wash, so this time ’round Kate and I plan on hitting up Coal Pits. ‘course, we might be at the mercy of weather conditions, water scarcity or other rough-and-tumble groups, so it’s best that we stay flexible in this regard. The Right Fork was certainly no slouch, and we spent days exploring all the intersecting canyons and streams in the area.

Coal Pits seems to offer more as far as getting up on the plateaus and enjoying sweeping vistas, but I’m pretty much cool with whatever. The Southwest as a whole is one of my favorite places on this gol’ danged planet, ever since I went there with my father for spring break when I was in fifth grade. Over the course of a week we toured Las Vegas, Death Valley, the Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon Caverns, and Zion.

In all honestly I spent nearly every waking moment playing my Game Boy, and yet it all seems to have left an impression anyhow. I think my only picture from the Grand Canyon was of the asphalt in a parking lot, when I finally beat Metroid II and set my Game Boy on the ground so I could snap a picture of the end-game sequence.

While I expect most of my pictures from Austin to hold true to a similar degree of pathetic nerdery, here’s hoping that this time around I can return from the Southwest with some better pictures.

Filed under Nerd, Outdoors, Travel | Comments Off on Polarization

Web Nerd Geek Party

March 2, 2007

Last October I accidentally threw away my iPod Shuffle. This may sound like an interesting story, but more than anything it was dumb. Just dumb. Sure, it was just one of the old style Shuffles, the kind that was as big as a pack of gum which seemed really small for about fifteen minutes there, and I had already replaced it once after all the buttons had stopped working, but that little bastard still set me back $150 at the time.

Last week my new iPod Shuffle arrived, the latest version of the latest kind that has a built-in clip and comes with Apple’s new-style headphones and is about the size of a postage stamp if postage stamps were a quarter of an inch thick and cost $79. Honestly, this thing is small. I almost swallowed it just taking it out of the box.

Anywho, I love the new Shuffle. At first I had planned on getting a nano, seeing as how the cheapest model would be the same price that I paid for my original Shuffle. After I realized that for my purposes I would need an armband or some crazy carrying shit like that, and discovering that such nonsense would run me an extra $30 or so, the Shuffle and its handy clip started looking much more attractive. I don’t need much from an mp3 player… I just need something that makes noise in my ears while I’m at the gym. Until I can afford a personal trainer, an iPod it is.

Hence the Shuffle, which is of a size that is so ridiculously small that it makes you wonder why your headphones need to plug into anything anymore, or even need to have cords for that matter. I still don’t have a proper full-size iPod, partly because I have no real use for one in my regular life, and partly because I keep putting off the purchase, in the interest of getting the next latest-and-greatest edition from Apple. I’ve been waiting for the multi-touch iPod ever since the iPhone was announced, and I know now that it’s only a matter of time.

It’s amazing when you realize that the click wheel, which was quite possibly the most innovative UI development of the oughts, has already been rendered completely irrelevant by the very company that invented it in the first place.

In other news, a week from today I take off for my second shot at SXSW. My first time was a blast and I got to spend it with my fellow UI-geek friend (and occasional lover) Jake Ingman, along with Sally and a number of other great friends we made down there in Austin. Jake and I have known of each other’s existences since 2001, but we didn’t hook up until SXSW last year. We rekindled our relationship through the 37signals personal ads (this joke was funnier before they started running their Job and Gig Boards) on a thread about Jim Brandenburg, and we spent our downtime at “South By” sharing the same bed. Or staying up all night blogging and uploading photos to Flickr. What can I say, we were both hopeless romantics at the time.

Jake and I are both jammin’ down to SXSW again this year, only this time around we’ve got two beds between us. Kate assured me, however, that she would be totally okay if we decided to share again. I guess we’ll just have to see what Anne says about the whole deal. Seriously though, some things just get out of control down in Texas.

Filed under Consumerism, Life, SXSW, Web Design | Comments Off on Web Nerd Geek Party

Gainful Employment

February 18, 2007

“How’s the shop?” you ask. Yup, it’s been a couple weeks since I sold out and went whole-hog at Big Winds. It’s been great, and while my job suffers from a severe and terminal case of ADD, I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing.

