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11月18日 Pictures from India tripThe pictures from my November 2007 trip to India are posted at http://www.flickr.com/photos/waidhere/sets/72157603126346977/.
-waid here Heading homeI am getting ready to head back home. The driver will pick me up in about five hours to get me to the airport. I spent most of my time in meetings with vendors and some with other employees based in Hyderabad. I have several pages of things to follow-up for my team and myself - so it certainly helped cement the relationships between Seattle and Hyderabad. When I was flying out of Seattle to India, I saw two pretty amazing things. First thing I saw was the slidewalk between the B & C concourses in Chicago's O'Hare airport. Now it has been awhile since I saw O'Hare. Last time, Ronald Reagan was president and I was accosted by Hair Krishna demanding money. O'Hare might have been remodeled years ago, but it still looks way better then it did during the 80's. It used to be that you couldn't go into an airport without being pestered by begging Hari Krishna, but thankfully that is over with. I found a reference from 1999 on airports being allowed to ban begging (http://www.rickross.com/reference/krishna/krishna1.html) Now there are light displays in the ceiling over the slidewalks and no need to play tag with the Hari Krishna. A huge improvement.
Second thing was sunrise as I was headed from Chicago to Frankfurt. We were over England and about 90 minutes to landing in Frankfurt. It was sunrise at 35k feet. with vivid reds striping the top of the clouds. There was no chance to take a picture to show my family, but it really made an impact just watching it for a couple of minutes.
I took quite a few pictures during the trip when I had a chance. They are posted over at http://www.flickr.com/photos/waidhere. I know it is clumsy to use a photo site and a different blog site, but I am not happy with what happens to the color balance with most blogging sites.
-waid here 11月1日 Daylight Savings Time or notLast weekend was NOT when the clocks were set back an hour - however my phone certainly thought so. Most of the electronics around have incorporated the shifting of the schduled time back a week without any drama. The Panasonic DVD-R/RAM PVR (TiVo like with a DVD burner) predates the Congressional mandate to move the date so I expected it to move on the old day, buy anything that is networked should be updated by some sort of temporal mothership so mere mortals like myself don't need to screw with setting the time.
This was was all true - but for my phone. Sigh...On Sunday, I set my phone to use a manual time entry and worried about calling AT&T/Cingular until later. Later was Tuesday. The last time I had to call the New AT&T, it warrented it's own entry at http://waidhere.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!B56799958BD8D618!231.entry. That's right - go read it now. Back yet? Good - so now that you understand my hesitation in calling the New AT&T, we can plunge into the abyss of customer service.
This time, I was transfered into a dead line after waiting only a few minutes. The timeline was something like this:
1. Call the 1-800-331-0500.
2. Wait.
3. Navagate through the automated maze, each time pushing the button to speak to a human being (off world aliens would also be acceptable).
4. Finally talk to a human, she asks for the same info that I have already supplied to the automation. Sigh.
5. Get transfered to "Top Men", where upon the line buzzes with static and goes dead. Not so much a sigh as a grinding of teeth.
6. Call back the 1-800-331-0500.
7. Wait.
8. Repeat the maze - entering the info again. Yeah!
9. Explain the transfer to Mars. Explain how I am worried it will happen again.
10. Get transfered to Mars.
11. Line does not go dead! Yeah!
12. Spend 30 minutes explaining how my phone that synchs over the AT&T network now has the wrong time.
13. Explain that I understand about a manual workaround for a Windows Moble Smart Phone, but it worked until the old cut off date.
14. Get directed to a Microsoft.Com download site using the same KB article that I found myself before calling.
15. The KB article and download does not fix the problem (I don't synch my phone to my PC, I synch over the network to our email servers).
16. Explain how some of the phones in our group that failed to correctly reschedule the new date for Daylight Savings Time were all the same model using the AT&T network. Explain that if it were our Exchange email servers, everyone should have the wrong time.
17. Finally get directed to the Samsung web site to see if they have an update for the phone.
18. Samsung directs me to a different Microsoft.Com web page than before. The update fixes the Blackjack phone and now all is well again with the world.
The Good: AT&T help desk did finally get on the right path. Everyone I talked with was very pleasent. The time is now correct without using manual workarounds.
The Bad: AT&T does not have a download site to support their own products? Huh? Having to repeat the same information to everyone I talk to and to the voice queue is lame. Weak. Does not fill me with confidence in a techology company.
The Ugly: The phone company's voice queue disconnected me. What's with that? Also - I had to download a file to my computer, manually move it over to my Smart Phone and then execute the file from the Smart Phone. Blech. Where is the over-the-air push feature for required updates?
After all that, I am waitng to see what happens this weekend with the **real** change over to Daylight Savings Time.
