Life of Steve

Steve vs. The Christmas Tree: 2008 Edition

So this past weekend we decided to put up our newly bought Christmas Tree on the Friday after Thanksgiving. This was our first big tree in our new house since we got married so we were pretty excited. We had shopped around earlier to find a tree that we both liked and had decided on one from Lowes that had these special GE bulbs that were supposed to stay lit even if one strand went out. (Are you noticing a pattern yet?)

Anyways so while my wife unpacked the boxes of Christmas decorations I started to take the Tree out of the box and assemble it. I got the bottom third all untangled and organized the branches and plugged the bottom in and it lit up fine. I did the same to the middle third of the tree with the same result. When I got to the top third I knew I was in trouble. Some of the bulbs (about 3 or 4) were broken from the shipping (I suppose.) No Problem since the lights are supposed to stay lit anyways right? I plugged in the top and the lights lit up for a minute or two and then half of the strand went dead (very top of the tree strand.) So I took the top off and took it down to my garage and decided to try to replace the bulbs that were damaged with the spares that came in the box. After replacing the spares I plugged it in again but half of th strand was still burnt out.

The lights on this tree came with a 3 year warranty so I called the number on the warranty card (That also said Do not return to retailer. So much for plan B!) and they told me that they would send me a new top of my tree but that it wouldn't arrive for 4-6 weeks (after Christmas most likely.) They recommended in the meantime that I could get a similar strand of lights and as long as I plugged it in with a separate extension cord it should be ok.

So I went back to Lowes to find a replacement strand of lights. I did manage to find the same type of lights and brought them home to connect to the tree. Plugged them in once and it came on fine. Plugged them in again and HALF THE STRAND BURNED OUT. (Strand # 2) At this point I am so angry I can't even move or speak (Sort of like Brian during the first half of the PSU Michigan Game this year.) After about 10 minutes of silence I decided to step away from the tree for a couple of hours (As I indulged fantasies of what I would do to the people at Lowes who not only sold me a damaged tree but defective replacement lights as well. )

A couple of hours later I was back at Lowes AGAIN but INSISTED on testing the next couple sets of replacement lights at least 8 times (not exaggerating) before I would take them home and took back the replacement lights to get my money back. The next 2 sets seemed to be ok after my QC process of plugging them in and unplugging them 8X and I headed back home to finish decorating my tree. By the end of this ordeal I was just happy to be done with getting the tree done and did enjoy the evening with my wife decorating the tree.

Just a word to the wise. You might want to consider avoiding any tree purchase that has GE always on lights. 2 defective light strands in a row is not a good sign.

Steve vs. The Christmas Lights: 2008 Edition

New house equals new Christmas lights Scheme. So I took a look at the front of my house and started to think about where I would like the lights to go. It always begins the same way. I look at the house and vegetation and decide that I would like to illuminate EVERYTHING. Then I actually begin stringing lights and my thoughts come back to reality. This year I decided I would put lights on the bushes and shrubs on both sides of the house and lights down the outdoor stairs and around the front door. I knew I was short on lights so I just started last weekend with the ones I had from the old house and decided to see how far I would get and then I could estimate how many more I would need. In addition I decided to use only the lights that would allow some bulbs to burn out without losing the entire strand of lights.

So I got all the lights up except for the high bushes by the left front windows and the massive Evergreen that is taller than the roof of my house (Trust me. I thought of how awesome it would be to get lights on a tree that size but didn't have the ladders or risk tolerance to attempt to do it. This year that is.) I also hooked up the lights with a light sensitive outdoor plug so the lights will turn on at dusk and then turn off X hours later. (Fully automatic lights rule!) Then I got my wife to go and take a look at them in the dark last weekend.

My wife liked the lights but did think that the two high bushes by the left front windows needed to be lit up as well. I always support more lights so I went to the store to get more lights and on Thanksgiving Day morning I started to hang the additional lights. After about 40 minutes or so of getting smacked in the face with branches and getting jabbed by thorns I was ready to test the additional lights on the left side of the house.

