Good Customer Service

It's not that hard to find bad customer service stories on the internets. And if that's not enough, there's even an entire radio show dedicated to it! Since I had three this week.

First, how about a decent ebay experience? I wanted some accessories for my camera, and the best source was a camera store in New York City. Suffice it to say that NYC camera stores don't have a good reputation, yet panwebi auctions treated me right. Not only did they answer the 1-800 number when I asked a question a couple of weeks ago, but when I did finally place my order it was shipped almost immediately via two-day UPS when I paid for slower shipping!

Next, Motorola showed its true colors. Last year I purchased one of those Star-Trekkie HS810 bluetooth headsets from my favorite cellphone store. I don't know why, but it died a few weeks ago. When I called Motorola, they asked when I bought it and then told me to send it in. I had to pay for shipping there, but I just received my new, free HS850 headset this morning. Yep, they sent me the latest model as a replacement. It did take a couple of extra calls, but who am I to complain?

Finally, I'm fallen in love with woot. One day they offered 250GB hard drives for really cheap. One was so cheap that it didn't work. All I had to do was send a single email to the right address (which was easy to find on their website) and a replacement drive arrived two days later with prepaid postage for returning the dead one.

Are any of these things really spectacular? No, not really. But they've still made me smile on this Friday morning. As if I really need any more reason to smile just before the weekend.

Football experiment results

So I watched the US lose to Ghana yesterday. I was as drawn to it as I might be to, say, a NASCAR race. That is to say, it's not a sport that I'll go out of my way to watch, but if it's on then it provides ready entertainment. It would probably be a lot more fun to watch with other people while drinking something other than the official beer.

I didn't hate it as much as I could have, and I was impressed by the sportsmanship of the game. I'd be open to being more educated about the world's most popular sport, but if my friends are going to play something other than baseball, I'm hoping for little league ultimate!

On Being a Recovering Baptist

Chris and Dan's IM exchange is absolutely hillarious. And I'm glad it came at my expense. But it's odd that even after working together for something like 5 years that Dan has no clue about my faith. I don't see how he missed Chris and I saying that the other is going to hell when he sat right next to us!

So, as Dan asked, what exactly is a recovering baptist? It turns out that a few APWBWGTTDers are recovering baptists and even more are recovering fundamentalists.

I'd say that a recovering baptist is someone who grew up in a typical Bible Belt church. Most of us grew up understanding that being a Christian means there is a long list of things you don't do (drink, dance, gamble). To be fair, what's taught from the pulpit may say that a Christian is merely someone who believes Jesus is God's son and died for your sins, but many Baptists have a way of also making a point of running away from anything or anyone that hinted at sin.

Many people are so hurt by this kind of religion that they turn away from Christianity completely. I don't know why, but I never did. As I read the Bible, I became more convinced that it is indeed true (yes I pretty much fit the definition of evangelical from Chris' IM), but that the Baptists have it wrong. Jesus didn't run away from sinful people or things which coud lead to sin, just the contrary, he embraced them. It was the religious people that he derided because they used religious rules to look down on everyone else while making themselves look better. And this is what many people in my old church did. If acting like a drunken idiot was clearly (in their minds) sinful, then I should not drink. Sure, you may not get sloshed when drinking, but somehow I'm better than you since I only drink sugar and caffeine-laden iced tea.

Denominations may be one of the worst things about Christianity, but in case anyone cares, my spiritual journey has led me to the Presbyterian Church in America. I'd say that on the Fundamentalist - Unitarian scale I moved from about a 9.5 to about a 6. That is, I still believe the Bible to be true (including that I don't believe in evolution, but that's because I don't buy the math of it), but I live my life very differently now. Obviously I figured out that Jesus drank alcohol, so now I follow his example. But more important than that, I've learned that in terms of who's better than who, Jesus is in first place and the rest of us are last. It's not my responsibility to try to change how someone else acts, and it's incorrect for me to think that I'm better than anybody else because of what either of us have done. And it's my responsibility to love and include everyone, regardless of what they do or believe. And that may be the biggest difference between my former life and my current one.

Enough theology, I need a beer. Hopefully I can make the next APWBWGTTD meetup!

Football experiment

With all due apologies to my friend Dignan and everyone at his blog, I hate soccer. And I say this as someone who played it for several years, up through my freshman year of high school. Why do I hate this game so much? Well, it's one thing to say that it's boring to watch a game, but I can honestly say I found it boring to play. That could be because I was always stuck at midfield, which meant I had to run more than anyone else on the field, but I never got a chance to score or even get an assist. Maybe I just sucked, but I didn't like playing the game.

However, since this is the world's most popular sport, I figure I ought to give it at least one more try. So I've decided to try watching the US - Ghana match today. I don't think I've tried to watch a soccer game in over a decade, so we'll see what I think. Yes, I know these things are better watched at a bar, but my boss doesn't look kindly to me drinking before noon!

House selling blues

My family and I just returned from a week's vacation in beautiful Lake Lure, NC. It was great being away from everything, including the internet, but the whole time we were gone we were monitoring the activity on our house. It's very hard to fully relax when you know you're 45 days away from having two mortgages and no one's even looked at your house twice.

I've seen several articles today discussing real estate. It seems that Georgia is facing a number of problems. Our economy slowing thanks to the departure of many corporate headquarters. The home market has slowed to the point that many people are facing foreclosures because they cannot afford the increase in payments on ARMs (buyer beware). And then there's the effect of last year's immigration bill. For some reason we in Georgia have decided to enact the toughest anti-immigration bill in the country, and we're seeing the unintended consequences. While I'm sure that my $300,000+ house in Brookhaven/Chamblee isn't the target house for an undocumented worker, when people in Norcross can't sell their homes, it can certainly have an impact up and down the Buford Hwy corridor.

As frustrating as it is, no investment is an exact science. Real Estate is especially tricky since there is no way to tell why a person chooses to not buy a piece of property. Selling your house is even worse since you're trying to sell something you've personally invested in and it may well be your sense of style which is sending buyers away. We're worn down and don't know what to do, and that's frustrating for a pair of people who love to take risk and can usually see to or three alternatives to everything.

Well, I'd better quit writing. I think I need to go drop our price again...