My cell phone sucks, and I’m stuck with it.

About 14 months ago, I acquired myself a Palm Treo 700wx. I’ve had a Treo before, and I should have known better! It wasn’t gadget lust, as I carefully research technology purchases; maybe it was just hope.

My Treo locks up a couple of times a day, sends me cryptic error beeps with no explanation, and has a standby battery life of about 14 hours on a brand new battery. (I’m currently trying an extended battery, hoping for 24 hours.) Its video driver has gone bad, and been fixed. I can’t change my Outlook email password without removing and recreating my email account entirely, several times.

Although it’s no fault of the Treo, it’s not Parallels compatible – it will synch with my Mac host system, but not my PC virtual system, where Outlook lives. I’ve solved this by setting everything up to synch wirelessly instead, but someday, there will be something I want to use from my PC and I’ll be hosed.

Because I am still under contract for this one, a new smart phone costs a fortune, $300-$600. Ebay offers no significant price advantages on newer phones, and in many cases Ebay phones cannot be supported under warranty.

And, you know, there isn’t really another phone I’d like to get! At least not one offered by Sprint, where I’m shackled and chained. All the offerings have mixed reviews, with reports of systems locking up, flimsy parts, battery life much less than rated, and poor signal reception. I’ve eliminated the BlackBerries from consideration because I’m not interested in paying the hefty additional BlackBerry fee that Sprint tacks on ($40/mo).

It’s not that the smartphone is a new technology, why does it still seem immature?

Here’s what I want in a phone:

• Decently small size profile
• Sturdy, solid construction – no plastic-y feel
• STABLE operating system with reasonably intuitive menus
• Outlook synchronization, with email, contacts, calendar, tasks
• Text and MMS capable
• Small QWERTY keyboard
• Touch screen with clear display
• Great signal reception, adequate earpiece volume
• EVDO and 802.11 wireless capabilities
• 1.3 Mp camera nice, but not necessary

I am willing to pay for quality. In fact, I thought I did, when I bought my Treo, both times! But it’s often little better than a brick, one I’d like to throw through the window sometimes.

Crossposted from http://ungeekit.com.

There are some commercials that are funny or mildly entertaining. Others are brutally annoying and must die. They don’t sell the product…in fact, in some cases I have blotted out what the commercial is meant to sell. A common thread here, I think, is that ad campaigners don’t get the concept that certain things are only funny once; sometimes they weren’t even funny that time. Anyway, here’s my short list of commercials/ad campaigns that must die:

1. The “Duh” car commercials. I honestly can’t tell you even which car maker these commercials are for. The first one a few months ago was funny – once. The Christmas ones are excruciatingly annoying.

2. The Visa commercials where someone breaks the lovingly staged symphony of folks using their card to buy anything. In particular, the food court one. Does anybody really enjoy or think it’s cool to buy a freaking taco with a credit card unless you just have to? Puh-lease.

3. The Nissan Rogue commercials where the whole city is that metal ball and holes game that people give at office parties and no one really plays with. This may be skewed by the fact that we watch Heroes and Nissan practically owns that show, and this commercial comes on at least 5 times in the hour. Enough already, the concept is lame.

4. I like the Geico commercials in general, especially the celebrity interpretation ones…but let’s get rid of the annoying Cockney-accented tea-slurping gecko. Or give the voice back to Kelsey Grammer, when the gecko was cool.

5. Any ad where a car or a $50K piece of jewelry is a surprise gift. Get real.

6. Prescription drug ads. All of them, but erectile drug ads first. All such ad campaigners must be made to suffer the side effects listed if they aren’t pulled now.

Jeri doesn’t like the “Slowski” Comcast commercials, the “Maniac” Kia commercial, and the Quisno’s “Sammy” commercials (“I hate you” “Wow…really?”). I only find the later moderately annoying. Anything making fun of Flashdance or talking turtles is gold, however.

Black Friday has come and gone, and once again, I didn’t go out and play.

I don’t get it, I truly don’t. Why would anyone go hit the most popular stores on the most crowded day of the year? Sure, there are good deals – but if you shop carefully, there will be good deals at various times throughout the year.

Retailers are reporting a slump this season. In my opinion, it’s backlash, a rebellion against the ever-earlier Christmas decor and merchandising, as well as a statement about the obnoxious advertising encouraging us to buy more, bigger, better.

As I’ve written before, I am not a fan of the typical consumer-driven Christmas celebration. I don’t believe that’s what the holiday is about, even at its most secular.

While I do enjoy buying gifts for others, and tend to be a bit too extravagant, the last thing I personally need is more stuff. I have too many personal possessions – clothes, music, electronics – and should be simplifying and cutting back, not trying to figure out how to fit more into my life.

What’s Christmas about, for me? Caring for family. Showing generousity. Building traditions. Loving others more than you do yourself. Remembering the original gift, of God’s son to the world, if that’s your belief system. The quiet snow and dark gloominess of midwinter.

