The answer is simple, you can make it yourself. I didn’t purchase the latest “Energy Star” model from my local appliance store, in fact I bought it at my local lumber and hardware store. If you haven’t put two and two together yet, I built a clothsline in my back yard.

For about $30 in lumber and hardware, and a bit of manual labor to build and install it, I have a new clothesline that can hold 3 loads of laundry at a time. It costs me nothing in energy to use since it is 100% solar and wind powered, and there are no expensive parts to wear out over time. I could replace the whole thing for less than the average cost of a single part on my traditional dryer.

I sat down and did some estimating the other day and figured my electric clothes dryer is costing $.71 or more per load of laundry. Now our electricity rate is fairly cheap here, but several things factored into this estimate. To start with, here are some facts used for my calculations:

• Electric rates for me are between between $.075 and $.09 per kWh at summer rates with all the taxes and various fees added in. Since I always like to estimate high when figuing out how much an appliance will cost me to run, I’ll use the higher side of the average or $.085.
• A typical dryer is rated for 4400 watts, meaning it will use 4.4 kWh during when used for an hour, or (4.4 x $.085) $.375 per hour
• Our washer has a higher capacity than our dryer, and we rarely remember to take this into account when loading the washer. Therefore it normally takes at least 1.5 drying cycles to fully dry a load. A cycle on the dryer is about an hour, so we average 1.5 hours per load, or (1.5 x $.375) $.56 in electricity per load.
• The less tangible cost (which I’m primarily just guessing at) is the cooling cost for the house in general. The room is noticibly warmer when running the dryer. This tells me a couple of things. First the obvious, the dryer is warming the air around it. Its a big heater in a box. Second, the less obvious, it is taking air I’m paying to cool, warming it up, and shoving it outside. This also means it is pulling warmer air from the outside back into the house. I’m estimating it costs at least $.15 per load or more for this “hidden” cooling cost.

The clothes line cost me about $35 to build between the lumber, hardware, and supplies (clothes pins and a clothes pin bag) to get started. At $.71 per load of laundry, that will take 49 loads to break even. At 7 loads of laundry per week, that is only 7 weeks until it starts leaving money in my pocket. I estimate if I can use it for 6 months out of the year, that $35 investment will return around $110 in savings. For those of you doing the math, you may say “Why not $130?” Well the reason for this is it is only $.71 per load during the hottest summer weeks, typically most of July and August, when we use the air conditioners. When the temperature is under 78 degrees or so, we just leave the windows open at night to cool the house and close it up during the day. The house stays nice and comfortable without any additional cooling except for a couple of fans to keep the air moving around a bit.

My only concern so far is that I used the cheap plastic clothsline cord. It seems to sag a bit under heavy load, and I’ve already had to tighten it once as it has stretched. What I may end up doing is replacing it with the plastic-coated steel cable. It’ll only cost another $5-6 dollars to do so, and I probalby should have used it to start with. I used the plastic cord to start with as it was easier to work with. Just cut it with a knife and tie it to the eye-bolt instead of needing bolt cutters to cut it and special cable clamps to secure it.

I’m considering investigating something to keep the savings (and environmental friendlieness) going in the winter. Essentially this would mean a drying rack or line inside for the passive drying, or venting the electric (never try this with gas!) dryer indoors. The drying rack or line would give the benefit of no extra heat required to dry the clothes, though it would be much much slower due to the lower temperature and less moving air. Venting the dryer indoors (with proper lint capturing measures taken) would still use the extra energy to heat, however that heat would be used indoors, lessening the load on the main heating system as well as eliminating the intake of cold air to replace the hot air being vented outside. Both of these systems however have the disadvantage of adding the extra moisture to the air. This can be good in small quantities, but I’m concerned that it could be too much for my family’s laundry load. While I haven’t weighed a load of laundry pre- and post-drying, I’ve read it can be a gallon of water or more per load! That would be a lot of extra moisture in the air. I have read about “spin dryers” that work like the washer’s spin cycle on steroids and “throws” out most of the water. From there it only takes a little while on a drying rack or under half the time in the traditional dryer. I’ll have to post more as the winter approaches.

