Monthly Archives: October 2007

links for 2007-10-15

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links for 2007-10-13

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DonorsChoose Update

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I posted earlier this week about DonorsChoose, which is a service that helps teachers raise money for projects.  One thing I wasn’t clear about is how the donated proceeds are handled, but today I read Fred Wilson’s post about his DonorsChoose challenge and he offered this useful tidbit of info:

I want to emphasize something that most of you probably don’t know
about Donor’s Choose. The public school teachers use the Donor’s Choose
procurement system to "buy" the supplies they need. Their shopping cart
becomes the "cause" that is funded, and when the total is reached, the
supplies are purchased by Donors Choose and sent to the teacher’s
classroom. This is not about sending money to teachers. This is about
sending supplies to classrooms.

That makes a lot of sense to me, and I’m sure it quells the misgivings of some potential donors who don’t want their funds to mysteriously morph into a trip to the ice cream shop for 30 kids.  So, if you were thinking about taking part in my challenge and had some second thoughts here’s your chance to help some teachers in Winston-Salem do better for their students. 

Lowder’s Lewisville Challenge

US State Department’s Official Blog

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The US State Department has an official blog that they’ve named DipNote.  I’m assuming that the "Dip" is short for "Diplomat" but given that to at least one generation of Americans the term "dip" is slang for a stupid person it’s an interesting name choice. 

Anyhow, as Erin Teeling at the Bivings Report points out the folks at State have opted to allow comments on the blog that appear to be un-moderated.  From Bivings:

What I found incredibly surprising was that the blog actually allows comments.
And they don’t appear to be censored.  After a quick scan of the
comments on several blog posts, I realized that both positive comments and comments critical of the State Department or US Government are freely flowing.  Here’s an example–a comment that appeared on a post about Burma.

Roy in Oregon writes:
"Thou hypocrite,
cast first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see
clearly to pull the mote that is in thy brother’s eye." Luke 6:42

Let me see — You are a political appointee in the most
secretive administration in U.S. history… How is that helping "create a
free flow of information crucial to democratic development?"

— You are the member of an administration which quite
improperly and illegally harvested telephone information without
appropriate judicial warrants…. That doesn’t discourage "free flow of
information?"

— Your President authorized pressuring Internet Service
Providers to release information about legal (but private) citizen use
of the internet… Who can trust this administration to protect the
principles of "freedom of expression?"

Brother, how about first removing the beam (and the
blinders) from your own eye and working to end the murderous cabal
which employs you?  Posted on Mon Oct 08,  2007

Pretty bold.  And the comments are loaded with others very similar
to this one.  It seems like DipNote is actually a legitimate forum for
discussion rather than just a false front.  In an era where so many
media outlets, organizations, and political campaigns are concerned
about "inappropriate citizen content" appearing on their websites, I am
finding the openness of DipNote pretty refreshing.  I have to say, I’m
even impressed.  Why is it that so many newspapers remain unwilling to
open their sites to various types of user commentary, but the US
government appears willing to reduce barriers to two-way communication?

I would love to see all branches of government, at every level from local to federal, engage in this kind of communication.  I think it would go a long way toward bringing more transparency to government and greater participation from the citizenry.

Go Deacs! Who Farted?

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P8030321Last night I had the privilege of attending the Wake Forest-Florida State game at Grove Stadium, er, BB&T Field.  I went with my uncle Frank James and my cousins Jeff and Chris James.  To say that we had some nice seats would be an understatement.  That picture you see to the left was taken from my seat with an Olympus Stylus 710 with a 3X Zoom lens, which is to say the seats had to be good for the camera to get that picture.

The Deacs won 24-21 in a tight, fairly sloppy game.  My biggest regret is that I wasn’t using the video capability of the Olympus when the Deacs scored their first TD.  It was an 83 yard run by Josh Adams that started right in front of us.  Here’s a link to some video I did shoot.

On the weird front there was a guy sitting somewhere in front of us who was cutting some of the most horrifically smelly farts you could imagine.  The odor was so bad that it wafted over several rows and the ladies behind us got so fed up they left before the fourth quarter. The guy seemed to burp them out whenever an exciting play happened so you couldn’t help but inhale them as you cheered.  Before the ladies left they informed us that the smell had been happening all season, so I feel for the season ticket holders who have to attend the games knowing that they’re going to be dealing with a stench that could peel paint.

On the good luck front as we were walking through the parking lot to get to the stadium a couple of girls in a golf cart stopped and handed us some free chicken sandwich meals from Chick-fil-A.  We’d been planning on getting dinner before the game but didn’t have time so we readily took the freebies.  The sandwiches were still hot and quite tasty so my hat’s off to the Chick-fil-A marketing people and the young ladies they hired to hand out the freebies.

