“Annoyances” update

Jeromey Balderrama

Well the package came in today around 2:00pm, so it wasn’t too bad.  The phone number port actually went faster than I thought – my phone was barely out of service.  It took a little bit work, but I’ve pretty much managed to duplicate all of the functionality of my phone & PDA combined, as well as accessing the Internet 🙂  Gotta love that!

I’ll talk more about the Treo later this weekend, but I was told something earlier this afternoon that made me feel lame.  When the FedEx guy came to the door (mind you I’ve seen him three times this week), he said something to the effect of "You’re keeping me in business".  I felt so dumb, that my only response was "Well, it’s dads & grads season…".  Something tells me that if the FedEx guy knows who you are, that is a good sign you’re buying too much crap off the Internet.

That said, my Treo docking cradle, Bluetooth headset and drumming book are all on their way…

Verizon “Annoyances”

Jeromey Balderrama

Here I am, working from home for the third consecutive day, mostly due to Verizon wireless. I’m scaling the walls here, ready to go crazy because I’m waiting for a package from them.

Last week, I decided to take advantage of my cell phone free-agency and look at an opportunity to break out to a new cell phone plan. I’ve been a moderately happy customer with Cingular, but I’ve really been itching at looking at either a Blackberry or a Smartphone that could surf the Internet. I really miss not being able to check sports scores and movie times, and given that I only check my email every 30 seconds while I’m working, I should be able to check my mail every 15 seconds by my phone (j/k).

So I was looking and as it turns out, Verizon has the best company discount for Smartphones. I was especially interested in the Palm Treo 650, which has received many decent reviews and is one of the favorites out there. Last Friday I made the leap, purchased the phone and have now been anxiously waiting for it to arrive.

Now, a week later, I have to admit that I’m a little annoyed with Verizon. I’m not frustrated, I’m not angry – but just annoyed. I made the request mid-day Friday, so I was hoping that the latest they’d ship it out to me was Monday. Immediately after I placed the request I got a confirmation email which included the typical things "Thanks for purchasing blah blah blah… your request has been sent to us blah blah blah… subject to credit approval blah blah… if we need any more information we will contact you blah…" What I took from that message was "Don’t call use, we’ll call you". Ok, great.

The weekend comes and goes, nothing from Verizon. Monday passes, nothing from Verizon. Towards the end of Tuesday I was beginning to get anxious and emailed the support address, asking for a status of my order. I thought it was weird not to get anything – at least a shipping confirmation (and hopefully a tracking number).

It wasn’t until the end of Wednesday when I finally got an email from Verizon. It made no mention of my pending support request, but it did inform me that my phone did get shipped that day, and gave me some instructions on how to activate my service and port my number. However, there was no tracking number – just a statement that they sent it through FedEx (glad it’s not UPS) and that it will take 2-3 business days.

I’m thinking to myself "Hopefully 2 business days, but we’ll see". Not a bad response from Verizon, I wish I would have received a tracking number, but oh well. But then I get two other emails: one from the DMB Warehouse fan club, telling the Kansas City tickets got shipped out (and gave me a tracking number); the other from Targus informing me that my cousin’s backpack (for her graduation) got shipped out as well.

Thursday arrives, and I had every intention of going to the office, but a series of morning meetings kept me at home throughout the morning. Luckily I was home because I got a knock on my door and the DMB tickets arrived (awesome). After my initial joy, my next thought turned to Verizon, thinking "Well if Warehouse can get me stuff within a day, where’s Verizon with my phone?". Later, Bethany offered the suggestion that because Warehouse sent an envelope rather than a box, they’re easier to sort and could get here faster. Unfortunately her hypothesis was proven wrong when we visited my mom and saw that the Targus backpack had also arrived – talk about fast service.

So shifting back to Verizon – here I am waiting for my phone, hoping that it’ll get here today and I won’t need to wait until next week to receive it. Again, I’m not mad at Verizon, but I think I’ve really missed out on starting off on the right foot with a new wireless provider. I’ve heard from friends that their customer service isn’t that great – I just hope this isn’t a preview of what’s to come.

Now I am working away up in my home office, with the music turned off and paranoid about every sound I hear – wondering if someone’s knocking at the door. Getting a wireless doorbell for my apartment doesn’t seem like such a bad idea…

SkypeOut now FREE for US & Canada!

