My Life Blog

In March I finally decided to go proactive with getting HD into my home theater through the satellite dish.  My indoor antenna just wasn’t working — it didn’t work for most local channels and for those it did, I nearly had to stand on one foot while holding one end of the antenna and raising my other arm with a hand full of aluminum foil.  Hey, I can get through “Lost” that way, but watching a NASCAR race is a little bit challenging.

So when I saw that DirecTV offered local channels in HD, I looked into it.  As usual, they greeted me as an “A-List” customer which always makes me feel a bit smug and glow with a hint of aristocracy.  I mean, are you on the A-List?  See, I’m pretty special.

I didn’t realize how deep the rabbit hole was going to go.  To make the change, I needed to swap out the satellite and get a new receiver.  They would “lease” me a new receiver for free as far as I can tell.  And the satellite, they would lease me as well if I paid them $200 to install it.  More than I expected to pay, but I’m an early adopter and the move toward HD is inevitable; I was ready to be assimilated into the collective.

So the install began routinely, the receiver was swapped out, the satellite was installed, and there was a picture on my big screen.  However, there was trouble pulling in the HD channels.  Then it was discovered that my multiplexor was incompatible with this new signal; they replaced that too.  But then things still didn’t work.

And I lost my signal on another TV.  I had visions of losing all TV service entirely at that point.  The technician then scrambled up to the attic and began troubleshooting.  Unfortunately, his troubleshooting logic led him to believe that cutting a couple of cables was going to send him down the proper path.  These cables were installed by Dallas Home Theater Design Group at a pretty high cost to me.  I’ve had no problem with these cables and of the two groups of technicians, I trusted DHTDG more.  So I was pretty on edge now.

He eventually spliced the cable back together and came back downstairs.  My receiver, an UltimateTV box (old, I know), was now not booting up.  Apparently, the technician had found a way to introduce an electrical spike.  The box never came back up.

Meanwhile, elapsed time on this quick install event was in the 3 hour range — it was supposed to be about 45 minutes.  I could tell he was antsy, no doubt he had other afternoon appointments that were being jeopardized.  And sure enough, he told me that they would have to be going and that it appeared the HD was working.  He said that DirecTV would take care of the damaged receiver.

Obviously, I wasn’t happy and told him I would not sign any form of documentation approving the work.  He said that he didn’t expect me to and literally ran out the door.  I was incredulous, so I immediately got on the phone to tell Suzanne this story.  Problem is, the line was dead!  I ran out the door as the technician was leaving and waved the phone at him and said it was dead.  He said it wasn’t anything he had done and he sped off.

So in a hurry was he to leave, that he left some sort of a testing device.  I’ve subsequently learned that it has a $100 value or so and that it the rest of his day was probably challenging without the device.

I spent the next hour on my cell phone with DirecTV complaining.  I called the phone company and they confirmed a power spike, but they would need to send someone out the next day to take a look at the place.  So I was going to be out one receiver and my phone service.  That’s pretty unacceptable to me.

I was still steaming mad later that night and decided I would call DirecTV again.  At least I was put in touch with a patient and qualified call center rep this time.  He suffered and survived my initial tirade and eventually consulted his knowledgebase and determined that the technician had hooked up my receiver incorrectly.  The phone line was input into the Ethernet port and that caused this.  So…telephone service restored.

So now to the receiver.  Unfortunately, this is considered a damage claim situation and it was logged as such.  Days later, I received a note telling me all that I needed to do to progress the damage claim.  Among those tasks is that I have to get a professional repair or replacement estimate.  Huh?  They don’t even make these anymore.  And who is going to service them?  And how do I get the box to them?  Mail it to them?  So because this was just logistically hard, I’ve deferred the problem for almost 90 days.  So here I am trying to figure out if I’m just going to let DirecTV get away with this.

I still have their device, they never came back for it.  Hmmm…eBay?  Lest you think this is unethical, I did inform DirecTV that I had the device, so I can only assume they are okay with it now being mine.

One other point.  When they installed the new dish, they had to uninstall the other dish.  But they left the “boot” up there.  I complained about that not being a very clean install and they said that they couldn’t guarantee no roof leaks.  I guess I wish I had know about this little detail too.

