I’ve been working on starting a company called Blue Dog Audio. We’ve been official for some time, but we finally did a soft-launch yesterday of our e-commerce website. As of right now, the company is online only (similar to NewEgg.com), but we plan on helping our customers as much as possible over email, IM, and may, at some point, do some limited phone support.

Currently, we have a coupon for 10% off your first order for new customers. We also have free shipping on all microphones. If you have any questions, feel free to email the site…we’d love to hear from you!

Dear Best Buy,

We should have known better than to purchase a large TV through a big box but at the time, needing instant gratification, we did. That has been our biggest regret since. The 36″ Panasonic has now been out of commission since a week before Thanksgiving–07! We called corporate, they set up a service tech, he came out and didn’t know what was wrong with it. He made a guess at a part rescheduled another service time, came out and it was the wrong part. He ordered two more parts and scheduled yet another service call to which he was so late that we had to go back to work. He had the audacity to put a little tag on our door saying that he was sorry he missed us, we were supposed to be there. Well we needed to go back to work to make money to buy a new TV elsewhere. We called corporate that night and I sat on the phone for nearly an hour 3/4 of it on hold waiting for a manager to speak with me about this situation. She could only rectify the situation by scheduling yet another appointment which got canceled due to the parts not all being in–it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the parts weren’t in therefore they would not have been in on the day that the tech stood us up. We were told we would be contacted again when the parts were in……..that was the week before Christmas…..by the way, it is now the middle of February. I called the Best Buy store located near my house. The only shining light of this whole debacle is that Lindsay was exceptionally helpful and got us scheduled for a tech to come out and fix our TV. She had them schedule an appt. for Feb. 23 but if they could come today, Feb. 16, they would call us and let us know. We received a call on Thursday, letting us know that in fact, someone would call us between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. letting us know when a tech could come out. At 9:30 I called and was told that they have an hour grace period before contacting our tech. GREAT. I called back at 10 a.m. only to be told that there is no tech available today and we need to reschedule.

I don’t think I have every received this atrocious service–EVER. I am curious to know if corporate understands that you can put all of this money into your fancy “Corporate Campus” but if you can’t service worth shit than how do you expect to retain customers. I am now to the point where I am planning on reporting you to the Better Business Bureau as well as contacting Panasonic to let them know that their distributor is running their name through the mud. If I was Panasonic, I would think twice before doubling my order with Best Buy.

Related Articles:

http://www.ihatebestbuy.com

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hate+best+buy

Best Buy loses laptop, owner sues

http://groups.myspace.com/fuckbestbuy

I’ve been emailing Yahoo just about every day trying to get an answer as to why my account was disabled, and I finally have a vague idea as why it was deactivated. I have a guilty pleasure. I visit omg.yahoo.com. I, like many other people, post comments. There is a message that says…”Comments that violate our Terms of Service, including spam, hateful or obscene messages, may result in the loss of your Yahoo! ID.“, but that’s pretty vague.

My latest response from Yahoo….

“Hello Brett,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! OMG.

Your Yahoo! account was disabled pursuant to the Yahoo! Terms of Service (TOS). You agreed to abide by the TOS as a condition of using Yahoo! OMG. The TOS can be found for your review at:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

and provides in relevant part: “You agree that Yahoo!, in its sole discretion, may terminate your password, account (or any part thereof) or use of the Service, and remove and discard any Content within the Service, for any reason, including, without limitation, for lack of use or if Yahoo! believes that you have violated or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the TOS. Yahoo! may also in its sole discretion and at any time discontinue providing the Service, or any part thereof, with or without notice. You agree that any termination of your access to the Service under any provision of this TOS may be effected without prior notice, and acknowledge and agree that Yahoo! may immediately deactivate or delete your account and all related information and files in your account and/or bar any further access to such files or the Service.”