When I opened up the front cover of the book, I saw something I realized I hadn’t seen in quite a long time, the due-date log.

The little flap of paper glued into the front of all library books, upon which the librarian would stamp or sometimes write in the due date when the book was loaned.  It brought back memories of being the first or second person to check out a book when I was a kid and being excited that I was able to get and read it so quickly.  Or just as memorable as being the last due-date on a page of the due dates, with sometimes 2 or 3 completely filled sheets underneath, and realizing how much joy this book has brought to dozens of people since the library started loaning it.  It could also tell you something about the previous borrowers, such as how well they cared for the book.  If I was the 3rd or 4th person to check it out and it was already damaged, I could tell at least one of those people had little respect for books, and likewise if the book was still in decent shape after a dozen or more uses, the previous readers were very respectful of the library and its books.

Technology in libraries has improved a lot.  It is wonderful being able to log into the library’s catalog with the click of the mouse at home or work if I want to find a particular book.  I can reserve it without driving in, even if it is at another library in the area rather than my own.  This is both convenient for me, and friendlier to the environment as I don’t waste gas to find out it isn’t there.  I get an e-mail from the library when any requested books are available too, and it doesn’t take more of the librarian’s valuable time to manually send a letter or call to inform me.  Inside the library it is faster to find something since the card catalogs have been replaced with computers, and you can search on far more terms than just title or author.

While overall I think the library experience has been vastly improved by the introduction of electronic recordkeeping, I’ll still hold a special place in my memory for the beloved due date reminder stamp.  This is one aspect of the library I am truly sorry my children will never know.

That said, I have found a huge oversight on Microsoft’s part, supporting old printers.  I have an older HP Laserjet 4L in my garage attached to my Linux server.  It is shared to the network using CUPS.  In Windows XP they had drivers included for that printer, so I just set up a new printer, pointed it at the right network address, and selected the driver and was up and running.  Piece of cake!  Not so with Windows 7.

I tried to set up the printer on Windows 7 and I noticed the list of available printers is very small, and my printer was nowhere to be found.  No big deal I thought, I’ll go find the Generic Post Script driver and use that, since CUPS and my printer work just fine that way.  Again, nowhere to be found.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?  From what I read it appears Vista suffers from the same shortcoming.  I can understand they need to let go of legacy hardware at some point.  Interfaces change, and the wider range of hardware that needs to be supported just holds back advancement and introduces more opportunities for bugs to show up.

The problem here is I don’t even need to directly interface to the printer.  All I need is a postscript file generated and sent across the wire, where the print server will take care of the rest of it.  There is no reason for the generic post script driver to not be included with the OS since it is non-hardware-specific.  I’m communicating using Internet Printing Protocol, which Windows 7 knows how to do.  I don’t need any fancy proprietary USB driver that should never have been supported in the first place.

With the big effort being made by people across the world to be “green” this is clearly a step in the wrong direction.  If I was most any consumer I’d throw the perfectly good printer in the trash and go buy a new one.  Besides the environmental impact, Microsoft is expecting me to not only shell out $300 for the SuperDuperUltimate edition of the OS, they’re now expecting me to spend another $200-300 for a new “compatible” printer.  Upwards of $500 and another hunk of landfill space being taken up is the wrong answer!

What I did was a simple and (I think) elegant solution.  It does involve a couple of extra steps now, but I think the advantages far outweigh the drawbacks, and actually gives me some benefit over direct printing.

1. I created a directory on my Linux box acting as the CUPS server and shared it using SMB.
2. On my Windows 7 machine I connected a drive letter to it.
3. I installed the basic free edition of the CutePDF print driver, so now when I hit print it gets saved as a PDF document rather than being sent to an actual printer
4. When I want to print something, I “print” it using whatever program I normally use, then drop the generated file on the mapped drive.
5. cron runs a script (listed at bottom of post) runs every 5 minutes checking for the presence of PDF documents.  If they exist it sends them to the printer and moves them to a “printed” directory.