All in all, I cannot say that getting HD was really worth all that.  All I can say is that if this is how DirecTV’s A-List customers are treated, God help those who are in less favor — ever seen Poltergeist?

On February 24th, we had a strangely windy day which made Dallas resemble Lubbock — very dusty and hazy. As a result of the wind that day, our neighbors had their fence nearly blow down.

In the days and weeks that followed, we watched as they used mops and other such things to prop the fence up and keep it from falling. On a couple of occasions, the fence leaned over onto our property. Each time, I would push it back in their direction.

After a few weeks of frustration, I finally called the Homeowners Association and complained. The HOA let me know that a letter would be sent out this week. I’m presuming that a letter was received just yesterday, actually.

Well, tonight in Dallas we had another storm with lots of wind. As Suzanne and I were watching the wind out one of our 2nd story windows, she heard a noise. Sure enough, the fence had taken another bad turn. This time, it slammed into our garage wall, unseating a utility box. It also pinned one of our Crepe Mirtle’s to the ground — basically dealing it a potential fatal blow.

As the storm raged, I decided I could not let the fence continue to slam into our house and went out to push it back onto their side. The fence was water-logged and just slightly too heavy for me to push over myself. So with Suzanne’s help, I was able to push it back over.

A few minutes later, the wind swept it back up and over onto our side. This time, one of its segments broke loose. I went back out again and pushed the fence back onto their side and this time I delivered the broken segment to the neighbor’s front sidewalk. I also delivered a broken Crepe Mirtle branch there as well.

I was trying to send the neighbors a message. This issue has been there for 4 1/2 weeks and now our property is being damaged. That’s not okay. These neighbors have been unfriendly since day one, so I didn’t feel too bad about the passive aggressive statement. Apparently respect for property is not core to their culture; wherever they are from.

We noted that the car normally parked along the sidewalk was not there during the storm, so we knew there would be discovery sometime soon. And at 10pm, it happened. I had debated earlier in the night whether I would confront my neighbor tonight or at some other time. I couldn’t help myself, so when he returned home, I was outside within seconds.

He seemed remorseful, but lied to me saying that he had only been aware of the problem for 2 1/2 weeks. Apparently, he and his wife must not talk since on Sunday February 25th, his wife planted new flowers and both Suzanne and I saw her approach and examine the broken fence. Further, they’ve been propping the thing up for over 3 weeks now.

I’m not sure how this is going to end, but I’m sure it won’t end with us all having dinner together. Suzanne and I always strive to be good neighbors and that’s all we want in return. Unfortunately, not every set of neighbors feels the same way. We’ll see what happens next. Hopefully, they’ll fix the fence and give us some consideration for the damage they’ve done.

Its mere minutes after the Aggies 28-27 loss to Nebraska, so my emotions are still very raw.  But I think I will read what I am about to write tomorrow or the next day and feel the same way.

Coach Fran must go at the end of this season.  I’ve seen enough.  Sure, he’s resurrected the team from last year’s 5-6 record and he’s made the team more competitive, but he can’t win the big game.  I’m convinced that even if he has the athletes that he is still apt to continue to lose.

Today, A&M rallied to take the lead 27-21 late in the fourth quarter, then intercepted the ball in Nebraska territory with around 3 minutes to play.   A small ball-control drive and a field goal at the least would have iced the game.  However, Fran went conservative.  He ran the ball outside and our running back wasn’t smart enough to stay in bounds.  That saved Nebraska at least 20 seconds.  Seeing his mistake, he runs the ball straight up the middle for no gain.  Now its third and long and he needs to at least get within range for a field goal.  A QB scramble then sets up what would be the longest FG this year.  But alas it was blocked.  Nebraska’s ball with a little over two minutes left.  They drive 71 yards with no timeouts, score the TD, and kick the extra point to win by one.

Like last week, the Aggies faces a 3rd and 2 in the late third quarter.  Instead of running Javorskie Lane, he calls a passing play just like last week.  To be fair, the pass should have been caught, but it wasn’t and that set up fourth down.  What does he do?  Field goal.  At that point in the game, still down by  8.  As poorly as they had played up to that point, a TD is what they needed.

The FG scenario today reminded me of the game last week against Oklahoma where he had 3rd and goal at the 2 and then threw an incomplete pass.  He then kicks the FG to trail by a point with three minutes remaining.  A&M never got the ball back.

