Thomas Rye
Why do we write on the internet?
There are billions of things posted, uploaded, updated, reddit‘d, submitted, stumbled, and tweeted all across the interwebs. Today, I want to look at those things that have a bit more substance to them – the “written” things on the internet, if you will.
Some write to journal publicly. Maybe just to get things off their chest or express themselves through writing.
Others write to entertain. I haven’t come across a lot of sites dedicated to fictional writings, but I’m sure there are some. When I say “write to entertain”, I’m thinking of the writing on the internet that is in short anecdotal stories that you can read in a few minutes or less (i.e. FML, Dear Blank Please Blank, Texts From Last Night) Sometimes this too can be to get things off their chest, but in a humorous style and about things that people can relate to. One of my favorite forms of this is in the form of comics (i.e. The Oatmeal).
You’ll find a very large community, nay, internet metropolis based around technology. Technology is a broad topic, yes, but it is a part of so many parts of our lives and this is what makes the articles about technology related topics so voluminous. Technology breaks into many different pieces that could also be categorized otherwise – some of the most popular are likely How-To articles and News articles.
You may not think much about the importance of writing. You may think that the last the the world and the internet needs is another article about something that doesn’t matter or that no one cares about. Or you may think that there’s nothing actually worth-while on the internet when it comes to written works. If so, I challenge you to do a search on things that you’ve always wanted to know how to do and tell me if you don’t find a decent answer.
If you know about something or are particularly good at something and ESPECIALLY if you are an expert (or something close to it), please, for the rest of us – write about it! Explain it. Give us enough insight to try it. And then when we’ve tried it and realize how beautiful or difficult or fulfilling it actually is – we’ll love you all the more for it.
If you are not an expert at anything and don’t really do much, well… Keep consuming. Keeping reading. Keep thumbs-upping and thumbs-downing, 1-starring and 5-starring, Liking and Retweeting. And most of all – Keep trying. You’ll get there. And when you do… write about it!
Food, Pipes, Fuel, and now this. Is there anything corn can’t do!
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Why I will never use Expedia again
I’ve been a big fan of online purchasing for a long time. Year after year, the process just keeps getting better and, perhaps more importantly, easier. Some things make a lot of sense to buy online – computer products, software, non-tailored clothing – you can almost always find much better deals and a much wider variety if you do your shopping online. Other things such as travel, food, and other try-before-you-buy type items require a much more complex process to successfully offer online, but with all the technology improvements over the last few years even these complex items can be obtained over the internet.
I can’t remember the last time I didn’t purchase my plane tickets online — you might not either. Many moons ago, Travelocity had a pretty good corner on the online travel market. If anyone remembers their DreamMaps, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Select your departure city and then just browse the globe speckled with prices and find some amazing deal to some exotic destination. I don’t know why they ever took it down.
Skipping ahead, Orbitz and Kayak have really never let me down. Priceline has given me some great deals on a few hotel rooms, but I’ve never successfully gotten a good airfare deal through them. Bing Travel (Farecast) and Cheap Tickets get an honorable mention, but the online travel giants of years past have failed to keep up. Travelocity never has the best price anymore so I rarely even check their site. Last (and possibly least), the one with my favorite jingle of all – Expedia “dot cooooooooom” – has become my foe…
My wife and I are leaving for our honeymoon to Central America…
I booked a room for one night at the Maya Colonial Hotel less than 24 hours in advance – no option to purchase trip protection insurance, so, obviously, I didn’t (but I would’ve if I could have)…
We miss our first flight which means that we will miss our connecting once-a-day flight to Honduras and, you guessed it, miss our hotel reservation. So I call Expedia looking forward to a pleasant experience that makes booking with online travel giants the way to go…
On hold for 45 minutes… carrying my phone around the airport on speakerphone waiting for someone to pickup… no answer… it’s time to board the plane so I have to hang up.
I call Expedia again after we land… on hold for 30 minutes… a guy picks up so I explain the situation. He is a nice customer service guy so he listens and explains that he will try to reach the hotel… puts me on hold, tries to call hotel… 15 minutes go by… I get disconnected… have to call back and wait on hold again for 25 minutes… again, carrying my phone around waiting for hold music to end and a person to pickup…
Finally get through. This time, I give the guy my number right away so he can call me back if we get disconnected. Explain the situation again, he puts me on hold… I wait 15 minutes… he can’t get a hold of the hotel. (To those of you that want to bash me for being disappointed with Expedia, please know that at this point I was only upset with the hotel)
So this guy, also a nice customer service guy, explains that he understands the situation and since we can’t reach the hotel he will submit a cancellation request to them right away. He then also puts me at ease and assures me that everything should be fine and to contact Expedia if I find that the hotel still charges me and they will take care of it. Great.