Sometimes I’m working on the website, but much of the time I’m helping customers in the store, or answering kiteboarding questions on the phone, or processing internet orders, or cleaning out the microwave after my coffee exploded. For the next couple days I’m actually in charge of the shipping department, as Joe has taken a few days off to go out to Joseph, Oregon and give a ring to a special person. Sadly, he may return to find both his bachelorhood and his workspace in ruins.

A few days ago Bruce Peterson, the brilliant and kind fellow behind Sailworks, stopped by the shop. While climbing into his van he found me on the sidewalk in front of the shop, covered in dust and shaking the dirt out of a whole stack of rugs.

“Hey Dane, welcome back!”
“Thanks, Bruce!”
“So, web guy, eh?”
“Yup.”
“And… rugs, looks like?”
“Uhh, yeah. Either way, I usually just take them all out back and beat them.”

So yeah, I’m all over the map these days and still busy getting reacquainted with the shop, but I’m really enjoying the diversity of it all. In regards to the website there’s a whole lot of changes I want to make, but much of it falls behind my current priority, which is to simply make our online product catalog accurate. There’s a lot of data in there, and even though I’ve nearly rewritten the entire back-end over the years, there’s a lot of legacy code that prevents me from efficiently making large-scale updates. That said, I have managed to eek a bit of coolness out of the deal:

Using this batch of Photoshop Automator Actions, I’ve automated the generation of product images for the website. It took a couple hours of development, but now I’ve got a nearly foolproof system that takes in a batch of original high-res images, and automatically creates large, standard and thumbnail sized images. The whole deal respects aspect ratios, throws in a bit of unsharpen mask and gently compresses each image, all while I microwave yesterday’s coffee for the fourth time.

Thanks to this, I’ve been able to integrate Lightbox with our kite detail pages. It’s still in beta so there aren’t any visual cues, but if you click on the kite picture it’ll bring up a larger version. I really wanted the large images to be much bigger, but our web statistics suggest that most of our visitors are still stuck at 1024×768 resolution, and I didn’t want them to have to scroll to hit the close button.

Hard to believe, eh? I mean, I kicked 1024 to the curb at least five years ago, maybe nine, and my preferred environment these days is a whopping 1900×1200. Apparently there are still a bunch of people out there who want to be miserable in front of their computers, and want blindness to accompany their barroom deafness.

Here’s another interesting discovery. According to our statistics, as well as some off-the-cuff usability studies I’ve conducted (which is just a fancy way of saying that I watched people browse our website), people have no clue that the “Boards”, “Sails”, “Masts”, etc. headings in our primary navigation are clickable.

It appears that even the New York Times website suffers from the same problem, which is probably why they have little » » glyphs next to their category headings. While I definitely have qualms about the improper semantics of using right angle quotes as visual cues rather than as, say, quotes, I figured I’d give them a shot and see if they affect usability at all.

Another kinda neat thing we did to the site is add a couple of QuickTime VR Tours of our shop. A couple months ago we had a guy come in and shoot the whole place with a fisheye lens, and stitch the photos together all right-nice. In the interest of catering to a hideous web browser that is used by a vast majority of our visitors (see my earlier point about how people want to be miserable at their computers), I tried to embed the videos as unobtrusively as possible, using these scripts provided by Apple.

Long story short, by using JavaScript to embed the video code, I am able to circumvent the repercussions of the Eolas lawsuit, and make the videos work in Internet Explorer without requiring visitors to hate their lives and click on it multiple times.

I know, I know. There are better ways to embed content, ways that will validate and are semantically correct. That said, even the most recent article on A List Apart doesn’t arrive at a definitive solution for the issue, and as such I’m willing to leave this one up to bloody pragmatism. My solution above worked in every browser I tested, under nearly all conditions, and I call that good.

In happier news, I did manage to get all of my tiny, disparate onload JavaScripts to fire using the same addEvent() function. Major props go to Dustin Diaz for his rock solid addEvent() function, though I might add we’re still gonna whoop his butt in bowling at SXSW.

