WalkerPad

Yeah so no pictures yet, been busy with house stuff.

I did get a new toy the other day off of craigslist on the cheap, factory sealed. The guy had a pretty good story as to why he had it, so I’m telling myself it didn’t just fall of the back of a truck (they got a couple at cost then didn’t need them etc, meh, maybe).
It wasn’t that much cheaper then Amazon actually (a bit) but I could get it first thing in the morning and I really needed it to go find some place in Los Altos (charise needed her hybrid with the integrated one), so I’m calling it a win.

I have some mixed feelings on the unit over all, but it dose seem to be fairly solid for point A to point B type stuff and that is always critical detail and surprisingly not all companies get that little detail right :p. So here is a brief man on the street feature/impression type review as I discovered them.

Note the page breaks on the full article page. I’ll see if I can get a picture of my UI from it.

Argh, my 360 finally died. Was ok for years, recently I turned horizontal, and put where it got a less air flow (new entrainment center) and it dies within 3 months. bad manufacturing for sure. Interesting I think the main problem was warm air intake from other AV component beneath because it was in a hotter area for al long time to and ran (but it was vertical then).

Got a unkind letter from the IRS claiming we made a lot more money then we did (the options had been treated as income correctly accept one 16 dollar one). Our tax person Lisa Berling is getting it fixed, that won’t be cheap but it’s better then me arguing with them, Lisa tends to win . Anyway I’m prety sure we didn’t do anything wrong and it’s a just a reporting reconciliation issue. Not like I have that sort of problem with socialtet stock :p.

House stuff is moving along. I think we are on the final leg. Big problem now is ours is not selling as fast as I had hoped which is making me real gun shy about putting money into the new place. On the other hand the Zillow property value graphs for the area comparing size etc still make the new place look like it will have a really great valuation after we put a of cash into the areas that are dragging it down. I’m less happy with the Zillow projection for sunnyvale :p, but Darren says we are still priced competitively priced and our disclosures show us to be in good shape. Ugh stressful. Probable drop the price a bit after this weekend if there is not a decent offer.

I should have some new kaily pictures up by monday switching around image apps has really messed up my work flow on that stuff.

Geeking out a bit today, tried out a some software for making HDR photo’s. I need to go back and learn how to do manual bracketing on my camera to to maximize the effect. Still kind of Cool, giving a lot of depth. Makes me wonder about some comment I read a year a so ago about the future being HDR photos off of HD video feeds rather then DSLR’s.

This was from when I was messing around up at Squaw valley and was perpetually scared of breaking my camera.

Image pulled. Looks like Zooomr is broken *again*. I might finally have to give up and move anything I’m not hosting over to flickr instead. I really like zooomr but it’s been nothing but problems for months and months. Its a one man army fighting the good fight there but there is a limit to what a user can take.

backup but for how long

Ok I ground my way through them and the pictures are up in the gallery. I don’t think I did the party justice though, I was a bit sick and not really taking many pictures once things got rolling.

* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 6712 ** WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 6704 ** WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 6756 *

Also I have bunch of new artsy shots up on Zooomer as edgshot 

Enjoy and sorry it took so long (see lower post, *grumble*)

I was hoping to add dads but he couldn’t figure out Amazon wish lists, or something with his accounts. Looks like there UI could use a little work at least for the non technical… So anyway here is ours, and if anyone else wants to one or email me I’ll add it to the list for general family reference. Or you could all just hope you don’t get fruit cake and nitted socks =).

Kaily
Charise
Griffon
Yeah ok it *is* a wish list so don’t *tsk* me for rdiculously exspensive camera lenses and what not, I buy that stuff for myself (or well not these days :p ), but I use my list as a memory bank for such things .

I noticed this on DIGG, an intresting look at things to come thought this was used for the lungs.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/omniguide.html

So I was trying to take some trash out, and was greeted at the door with "up Daddy up!". After some negotiation Kaily and trash where maneuvered outside, where we paused to look at the giant moon floating just above the roof tops. Kaily said, "This way please" indicating toward the street and the moon. I walked out a few steps, as she kept her arm out, and stooped. Kaily gave me a confounded look and said "I can’t…. I can’t reach it Dady…" and she reached up and up again toward the moon.

She will probable stay in the icu today and maybe tonight as well, based on the nurse not having any heads up for a move.
Never seen sombody so happy to brush their teeth.

I picked up a 360 finaly, played some DOA4, Gun and a bit of Halo2. Good stuff, DOA4 in particular impressed me, though I still prefer the Soul caliber franchise (I like the weapons). Gun seemed fun to but I just barely got started with it (just past the boat crash). Going to check out some the demo’s are arcade live stuff tonight. I hear some good things about the fight night demo.

Probable try out the MCE stuff later. Vista is sadly broken with the Fusion HDTV USB device so I have to do a roll back or wait on some working beta drivers. But without Divx support it’s all sort of pointless anyway (*shakes fist at MS*). Still should be some intresting geek moments 8-).