To me the extra step of saving the file and moving it to the print queue is a good thing.  If I want to print a page for my records, it gives me the opportunity to just keep it electronically while having the exact paper copy later if I need it.  I’ve also gone to print webpages and have it be completely screwed up when it comes out, even though the “print preview” looked good.  This way I have the opportunity to see exactly what is going to come out of the printer before it is ever on the queue.

The biggest disadvantage of this setup is it won’t work with any printing services that require direct contact with the printer, such as printing postage from the USPS website or some of those online coupon printing programs.  Luckily for those I can still use my wife’s PC.  As I said, these small disadvantages are trivial to me considering I don’t print very much, but when I need to print I can.

Hopefully this will help someone else out who wants to move to a newer Microsoft OS but doesn’t want to throw out some perfectly good hardware in the process.  It took me probably a half hour total of setup time (the print sharing and samba sharing was already set up) to get everything figured out and the script debugged.  You’ll need to extend your time if you need to install additional components that I already had setup.

Here is the bash script I use, triggered by cron every 5 minutes during normal PC usage times:

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/PrintQueue/

# Space removing portion of script lifted from #http://www.linuxconfig.org/Bash_scripting_Tutorial

DIR=”.”
# Controlling a loop with bash read command by redirecting #STDOUT as
# a STDIN to while loop
# find will not truncate filenames containing spaces

find $DIR -type f | while read file; do

# using POSIX class [:space:] to find space in the filename

if [[ "$file" = *[[:space:]]* ]]; then

# substitute space with “_” character and consequently rename #the file
mv “$file” `echo $file | tr ‘ ‘ ‘_’`
fi;

# end of while loop
done

#sleep 5

for f in $( ls ~/PrintQueue/*.pdf ); do
echo “$f”;
lpr “$f”
mv “$f” ~/PrintQueue/Printed/
done

While it was not planned, most of the completed circuits did not work the first time around.  This presented a perfect opportunity for some impromptu troubleshooting practice.  A couple of days after the workshop I breadboarded the circuit at home and made a couple of observations.  If the voltage is applied in the correct polarity, the LED must be installed in the correct polarity for it to work.  If the voltage is applied in reverse polarity, the LED will be very dim when installed correctly, and normal brightness when it is installed in reverse.  I also discovered the small green LEDs handed out for the practice circuit seem to be fairly dim in comparison to the other LEDs available.  I was also able to run 15 LEDs off of a single AA battery if I didn’t use those smaller LEDs, but only a few if I did.  I was going to try more but it was way past my bedtime and my desire for a horizontal position overrode my desire to push the circuit any further.  I want to work with Gillian to use a multimeter to determine the output voltage of the circuit, and show her how the current increases as more LEDs are added to the circuit.  I’m also curious to look up the specs of the transistor and see how many LEDs it should be able to safely drive before exceeding its safe operating current, is 15 pushing it?

Gillian’s lamp she made currently only has 5 LEDs installed, but if we replace those smaller green LEDs out with the larger green, and some more orange/red LEDs, we should be able to run at least 10 LEDs since her battery compartment holds 3 AA batteries in parallel.  We did notice the transistor tends to warm up a bit even with the 5 current LEDs, so we may be limited more by the tolerance of the transistor rather than the capacity of the power supply.

All in all we had a great time and Gillian learned quite a bit.  While she hasn’t grasped the full concept of electronics work yet, she does now know how to do basic soldering, and understands that different parts do different things, and that combining those individual components makes larger components.  We’re currently working on a basic walker robot built out of cardboard, so she’s learning how the electronic world (Arduino) can interact with the physical world.

What we’re looking at doing is getting something in the 36″ to 47″ range.  Originally we were thinking 32″, but it isn’t really any larger than our existing TV since the widescreen format changes how they’re measured.  Since part of our desire to upgrade is to be able to read the smaller text on the screen from across the room, sticking to something that doesn’t give us any additional size is kind of a waste.  Over the last few days I’ve been looking at the local stores and it seems our best bang for the buck right now will be a 42″ LCD screen.  I’ve also looked at a size chart and it seems 42″ is the right size for our room too.  That being said, it says a 27″ standard TV is about the right size for our room, and I think a 32″ would be much better.  The price difference from 42″ to 47″ seems to be a little steep right now though.