This was my first Wake football game and you can count me as hooked.  Grove Stadium, er, BB&T Field is a great place to see a game and offers a fantastic atmosphere if you disregard stinky in our section.  If you get the chance I highly recommend you go.

Good Customer Service?!

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It’s become so rare to get effective, prompt customer service that I just had to share this experience.  My mom is currently on a long trip to South America and the Galapagos islands and so her communications have been limited to sporadic email.  Before she left on her trip she put her Netflix account on temporary suspension, but unbeknown to her they had already shipped her two DVDs right before she changed her account status.  While sailing towards the Galapagos she was able to check her email (how cool is that!) and had a note from Netflix saying that she had two of their DVDs and if they weren’t returned promptly she’d be buying them.  She attempted to contact them but was only able to find their 800 number and since she couldn’t call it didn’t do her much good.  So she shot me an email and asked if I could handle it for her.

Yesterday I logged into mom’s Netflix account and found the customer service number.  Right under the number is a status message giving the current wait time on the 800 number.  Seeing that it was less than a minute I called and within 30 seconds I was talking to a rep and one minute after that we had the issue resolved.  As any of the 13 year old girls on my daughter’s soccer team would say, "O-M-G!"

The status message on the website is a great feature that Netflix provides and having a staffer answer the phone who is obviously empowered to use a little creativity to fix the problem is a massive winner in my book.  I’ve been a Netflix fan for years, but this really is icing on the cake.

By the way this happened the same day that I had a not-so-smooth experience with our van.  The battery died and since it was still under warranty we took it back to the dealer to trade it it.  The customer service was fine and the folks very helpful, but the system they have to deal with is a little tortured.  Despite the fact that I had the receipt showing that the battery had indeed been purchased there and was less than 24 months old they still had to do a load test to verify that the battery was dead. That was fine and the load test showed that our battery was as dead as a doornail, but unfortunately the tester that they’d found wasn’t the official Mazda load tester that spits out a receipt that’s required in order to get the new battery.  After searching for about 20 minutes they found the official load tester and were able to get me my new battery, but it took about 45 minutes.  In my mind once they found that the battery was dead they should have given me the new battery and dealt with the receipt issue after I was gone, but because the parts department wouldn’t release the battery without the receipt the service department had to find the right tester before I could get it.  In other words the dealership made their problem my problem.  To their credit their service employee didn’t push me aside despite being very busy, so two thumbs up for him.  To their discredit they have a system in place that puts unnecessary stress on the customer.

Still, yesterday was that rarest of occasions: a good customer service day.

ChallengeFest

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This past weekend was largely spent on the soccer fields at the Sara Lee Complex and Hine Fields here in Winston-Salem.  My daughter Erin’s soccer club, Twin City Youth Soccer Association, played host to the ChallengeFest, which is a mid-season tournament for "Challenge" level teams.  All the kids played four games in two days and by the end I can tell you that all of our girls were fried.

Our girls went 2-2, winning two games against teams from our Challenge League (teams for Davidson County and Statesville) and losing 2-1 on Saturday to a team from the Trianle area and 3-1 yesterday to a team from Clayton.  The two losses came in the afternoon games (second games of the day) and in both games our girls played with only one sub due to injuries and our opponents had at least four subs each.  Both teams were as skilled as any team we’ve played this year and our girls took a 1-0 lead into the last 20 minutes of both games before running out of gas and giving up some late goals.  All in all our girls played very well and "left it all on the field."

A couple of highlights for our family: Erin scored her teams goal in the 2-1 loss on Saturday, and yesterday she showed a little fire towards the end of the afternoon game.  The Clayton team played a more physical game than our girls are used to and the ref let most of the pushing go unabated so our girls were getting pretty frustrated.  Erin had the ball near the sideline right in front of our bench and after getting the treatment from one of the more aggressive players on the other team she screamed at her. I believe she said "Stop pushing you idiot!"  Then she immediately felt guilty and not long after that I saw her fighting tears as she was playing.  Personally I was proud of her for not retaliating physically, which is what her old man would have done in the same situation, and I have no problem with her venting.  The name calling was understandable but still not necessary, but since she already felt guilty I didn’t feel any need to say much about it, especially when I would have used much more colorful language in the exact same situation after administering physical redemption as well.  I was VERY happy to see that she had some fire in the belly.

All in all it was a good weekend, but will someone explain to me why our girls were playing in 90 degree heat on October 7?  At this rate we’re going to be hanging out at the pool on Christmas.