My wife and I go and have a great and adventurous honeymoon…
10 days later… returned from the honeymoon, checking my bank statement and notice that I got charged for the hotel room. So, as the nice customer service guy said to do, I call Expedia… wait on hold for a while (no surprise)… talk to a lady and explain the situation… She looks up the itinerary number, reads the notes, calls the hotel. When she gets back on the line, she tells me that they never received any cancellation request, so that’s why they charged me. I wasn’t even in their country, much less at their hotel, but since the reservation was not cancelled, they charged me. At this point, it’s upsetting, but I assume this is when Expedia will apologize and take responsibility to get me credited back for the mistake. Expedia lady doesn’t offer an apology that apparently they didn’t handle it correctly, she apologizes that I have to pay for a room that I never stayed in – almost like a “Sorry, better luck next time.” I try to stay calm and explain that I don’t think that is right. She tells me I can speak to the manager of the hotel if I call back the next day at 10 am (which would be Monday and I would be at work) – I tell her that won’t be possible and that I need Expedia to take care of this for me… she puts me on hold and gets her supervisor.
The supervisor was nothing more than an “I’m sorry, but we won’t help you” man. I made sure that he understood the circumstances. He said because I tried to cancel within 24 hours of the reservation time that I would still be charged. I asked him if he knew when I made the reservation. He looked it up… made the reservation less that 24 hours in advance. So I asked him if there were any exceptions to that rule considering that I never would’ve had the chance to cancel more than 24 hours in advance AND I canceled within 6 hours of making the reservation in the first place. He didn’t seem to have an answer but merely responded with, “Well, you clicked that you agreed to the Terms and Conditions, so there’s nothing I can do to help you.”
I clarified, “So you are ok with the fact that Expedia helped me lose $100 on a hotel room that I never stayed in?”
His response after a long pause, “Uh… I guess you are entitled to your own opinion.”
Later he says, “I’m sorry sir there’s nothing we can do for you, you checked the box agreeing to the terms and conditions.”
I re-stated, “There’s nothing you will do. There is plenty you can do, but you won’t. I’d really like for you to help me out, but you do not want to.”
Before we got off the phone, I made sure that he (and whoever reviews the call later) knew that, “I will never use Expedia again.”
In the end, I’m glad it was only $100. I don’t have any reason to believe they would have done any more to help me out if it had been $1000 or even more.
Sidenote: I have had last minute itinerary changes and canceled flights before when using Orbitz. When I called them to get assistance they were always very helpful and understanding. They seem to truly understand the chaos that traveling can be and they’ve positioned themselves to be a help in those times… not add to the misery. Thanks Orbitz.
Word to all service-offering companies: Don’t use your terms and conditions to legally screw your customers out of their money.
Others that have been screwed by Expedia:
http://www.marketingshift.com/2005/12/expedia-dot-scam.cfm – I really hope Team Expedia comments on my blog.
http://worstcustomerservice.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/bad-customer-service-expedia/
Movies you should’ve already seen
UPDATE: This list will be for movies from your college days or before, if you’re my age (ie around 5+ years ago).
** I’ve nixed a few great movies simply because they’re just too recent. I’ll make another list/poll for those. Since the conversation started with Garden State (2004) – that will be the cut off. Also, anime has been nixed (because I’m close minded).
In a recent conversation with some friends, we stumbled upon the fact that my girlfriend fiancee wife had never seen Garden State. We were all flabbergasted. As we investigated further, we came to find out that she had missed out on many of the rest of the groups favorite movies from years past. It turned into a quick-fire survey where we were all shouting out movies, most with her shaking her head “no” to. I quickly got out a paper and pen and started writing down the movies we were throwing out with much nostalgia, noting the ones my hypo-cinematically-exposed lady friend had not seen.
(Edit) I quickly lost the list before I was able to transfer it to this blog. So help me out by posting the movies that you feel are staples in your DVD collection or ones that you would be surprised to find out if one of your friends hadn’t seen it yet.
(Edit) I’ve made the list into a poll – feel free to vote for your Top 20 “Should’ve Already Seen” movies – View Results link at bottom.
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A brief wrap up of 5 things people seem to care a lot about
You came to my blog so you’ll get my opinion… and we’ll waste no time getting there.
