I’m a die-hard Apple nut. Love the products etc. Unfortunately the Apple Store “Genius Bar” experience is about as productive as putting one’s hands in a blender. Seriously.

I have a SIMPLE repair to my MacBook Pro. Something that requires the ordering of a part and quick swap-out. The “Genius” sorry, I can’t call them that… The “Idiot” tells me that it requires me to turn my machine in for 7-10 days. WTF?!

I understand that it takes a few days for the part to arrive (really it arrives next day) so I told the Idiot to order the part and then call me when it gets in. I’ll then bring my machine in, they can do the repair in the back, and I’ll have it back, fixed and all, in a matter of hours. NOT DAYS! The Idiot says that it doesn’t work that way. Even if they order the part, they’ll still need to keep my machine for 7-10 days.

WTF?! Does the monkey in the back take off one screw a day? Seriously…

I called an independent repair shop- CompuTech and they were more than awesome. Took my machine in, showed them what’s wrong and they:
a. are fixing it under warranty, so no charge to me;
b. are going to order the part and will call me when the part arrives (overnight) and a tech is available (about 1-2 days);
c. are going to fix my machine while I wait- 1-2h max!

No 7-10 days bullcrap. Just plain easy and efficient.

Now… Steve, Ron, Tim… if you’re reading this (and trust me, I’ll make sure you’re reading this)… you guys REALLY need to fix this. You bill your Apple Store as the Ultimate Apple Experience and somehow it’s really the most painful part. Your “Geniuses” are absolute assholes and completely useless. I’ll bet they don’t know what 0+0 adds up to. Seriously… where the HELL IS COMMON SENSE?!

7-10 business days is bullcrap. Even with the the ‘order the part and I’ll bring my machine in’ option!

Sold the old 27″ boob tube and replaced it with this 32″ 37″ 1080p-native flat panel. Woo hoo!

New (KDL-32XBR6 KDL-37XBR6):

Old (KV-27FS320):

We all know what happens where on the 8th of August 2008- the Olympics kick off in Beijing, China.

We all know how I feel about thems- they are scumbag snakes!

We all know why I feel that way- amongst everything else, because they are occupying Tibet.

So, starting 08-08-08, I’m going to post up one entry a day that:
1. Tells those scumbags to get out of Tibet; and
2. Tells them that they are fuckwads; and
3. Tells them that they are destroying the planet; and
4. Tells them that “the party” is probably the worst thing to happen to them and the planet.

That’s it really. I don’t hate all them Chinese. Just the ones who are responsible for the disaster out East. And the ones who aren’t doing anything about it.

So:
1. FREE TIBET
2. FUCK CHINA
3. GET OFF THE PLANET
4. COMMUNISM IS DEAD!

Oh, and here’s what my MacBook Pro has to say about it:

My 2.6Ghz 15″ MacBook Pro arrived. I’m finally gonna do what I recommend to everyone else- switch to a Mac!

Joost has now given beta testers (aka yours truly) unlimited invites. Leave your name and email address in a comment and I’ll invite you.

Press release after the jump.
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We recently bought a Macbook Pro and went and picked up the free printer this past weekend. We got the HP PhotoSmart C3180 all-in-one. Yes, I know it’s nothing great, but we just wanted something that was capable of putting ink on a sheet for the occasional need for a printout. Also, we wanted something that had a scanner- you know, to make quick copies of stuff.

Read on for my adventures in getting this printer correctly working on my home network.
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I installed the Office 2007 suite a few weeks ago and noticed that every few minutes there would be a processor spike while Outlook did a ‘Send/Receive’ or a Sync. At the same time, the ‘Synchronization Manager’ icon (like so: ) would appear in the notification in my taskbar. I checked my Send/Receive Groups and couldn’t find what was going on for the life of me.

I did notice that my machine kept wanting to synch with http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidOutlookRSS?clid=1033

So, a bit of digging later, I found the culprit. The ‘RSS Feeds’ folder had the above URL set as its ‘home page’ and in the ‘Offline Web Page Settings’ control it had the ‘Make this page available offline’. Once I killed these options off, processor spikes were a thing of the past.

For all of you who want to make the changes, do this:

* Right-click the ‘RSS Feeds’ folder (right below ‘Outbox’)
* Click ‘Properties’
* Go to the ‘Home Page’ tab
* Uncheck ‘Show home page by default for this folder
* Click ‘Offline Web Page Settings…’
* Uncheck ‘Make this page available offline’ in the ‘Web Document’ tab
* Click ‘Apply’ to close this window
* Click ‘Apply’ to close the ‘RSS Feeds Properties’ window

That’s it. If you want to get a little more aggressive, you can just clear out the ‘Address’ in the ‘Home Page’ tab of the ‘RSS Feeds Properties’ window.

This past week I upgraded to “Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007″ along with “Microsoft Visio 2007″. I was wary initially- this is my primary work machine, if things fuck up, I’ll be up the creek without a paddle (ok, not really because I would still be able to go back to Office 2003, but it would be hours burned getting everything back to how it was)- but after a few good reviews (and a final ‘fuck it, just do it!’) I decided to bite the bullet.

Read on for my take on what I think of Microsoft’s most ballsy revamp of such a business-critical suite.
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We arrived into Bombay and I got myself a temporary prepaid GSM phone card on Hutch (lots of buzz around them of late due to a potential $20bn sale). They offer GPRS under the banner “HutchWorld” or “HutchAccess” for a monthly fee of Rs. 199 and a usage rate of Rs. 0.05/10KB. All one has to do is send the message ‘ACT WWW’ to 144. They say that the activation happens within 24 hours. To check the status of the service one sends a message ‘ST WWW’ to 144

So, I did that on a Monday morning and received a confirmation of my request. Come Tuesday afternoon the service wasn’t up. The status kept coming back as “in process”. I waited until Wednesday (now more than 48h have passed and the Rs. 199 has already been deduced from my account) and then called their customer service “hotline.”

I got the usual bullshit: “it’s in process”, “power cycle your phone”, “clean the SIM card with a cotton swab”, etc. The reps refused to let me talk to a manager and kept making me dance around in circles. No one seemed to understand that they failed on their promise of activating it “within 24 hours” and that compensating the customer for this is what they should do. After much hair pulling and yelling at a whole bunch of reps, I had someone who finally took ownership of the issue. He eventually got it working for me, but only after I threatened to make the entire matter public.

All in all, these people (whether it be the call center zombies or the average Indian company) really don’t understand basic customer service. No one seems to take ownership of issues and they don’t understand the principle behind “if you fail on a promise you should pay for it.”

In all this, Hutch really needs to get its act together from a customer service point of view if they plan to be a world-class cellular company and not just grow because people have only a handful of carriers to choose from.

Our Sapien bookcase (short) from DWR arrived last night. Setup was a breeze- just a couple of bolts at the bottom, and then the shelves slide in.

I really wasn’t looking for it to display/keep books, but instead to keep the networking/technology equipment in a much more elegant manner with the wires disappearing behind the column. So, here’s a few views (still need to finish tidying up the wires etc):

More after the jump.
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