I HATE Customer Service, and So Should You.

Oh how I hate calling customer service, (the VOICE) be it for the computer, to talk to the phone company or to ask a question of the bank. In general, I find myself caught in Voice Mail Tree hell (the VOICE)! Remember when you called your bank and got an operator who actually tied to get you to the right person.

Or call my personal favorite, Directv. These people have developed a very special voice tree designed to keep you from getting to the person who can actually help you (unless you want to buy something, that's pretty quick). The VOICE tells you how valued you are, all the things you can currently subscribe to on Directv, whats coming up, and then connects you to someone who asks you all the information you just told the VOICE about, to pass you on to someone else to tell the same thing to: again and again.

So imagine my delight to find a Web Place dedicated to getting you information on how to actually get a human on the phone. The site is gethuman.com a group dedicated to improving the customer service experience. The site gives you a list of customer service numbers and hints, how to get around the phone tree, how to ignore the VOICE.

Now we need a site that improves the quality of the human you eventually get. I'll settle for someone who actually cares that your a customer. Unfortunately, those are few and far between. I had one last night at Wachovia's Customer Service, someone who really cared that I understood the issues, was happy with the answer, and felt that I had been helped. To tell you the truth, my experience with Wachovia has been pretty exceptional.

Directv, you should take lessons.

Candidate Update

I hate that I have not found the time to keep you up on the current "race for the race for the White House". There are just so many opportunities to find humor in the current group of contenders, regardless of who you may personally feel is the best candidate. The Geek needs to be more aware of your need to know.

In other words, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, these men and women are going out of their way to not say anything that makes any sense. So I will re-double my efforts to search the net for the very best of the election season, and be sure that I present it here, for your enjoyment. Like this delightful piece:


As Obese Population Rises, More Candidates Courting The Fat Vote

A Little Big Book

I just finished Final Rounds, a father, a son, the golf journey of a lifetime, a small but very powerful book. Written by James Dodson, a long time golf writer and regular contributer to Golf magazine, this is a beautifully written story about golf, life and choices made, and about death.

Without being "preachy" or sappy, it is about the nature of fatherhood, and how we influence our children, for good or for bad, by the example we set for them.

I am going to give this book to every young father I know in the hope of a better crop of dads and kids. I will tell you the end is so gloriously crafted that I cried my way through the final 30 or so painfully exquisite pages. I strongly recommend this book.

MicroYawn

Vern, from someplace in Virginia wrote last week to ask why I didn't express an opinion on Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo. I know that everyone is calling this MicroHoo, but to me it's MicroYawn. Who cares?

Now I do not subscribe to the Microsoft is evil, Bill Gates is the spawn of Satan theory of the world. I think Microsoft, while not the greatest developer of software and a really lousy developer of products, has done a tremendous job at bringing technology to the masses. I don't love them, but I don't hate them either.

I keep reading opinion that Microsoft will destroy Yahoo. Yahoo, Geekettes, is not killin' them in the business. Great portal, no idea how to make money at it. Pretty good content, but...

So why does everyone care so much. Because sometimes bigger is not better. Because we hate Microsoft, because Google is good but Bill is bad.

I think that Microsoft looking for another business is good. Let them do for search what they did for operating systems, make them cheap and reasonably accessible. If the develop a good web word processor, great. If not, who cares.

Go for it.

Netflix Drops HD-DVD

Well I guess the battle is lost. Netflix wrote the Geek today to tell him they will no longer be serving up HD-DVD's from their vast cavern of DVD's. This makes the Geek sad, but then again, they seem to only serve up the items at the very end of my queue. Maybe I need to move on to a less random selection process.

So having lost the war, we are left wondering-what did blu-ray have that HD-DVD didn't. Was it just that they were willing to spend the most to convince retailers and content producers to sign on? I think we need a congressional investigation.

But seriously, has anyone noticed that these subscription DVD services are a real crapshoot. I have had the HD-DVD of Bladerunner in my queue since it was released before Christmas. Still haven't seen it. It seem inevitable when every I break down and rent something at Blockbuster, the next day Netflix sends me the item I just rented.

Seems easier to just go down to the corner and rent the DVD there to begin with. Well maybe Netfix's decision to drop HD-DVD format gives me an opportunity to do that.