And hey, did you know that in a Google search for “camp loo”, camping toilets come up in nearly all of the link ads? I just thought that was funny.

Filed under Hood River, Web Design, Work | Comments Off on Gainful Employment

The Sound and the Fury

February 18, 2007

I just got back from doing a bit of night riding over at Mount Hood Meadows. Apparently this weekend they’re having a throw-down called Jamaican Days, which means they pipe reggae music through their outside speakers, host a bonfire out on the snow, and cook something at the chalet that smells vaguely Jamaican. It also means that the snowboarders burn something in the terrain park that smells vaguely Jamaican. How this makes it different from any other weekend is beyond me.

However. If snow conditions had any say in the matter, the festivities would be known as “If you hate your life and want to die, let’s go snowboarding! Days.”

As I was taking my first ride up the chair lift (I take Daisy Chair because I’m a sucker for its vintage charm) I heard a very odd sound, that was not unlike the sound of waves crashing on a beach. At first I thought it was the lift, and I braced for my imminent plunge to the earth, but when the sound didn’t change as I passed lift tower after lift tower, I began to wonder. Why, the sound even seemed to echo through the resort, and besides snowmobiles I know of no lift that creates such a din to actually echo.

No. The sound I heard was every single person at Mount Hood Meadows, simultaneously scraping the metal edges of their skis or snowboards across the ice, the bulletproof ice that covered the entire mountain in a cruel mockery of actual snow. Oh god, that sound. I swear, it was so loud you could probably hear it all the way down in Government Camp… hear it, that is, if you weren’t deaf already from getting punched in the ear in a brawl down at Charlie’s.

Anyway, in contrast to the abhorrent snow conditions to be had at the mountain this eve, we had a beautiful day here in Hood River. It started out as the typical crud, cloudy and somewhat chilly with a cold drizzle every now and then. Early in the day someone at the bagel shop said it was sunny in Cascade Locks, however, so that gave us hope. Hope and rage. See, Cascade Locks is located in a fucking rainforest, such that we firmly believe it should never be sunny there. When it is, we Hood River peoples take it as an affront to our very existence.

Fortunately, the sun was kind enough to migrate this far east, and we were treated to cloudless skies and 60 degrees for the entire afternoon. I was busy soloing the shop for a good part of the day, but I managed to get outside for a spell and unwind some kite lines. In the evening it was still crystal clear, and the stars were out while I was riding at Meadows.

Or perhaps that was because I slammed my head into the ice one time too many.

Filed under Hood River, Snowboarding, Weather | Comments Off on The Sound and the Fury

Hired Goon

February 4, 2007

Phew.

I guess there’s been some changes ’round these parts over the last couple weeks. I’ve been busy with those so I’ve kinda been neglecting some things, small things like this blog and personal hygiene and common decency.

When I got back from Walla Walla last Sunday someone had been kind enough to leave me a dead bird on the sidewalk to my house. The next morning the bird was gone, replaced by little feathered turds. That afternoon I came home to find a dismembered wing on my front step, and the turds were missing.

So there was that.

Also, I’ve been busy raising a beard again. It’s hard work and it takes a lot of time and effort, especially for the few of us who do not have Chuck Norris in our ancestry. There’s so few of us.

So very few.

But yes, a beard. By the looks of things this is the winter of the Sketchy Facial Hair, and I wanted to throw in my lot. I would also like to have a beard for SXSW, along with a mohawk, if I can muster the guts to do that again. Yeah, a beard and a mohawk, so I can appear to be consistent with my Flickr and Facebook and Upcoming.org profile photos. We call this “branding.”

This “alcoholic energy drink meets malt beverage” tastes like an atrocity.

That’s branding, too.

Hey, Kate took me to the Walla Walla Wal-Wal-Mart when I was back over there, and it is vastly superior to the Hood River Wal-Mart, and we actually went there twice, once to buy a potted plant and frozen chilies and again to buy windshield wipers and twelve mason jars, and both times the same clerk helped us. The same clerk! At checkout lanes that were at complete opposite ends of the store! And there’s a tram that runs every seven minutes to take you from one opposite end of the store to the other!

