thirteen ball is the personal web site of Joe Polk...a technology consultant, web developer, husband, father and volunteer firefighter/EMT from Pittsburgh, PA.
// April 23rd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Give Me A Break!, Technology
Would someone please tell me who the hell would think it would be appropriate to sell an iPhone/iTouch game where you shake a baby until it dies? And how the hell did it get approved by Apple? Don’t believe me? See it yourself. This makes me sick!
// April 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Give Me A Break!, Politics, Religion
Will someone please tell me why it was necessary to cover the name of Jesus during President Obama’s speech at Georgetown? What’s the point of speaking there if you cover up anything that makes it recognizable? People are not going to think that he is a proponent of the university or their beliefs just because he has spoken there. I think you should be respectful to the place that you’re speaking at — otherwise, what’s the point of being there? When he speaks at GM, does he cover up the GM logos as to not offend Ford or Chevy?
// March 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // Give Me A Break!, News Stories, Politics
Am I the only one that actually supports Bowling Green State University on this decision? A sculpture showing a middle school girl performing a sex act on her teacher? Are you kidding me? What the hell has happened to our society that a sculpture like that is considered acceptable and that having it removed is censorship?
// February 10th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Give Me A Break!, Sports
Besides the fact that they beat us twice at home in the AFC Championship, I still have others reasons why I can’t stand the New England Cheaters Patriots. It is barely one week from the Steelers winning an unprecedented 6th Super Bowl and the bookies in Vegas are picking the Patriots as the odds-on favorite to win the big game next year. Are you kidding me? And then this jerk from Providence, RI tries to say that the Patriots are the “team of the decade”? Where is the respect for the Steelers?!?!?
// August 28th, 2008 // No Comments » // Give Me A Break!, Technology
Well, this definitely doesn’t apply to everyone — but it did affect over a million people in the United Kingdom. A laptop owned by a company that is actually supposed to protect financial data was sold on eBay for $65, but luckily it was sold to an IT person who reported it to the companies whose data was on the hard drive.
I’m not surprised when I hear stories like this — considering that the same thing happened to me at a garage sale a few years ago. I went to a sale here in Mt. Lebanon and saw a Compaq Presario laptop that had a piece of masking tape on the lid with $10 on it. At first I thought it was a goof-up and that she meant to put $100 on it. I walked up to the owner and said “this is really only $10?”. She said “Yup” and of course I said “so..what’s wrong with it?”
She said that nothing was wrong with it and that I could plug it in to confirm that it was OK. I told her that I wanted to and lo and behold, a Windows 2000 login screen came up after I turned it on. I asked her if she could tell me the username/password for the laptop so I could see what programs were on the computer and she told me that she didn’t remember it. She then said that it was her old work laptop and that they gave it to her once she got a new one.
Being the geek that I am, I know/knew that the base install of Windows 2000 has “administrator” as the username and no password for the password and it let me right in. I turned off the laptop, handed the owner her $10, said “Thanks!” and walked out. When I got home, I logged back in and got the surprise of my life.
It turns out that the previous owner of the laptop was a mortgage broker and that neither she nor her previous company wiped the drive before she was given the laptop. A basic search of the computer revealed mortgage applications with all kinds of personal information (names, social security numbers, job information, etc.), emails, documents and pictures. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! Imagine if I was a criminal! I had tons of information to commit identity theft with. She hadn’t deleted a thing!
When I bought the laptop (but before I saw what was on it), I had intended on reselling the laptop after I had wiped the drive anyways — but I definitely needed to make sure to do it now! I pulled out my trusty DBAN CD to make sure that none of the information on the laptop would ever be found again.
And if you think that’s the only time I bought something with data already on it, you’d be wrong. I’ve bought an HP Jornada and multiple Palm PDAs with all of the content intact. Unbelievable!
// July 30th, 2008 // No Comments » // Give Me A Break!, Technology
This is the first of (I assume) many postings about customer service experiences that I’ve had. I want to share them with you, the readers of my blog, in the hopes that you are able to learn about the good or bad things that a company has done and either make sure to patronize a company in the future because they did a really nice job or that you stay the heck away from them because of their shoddy customer service.
I received a Garmin nuvi 350 GPS from my parents 1 1/2 years ago for Christmas. They wanted me to have one since they knew that I traveled all over the place for my job (12 counties in southwestern PA). For 18 months, the GPS was working great but then all of a sudden, it stopped working — meaning that it wasn’t able to acquire the GPS satellites and find my location — rendering the unit useless.
I went onto Garmin’s web site to see if I could fix it and learned that I could do a master reset — which actually did fix it the first time. Unfortunately, a few weeks later the same problem occurred and the master reset didn’t do anything to fix it this time — so I called Garmin support and spoke with one of their customer service folks.
I identified myself and explained when I bought the unit and what was wrong. The gentleman told me that in order for it “to be looked at and repaired” it would cost $200. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I told the man, “Um..sir….that’s half the price of the unit NEW”. He said “I understand but that’s our policy.” I told him that that price was unacceptable and that I would rather by a new GPS from another company with that $200. He paused for a second and then stated “Well…the best that I can do for the repair is $100. I sat there and said to myself “Damn….I would’ve had to pay $200 if I hadn’t complained about that price!”
After hearing about the super-quick 50% discount on the repair, I told the customer service rep that I wouldn’t even spend that much for a repair because I still thought it was too high. He paused for a second and said “Let me check out something. I’ll be right back”. He returned to the phone about 2 minutes later and stated that “because it was only 1 1/2 years old”, they would send me a “new” (refurbished) unit free of charge once they had received my old one back.
I received the new unit about 10 days later and it’s been working just fine. I’m happy that Garmin replaced the unit for me, but I’m definitely disappointed that I had to complain heavily about their customer service/support policies in order to get the free replacement that I did.
Copyright © 2010 thirteen ball. All rights reserved.
