Can the NFL season start already?

Jeromey Balderrama

Since the Super Bowl ended on February 5th, I’ve shifted my attention over to the 2006 NFL season and watching the events leading up to a new season.  First is the Free-Agency period, the scouting combine, draft preparations and on last Thursday one of the biggest developments of the off-season – NFL Schedule Release Day.  The new schedules are out, and I couldn’t open it fast enough to see what’s to come for my beloved Broncos.

After looking at their 2006 schedule my immediate reaction was "We’re screwed".  While the Broncos don’t rank very high on the official "Strength of Schedule" statistics, they still must have one of the toughest schedules in the league.  When you play both Super Bowl teams from the previous years, as well as the Patriots, the Colts, and the Bengals – all play-off teams from last year.  On top of that we’re in arguably one of the toughest division teams – you know that San Diego and Kansas City are going to contend this year and give us a run for the money.  We also have a lot of teams we’ve historically struggled against with the Ravens, and the Rams.  Right now outside of possibly San Francisco and Arizona there really isn’t any teams we can pencil a "W" next to their name. 

Also, we’ve stuck with the Bye in September, on the 4th week of the season (the 2nd week of bye’s).  The last few years we’ve enjoyed having our bye week in the middle of the season, giving our players enough time to rest, recover and get ready for the remainder of the season.

As a season ticket holder, it’s a pretty strange assortment of home games.  We have one in September (W2 vs Kansas City), then we have 3 home games in October (2 of those being prime-time games), one home game in November (week before Thanksgiving), then 3 in December.  December’s a bit disappointing because we have another Christmas Eve game (but so does the rest of the NFL), then a home game on New Year’s that I’ll miss because I’ll be in New Orleans (hey but I could see the Saints play the Panthers – hmmmm…  ).  So in the end, a pretty strange season home game-wise.

One really cool thing is that we have 4 prime-time games (Sunday Night Football vs the Patriots & Raiders, Monday Night Football vs the Ravens, Thanksgiving Night Game vs the Chiefs).  I’m also glad that we’re playing both San Fran and Arizona in December, when wins seem most crucial for play-off berths.

Super Bowl XLI here we come!

New Blog URL

Jeromey Balderrama

Well I’ve proved that I am a total geek – as if there wasn’t any doubt in your mind…  I’ve one again changed my blog’s URL, for hopefully the last time.  Welcome to Romeyinfc.com!  The old URL should be automatically re-directing you here, but you may want to update your bookmarks.

For those who are curious, Romeyinfc comes from "Romey in Fort Collins".  "Romey" is a nickname that was given to me when I worked with the high school youth at my church.  I was helping lead a mission trip a few years back and they gave me that name and it stuck!

So welcome to the new blog site, and yes I guess I’m a nerd for getting my own domain name…

The Warehouse Results Are In…

Jeromey Balderrama

…and it’s official, so far I am going to TWO DAVE MATTHEWS CONCERTS!  I’ve been confirmed for the Pepsi Center, and then I also got confirmed for the Bonner Springs, KS show as well!  That makes me 5/5 in DMB ticket requests!  How awesome!

So tomorrow morning I get to sleep in and enjoy a weekend morning instead getting up early to stand in line or frantically work on the internet to get tickets. I love Warehouse – best $35 I ever spent.  Now it’s time to plan the Kansas road trip!

Crappy Support Experiences…

Jeromey Balderrama

Today has been a crazy day when it comes to tech support, and dealing with outsourced support.  A great part of my work-day (and the last few weeks for that matter) has been spent with nailing down difficulties we’ve been having with our outsourced support from India.  We’ve experienced a high level of turnover from our workers in that region, which is resulting in a complete re-training process for the support workers.  Lately it seems like they’ve been "picking and choosing" the work that they want to do, often leaving our group high and dry with many angry end users.  Each week I meet with the person who is mentoring them to try to understand and address each issue, and each week I find myself with little that I can do to make any kind of impact.  I turn right around and bring the issues up with their management, but each time I do it I feel like we get criticized for being resistant to outsourcing, change and the global economy. 

My feelings are far from it.  Initially I was resentful of many of our tech jobs being shipped to lower-cost centers over seas.  However, in the changing global economy I have come to realize that this is necessary and that I must find a way to work within the system.  What I do struggle with is the fact that none of these transition are being done particularly well, and with the market in these low-cost centers (like India) so competitive, you’ll find a high turn-over with the actual employees in this area.  My frustrations come from a fact that no matter what I do things aren’t improving.  These frustrations are also resulting in my general unease when hearing the words "support" and "outsourced".

This leads me to this evening.  I finally had some time to get to work on the 24 bloggers project between Matt and I, and I found that I was experiencing some major problems with our web control panel.  When I went to my hosting server (which used to be based on the East Coast), I found out that my hosting company has shifted almost all of their operations to India.  It was hard for me to overcome my initial fears that my past experiences have brought me, and they did seem a bit justified when I submitted my first trouble ticket and received the following response:

cp is ok now, cp goes little bit slow during backups.
we have good feedback regarding cp performance
you can come on Live Chat for instant support at <our web site>

Ok.. Did you even look at my issue, or did something get lost in the communication?  I ended up logging into their Live Chat on their site, spent a while waiting for an agent to contact me, and when I described my issue again he said "Ok, I will check", then was gone for almost 45 minutes…  When I sent a follow up in the chat he replied "We’re working on your issue.  Please send a trouble ticket to track your request."

Isn’t that what I originally did?  I realize we all have been victims of bad support, and this may be an isolated case, but I seriously doubt it.  It seems like businesses are all too eager to off-shore these operations and watch the cost savings roll in, without spending much time training or transitioning.  The true phrase of "you pay for what you get" rings true here, and if we pay for these low-cost support centers without setting up efficient processes to smoothly transfer the support (as well as maintain the expected level of service), the other parts of the business will suffer (in many cases the customers).

We’ll see how hard it is to have this issue resolved.  I’m disappointed too, because in the three years I’ve used this hosting company I have never experienced a problem…  First time for everything I guess…

Also this blog may be on the move again, because as of Wednesday I am the proud owner of www.romeyinfc.com – this will be a much easier address to remember.  Keep posted for the change…