He was a really cool clerk, too. We wondered why he was working at Wal-Mart, being as cool as that. I thought he was probably writing a book about his experience, or at least blogging it.

Twelve mason jars is a lot more mason jars than I thought I needed, so I’ve been spending my time finding things to fill them up with, things like basmati rice and cashews and yerba mate. Yerba mate has a very strong organic, earthy taste to it, which is a nice way of saying it tastes like dirt. It’s dirt jam-packed with caffeine, though, so I’m not about to criticize. My bombilla fell apart way before the Web 2.0 boom so I need to find a new one before I can drink my mate again. Taragui, it was. The mate, that is. You can buy it by the kilo, like other things you can buy.

There was something else.

Oh yeah.

Tomorrow I start my new job at my windsurfing and kiteboarding shop. Even though job titles are kinda ridiculous and we really have no use for them, I shall be working as the Director of Web Marketing for Big Winds, a position which is known internally as “Hey, we have our own computer geek!”

I have worked for Big Winds a couple of times in the past, once in 2003 and again in 2005, and I hearts them lots and lots. I love the people who work there, I love the store and the products, and I love their business ethos. Needless to say, I’m stoked as hell to work for these guys, to be surrounded by people again, to be active in the community, and to know that this summer I will kiteboard so much I won’t even be able to piss straight.

The upshot of all this is that I’m taking on Big Winds as a full-time job, and I’m going to have very little time to run Brainside Out. I’m still kinda stunned by the whole bit, shocked and nervous and excited and somewhat nauseous, but I think there’s a tremendous opportunity to do some kick-ass stuff here. I’ve told my clients about the change, and they have all been extremely supportive and enthusiastic. Like, bummed I won’t be able to rock stuff for them anymore, but amped for me nonetheless.

Still, I’m freaked out by the fact that I’ll actually need to wake up in the morning. I suppose it’s a small price to pay to be able to interact with real people, though.

Brainside Out will continue to exist, perchance as a shadow of its formal self, but dammit if it’s not going anywhere. I’ve been running that dealy-deal for 1 1/2 years, have gotten to build some great websites for some absolutely ripshitkickass clients, and I take a huge amount of satisfaction in knowing that I’m fully capable of running my own show. With the ridiculous degree of autonomy that I’ve been enjoying in running Brainside Out, the shop may have gotten more than they bargained for. I mean, I build good shit, but I’m used to doing it on my own terms.

That said, I did work for them in-house on two separate occasions, for half a year on both counts. In 2003 I shared an office with the head manager for a couple weeks, until he realized that I talked and cursed to myself so much that I needed to be quarantined to my own office. Big Winds was also the first client that Brainside Out ever had, and thus precipitated my move to indie status.

Nah, they know what they’re gettin’. And I’m stoked.

Geez, did I mention I’m stoked?

Filed under Business, Hood River, Life, Web Design | Comments Off on Hired Goon

Closure

January 24, 2007

Sprint called over the weekend and confirmed that they were indeed experiencing network issues in my area, something about trunk-lines and T1 connections and such. The call came from a fellow who was based in Texas, at the apparent locus where Sprint receives and processes “trouble tickets.” He was genuinely kind and helpful and did not possess the obsequious nature of the last person I had spoken with, who left me feeling like I needed to take a shower after I hung up the phone. Of course, between this last person and I there no doubt exists a great geographical and cultural chasm, not to mention the simple fact that in relation to me he exists fourteen hours in the future. How awkward it must be to speak to the past, I can only imagine.

Yes, I must give props where props are due. He speaks my language, quite fluently I might add, where I couldn’t even say for certain the name of his native tongue. Also, if news stories are to be trusted, they make a convincing argument that these internationally outsourced call-center employees are utterly shit upon by many of my fellow citizens. Thus, I try to go out of my way to be patient and respectful when I’m pretty sure that I’m speaking with India, as these hard-working folk already have enough to deal with. It’s a fucking cell phone, for chrissakes, it doesn’t need to come to blows. Save the fighting for Kashmir.

