Just wondering….

Here is what the “Reason” Foundation says about High Speed Rail:

If you don’t want to read the whole thing:

• a Highway project in Massachusetts ended up cost more money than planned for — as we all know highway projects always cost way too much.
• the US can’t get off its ass and build anything faster than the Acela. (at a time when the French have tested a train that could beat a plane flying the JFK-LAX route)
• the California HSR route is longer than the Acela line and somehow that means the percentage market capture should be smaller — because as we all know people take High-Speed Rail to get to their neighbor’s house or their kitchen.
• Apparently the species of homo sapiens (homo sillius?) that lives in the US is different than the species living in Japan and Europe — so therefore anything that other species does does not apply to homo sillius.
• High-Speed Rail apparently is supposed to compete against Greyhound on a price basis and against planes based on time. I didn’t realize that the business bus traveler was such an important target market.
• All that stuff in the latest Star Trek movie — you know …. those cool transporters that instantly zap you from place to place … are already in place. Those transporters will be used to instantly zap you out of your house, past airport security to your airline seat. Travelers will not have to arrive at the airport 2 hours before their flight. At the other end, the transporters will get travelers from LAX to where they really want to be. This will keep that airline flight of 80 min time competitive with a 150min HSR trip. The bad news is that sometimes TSA regulations result in you arriving unclothed because TSA needs to send your clothes for “extra screening”. Hospital gowns will be provided while you are waiting for your clothes to catch up. Remember the adage to deal with stage fright “Imagine your audience is wearing no clothes?” well now you will not have to imagine…
• Businesses survive by satisfying the “homo consumius” species. politicians survive by satisfying the “homo votius” species. Once again, new subspecies that our high school textbooks sadly have failed to document.
• Bonds are a bad idea. investment is a bad idea.

Dear iPhone fanboi and fangrl,

If you are in Canada, the US, New Zealand or pretty much anywhere in the world.

Please accept the sad reality that you are a sheep to be fleeced. I understand that it is not a wonderful situation. But please learn that you made the wool (money) just to give to the phone company and Apple.

And just remember that next year, you will be fleeced next year. And please not bleat next year again.

If you could practice self-restraint and simply refuse to buy when you are being treated like sheep to be a fleeced — then you would be treated better.

Until then please do not complain when the man with the shearers comes a’callin’

O.k.?

Do have a nice day!

Talk about a really interesting take on what being a sales person means. It is my general (perhaps misconceived) notion that when a customer contacts a sales person that their job is to try to evaluate the customer’s needs and maybe upsell them or find some combination of services that would met the customer’s needs and, oh may be make the company a wee bit more money. May be this is a little out-dated, after all it is a concept I learned while selling roast beef at Arby’s - guess it doesn’t apply to LayeredTech’s sales people.

I should preface this with the comment that I was planning on adding more servers but…..

From: Patrick Moore
To: sales@layeredtech.com
Subject: Re: [LTSALES #GHX-xxxxx]: Client Order: Patrick Moore [Client ID: xxxxxx] [Server ID: xxxxxx]
Date: Sep 27, 2007 5:38 PM

Hi there –

It looks like the prices for the servers have dropped in price to $49/month … So I would like to take advantage of that to move to the lower price.

I am also looking for a build/staging box build machine so this can be a slow box…or virtual machine…

-Pat

So here I am saying I want to get my account billing changed, but I am also saying that I want to add an extra server. (Wo ho) existing client, upsell opportunity (any place but layeredtech)!

Got this reply:

From: Sales Related Requests [Add to Address Book]
To: xxxxx@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: [LTSALES #GHX-xxxxx]: Client Order: Patrick Moore [Client ID: xxxxxx] [Server ID: xxxxxx]
Date: Sep 27, 2007 6:11 PM

Hello Patrick,

If you need to upgrade (or downgrade) your current server to a new processor, you will need to order an entirely new server. So, you should time it to where the server that you want to upgrade will be cancelled right after your new server will be up. We need a 2 day cancellation notice (go to support.layeredtech.com and open a ticket, chose ‘Cancellations’ and you will be guided through the process).

You can set the cancellation of the existing server to be now or at the end of your billing cycle. Please specify in the body of your ticket. There will be no refunds given for servers cancelled prior to the renewal date.

I apologize, but we will not move hard drives from one server to another. IP allotment is also not transferable to newly ordered servers.

If you have further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me for assistance.

Thank you,

Jenny Song
Layered Technologies Sales
Toll Free: 1.866.584.6784
Direct Line: 972.398.xxxx
Fax: 972.398.7055
Email: jsong {at} layeredtechnologies.com

You got to love this! Instead of trying to find out more about my needs was

• to direct me to some series of steps on a website that I don’t want to figure out, and
• not bother to find out if I had other needs (which I pretty darn clearly indicated)

But that’s o.k. right Jenny did say to contact her if I had “any further concerns or questions”. Well as a matter of fact I did:

From: Patrick Moore
To: jsong layeredtechnologies.com
Subject: Re: [LTSALES #GHX-xxxxx]: Client Order: Patrick Moore [Client ID: xxxxxx] [Server ID: xxxxxx]
Date: Sep 27, 2007 6:36 PM

well this looks like exactly the *same* server….so why can’t you adjust the price?

No response by the next afternoon, the offer of assistance must have been an empty one….


