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September 27, 2007
Don't Make Me Bleg...
Okay, I'm going to bleg anyway... Anybody out there have a Grand Central invite they could pass my way?
Update: Got one (thanks, Ken!).
Posted by Dave! Permalink
September 21, 2007
Speaking, Naturally
I write a lot. I write for work. I write for school. As a result I spend a lot of time in front of the keyboard. Lately, my wrists had been giving me some problems. Ironically, most of my wrist problems don't come from the keyboard but the mouse.
Regardless, I decided it was time to try something different. So I broke down and bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking, it's pretty weird actually trying to get used to speaking instead of writing. It's almost as if speaking engages a different part of my brain than writing does. Although the words come out faster, it takes me longer to think about exactly what I want to say. When I'm typing, it seems as though the words just naturally flow out of my fingertips.
I am pretty impressed with the accuracy of the speech recognition. After a short training session, NaturallySpeaking does a pretty good job of keeping up with my speech. It is a bit strange learning the command structure for corrections, but I'm sure that will come with time.
David Pogue was right about running NaturallySpeaking on the Mac. And yes, NaturallySpeaking actually got "David Pogue" right on the first try. Hmmm... I'd really like to get it running on my MacBook with Parallels. I installed NaturallySpeaking on my Windows partition, but was not able to get it working well with Parallels. So instead, I'm booting my machine into Windows with Boot Camp, and dictating in Windows applications natively. That really is not the way I would prefer to use the application, but since there is no Mac version I don't really have a choice. Are you listening Nuance?
Another annoyance is the microphone comes with NaturallySpeaking. It's pretty cheap. No, scratch that. It's beyond cheap. In fact, when I first installed the application it kept telling me there were problems with the volume on my system and the sound quality. In the troubleshooting it suggested trying another microphone, which I did. The microphone I ended up using is a three dollar super cheapie I picked up at NewEgg for Skype when I was traveling. Seriously, it was $2.99. NaturallSpeaking didn't have any problems with the three dollar, super cheap microphone, but continues to have accuracy issues with the microphone that was actually supplied by Nuance with the software. Again, are you listening, Nuance?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the experience. It's definitely going to take some getting used to, but I can see how it will be a productivity boost once l get used to speaking instead of typing and after I spend a little more time training the application better. But booting into Windows to use it on my Mac is going to suck. I may give iListen a try...
For now I'm giving it three out of five stars. Speech recognition is definitely more impressive than it used to be, but it's still not the seamless experience it needs to be in order to really change the way that I work every day. And it should run on a Mac, too.
Posted by Dave! Permalink | Comments (2)
Fifth-Third Bank: Does Nice Customer Service Overcome Gross-Incompetence?
My mortgage is with Fifth-Third Bank. The first thing I have to say is that, at least in Chicago and on the phone, they have some of the nicest customer service people I’ve ever dealt with at a bank. They are just sweet. Unfortunately, they are (expletive deleted) incompetent.
Like many people, we escrow our property taxes. A portion of my monthly mortgage payment goes into an escrow account and when the property tax installments are due, Fifth Third pays them. And Fifth-Third did pay ours. Twice. That’s where the nightmare started.
If you’re familiar with Cook County and some of the suburbs, you probably already know property taxes are a nightmare. So imagine my shock when I got a statement from Fifth-Third saying that our escrow was short several thousand dollars.
Now, I never claimed to be a financial genius. But I can add. And when it comes to our mortgage and property taxes, I’m pretty thorough. So I was quite surprised when I received this statement and the accompany letter that Fifth-Third was raising our payment by $500 a month to cover the shortage. Something was up. And when I looked at the amount of the shortage, I noticed it was exactly, to the penny, the amount of our last tax installment. Curious. Then I looked at the tax payment dates on the statement. Wait a minute?! Fifth-Third paid an installment they shouldn’t have!