So I went up to the top of the stairs where the outdoor plug was at and TADA! The lights all came on. For about 8 seconds. Then ALL the LIGHTS WENT OUT. AHHHHHHHHH! I tried plugging the plugs in again. No dice. Holy Crap! Did I just kill I don't even know how many stands of lights I just bought this year? These lights are supposed to stay lit even if some bulbs fail.  So after I got done cursing for a good sixty seconds I started to plug each strand in to see where (hopefully not everywhere) the failure was. After some testing I realized that one entire strand of lights had failed (The first one that was plugged into the plug and so I decided to replace that stand and break that are on lights up to multiple plugs (going by the theory that the power load blew that one out.) 10 minutes and an additional extension cord later I was ready to try again. TADA! This time all the lights came on and stayed on Success! So now I have it figured out for future years and the lights turn on by themselves when it gets dark and turn off 6 hours later automatically. No more getting out in the cold to plug in the lights every winter night for me!

Coming soon: Steve attempts to install a new Christmas Tree story.

Haircut story

This week I decided that I needed to get a haircut. I wanted to go on Monday night but I ended up working until 8PM and the place closes at 8. So that meant that I was going on Tuesday. No big deal right? Tuesday won't be a problem, right?

WRONG!

  First I walked into the place and it was packed. I mean standing room only. I was very puzzled as to why everyone in the North Hills decided to get a haircut on a gorgeous summer evening. Some of the patrons told me that every Tuesday is 2 dollar off night and the staff was bitching about how busy it gets. A couple of things about Tuesday night at my hair place were strange.

The crowd sitting there waiting can best be described as the fringes of society. (I made my wife laugh by describing them as the lowest common denominator of Pittsburgh) Try to imagine the kind of people that are really concerned about saving a measly 2 dollars off a normally priced 12 dollar haircut. The cast of characters included:

-A guy so old I think he fought in the first world war.
-A tattooed lesbian who was getting the same haircut I would be getting later on that night
-Not quite a mullet but definitely a wanna-be mullet guy.
-Old tanned guy who kept talking to complete strangers
-Adult "Please grow up!" Guy who has his mom take him to get a haircut

and so on. I arrived there and within about 30 minutes (Which is approximately 25 minutes longer than my normal haircut wait) my name was called and I got up into the chair with a lady ready to cut my hair.

The fun was just beginning. It reminded me of that scene in "A Christmas Story" where the elves start yelling at all the kids to keep moving because the store is closing if they want to see Santa Claus. Most of the staff was in a very crabby mood. I arrived at 7 and the place closes at 8 and people were still coming in the door. So the staff was in a pretty surly mood and were pretty vocal about it.

My haircut began and I think I was being punished for having the nerve to show up on a Tuesday night and expect a gentle haircut. The lady had taken the hair clippers and was trimming my head but was also practically beating my head with them in the process. It was the roughest haircut I have ever had. Thankfully it doesn't take long with the clippers to trim the sides and back. She got out the scissors and cut the rest of my hair. I think she was a little more careful with those since I don't have any stab wounds in my head. The hairdryer was a different story. While using the hairdryer to blow the excess hair off me the whacked me in the head with the nozzle of the hair dryer. Ouch.

So I suppose the lesson I learned was: It's not worth the 2 dollar savings to go on bargain Tuesday at the haircut place. I'll gladly cough up the extra 2 dollars to save myself the wait and the beating that follows.

HD Challenges Part III: TV Stand

Sometime back in Mid November we ordered a TV Stand from a company called:

http://www.bestpricedfurniture.com

(I have included the link so you can avoid accidentally placing an order with them)

So on Friday Night our TV Stand arrived. This was pretty exciting for us since we were not expecting it to arrive until sometime around new years. There was a dent in the side of the box but the Fed Ex delivery guy ASSURED US that Fed Ex would return it if the item was damaged. So we were not worried at first since it seemed to be packed well in foam which did not appear to be damaged.

When we opened the box and noticed that several pieces of the TV stand were clearly damaged. Since the Fedex Ground delivery person told us to call them if we had any shipping related damage I picked up the phone and called the useless people at Fedex.