The point I’m trying to make is that Coach Fran plays too conservatively.  Unlike Coach Stoopes at Oklahoma, Coach Fran has no guts whatsoever.  His conservative calls today cost the team another win.  It should be noted that some of the players play stupidly too.  Running out of bounds when you need to run the clock.  Taking a roughing-the-passer penalty when it was going to be 4th down.  That’s poor coaching.

You could look at the 8-3 record and wonder why I am complaining.  But realize, we almost lost to Army — had to get a late goal line stand to preserve the victory there.  Against Kansas, a basketball powerhouse, but not a football juggernaut, we trailed the whole game until a TD in the last 30 seconds of the game won it.  Missouri could have beaten us if their opening TD drive had not been scuttled by a flukey goal line fumble turned touchback.  We needed a one-handed grab on 4th down to prolong a game-tying TD drive against Oklahoma State.  That game ended miraculously with a blocked extra point in OT for a 1 point win.  The most solid Big XII win would seem to have been the Baylor game, but even that game wasn’t settled until 6:34 left in the fourth quarter.  So the bottom line is that the record stands at 8-3, but could easily be as bad as 3-8!

This week I heard a rumor on the radio that Coach Fran needed to win out against Nebraska and Texas to keep his job.  At first, I thought this was absurd.  After all, we were sitting with an 8-2 record with a narrow 1 point loss to Oklahoma.  But as I analyze the record, its really pretty flimsy.  Take away a few plays and calls and we could very well be looking at something similar to last year’s 5-6.  And that’s not good enough for a coach in his fourth year.

So my opinion: Coach Fran must go!

Suzanne and I continue to add refinements to our house — its Extreme Makeover: Married Edition!  So the latest project is getting new countertops.

As we were disappointed by Home Depot in our island installation, we decided to try Lowe’s.  Its too bad for Home Depot since this job was about four times more expensive.  HD’s poor customer service cost them this job and our continued loyalty.  So we were very hopeful that Lowe’s would provide a much better experience.

But we must have the black cloud of home remodeling perpetually hanging over our heads.  This job goes no better.

We are currently on day two without running water in the kitchen after the faucet installation was aborted by the sub-contractor.  His reason?  The faucet we bought was uninstallable due to its shallow mounts.  It seems the combined depth of our countertop and the undermounted sink means there’s no room to thread the connector hoses. 

We were incredulous when the sub-contractor advised us to buy another faucet and Lowe’s seemed to support that advice.  I could not believe we were going to have to spend additional time to pick another out.  But we went to Lowe’s anyway and looked at alternatives.  All had the same "shallow " mount.  So it would seem that the shallow mount is actually standard.  So after failing to find a workable alternative, Lowe’s finally does what they should have done all along and commits to having the sub-contractor "core" out the sink to make additional threading room. 

We are pissed because we spend 1.5 hours at Lowe’s when Lowe’s could have done the right thing saving us the trouble.  And since we returned the faucet upon entry to the store, we had to buy the same damn one on the way out.

There have been other rough spots along the way, but I’ll spare everyone those details.  Suffice it to say that the home improvement industry has a ways to go with their home remodeling services.  I think we are like most customers, we want a smooth, trouble-free experience with no surprises and all work done as advertised. 

As a point of information, the sub-contractor admitted that Lowe’s serves only as the middle man and that they take 30% of the job cost before delegating to their sub-contractors.  Given the amount of value they provide for that 30%, they are surely very profitable with this approach.

I have long realized that most every post on this blog tends to be negative or whiny in nature.  I think its really just therapeutic for me to write about things to get them off my chest.  If you want to read something pleasant, go here. 

So here we go with another episode.

I’m using Quicken for Windows as emulated on my MacIntosh.  The Mac version of Quicken is still feature-poor at this point, so I have to go to great extents to continue to use the Windows version.  I meticulously maintain my financial records and have been using online billpay for years.  With the new marriage, things changed.  So I’ve added a new bank into the mix…Compass.

In a bizarre twist of irony, Compass can’t seem to find their ass in a mirrored room.  It goes like this.  Two weeks or more ago, I lost the ability to download transactions and upload bills.  I also experienced sporadic service on their website.  This is troubling to me as I do not write checks.  The checkbook for my main account still has 19__ on it, if that gives you any idea.