What I’m deciding now is whether it is worth the small price difference to go from 720p up to 1080p.  While the broadcasts currently aren’t at 1080p (according to local TV salesmen for what it is worth) they could be in the future, and we would also see that if we picked up a Blueray player.  Since I don’t anticipate doing that any time soon, I don’t think that is a very big deal.  The only HD input we’ll have for now is the Xbox 360, and we may decide to upgrade satellite receivers sometime down the road but that won’t be on the table for a while anyway.  Also in some research I’ve done, Dish (which is who we use) seems to have the best HDTV quality but its still not full 1080p.  I am noticing however that there doesn’t seem to be much difference at all price wise, it just depends on what models the store currently has.

The thing that is hard to keep in mind is that we may notice a difference when looking at the TV models side by side in the store, but at the end of the day when we get it home it is going to look thousands of times better than what we currently have.  Because of that little fact right there, I’m concentrating on getting the best value in the size range we want, and I am hopeful that this purchase will last us another 9 and a half years.  I guess worst case in a few years if we want to upgrade again, this would make a heck of an improvement for a TV in our bedroom…

The last 2 years I’ve volunteered to be a speaker.  Both years I’ve given an instruction on the importance of and a crash-course on revision control.  While I feel it is a subject all programmers should be more than familiar with, I wanted to do something a little different this year.

I like to stick to beginner level subjects.  While I could get into serial port and socket programming in Delphi and Java, I feel Code Camp already has a good selection of subjects for the intermediate to advanced programmers.  Since Code Camp targets all audiences, I want to give people a chance to pick up something completely new to them without falling asleep because the material is far above their experience levels.  At the same time I like to choose something I will learn from while I prepare my demonstration.   As an example, the first time I taught revision control I did it along side Jim Munn.  I knew some of the Subversion basics but branching and merging were something I hadn’t done yet.  Jim showed the attendees (including me) that part and I focused on the integration with Trac.  The following year I explored it a little more in depth and taught the whole kit and caboodle.

Here are some of the subjects I considered  for my presentation:

• Test Driven Development in Java
• Beginner’s Home Automation using Misterhouse
• AGI programming for Asterisk
• WordPress widget/plugin development
• Dojo web programming

All of those subjects are topics I’ve dabbled in on some level.  I’ve started with some basic Dojo application development for example, but I’ve worked extensively with Asterisk.  I could even combine some of the above topics, such as using a Dojo interface to a Java based Asterisk AGI program in order to interface with a home automation system that makes a WordPress blog entry when it is complete!  The fun never ends.

In the end I decided to give a beginner level presentation on developing for the Xbox 360 console.  I’m already familiar with the language required due to some projects at work, so this will make for a fun project.  It will also be something a little different and I’m hoping will help attract some of the younger audience to Code Camp that may not have attended otherwise thinking it would be all about business programming topics.

Now there is a game system that has been out for a couple of years now that is pushing the boundary on game-based exercise, the Nintendo Wii.  From the start it has involved larger scale motions with your arms instead of pushing buttons on a stationary controller, and now they’ve added the Wii Fit for full body involvement.

The Wii Fit takes fitness gaming to another level.  When you start out and configure your Mii it asks for some information such as your birthday and height.  Next it has you go through a body test which checks your weight and your balance.  It then shows you your BMI and how far off-center your balance is, along with tips on how to adjust it and the benefits of doing so.  From there it takes you to a screen where you can select the type of activity you want to perform, Yoga, Aerobics, Strength, and Balance games.

Each of the categories has only a few exercises you can perform, and a whole bunch of exercises that you can’t view.  Yoga starts out with a simple breathing exercise, and a half-moon pose.  As you perform the poses it shows you your current center of balance on screen with a designated area you need to maintain.  The balance board is extremely sensitive and it doesn’t take much in order to move the balance indicator out of bounds.  The on-screen trainer offers words of encouragement as well as gentle reminders to maintain your balance if you are unsteady.

The aerobics games are fun.  The exercises originally open include running in place (Wii Remote in pocket, not on the balance board), and a step-aerobic dance routine where you step on and off the board in time with music while following the on-screen pattern.  Also open is the infamous Hula Hoop game where you swirl your hips as if you were using an actual hula hoop and bend to either direction as more hoops are tossed to you.

