Chad Things

Don’t ever ever get a gift card for Tigerdirect.com – trust me. I worked for yahoo, got a free gift certificate at giftcertificates.com, which i used to buy $250 gift cards at Tiger direct. Bad move. All i wanted to do was buy stuff from their site using the gift cards –

1. I ended up having to call them 5 times, totaling about 3 hours, longest call was over an hour (this really sucked)
2. I got passed around from customer service to credit card payment and back and on hold and talked to supervisors and on hold and … dropped entirely, 3 of 5 times. Each time they liked to tell me how their internal operations work (hello, do i care?), and it varied depending on who i talk to.
3. Web site is great, but does not work with gift card system. During checkout, It incorrectly reports the amount available on gift cards
4. If you use less than the full amount of a gift card, they have to mail you another gift card for the difference (why not email? or better yet, just change the amount on the gift card to whats left? not rocket science)
5. They have at least 2 different types of gift card numbers, and one of the problems i had was that both could not be applied to one
   order – at least the supervisor acknowledged this as not great and made it work for me.  well, i hope he made it work – not shipped yet.

Seriously, guys, how much money do you waste on customer service? Perhaps gift cards are not that popular, and its not worth the time to make the system functional, relying on supervisors to fix it? I thought about calling Carl Fiorentino, TigerDirect’s president, at home in Miami, like Fred Wise did, but haven’t. I think i got it sorted – we’ll see if my package arrives after burningman.

I’m finally getting in gear for this year’s Burningman. This will be my 9th year going. Yeah, i’m old, and nine times may seem like alot, but each year is different at burningman and for me (where i am in my life). Why do i keep going? why don’t i get burned out? Well, i see burningman as life – you get out of it what you put into it. You don’t have to party or drink or build large things that take all your time. You just have to participate. You do have to abandon some comforts of home, but you get more creativity and freedom in a larger context. I like that alot.

This year i’m going small again, minimal planning, small camp of friends tied together by the Monkey Island Art Car – brainchild of Sir Checkoway (and chef ben as the workhorse). The island is a ford taurus station wagon with the back chopped off, wood platform for the island, rocks, green plants, a generator, dj setup, and tastee beats. Right up my alley, and i’m lucky to have close friends that let me join in at the last minute. Sadly, i’m not staying with the brasstax bunnies – they’re way over at 3 o’clock and we’ll be at 9 o’clock area.

I’ve only been back in SF for about 2 weeks, so i’m still getting my feet wet in this year’s theme – the Green Man – but its right up my alley. Mainly cuz i’m looking into doing a Green MBA – environmentally and socially aware business – but i admit i’m still just looking.  But if you know me at all, you know i love nature – especially hiking in mountains.  I read that the man will be on a green mountain peak this year.  Can’t wait to climb that mtn !!

I also put together a list of DJ lineups at Burningman 2007. This will be updated till i leave on Monday. Enjoy.

I can’t tell you how excited and happy I am now that i got my laptop fixed. My macbook pro, which died in India, was resurrected by the good kids at Apple. I’ve been waiting to get this laptop fixed since i got back – and it finally arrived thursday after 11 days of separation anxiety. Hurray. Now i’m loading it up with software, mp3s, and videos.

Here’s a little more on fixing a broken macbook pro. First lemme tell you its condition – it was in my bag, well padded, but the bag fell off the roof of a SUV going 30 mph. Ouch. Surprisingly, it did boot up – the screen was mostly cracked (nice fractals) but the upper left corner of the screen i could see the mouse and the little blue apple. The harddrive worked (wow), the keyboard sorta worked, but the sides of the titanium casing had ripples in it, making the ports questionable. I took it to the apple store for an estimate – he quoted $1,000 for tier 4 damage – meaning they would replace all parts needed to get it back to normal. He said a 3rd party could fix it cheaper – maybe – and mentioned techrestore. I talked to those guys, but they wanted $500 for just a screen fix – and wouldn’t give me an upperbound – like, the most it would cost for a new screen, new case, new ports, new drive, etc. So i just decided to let apple do it. Apparently the first apple guy was incorrect on the price – Apple ended up charging me about $1,300 ($1,140 tier 4, $100 labor, $96 tax) – more than a brand new windows laptop. Of course, this IS a macbook pro. Ooooooo…. But i gotta say, i think they replaced EVERYTHING. It’s like i have a whole new computer. Feels so nice and purty. I’m soo happy. I love being a Geek.