So last week I called their technical support to get the problem worked out.  Amazingly, their technical support staff seemed to be hosted within the U.S., so no complaints there.  However, their troubleshooting process involved me changing my password to something else and thereby retiring my current password.  Once you use one, you can’t use it ever again.  After 10 minutes on the phone, I was able to download transactions, so all seemed to be okay.

A few minutes after the phone call, I entered a bill and repeated the connecting process.  Unfortunately, it failed.  I was too whipped to go through the call process.  It seems it takes 30-45 minutes to work through the wait and the eventual help.  So I deferred the payment until the weekend.

On Saturday, Quicken and Compass failed me again.  Since the bill was due relatively soon, I decided I’d pay the bill from the site.  However, the site had a message saying it was down.  I just figured that it was scheduled downtime, though weekends aren’t the best time for downtime for such a service.  I resumed my attempt to tonight and was still unsuccessful. 

So I called yet again.  This time, I was made to reset my password yet again.  So now I’m on my third password.  Unfortunately, after 15 minutes that still didn’t work.  The final suggestion was that I remove all pending and recurring payments and deactivate and reactivate my account.  I refused on principle.  I’m pretty sure I’ve done nothing to cause whatever the problem is.  I’m college-educated and even work with computers for a living, so I don’t think its me. 

So though it probably makes no sense, I’ll be looking for a new bank this weekend.  I’m sure it will take me longer to set up a new account than to work through their suggestion, but I just can’t reward that type of disrespect for my time.

So Compass, find a clue…

With the marriage now approaching the completion of its sixth month, we’ve been busy nesting.  In doing so, we’ve been adding to the kitchen.  We contracted with Home Depot to install an island.  And now we’re contracting with Lowe’s to install new counter tops.  However, we’ve experienced much frustration with each company.

In regards to the island, I think your Home Depot experience varies greatly depending upon the employees you are able to work with.  In our case, we found that the Home Depot people were light on product knowledge and weren’t very competent with the CAD software that they were apparently forced to use.  It was excruciating to watch our assigned representative try to represent our design in that software.  At one point, I almost suggested that we just use pencil and paper.  We made no less than four weekend trips to work through the simple design.  Thereafter, we had to work with their inflexible contractors who could only work on certain days and at certain hours of those days.  It was far from a great customer experience.

And here we go again…this time with Lowe’s.  We’re using Lowe’s because we hated Home Depot.  Its early in the process, but I found out yesterday that the counter top installers would be unable to turn off the water or gas and that I might have to do that myself.  Apparently, its a liability issue.  So even while we’re paying several thousand for this job, we can’t get them to throw in this expertise to make this a total turnkey job.  As a customer, this pisses me off since I must now school myself on each of these items that they cannot do.  When I complained, the Lowe’s rep said, "You’re a handy guy, aren’t you?"  My reply: "For the money I’m paying you for this, I didn’t have to be handy."

But alas, there is a solution.  For a cool $160, they’ll arrange for a company to come out to take care of both the water and the gas.  In my opinion, that’s a line item I shouldn’t see.  Just throw that in!

So given all this, I don’t know whether to root for Tony Stewart (the 20 car) or Jimmy Johnson (the 48 car).  But at least now I see where some of my money is going.

Nothing entertains me more than bathroom behaviour gone awry.  This post is for the men since those bathrooms are the only ones I have experience with.

Would someone please explain the following odd behaviors to me?

1. Washing your hands before going to the bathroom, but not after.  What?  So you can’t touch yours with the germs you randomly encounter, but you’re quite willing to leave your worst ones behind for the rest of us?
2. Flushing a urinal during midstream.  I’m not sure I understand the purpose for an incremental flush.  I further don’t understand when there isn’t a flush to bookend the experience.  Could it be splatter management?  If so, I appreciate it since I’m next door sometimes.
3. Empty urinal avoidance.  Why do some guys bypass the urinal and go for the stall?  Let’s face it, most of us are pretty lazy and a stall brings with it the possibility of having to lift the lid or close the door.  As I’ve mentioned before, some people have trouble with the former and create even more egregious sins.  I can maybe understand this is you’re a homophobe male at a gay bar wheeling up to a mirrored urinal with no divider in between.  Otherwise, I don’t get it.

