My own idiocy, that is.  

Dear Shawn,

We recently received your return of an empty sealed envelope and game sleeve for game, The Godfather: Blackhand Edition. To enable you to return the game, we will send you a new pre-paid shipping envelope.

If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.

Sincerely,

GameFly Customer Service

Oops…

I’m a big fan of personal space — that imaginary bubble that surrounds each of us… the Force, without the superpowers.  I find it uncomfortable when someone violates my personal space for any prolonged period of time and, in turn, I try to avoid doing the same to anyone else.  This inclination is not universal as I know more than a few people who have no concept of boundaries or personal space in any form.  Usually, this is only with people they know well but there are even those who are blissfully unaware even around strangers.

This afternoon, I betrayed Subway and ran to Quiznos for lunch.   It wasn’t particularly busy with only a few customers.  Only 1 person fell into line after me.  Or rather, on me, as he seemed curiously interested in being right up on me.  Everytime I, nonchalantly, adjusted to put a few inches between us, he would edge closer again.  More than once, I felt he was about to wrap me in a big hug.  His weird activity didn’t halt there as he started whispering gibberish.  Since he was so close, it was as if he was blowing into my ear.  I’m sure it was amusing for anyone watching to see me slowly try to inch away, putting some separation between us, and then him adjusting to pull up close again, with the process than repeating itself all the way down the 15ft of the Quiznos line.  Definitely the most bizarre Quiznos experience I’ve ever had.

At least my sandwich was delicious.

This morning, I had to get up a bit earlier than usual and not being one to rush into work, I decided to finally try out the Shaun White Snowboarding game for the Wii. Last week, I had returned the Godfather to Gamefly so imagine my surprise when I saw it on my Wii channel list, beckoning me to play. Gamefly acknowledged that they had received it but obviously, there was confusion all around. I quickly checked my other Wii games in panic, worried that I had sent back one of my other games instead but all seemed to be accounted for. As it stands, I’m pretty sure I sent something back, I’m just not sure what. Whoops!

I commented previously about my excellent experience with the customer support I received from the Apple Genius Bar (in-store tech support). However, even decent customer support is definitely not in the norm for most companies and a recent email from UStream is my latest such “failure”.

(more…)

Hulu was almost universally mocked when it came into existence.  News Corp and NBC building an online video site?  Everyone knew it was going to be a laughable, worthless waste of our time.  It would be poor quality, poor selection, built using some proprietary plugin (probably Windows only), wrapped in DRM, and short-lived.

But then, a funny thing happened.  Hulu rocked.  Lots of content, perfectly watchable quality, and built-on top of Flash, a more or less universally accepted plugin.   The ads seemed like a great compromise – present but not overwhelming like on TV.  By all accounts, Hulu was a win for both content providers and users.

One of the best features of Boxee is its integration with Hulu.  On-demand access to any of the Hulu content integrated into a media center interface, Boxee was at the forefront of a media revolution.  A unified media center interface aggregating my local media content with internet content is quite simply exactly what I’ve wanted since I first got an HDTV.

As typical consumers become more savvy, they too will become more and more of an on-demand viewer.  The idea of being tied to a TV at a given time became passe as soon as TiVo came into existence.  The inferior, generic DVRs pushed out by the cable companies at low cost, only reinforced the idea of video on-demand to a wider market.  The next logical step is on-demand video delivered over the internet.  Despite all expectations typical with a product delived by “big media”, Hulu looked set to become the de facto standard for exactly that sort of thing.  

Alas, Hulu announced yesterday that it was blocking access from Boxee.  Instantly, Hulu went from media darling to online pariah.  This act is a perfect example of why big media still doesn’t get it.  Even more galling, no explanation was given other than some “content providers” requested that access be removed.    It’s hard to even fathom a reason why they would make this move.  The content displayed within Boxee was not different in any way from the content displayed on the website.  The ads, so important to those content providers, were still present.  All Boxee did was provide an integration; if anything, further expanding the audience of potential viewers.

Hopefully, Hulu will get their act together.  It’s unlikely that the tiny demographic of Boxee users will have any influence whatsoever in fixing this wrong though the large internet outcry does bode well.  Still, it’s unlikely Hulu will backtrack anytime soon and it will probably continue to do just fine for many users.  It will, however, have lost one user.

This afternoon, I ran out for a vice-laden lunch from Baja Fresh.  The shopping center where it’s located is a bit convoluted and has a dizzying array of stop signs spread haphazardly around the parking lot.  There really doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for their placement though if their goal was to generate revenue, I think they succeeded.  Two motorcycle officers were having a field day pulling people over for running stop signs.  They would invoke their bike siren and before they could even get the “criminal” to pull over, another car would run another stop sign.  The cop would then waive them over to the line of cars waiting to receive a ticket.  I imagine at some point, the two officers would grow tired of their easy money but in the 5 minutes I was in Baja picking up my lunch, they must have pulled over 12 or more vehicles.

On a side note, I’ve never quite understood the depths of laziness one must achieve to not be able to put a shopping cart in a cart rack or take it back to the store.  Maybe I’m just that much more conscientious than the next person — which I hope isn’t true — but I know I wouldn’t want to block a parking spot for someone or, worse, have my cart sail across the parking lot into someone’s car.

watching psych w/ christina

After starting twitter way back on Feb 8, 2007 with the profound tweet above*, giving it up for awhile, and then starting back up last May, I’ve more or less kept up regularly.

