con
Post Flood Update
Yup, we're still here. Just been busy/not felt like writing. Points of interest post-flood:
- Drove past a hot air balloon that had landed on the side of the rode while coming back from a friend's house.
- Two days later drove under a massive lightning storm coming back from the same friend's house.1
- Tried taking some end-of/post-flood pictures around town, but did not want to cause any problems for those working in the affected areas. So pictures were all taken from the car while driving through the affected areas and they all pretty much sucked or at best were no better than the dozens of other drive-by photos already posted to Flickr.
- Gave blood and it left me feeling wiped out for days afterwards.
- Attended Convergence with AWelkin, Bryon, Amabaku & Oyarsa Elentari.
- Had a complete blast but also got totally worn out.
- First night of the con, while leaving to go out to get dinner, I thought I was on the bottom step when I was still 1 step up. Walked out, didn't feel ground underfoot and fell smack down on my ass folding my leg under me and scraping my arm. Ankle got twisted a bit and is still vaguely sore.
- Ate a lot of good food.
- Bought my wife a ren-faire style corset. Yum!
- Saw many good costumes around the con. Even got a few photographed.2
- Went to a flip-book animation panel and watched the panel-host get rather confused by all the adults at the panel. He clearly was expecting this to be almost a form of baby-sitting.
- Drank much good coffee & tea at the con's CoF2E2 cabana.
- Especially liked the Moon over Madagascar tea (Chinese Black and Ceylon teas blended with bits of bourbon vanilla).
- Also quite fond of the English Toffee/Vanilla Latte they made for me.
- Watched a stunning presentation from a local raptor center.
- Attended a panel on GMing which gave me some ideas for a game I want to run.
- Almost played in a steampunk LARP, but the intro panel killed my interest in it.
- It was this particular group's first year running a LARP.
- They based the LARP on some sort of "How to Host a Murder Mystery" thing.
- They tried to design it to allow players to continue to enjoy the con.
- Except the players weren't given any sort of characters. You were expected to go around the con searching for clues.
- You could interact with the people running the LARP as the characters they were dressed up as or as "norms". If you tried to interact with them in-character, they said they'd respond by interacting with you based on your costume. I only rarely run around in a costume and didn't have one for this con, so that pretty much killed my interest.
- Painted a miniature thanks to Reaper's demo painting. That was fun and something I haven't tried in several years.
1 We were cat-sitting for them.
2 Several I only saw when either I or the costumer were running different directions and so I didn't always get photos. *sigh* There was one kid in a really excellent TF2 Medic costume. Photos will be posted later, as I have to go through them all and clean them up in GIMP. Especially as my camera fritzed a few times and the image turned out all "purple-ly".
AnimeIowa 2007
This year Ariesna and I returned to AnimeIowa after a years absence. We'd gotten a bit burned out on the con due to the overly crowded hotel and the lack of programming for the over-15 crowd. But this year AWelkin and some mutual friends put on Natsukashii seminar, a programming track designed specifically to cover older anime shows. Natsukashii seminar turned out to be a blast and surprisingly was attended by some of the younger crowd rather than just bitter, old fans like myself. Now I could write up a detail summation of my experiences at this year's con, but I'm far too lazy for that. So here's a quick list:
- Good grief! The lines for registration were insane and stretched around practically the entire hotel.
- That many people in one place, even a place with excellent A/C, stink! Seriously the funk around those lines was as bad as most cons on Sunday and this was only the first day.
- With registration so backed up most early panels were empty, which was really good as from what I was hearing most didn't start on time anyway.
- The hotel was gorgeous and much better laid out for the con, excluding that con-com put the consuite on the 8th floor. Also, paid parking sucks but Ariesna & I got lucky and found a free spot.
- The con ran a blood drive in cooperation with a local blood bank. I donated and it was kind of fun seeing how the medical staff were reacting to the con-goers. Some were interested, some ignored them and some looked confused.
- Driving back in the next morning, our free parking spot was still empty. Wahoo!
- This year's dealer's room was huge. Unfortunately, the number of dealers was not as large as it initially appeared as the artist's alley was in the middle of the room.
- Though that was cool for the artists and not bad for the con-goers.
- The dealer's room had a decent selection of merchandise. I filled in some missing discs of R.O.D. TV and Ariesna got a doll she's been looking for. Still there was considerable overlap in the merchandise between boths, not surprising but not pleasing either.
- A larger number of con-goers were costumes this year1. Good! A good portion of them had giant sized weapons (ala Final Fantasy) and the costumers didn't really know how to handle their props safely. Bad!
- Once the con-goers were more spread out; the funk in the air lessened somewhat. Though you could still tell where the A/C was weakest by the strength of the funk.
- Watched some excellent anime in the Natsukashii video room, heard it was the best video room at the con.
- I saw a dealer selling large, wooden paddles. Weird! Later noticed the goobers who bought them spanking one another with them in the halls. Bad! I also noticed they didn't pay much attention to their surroundings, and so were constantly in danger of hitting people who did not want to be hit. Very bad!
- AI's idea of a fansubbing panel was to have an industry shill sit up in front of an audience and tell us all the ways people can pay to watch anime rather than downloading the fansubs. Seriously, odds are this guy would have never heard of anime if people hadn't started fansubbing it and all he can do is sit up there babbling on how people who download fansubs are all thieves. Note: It is possible that the panel discussion actually had something useful in it later on; however I grew sufficiently discontent with it that I left after listing to ~20 minutes of this nonsense.
1 I also found this somewhat depressing as nothing like this exsisted when I was the same age as these kids and there were a fair number of attractive, young ladies in rather interesting costumes. Which had I been single and of the same age (or at least close to) I would have enjoyed making their acquaintance.