Of course, someone is probably blogging at this moment on how weird the guy is who walks straight in, addresses the urinal, pees, flushes once, washes hands, and then leaves. 

Man if I’m doing it wrong, please somebody let me know.  I’m almost 41 years old and need to get it figured out while there is still time.

This is a continuation of my experience with Park Place Motor Cars - Bedford. And if the last rant seemed questionable, this one is surely not.

As I mentioned in the last post, I took my car in for service to prepare for a road trip for my Grandmother’s funeral. Over and above the regular service and the rough idle condition, the purpose of the visit was to ensure the car was ready for a road trip. And as mentioned in the last post, regular service plus the diagnosis of a rough idle condition and the subsequent replacement of spark plugs cost me $580+.

On my way back from San Antonio, my car suddenly lost power when I would accelerate aggressively. I could gradually increase speed, but I had no agility on the highway. And so I limped home for the last hour — carefully planning my lane changes.

As you might imagine, I was frustrated and questioning where my money had gone the previous Friday when I had someone “look” at my car.

So I took the car in the next day (Friday). I received no phone call until placing a call late in the afternoon on Friday. These guys just don’t believe in proactive customer communication, so it leaves you wondering what’s going on. When I called, I was told that there was no news yet, but that the service advisor would go research. And so he did. He called back to say that the mass airflow needed replacement at some $700. Grudgingly, I approved.

Fifteen minutes later, I received a phone from the same service advisor saying that the technician had found oil where oil wasn’t supposed to be while replacing the sensor. And because of that and because it was late on Friday, they would have to hold the car over the weekend. There was nothing I could do, so I allowed it.

As an aside, shouldn’t they have known about the oil prior to the first call? My theory is that these technicians just hook the car up to a computer now and get a diagnosis and do less visual inspection than they used to. If he had bothered to visually inspect the part, he would have discovered the oil.

Monday arrives and I get no phone call. I do not call them out of principle.

Tuesday arrives and I do not get a phone call once again. But this time, I call at 4:30 or so. Apparently, they had switched me back to a different service advisor and I was advised he would call after getting off the phone. After 45 minutes, I called him and got his voice mail. I received no phone call the rest of the day. So to summarize, my car has been in the shop now 5 days and I haven’t officially approved any work.

On Wednesday, I call the Service Manager and recount my story and my frustrations. He gets to the bottom of it and by mid-morning my car has been diagnosed. It apparently needs $2300 worth of service!! Apparently, their opinion was that one part went bad and oiled up lots of neighboring parts. So they wanted to replaces $1000 worth or parts and install them for $1100 in labor (tax was extra).

At that point, I considered the inflated prices of my previous experience and told them that I would call back to approve the work. In the meantime, I called two import car service places. In both cases, I was told that I could save money on parts and on labor. The labor rate was $80 versus $125. And it appeared that these technicians were certified as well.

So I called the dealership and had them reconstruct the car. They did. Although when I picked it up, the check engine light was on. I had been told they would give me the car back in the same shape it was in when I dropped it off. It did not have the check engine light on. So after 20 minutes of arguing with the service advisor, he finally agreed to clear it. After doing so, he wished me luck and I was on my way.

The import service shop got the car and turned it around within 24 hours, placing proactive calls to tell me the status, and did so for $400. My car is running fine and I save $1900.

Moral of the story: let dealerships do warranty work, but when your warranty expires, go somewhere else. Its clear why at Park Place you are able to drive a free loan car Mercedes. People like me are paying for them every day!

So in closing, I’m trying to figure out who to contact to register my complaint. I’m thinking about writing Mercedes a letter and copying the Better Business Bureau and perhaps the local TV stations.

In advance of my trip to San Antonio for my Grandmother’s funeral, I decided to finally get my car in for service. I am the worst procastinator where car service is concerned.

So today I took my car to Park Place Motorcars - Bedford to handle regular service, a rough idle condition, a running light outage, and a state inspection. I figured this would go like clockwork.