Surviving A Computer

I was talking to Dr. Bob, the Geek's eye doc. Dr. Bob's a great guy, smart, and can find your eyes in a dark room, but about computers...well he isn't exactly Bill Gates.

Dr. Bob's oldest just got a new computer. Spanking new Dell XPS. Nice machine, although he did ignore my advice about buying a Mac, but more on that later.

Dr. Bob wanted to know what he needed to do to keep that spanking new XPS running like the fairly efficient watch it should be. So, Dr. Bob, here it is. You have to have that hard conversation with Son Dan:

Practice safe computing! Know who your sleeping with (theoretically that is) and don't forget the condom.

• Spyware! It will make you slow and stupid so get a Spyware program (recommendations below)
• Viruses! Take you over and make you a spammer, so get an Anti-Virus program.
  

Safe computing. Know where your going on the internet and in email. Here are two things you need to know:

1. Stephen King has nightmares about the things that lurk out there on the internet. Really Really scary stuff. Things with claws, and long sharp teeth.
2. Free stuff will cost you your hard drive and could get you owned by some network of nasty spammers.
3. (oh yeah there are really 3 things) porn kills.

Scary stuff. Viruses, Spyware, Trojans. Use to be that viruses just wanted to pop up a message on your screen, maybe about the Beetles, or World Peace or the war. Or destroy our hard drive or erase it. Now it is more likely that a virus will sit quietly on your hard drive, giving you no clue it's there. Then late at night going to work for some spammer sending thousands of emails out to the world offering low cost Viagra or letters from Tonya who admires a longer organ. And getting you banned from AOL for life because it gets traced back to you. Or, acting as a porn server, and getting you arrested for child pornography there by ruining your life.

Spyware, that can slow your computer to a crawl as it pops up messages about stopping spam...just click here. So, get a Spyware filter. Install it and keep it updated. The good news is the best ones are free! Microsoft, the very evil empire that brought you software that is susceptible to spyware, makes a free spyware program. Its called Defender, and much as this is a first here, just click for the site. I actually recommend running this and Ad-aware (not the pro version the free one) together. They work by blocking spyware, and you need to keep them updated. Regularly.

Then you need an anti-virus. Generally a virus takes over your computer. Makes it a slave. I recommend a single purpose program, not a suite that loads down your system. AVG makes a free one: FREE for God's sake go down load it. If you really need to buy one, buy one that is only an anti-virus. Update everyday. Everyday. There are always setting, set yours to update.

Now that you have these spyware and anti-virus programs installed, set them for automatic updates. Do it...now...I'll wait.

Now about that free stuff. Do not download free stuff from the internet. I know, all those songs and television shows and movies, and everyone does it, so why shouldn't you down load them too. HAVE YOU NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION? There is no faster way to become infected. A song on iTunes is 99 cents. Your computer was, what, almost $2000. If you are downloading, you will be infected. Period. Sooner of later it will happen, probably sooner. So knock it off. It isn't worth it. Oh, and by the way, the music and movie industry have no sense of humor about this and they do prosecute, and they love to mess with college kids cause they can.

PORN...there I said it. My suggestion, as hard as it is for the young, stay away. There are so many things that you can catch from it, besides the obvious. Its another case of, get them to come to a site, then infect them. There have been several virus infections that infect windows user just by their visiting a site. And guess what, they are porn sites. You go, click a picture and...your sending emails for a spammer to half the world.

I know this is tough stuff, but you got to follow the rules, no downloads from unknown sources, no click here to see pretty girls, no porn sites, wear your spyware protection and always assume its a scam.

Or, if you are scared and afraid, BUY A MAC. At Amazon, right there at the top of the blog.

The Geek Loses

It seems that everyday brings new, worse news for the HD-DVD format. Who's left that's producing HD-DVD content other that Universal? OK, its not over, there is still a chance that HD-DVD will survive. But, frankly, why did there need to be a format war?

Did anybody learn anything from Beta-Max? The real losers in the war are the people that bought the wrong format. That includes the Grey Hair Geek! How could HD-DVD lose? It was cheaper to produce, the sound and video quality were on a par or better than Blu-Ray. The HD-DVD player was cheaper. And Blu-Ray is produced by Sony, the company that brought you the root kit controversy, where they put nasty, potentially dangerous software on your computer.

But, long live money. Just give it to the greedy studios, by the bag full. Give it to the retailers. And pretty soon you got the market and the consumer is screwed. Ah well.