Besides trying to explain the point of it, the most popular discussion related to Twitter is if it would ever break out into the mainstream.  Slowly and steadily, it has slowly started to accumulate more and more non-tech-related celebrities, for better or worse.  John Cleese, M.C. Hammer, Dave Matthews, and Lance Armstrong  were some of the more tech-savvy celebs who were fairly early adopters of Twitter.

Recently, the biggest name to hop on the Twitter bandwagon is a celebrity most Americans have never heard of but is absolutely huge in the UK, Stephen Fry.  He quickly shot way up the charts and is, as I write this, #2 on the list of most popular Twitterers, passing many of the well-known tech alumni who have dominated the charts since it’s inception.

Other “pop-culture” celebs who are on Twitter include Britney Spears (or rather, her PR person), trucker cap Ashtun Kushter, trucker hat lover Demi Moore, Harry Potter girl Emma Watson, the surprisingly NOT hot Mischa Barton, High School musical girl Vanessa Hudgens, the Guber-nator, and the Guber-nator’s wife.  I don’t see the point of following any of the above but other people will.  The draw of Twitter is increased exponentially the more people there are on there to follow so despite my misgivings of the pop-culturalization of Twitter, I suppose it’s better for all in the long run.

• Famous Twitterers - http://mashable.com/2008/10/20/25-celebrity-twitter-users/
• Celebrity Twitterers - http://allieiswired.com/archives/2009/01/celebrities-who-twitter/
• Top Twitters - http://twitterholic.com/

* For what it’s worth, Christina and I are still watching Psych and it’s a must watch.  Great show!

As people’s expectations start to fall back down to reality, Obama will undoubtedly disappoint some of his more rabid supporters.  His first couple of weeks have had their ups-and-downs — the ongoing “Change-O-Meter” at Slate is both entertaining and possibly disheartening.   That said, I don’t follow politics all that closely but the news that Vivek Kundra was nominated  to essentially be the CTO of the government was very interesting.  From a tech perspective, which is something I do care about, Vivek Kundra sounds like a brilliant choice.  I read an article about him a while back and he sounds like exactly the sort of person we need making decisions related to technology.

Considering the effort involved in getting my iPhone 3G, the first phone I’ve ever been happy with, last Friday was not the best of days for me.  During a trek across a parking lot, I found myself running along next to my iPhone which had slipped out of my coat pocket and was sliding across the icy asphalt.  My clumsiness knows few bounds and this wasn’t the first time I had dropped my iPhone.  This was the first time I was to pick it up and find the screen shattered.  

Devastated, the phone was actually perfectly usable despite a dense spiderweb of cracks.  I was just waiting for the glass to fall into pieces and taped it up — possibly the tackiest iPhone accessory.  

Today, I finally made it to the Apple Store to find out what sort of options I had to get it replaced.  I’ve had to go to the Genius Bar only once before and was amazed at the customer service.  The monitor on my older iBook had stopped functioning and 2-3 days later, I had my laptop back in my hands, sent straight from the repair facility back to me.  The turnaround time was pretty remarkable and I have to admit, it helped solidify my interest in buying Apple products.

With some dread as to what sort of options I would have regarding getting my iPhone fixed, I suppose I shouldn’t have worried.  I scheduled an appointment this morning for 11:30, was called at more or less 11:30, and walked out of the Apple Store with a brand new replacement phone at 11:40.  Considering buying a new iPhone unlocked is something like ~$600, I had a feeling my out-of-warranty phone was going to cost somewhere in that ballpark.  The $200 I paid, while nothing to scoff at, was well below the minimum I was hoping.  

While I wouldn’t consider myself an Apple fan-boy, just a happy user, that kind of customer service is one very good reason why others are.

Just like ~98,699,699 other people, I gathered with some friends for our yearly Superbowl get-together.  In addition to the game, we have a pre-game poker tournament.  Typically having between 12-15 participants, this years poker tournament was a little smaller with just 10 of us matching wits across the felt.  I’ve been considering getting back into poker after my 1.5 year (except for a few weeks here and there) absence from serious play.  After a few hours of play, we finally whittled our game down to three of us, including myself.  I was extremely proud of my play at that point as I hadn’t had anything to work with from my cards and able to make several moves and outright pot-steals to continuously keep my stack healthy.  

After that point, however, the three-way match became a bit of a crapshoot as the blinds grew and grew while we were unable to do anything but move the chips around from person to person.  Eventually, a hand saw all of put our money in the center and ended the tourney when my hand knocked out both Mike & Jason at the same time.   The victory did nothing to reduce my renewed interest in poker.

The poker tournament had dropped to 3 people around the start of the Superbowl and didn’t finish until The Boss was singing at halftime… an epic finale, at least in duration.  Fortunately, much like last years Superbowl which was extremely boring until the last 2 minutes, this years Superbowl was pretty dull until the final quarter (the remarkable play to end the 1st half not-withstanding).  Arizona had a remarkable rally in the 4th and looked set to upset the Steelers in a game that until that point, had looked like the one-sided game many of us thought it would be.  When Fitzgerald was running in his second TD reception with 2 minutes to go, all of us were on our feet.  As it turned out, Pittsburgh answered in dramatic fashion and quieted all of us underdog fans.  The better team won on Sunday but Arizona gave us something to cheer for.