Strength training starts out with torso twists and push-ups with side planks.  The balance board watches your balance on the twists, and watches the pressue while doing the push-ups and planks.  After a while other exercises are opened up, such as a crunch-style leg lift (I don’t remember the exact name of it at the moment) and you start with your feet resting on the balance board, and lift them off and return as you’re following the movement.

The balance games are also quite a bit of fun.  One game involves standing on the board and leaning back and forth to hit a soccer ball with your head while avoiding shoes and stuffed panda heads (PVP reference maybe?) which is actually a lot harder than it appears.  There is a balance board game where you have several marbles on boards of varying shapes with holes.  You move the board to drop the marbles through the holes without making them fall off the edge.

As you play the games and perform the activities you get points in your piggy bank based on the number of minutes it takes to perform.  As you build up a balance and become more skilled at the activities it unlocks more of them for you to select.  I went through most of the activities originally open to me over a period of about 45 minutes, and earned 30 minutes of activity time.

My only complaint at this point is the pause time in between activities, and after browsing the ‘Net it appears I’m not alone.  If you could set up a circuit of a half dozen exercises or so it would make it much easier to get your heart rate up and keep it there, but as it is now there is at least 1 minute in between each exercise as you have to select each one individually by going back to the menu.  Since the Wii is connected to the Internet, I’m hoping Nintendo will listen to the complaints and offer an update to the game in order to offer this option.  With that being said, after completing a session I have muscles that are sore that I do not hit during my workouts at the gym, so I’m getting a more complete body workout.

There are those out there who put the Wii Fit down based on several factors.

• Price: It is $80 if you find it on sale.  This is only about $20 more than most console games these days anyway, and it includes a pretty sophisticated piece of hardware.  To put it into perspective that is only 2 nights of eating out at a restaurant with the family, or giving up a $3.50 daily FiveBucks coffee on the way to work for roughly a month.  I was told by a personal trainer a few years back that as a person ages, being overweight increases healthcare costs by several thousand dollars per year.  The math makes it look pretty cheap to me.
• Playing games instead of hitting the gym: They have a point here, but any exercise is better than no exercise.  Coupled with a stigma that many over-weight people have about going to a gym full of “skinny people,” it makes home workouts a good choice.  This is the reason workout videos are so successful.  The Wii has the advantage of not only showing you the correct moves, but can somewhat monitor it based on balance and other factors to ensure that good form is being followed.  Not to mention a gym membership is expensive monthly, and there is usually a signup fee as well.  You can get a Wii console along with a Wii Fit for far less than a new gym membership would cost over the course of a year.  In my case I have a killer deal for my gym membership since I’ve been grandfathered in so it is another tool at my disposal.
• Playing games instead of going outside for a walk:  Again this is just another option to workout at home.  For parents with small kids, it is hard to find time to go outside and walk for half an hour to an hour alone.  Couple this with bad weather that makes it difficult if not near impossible to take the kids along, indoor workouts are the best fit.
• Using a video game instead of a “real” piece of exercise equipment: One word sums this up – Monotony.  Sure you could pick up an exercise bike or treadmill (for far more money for a decent one) but you’re limited to the one and only exercise you can do on it.  Unitaskers suck.  With the Wii Fit, there are many different activities in the game itself, and there are already other games coming out that use the balance board too.  Besides the boredom of doing the same thing all the time, the body also becomes accustomed to the routine and needs a periodic change to keep it in calorie burning mode.

In my opinion, anything that helps my family get up and be more active is a good thing.  I’m glad we decided to pick up the Wii Fit, and I’m looking forward to the additional edge it’ll give me in working towards my goals.

Losing weight is the same as paying down debt/saving money in that there is only one way to do it. Calories in vs. Calories out, just like money in vs. money out. When working to lose weight you must burn more calories than you eat, this creates a deficit and your body will burn fat (and lean mass if you aren’t careful) to make up that difference in what it needs to operate. Just like your debt, where you spend less than you earn so that the extra can be applied to payments or to savings if you’ve paid everything off.