Cheers,
Waid Here
10月15日 back to India!I am headed back to Hyderabad during November. We have a couple of vendor teams we work with and our own employees. 10月6日 photo sitesI did some looking around and I think that flickr does a pretty good job - at least for casual online storage of pictures. There appears to be no end of deadly serious photo sites, but flickr is integrated with Yahoo and has members ranging from uber serious to the humorous. This gives me a single sign-on to some interesting photo groups (including some local here to the Seattle area) and a multitude of discussion groups. When I look at my shots uploaded to flickr and compare them side by side on my monitor, they look pretty good - not to infer quality of my pictures as much as they are not mangled or have their color oddly shifted. My shots are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/waidhere/. 9月30日 home for a while and buying camerasI've been home now for just over a month - the amount of work that stacks up while you are working on the road sneaks up. Coming back to face a months worth of meetings makes me question my sanity. A couple of things not worked related became more obvious (besides missing my family and hopefully they missing me) upon my return. First, while MSN Spaces works as a (mostly) free blog site, it does not put a lot of emphasis on picture quality. The color & lighting seems off when I compare the same pictures on the web site with local storage on my computer. I am trying out some alternative sites that focus more on photography (argh, pun not intended). The second thing is that I was really missing my old 35mm SLR gear. The P&S camera I used on my trips were fine and did exactly what they advertised, but shooting buildings, people and landscapes ran me quickly out of room on the P&S 4 megapixel camera. I had some pretty serviceable 35mm SLR gear from a few years ago (ok, it was the 80's) but the lenses were good and the bodies solid. I figured I would get the shutters checked out and refresh the meter batteries and jump back into film. Too bad my camera resurrection plans didn't pan out. Now when I boxed all my gear up "a while back" (mid-90's?), there were a couple of camera bodies, several lenses, light meters, enlargers, darkroom equipment (trays, film loaders, etc), but none of it was to be found. I dug through my garage like an impassioned rodent, but no joy. Damn. I did find several boxes of photos and slides (of which I am busy sorting out) but not one single filter, lens, case, camera or tripod. Double Damn. So now I am making the jump all at once from 35mm film with only a light meter and all manual controls to digital & zoom lenses & auto-focus & auto-shutter & auto-aperture controls. I tried out several cameras for ergonomic fit and picked one that allows me to run either manual or automatic modes for all settings. After a lot of market research and trying them out, I picked a Nikon D80. It still feels like a Nikon and the lens mount was immediately familiar (even if the electronic contacts are new). When I was on the road, I was determined to go back to what I knew once I got home (manual 35mm film SLR's), but I let myself get talked into trying the digital SLR's by some co-workers and friends. Now I get to figure out if I should have just EBay'ed a Nikon F2A or FM2. While I don't have to buy film or chemicals or paper anymore, I do have to learn how to use fairly complex software (Photoshop or CaptureNX). So I won't have a darkroom, but I will have a "lightroom". Sigh. 8月16日 India's 60th birthdayYesterday (15 Aug) was India's 60th anniversary of the country's independence from England. Everyone I talked with here in Hyderabad was justifiably proud on how far they've come in a single lifetime. One side effect however was that no business was conducted as everyone was on holiday (well, just how much work do we get done back in the States on July 4th?).
So we took the chance to visit Golconda fort (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golkonda) and the Qutub Shahi Tombs. Golconda was a world class fort back in the day and the ruins are still impressive. The Qutub Shahi Tombs are incredibly beautiful to this day - albeit a bit worse the wear over the centuries.
I will get some pictures posted soon. It was back to the work today with more work to follow tonight (just because I am overseas doesn't give me a free pass on my day job back home). 8月12日 How AT&T lost & then gained a customerI have a Cingular ("The New AT&T") Blackjack Smartphone. I love the functionality and form factor. It works first as a good phone and also does my email, web surfing, schedule, etc...No complaints. It worked all through China (Beijing, Hainan & Hong Kong) and Israel and the US without a problem. Highly Recommended.
Until.This.Trip.
On my way to India, I had a layover in London. When I got off the plane, my phone decided to emulate a brick. I saw lots of AT&T ads on how they cover London. However no joy. I powercycled the phone. I turned the radio on & off. No joy. With only a few hours in London, I decided to bag it until I got to Bangalore. However it was the same brick in India. No joy in Mudville for this Blackjack.
Just to show that I was not expecting too much, I used the AT&T “Travelers Guide” at http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/roaming/travel-guide.jsp (that will list out the local carriers, rates, services and potential discounts). Very handy. Everywhere I was or am going has some sort of coverage.
Up until now, I was annoyed but not seriously torqued. After all, I thought I would just call Cingular/ATT from the hotel in Bangalore and figure this out. Then the madness began.
Going over the web site http://www.wireless.att.com/ for support info, all l could readily find was a US toll free number and a chat line. While I suspected the toll free number was blocked from int'l calls, I gave it a try (1-800-331-0500). The result only confirmed my fear about the toll free number being blocked. Argh.
I then tried the online chat help. This became a recursive nightmare of super-useless words. The tech continously kept refering me to the same 1-800 number that was blocked and would not admit to an int'l number existing. While I *was* getting very frustrated (to the point of buying out my contract once I got home), I kept a log and here it is (only edited to obfuscate my employer & myself). Let me know if I was out of line or expected too much. I admit to getting annoyed, but thought it stayed civil.
At this point, I closed the chat window and fumed mighty fumes.
After a few minutes, I got a hold of my wife via MSN Messenger and asked her to call stateside and get the int'l number. She had it in moments and then IM'ed it back. Once I had the magic int'l number (1-916-843-4685 <- keep that number with you!), I got a hold of a human being and explained my problem.
Cingular/AT&T Mgmt - if any of you are listening, you owe that woman a raise. She was awesome. We quickly went through the diagnostics and got my phone up & running in 5 minutes. Previously you had lost me to the point I was going to buy out my contract and NEVER even spell AT&T again. You were dead to me. However the woman that helped me was outstanding.
My advice at this point? Be very obvious on your web sites and give your chatline helpdesk the int'l number! Why pay someone for support if they are not given the info or tools for the job? 8月11日 traveling againI was home for only a couple of weeks this time. I am now in India for several days and then I will be in London. The India trip will cover Bangalore, Hyderaband and Dehli. While the hotels are very nice, I am eager to get to the job sites. Flying from Seattle to Bangalore makes for a very long flight. 7月31日 picturesI've the chance to do some travel recently and this seems like a better way to show the pictures. I've managed to visit China and Israel while on business. Some of the pictures seem a bit too "laid back" for work - but they are typically taken while rushing from one site to another or during a lull in the action. |
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