PhotoDude.com

Sat. Mar 18, 2006

And, We're Back...

I’m back in Atlanta (have been since late Tuesday), I’m posting this from my formerly dead primary computer, and I’m picking up my formerly dead but soon repaired truck on Monday. Is that a black cloud clearing? No, no, don’t look up ... we might jinx it. In addition to updates, I have still more thoughts and observations from the road. And a small rant or three. In other words, even in the midst of chaos, I must empty my head. It helps to narrow down where that buzzing sound is coming from…

After a couple of trips in and out of the ICU at Anderson, it was decided to move Dad into Regency Hospital in Meridian, based on the doctors recommendations, and some pretty high praise we heard from several other places. They have an ICU setting in addition to “regular” rooms, and that’s where Dad was first admitted. But they will be able to offer him more focused and intensive therapy to get him physically strong enough to eventually go home (much longer individual therapy sessions, 7 days a week instead of 5, higher staff to patient ratio, etc.). They emphasize their average patient stay is 20 to 25 days. They want the patient to go home with the same capabilities they had, as close as possible … but they want you to know it won’t be a 5 day miracle treatment.

So after his transfer from Anderson to Regency, I stayed long enough to observe another full 24 hour cycle, and make sure Mom and I were both comfortable with his situation. Since he was at the last way station on the road home, and it was going to be weeks before he’s ready, my Mom and I agreed that after a wek and a half (plus three days just before that) it was time for me to go home. I’ll be heading back over to Meridan as needed, and for a week or more when he is finally ready to go home for good.

So, of course, I hit Atlanta right at rush hour Tuesday, and though the traffic sucked as always, the skyline never looked so good. The same was true when I saw my wife. After a long hot shower in my own bathroom, we went out for a nice Italian dinner. Dessert was even better. Nothing else got accomplished Tuesday night. Nothing else needed to.

Wednesday I dove into repair mode, and “one foot out the door” mode. I felt like I had to have everything ready to head back on a moment’s notice, yet had so much I needed to do while here. Job One was my dead workstation, and a more thorough inspection didn’t sway my more harried initial assessment from before I left: fried video card. 18 days after the warranty expired. Doh!!! After a $200 purchase and 48 hours with UPS, a new video card installed the first time with very little hassle tonight, and my multi-monitor multi-OS kingdom has been resurrected. It is good to be the King again.

Job Two was the truck. It seemed to have a dead battery, but I could never confirm that. Because when I tried, the hood latch broke. Doh!!! So I first I had to pay to have it towed. Then I find out that the hood latch and labor to replace it will cost over two times the amount of the new battery and oil change that I wanted done underneath that hood. So … my truck with the $375 new battery will be ready Monday.

Tomorrow I may even have time to get a haircut. This seeming normality is making me paranoid, like a big con is being pulled on me. So if you’re in on it, I’m watchin’ you, man…

On the subject of vehicles and hospitals, I have to share one observation that I tracked over the course of the 13 or 14 days total I’ve been in Mississippi. The lot where we parked caused us to walk right by the reserved spaces for the ER doctors. Now, in Atlanta, that’s import row. Sporty, flashy, luxurious … you get the idea.

In Meridian, I saw one older but nice Porsche 911. One nice new Mercedes. And umpteen $30-$50,000 trucks. Hummers. That Big Ass Ugly Chevy Z71 that’s all odd angles. Tricked out F250s. When I first noticed the selection of vehicles in those six marked spaces one day, I thought it was just a humorous coincidence. But every day … every single day … the vehicles changed, but the ratio remained the same. I’m not sayin’ anything, I’m just sayin’...

What’s been in the news? Well, Slobodan Milosovic died. But, according to the death toll in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo, he deserved to die a quarter million times over. Not to mention tens of thousands of kicks in the nuts from each of the children orphaned as a result of his regime’s addition of “ethnic cleansing” to our global lexicon.

I also hear that President Bush is urging the factions in Iraq to seek out compromise amongst their quite opposed positions. Is it just me, or is that like a 400 pound man telling you that you need to go on a diet? I’ve never been one to claim Bush was a liar about this or a liar about that, but when he told us he was a uniter and not a divider, well, his pants might as well have been on fire.

And whenever you hear the hype about some “Web 2.0” site or widget that’s going to Revolutionize the Way We Do Business, remember the reality you experience day to day.

Reality One: The Cingular Experience. Wednesday night, Susan and I sat down with the laptop, and went to the Cingular web site. We needed to do three things, all of which the web site advertises it can do. We needed to [1] convert an existing phone line to their “Family Plan,” so that we could [2] add a second line, and then [3] buy two new phones. Essentially, we wanted to do the things that cell phone companies love their customers for; spend three figures on new phones and new services, and lock us down for another two year contract.

However, my wife, who is my better half, and myself, with ten years experience building web sites, were simply unable to find any way to complete even one of those transactions on the web. We tried for a full hour, with growing amazement. First, when we tried to convert the existing line to “Family Plan,” it refused. Just said that number couldn’t be converted.

OK … let’s try buying two phones and adding a new line. We could indeed choose our phones and add them to our cart, and we could choose our rate plan and add it to the cart. We could also easily remove these items from the cart. But that’s about it. Though the cart clearly showed we needed to pay them three figures, there was simply no way to CHECK OUT. Or COMPLETE THIS TRANSACTION. Or ORDER THESE ITEMS. Or PAY $$$. We went through this process multiple times, in multiple ways. There was never any way out, no error message about any browser issue (Firefox 1.5), nor really any way to submit anything ... except “remove.”

So we finally bailed and called to talk to a human. Who was having problems with his system. But he worked hard at trying to get it all set up. For an hour. Then said he was locked up again, and would have to call us back within a half hour or so. He never did.

The next morning, Susan gets on the phone again and starts over with a new human, as Reid is not fit for talkin’. The new human explains that the 2 for 1 phone deal was web-only, but we could order it online.

We explained, no, you can’t. You just $@#! can’t!

He was disbelieving, but after another hour of attempts, both with him walking us through doing it ourselves, and then by trying it himself using the same web page through his own system … he was unable to complete a web order either.

When he finally came to realize there was no way to checkout, he muttered “huh.” Susan calmly replied, “do you feel our pain now, Michael?” He did. He was relentless at pounding it through offline after that, and we finally got our phones delivered today, correct and as expected.

However. This should have been (and they are allegedly set up for it to be) a ten to fifteen minute web experience for us. And an automated profit experience for them. Instead, it ate 3.5 hours of Susan’s and Reid’s time, and 2.5 hours of time from two of their customer service reps. The profit margin on the 2 for 1 deal we got was much slimmer than the worker hours that went into this. They bled money on the deal, due to an absolutely godawful user interface and experience.

They never ever gave it the Mom Test (“hey, ma, would you mind sitting down at my computer and ordering a phone with this new thing we built?”). Even their own customer service reps can’t make it work. And all we wanted to do was give them some money…

Reality Two: The Earthlink Sequel. It’s that time when my credit card expiration date changes, so I went to login to my account at Earthlink and change it so the next hit in April won’t fail. Silly me. My attempt to edit my credit card info failed, with an entirely cryptic error message. I laughed, because I’ve cried enough lately, and just closed the window.

I’ll just let it rest.