We learned a valuable lesson. Despite that fact that Fed Ex delivered us a box with a dent in it (very clearly showing that any damage inside was the result of them handling the package) if we signed for the package it meant that we accepted the package and absolved them from anything and everything. This of course is complete garbage since this would result in me rejecting virtually every package I ever had shipped to me. Not to mention that fact that we were LIED TO by the Fed Ex Delivery person about EXACTLY that. So after both myself and my wife complained to Fed Ex for damaging our long awaited TV Stand I got a hold of the sales company that is trying to decide what to do with the manufacturer.

I will probably know today or Tuesday what they will decide to do. If I don't hear I will place the item in dispute and let them fight it out with whoever they choose. We'll see what happens. Part IV to follow.

HD Challenges Part II- A new LCD Hope

When we last left off our hero, Steve, was trying to successfully get a HDTV working in his house while also making his wife happy with the furniture in the room and the picture on the new TV.

We regrouped again and started to look for a new TV to replace our defective plasma. After seeing the Plasma in the room and also checking some websites on proper viewing distance we decided that 50 inches was in fact too large a TV to view for the narrow living room and that a 42 or 40 inch would be more appropriate.

I went back to the Internet again to read more reviews of TV's and also to decide if we wanted to go with LCD technology instead of the plasma. Although I was convinced that the Panasonic tech was full of crap about all plasmas looking as bad as our clearly defective TV I figured I would look really dumb if I bought another one and it turned out he was right. Also I really liked the way it looked on my LCD computer monitor. So we decided to go down to Circuit City (Who had some great prices and also offered a discount from my employer.)

I wanted to look at Sony LCD's since I had read great things about them and also had friends who got Sony HDTV's and were very happy with them. Crystal wanted to look at both Sony's and some others to see what we thought. After looking and comparing the Sony 42 inch to the Samsung 42 inch we thought the Sony looked better. So we decided to buy it, took it home, and hooked it up.

Just to convince myself (some more) that the Panasonic guy was full of crap I actually hooked up both the Sony and the Panasonic next to each other and I could tell that the Dish HD looked awesome on the Sony and looked like complete crap on the Panasonic. Nothing to do but wait for my check from Panasonic and for them to come and take the defective Plasma away, Right?

WRONG! I got a call at the beginning of this week that Panasonic had obtained a replacement Plasma TV for us instead of the check we explicitly asked for. I told the Panasonic Tech on the Phone that I would not be satisfied with a replacement unit and we would like the refund check that I had originally requested. So I was told that it would take ANOTHER 7-10 Days to get a replacement check. I asked him (nicely) to please expedite the check as much as possible since I had already had the defective TV for 6 weeks and had already waited over 10 days from the time we first had requested a refund. I'm still waiting.

So far the story is still unfinished as of today's date. I still need a check & am still awaiting the arrival of my new TV stand. However, I do have a Sony LCD HDTV that works and looks great. I suppose the lesson learned for me here is not to buy a large piece of electronic equipment that I cannot easily return in the event that it is defective. It's not fun to deal with these bozos when you ordered from the Internet and can't just drive it back to the store if it doesn't work. I'll update with Part III of the story when we find out what happens with my refund check, the defective plasma, and my back ordered TV stand. Hopefully the rest will go a little more smoothly than Parts I and II.

To Be Continued......

HD Challenges Part I- A Plasma Mistake?

HD is not easy. Back in October we decided that we would take that great step and get HD in our house. The first challenge was finding a TV. So I did a lot of research online, talked to friends, read tons of online reviews and comments. After all that work I also went to some stores that sold the TV models we wanted to see and looked at them with my wife. Ironically my idea was to get a smaller TV (maybe 40 or 42 inches) but that idea changed pretty fast when my wife saw the larger TVs. So based on what we saw and researched we decided to get a 50 inch Panasonic Plasma TV. I ordered it online and waited anxiously for it to arrive.

