Another example of how not to sell your car on Craigslist

I feel bad for people who try to sell their beater car on Craigslist but possess an active honesty gene that gets in the way. After reading this ad I’m convinced of three things:

1. Given all the problems including the “tented” windows, mysterious leak originating from “somewhere” and driver’s seat that leans to one side, the owner of this car should pay someone to take it off his hands.

2. The $200 he’s asking for the car was determined by the insurance premium rather than on the value of the car.

3. Love the math here. 8 Passenger Van minus seat = 6 passenger van.

It’s ads like these that keep me coming back to Craigslist for some unintentional laughs.

One of the Best Fark Photoshops

You probably need to be a regular reader of Fark.com to get many of these these, but if you are you’re in for a treat. The theme for this contest is to Photoshop “Movie posters that Fark clichés could have improved”. One of the best contests in ages.

Link to list of Fark cliches

Dell’s Big Button

Dell has been taking a beating lately for it’s declining customer service. It used to be that Dell had some of the best customer support in the business. I remember when Consumer Reports along with most PC related magazines ranked it near the top with Apple for years and years.

So if you’re Dell how do you go about fixing some of these problems? Well, you can start a blog and start to interact with your customers more than you have in the past. One of the main categories on the Dell blog is Customer Experience. From what I can tell the blog is updated by people who do care about their customers and are willing to listen to feedback and criticism. That they allow comments is great.

One more thing you can do is make it easy for customers to contact you when you run into problems. It’s frustrating when a company makes it easy to contact sales but makes it impossible when you need assistance. So kudos to Dell for putting a big blue button on their homepage that says, “Unresolved Issues”. This is good but it could be better. Unless you read fine print you’ll click on the button and then on “Customer Support” or “Technical Support” areas which then present you with online form to fill out. I can’t stand these forms. When I need help I want it now and don’t want to wait a day or two for a generic response.

So if I click on the big blue button how many clicks does it take before I find a phone number to call? Four clicks was the best I could do. There are so many options that it’s easy to take off in the wrong direction. It appears someone at Dell suggested a big blue button would give the appearance that we care and they ran with it. It’s better than nothing but there’s a lot of room for improvement here.

Mad World

One of my favorite activities to do is take one of the kids to Starbucks for hot chocolate. This past week I took my 4-year old son along. I opened the door for him and he ran straight to the counter and put his chin on it. At eye level was a cookie which he stood and stared at until I decided to get it for him. I ordered us both a hot chocolate and we sat down. His small legs dangled over the chair as he could barely see over the table. He couldn’t have been happier as he munched down his cookie. He reminded me several time that this was “his own” hot chocolate and I was reminded how many times Kim and I ask our three kids to share things. Getting your own drink, dessert, or hot chocolate is a big deal to them.

As we sat there at Starbucks enjoying our drink the song “Mad World” came over the speakers. I’ve liked that song for a while but it was a strange time to hear this song. I thought to myself, “No, being around an upbeat 4-year old makes the world feel far from mad”

Jeff Bezos “Wish List” on Amazon

Dave Winer links to Jeff Bezo’s Wish List which includes a Darth Vader Lamp among a few other interesting items. I wonder if anyone has come across Jeff’s list, felt sorry for him over the Amazon stock price, and decided to pick up the tab for say, the Hullabaloo game? Probably not.

If I were to interview for a job at Amazon I’d try to find out with whom and see if they have a “Wish List”. Could make for good small talk and would no doubt make the interview more interesting. “Hey, I saw you have the Golden Girls DVD set in your Wish List…..”

How quickly do search engines find a new blog?

I started a new blog just over a week ago called BuzzTips. I wanted to see how the search engines had indexed my blog and see how easy that made it for people to get to my site by typing in ‘buzztips’. Here are a few impressions based solely on this one search:

Microsoft Live Search – Does a pretty good job, listing my blog as the third result. Also links back several times to this blog. Not too bad.

Google – Nails it on the first first result and hits my RSS feeds as the 2nd result. Google’s index also seems the most up-to-date.

Ask – Just terrible. Must have a very tiny index since it finds only 2 pages of results, none of which are my blog.

IceRocket – A mixed bag here. The web search does a great job at finding my blog, as good as Google. But their Blog search finds nothing under ‘buzztips’ where I’d expect to find it.

Doing this quick test reminds me why Google still dominates. Their results are presented quickly, neatly, and feel like they were gathered recently. It’s quite clear that Google’s competitors are happy with merely making their search a near carbon copy of Google’s. Google is setting the design for search for nearly everyone. Only Microsoft Live Search felt any different than the others which I see as a good thing.

What search engine do you use?