If you would like to establish a new Yahoo! account and are concerned
that your intended use of our service may be a violation of the TOS, we encourage you to review the TOS and to take care to proceed accordingly.

Once again, we encourage you to review our TOS:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! OMG.

Regards,

Eric

Yahoo! Customer Care

40311193″

I’ve had a Yahoo account since about 1998-99, and for whatever reason, it’s been deactivated. I went to login to my email account last night, and all I keep getting is the following message…

I went through all of their help menus and finally stumbled upon a tool used to help you if you forget your Yahoo ID. I filled out the form and it told me my account has been deactivated. Deactivated? Why? I use Yahoo for personal email and Fantasy Football.

I emailed Yahoo last night, but I’ve yet to hear back from them, and kind of doubt I ever will. In the meantime, I’m using a gmail account, and I’m thinking I might be done with Fantasy Football for the year, which really sucks!

brettsontfarrey AT gmail DOT com.

I’ve been working on a new website for 20 Reasons Taken, which just went live today. There are a lot of features I plan on adding at a later day, such as blogs, forums, and more images, but one step at a time. We just really wanted something new before we played Summerfest and finished up our cd. Also, the Summerfest people posted samples from our upcoming cd on the website, so go to summerfest.com to hear it before it’s released.

I hate Internet Explorer 7. I understand hate is pretty harsch, but it’s true, I HATE it. I’ve been working on a couple of sites, trying to get them ready for IE7, and let me just say, they better make some major improvements before they release this piece of crap. First of all, it handles cascading stylesheets in it’s own special way, and honestly must not care if breaks a majority of the world’s websites. The sites I’m working on have valid CSS according to W3C and works in every other browser, including IE6. Secondly, the user interface is awful, there isn’t even a menu bar.

A part of me is actually happy Microsoft is about to fail with IE7, but I do web development for a living, so I’m not happy about having to deal with their crappy products. A part of me wants to just ignore Microsoft’s products, but there are just too many people using Internet Explorer, but I think that is about to change with the release of IE7.

I’m stepping off my soap box.

I’ve been working on computers in some capacity for years now. I first became a Dell fan when I was fresh out of college and working at the University of Wisconsin Athletic Department’s Help Desk. I had to fix many a Dell, but loved them due to their great support.

It’s been a few years since I’ve called Dell support, but I figured I’d do so for a friend of mine’s computer. The BIOS wasn’t recognizing it’s hard drive anymore, and it was making an awful clicking noise. It was clear the hard drive was fried. I called tech support, and I was actually surprised how quickly I got a human on the phone. Once I got someone on the phone, I notice he had a VERY, VERY thick Indian accent. He says, “Hi, my name is Sam, can I have your service tag number?” It was actually one of the few things I actually understood, but that’s because I already knew what he was going to say, aside from his phoney name. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing Sam isn’t a popular name in India.

I probably spent an hour on the phone with Sam. He had me doing all of these checks, which is the norm, except I had to wait a few minutes between each check. Eventually, I had to tell him that I wasn’t doing anymore checks on the system and he was going to send me a hard drive. I thought that did the trick, but he than started asking me questions about the system, and ultimately suckered me into trying a few more things. Finally, he asked me to take the battery out of the motherboard. I said, “what does that have to do with the hard drive clicking?” He said he needed to put me on hold for a few minutes. FINE!

The conversation with this guy was priceless….

Sam: Are there any lights on the front of the computer?

Me: Yes. There are three green lights labeled 1, 2, and 3.

Sam: So there are lights?

Me: Yes.

Sam: What do they say?

Me: 1, 2, and 3.

Sam: What color are they?

Me: Green.

Sam: Let’s try rebooting the computer and see if the lights change.

Me: (after reboot) They’re the same.

Sam: What color are they?