This year, my family on both sides is just doing presents for the kids. We adults are exchanging charity donations. I’m really thankful to my family for that, to me it’s truly a Christmas gift.

I’m making a Christmas resolution: I will not stress. It’ll be hard to keep, but I’ll try!

Nanowrimo update: I’m behind but catching up, at 36,458 words.

Friday afternoon I took off work a bit early and enjoyed the entertainment experience of school shopping with Zach.

Neither of my boys have much of a sense of style, preferring wrinkled, faded cargo pants and ancient t-shirts to any other clothing. Comfort is king!

Zach didn’t need a lot, he already has enough t-shirts to open a shop. Nonetheless, he wanted pants, shoes, a few other things, so in one afternoon, we hit Costco, the mall, Walmart and the haircut shop.

Costco usually has great buys on cargo pants. Zach told me that the jeans in stock, though, were “too emo” – i.e. narrow legged. They also had plaid flannel shirts, which Zach thought would be awesome to wear. He’s now the proud owner of a red plaid lumberjack shirt.

At the mall, we always have a tough time shoe shopping. Stores don’t stock much in size 14. Rather than looking for shoes we like, and sizes second, we have to do it the other way around. There are usually about 5 size 14s in the entire store, and they’re never cheap, but he managed to pick a pair.

He found a watch he wanted at JC Penney’s. It was hideous, Armitron black and gold, with a massive black rubber band tooled up to faintly resemble a leather band. He was in love with it though, and the price was right.

Then we hit the haircut shop. Calling it a ‘salon’ would be overstating things. Zach doesn’t go for style there either – in the summer it’s a buzz, in the winter a classic barber-shop cut w/ bangs. It takes 20 minutes and he’s happy.

And, finally, WalMart. I feel about WalMart like Beast Mom feels about Fred Meyer. Zach is super persnickety about undies – comfort, again – and requires XL sized socks, and Walmart is the only place close that carries either brand. He also talked me into one new t-shirt – with a head shot of Chuck Norris on it, and the caption, “There is nothing to fear but Chuck himself.” Both boys are into the cult notoriety of Chuck Norris.

We also stocked up on school supply basics – notebook, paper, pens, pencils. Does geometry require a calculator? Who knows. Walmart was surprisingly poorly stocked with such stuff. After a brisk 20-minute wait in line to check out with a semi-conscious cashier, we were done!

Thank goodness!

We have had some adventures in customer service lately, so I thought I’d share them.

Restaurant
We went out to dinner last night – Thai food – and had a really delicious meal ruined by very poor service. Our appetizer never arrived, and our meal arrived very late, long after several diners who arrived and ordered after us. We couldn’t get more water – which was fairly hilarious because Zach picked last night to prove us wrong about eating a Thai chile. And when we were done, we couldn’t get anyone to bring us our check for a ridiculously long time, although the restaurant was emptying at that point and staff were flouncing around blatantly ignoring us. We’re not snotty customers! We’re polite, thankful, reasonable and usually tip quite well – but we sure didn’t last night.

I don’t think we’ll be back, even though they have really fabulous food.

Pet Sitting
We tried to hire a petsitter for our three musketeers, a service we’d used before and was very good to our doggies. We emailed her. No response for three days. We called and left a voice mail. No response for two days. And finally, I started drafting a follow-up email, and a message dropped in. Her introduction: “Boy, time just got away from me this week.”

That’s something I’d expect to hear from a busy, slightly flaky friend who missed a social callback – but not very professional from a business! She did go on and arrange coverage for the times we’ll be out of town, but the lack of a quick communication avenue is certainly a concern.

Gutter Cleaning
We hired our roof and gutters cleaned – by the same service that does our weekly housecleaning – and they almost lost our business with, again, completely lousy, unreliable service. They were supposed to do the work on a weekend we were out of town, and because we had a long term business relationship with them, we paid cash in advance.

We came home to a mess – job not done and dirt, pine needles and moss bits cascading down our trim, the front of our house and trashing our garden beds. A note said their pressure washer had broken, and they’d reschedule when it was fixed. After two weeks of no contact, I called them. “Oh, it’s fixed now, we can fit you on the schedule in ten days.” And on that day, no one showed, and the owner didn’t call. She sent an excuse with her housecleaner – another job ran long because of weather – and they’d have to reschedule. The owner didn’t answer her phone.

When I finally got in touch with her the next day, I cancelled and requested a refund. She was very angry and defensive, but the bottom line is, I need a service I can count on, and results that won’t leave my home a worse mess that I will now have to clean up. It’s really sad that she would jeopardize her weekly recurring business – and it could have come to that – by doing odd jobs unreliably and poorly.

We hired another, more professional service instead – for 2/3 the price – and they’ll be here next week.

Common Thread?
What do these have in common? Really, really poor customer service – lack of communication, little or no follow through, no reliability and unprofessional behavior. In my opinion, if you are going to operate a business, you don’t have to have a wonderful innovative product, a technical advantage, or even a better price. You just need to provide really good customer service. Get that right, and you’ve won most of the war!