The Bodybugg is a little device worn on your arm that does nothing but sit there and monitor the calorie burn rate of your body at any given point in time. To do this it uses a variety of sensors including an accelerometer, a couple of temperature sensors, and a sensor to read galvanic skin response (skin moisture level.) You wear it 24 hours a day, minus any time where it may be exposed to water, such as showering and swimming.  The Bodybugg ties my health and fitness goals to my geek obsession with gadgets.

The device itself has no indication of current rate, or any other feedback mechanism other than to warn when the logging memory is full (about a weeks worth of data can be stored) or when the AAA battery is getting low. In order to view the data, you have to connect it via USB (or a wireless communicator) to the computer and upload its data to the Bodybugg website.

Once the data is up on the website, this is where the real power of the system becomes apparent. You now can see how many calories you’ve burned so far today, as well as the number of steps taken and minutes of physical activity (when calories per minute are above a certain threshold.) This is great, but doesn’t this only provide half of the equation for losing weight (calories burned – calories eaten = calorie balance?)

Yes, that only covers the burned half of the equation. The website also has a food tracking system built in as well. It is set up for you to enter your food consumed for Breakfast, AM Snack, Lunch, PM Snack, Dinner, and Evening Snack. It includes a very extensive calorie database, so most foods you eat will be on there. If not, it allows you to enter your own foods based on the information found on the nutrition information label. You now have the calories eaten portion solved.

The system takes it one step further and you enter in your current and goal weights, and it will calculate it all out for you. This means if you want to lose 10 lbs in 10 weeks, you need to lose 1 lb per week. Since one pound = approximately 3600 calories, that means you need to eat 3600 calories per week less than you’re burning, or an approximately 500 calories per day deficit. You can adjust the different factors such as increasing the daily deficit and see how quickly you can lose that 10 lbs, or how much more you could lose in the same time frame.

When you set a new goal, it goes through a wizard asking you several pieces of information, including your activity level, your weight/height, and your preferred diet profile. Based on this information it generates a diet plan for you and sets your target burn and consume goals so you can see at a glance exactly where you are for the day.

The version of the armband I have is the V1/V2, and they just came out with a V3, which is smaller, and is black instead of grey. While I don’t see the information directly on their website, from what I’ve read from other sources it has upgraded sensors that will be used sometime in the future to increase the accuracy of the device even more than it already is.

The key to the Bodybugg is to work the program. If you upload the data often, especially before indulging in any extra eating, you will be able to take the most advantage of it. If I’ve burned extra calories during the day and maybe have eaten less than anticipated, I can see that it is OK some nights to have an extra snack, where others I need to just have a glass of water and forget about it. If you don’t upload it often, and don’t enter your food in, its slightly better than the guessing game you’re playing right now.

While the Bodybugg is expensive at $250 (or more depending on the accessories and subscription length,) it is well worth the price if you’re willing to put the work into the program. I’ve had my Bodybugg for several years, and have used it off and on. When I use it and actually follow my advice in the previous paragraph, it does wonders. My only problem I’ve had with it is I’ve been lazy and have not followed the program. Since I have a long-term goal in place, I’m confident this time I’ll make the most of it. Like any piece of exercise gear, if you use it properly you will see great results, but if you neglect it like the exercise bike in the basement, you’ll get the same benefits the bike provides. The bottom line is when you use it properly, you won’t find a better tool to assist you in reaching your weight loss goals.

There has been more than enough warning between the press and the non-stop tickers running across the bottom of the screen. In fact the other day we were watching TV and my wife asked me to rewind it so she could see something. Turns out she caught the tail end of a dense fog advisory and wanted to see what it was. Normally these important messages catch the eye, but due to the DTV ticker, we almost didn’t see the weather warning. Since the primary purpose of the public allowing these stations the bandwidth is for public service and warnings, it is kind of ironic that they are defeating the purpose right now.