So I resent the email thread to sales@layeredtech.com hoping the luck of the draw would get me someone a little better. Wishful thinking. Got this reply:

From: Sales Related Requests [Add to Address Book]
To: xxxxx@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: [LTSALES #GHX-xxxxx]: Client Order: Patrick Moore [Client ID: xxxxxx] [Server ID: xxxxxx]
Date: Sep 28, 2007 3:54 PM

Hello,

We wish it was that simple however, it is not. Again, if you would like to upgrade or downgrade the processor you will need to order a new server. We will be unable to drop the current price of your server to $49.00 as per our current specials.

Thank you,

Drew Patterson
CSR/Sales/Accounts
Toll Free: 1-866-584-6784
(972)398-7000
FAX: (972)-398-7055
Email: Sales@layeredtech.com
Email: Accounts@layeredtech.com

Now at least Drew was a little more upfront and honest. He didn’t extend the (empty) offer to be of “further assistance” and he wasn’t even going to try to be helpful with a list of steps on navigating the layeredtech website. And certainly no direct number or email address for him!

I should also add that my whole humorous exchange started with me asking the same question of their pre-sales person ‘available’ via chat. I will not mention the id number of that person, because he did try to be helpful but admitted upfront that he didn’t have the ability to handle what I was asking for. He at least tried to be helpful and referred me to the (un)helpful people available at sales@layeredtech.com

Capitalism at its finest - “we won’t take you money unless you shove it in our hands”.

All I can say is… I am shocked! I actually agree with Paris Hilton. From her statement to the press about all the hullabaloo around her 45-day jail sentence:

“I must also say that I was shocked to see all of the attention devoted to the amount of time I would spend in jail for what I had done by the media, public and city officials. I would hope going forward that the public and the media will focus on more important things, like the men and women serving our country in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the world.”

Hear, hear!

File this under “words that should be in the dictionary”. Rosemarie (4yrs-old) has this great word, “yestertime”. If yesterday means the day before today, then “yestertime” should exist and mean some time before yesterday.

What a great word!

I got to love this site that advertises on places like NewsMax which is for denial-of-reality people. Using the what goes-down-must-go-up inverted law of gravity, the website says:

Let’s say you decide to err on the side of Iraqi prosperity. You take advantage of the 100 year low value and buy 2 million Iraqi dinars. You look them over, admire them, and show them to some friends as a curiosity. The security features alone will have them enthralled. Then you stick them in a closet and go about your life.

A few years from now, you see a program on A&E portraying the lives of average Iraqis. You see people drinking locally bottled, genuine Pepsi Cola; not the ersatz they’d been consuming for years. They are buying their cars from Baghdad Mitsubishi.

Their highly educated engineers, no longer waiting tables or driving cabs, are engineering. The world’s 2nd largest oil reserve is producing more efficiently. Higher quality crops are being harvested, in larger numbers.

You discover that things are going well enough in Iraq to have raised the value of the the dinar to one US cent.

Your $2100 purchase would now be valued at $20,000.

If the dinar were to climb to a dime, you’ve got two hundred thousand dollars in your closet. What if it were to reach a dollar? Or rebound to it’s peak of over $3.00? Do you dare continue to keep your dinars in the closet?

Of course this is assuming that the Iraqi government doesn’t devalue their currency and no longer honor it. How much are those Confederate dollars worth, those Third Reich marks, or Wiemar Republic marks?

But to all of you still believing in the Iraqi (mis) adventure I would like to encourage you to go to that site and experience in person the fraud that is Operation Iraq Liberation Freedom.

I was listening to This American Life and they had a program that they called “Mind Games”. It is about ImprovEverywhere. This is a group that does great street theatre. My favorite is “Look up More”. Although, the mini-skit of “Meet a Black Person” in the 0.44% black Aspen, CO was pretty good as well.

This reminds me of the flash mob craze from a couple of years ago. I guess some people are still doing it.

a while ago I mentioned posted about crashing hard drives turned to music. Well suddenly, its not so funny! My Acomdata 320GB Harddive suddenly started making those same sounds. Got a techsupport email “call” in today. Promised a response within 3 days. It will be a long 3 days.

So Thursday last, my wife and I were going out for one of our rare and much needed date nights. With babysitting costing between $10-$15/hour it does not happen that often! We swung by our friends’ house to play some games. When we saw people going the opposite direction of in. Betsy was announcing that “Games night is cancelled because we are being sued!” To which she added when she saw us was: “And so are you!”

That kind of gets the heart racing doesn’t!?

Needless to say: Trisha did not get her date night.

Thank you, Carl Guardino, who is modestly:

named as one of the “Five Most Powerful” people in Silicon Valley

O.k., o.k. so legally I wasn’t sued by “One of the Five” but rather by an “SVLG operative”, Rick Callendar. Thursday, I was wondering who is Rick Callendar. Tips to accountablevta, for doing some research. Rick Callendar, aka Enrico Lydell Callender:

is the Government Relations Manager for the Santa Clara Valley Water District and also the head of the Silicon Valley NAACP.

Hi, Rick! O.k. so he isn’t “One of the Five”, but he is in line to be “One of the Ten”.

So why did I deserve such an honor as to be sued by a “One of the Ten”?

Well, I was one of the signers on the “No on Measure A” argument. The VoteNoOnA.us during the campaign will go into greater detail about this issue.

This contest is just too cool. Hitachi posted some wav files of harddrives crashing. These are the results after the remixes got through with them.