However, in my initial discussion with the Service Advisor, he mentioned that the running light bulb would cost $15 to $28. I was stunned. I had recently replaced the bulb on the other side for under $5 and it took me mere minutes — I did it out in the parking lot of the NAPA store. So when I balked at the price, I was told that Mercedes has premium parts and that a skilled, trained technician would be doing the work and that the cost was justified. I retorted that NAPA’s parts are probably pretty good and that I WAS NOT a trained technician and yet had successfully completed the fix in mere minutes. So as such, I decided on principle to scratch that off their list. I don’t like giving away my money.

On the way to work, I calmed down and noted that I was in a free loan car — a new CLK 240. So I thought maybe I could have paid for the bulb and all would have washed out. A few years ago, loan cars weren’t the norm.

At about 2pm, I hadn’t heard from the dealership, so I decided I better call them. I was needing to ensure that the service would be complete today just in case I had to go to San Antonio tomorrow. At that time, I was given a $909 estimate for my repairs. It seems that the rough idle condition was diagnosed as a spark plug and an engine/transmission mount problem. The mounts part of that sounded suspicious, so I had them cut that out. That reduced the quote to around $250 or so.

So around 4pm, I received a call stating my car was ready. To my surprise, the bill was $500+!! In reviewing the detail, it turns out that the scheduled service represented half of that. So the Service Advisor was quoting me the extra amount required to fix the rough idle. I hadn’t understood that previously. It made me wonder if they did that on purpose.

As I reviewed the details, I also noted that the rough idle was fixed by replacing the spark plugs at a parts cost of about $39. The labor was $236! I was astounded by that. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations, but I really thought that was quite out of balance. When I questioned the Service Advisor, he mentioned that it took a lot of time to hook the car up to a laptop to run the diagnostics. And also, the car had to be jacked up high. I really thought automation would save us time and money. For all I know, the technician hooked up my car, initiated the test, and then went off on a smoke break. And jacking the car up is a push of a button, I think.

And just to cap the story off, the state inspection was not done because their state inspection machine was out and wouldn’t be fixed until Monday.

So in the end, I know why loan cars are made available for us. While there is no direct charge, we’re definitely paying for them.

For what its worth, my car is out of warranty and I plan never to return to the dealership. I am thinking there are plenty of smaller shops which can provide quality, affordable service.

So I wonder if I’m playing the victim here or if I really did just get screwed…

I’ve been stewing on this for a couple of weeks now.

I have a couple of former co-worker friends who were involved in an e-mail thread that I was part of.  One of them suggested that a friend who was working in Sweden stay there since the U.S. is no place to come home to right now — this because of the perceived poor leadership.  Another mentioned living in Canada. 

I should admit that I’m fairly apolitical — I don’t get into politics at all.  I’m into sports and other things that I can get my head around.  So I’m happily unaware of the misery that apparently surrounds me.  Does anyone else find offense in these reactions?

The United States rocks as a country!  We’ve all hit the jackpot when you think of all the places that you could have been born into.  However old you are, many of the freedoms you enjoy are the result of the hard work and sacrifice of those before you.  Many paid the ultimate sacrifice — and there is no arguing about either WWI or WWII. 

I do not understand the mindset of these people who can become disenchanted with a country after four years of perceived poor leadership.  Have we not had spells of questionable leadership before?  Didn’t we have a depression at some point?  Haven’t we made some mistakes previously that created vast more hardship than we all feel now?  I just don’t get it.

My grandfather served in WWII.  I have all of his many medals in my home.  He did not pay the ultimate sacrifice, but he certainly sacrificed much.  He was away from my mother and grandmother for years at a time doing what he thought was right.  If he only knew how disloyal people would become!

To all of you who would move to another country: you are quitters and you are disloyal to your country and everyone who has ever served and who serves now.  Instead of running from the "problem" (whatever you perceive it to be), why don’t you DO SOMETHING about it?  Why don’t you hang in there for the next four years and sacrifice a little of yourself to make things better?  Or is it too much of a sacrifice for you to earn your six figure jobs, go to your nice restaurants, drive your nice cars, and work some of that into your lifestyle? 

I meant to work in a note about the guy who suicided as a protest at Ground Zero.  I am equally disgusted by whatever thought process led to that event.  That guy was the ultimate quitter.  He had a lifetime perhaps to effect change and decided that things were just too far gone.  Unbelievable.

Happy belated Veterans Day…and thanks to all who remain patriotic to your country and maintain a constructive mindset to the problems that we confront.

Okay…I feel better now…