That said, my only criticisms regard the quality of customer service I receive when working through issues with outsourced support. It wasn’t until my issue was escalated to a dizzying degree that I finally received real information from Sprint, in the form of a phone call from Texas. Until that point the problem was completely vague and ambiguous, and my written correspondence with Sprint, while humorous, was more ritualistic than anything else.

It didn’t matter what I told Sprint, nor did it matter what Sprint said in return. Rather, all that was important was that our exchange was happening, and I was continuing to make it happen, so it behooved them to eventually pass it to someone who could do something about it. Nothing I spoke was translated as real information on their end, nor was any of the apologetic boilerplate that they shot back actually useful. The entire conversation could just as well have been written in “lorem ipsum,” and the result would have been the same.

Sadly, much of this fell to the ear of the Texan. I assured him that in no way did I believe my frustration with the general uselessness of Sprint’s customer support was his fault, and I sympathized that he might not be in a position to manifest such change, but I needed to vent just a smidgen.

My suggestions were simple. First, don’t tell me to drive to Portland and die just have my phone tested, when all physical evidence points to a problem with the network. Second, when a trend is developing that suggests there is indeed a problem with the network, just tell me there’s a problem with the network. The Texan told me straight-up that theirs was a clearinghouse of trouble tickets. When they see tickets start to build up from a particular area, they get suspicious and start checking out the network for that region.

In my case, that’s what happened. A number of Sprint customers from in-and-around Hood River must have called in coverage issues, those issues got escalated to Texas, and Texas found a problem with the trunk-line.

Now, I don’t really care if there’s a problem with the trunk-line, or if an osprey built a nest in your cell tower, or if hooligans tore the whole thing down so they could sell the scrap metal and buy more cold medicine. I just want to know whether or not you’re doing anything about it. And while I really appreciate the follow-up call a week later, it would be nice if, during the process, I could receive some sort of message that takes the mystery out of the whole deal. An email, let’s say, like this:

Dear Ambiguously-Valued Sprint Burden,

Evidence from your area suggests that the troubles you are encountering may be resulting from an issue with the network. We’re looking into it, so sit tight.

Stewbuilder D.
E-Care
Sprint together with Nextel
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!”

Trade in your old hobo and get $25!
Visit www.sprint.com/hoboprogram for details!

Seriously Sprint, you wouldn’t lose any face in telling me straight-up that you’re having network problems. I know this shit ain’t perfect, and yours far from it. It’s when you try to maintain an impression of your infallibility, to the point where interacting with your first-tier customer support amounts to a conversation with ELIZA, that you begin to piss me off.

So in the end, my phone works again, it’s now lunchtime in New Delhi, and I love Texas more than ever.

Filed under Business, Consumerism | Comments Off on Closure

Bumper Cars (and Cannibalism)

January 19, 2007

This is just. Too. Awesome.

Portland rules!

Filed under Funny, Oregon, Weather | Comments Off on Bumper Cars (and Cannibalism)

I Heart Sprint

January 18, 2007

Last week my cell phone suddenly lost most of its ability to make and receive calls. The nature of the glitch suggested that it was a problem with Sprint’s all-digital wireless network built from the ground up. My phone kept getting booted off Sprint’s network and into roaming land, so my initial concerns were about my monthly bill (which is already a little bit out of control).

I sent the following message to support:

Dearest Sprint,

Lately your Sprint Network coverage within the 97031 zip code has been extremely spotty. Normally I get an extremely strong on-network signal when I’m in town, but for the last couple days I’ve been experiencing some rather frustrating trouble.

Frequently when I go to place a call, my Sprint Network signal suddenly drops to zero. As the call starts dialing, I’m suddenly on Digital Roam, or even (gasp!) Analog Roam. Thus, I am being forced to “roam” even though I’m well within Sprint territory, and well within my usual locales when placing calls.

I assure you that my home or office have not suddenly relocated themselves to places that would have spotty Sprint reception, nor have I wrapped my home or office in tinfoil or lead shielding or other such things that would interfere with signal strength.

No, nothing has changed except for the signal quality and reliability that I am currently receiving from Sprint. I will allow that it might be a problem with my cell phone itself, but beyond turning it off and on again, there really isn’t a whole lot of diagnosing I can do in that regard.