When it arrived I discovered that we had another problem. We had nowhere to set it up. Since our existing entertainment center could only hold a 32 inch TV we couldn't use it. In addition, I didn't realize how difficult it would be to find an entertainment center at a REASONABLE price (read not 400 or 500 dollars) capable of holding a TV that large (Since we decided that mounting it on the wall was out of the question.) That took another 3 weeks to find one we liked online (although we checked every store in the North Hills to find a reasonable price on a TV stand we liked. It would appear that if you buy a 50 inch TV furniture stores assume you are willing to pay another 500-600 dollars for something to sit it on. We were not willing.) Then a week or two later we found out the bad news. Our TV stand was back ordered and won't ship until (maybe) Dec 27th.

By this point I was losing my mind. We just spend a ton of money on a TV that was sitting in a box in a corner of the house because my folding table in the basement did not fit into my wife's decorating scheme for the house. Three weeks after it arrived and I still didn't even know if it worked correctly yet. So after thanksgiving I convinced my wife to bring up another (better) table from the basement, set the TV up, get the HD equipment and see what it looked like.

But the fun was just beginning. We got the TV hooked up. It looked terrible. I thought that maybe it was because the Dish HD was not set up yet. In addition, it had a vertical line down the left side (about 1/3 of the way across the screen) and clearly had problems. I called panasonic and they offered to have a tech come out the day after my Dish HD appointment.

Dish came out and hooked up the new hardware. I could tell that the resolution was better but the color looked terrible. Unless people are supposed to have strange shadows across the faces and look orange colored instead of flesh tones. My wife looked at it when she came home and told me it looked awful. Earlier, the Dish Tech said he would ask for a new TV since it looked so bad. I wondered if it was the TV so I hooked up my LCD from my computer (Which is a very good LCD and can support HD resolutions) and the picture looked fine but still looked terrible on the plasma.

When the Panasonic tech came out he said he could fix the line on the screen and then proceeded to lie to me about how the bad color was Dish Network's fault. He said any plasma would look bad and it wouldn't matter if we replaced the TV. I told him that was unacceptable to my wife and I and we needed to get a refund. He called his office and confirmed that they didn't have a replacement to give us and said we would get a check in 7-10 days. Now we needed a new TV (again) and were back to square one.

To Be Continued.........

Granny Panties vs. Old Naked Hairy Obese Men

A while ago I was talking to my Fiancee (She wasn't my wife yet at the time) about the Gym. She had recently gone to the gym and told me that in the Ladies Locker room she saw something terrible. While she was getting changed in the locker room she saw some lady putting on "Granny Panties" to work out in. Didn't really want to see that. Came across as somewhat offensive and impractical.

Of course this got me thinking about the Men's Locker room. I think ours has yours beat ladies. In the Men's Locker room you are likely to get a real treat. Most of the people who work out at my suburban gym in the early morning are one step away from graduating to the "Mall Walker" phase of their lives. The typical demographic is Steve, 1 25year old guy (He is the trainer working the desk), and the rest of the AARP members. In MY locker room the most likely site is a old naked hairy obese man who doesn't really think about having a towel around his waist while he gets ready to get dressed. Today I got the fully naked guy using the wall blow dryers to dry off (all his parts) after his shower.

Ummmmm. Not that I really want to see either but given the choice. I'll take the "Granny Panties." You girls are getting off light.

In search of Weber

I love to Grill. Absolutely love it. One of the things I liked about living in Las Vegas is that the weather was warm enough year round for me to be standing outside next to my grill BBQ'ing up some meat for my dinner. I did this for more dinners than I could count. I even have a grill light (that I got as a gift) so when it starts getting dark by 4:30PM in the winter I can still be outside grilling a steak.

You would think since I love to grill so much that I would have an awesome grill of very high quality to cook on. Not yet. Due to my cheap nature I still have a grill I got from my brother for free when he moved. It does the job but it is one step above a Wal-Mart tailgating mini-grill. My wife has a grill from before we met too but it is starting to have some problems with the burners. I loved her suggestion that instead of having 2 marginal grills we could/should buy one awesome one with some of the wedding present money we received.

Weber is known for making really great grills. So I didn't even have to think about what Grill I wanted. It was a no-brainer. I did some research on line to try to determine which models we would want to get. Like any grill manufacturer they have Low-Middle- and High End Models. Since I already have a Low-end grill I started by looking at the Middle to High End Grills.

