Chance Bliss

I’m trying the sympathy approach in my exchange with LG, but no avail. Never buying LG again.

7:29 PM	Angelica:	Hello Guest. Welcome to LG Electronics! How may I provide you with excellent service today?
7:32 PM	Guest:	Hi. I purchased an LG dyer on March 2. It turned on but is not heating. I’ve had two repair people come out, but there is still no resolution.
7:32 PM	Angelica:	I am sorry to hear about this.
7:32 PM	Guest:	I’ve clocked more than 4 hours on the phone with Home Depot and LG
7:32 PM	Angelica:	I see.
7:33 PM	Guest:	A customer service manager promised to call me back but I haven’t received a call
7:33 PM	Guest:	I need some type of resolution this week
7:33 PM	Angelica:	May I ask when did he promise that?
7:33 PM	Guest:	I talked to a CS rep about an hour ago
7:34 PM	Angelica:	I see.
7:34 PM	Angelica:	Well, I would like to take a look at your case to see what is going on.
7:34 PM	Angelica:	Is your home phone number 973-7?
7:34 PM	Guest:	I’m reaching out on every channel to see if I can get some action of this
7:35 PM	Guest:	yes
7:35 PM	Guest:	973-
7:35 PM	Angelica:	Very well.
7:35 PM	Guest:	Thanks
7:35 PM	Angelica:	Can I ask if you were talking to Charles, manager?
7:36 PM	Angelica:	I can see on the notes that he actually called you but unfortunately he didn’t get an answer, so he left you a voice mail.
7:36 PM	Guest:	I only talked to a CS rep
7:37 PM	Angelica:	Well, I do see a lot of notes from different representatives on your case.
7:37 PM	Guest:	I definitely would have picked up the phone. My cell is 973-.
7:37 PM	Angelica:	They are from today, but on different hours.
7:38 PM	Guest:	I’ve tried through Home Depot where I purchased and directly to LG
7:38 PM	Angelica:	I see.
7:38 PM	Angelica:	Well, I could go and see if the manager that tried calling you is still available.
7:38 PM	Angelica:	If he is, I can ask him to call you back.
7:39 PM	Angelica:	May I ask what have the service center told you so far?
7:39 PM	Guest:	I desperate at this point
7:39 PM	Angelica:	What they’re doing on the unit, waiting on some parts or something?
7:39 PM	Guest:	They told me they are waiting for the notes from the repair people
7:40 PM	Guest:	At this point, I would prefer a replacement. They have taken apart the dyer twice now
7:41 PM	Guest:	I don’t have a lot of confidence that they can repair this one
7:41 PM	Angelica:	Well, as I can see, I’m afraid there are no notes from Tech Support stating that the unit has been deemed as unrepairable. Unfortunately, the only way we can actually submit a replacement order would be if the unit has been deemed as unrepairable.
7:41 PM	Angelica:	I do completely understand.
7:41 PM	Angelica:	The only notes that I can see from our Tech support state the following:
7:42 PM	Angelica:	“og tgetting power to the ignitor and renning not heating. ohm from the bd through system to the ignitor. spsect shorted wire from belt switch to the themostat the blowr housing
7:42 PM	Angelica:	First word would be Not. Sorry.
7:42 PM	Angelica:	Now, these are the recommendations they told the service center people.
7:42 PM	Angelica:	According to this, once the service center tries this, if that doesn’t work, then they might be able to deem the unit as unrepairable.
7:43 PM	Guest:	Unfortunately I can’t take the time to have another repair person come out to my house
7:44 PM	Guest:	I’m sure you can understand my situation. Two week without a dyer has been pretty rough with a household of 6 people
7:44 PM	Guest:	I need to have a functioning dyer this week
7:44 PM	Angelica:	I do understand.
7:45 PM	Guest:	If that can’t happen, I really need a refund
7:45 PM	Guest:	or at least a replacement
7:45 PM	Angelica:	I wish I could something in this case for you, but I’m afraid that for policy, I’m not really able to.
7:45 PM	Angelica:	Well, there is not a reimbursement policy on LG.
7:45 PM	Guest:	That’s the same answer I’ve been getting everywhere
7:46 PM	Angelica:	If I could just transfer you to our Supervisors, they might have the power to do so.
7:46 PM	Angelica:	But, we at customer service really don’t have the power to. IF it was for me, I would be giving units away, trust me. (Probably that’s the reason why we can’t submit replacement orders).
7:47 PM	Angelica:	For policy, the procedure would be the following:
7:47 PM	Guest:	I understand you have no power to do anything given the company policy, but someone at management some at least contact me
7:47 PM	Angelica:	Exactly.
7:47 PM	Angelica:	As for right now, I can go quick and see if there’s a manager on the phone that can contact you.
7:48 PM	Guest:	thanks
7:48 PM	Guest:	don’t want to sound angry. I just want a working dyer.
7:48 PM	Angelica:	It’s ok
7:49 PM	Angelica:	I’ll be right back, just one moment please!
7:49 PM	Guest:	ok

Were the original Burger King characters the origin of Aqua Teen Hunger Force? I thought I read that somewhere. These characters are such a poor rip off the McDonald’s.

