Tag: creative zen sleek photo

Getting back to my roots. :)

Sorry, this post is not going to be deep contrary to what my title says. lol. By my roots, I mean my neosoul-loving former self. l have not been able to get enough of Vivian Greene’s “Emotional Rollercoaster” or Floetry’s “Say Yes”. Those songs sound awesome on my Creative I-Trigue system which I got for a steal at $50 and even better through my HP premium headset. Those songs pump me up while at work and are the secret behind my ever-present smile(s) at work. I’m sure I’m already a constant fixture in many people’s minds for my bouncy walk and ever-ready smile. It makes me feel good to just smile even though I have problems. It’s totally worth seeing the smiles get lit within people when they see me being all infectiously happy. 🙂 I really love the environment at my workplace and that makes all the difference because it makes me want to haul ass free of charge! lol.

In other news, I sustained a mild injury at work. I’m inclined to call it a major injury, but the learned bosses and my smart husband have concluded that it’s “not a big deal”. Try telling that to my hurting left hand which got all swollen up to the size of a small egg. 🙁 Anyhow, I put an icepack on it and it kept the swelling down. My diagnosis (by the 4 DVMs or doctors of veterinary medicine) was that I had busted a blood vessel. One of these days, I’ll regale my children with tales of their mother’s clumsiness.

In yet other news, my HP premium headset broke. I got that blasted thing on the 20th of September and it’s broken already! Matt can attest to the loving care I bestow on my electronics so it was definitely not operator error. I say that HP has a defective design. Accordingly, I called the warranty line (HP Premium Digital Stereo Headset manuals) and got told that they couldn’t help me because I didn’t have the box which had the serial number on it. Why HP doesn’t engrave the serial numbers on the headsets? I have no earthly clue. Well, this is where Matt, my knight in shining armor, comes in. He simply took it to the returns department at a certain unnamed retail store and they gave us/him a brand new HP premium headset. At first blush, I was ecstatic, but I’m now extremely suspicious because I might not get lucky a second time. So, when I get home from hanging out with Matt, I’ll scan my receipt that documents the exchange of the defective HP product for the new HP product and write down the relevant numbers and such. I knew it paid to be paranoid. Now, I’m 100% certain it does. From today, I’ll try will scan all receipts that show purchase of heavy duty items like electronics and other precious items. lol.

With that, have a happy friday! Lawdy, ya’ll, I was slogging at work today! I couldn’t stop yawning and it felt like the day had an extra hour tagged onto it! I’m relieved to be off work and just chilling out. However, knowing me, I’m also up to something that’s pretty cool if I may say so myself. 😀 I am giving Remote Administrator a trial. What is Remote Administrator? It’s basically a way of remotely administering your home/work/whatchamacallit computer. I have successfully connected to my HP pavilion desktop pc from my laptop using Radmin 3.2 Remote Control and even Matt was suitably impressed. The best thing about having this type of control over my home computer is that I won’t have to constantly carry the same files on both laptops e.g. I can keep things that I’m not ready to dispose of, but might have a need for on my home computer. Sadly, I had used my local address to connect and now that I’m away from the house, I need the external IP address. So, I’m just listening to my music library on Windows media player and sipping on some Hennessy. I kid about the alcohol part, but I am in that kinda mood, feel me? 😀

Which brings me to the topic of media on the PC. On my desktop PC, I use the Creative MediaSource player for listening to my music and video files. However, I decided to give Windows Media Player 11 a whirl on my Vista Ultimate Laptop and I have to confess that I wonder what had been stopping me from trying it all this while (at least on my laptop). If you recall, I had to reformat my laptop and Creative MediaSource had been a minor irritation on my system. So far, I’m loving the way it integrates with my Creative Zen Sleek Photo player seamlessly and its organization of my music files is to die for. I can’t imagine going back to Creative MediaSource just yet. Still, some small part of me feels like giving up Creative MediaSource for Windows Media Player is an admission that sometimes it doesn’t pay to fight the power, if you get my drift. I mean it’s often best to use things made by the PC manufacturer for the maximum compatibility i.e. instead of Thunderbird, learn how Microsoft Outlook works and make it work & instead of some alternative media player, learn to love Windows Media player. lol. I’m tired of fighting. 🙂

Last but not the least, the reunion (representing Matt’s maternal side of the family) is tomorrow and I’m looking forward to it.

Namaste.

Careless whispers and companies that could care less

This post is backdated because it was on my old Drupal site. I was a former Gas South customer and I was treated very badly. Enjoy my story.This song (Careless Whispers) was recorded on my Creative Zen Sleek Photo from a radio station. Matthew introduced me to George Michael and his songs. Apparently, this song was first released as a solo George Michael single, while he was part of the pop group Wham!. So, I fell in love with this one in particular. Enjoy the song. While you’re listening, I’ll take the time to burden you with some trouble I’ve been having or had (hopefully). When picking a company to provide a service say gas, please choose wisely. I didn’t and I tolerated this particular gas company’s service until when I decided to quit due to a change in my living situation. The first thing they did was hit me with a cancellation fee that I hadn’t been advised of. Naturally, I challenged this fee and it took them over 1 month to investigate and remove this $50 cancellation fee. Well, I didn’t pay the initial final charge with the $50 bill tacked on. In a little over a month after the matter was resolved, I got a letter from a debt collection agency about the account which was overdue. To say I was blindsided was an understatement. They sent my account over to collections without so much as a “Hey you — pay or collections-here-we-come letter”. I paid the bill the day after I received the letter from the external collections agency and then, called this company (it’s Gas South, for the record). I have all my cell phone records and distinctly recall asking the CSR (customer service representative) for a final bill to be sent to me. This never happened. During my call to Gas South this time around, I got the call escalated and it reached a lady who pulled all the tricks they teach them at customer service school. First, she claimed that during my last call to confirm if the case had been resolved, that I hadn’t requested for a bill to be sent. I should have requested for a call transcript, but it slipped my mind. Then, the next thing was my inquiry into their reporting procedures. Apparently, it’s 45 days from issuing the final bill and 30 days from when it’s due that it’s first sent to Gas-South’s internal collection crew. They’re supposed to get in touch with the customer and then, forward it to an external collections agency if the customer doesn’t pony up the money. I never heard anything from Gas South. The last time I called them was 06/08/2007 and I was so occupied with things like my parents coming down, my wedding reception, etc. I’ll be the first to admit that I should have been on top of things. Nevertheless, it doesn’t give a company license to fast-track things as they please without regard to due process. I’ve since lodged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and I am in the midst of drafting up a letter to their headquarters. That way, I’ll have my complaints on the books and their system.

Update: I’ve found a Youtube video of his performance of the song so enjoy it!

and here’s just the mp3 of the song: