... and tell them you're the original poster of this/. article.
Beat them over the head with the clue-stick.
I for one have been contimplating buying a nice shiny new PAIR of Apple laptops, one for me and one for my wife, but after reading about all the problems people have reported with both the laptops themselves and AppleCare online, and considering that some very small nice laptops in the x86 world go for about $1000 less...
I can buy a lot of repairs and/or vendor extended-warranty insurance for $2000.
Anyway back to your problem -- Tell them you'll post their next negative response as a follow-up to your article if they don't replace the system.
And don't hang up without a manager's NAME and a refusal IN WRITING from them stating that they will not replace that lemon machine.
Scan it and post it on a website that can handle a slashdotting...
Perhaps if you'd sold them on the idea a little more -- some more communication about how you really want that motorcycle and how hard it is to save for it and how much it would mean to you if someone felt they could contribute to the "motorcycle fund".
On the flip side -- the fact that it's a motorcycle could have turned many people in your family off. They're viewed as supremely dangerous by many people and their silent refusal to help you purchase one may have been their own "practicality" kicking in. There's a reason medical staff call them "donor-cycles".
I'm not arguing for either side (but I'm sure someone will start up the completely off-topic "motorcycles aren't dangerous!" thread now. It's a requirement of the Religion of the Bike, to defend it's honor. And yes, I have ridden in the past, and would like to again -- I don't currently own a bike.)
Your mother's comment sounds like that was EXACTLY the subtle point she was trying to make -- she doesn't want you to buy a motorcycle anyway... "no thought in it"... that means that she THOUGHT about giving you a Target gift certificate INSTEAD of money for a bike. Perhaps she'd like to see you live a long, healthy life with your lovely wife.
Perhaps it's your family's subtle way of saying, "Get off the whole motorcycle thing, man."
"If the customers are better off by me doing this, it won't matter. They don't read my performance reviews. Want to help, or should I let you know how it turns out?"
What's even funnier about this analogy is that the same parents who whine about TV transmission towers and HV power lines running near the schools probably wouldn't say "boo" about every computer in the kiddie's computer lab having a 2.4 GHz transmitter in it.
The joys of ignorance... neither the power lines, the transmitter tower nor the 2.4 GHz wireless devices pose any threat, but they'd be marching in the streets against one, while allowing the other...
I spent months hunting down problems in a 300+ workstation office in the wiring closet that was wired out/punched-down by guess who... the only red-green colorblind engineer in the building.;-)
There is wisdom in realizing young that in many cases pursuing your most enjoyable hobbies into a job/career can sometimes ruin a good hobby.
Example a friend gave me a number of years ago:
Flying airplanes and learning to fly them commercially at the local airport is fun.
Getting up in -10F weather to ride in a cheap Ford Club Van from an airport hotel in Wyoming to a cold airplane to have it cranked and ready for a 4:55 AM show-time and a 6:05 AM push-back, after arriving late the night before on a "standing overnight" where the airline starts your duty day in the evening of the previous day and then kicks you out late-morning the following day (read: you got 4 hours of sleep if you're lucky), is not.
Jobs are jobs, ultimately... work is pretty much required for most folks in our society, so you have to make of it what you can.
If you only enjoy computers and programming as a hobby now, and you continue into it for a career, you may find that doing it both for a living and for "fun" takes all the fun out of it.
This is true of just about anything, really.
Secondary teaching is a very noble profession, but includes long hours, and comparitively low pay (there are three teaching professionals in my family) but the ability to really make a difference in a few student's lives. It can feel more morally worthwhile than coding up a program.
Ultimately now that I'm in my early 30's I now realize that just learning to be happy in whatever you're doing is probably a skill everyone should practice early in life. It pays off over and over again.
Search for the balance... work when you must, enjoy life when you can.
20 years since Judge Greene's decisions, and we're still debating them... certainly shows it's an interesting question -- monopoly or non-monopoly Utilities.
Look at the Board of Directors of most organizations for the largest steaming pile of problems.
If the BoD bonused on long-term growth and profitability and the appropriate decisions being made to get to that point, and not just next quarter's numbers, perhaps we'd see another communications technology power-house like Bell Labs again in my lifetime.
The people are here, and have the skills. The companies just need to get off the "next-quarter treadmill".
The vast majority of the "internal guts" of telco still runs on Unix. I'd say Unix made AT&T plenty of money.
800 numbers and SS7 wouldn't have existed in the 80's without Unix behind them. Toll-free to the end-user is of course, not toll-free to the business answering the phone.
Any small office using Definity Voice Mail or IVR platforms is running it on AT&T Sys V Unix, still to this day...
What ARE you smoking? Unix made AT&T and the later divested companies a ton of money. They didn't create Unix to SELL it, they created Unix to USE it. Which is the CARDINAL difference between Unix and Windows... Unix was created to WORK, Windows was created to SELL.
Re:SCO & Mondavi/Rothschild Opus One
on
AT&T Labs' Brain Drain
·
· Score: 2, Informative
SCO isn't even *that* SCO anymore. Or hadn't you heard. Today's SCO isn't the "Santa Cruz Organization" of old, they're the "SCO Group" -- a group of businessmen who have a track record of buying up dying companies and finding things to sue about to pump up their value. Really.
"Use this ultra-cool cash machine. They will save the bank money (not paying tellers to assist customers anymore) and we'll pass that savings along to YOU!"
What utter bullshit.
Give me back a whole pack of intelligent bank tellers who can answer questions, make recommendations, and maybe even remember your name if you come in fairly regularly instead of ATM machine 1000% interest/ransom "fees" (we'll only charge you $2 to get $20 OF YOUR OWN MONEY out of our bank).
Now I know that most banks don't charge their own customers, but with an ATM on every corner and Direct Deposit handling the input side of the account, how many people even know where their bank's actual branches are? (Technically branch banking is illegal in my State, so their "affiliates" or whatever legal mumbo-jumbo they use to get around that one...).
Banking in general is not so bad here, however. Thank goodness my State is one of the only sane ones that passed State Law requiring credit-reporting bureaus to give residents a free annual full credit report, no charge. Why anyone anywhere else isn't beating down the doors of their State Legislature requiring the same thing is beyond me...
Naming buildings after them is only a symptom, not the disease.
I could care less if they're smart or not -- they have money and power (as your comment about degrees from Yale and Harvard prove -- the "average American" can't afford either one) and run the country with their political power.
Senior worked his way up, Junior's a slacker alcoholic coke-head who has friends in high places. Nepotism at it's finest.
Yes, the HDTV tower on Lookout Mountain took three (more?) years to approve because a bunch of rich snobs in Jefferson County didn't want another TV tower on the most reasonable site for TV transmitters that has had numerous towers on it dating back to the late 1950's.
Of course the usual B.S. about proximity to a school and power levels came up... and yes, I've been here long enough to know the towers were there first, the school was built later. Just like airports and houses... who's there first doesn't matter...
Would the rich California-fake-granola-heads in JeffCo please leave and go back to the land of Fruits and Nuts? Take some of the Boulder trust-fund silver-spoon pseudo-hippies with you also, please.
Then of course, the site developers instead of standing with a backbone to the JeffCo idiots actually did feasibility studies for Eldorado Mountain (a mixed use FM broadcast/commercial 2-way/microwave site and home of Sprint Broadband's transmitters), and Squaw Mountain (a mostly 2-way communications site with only one TV transmitter hundreds of yards to the north -- PBS CH 12 which compared to the network monsters is a relatively low-power output TV station -- although they did apply for and installed higher power transmitters for both HD and non-HD content last year).
Neither site covers the entire Denver Metro area, and both had mixed-use design problems (interference) and with the suburbs sprawling north and south simultaneously the only reasonable site for anyone was Lookout Mountain. It always makes sense to keep the high powered broadcasters together on the same hill.
Every RF-knowledgeable person in town knew this, it took the idiots in JeffCo three years to cave in, eventually only asking that three smaller towers be brought down in return for the ~950' new HD tower that all the major networks will share.
So the Denver stations in meeting their requirement to have HD on the air all did it from downtown buildings while they waited for the stupid wrangling and gnashing of teeth about using the same site that has been used for over 50 years for TV broadcast towers -- eventually worked itself out.
Finally... progress. In spite of the morons who wouldn't let the RF engineers just do their jobs... Looking forward to seeing the new tower on Lookout.
From talking with other RF-interested folks around the country, similar political plays are taking place all over. It's retarded. Pour the base, get the dang towers up, and get back to work.
Slashdot Mirror
... and tell them you're the original poster of this /. article.
Beat them over the head with the clue-stick.
I for one have been contimplating buying a nice shiny new PAIR of Apple laptops, one for me and one for my wife, but after reading about all the problems people have reported with both the laptops themselves and AppleCare online, and considering that some very small nice laptops in the x86 world go for about $1000 less...
I can buy a lot of repairs and/or vendor extended-warranty insurance for $2000.
Anyway back to your problem -- Tell them you'll post their next negative response as a follow-up to your article if they don't replace the system.
And don't hang up without a manager's NAME and a refusal IN WRITING from them stating that they will not replace that lemon machine.
Scan it and post it on a website that can handle a slashdotting...
Perhaps if you'd sold them on the idea a little more -- some more communication about how you really want that motorcycle and how hard it is to save for it and how much it would mean to you if someone felt they could contribute to the "motorcycle fund".
On the flip side -- the fact that it's a motorcycle could have turned many people in your family off. They're viewed as supremely dangerous by many people and their silent refusal to help you purchase one may have been their own "practicality" kicking in. There's a reason medical staff call them "donor-cycles".
I'm not arguing for either side (but I'm sure someone will start up the completely off-topic "motorcycles aren't dangerous!" thread now. It's a requirement of the Religion of the Bike, to defend it's honor. And yes, I have ridden in the past, and would like to again -- I don't currently own a bike.)
Your mother's comment sounds like that was EXACTLY the subtle point she was trying to make -- she doesn't want you to buy a motorcycle anyway... "no thought in it"... that means that she THOUGHT about giving you a Target gift certificate INSTEAD of money for a bike. Perhaps she'd like to see you live a long, healthy life with your lovely wife.
Perhaps it's your family's subtle way of saying, "Get off the whole motorcycle thing, man."
Just a guess -- I don't know your family.
Another good one for this is ...
"If the customers are better off by me doing this, it won't matter. They don't read my performance reviews. Want to help, or should I let you know how it turns out?"
This is where GOOD managers learn to pad their teams to protect those people they really want to keep.
Sad, but true.
What's even funnier about this analogy is that the same parents who whine about TV transmission towers and HV power lines running near the schools probably wouldn't say "boo" about every computer in the kiddie's computer lab having a 2.4 GHz transmitter in it.
The joys of ignorance... neither the power lines, the transmitter tower nor the 2.4 GHz wireless devices pose any threat, but they'd be marching in the streets against one, while allowing the other...
I spent months hunting down problems in a 300+ workstation office in the wiring closet that was wired out/punched-down by guess who... the only red-green colorblind engineer in the building. ;-)
Ben,
There is wisdom in realizing young that in many cases pursuing your most enjoyable hobbies into a job/career can sometimes ruin a good hobby.
Example a friend gave me a number of years ago:
Flying airplanes and learning to fly them commercially at the local airport is fun.
Getting up in -10F weather to ride in a cheap Ford Club Van from an airport hotel in Wyoming to a cold airplane to have it cranked and ready for a 4:55 AM show-time and a 6:05 AM push-back, after arriving late the night before on a "standing overnight" where the airline starts your duty day in the evening of the previous day and then kicks you out late-morning the following day (read: you got 4 hours of sleep if you're lucky), is not.
Jobs are jobs, ultimately... work is pretty much required for most folks in our society, so you have to make of it what you can.
If you only enjoy computers and programming as a hobby now, and you continue into it for a career, you may find that doing it both for a living and for "fun" takes all the fun out of it.
This is true of just about anything, really.
Secondary teaching is a very noble profession, but includes long hours, and comparitively low pay (there are three teaching professionals in my family) but the ability to really make a difference in a few student's lives. It can feel more morally worthwhile than coding up a program.
Ultimately now that I'm in my early 30's I now realize that just learning to be happy in whatever you're doing is probably a skill everyone should practice early in life. It pays off over and over again.
Search for the balance... work when you must, enjoy life when you can.
Ouch. I feel sorry for whomever has to maintain those. I assume those are the small non-carrier-class boxes?
20 years since Judge Greene's decisions, and we're still debating them... certainly shows it's an interesting question -- monopoly or non-monopoly Utilities.
Who sets their bonuses?
Look at the Board of Directors of most organizations for the largest steaming pile of problems.
If the BoD bonused on long-term growth and profitability and the appropriate decisions being made to get to that point, and not just next quarter's numbers, perhaps we'd see another communications technology power-house like Bell Labs again in my lifetime.
The people are here, and have the skills. The companies just need to get off the "next-quarter treadmill".
The vast majority of the "internal guts" of telco still runs on Unix. I'd say Unix made AT&T plenty of money.
800 numbers and SS7 wouldn't have existed in the 80's without Unix behind them. Toll-free to the end-user is of course, not toll-free to the business answering the phone.
Any small office using Definity Voice Mail or IVR platforms is running it on AT&T Sys V Unix, still to this day...
What ARE you smoking? Unix made AT&T and the later divested companies a ton of money. They didn't create Unix to SELL it, they created Unix to USE it. Which is the CARDINAL difference between Unix and Windows... Unix was created to WORK, Windows was created to SELL.
SCO isn't even *that* SCO anymore. Or hadn't you heard. Today's SCO isn't the "Santa Cruz Organization" of old, they're the "SCO Group" -- a group of businessmen who have a track record of buying up dying companies and finding things to sue about to pump up their value. Really.
Dell and WalMart are already stagnant and bland.
I remember those and the marketing hype:
"Use this ultra-cool cash machine. They will save the bank money (not paying tellers to assist customers anymore) and we'll pass that savings along to YOU!"
What utter bullshit.
Give me back a whole pack of intelligent bank tellers who can answer questions, make recommendations, and maybe even remember your name if you come in fairly regularly instead of ATM machine 1000% interest/ransom "fees" (we'll only charge you $2 to get $20 OF YOUR OWN MONEY out of our bank).
Now I know that most banks don't charge their own customers, but with an ATM on every corner and Direct Deposit handling the input side of the account, how many people even know where their bank's actual branches are? (Technically branch banking is illegal in my State, so their "affiliates" or whatever legal mumbo-jumbo they use to get around that one...).
Banking in general is not so bad here, however. Thank goodness my State is one of the only sane ones that passed State Law requiring credit-reporting bureaus to give residents a free annual full credit report, no charge. Why anyone anywhere else isn't beating down the doors of their State Legislature requiring the same thing is beyond me...
Oh goodness, what shall Astronomers do all day then? (Yes, this is sarcasm.)
Royalty = A family that runs a country.
Do *you* get it now?
Naming buildings after them is only a symptom, not the disease.
I could care less if they're smart or not -- they have money and power (as your comment about degrees from Yale and Harvard prove -- the "average American" can't afford either one) and run the country with their political power.
Senior worked his way up, Junior's a slacker alcoholic coke-head who has friends in high places. Nepotism at it's finest.
Caller ID, and an answering machine. What are you, new?
Get on with it, man. Seriously.
Does it really matter? Junior, Senior... nah, we don't have royalty here...
It's good to be the King!
/etc/resolv.conf:
.org
search
Done. Next?
Got an RSS feed? Interesting site, but the joys of information overload mean that I usually peruse the interesting stuff via RSS feeds these days. ;-)
Yes, the HDTV tower on Lookout Mountain took three (more?) years to approve because a bunch of rich snobs in Jefferson County didn't want another TV tower on the most reasonable site for TV transmitters that has had numerous towers on it dating back to the late 1950's.
Of course the usual B.S. about proximity to a school and power levels came up... and yes, I've been here long enough to know the towers were there first, the school was built later. Just like airports and houses... who's there first doesn't matter...
Would the rich California-fake-granola-heads in JeffCo please leave and go back to the land of Fruits and Nuts? Take some of the Boulder trust-fund silver-spoon pseudo-hippies with you also, please.
Then of course, the site developers instead of standing with a backbone to the JeffCo idiots actually did feasibility studies for Eldorado Mountain (a mixed use FM broadcast/commercial 2-way/microwave site and home of Sprint Broadband's transmitters), and Squaw Mountain (a mostly 2-way communications site with only one TV transmitter hundreds of yards to the north -- PBS CH 12 which compared to the network monsters is a relatively low-power output TV station -- although they did apply for and installed higher power transmitters for both HD and non-HD content last year).
Neither site covers the entire Denver Metro area, and both had mixed-use design problems (interference) and with the suburbs sprawling north and south simultaneously the only reasonable site for anyone was Lookout Mountain. It always makes sense to keep the high powered broadcasters together on the same hill.
Every RF-knowledgeable person in town knew this, it took the idiots in JeffCo three years to cave in, eventually only asking that three smaller towers be brought down in return for the ~950' new HD tower that all the major networks will share.
So the Denver stations in meeting their requirement to have HD on the air all did it from downtown buildings while they waited for the stupid wrangling and gnashing of teeth about using the same site that has been used for over 50 years for TV broadcast towers -- eventually worked itself out.
Finally... progress. In spite of the morons who wouldn't let the RF engineers just do their jobs... Looking forward to seeing the new tower on Lookout.
From talking with other RF-interested folks around the country, similar political plays are taking place all over. It's retarded. Pour the base, get the dang towers up, and get back to work.
Considering the possibilities, you could self-deprive yourself of TV for a week and probably figure out you don't need it at all. Go figure.
/. and watching my Dish Network-fed TV. GRIN...)
(This said from the comfort of my living room sitting here with my Mac OSX machine on
Care to explain why you despise them? That might be interesting.