No problem, I assumed. Surely this will be easy to straighten out. Well, let’s just say I had an easier time shaving my cats.
First, I tried calling the Fifth-Third support line. They were super friendly! And extremely unhelpful. They denied the bank had made any mistaken payments. They denied anything was wrong—except that we owed them more money. They did promise to fax me copies of the cancelled tax checks and mail them out. I never got a fax. I never received a letter.
I started calling back. A lot. I got more friendly phone people, even some supervisors. They all understood my problem, but couldn’t do anything. They all promised to fax/mail the info I wanted. I never got a fax. I never received a letter.
Out of frustration, I called Cook County. The lady on the phone there was not friendly. But you know what? She did her job. She pulled up our PIN. She said, “Our records clearly show a duplicate payment.” And then she promised to send me a copy of our statement, along with a form to request a refund. I got both in the mail two days later.
I faxed the info to Fifth-Third. Then I called. “Oh, that double payment,” they said. “Oh, we see that now. You should really fix that.”
So my wife and I decided to try the personal approach. We went to the local branch. There, we met a very friendly, dedicated and helpful branch manager. He was apologetic. He agreed to take care of everything. We went away, feeling good.
Then, a week later, we got a letter from him saying he’d just faxed all our info over to the tax department. Yes, it not only took him a week to get to our problem—but then all he did was fax the same info I’d already faxed to their tax department!
Another week passed. Now we got a letter from the tax department. Finally, a Fifth-Third representative was taking ownership of the problem. Well, no. Instead, we got a letter stating that we should request a refund from Cook County (duh) and if we had any questions to call… the tax department!
sigh
I wish I could say this nightmare was over, but it drags on. We finally got the name of the tax department representative… because she included it on a letter she sent to Cook County on our behalf, asking them to send us a refund form. We called her. She promised to take care of it.
That was two weeks ago. She hasn’t.
Now, I hear you all saying, “Why don’t you just request the refund yourselves.” Well, we need copies of those cancelled checks, as proof of payment. You know, the ones Fifth-Third has promised on a half-dozen occasions to fax and mail to me. The ones I have, to this day, not received.
In the meantime, in order not to be delinquent on my mortgage, I’m having to bite the bullet and pay Fifth-Third the extra $500 each month. And we have a tax installment coming due in September.
I can tell you one thing I’m doing next week: talking to another bank about re-financing our mortgage. Fifth-Third has lost my business forever.
Posted by Dave! Permalink | Comments (6)
September 9, 2007
First, Appalachian State. Now Oregon.
It's a great weekend ...to be married to a Buckeye. :)
Posted by Dave! Permalink | Comments (1)
September 8, 2007
Mod Blanc
Pilot G2 "Gel Ink" (4) for $8.
Mont Blank Rollerball Refills (2) for $10.
Cut less than 1/8" of plastic off the end of the Mont Blanc refill and replace the G2 cartridge.
Amazingly fine writing instrument for $7. Net savings of over $200.
I've been meaning to try this trick for a while, and tonight I finally did it. It took me longer to open the pen/refill packages than to do the hack.
Now, granted, the pen doesn't have the same weight in your hand as a Mont Blank, which is part of what makes them such a pleasure to write with. But for the difference in price, I'll take my mod-G2. It does write as smooth as glass. And if you're a dork like me who is always losing pens anyway, it's much better to lose a $7 "Mod Blanc" than a $200+ Mont Blanc.
Yes, I'm a pen nerd.
[Via Instructables]
Posted by Dave! Permalink
September 1, 2007
Yes, I Think I'm a Grown Up Now
My wife turned to me yesterday and said, "I'm going to call a stripper... and Amy wants us to come over at 4 and smoke some stuff."
For the record, the stripper charges $85 per door, so refinishing all of the upstairs doors in our house would run us $680. And we are going over to Amy's later to smoke some stuff. Ribs. And maybe a brisket.
Posted by Dave! Permalink | Comments (2)