Global warming. True or False?
False. To say that the only reason the globe is heating up is because it’s on it’s way down is turning a blind eye to a lot of other very plausible explanations. (I won’t even go into the research that shows the Earth may not be warming up at all, but rather cooling.) What about the idea of cosmic seasons? Perhaps the Earth has ebbs and flows of temperature on a very long cycle. What about natural evolution of the planet? If Earth really did start as Pangea, then why would it have stopped moving now? And why couldn’t water redistribution from the polar ice caps be the force behind the continual reshaping of the landscape of the world?
* I absolutely agree that we need to pollute less, find more sustainable energy now and respect the wildlife of the planet at a level that we do not push extinction on any more species.
Are there aliens on other planets?
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Yes. Don’t get all excited. Yes, I think there are other life-forms on other planets. There is plant life, fungi, and even insects of sorts, but I don’t think there are any mammals or humanoid like creatures in the great beyond. But even if there are, well, I’m sure they’re as far away from building a spaceship that could reach us as we are from reaching them. So stop wasting your life taking pictures of lights in the sky. It’s more likely government military testing or satellites.
Speaking of the government…
Did the government have anything to do with 9/11?
Yes, the government was about to lose control and loyalty of all of Americans to the fun loving ways of militant Islam so they had to make the Islamic extremists look bad… NO! Are you serious?! I am sure that plenty of mistakes were made having to do with the preparation and precautions about security, response to news of a possible terrorist threat and plenty of other things. That doesn’t mean that the government DID IT! Jeez. “Where’s the debris from the plane that hit the pentagon? The video looks like a missile!” Ya and that was some real high quality 1 frame per second video you watched on YouTube to make all of your conspiracy theories, wasn’t it?
Travel security got lazy. It had been so long since a real hijack/terrorist threat that we started caring more about fast security and check-in lines than we did about the actual security. And I’m sure plenty of us made complaints about airlines making us take too long in the lines. And so they responded – as any good company would to their customers. The lesson to learn here: Always consider the full ramifications of your actions when fighting for your conveniences.
Is Healthcare Reform a good idea or bad idea?
In the way they’re approaching it… bad. Pay doctors less so that everyone can get poor healthcare. “Hey but everyone is getting healthcare, right?”
I won’t spend much time on this because a lot of the Healthcare Reform is still being battled over in Washington.
Here’s how we SHOULD be reforming healthcare… Government programs and encouragement for Healthy Living. Obesity and the health problems that are related to it are the biggest expense in healthcare today. Just listen to Jamie Oliver.
What should happen to BP?
They are crooks and thieves as bad as Bernie Madoff. The company (at least all of it’s American assets) should be sold and all of the money be put into a fund solely for oil clean up and on-going environmental recovery of the Gulf. Sold to who? QuikTrip, Phillips 66, whoever is currently running their oil business ethically. “Oh but what about the jobs and what about the economic downturn if BP goes under?!” You mean the same economic downturn from when we bailed out all those crooks in the financial sector? Ya, that helped a lot didn’t it? No, people still foreclosed on homes, most of the higher-ups in those companies still got their bonuses and we still are shaky economically… and we’re paying for those bailouts still.
Understand this – the world will change… constantly. Big events like this may be tough, tougher even for some than others, but we will survive. Growing pains are the good kind of pains. We get so scared about losing jobs, but if it’s for the right reasons, then I can’t say that I’m opposed. I mean, is anyone upset that there are no more Blood Letters employed? Is anyone upset that “moat shoveler” or “pyramid building slave” are no longer available jobs? No, of course not. We have moved far beyond those things. What about a day when Oncologists do not have steady work. Will anyone be upset? No, because it means that cancer is a thing of the past. And I hope that we don’t bailout the oil companies when we are on the verge of using sustainable clean energy from some other source.
Sprint HTC Hero – Re-Rooted and Re-Flashed with Apps2SD
Finally took the time to redo what I did wrong the first time around. I realized that I never properly got Apps2sd working. So I was running out of space on my phone and it was getting bogged down a lot because it didn’t have available memory to run smoothly.
