Can you define warrenty? Samsung can’t.

Three reasons why you should never deal with Samsung tech
support:

  1. Their call center has very long hold times, and poor
    in-experienced reps.
  2. They need to look up the definition of “Warranty” in the dictionary.
  3. The departments that matter have banker’s hours.

After several hours of wasting my life on hold with Samsung, I come to find out that they have one of the worst warranty’s ever. Their 1 year manufacturer’s warranty only covers repair of your original handset. I f for some reason the cell phone cannot be repaired, Samsung simply send it back to you and say “Not Repairable” and you are left on your own. The technician I spoke with told me the only way to get the phone replaced under the 1 year warranty would be to file an insurance claim, and pay the $70 deductible (that is assuming you have insurance on your line through your cell provider).

So, if manufacturer’s warranty is important to you, Samsung is not the company for you to purchase a phone from.

The Landlord

So, today my landlord (who’s name I will not mention) decided it would be a good idea to re-key the outside doors to my building.  I don’t know about you, but after getting home from a long day a work, the last thing you want to do is figure out why you can’t get into your building.  So, I called the main office, and they informed me that I received a note yesterday (which there was no trace off).  After a few minutes of bitching them out about their lack of notice, and failure to inform tenates and post signs, I walked over to get a new key.  Needless to say, now they have posted signs saying they have re-keyed the building.

Maybe I should send Pearl to talk some sense into my landlord 🙂

phpTek 07


I went to my first real PHP conference last week, phpTek which was located at the Ohare Hyatt in Chicago, IL. The big conference sponsors were Microsoft, Facebook, Active State, Adobe, hostedlabs, Active Media,
and php|architect.

The days were fairly full. They started out at 9, and then there was usually a coffee break after the first sessions or so, then we went until 12:30 and stopped for lunch. The lunch consisted of a buffet sponsored by adobe. Each table was contained a PHP topic. The idea was to have a working lunch, so each table would discuss a certain PHP topic. As you can guess, that works for the most part, until people digressed onto some other topic. All in all, it was a good idea, and I hope they do something similar next year. The afternoon then had a couple sessions, another coffee break, and then another
session or so. Wednesday night they had a Jeopardy style PHP Trivia contest, and Thursday night Facebook sponsored an Open Bar and live music by Andy McKee.

After the conference, I was inspired to buy about 5 newbooks which pertained to sessions I attended. For 3 days, I felt like I was back in school, only this time, it was much more enjoyable, and I’d gladly do it again! The only disappointment was the lack of power and wireless connectivity. If you were
in International A, you were usually able to pick up a signal. However, you were out of luck if you were in B or C.

There was also a podcast created by the php|architect guys. Warning: This was after the open bar, so
there is some interesting dialogue 🙂 phpTek Podcast

International Dinner 07

Friday night Sami talked me into going to the International Dinner on campus. For $10 for students, $16 for everyone else you get to try a wide variety of dishes from different countries. Even though the food was prepared by Chartwells, it was still pretty good. The menu was as follows:

Salad:

  • Tunisian Couscous Salad – North Africa
  • Baba Ganouj (roasted eggplant dip) – Middle East
  • Kim Chi (fermented cabbage) – Korea

Entree:

  • Pork with Dumplings & Cabbage – Czech Republic
  • Pad Thai (meatless) – Thailand
  • Hungarian Chicken Paprika – Hungary

Side Dish:

  • Cauliflower Curry – Nepal
  • Jamaican Rice with Peas – Jamaica
  • Lecso (simmered peppers & tomatoes) – Hungary

Dessert:

  • Conconut Toto – Jamaica
  • Apple Strudel – Czech Republic

As you can see, its quite the variety. Every got a recipe book as well. Any bets what I’ll make first?

Catching penguins one at a time