That said, the reliability of your “all-digital wireless network built from the ground up” has suddenly become very questionable. I suppose this is a long way of saying that when my next bill shows up, I will dispute any and all “roaming” charges that have resulted from the instability of your own network.

Yes, I know that my plan includes “free” roaming off the Sprint Network. However, I also know that while you don’t charge me for “roaming” when I make/receive calls off your network, you do nick me for “long distance” charges, which are normally included when I use your network.

Claiming that you offer “free roaming” when you simply charge for “long distance” in its place is merely a clever game of marketing semantics, as you are effectively charging for the exact same thing. Thus, I shall dispute any charges for either roaming or long-distance.

Take care, and have yourself a lovely day.

Cheers,
Dane Petersen

Not long after, I received the following response:

Dear Dane,

I apologize for the inconvenience caused by the coverage issues. Thank you for contacting Sprint together with Nextel in this regard.

Since your plan includes roaming, the long distance calls made withing U.S. would not be charged even while roaming. However, the long distance calls made to outside the U.S. would be charged irrespective of roaming.

I have checked through our resources and noticed that we have good coverage in your area.

We understand that in spite of the good coverage, you are experiencing service related problems. To resolve this matter, we need to create a trouble record for this issue. Therefore, I have forwarded your case to the appropriate department. One of our specialists will call you within the next 48 hours (on your Sprint number) to assist you.

Our specialist will take the required information, which is used by Sprint engineers to improve the network. Each month we add or improve hundreds of cell sites based upon the information received. Thank you for reporting this situation and we will do everything we can to resolve this issue.

Thank you for contacting us. Have a great day.

Abel R.

E-Care
Sprint together with Nextel
“Where our customers come first!”

Refer someone to Sprint and get $25.
Visit www.sprint.com/referralprogram for details.

I wrote a reply the following day, by which point my troubles had, well, progressed:

Dearest Abel,

Thank you for your response. I will take you at your word that I will not be charged long distance for my calls placed to destinations in the U.S. while roaming within the U.S. That said, Sprint has given me plenty of reasons to be distrustful of our relationship with one another, so please don’t take offense as I brace myself for other hidden charges that we haven’t discussed here.

In the time since I wrote my original message, my troubles with Sprint have progressed from mildly irritating to downright infuriating. In an effort to “force” my phone to use Sprint’s network (which according to my phone has strong signal coverage, despite evidence to the contrary) I have disabled both analog and digital roam.

As a result, only about 25% of the outgoing calls I have been trying to make actually go through. The rest result in errors ranging from “The network is busy, please try again later,” to “No service available.”

Additionally, I’m receiving frequent voice mails from calls that never even caused my phone to ring. I would estimate that at least half of my incoming calls are not coming through to my phone, and are instead getting diverted to voicemail.

Not being a specialist myself, I don’t know whether this is a problem with my phone, or a problem with the network. I hope that the specialist can help answer this question. I also hope the specialist can manage to get through to my phone when he or she calls.

Cheers,

Dane P.
E-Kvetch
Brainside Out together with Dane Petersen
“Where you hear us before you see us!”

It wasn’t long until I received a reply. I must say that while not being all that helpful, Sprint is very responsive. Sadly, however, my dear friend Abel had been replaced by someone new:

Dear Dane,

Thank you for your reply.

I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you are experiencing.

The zip code 97031 is covered under the PCS coverage network and there is a problem with the phone reception or coverage, this could be because of the following two possibilities:

1. Phone difficulties: Please visit a Sprint Store to get your Phone tested. To locate the nearest Sprint Store, you can click on the following hyperlink:

http://www.sprintstorelocator.com

2. Network difficulties: If your Phone passes the diagnostic test and the coverage problem persists, you can contact us to process a trouble record for this service-related issue. Please dial *2TALK from your Phone or 1-888-211-4727 from a landline phone. Our specialists will be glad to assist you.

Thank you for contacting us.

Odalys D.
E-Care
Sprint together with Nextel
“Where our customers come first!”

