Mindless Juices

I've been busy with work. I have a great team and a great new boss. That being said, I'm also applying for a position higher up. So, wish me luck! If I get the job, the raise would be significant and enough to maybe even buy Sabrina a new car...

OK, it's official, I am completely sold on GameTap. GameTap announces 3 new publishers GameTap & Intel Viiv... what could be sweeter? What the hell is Viiv? ... No, really (slightly geekier)? It's none of this that has me sold... It's the fact that, last night, I was playing Grandia II (a pretty sweet RPG) while sitting back in my office chair with my USB GamePad that Nick and Kelli got me with my feet up on the desk with the game full-screen mode on my 19" flat-screen. I've already beaten Beyond Good & Evil. Apparently, if I was born about 150-200 years ago, I should have been a Railroad Tycoon. And, I should not be a Splinter Cell spy no matter how much I enjoy it. So far, I think I've paid $10 to GameTap (of whose parent company, I'm a stockholder). I know Sabrina has played some BurgerTime. All in all, I think we're getting our money's worth.

Can you say cheap shot? http://www.nhl.com/news/2006/01/251328.html My friend CJ was at this game and I'm hoping he doesn't judge hockey by this action. He and I had a discussion about hockey vs. football. When I heard he was going to the game, Iwas quite surprised since he seemed pretty uninterested in hockey. Seriously, I'm hoping to get the video tomorrow (Sunday) and get it posted (somehow). Flat out, it was sad to see a professional athlete act like a child. I know, just about every professional league has had its recent strings of uncalled for violence, but it hurt to see it happen to your team. Luckily, Justin Williams was not injured. Godard was suspended two-games and charged $4K. This is apparently because Justin Williams wasn't injured. Still, what kind of chicken do you have to be to sucker punch a guy in the middle of a game?

So, I ordered some of Sabrina's Christmas presents from Overstock.com. I get a little discount through my company perks. The discounts were enough to make it worth buying some of her presents from them. After filling up my shoppiong cart, I ran into a few difficulties with my credit card. I'm still not sure why it wouldn't go through, but after each attempt, my discount would dissappear from the shopping cart. Therefore, I would need to start over each time. There were several attempts made, but once I finally got my order to go through with my discount, I was quite happy. I received my confirmation page and my confirmation Email, I received my merchandise, but that's where the real trouble starts. I got two boxes in one day. I opened the first and found everything on my list minus one item. I assumed it was in the other box. I opened the other box to find a duplicate order, still minus the one item. At this point, I check my account with Overstock.com and find that they shipped me two orders and charged me twice. Well, I called and explained and, at first, the Tier 1 support girl didn't really seem interested in helping me. She did her job and I kindly requested to speak with someone who could help me. She escalated me to the next level of support and this girl WAS helpful. She was very understanding and gave me a solution with which I was happy. She noted my account, agreed to accept the return of my duplicate order without any fees and said she would send me labels to cover the shipping. Unfortunately, they took 2-4 business days to show up in my EMail. If I did not receive them, I was to call back. I didn't receive them. I called back, I requested them again, I still didn't receive them. I've now called a third time and requested. This time, I changed my EMail address, so maybe that will help. Luckily, the company seems to be working with me, but it seems like they have a broken system in their midst. Unfortunately, I'm paying for it with a loss of time. So, I wirte this only to say that you need to be very careful when initially ordering with them. Wait 20 minutes between attempts, should you have a failed attempt. Check your account 24-48 hours after ordering. I suppose that's a given these days, but I didn't realize it. As more and more business become internet successes, we really need to demand excellent customer service from these companies. So far, the majority of my internet purchases have gone off without a hitch. I only had one issue that the Better Business Bureau helped me resolve amicably. At the end of the story, I did receive two of everything I ordered from Overstock.com. They did a great job except for sending me the order twice and they're having a difficult time making it easy to send the duplicate order back to them. Otherwise, I think they did a good job. I would be willing to give them a second chance and, assuming they don't screw it up, I would continue to do business with them.