This was my main source of help on the rooting
Here’s the basic run down to get a sure thing:
- Make sure phone is not plugged into USB
- Turn off phone
- Turn on phone in recovery (Hold Power + Home at same time)
- Phone loads with simple green menu
- Go to Wipe >
* wipe data/factory reset
* wipe dalvik-cache
* wipe sd:ext partition
* wipe battery stats
* wipe rotate settings
(important for things to load right, especially if you had a custom ROM before) - Go to Partition > Partition SD card (Swap = 0, Ext = 512MB, FAT32 = Remaining)
- Plug phone into computer via USB cable
- Go to USB-MS Toggle > Enable
- On PC: Drag your ROM .zip file on to SD card *
- On PC: If you want Live Wallpapers – drag that file on to SD card as well **
- On Phone: Disable USB
- Flash .zip from SD
- Reboot phone
- Before you do anything else – Press Menu > Settings > Manage Applications > HTC Sense > Clear Data (This gets the clock to show up on the home screen)
- Go to town on downloading apps and happiness
* Find a ROM that automatically enables Apps2sd if the SD card is partitioned.
* I use DamageControl 2.09.01 – Stable and fast 2.1 rom, especially when running apps from the SD card
Read the info page on XDA Developers Forum
Cream of Wheat is SO good!
Last night I was so hungry it was making me REALLY grouchy. It was one of those hungers where you are starting to lose it and just get delirious… only with a good helping of straight up MAD. I remembered that I had a box of Cream of Wheat in the pantry, so I got it out and started to boil up 2 servings of it (both for me). I asked my girlfriend if she wanted some and she answered with a laugh – I already knew that she didn’t like Cream of Wheat. So I doctor up the finished product with butter and brown sugar and head into the other room where she is.
As I’m going to town on this bowl (after apologizing for being a total grouch 10 minutes earlier) she peeks over and makes a face. It’s at that point I decided to defend my beloved childhood meal and started to pry into her about it.
Me: “When was the last time you had Cream of Wheat?”
Her: “Look at it! It looks like… like… little eggs or something, bleh.”
Me: “Ok the texture might be unique, but it’s like a massage to your mouth and it tastes SO good!”
She starts to argue more (playfully, of course), but decides instead to just take a bite and (presumptively) hate it and put an end to the discussion.
*Takes bite, goes back to reading her book* ………. *Turns back towards me with a slight smirk*
Me: “You want some more don’t you?!”
I hand her the spoon and we split what was left of the bowl. She loves it now!
I call upon all of you that are against Cream of Wheat to give it another shot. Try it with butter and brown sugar or add some chocolate syrup or put fruit on top. It’s good.
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AT&T killing iPhone, helping Sprint and Android
Unless you are not an iPhone user or do not know anyone who is, then you’ve probably heard complaints about AT&T and their iPhone support (or lack there of). Shortly after the iPhone exploded on to the mobile phone scene and changed everything (kudos Apple), it had competitors trying to catch up. It took a long time before any other phones were even in the same area code as the iPhone because of it’s apps that could do anything and the smoothness by which it is operated – a staple all Apple products have become synonymous with. Really, the Achilles Heel of the iPhone, since the beginning, has been it’s exclusive carrier, AT&T.
Exclusive contract
I’ll hand it to AT&T for getting the exclusive contract to carry iPhones. I’m not sure what they did or how they convinced Apple that it would be in their best interest, but somehow they did. I know that Apple is all about “exclusive” – their software is proprietary, their machines are closed, they’re not “compatible friendly” in general. Still, to limit their phones to one carrier that has some of the spottiest coverage of all the major carriers and limits the extensive abilities of their power product by capping data usage and adding huge charges for basic features (ie – texting), well, it leaves me confused.
But then it happened again. AT&T’s initial contract with Apple for the iPhone ends this year (2010), but they are in serious talks to get an extension and remain the exclusive iPhone network carrier through 2011. Which would get them to their projected 4G network availability date.
4G will change the game
Apple recently had a couple leaks of their new iPhone 4G (once on accident, once on purpose, I think). There are two 4G networks in the US right now… and AT&T is not one of them… yet. Sprint has already launched it’s 4G network and word on the street is that it is screaming fast. HTC (maker of the Hero for Sprint, an Android phone) has the first actual 4G phone on a 4G network available now – the HTC Evo. Verizon has plans to have a 4G network up in the next 2 years.
I expect that when AT&T exclusive contract extension is up in 2011, iPhone’s will go multi-carrier and release their iPhone 4G on Sprint and Verizon stay exclusive except move to Verizon as their carrier. Just a hunch. If you trust me, sell AT&T stock late this year and buy Verizon.
What do you think?
Are you an iPhone user? What has your experience been with AT&T?
Any HTC Evo users out there? How’s that working out for you?
