Instant Replay

Well, I'm going to way in on this topic. I've been on the road all week, and I've been watching the NBA playoffs a bit. I realize that I've watched cumulatively 1 quarter of the NBA this entire season, but, now I'm watching the playoffs. It's the "second season" after all, so why bother with the first one? Anyhow, I've finally drawn my concusion about instant replay. GET RID OF IT. I watched the referees go to the monitor to determine who gets the ball that gets batted out of bounds. We waited 4 minutes while they watched, rewound, watched, rewound....oh give it up! Just call it a jump ball if you don't know! That's what all the other levels do. It was a major waste of time that could have been cleared up by the simple jump ball. The second was a shot at the end of a quarter and it went out of bound. The referee said put up 3/10ths of a second, but then they spent 3 minutes at the monitor to determine that .8 should have been up. Wow. Just put up what you think and get on with it! The NBA is a great example of why people HATE instant replay.

I need my mower!

A while back, I acquired an old riding lawn mower to assist with the job of mowing the large yard. Of course, I've got some other plans for the back part of the yard, but will need an alley back there, or at least city permission to operate out of that particular area. I'm not sure if that will happen or not, as the lot next to me had blocked the back alley off and thus made it abandon, or it was never an alley to begin with, just a grass patch. So, anyway, I mowed the other day with a borrowed push mower. And while I appreciate the gesture, never again will I use a non-self propelled mower on a lawn that size. I spent 1.5 hours mowing that thing. And, while bagging makes the lawn look nice, I'm thinking that is going to get the kibosh put on it too. I'm told my mower will be done soon and delivered next weekend. Now all I need is Forrest Gump to come and mow, because it's exactly like the one he used at the beginning of the movie.

This weekend has been filled with projects and things going on all over the place. I'm happy that they are completed, however, this week I'm off to Florida. This trip has been postponed several times and I'll be returning often over the summer as this is a new client for our department. I'm wishing we'd have made these trips in the winter for 2 reasons:

1. It's cold here in the winter and not so much there,
2. I wasn't married in the winter.

Maybe I can get a "stowaway" on the plane one of these times.

More Awful Service - Dish Network Tanks It

Ok, I don't know what has set people off to just be plain awful at customer service, but now, we have a new leader if you're scoring at home. Dish network now tops the list of worst companies you can do business with. Here is the story behind that. My mom was checking through some bill for my grandparents, and came across some thing odd on Dish's bill. She found the February bill to be over $25 dollars higher than the January bill and found March's to be around $100 more than January's. Now that caused some alarm, so she called it in. After speaking with a few different people, she was told that the reason the bill was higher was because my grandparents had ordered Cinemax in February from their remote and then upgraded to the Premium-super-duper-gold package or something like that. That also was done from the remote according to Dish's statement. Now, let me get one thing straight here, because at this point if you work for Dish you probably don't realize how absurd that sounds. There is no way on God's green earth they would know enough to order channels from their remote. Wow. Simply unreal. My mom fought with them about it, and they refused to remove it from the bill stating that grandpa and grandma had ordered it, so it stayed. So, apparently Dish Network isn't into the whole customer retention phase of customer support. I'm going to call them tomorrow to help them understand their billing system and a bit about customer service. Looks like I get to lead some training sessions early this week. I should also submit a bill to them for my time on this training. At my face value of $125 per hour, I'd say I'll come out nicely here. So, if you are coming to the end of a contract or considering switching away from Dish Network, I strongly want to encourage you to switch to someone else. I'm so enraged at Dish Network, I recommended my grandparents take Qwest cable. Yeah, if you know where Qwest ranks on my scale, you know that's pretty bad for Dish Network and their extremely bad customer service.

Redemption for Sears....Verizon to the back!!

I spent alot of time ripping into Sears Auto Center in earlier posts. I've now found a company doing worse than Sears at business. And, it should be noted that Sears has done some redemption and I will be going back, just maybe not to an auto center. The manager called me directly from the store, and they refunded half of the labor bill, plus gave me a discount on any next purchase at Sears. So, Sears at least came back to me to make things right after reading this blog (and that is true)! Well, now on the company on the table is Verizon.

Ohh, miserable Verizon. Heather and I are already looking to switch if possible when our contracts are up because of the terrible ability for Verizon to handle a simple request. You know how they have the commercials that tell you that you can join the family plan and combine the lines. Ever tried to get a phone out of one of those family plans? Ever tried to get two phones out of one of those? Ever tried to get two phones out of separate family plans and make a new 3rd family plan? If you're confused, you have a future working for Verizon wireless. If you understand what we're trying to do, please apply at Verizon if you need employment and help them get a decent customer service representative. All Heather and I tried to do was take our phone numbers, and combine them into one separate plan from our parent's plan. It took Verizon about 25 days and 4 attempts to get this right, and after our first bill came, we found out that they still had it wrong. We spent about 5 hours on the phone with them trying to get them to understand what we were going for, and then they still couldn't get it right. It's been a major nightmare. We're plenty fed up, so we'll see how the next bill goes, and then we'll see how soon we'll be looking at getting a new network. That guy needs to quit looking for TV time and go assist the call center in doing some decent work. One of the worst parts was that as we talked to more people at Verizon, we got a different answer every time. The first day we tried this, we talked to 8 different people, and we were told we had to do it 8 different ways. It was unreal. You'd think that you might get a couple of ideas, but all 8 were different. It's painful, and if you're looking at switching to Verizon, think about it hard, and be sure you're in a pretty bad situation before switching. Heather and I are definitely looking to go the other way.