Trying to lose my business? (Part 2)
Perhaps I am old-fashioned but I feel when you say you are going to do something, then you should do it. Case in point, this morning I dropped the car off at the dealership to get that shifting problem fixed. I dropped it off at approximately 7:45 AM CST (-06:00 GMT). My appointment to have them look at my car was for 9:30 AM CST (-06:00 GMT). When I dropped the car off, they told me they would call me back when the car was done or if it would require parts/maintenance not covered by the warranty.
It is now after 4:00 PM CST (-06:00 GMT) and have I heard one peep out of them? Nope. Feeling more than a little indignant at this turn of events, I tried calling them. I got a hold of a receptionist who asked me a couple of questions; presumably to route my call to the correct portion of their service dept. Then I was put on hold...
For all of 60 seconds. *Grrrr* After which I got transferred to some nameless persons voicemail. *Grrrr^2*
I was polite and left a message simply asking them to call me back with an update. I even went so far as to give them both my work and home numbers again. And to tell them when I would be leaving work, so they would have a better chance of catching me. Not that I have seen any sign that they've tried calling, but I am still trying to be nice and give them the benefit of the doubt. Now, I'm waiting again for them to call me back.
Update: About 10 minutes after I called the dealership, they called me back to say the car was fixed. All the repairs fell under the warranty, so I didn't have to pay a dime. For those curious as to what was wrong:
- The brake light switch (what they call the sensor for the ASL) was bad.
- Additionally when they checked the car with their diagnostic software; it reported there was a problem with one of the engine coolant temperature sensors. So they replaced that as well (again this was under warranty).
Am I pleased with the customer service I received? Not especially but now that we have the car back (and particularly since they didn't charge us for any of the parts/labor); I'm not quite as upset about it as I had been. Would I buy another VW from this dealer? It's a bit too early to say. Their sales and finance departments are great, but the so-so treatment from the service department makes me feel hesistant to say yes.
Jon Stewart, Cynical Youth and Voting
A Washington Post columnist posted an article last Friday covering a bit of research claiming that Jon Stewart's popular comedy/news show on the Comedy Channel may cause people to stop voting. The report's title was not given, nor was there any link to the results. So we have no way to read the report for ourselves to judge the accuracy of the columnist's claims and have to rely on the quotes from the report he gave us. Quotes like this one:
"Ultimately, negative perceptions of candidates could have participation implications by keeping more youth from the polls," they wrote.
Maybe I'm just a bit cynical myself but I'd think there's also the possibility these youth will start working the political scene to replace the loser candidates we have now with somebody who might actually represent their interests.
Trying to lose my business?
Back in April, we bought a new car from Carousel Motors. And until yesterday, it's been great. I let me explain...
Yesterday, I went home for my lunch hour. When my time was up, I went down to the car to get back to work. The car unlocked and started up without any problems. What was a problem is the ASL light turned on and stayed on. Normally, this light turns off once you press down on the brake pedal. It's there to prevent you from shifting into gear without having the brake pressed to avoid accidents. Except now, my foot was on the brake and I was still stuck in park. I fiddled around with it for a bit, but couldn't get aything to happen1. I rushed back inside, called by boss and worked the rest of the from home via the corporate VPN.
After work, I called the dealership but found out the service department closed an hour before I called. I talked to the salesman who sold us the car and he suggested calling the VW roadside assistance 800# to have them tow the car out. I called them up, waiting on hold for several minutes and then got to talk to *mumble, mumble #1*. He had me go out ot my car and try several things to get the car out of park. I was just nearing the end of his instructions when the battery in my phone died. *grumpf*
I tromped back up into the apartment and called back on a wired phone. Again I had to wait several minutes and then I got to talk to *mumble, mumble #2*. I explained what was wrong and what I'd done so far. He gave me the complete instructions and I wrote them down. Then I set down my phone and ran outside to try them. Success! I could now get my car out of park! Before I ran back inside to relate my success, I turned off the car and tried starting/shifting normally. No luck, that was still screwy. I went back inside, picked up the phone and... And nothing, all I got was dead air. *double grumf*
I called the roadside assistance a third time and once again had to wait several minutes for the privilege of talking to *unidentified pissy man*. This guy never gave me his name. I told him everything that I'd been through and the resuylts of their procedure for getting the car out of park. I asked if I was supposed to be ok now, or if I still needed to get it to the dealership? He grumpily answered that "of course I needed to get it to the dealership." All this around, though not entirely their fault, was not exactly making my evening any better.
Today, I called the dealership and their receptionist was waaaaaaay to gorram happy for 7:45 AM. Fortunately, she quickly transfered me to their service department. And they answered the phone with a "Good Afternoon". While time is relative and there was a period in my youth where I always used "Good Morning" as a greeting that was high school for crying out loud. Still, she could have just been tired by the early hour of the day, so I didn't go off on her. I explained my problem and that the roadside assistance people had given me a procedure to get the car out of park. She said since I could technically drive it; their first opening to have somebody look at the car is next Monday. I made the appointment, but it left me feeling very disappointed. I think if this is the average level of customer service I get from them then when we replace our other car, it's not going to be another Volkswagen. As much as I like driving the car and as good as their sales department is; if the rest of their team is lacking in customer service then it's not worth it.
Or I could just be grumpy from having to handle all this so flippin' early in the morning.
1 Actually, that's not entirely accurate. All I did appeared to make things worse. After my fiddling with it, the EPC light came on. Though after following the instructions from roadside assistance that light went back out.
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