Phill Becker

This post was about my second trip to BOSS

Monday, August 6th, 2007

I am actually on my way home from a camping / survival trip in Utah. 2 weeks in the desert and mountains with a blanket, poncho, knife, cup, and clothes. Good times.

I’ll post more soonish, and get some pictures up.

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

I’m not a fan of computer hardware that behaves the wants to, rather than the way I tell it to. My wife thinks it’s a control issue. She’ probably right.

I was getting peeved that the music on my (gifted) iPod wasn’t readable by anything that couldn’t decode the iTunes database structure. Well, the music is readable, but you can’t tell what song you’re clicking on unless you memorize the length and size of every song. The names are replaced with things like FWOX.mp3 in folders of similar names with dissimilar tracks (not of the same album). Plus you couldn’t copy (decoded) music from the iPod to another computer unless you purchased it through iTunes and were transferring it to one of your five approved machines. And you couldn’t play open-source music formats (ogg, flac, etc)

Well, I fixed that.
(more…)

Posted in Technical | No Comments »

I bought a pair of vegan birk sandals in April 05. For $90 you’d expect a pair of shoes to last more than 2 years, especially when they’re only seasonal wear.
I took them in the other day to get resoled, and the guy said fixing them would be “throwing good money after bad.” The footbed (the pride and joy of birks) was cracked, and the synthetic straps were tearing on both feet. Now they no longer (according to the birkenstock USA website) carry 100% leather-free sandals, so replacing them is as pointless as repairing them.

Just for grins and giggles, I’ll post the email exchange I’ve had with customer service. More if they bother replying again.

From: Phill Becker
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007 12:17 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: My sandals are falling apart

I bought a pair of synthetic leather birks from a local shoe store here in April 2005. They started wearing thin this last winter, and I took them to a repair store today only to be told they were beyond repair. The straps are splitting on both shoes (right where they attach to the base) and the base is cracked on one.

I bought these sandals partly because I wanted to be able to repair them and keep wearing them for a long time. If 2 years is the max lifespan of Birk. sandals, I will never buy another pair. My Tevas lasted 5 years of hard abuse. I guess I expected more from legendary Birkenstock.

If you would like me to send the sandals back so you can examine them for quality control, please let me know. Otherwise I’ll wear them until they fall off my feet, then never buy another pair.

pb

On 6/8/07, Consumer Relations wrote:

Hello,

Thank you for emailing us at Birkenstock Distribution, USA!

Please Read our FAQ’s below for an answer to your inquiry.

We are the US distributor of Birkenstocks, and run as a company separate to other suppliers and retailers both in the US and internationally. So unfortunately, we do not do direct business with the general consumer base. And since all of our retailers are independently owned and operated we do not have insight to their specific inventory.

We are the US distributor of the Birkenstock Classic Brand only.

We no longer carry or represent Birki’s, Footprints, Tatami, Alpro, Papillio and Betula.

For more information on those lines of Bikenstock, please contact the appropriate distributor…

Tatami / Newalk / Footprints :

Web :http://www.tatami.com/tatami_usa.html

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

I went in with every intention to vote today. I was pissed that there was not a single Green party candidate on the sample ballot I saw, but I thought I’d vote for the lesser of the evils. However, I never actually saw the real ballot.

We just moved, and I changed my address with the DMV, and they said they would forward the address to the registry of voters. So I didn’t know if I’d vote at my old polling place or a new one. The old one worked fine. I got checked in, went to go to the machine and someone had to “get it set up for me.” I was sure that we weren’t getting electronic voting machines, but I was wrong. I asked for a paper ballot and was told “It’s electronic or nothing.”

“Fine. This fkng sucks. Scratch my name off, I’m not voting.”

Blank stares.

“Just record him as a canceled ballot.”

Yay. I wonder if that counts as “none of the above” like in “Brewster’s Millions”?

Posted in Political | 1 Comment »

Friday, November 3rd, 2006

i’ve slept … maybe 8 hours since tuesday 6AM. everything was so much more labor intensive than I expected… mostly ’cause I was doing it alone. My brother did help with some of the moving / loading, so that was nice. Now there’s crap everywhere. Dismantled furniture with screws in bags that were not taped to the furniture. We ran out of boxes so there are cloths baskets and piles of things everywhere. The “honeydo” list of things that were broken that we didn’t know about gets longer every minute.
word of advice. When the water heater is turned up to 170 degree, it may be because there is a problem with keeping the water hot.
Then, my boss called at 715 this morning and asked what time I was planning on coming to work… bastard. So here I sit helping ~2 customers an hour. yay.
But, we own the house. Oh yeah, did I mention that the sellers, who spoke little English, didn’t realize until about 24 hours before the closing that they were getting stuck with $5800 in pre-payment penalty? They were expecting to walk away with a couple grand and ended up owing close to $1000.
sucks.
sleep is for the dead. did I say that already?

Posted in Personal, Work | No Comments »

We’re closing on our first home on Halloween. Then we need to be out of this apartment by Nov 3. Sleep is for the dead, right?

It’s a nice place – up on the hill a little, real steep backyard with a nice deck, decent neighborhood etc. Needs a little work (new shingles and floor covering) but we can do that once we move in. We were going to take November to move in and fix it up, but we got an offer to sublet our current place in Nov. So, rather than risk not subletting and getting stuck with a mortage and a lease, we decided just to move in like Sr. Speedy Gonzales.

I’m excited about having a place of our own. No more money tossed out on rent. Now it’s tossed out on interest. But we’ll get to paint and decorate and re-shingle and install hard wood floors and stuff. I have big plans to redo the wooden retaining walls with cement blocks and pavers, but that’s probably a couple years off.

We’ll miss the park, and the location of our current place. But the house was just too good an opportunity to pass up. At least that’s what I’m thinking now. Who knows, maybe like most things that are too good, there’s a reason for it.

For now, I’m ready for the move. No, I’m not. It’s going to suck and we’ll be unsettled for at least a month. The current plan is to:

1. rip out the carpets and wall paper in 2 of the 3 main floor bedrooms (its a split entry with the main floor upstairs and a 1/2 finished basement 1/2 garage on the lower),
2. repaint and install new carpet,
3. move in to those rooms,
4. get everything else into the garage/basement (this much has to be done by 3nov… yay.)
5. repaint the family room
6. rip out the carpet there
7. intall new bamboo floors (like hardwood really)
8. move stuff upstairs and set up like we actually live there.

Then eventually we’ll redecorate the kitchen, and then re-carpet / paint the other bedroom, then ditto for the downstairs room (oh, and it will need a de-humidifer)

Then there’s the chimney that’s not connected to anything, and the floor vents that are covered over. We might discover a fireplace behind the wall, or a place where a stove vented.

Yeah. The retaining walls might be a little ways off.