Tax Day - Things I hate

Well, it's a pretty nice day, knowing that soon my big refund will be on the way. I already got the tax break refund, but the homebuyers credit is now coming! That's a good feeling knowing that is coming in. Too bad it's already spent though, that part is a bummer.

So, recently I really got back into running. OK, so I've only been out a couple of times. I've been invited to referee as early as this weekend in Huron, however, cannot make it due to my niece's birthday party. So, this weekend it's on the road to Minnesota. All the cake decorating and baking will take place there because of the lack of consistency with our oven. It might back at 350, it might be 385. One just never knows. Speaking of which, we started pre-heating that thing about 40 minutes ago. It might be to 425 for supper. Gotta go check. Can't miss a quality meal ya know!

I should have been an automobile engineer

After having owned a Ford Probe - and we'll just leave any jokes about that alone at this point Ray - I have concluded that I should have been an engineer that designs automobiles. I could have spent about one hour with Ford engineers and GM engineers and told them immediately how their design would fail. Case in point...

Ford Probe
I owned this car in high school and through college. At first, no issues at all, but as the miles started to add up, and the problems grew more complex, I realized how poorly this car was designed. This one takes the cake for bad engine design. When I had alternator trouble, I was in a remote town north west of the Twin Cities. After getting an estimate of somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000 to replace it, I thought that was just awful, and called on my dad to help. Well, after we slaved away for hours, we figured out why it would cost that much, it was all in the labor. Getting the alternator removed from its holding took about 10 minutes, the next 6 hours was spent removing the entire front axel to get the alternator out of the engine compartment and the new one in there. Dad and I bonded that day, and knew why we weren't Ford people.

Pontiac Grand Am
I've always thought this was a nice little designed car. Now after working on one for the past two days, and after the problems over the week, I like the car, when nothing is wrong with it. Sears told me the serpentine belt needed to be replaced, and told me it may take up to 4 hours to get it done. I thought this was absurd, but, after spending about 6 hours on it total, I'm in the home stretch of finishing it up, sort of. I've broken one bolt, and can't get the last bolt on the alternator. In case you ever need it, here is the procedure for changing the serpentine belt on a Grand Am. (I recommend some soothing music. I used KLOVE which kept the cussing to a minimum.)

1. Remove anything on the passenger side of the engine that holds the motor in place. Yes, it all must come off.
2. Remove the brackets that hold the engine in place from the outside of the car. Yes, this must come off as well.
3. Remove the old belt. I recommend cutting it.
4. Carefully re-insert the new belt into place between the bracket where the engine brace attaches the the outside of the car.
5. Remove the entire rock guard from the bottom of the car along the wheel well.
6. Remove the passenger side tire.
7. Be sure at this point to recover any tools that you've dropped (which was 2 sockets and one wrench and 3 nuts for me).
8. In this newly created opening, re-insert the belt into it's place
9. Re-attach the alternator (good luck with that part!)
10. Be sure that you repair any gouges left to the outside parts before starting the car.
11. Reattach all these things that you've removed, and good luck remembering how it was put together.

I'm still in the vicinity of #9. Whoever designed this, should be required to replace 1 of these. Just one would do the trick. This goes with the Ford Probe for possible worst car design ever.

Did you know...

...that buffalo are not really buffalo at all? That's right, this is no joke! The name that we have called them by for years is completely wrong! We are actually talking about the bison. Check out the link here. Today, while driving through Custer State Park we were able to stop and see some of what Heather has dubbed the "NA Buffs" (for North American Buffaloes, or is it buffalii??) We saw a few very close to the road at first, then we later came upon the herds that roam the park. Some of them were finally right by the car and were able to pose for the camera. At one time, Heather was rolling up the window just in case the NA Buff would turn toward the car, he'd be having his head right in the window. So, we got some good photos of that.

The scary part of the day for Heather was the burrows. They were in love with our rear view mirror. One came up and started rubbing his neck against it. It was funny at first, but then he started rubbing harder and harder and I was starting to yell at him to not break the mirror off the car! Heather was frantically rolling up the window as the animal was trying to give her kisses and licks. She was crawling over to my side of the car screaming as the burrow kept sticking the mouth in the car. I was too busy laughing at her to do much about it. Then, I turned to the left out my window where one was making out with my glass. I let out a yelp and Heather didn't know what to do. She stated to moving back to her seat, as the burrow on her side got distracted, and as soon as possible, I had that little Grand Am peeling out to get out of there. The animals had given us quite a scare, and we were moving on!

All in all, it's been a fun break and a fun honeymoon, but tomorrow, one stop in the Badlands and then on to settle in for home. It will be a welcomed site! Coming soon, we'll have pictures of the wedding and the animals we encountered coming soon.