I live in Pittsburgh (which is a real city, sort of) So first we went to visit certain stores in the North Hills that would be likely to sell the Grills we would want to see: (Ex: Home Depot, Sears, Various Patio Stores, etc) We did manage to find some of the low models and gather some additional information about the models we wanted to see but none of the stores actually had the exact model we wanted to see. Weber has a website where you can enter your zip code, the grill model you want, and Miles Radius out to search and then it will produce a list of distributors who claim to have what you are looking for. (Find a Dealer) So I started out with 10 miles out. No Dice. 50 Miles? Nada. 100 Miles? WHAT? My grill isn't within 100 miles of my house? 200 Miles? Hit! It appears that the nearest Weber Distributor that has the middle grill model I want is in State College, PA. Or I can go to Baltimore or Washington DC but they are even further away.

Hmmmm. Looks like I might be ordering this grill from BBQ.com or something. I wasn't really planning on driving 160 miles each way to pick up by grill. Can't wait to get it though. The good news is that from our research excursion yesterday the wife and I agreed on the exact model we want so we can actually get the grill now. I just didn't realize that I couldn't purchase the grill from a (brick and mortar) business in my side of PA or Ohio. Who knew?

Hummer = Hot Girlfriend?

On Monday Morning I was walking toward the long covered tunnel that spikes out into the Long Term and Extended Parking at the Pittsburgh Airport. As I was getting close to the door I saw a Hummer parked close to the door I was approaching. Off in the distance I saw a girl get out of the passenger side door and although I couldn't tell from that distance I figured she was attractive (Based on the fact that she was getting out of such an expensive car with her boyfriend.) Once I got closer I discovered that my educated guess was correct. Which got me thinking. Does this mean that Owning Hummer = Having hot girlfriend? More importantly (Since my mind is always in the gutter.) Does Hot Girlfriend in Hummer = Hummer in Hummer with Hot Girlfriend?

These are the things I think about when walking to from my car to the Airport Terminal while sleep deprived at 5AM on a Monday.

Here I go…On the Road Again…Here I go…Turn the page

The last time I spent a major amount of time on the road was during the Spring to Fall of 2001. This was during the very beginning of my Consulting Career and I was working for a Management Consulting Firm based in Las Vegas. Most of my clients were in the Southwest and were small businesses far away from major cities. This made for pretty punishing travel since I would have to fly to the nearest major airport and then (usually) drive for another 2-3 hours to get to the small town where the job was. Small towns in the middle of nowhere are not really known for having decent hotels or restaurants either. Sometimes I was sleeping with the bedbugs and eating Jerky for dinner. It was pretty tough being at a new client every couple of weeks and never getting any sleep (since my travel was always had me arriving at work or home very late at night. Aside from an occasional upgrade to first class (which I would treat myself to when it only cost 40-60 dollars) and meeting some interesting rural people (like farmers, etc) it was pretty tough.

Fast forward to today. I am once again working for a consulting company which requires me to travel. However, this time things are much much better. I am working jobs that are measured in months or years with clients that are very large and some of the top in their respective industries. In addition I have a really great Travel Agency that supports our company (American Express Travel.) I really can’t say enough about their customer service. They have really done a great job with the last minute changes I sometimes need and go above and beyond. In addition, the management I deal with at work is really experienced and talented.

Sometimes I will rant about how Delta screwed me by a delay causing me to miss my connection home and then refusing to pay for my hotel room when I am stranded between work and home. On the whole though (other than the Airlines) everyone seems to go out of their way to have the “on the road” consulting experience as pleasant as possible. A vast improvement over my first traveling consulting experiences to be sure.

Business Travelers go through a lot to do their jobs. Perhaps things could improve with some open bars, after-work parties, and groupies (Similar to Rock Stars perhaps?) but in the meantime we try to remember that those frequent flyer miles and hotel points might give us our next free vacation (or Honeymoon Flights! Thanks United!) Sometimes we even can get a plane without a screaming baby or the flight that is going to the next modeling convention. One can only hope.