Chaim Zvi's blog

It finally happened. My trusty old station wagon finally died. Cause of death: transmission failure. Not wanting (or having) the money to buy a new one, I found a great used car: 3 yrs old, 14,000 miles and in great condition. It's a Ford Taurus, top of the line model with tons of options. The funny thing is that most of the options on the car were not even invented when I bought my last car!

So now that I have a "new" car, I find myself wanting to take good care of it. My son and I have washed it, waxed it (haven't done that in about 15 years) made the tires shiny, and conditioned the leather seats. I even gave her a name: Fiona (from Shrek). She may appear to be no beauty, but to me she's a princess!

I was in Annapolis, Maryland last week and was able to take a ride on a schooner in the Chesapeake Bay. It was so peaceful. I haven't had a chance to look at much of ipernity since I've returned. What did I miss?

I never had much reason to complain about my medical care here, but my doctor recently sent me to have my blood drawn for routine tests.

Never mind that in the "old days", the nurse would just draw your blood in the doctor's office and send it to a lab. Nowadays, the insurance companies will not pay the doctor for this. So it's off to lab myself to have my blood drawn.

I should also mention that many insurance companies just switched contracts to a lab called LabCorp because the insurance companies were able to get the contract for dirt-cheap. So instead of the usual lab I used to go to, where there was, at most, a ten minute wait, now I have to go to LabCorp. Apparently, so does the rest of my state.

So what has LabCorp done with all the money from the new contracts? Hire more personal to keep up with the new stream of customers? Heavens, no! I walked into the waiting room, and couldn't even find a seat. People waiting said the wait was around two hours! I walked out. I will not get my blood tested.

What ever happened to treating people with respect? The insurance CEOs are happy because the cheaper contract makes them richer. LabCorp is happy because they just got all this new money from contracts without having to pay a dime for new hires. And what do the CEOs have to say about the masses? Fuck 'em!

Mac Fans: The new iLife and iWork are available. Any comments? Do you plan to upgrade?

My initial feeling is that the best improvements are in iPhoto, which I no longer use since I got Aperture. So I'll pass on the upgrade. I do wish they would have made more improvements to iWeb. I use that for my mother-in-law's business website and it is very rigid.

I'm having a hard time browsing the audio selections on ipernity. I'm looking for some good tracks to use for various slideshows, but the music on ipernity is not categorized. Anyone care to post a link to their favorite slideshow audio track?

I know. Compared to Flickr with their millions of accounts, ipernity is... well, you know, tiny. So being on the front page is probably easy.

Is it random? Is it chosen? Is it like flickr's interestingness or is it handpicked? Either way, thanks ipernity team for the pat on my back. I'll take whatever I can get!

So yesterday I had my electrician come to wire a remote controller unit into my ceiling fan. One of the pull-chains had broken, thus prompting the request. After he was done installing it, he said that the unit was a dud; it controlled the light correctly, but was not getting the fan blades to spin (even though we could hear a buzz from the motor). He checked his wiring again -- he has installed many of these so it was a pretty simple job for him -- and confirmed that there must be something wrong with the unit.

When I brought the unit back to the store, they were skeptical that it was broken. Since I live nearby, they asked if I could leave the unit in the store to be checked out the next day (it was late).

They called me back today to tell me that they had the unit hooked up to one of their fans and it was working. So I went back to the store with my fan (sans blades). After a quick hook-up, everything worked fine.

My electrician was puzzled, and so was I. He clearly knew how to hook these up (he has done lots of work for me). He came back to my house, wired it again, and now it worked. Obviously, he had made some sort of stupid mistake yesterday.

He was so sorry for making me run back and forth to the store that he refused to charge me anything for his work.

We all make mistakes some time, and clearly he had yesterday. I was more than willing to pay him something, since he came back and corrected his mistake. But he was upset at himself for not getting it right the first time, and he apologized by refusing to give me a bill.

Are you watching, Flickr?

ipernity has some really amazing features. I also posted my very first video today.

I received a letter today from a customer relations associate with an apology for the coffee incident (prior blog entries) She also included five dollars of "gift checks".

Thank you, Dunkin Donuts, for acknowledging your mistake.

So I was back at Dunkin Donuts today [see previous blog entry] because I had another 99 cent coupon for a medium iced-coffee. The manager happened to be there this time filling my order.

I described to him last week's story, with the clerk from last week present. The clerk continued to insist, in front of his manager, that a small contains the same amount of coffee as a medium. The cup is larger, he said, so they can fill it with more ice. When I pointed out that most people will be surprised to learn that they pay extra just for some more ice, the manager finally became embarrassed and said that he should have put more coffee in the medium coffee.

But think about it. Both cups were filled to the top with ice and both cups contained the same amount of coffee (remember, all he did was pour the coffee from the small cup to the medium cup). So give or take a teaspoon or two, which is negated if they leave a little space on top, all sizes of iced-coffee contain the same amount of coffee.

PS. I've been told that at Starbuck's, they first measure the coffee into a measuring cup with lines for small, medium, and large and then pour it into a serving cup and add ice. You may pay through the nose at Starbuck's, but at least they are fair about it.

[This is a letter I submitted online to Dunkin Donuts, a popular doughnut and coffee chain on the east coast of the USA. I just had to get this off my chest.]

Today, I was using a 99 cent coupon for a medium ice coffee and the employee mistakingly gave me a small one. When I pointed this out, another employee took the small iced coffee, poured it into a medium cup with ice (enough ice so the medium cup was now full) and handed me the "medium" iced coffee. I looked at him incredulously (as did the others in line) and asked "That's it? Doesn't a medium iced coffee have more coffee than a small iced coffee?" No, he told me, they have the same amount of coffee.

I've been suspicious for a long time that I was being cheated by the amount of ice you put into the cups, but now I have proof. The only difference between a small, medium, and large iced coffee is the amount of ice! That's quite expensive ice I'm paying for when I get a large.

For now on, I'm buying a small iced coffee and asking for an empty large cup. I'll make the transfer myself and then ask for extra ice.

Shame on you, Dunkin Donuts, for being so blatant in cheating your customers.

follow-up in www.ipernity.com/blog/chaimzvi/15860

I can see how this site is very similar to Flickr (copied?). But why is it better? I have over 3000 photos on Flickr, so this would have to be better, not the same, as Flickr to even consider a switch.