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Archive for February, 2007
SpinvoxI was watching the local news the other night and they talked about a service called Spinvox where your emails are transcribed as text messages. I got so excited when heard that. You see, I hate listening to voicemails. I sometimes know that the person just called to say “I’m on my way” or to say hi. But I still have that voicemail icon on my phone so I have to call my voicemail, listen to the voicemail and then delete it. Or what’s worse, people tend to ramble on the voicemails and you have to listen to the whole thing. So I went to the spinvox website (kind of a creepy site) and I saw that they are a UK company about to launch the service in the US. I emailed them and asked when it’d be ready and they told me that if I wanted I could be a part of their beta test in the US. I agreed and I received activation instructions. And you know what? It works amazingly well. I’ve had a couple of people call my phone and I sent them to voicemail. Less than a minute later I had a text message with the contents of the voicemail. For example: “Hi David. it’s Heather. Just thought I’d call & say hi. Talk to you later, bye.” Punctuation and all. Apparently they have a couple call centers with people who just transcribe voicemails as soon as they are recorded. I don’t know how much this is going to cost, but if it’s not expensive, I can imagine getting it. Now if they could only do the same with my voicemail at work …. Update 3/8/07: I’m allowed to “give away” 5 free accounts on Spinvox so if you know me, and I know you, drop me a note and I’ll tell you what to do.
Don’t tell me what kind of day to have!It’s time to renew my Disney World annual pass. It’s expensive but I get my money’s worth. So I call, I wait on hold listening to the Mickey Mouse march song for a couple of minutes and I get disconnected. I call back and I spend three minutes listening to the zippididoodah song and someone finally answers the phone. I give her all my information and then she says “and there is a $3 shipping charge.” What? I’m giving you a few hundred dollars and you want to milk $3 out of me? I didn’t put it in exactly those words but I let her know my point of view. She says “well, you can do it in person at any of the parks or Downtown Disney.” I ask “if I pay you $3, do you mail me my pass or some kind of voucher?” And she explains that they send me a “certificate” and then I have to go to the parks and exchange it for the actual pass. So let me get this straight. I can pay $3, wait in line, and get my pass. Or I can just wait in exact same line and get my pass. Hmmm. Which one did I choose? Of course, the call ended with the usual “have a magical day!”
1 year (and 1 day) in OrlandoI just came across this picture of me on the Intertubes which happened exactly one year ago funny enough.
I enjoy my normal selfJosh is addicted to World of Warcraft. Apparently people disappear from public life once they start playing and he is apparently not an exception. I’m so bored tonight that I thought I’d try it. I go on the website, download the downloader application and while it downloads I start reading the quick-start guide. It explains that the game has 2 rival sides and that if your friends play on one side and you want to be able to communicate with them, that you choose the same side. Alright, whatever. I go ahead and text Josh: “Horde or Alliance?” and he writes back “all on kel thuzad.” Er…. What?
My journey ended before it started.
Lowe’s rocksWhenever I’ve needed something for home-related projects, I’ve always gone to Home Depot. No reason why. It’s just as convenient for me to get there than to get to Lowe’s. I guess I just think “project” and “Home Depot” comes to mind. But last night I thought I’d try Lowe’s. Again, no reason, just to see what they had since I needed some shelves and a shovel. What a difference! You actually see employees at Lowe’s. They are there, available to you! Not just that, but they actually smile, greet you and ask you if they can help you find anything or if you have any questions. Holy customer service, Batman! At the end of my visit, I decided that I wanted to buy this set of 3 palm trees to plant on my front yard. The problem? The whole thing was so heavy! A few minutes later two wonderful people from Customer Service came and in between jokes and laughs, the palm trees were in the back of my Jeep. I ended up spending a couple of hundred dollars and yet I left with a smile on my face.
You Tube PranksAs a self-declared You Tube addict, I decided to look up some pranks that people have recorded and posted. Here are some of my favorites: What happens when you call up 2 Chinese restaurants and get them to talk to each other? What happens when you call C-SPAN and prank them? How to give anyone a heart attack Public humiliation is always funny as long as it’s not you (the second set of pranks, around the 5 min mark, is great too) And finally, a prank that makes me double in laughter every single time I watch it
Microsoft re-designs the iPod packagingThis is not just absolutely brilliant but also a real internal Microsoft video.
La casaI’m almost done moving into my new house! The past few weeks were spent painting the walls before moving in any furniture and then slowly moving boxes and junk into the house. The final move will happen this weekend when we’ll move the couch, beds and other big things. What colors were the walls painted? A lot of colors! Now, I didn’t want the house to look like a circus, but I also didn’t want white walls nor did I want the same color through the whole house. So what I did was grab one of the floor boards and take it to Home Depot. There, I went to one of their magical color matching machines, stuck the floor board in it and tell it to match its color. Once it had the color of the floor, I told it to give me colors that matched that color. It selected several. Among all of the colors it showed, we liked this somewhat dark green:
That is a view of the front entrance hallway, kitchen and part of the living room. Two walls in the living room where painted with the dark green. One of the walls is shared by both the living room and the kitchen. The rest of the walls, in other words, the kitchen walls as well as the entrance hallway and the wall that you see on the right which goes all the way down to the bedrooms, is a very very light green, it’s almost white, but it goes great with the dark green that we chose. It’s impossible to tell on the picture, but trust me, it’s a super light green. The house also has a 1 foot wide ledge around most of the house. We painted that ledge in the livingroom/entrance area the same dark green as the living room. The ledge also wraps around into the kitchen, so we brought the dark green down a small wall in the kitchen by the fridge. This brings both shades of green together. Then we told the computer to choose colors that coordinated with the dark green. Out of all of the colors that it showed, we chose a greyish blue for the 2 “guest” bedrooms:
And a brown for the master bedroom
The ledge in the master bedroom is a brown 2 shades darker than the wall color. Both of those bedroom colors look really nice in person and they go great with the white baseboard, blinds, closet doors, etc. I know the pictures show some paint imperfections, but the paint was still a bit wet when I took those pictures and we then had to go around the house and do some touch ups here and there. Everything is looking great now and it’s ready to be lived in! I’m OKLast night several severe storms and even tornadoes came through the central Florida area. I of course slept through the whole thing, I’m awesome when it comes to sleeping through anything. Apparently there was some damage about an hour north of Orlando and a bit of damage also about half hour South of Orlando, but nothing in my area. I have received several calls and emails today, and I appreciate your concern.
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