24 is Back!

To celebrate the return of Jack Bauer, here are a few of my favorite 24 related links.

Dave Barry’s 24 Blog

Day 6 Motivational Posters

Summaries from Season 5

TorrentSpy

Past seasons on DVD from Amazon

Fark.com 24 Discussion

NY Times says beware the iPhone handcuffs

Excellent article by Randall Stross describes a few of the ways Apple is locking down the iPhone much the same way they have done with the iPod. I’m not all that interested in the phone since it only works on Cingular’s network, although I do own an iPod. I don’t purchase music from iTunes because of DRM and the music just sounds terrible in AAC format. I’d much rather buy the CD and rip it using a higher quality bit rate.

One of my friends purchases his music from iTunes and then copies it to CD where he can rip it into the format of his choice. That seems like an awful convoluted way to get my music in the format I desire. I like the idea of having a backup CD in case my drive were to crash. I assume I can backup my iTunes folders but the manner and strange folder structure they use is far from being user friendly.

The iPod is a great device. Although I have yet to purchase any iTunes music I have purchased several audiobooks from the iTunes store. My rationale is that, unlike music, I listen to the books once rather than time after time. I don’t need to move the audio books around to my other devices nor do I care if they’re backed up. There doesn’t seem to be a “one size fits all” solution to this DRM mess. For now I’ll continue to purchase CDs and do the ripping myself.

Failure to Round

I don’t know why but whenever I’m driving down highway 167, I nearly always notice the road sign that says failure to buckle up will result in a fine of $101. I believe that people should buckle up and if they don’t, they should be fined. But it’s the amount that seems strange to me. It’s as if the Washington State Supreme Court has never heard of the rounding concept. Why not just make it a hundred bucks even and call it a day?

I looked up the Washington State Highway Patrol website to see if this was just a one time oversight. What I found is the lack of rounding fines is the rule rather than the exception. But there are a few where simplicity won out and were rounded such as Second Degree Negligent Driving ($250), No Valid Driver’s License ($250, Failure to yield the right of way on approach of emergency vehicle ($500), and Failure to provide proof of motor vehicle insurance ($250). Hmmm….maybe any fine that’s a multiple of $250 gets rounded? There are a couple more parking fines that run $80 or $90 as well but the majority of fines aren’t so neat and tidy. Here are a few of my favorite infractions and fines that seem to be determined by rolling a set of Yahtzee dice:

Intoxication in State Park Areas – $137 (Don’t people head to parks to get wasted? Let’s call it $140 and be done with it.)

1st Offense Load Violation – $52 (If we milk ’em for 2 bucks more we can afford that cool new radar gun)

2nd Offense Load Violation – $97 (One might assume a 2nd violation would be double the 1st violation? Nope!)

3rd Offense Load Violation – $112 (Again, by the 3rd offense I’d assume they are deliberately trying to break the law, yet they receive a volume discount. You don’t send a strong message by offering only a slightly higher fine than than the 2nd offense. From here on out it’s “break the same law 3 times get the forth violation for free”)

Wrong way on Freeway – $177 (This is the fine of the month special. This is the same amount as driving 35 mph over the posted speed limit. My guess is going down the freeway in the wrong direction is often bundled together with a “Driving while intoxicated” and “Open container” in a combo-meal type fashion.

Sometimes face to face customer service trumps lowest price

I normally default to buying most things online. There are very few things outside of clothing and food that I don’t look online first to purchase. But this week I was reminded how much value a skilled and informed sales person can provide.

I know very little about cameras and even less about photography. I carry around a Canon A80 that I never take off “auto” mode. In fact, I don’t even know what the modes do for the most part. But one of my coworkers is looking to purchase a digital SLR camera and so I tagged along hoping I might learning something.

So we walked over to the downtown Kits Camera location. We were immediately approached by a young man who asked what he could do for us. He listened to all our newbie questions without making us feel stupid. He didn’t try to sell us the most expensive equipment in the store. In fact, he listened to us for the first little while before even pulling a camera off the shelf. He compared several models and discussed several of the features that might interest us. I learned more about cameras in 20 minutes than I came into the store with. He pulled several models off the shelf for us to hold and test.

We asked him what camera he used and he told us why he likes his camera. He also told us about the camera his father uses. The information he gave us that day was more valuable than what I’ve been able to gather on the many photography enthusiast websites like Steve’s. Not that those sites don’t have value but for a person who is new to digital photography the hands on, face to face interaction was a lot more valuable for me.

I’ve been looking at the Nikon D40 as my first DSLR down the road. Even if I could find it at a cheaper price online I’ll be going back to Kits when it comes time to buy.