The “Marvelous Magical Burger King”

The original animated King was soon replaced by the “Marvelous Magical Burger King,” a red-bearded king, acted out by actor-singer Richard “Dick” Gjonola, who ruled the Burger King Kingdom and performed magic tricks (mostly sleight-of-hand, but sometimes relying on camera tricks). This campaign paralleled McDonald’s McDonaldland children’s commercials, which featured “Ronald McDonald,” “The Hamburglar,” and “Mayor McCheese,” along with other characters and mascots.

Other characters in the Burger King Kingdom included:

• “The Duke of Doubt,” the King’s arch nemesis, who constantly tried to prove that the King’s magic was not real; he always failed, and each commercial that featured him ended with the tag-line, “No doubt about it, Duke.”
• The “Burger Thing,” a large, three-dimensional painting of a hamburger that talked.
• “Sir Shake-A-Lot,” a knight, whose name was drawn from the fact that he was often literally physically shaking, with a craving for Burger King milkshakes and armor made of BK Cups. (Sir Shake-A-Lot’s name was a take-off on Sir Lancelot, and his constant shaking was sometimes misinterpreted as being a symptom of hypoglycemia from the sugar content of Burger King milkshakes.)^{[citation needed]}
• The “Wizard of Fries,” a robot who could “multifry,” or generated French fries whenever given a sample.

I’ve looked at a lot of kids’ menus over the last 8 years. By far, this one is the spookiest (via Daring Fireball > 0:Lives)

I find many clients respond positively when you tell that you like to work collaboratively. The reality is that they really just want to see the final product. The messiness of rolling up your sleeves and hashing out different solutions to large and small problems is just something they would rather leave up to you. I guess that’s OK. It’s why they hired you, but I have a suspicion that those clients’ who aren’t participating aren’t getting their money’s worth.

Great post from What Makes Them Click about determining the reading level of your text. Seems there is an actual formula called “The Flesch-Kincaid Reading Score” that measures the reading level and easy of a passage.  For fun, I decided to look up the first passage in George Bush’s memoir, “Decision Points” versus Barack Obama’s, “Dreams from My Father”.

It was a simple question. “Can you remember the last day you didn’t have a drink?” Laura asked in her calm, soothing voice. She wasn’t threatening or nagging. She did expect an answer. My wife is the kind of person who picks her moments. This was one of them.

“Of course I can,” came my indignant response. Then I thought back over the previous week. I’d had a few beers with the guys on Monday night. On Tuesday I’d fixed myself my favorite after-dinner drinks: B&B, Benedictine and brandy. I’d had a couple of bourbon and Sevens after I put Barbara and Jenna to bed on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were beer-drinking nights. On Saturday, Laura and I had gone out with friends. I had martinis before dinner, beers with dinner, and B&Bs after dinner. Uh-oh, I had failed week one.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 6.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 65.

I had originally intended a very different book. The opportunity to write it first arose while I was still in law school, after my election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, a legal periodical largely unknown outside the profession. A burst of publicity followed that election, including several newspaper articles that testified less to my modest accomplishments that to Harvard Law School’s peculiar place in the American mythology, as well as American’s hunger for any optimistic sign from the racial front — as morsel of proof that, after all, some progress has been made. A few publishers called, and I, imagining myself to have something original to say about the current state of race relations, agreed to take off a year after graduation and put my thoughts to paper.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 12.
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 38.

Interesting results. Grade level 6 vs. 12. Reading ease 65 vs. 38. So Bush is writing a 6 grade level, but at 65 is more difficult to read than Obama at 38. One more point to make is that on average American reads at an 8 grade level. I know this isn’t very scientific, but from these short passages, who is the more better communicator?

There is no mistake that the rear-end of AMC Pacer looked like a huge butt. My hats off to the French for their attempt to make this car sexy.

For those who don’t know what I do or what my day is like, this pretty much sums it up. I try to make pink ponies for my agency’s clients. But unlikely the inherit excitement of a birthday party (eating cake, playing games,…), I have to make things like fixed income trading platforms and asset management services into pink ponies.

Most of my iPhone apps are games, but there a few utilities that I can’t live without. Two of them are GuitarToolkit (guitar tuner) and TabToolkit (guitar tab reader). I can’t recommend them enough.

Now the folks at Agile Partners’ has released the last piece of the puzzle, Ampkit. Turn your iPad or iPhone into a amplifier with a host of effects. I can’t wait to try it out.

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to move my company away from hosting our email, website and file server. You think it would be easy given all the hype around cloud computing. But guess what, it isn’t. After doing some research, Google, Microsoft and hosting companies such as Rackspace, still haven’t figured out how to 1) explain it simply, 2) market it with any confidence and 3) provide a price module that makes sense for a small business.

Personally I use Gmail and Google Apps plus DropBox, Basecamp and HotGloo which are very cheap if not free in most cases. These work fine at an individual or small group level, but at a company level it gets complicated.

There a huge opportunity here, but no one seems to be able hit the right balance. Google is coming closer, but still doesn’t get small businesses.

Why does enterprise software always have to be such a mess?