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Article posted on Dec 27

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 27, 2001, 3:03 pm

I don't see why holiday-colored M&Ms are discounted after the 25th. I mean really, they're M&Ms. You eat them. Does it really make a difference what color they are in relation to the time of year?

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Article posted on Dec 26

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 26, 2001, 10:26 pm

hepkitten called me to test my geeky phone number! I'm so excited! And all I had to do was publically post my call phone number to about 35 semi-strangers (Yes, I don't get out much :)

Well, my laptop is happily chugging along. I ordered a battery compartment cover from Sony; it should be shipped out after they get some in stock on January 7. $14 for a piece of plastic...

xenophile loaned me an orinoco card until the two cards I ordered on eBay arrive. I set up my firewall machine as an access point. I think it works, it's kind of hard to tell when you only have one wireless card for two computers :)

I should have taken this week off of work. Blah.

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Article posted on Dec 24

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 24, 2001, 8:53 pm

'Twas the night before christmas, my laptop is screwed.
The XP driver installation was rude.
"This isn't a Vaio," said Program with glee.
I'm so fucking pissed off, I punched LCD.
Now what should I see on Sony's support site?
An old barron wasteland; no info, that's right.
I contemplate calling support at this hour.
Who knows if they're open, that big ivory tower.
The modem is useless, the COM port unknown.
I wonder if I'd even be near a phone,
for 56k. I have enuf bandwidth,
through cable modem, latency is a big diff.
I finally give up, the modem won't be borne.
I load up a browser and search for more porn.

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Article posted on Dec 23

Another hellhole day at Best Buy

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 23, 2001, 6:46 pm

So I went to return the cable modem today. That went rather smoothly.

After that, I browsed around for awhile, and ended up in the laptops aisle. As you know, I've been wanting a laptop for awhile now... I saw a Vaio that looked decent: 900mhz/128MB/15GB for $1150 - $150 rebate. Before I knew it, I was looking for an employee to get me one.

I found a girl who was actually very friendly. She went back to find one, but came back and said they were out of stock. As I walked away, I saw an open item behind glass: a Vaio PCG-FX215 800mhz/128MB/10GB for $950. The sticker said the only thing wrong with it was it had no software/documentation. That was fine by me...

The (cute) chick spent the next 15 minutes trying to flag someone to open the glass case. In the meantime, she managed to convince me to pay $200 for a 3 year warranty. Hey, I figure in 3 years, battery replacements will pay for itself, and there's always the possibility that the screen will fry.

She finally gets someone to open the case and pulls the laptop out. "Oh, it looks like there's no battery. That's alright, just buy it, get the warranty, and then go immediately to the service desk and they'll pop one in. We definitely have them in stock," as she points to a stack of Sony batteries. That seems fine. She fills out the paperwork and tells me to go to the service desk to pay. There the guy begins ringing me up and asks if I need anything else. "Not really, you just need to give me the battery for it." He looks at the laptop. "But, this doesn't come with a battery." "Uhh, the girl I was talking to said the service plan would cover getting a battery in this." "No, it only covers replacing batteries."

*groan*

I rip up the form the girl filled out and start walking towards the door. Halfway ther I decide to turn around and go to confront the girl. The guy who said "no" was also walking toward her with the laptop. I thought he was going to ask her about what just happened, but no, he wanted the keys to put the laptop back in the glass case. She looked at the laptop, did a double take, and gave him the keys as she saw me walking up. I told her what happened and she rolled her eyes and said, "That guy's an idiot."

Again, I start walking toward the door, double back and go towards the customer service counter. I will exercise my constitutional right to bitch, oh yes. As usual, there are about 50 people in line for customer service, but I go straight to the front and say "I'd like to speak to a manager." "I'm sorry, is there a reason why?" "Yeah, you just lost a $1200 sale because you're promising more than you're giving." "Okay, I'll get a manager right away."

So a manager comes up and asks what's going on, and I explain what's going on. "This is over a battery, huh? Wait a second please," and he runs off. Great, I'll probably never see him again.