Me: I’m not repeating myself anymore!(blood pressure rising)

This guy knew less about computers than my 5 year old niece that just graduated kindergarten. I grew to love Dell because of their support, not necessarily because their hardware was better than any other company. I’ve dealt with companies like Quark who have awful support. In fact, Quark still has the worst phone support on the planet. Anyway, if Dell doesn’t do something quick, they’ll lose customers, and I mean A LOT of them….including myself.

10. Improve Keyboard and Mouse Technology - My issue with Apple, and just about every other hardware company, is the keyboard and mouse technology has been stagnant. Apple needs to quit being so damn stubborn and offer a three-button mouse. Why do I say three? Well, I need to be able to right-click and I like to use a top button for Expose’.

I didn’t realize how bad their keyboard is until I tried to switch from my G4 PowerBook keyboard to the Apple keyboard. It looks cool, but it might the klunkiest keyboard I’ve ever used. I want less action on my keyboard so there is less between the point of pushing a key, and the key issuing the command. Kensington has keyboard that uses scissor switch technology that feels like laptop keyboard, but has better spacing. Apple should follow their lead and come out with one of their own, and ditch their embarassingly awful keyboard.

9. iTunes for Linux - I understand they probably don’t want to give people another reason to choose Linux over OSX, but the Linux community is clammoring for iTunes. Apple dominates the mp3 player market, yet they’ve shut out an entire community of Linux users. Let’s not forget, the Linux community will have their way, one way or another, so resistance IS futile.

8. Port OpenOffice - I think Apple should partner with OpenOffice and help them develop the software and port a version for OSX. I’m not a big fan of pre-installed software, but I think they should also consider pre-installing, or at least make it easy for users to install it themselves.

7. Open Source Bundled Applications - Apple bundles some nice software on their computers, so why not make them open source? I say open up these applications to the community, and watch the them get better.

6. Servers - Apple has failed miserably at the server market, and the cost of their servers is a big reason not to even give them a chance. Why spend all of that money on a Apple server when you can run a Linux on a Dell for half the price? I think Apple is putting too much effort into making their servers look cool. Who cares? The server is probably going to spend it’s life in closet anyhow.

5. Gaming Console - Apple is in the hardware business, right? Apple should come out with gaming console where games can not only be played on their console, but also played on their computer. Over time, Nintendo and Apple would end up being the top two consoles, easily beating out Playstation and XBOX.

4. Wireless iPod - I’m tired of hooking up a cable to my iPod to transfer music. Also, if I could ditch this FM transmitter, I’d be a happy man. Apple should have incorporated Bluetooth into their iPod a long time ago so users can transfer music and play music on their Bluetooth compatible home/car stereos.

3. Games - They need to get back into the gaming market. I have a ton of friends that wish they could switch to a Mac, but are stuck with Windows due to their love to play games. They should try and partner with some of these gaming companies and start creating some of their own games. Gamers also want like their hardware, so Apple will also need to put out a powerful machine that gamers can easily upgrade.

2. Affordable Hardware - I love Apple hardware, but I don’t care what anyone says, their hardware is too expensive. If Apple wants a bigger piece of the pie, they must lower their prices. If I were to buy a Mac-mini, by the time I upgraded it so it has at least a gig of ram and a 120 gigabyte harddrive, I’m over $1,000; and I still don’t have a keyboard, mouse, or monitor. Enough said.

1. Run Microsoft Applications - I say, “Forget bootcamp!” I want to be able to stick a Microsoft Office installation cd into my cd-rom and install office. Apple has the Windows API, so I say, “make it happen”, and watch Microsoft’s stock dip down to 15. If Windows games could be installed and run flawlessly, GAME OVER! I, and many others, would never use Windows ever again.

How many times have you seen this error when compiling PHP? It absolutely drives me insane! I don’t know why, but when I stumble upon this error, I fix it, and then never document it. And, I’ve found little information on Google about this error message:

configure: error: libjpeg.(a|so) not found

The problem I run into is I forget two steps of the installation after “make install”. So, here’s what I do, and it seems to clear up the problem….