Oh, and before i took it in, i wanted to salvage my harddrive data – mostly pics – because apple likes to erase everything. My ports wouldn’t work, so i had to remove my drive and put in a external harddrive enclosure, and mount it to another computer. Removing the drive was a bit of work, but a success, thanks to the macworld macbook pro hard drive upgrade guide (say that 10 times fast).  After doing this, i decided i could do it again, replacing the new 100GB drive with a 250GB hardrive (only $200). I also ordered another 1GB of RAM ($50), which will arrive next week. Woop!

So yeah, like i said, this stuff makes me happy, so i know i’m a geek. And i love it.

Literally. Shayna and I signed a lease today for our new apt in the mission – 116 San Jose (yelp). We move in Sept 11 (yeah, weird). We’re extremely excited. Well, Shayna might be a bit more excited and relieved than me, she’s been wanting this for months. I was still traveling around the world 2 weeks ago. I do like change, and shayna and i have been doing so well that this only makes sense. Sad to leave the 126 and my manservant sir fritzalot, but he’ll survive without me.

Figuratively, its also kinda a new lease on life. Moving will force me to look at all my crap, go thru my past, and without a job, i’ll have time to sit down, reminisce, and then decide what the hell i should do going forward. I’m looking fwd to that. Between now and then, i got burningman to prepare for and Round The World pictures to process .. as soon as my laptop gets to me (shipped back to me today!).

I made it back home to San Francisco, California, U, S, and A. Hurray. My Round-The-World trip for 2007 is over. I’m glad to be home, the last few weeks i was ready – i missed my friends and miss shayna. But i loved my trip. I saw things i’ve never seen before, i had experiences that will last a lifetime, and learned a few things about myself as well. What more could you want?

First, lemme recount my adventures a bit. I’ll be brief – feel free to check out my itinerary for details of everywhere i went. Last entries were for India – i spent over 3 weeks there, mostly in the mountains doing my trek. After the trek, i headed to Srinagar, Kashmir despite warnings by lonely planet. Up till this year, the was much fighting, but now its cool – i saw a ton of army dudes hanging around. I ended up on a houseboat instead of a hotel/hostel/guesthouse, which was cool in concept, but lame in reality – family turned out to be very dodgy on details like how far it was to town, how much things cost, and always trying to make me buy something. Pissed me off – at this point of my trip i had enough of people pretending to be friendly or honest, and then end up being dishonest and only out to get you to buy something. But i did see some beautiful lakes, mountains, and gardens, and i loved that. Then i flew to Delhi, hung out there and did a day trip to Agra – home of the Taj Mahal. Wow. I decided that was the thing i liked the most from my trip. The architecture was amazing – the white marble stone, the simplicity, the grandeur, the way it impressed me from all angles, the gardens around it. And altho crowded, the people didn’t bother me like they did at Angkor Wat, Cambodia. The heat really got to me at Angkor Wat.

After India, i flew to London for one night, then to Zurich, Switzerland – home of Stephanie Hannon. I mainly wanted to just visit Steph and chill for a few days, but i ended up really loving Switzerland. Expensive, yes, but soo beautiful – I was there 4 days, one day we went to Luzern, another day i went hiking by myself to Speer – and it was amazing. Steph took me to some fancy bars and restaurants, as well as introduced me to some of her friends and coworkers. What a good host. Switzerland – It really is a land out of a fairy tale.

From Switzerland i did one more night in London before heading to New York. Lindsey Bauer was kind enough to let me crash at her place in London, and i even joined them for an impressive cirque-de-solei type show done bye nofitstate circus. Once i got to NYC, i stayed with another friend, Suzi Palmer. The western world is too expensive for me to NOT stay with friends, ya know? Greenhouse was, of course, a great host as well. She has cool friends, a happy dog, sadie, and ever rusty cat. What a great family. I also made it to Hoboken to visit Mike, Zuad, and their 2-month old boy. I’ve never seen a house so clean.  And then monday i had John’s pizza.  SOooooo Gooood.  As Jack Black says, “You can’t even order a slice.  They make you order a whole pie.  But that’s fine with me.  I wouldn’t want to eat just one slice.” NY was nice – good to do some serious chilling out before heading home.

Thats it for now – expect a RTW summary some time soon – best and worst and weirdest . . something like that. Now i’m just happy to be home – to have to go through 12,000 pieces of mail, fix my broken laptop, get new ipod, and try to figure out my life ..

cheers – chad