Woo hoo! Day 2 and I’ve got another blog up!
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Mike
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Mike
Yarr – I’m fit to be tied these days. My frustrations come from the lack of customer service in most major companies or just the lack of not giving a damn about the consumer.
First incident – a month ago my Dell desktop that I use for editing and design work just stopped working. All we got was a flashing orange light. The tech forums were no help so I called “customer service”. After spending at least two hours on the phone with this very nice Indian fellow we figured out it must be my power supply. He couldn’t order the part for me so I was given another number to call to order the part.
I ordered a new power supply and was told it would be 3 – 5 business days until it arrived. This was on a Friday night. No work that weekend, ah well. But on Monday it arrived . Woo hoo ! Awesome customer service!
Quickly whipped out the old one and installed the new one. Still had the flashing orange light. Back on the phone to India I go, and I get another guy who walks me through the paces AGAIN. Now we have it down to TWO possibilities, they shipped me a defective power supply or it’s my mother board. Again he can’t order me the part so I call the other number, and talk to what sounds like a Filipino lady this time. My mother board is out of stock and will be until the end of April!
I have one job I’m in the middle of and two others waiting. I can’t wait until the end of April, so I decide I will tell the IT guy where I work about my dilemma. He says bring it in and he’ll transfer all my components for me to another motherboard he has and so I don’t have to buy the Dell board.
Before he takes my computer apart he does a check over. He discovered that one of my USB ports had shorted out and that was the cause of my problem. So now I don’t need a new motherboard. My computer is back up and running and I am not out the $225.00 plus Dell wanted me to shell out.
I’m also PO’d at having to pay extra because my computer is out of warranty – my lease isn’t up yet but the computer is out of warranty and I am on my own according to the folks at Dell, both in India and here.
Now about that outsourcing – see my next blog/rant!
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Mike
I’ve read that another tip to having a successful blog is to be passionate about the topic.
I have two blogs I host on my videozine site – vlogger and newMedia. I started vlogger to write about the vlogging scene as I thought it was cool and “sexy” and I was really impressed by what others were doing. It also fit well into my unofficial motto “Those that can, do; those that can’t write about it”. I tried a few video blogs but I quickly realized I had a face for radio so I abandoned the idea of being the face of my own video blogs and decided to write about other video bloggers and the video blogging technology instead. I love technology, I’m a techno junkie, I can’t get enough about technology!
Then came the challenge – what do I write? When it comes to technology I am a perpetual student. I like learning about technology but I don’t have enough knowledge to be able to write about it. And I didn’t want to just continue regurgitating what I was finding on the net. I wanted to create something and I wanted this to be visual, so what do I show? After a few false starts, vlogger ground to a halt.
newMedia was set up to take over for the magazine I used to be the editor for which faded into oblivion when we couldn’t get enough advertisers. Again, came the challenge – what do I write? And as I wanted this to be visual, what do I show? And so newMedia also ground to a halt.
The “passion” was there but also not there. It seemed that blogging about technology just wasn’t my passion.
So what am I passionate about? Well my wife and I have an adopted retired racing greyhound. She is our current passion (Oh yeah the two kids we have are great, but they aren’t the same as dogs – JK girls! Daddy luvs ya). I’ve shot many hours of footage of her playing and being goofy and turning from a retired athlete into a beloved pet. I’ve posted numerous videos of her on YouTube. Greyhounds are something I’m passionate about. I know a whole encyclopedia of info on them, I talk for hours with total starngers about greyhounds and what fantastic pets they are.
So it came to me that perhaps I should take the knowledge I have of online video and blogging and combine that with my passion for greyhounds and start yet ANOTHER video blog – but this time on a topic I am passionate about.
It may not be as “sexy” as video blogging or new Media seem, but getting the word out about greyhounds and adoption is again a passion for me.
So look for that new video blog soon – I’m still toying with names so once I have that I’ll post it here.
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Mike
When your last name starts with the letter “A” and you are a Canadian (proud one too) doesn’t it make sense to call yourself Mike Eh! to stand out from the crowd?
That is the rationale behind my new online handle – Mike Eh!
Thanks to Bob and Doug McKenzie, Canadians have been associated with the expression “eh!”. To be honest though, I never say “eh!” unless I’m intentionally saying it. We’re expected to say it, so I’ll say it for comedic effect. I never say it as my natural way of speaking.
Apparently it is also slipping out of usage with most Canadians according to an article in last week’s Toronto Star.
But maybe with the approaching 25th anniversary of “Strange Brew” we can keep this tradition alive, eh?
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Mike
I recently went to the HomeDepot.ca website to buy a garbage shed. You know one of those boxes made out of plastic so the raccoons won’t get into my garbage. I typed “garbage” into the search box and here is what was returned:
I’m steamed. First off I wasn’t looking for anything to do with a garage and if you are going to correct me, why not do it the way that Google does (which in itself is infuriating): “Did you mean garage?”
I tried the same search at Canadian Tire and got the results I wanted.
Which can mean only one thing to me – even though the website I went to was homedepot.CA as in CANADA they are really using American English as the basis for their searches … which only infuriates me even more!
It gets worse though, when I called to complain the customer service rep told me the correct term was TRASH, not garbage!
Needless to say I won’t be shopping at Home Depot any time soon.