Refer someone to Sprint and get $25. Dial #REF or visit a store for details.

…as an aside, I find it rather tactless on Sprint’s part to include a “Refer someone to Sprint!” link in their email signature on support emails. Seriously, if I’m mailing back and forth with your support crew you can safely assume that I’m kinda pissed at you about something, and probably not in the best mood to burden others with your service.

As of yesterday it appears that the worst has finally passed, as my phone seems to be making and receiving calls once again without issue. I figured I owed Sprint an update regarding my current status:

Dearest Odalys,

I am pleased to tell you that as of today my phone seems to be working fine. I am now able to make and receive calls with the same rate of success that I had previously enjoyed with Sprint. I didn’t bring it into a Sprint Store for testing, however, as the nearest store is 60 miles away and my gut tells me that this has been a problem with the network, not with the phone.

Also, with an hour of freeway driving and six inches of snow standing between me and the nearest Sprint Store, I fear that under current weather conditions I would probably die if I were to undertake such a foolish excursion. Seriously, I hear they’ve resorted to cannibalism in Portland.

No, the Oregon landscape has consumed enough poor souls this winter. I feel it is my duty as a responsible citizen not to add to the mounting body count, and instead I chose to wait this one out. If the fact that my phone works again is any sort of evidence, it seems that inaction in this case was indeed the best action.

Thank you for your help, and have a lovely day.

Dane P.
E-Carp
Brainside Out together with Dane Petersen
“Where cold fury follows us wherever we go!”

Refer someone to Brainside Out and get $25!
Visit www.brainsideout.com for details.

Today I received a call from a Sprint representative who, along with being uncomfortably apologetic for the problems I have been experiencing, assured me that a network specialist would contact within the next couple days regarding these issues. I thanked him for his deep concern and made sure he understood that most of my troubles seem to have already been resolved, but I agreed that further correspondence with Sprint would certainly be enjoyable.

Filed under Civilization, Consumerism, Hood River | Comments Off on I Heart Sprint

That there’s mah drinkin’ music!

January 16, 2007

I’ve said it before, but I need to say it again.

I love shitkicker.

I had missed it for a spell, but my recent investments in massive amounts of technology have reunited me with my favorite internet radio station of years past.

You see, I’m normally not much of a radio person. In all actuality I don’t even own anything that pulls in legitimate radio. Well, I guess that’s not entirely accurate, as I have a Subaru that is rumored to pull in a mighty fine FM signal. This is a claim that might warrant some investigation at a future date, but for now my MP3 mix CDs are spinnin’ mighty-fine on my Panasonic CQ-C7403U. That, and its dot matrix display shows people surfing at a fidelity matched only by pinball machines!

Anywho, I recently acquired a Samsung HL-S4266W. You would never guess from the name, but that’s actually a 42″ DLP TV, which I adore now that I’ve gotten over the fact that I slammed down more than a kilobuck for such an obscene piece of passive entertainment.

…as an aside, am I the only person who is disappointed that Apple is the only company in existence right now that assigns names to their products that can actually be deciphered by humans? Apple releases a new product and they call it the Apple TV (even though I’m in complete agreement with Jobs that it should really be called the iTV). Samsung releases a new product and it’s called the SCX-4725FN. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that does.

Yes. I now have a large TV with a ridiculous number of inputs, and it does a great job at anchoring my living room to the ground and preventing it from drifting down the street to hang out at the neighbor’s house. It even has VGA inputs, which I consider to be pretty cool even though I’m a DVI guy through-and-through ever since switching whole-hog to Macs a year ago.

Over the weekend I took a trip to RadioShack, a store whose motto is “Becoming Increasingly Irrelevant by Offering You More and More RC Cars! Everyday!” I picked up an audio cable that lets me plug my PowerBook directly into my TV, and dammit if that simple thing changed my life. Even though I had to delete all my MP3s from NeverSummer (the laptop, her name is NeverSummer) a few weeks ago to free up hard drive space, I can still stream my entire music collection wirelessly from BitterRoot (my G5, she’s known as BitterRoot) straight to NeverSummer, and subsequently to my entire living room.