A couple minutes later he comes back with the laptop and a Sony battery. "Okay, I'm terribly sorry about all of this. I've got the battery here. The system won't let me give you the battery, but I'll take the price off the price of the laptop." *shrug* A $250 rose by any other name still takes a very long time to buy. "There's one other problem, there's no battery cover, and I don't have one here that will fit it. You can buy one for a couple bucks from Sony, so I'll take another $15 off the laptop price."

He takes me up to the checkout lines (which of course all have dozens of people in them, this being the 2nd day before christmas and all), picks me the shortest line, and gives me a sheet of paper. "Okay, give this to the girl at the register, then pick up the laptop at the security desk." I thank him and he walks to the security desk, gives the laptop to the guy there, says a few words and then points to me.

So I wait in line for about 15 minutes (stupid christmas), and then give the sheet to the checkout girl. She keys in the SKU, and the register shows $1400. She then looks down at the override price: $685. Then she looks at her screen. Then at the paper again. "Is this price right? $685?" "Yes, and for how long I've spent trying to get that laptop, it's just the right price." She rings it up, I pay, then I go to the security desk to get the laptop and leave.

In the end, I worked with 1) a very friendly girl who promised more than 2) the drone at the service desk could deliver, and 3) a manger who was probably so busy that he was willing to do anything to get me to pay and leave, even if it means a $250 battery. Total time from park to drive-off: 2 hours.

May this shit never happen again.

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Article posted on Dec 22

You suck. Warm wishes! - AT&T

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 22, 2001, 8:44 pm

I was browsing through Best Buy today when I saw a open box Motorola cable modem for $80, marked down from $150. In fact, all the cable modems were open box, which was a bit weird, but the $80 was the lowest marked down. The hardware looked fine; there was even a shrink-wrap-license sticker still over the ethernet port, so I bought it.

Come to find out, AT&T "doesn't support customer-bought modems in this area yet". Guess that explains why all the modems at Best Buy were open box. Tomorrow I'll return it, and make sure to tell a manager (in case they don't know) why all of their cable modems are all returned, and why they'll never actually sell one of them.

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Article posted on Dec 18

TurboTax blows

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 18, 2001, 10:17 pm

I did a "test run" to see what kind of refund to expect come April.... $1178 federal, which is actually a bit less than what I expected. Oh well

So I buy this big fancy $40 tax software, only to have it tell me that I would have been fine with a 1040EZ. Ahh well, at least it saves me the wait of getting my refund. 5 business days after my W2 arrives, I'll have submitted my return electronically and the moola should be in my bank account.

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Article posted on Dec 16

New years resolution

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 16, 2001, 8:53 pm

Let it be known throughout the land that beginning January 1, 2002, I shall save all receipts, save all non-spam dead-tree mail (scanning it in with that little scanner that's been collecting dust for the past 6 months), keeping my house clean, and I may kill a celebrity if time permits.

Yes, I can keep these promises.

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Article posted on Dec 16

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 16, 2001, 4:50 pm

Ahh, what a modern technological age we live in. Man has walked on the moon, you can fly from Paris to New York in three hours, and I can now order pizza online. Life is good.

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Article posted on Dec 14

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 14, 2001, 2:15 am

How's that for irony.... 10 minutes after I defend attbi for not being that bad, my internet connection goes dead.

Ahh well, EarthLink dialup to the rescue...

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Article posted on Dec 14

Hmm

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 14, 2001, 12:55 am

I don't see what the attbi customers are bitching about... True, I used to get speeds up to 4 mbps, but it was very erratic... sometimes I'd be as low as 300kbps. But since AT&T moved me to their new network, I've been constantly testing at 1.5mbps down/128k up (give or take, today it said 1536k down, 119k up)...

It's ironic that AT&T, a company I've had tons and tons of problems with (it took 4 appointments just to get someone to actually show up for the initial installation, and then there's that issue with the modem)... but when the rest of the world is bitching about them, I'm totally content.

I try not to question that.

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