A couple of weeks ago I was having issues with my satellite TV receiver, so I called my provider Dish Network. I got right in to a representative that was awesome. I explained to him up front the troubleshooting steps I had already done, and he thanked me for it! I couldn’t believe it, most of the time they say they need to walk through the steps in a specific order and make me go through it again. I thanked him for taking my word, and he said he’d never had someone call in that had gone through everything like that before. I explained I used to be an installer so I was used to going through it. He then had me walk through one more step that I didn’t think to do, and it still didn’t work. He shipped me a replacement receiver and that was the end of that.

When the replacement receiver arrived, the instructions said to plug it in, go through some setup, and once the demo channel is available to go online and activate the new receiver. “Great!” I thought, “I can do this on my own without having to wait on hold.” I hooked it up and turned it on, but it wouldn’t go past the “Please connect a valid phone line” error. I don’t have a landline, and there was no way to cancel the error without it validating the phone connection. I called support and was connected to what I’m pretty sure was an Indian call center. The lady on the other end of the phone had such a thick accent I could barely understand her. She spoke with very bad English grammar (“Please be on hold while I look this for you.”) She was obviously scripted as she wouldn’t use common sense and deviate away from any kind of questioning. She started to tell me that my bill would go up for not having the phone line, and I had to explain to her that I haven’t had a phone line connected for over a year. I finally convinced her that it was a replacement receiver so that nothing should be changing on my bill. Then she told me it should be activated in 15-20 minutes. I asked her what receiver serial number she was activating, and sure enough it was the old receiver! I gave her the new information and she removed my old one and put the new one in its place. I was so frustrated by the time I got off the phone that I was tempted to just call back and tell them to cancel my account and send me boxes to return my receivers.

20 minutes later, I still didn’t have my channels available, so I called back. I expected to go through the same horrible service, but this time a gentleman answered as “advanced technical support.” He was easy to understand and pleasant! I asked him if he was in an American call center and he said he was. I explained what I had been through and he looked up my account. He said the former rep entered in the information, but never “saved” it so the activation signal was never sent. He put me on hold for about 45 seconds, and I had picture before he was back on the line. Excellent! Talk about a night and day difference. That shows the difference between getting a representative who is knowledgeable and one that is scripted.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with outsourced technical support, IF and ONLY IF they are properly trained and can do the same quality of job as the domestic call centers can do. I’ve reached Indian call centers for other companies before and while the thick accent is sometimes a problem, they have been very knowledgeable and knew how to get the job done. I can deal with an accent as long as I’m communicating with an intelligent and/or properly trained person behind the accent. This particular incident though is a perfect example of how badly outsourcing can go since it shows a stark contrast between domestic and outsourced call centers working at/for the same company.

Another pet peeve of mine is when a support representative doesn’t take the time to understand what the problem really is. In this case, I sent an e-mail support ticket to Microsoft Xbox Live support. With our 360 console we received the game Uno and we like to play online with other players rather than single-player against the computer. Since I pre-registered my gamertag I don’t qualify to get the normal 30 day free trial of Live Gold (way to drop the ball on that one, Microsoft!) however I was able to play Uno online with my free Silver account. We registered my wife for a Gold account on the free trial, and I hadn’t had a chance to play for a few days. I went to get on and it told me my account was not allowed to play online. I switched to her account and it worked fine. So I wrote an e-mail support request explaining that I had a silver account and was able to play, and all of a sudden I can no longer play. I included that it works fine on my wife’s Gold account, and I was concerned that it was a problem with my account and didn’t want to upgrade to Gold until I was sure the issue was resolved. I did some more searching online and discovered it was a holiday promotion that ended with the new year. Ok, problem solved, I now know why I was no longer able to play.

The next day I got a response back from a Microsoft representative that had a boiler-plate explanation of the differences between a Silver and Gold account. They didn’t even read the request! They skimmed for a couple of keywords and fired back a form letter. I replied back and (without trying to sound too much like a jerk, but I probably failed there) suggested that next time the representative should actually read the request in full before sending an incorrect response.  I re-iterated that I said I knew the difference, and was asking why it worked then all of a sudden failed.  I explained that the response he sent had nothing to do with answering my question. The response he sent me was a complete support failure. It wasn’t that I was requesting something that couldn’t (for whatever reason) be done, it was that they simply didn’t listen to (read in this case) what the customer was asking.