Do please take a moment to marvel at my ingenuity, as you realize that I’m using my PowerBook as a $2,000 version of the Apple TV.

Yup, it took a completely dumb amount of technology, but I finally got my abode to a point that the rest of the world reached fifty years ago. While I don’t care much for listening to the radio while working at my computer, I find it to be a wondrous thing when I’m milling about my place, whether I’m cooking, cleaning, or trying to figure out whether I should be cooking or cleaning. All the while drinking, of course.

Enter the shitkicker. It’s no secret that my favorite internet radio station of all time is Boot Liquor Radio. In the past they’ve described themselves as “dysfunctional cowboy music,” and “music for saddle-weary drunkards,” and that pretty much says it all. It’s nothin’ but folk and country songs about drinking, gettin’ drunk, and bein’ drunk.

Wholesome? Hardly. Some of the songs have names like Shitfaced, Loaded Gun In The Closet, and I’m In Love With The Girl Who Done Run Off With My Wife. They plays a healthy mix of such stars as Johnny Cash, Tom Waits and Lyle Lovett, as well as lesser-known acts like Meat Raffle Road, the Groovy Rednecks, and the Drive-By Truckers. The music is pure Americana, plain and simple, and I’m certain that we’ve covered a few charts from their playlist in the Como Avenue Jug Band. If the slide guitars and mandolins don’t warm your blood, boy, ya better start hittin’ the whiskey harder.

Ironically, Boot Liquor Radio also plays a bunch of songs that are old-time favorites at camp, including Desperado and Ghost Riders in the Sky. Yup, here we are trying to create a positive atmosphere for kids, all the while singing songs about whores and hell.

Anywho, I haven’t kept up with the whole lineage, but it appears that Boot Liquor Radio is currently operating under SomaFM, a brand to do Huxley fans proud. You can take a look at their recent playlist, or just go ahead and listen to Boot Liquor right now.

Seriously, just dive in. You very well might be missin’ such kick-ass songs as Beer n’ Bacon, Warm Beer and Cold Women, or Viagra In The Waters.

I’d have ya tell ’em Dane sent ya, but that’d probably just get you kicked out of the joint.

Filed under Culture, Music | Comments Off on That there’s mah drinkin’ music!

Design WTF?

January 14, 2007

When I started Daneomatic I promised myself that I would never attempt to “design” it, as the focus here is supposed to be on “writing.” And “swearing,” if you will. But certainly not “designing.”

I had also promised myself I would call it Dane-O-Matic, but I quickly realized that I was far too lazy to go through all the work to type it that way. Geez, two hyphens, three shift keys? You’d think I wanted to pull a muscle while trying to spell it out. Thus, in the continuing interest of pragmatism and efficiency, Dane-O-Matic became Daneomatic. I estimate that I can type it at least ten times faster.

Faster than your mom, that is.

Anywho, as lovely as the default theme of WordPress is, and for how many blogs out there who must be using the exact same theme for many the same reasons as I, it was really starting to grate on me. The design was too narrow, too tight, the letters too small. I wanted something mo’ open, mo’ bigga, mo’ printy in nature. And so I cobbled this together.

The advantages are two-fold. First, I feel less cramped by my canvas. Second (and far more important), you can now freely browse this site and pretend you’re looking at something far more reputable, like the NYTimes.com or something!

Things might could be kinda broken in a few terrible web browsers. I tested this design in all the worthwhile browsers I could think of (Safari, Firefox, Camino, Opera), as well as a few worthless ones (IE 7, IE 6) and everything works fine. Not great, not awesome, but fine. Yes, there are a number of whitespace inconsistencies, as well as some leftover default WordPress silliness that I find to be quite… silly. If I find something in the design that will literally cause people to die if it isn’t fixed, I will probably address it. If not, I shrug.

I’ll probably continue to tweak and massage this beast over the next couple weeks, so for the time being my only advice is to hang onto something. If all else fails there’s always the newsfeed, a syndication technology that stands to undermine the work of web designers everywhere.

And in all honesty, I’m perfectly okay with that.

Filed under Web Design | Comments Off on Design WTF?