September 2006 - Posts
This guy is trying to visit every Starbucks in the world. Not only visit every store, but drink 4oz of caffeinated coffee in each store. This interview reveals that he's worn a Starbucks t-shirt for every day since October 2001, once visited 29 stores in one day and has spent about $30,000 on his quest so far!
I don't think I've even been to every Starbucks in Seattle. it's a pretty interesting goal. I've seen plenty of Starbucks when I've traveled. I think the most unexpected store was the one inside the Forbidden City in Beijing. It's actually fairly discrete; it's in an original building, with "Starbucks Coffee" in the normal lettering on the window.
I've complained about American Express before. Their service leaves much to be desired and I've had enough. Recently they quietly announced they would be reducing or removing the features of my card that I used the most, adding some features I wouldn't use and increasing the annual fee. I wasn't happy at these changes so I called to complain and got nowhere so I downgraded my gold card to a green card at a lesser fee. Once I got off the phone I realised that actually I didn't want the card at all. It would be a pain to switch my automatic payments to another card I thought, but actually all it took was a look back at a few previous statements to find what was charged automatically and changing the account details online. It was actually pretty simple.
I applied for a new card that would earn my airline miles on my existing account with Alaska Airlines for my eventual goal of a free first class ticket to Australia (late 2008 probably). That process took a little longer than it should thanks to having my credit info secured by Debix, but it's good to know that nobody can open an account without my knowing about it and being able to stop it first.
So with my new card in hand and my American Express card gathering dust I called today and canceled. The representative asked why I was canceling the card and tried to bribe me with a credit on the account or some extra reward points (I redeemed what I had left yesterday for some gift cards to Banana Republic and last week I redeemed more points for Toys'R'Us gift cards which got me a Nintendo DS for free). I declined the bribes and had them close the account. It feels good to be free. Although I do still have one of their credit cards and a corporate card, but neither has an annual fee, so they're not making any money out of me.
Microdrives used to the card of choice of digital-SLR camera uses - lots of capacity at a lower price. IBM was first on the scene, but the early drives were very expensive. The next generation of 2GB and 4GB drives though were much more affordable, sure they used a little more battery life, but it was much cheaper than flash memory. They really hit the big time when the iPod mini and competing Creative player hit the market with this tiny drives built in. Someone, somewhere discovered that you could dismantle the player and remove the microdrive, format it and use it in a camera. Whats more the cost of the MP3 player was less than the retail cost of a microdrive. Suddenly the devices flew off shelves and eBay was full of these OEM microdrives for sale at little more than the cost of the MP3 player they came out of. That's how I got my first microdrive. A 4GB OEM IBM/Hitachi (IBM sold their hard drive business to Hitachi) microdrive. I use it extensively when I travelled with my Canon 10D taking hundreds of photos. It worked well and had plenty of space on it. The battery life never seemed to be a problem.
Prices dropped further on the retail drives and I next bought a Hitachi branded 4GB microdrive which became my primary drive and for a while I kept the OEM drive in reserve in case I needed it while travelling. That drive continued to work perfectly until being replaced with a new drive. Seagate entered the market and released 4GB and 8GB drives at low prices. I picked up an 8GB drive to use as my primary drive and the Hitachi 4GB became the reserve drive. The Seagate drive worked well, it was fast and had more capacity than I ever used.
There was, however, a problem with the Seagate drive, something I wouldn't discover until I had the latest firmware on my Canon 20D. The drive became incredibly slow. It would take seconds to write a single photo to the drive after it was taken. It was unusable. Seagate admitted this was a problem with their drive, but it was corrected in their latest firmware and could be replaced under warranty. They initially insisted that my drive didn't exist though, that the serial number was wrong and they wouldn't accept it for replacement until I could show them a photo of the drive. Just as well I had another drive that did work so I could actually take a photo of the faulty drive... I packaged up the drive and sent it back to Seagate. Two weeks later they send a replacement drive back. It's a new drive in the retail packaging, so I cut my way into the package and pop the drive in the camera for a test. The drive is slow. Really slow. I check the firmware on the drive and it's the same as the one I sent back. OK, so they made a mistake, I emailed support told them about the problem and they agreed to send out a new drive with a pre-paid shipping label to return the one I had. A week later the replacement for the replacement arrives. Guess what? It's got the old firmware as well. Seagate finally tell me that actually they don't have any drives with the new firmware, but they've got some coming in soon and they'll send one out once they come in. Weeks go by and nothing from Seagate. All they'll say is the drives are coming in soon. Eventually they find one with the new firmware and send it out. It works, but they experience has soured me to microdrives. It shouldn't take 2 months to replace a drive, it shouldn't have this problem to begin with.
I started looking at flash prices and it turns out that now 8GB Compact Flash cards can be had for under $130. That's less than the cost of an 8GB microdrive (if you can even find someone that sells them) now, they use less power, so the camera battery will last longer and don't have any moving parts to fail. Lower capacity MP3 players don't use microdrives any more, they've moved to flash. So is there any use for the microdrive any more? Can they manufacturers up the capacity to make them worthwhile - how about 12GB or 16GB? Even if they can are we better off with a couple of high capacity flash cards instead?
After I got back from travelling in Egypt and Jordan earlier this year and started examining my photos I realised I'd gotten some dust on the sensor of my Canon 20D. There were blotches on my photos, easily edited out, but annoying none the less. I tried cleaning the sensor with an air blower, but I couldn't shift the dust. Eventually I realised that I was going to have to send the camera to Canon to be cleaned. I had a look at a few local stores who advertised they could clean the camera, but they wouldn't provide an estimate of the cost in advance and I wasn't sure I really trusted any of them to do it.
I contacted Canon via their website to ask about how to get the camera cleaned and I quickly got an email back explaining the process. I could request the service online, then package up the camera and send it to a service centre. They would examine the camera and email me a quote for the cost of the service. If I wasn't happy with the quote, they would return the camera at no cost to me. I sent of the camera and watched the tracking info to see when it arrived. After a couple of days I got an email saying the camera had been received at that the requested service would be provided at no cost! That was a surprise. The camera had been out of warranty for a couple of months so I was expecting to pay for it to be serviced.
Just a couple of days later Canon emailed again to say that the service had been completed and the camera was on it's way back to me. It arrived safely in just a couple more days. Inside was an invoice for $0.00 with a note that although the camera was out of warranty the service had been provided as courtesy to myself at no charge. The camera itself looked brand new, it had been thoroughly cleaned inside out, no more dust, no more sand, no more strange sticky spots, just a very clean camera. They'd even updated the firmware.
It's good to see that some companies still have great service.
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