Jeromey Balderrama

There is some recent news regarding Skype, which is a Voice-Over-IP application that allows people to actually talk to other people through the application for free. This is especially useful if people are looking to talk internationally. Skype also has some other options if people are interested in using this application as a replacement for their telephone. There is a voicemail service, a dial-in phone number service (where you’ll actually have a phone number), and finally SkypeOut, the ability to call land-lines/cell-phones. Earlier this week, Skype announced that they are going to make their SkypeOut feature available for FREE for calls within the US/Canada, for the rest of 2006! There’s no prepayment, no minimum use, no subscription, no monthly fee – nothing. The only stipulation is that the caller and the number called must be in either the US or Canada. Otherwise there are no strings attached.

I have been eager to get rid of my land-line for quite some time. I’m sick of writing $43 checks to Qwest (or Q-worst as I call it) for my $25 phone line – paying all of these stupid taxes for a line I barely use. I primarily use my cell phone, and the only time I really use my land-line is for phone conferences from home. Anxious to try this out, I called into on of my NCSC Conference Calls with it last night, and overall things went very well! I think there was a thunderstorm in the area, which caused a little static whenever lightning struck. Besides that, the quality was very good, and it sounds like people were able to hear me just fine.

It should be noted that I did not use my standard computer microphone, but rather I purchased a USB microphone headset a few weeks back. It’s more of a gaming headset, but I bought it with the intention of being able to make audio comments to PodCasts, but little did I know that I could also get free phone service while I was at it.

Obviously when the calendar turns to 2007 the SkypeOut will be out, but I’m anxious to see what the pricing structure will be. I am very excited to see what happens a few months down the road!

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Random thought at 2am

Jeromey Balderrama

Ok, it’s waaaaay past my bed-time, but I just wanted to post a random thought that just sprung in my head at 2am.

Is there any more worthless word in the English language than "extraordinaire"? I was browsing the page for the Buzz Out Loud PodCast that I listen to, when I saw one of the hosts described as "producer extraordinaire". I just had to laugh. What a useless word to use. Sure the word sounds descriptive, but after hearing/reading it I feel that it’d riddled with conceit and egotism – at least one someone’s part. I challenge anyone to use the word without sounding pompous. If I use it about someone than I sound like I’m sucking up (when was the last time you were called "<something> extraordinarire"), and if I use it to describe myself I’m just an arrogant ass.

First off, you really shouldn’t compliment yourself on your own web site (and when I say "your" I mean CNet – I don’t think the gal wrote about herself), and definitely shouldn’t use that word. I could live with "skilled" or "experienced" but definitely not "extraordinaire". I challenge anyone to find a use for that word that’s not completely meaningless.

A really cool “rack” story

Jeromey Balderrama

One of the coolest things happened to me late last week, resulting in an exciting addition to my drum set. On Saturday nights you’ll find me playing my drums over at church, typically week in and week out. From what I can tell, the parishioners at J23 enjoy the drums, and I’m sometimes humbled by people offering compliments about our choir and specifically my playing. After Mass last weekend, a parishioner approached me and asked me if I would have a use for some "stands"? As I could never pass down an offer for free drum hardware, accepted his generous offer and we agreed to get the stands on Thursday after a meeting with both attended.

Thursday came by and I had almost forgotten about these "stands" This person, a professor at CSU, apparently got a drum set from a student and said that while the drum set was great "These stands are simply too big.". I park my car right up next to his in the parking lot, he opens up the back of his car and pulls out a drum rack!!

For those who aren’t familiar with a rack, it’s a piece of hardware that you station around your drum set. The idea is that you mount all of your drums and cymbals onto the rack, and it’s supposed to stabilize your drums a bit, make things easier to set up and tear down, and equate in less hard-ware that needs to be carried around. I’ve wanted to get a drum rack for some time, but never brought myself to getting one – now I’m happy to be a proud owner of one. I was definitely most grateful for this gift!

So a few days pass, and on Saturday I finally broke down and set up my drum set in my apartment (something I’ve never done). Due to the noise considerations I didn’t really get to play, but it was helpful to see how the rack sets up. It looks really cool on my drum set! It makes it a lot easier to experiment with the configuration, and it simply makes my drum set look cooler!

I dug back and found a picture of my drum set from a few months back without the racks, and wanted to compare it to what the drum set looked like in my apartment on Saturday. Let me know what you think!

Without the rack – not too bad…

With the rack

Also, as I was look through my picture collections I thought I would send pictures of my drum set from a few years back, to show you how they’ve evolved over time:

I wish I had digital pictures from high school, when I only had 2 cymbals – what a difference from now! This is one of the reasons why I love playing drums – I can keep making changes and tweaks to my instrument, and the additions are limitless!