I thought I had some snaps from when Aunt Ariana was here but I’m haivng some trouble figuring out where they went (they didn’t spool off the camera with everything else). I’m sure they will turn up though. In the mean time here are the shots from xmass2005 and there about including Kaily meeting Elmo.

Specifically happy new years! Thank you all for the great gifts (we still have a couple folks to drop by wearing the old santa hat), we like you all liked yours too. I’ll have pictures up tomorrow, if all goes well.

Walker Clan Sunnyvale Amazon wish lists:

Kaily

Griffon

Charise

Walker-cleary:
Selina

Anyone else want to send in a amazon one for consolidation?

Grandma was nice enough to sit Kaily so Charise and I headed to the movies. Originally we where going to see Walk the Line but we noticed Aeon Flux was out. We had a nice dinner and hit the flick.

I don’t think either one of us had particularly high expectations, but the movie surprised a bit by being faster and funner then I thought it would be.
It’s a solid sci-fi action flick. Fast pacing, dorky impractical fleshy costumes glaring plot holes and of course pretty good special effects.

Unlike the TV series the plot was actually pretty followable and was more or less coherent. I still hope they do a full length Animated Aeon Flux some day, but this was fun a pretty good. A must see, no, but if your looking for something to take your mind off the real world for a bit this is a slam dunk as a discount show. The critics seem to really hate it, not sure what they where expecting…

Bottom line "B"ish.

I fired SBC yesterday, I simple was not getting nearly enough throughput and they seemed to keep raising the  prices every month by a few bucks.

So now we have Comcast again. They are claiming 6mb dl and 768k ul, will see but right now I’m sustaining 800-900kb on 256meg file from file planet. This is a lot better then I was getting from SBC (lucky to see 240kb).

None of it is enough though. I can’t believe I live in sunnyvale CA and nobody can drag fiber to my door step for next gen speeds. It’s simple a sad commentary on the American tech industry and the government (FCC in particular) that we allow this duopoly to continually hold true by directional high speed connectivity to all of our homes.

I also fired DIrect TV. I have been down on their politics and business philosophy for years but the service was ok. They wanted to charge me $300 for second HD Tivo. Comcast offered me 2 of (their admittedly less capable) Motorola boxes and a package that is about the same as the direct tv one with HD for a couple bucks less a month. I figured what the heck it’s worth trying out. Maybe when DTV gets their new MPEG4 HD DVR boxes deployed (they have none until some time next year) I will talk to them again, but the upfront costs they try and stick you with are pretty nutty.

Really though I hate all this. I want to be able to bring all this stuff into one big ass computer in the garage and have it send the HD and what not to all my other silent boxes through out the house. As well as serve all my other content like divx and mp3 etc.
None of the fatass incumbents are offering anything like this. Maybe we will get some of this with Vista MCE and cable cards late next year but that does nothing for me in the interim.

I’m actually going to try and get my MCE (might setup myth again, don’t know) box working with a HD OTA card. If I can get that working right and get good single from all the main networks, I might just fire comcast too. The Motorola boxes fail to impress, and I was pretty tired of Tivo’s awful UI and calculation performance (as well direct TV blocking all tivo enhancements to their customers).
All these things are symptoms of powerful monopoly’s colluding with IP owners to give us as little as possible while keeping as much control as possible for themselves over our content on our property. Sad.

Anyway, some good some bad and not yearly enough for all the trouble but Charise won’t let me cut all the cords so I have to eek what amusement out of the process that I can.

Oh yeah I canceled Akimbo before the trial expired. Nice ideas, but no content and the piece meal pay system is a joke IMO.

Looks like I struck out.

I have got to say that I think I agree with the tinfoil hat crowd about MS deliberately engineering the appearance of a shortage. I had retail drones telling me they are not expecting to get more in until January (after only having a handful for resale). If what MS is saying is true, and that this is because a world wide release then that was a mistake and they never should have tried it. I hit a dozen places none of which had any or had gotten cleaned out this morning by fan boys willing to wait out all night. Pretty nuts for a console that is getting so so reviews and has a pretty weak line up if you are not a hardcore race or sports fan franchise fan.
Really though I think they are trying to create the cabbage patch kid phenomenon of yesteryear. They wan the news to sound the shortage alarms and show pictures of everyone waiting in line everywhere. Some times grabbing market share is about grabbing mind share. Personally I think it’s going to back fire, people will just get pissed off and blow it off entirely and wait until the PS3 comes to do a real side by side and then buy the better system. Also angry disenfranchised people taking frustration out on retail folks is going to spawn some might bad karma for anyone who had a hand in architecting this slowly rolling ball

Will the stores get more tomorrow, more Friday? If so the retail folks don’t seem to know. Not impossible that they are clueless but that seems like yet more signs of a potential disaster. People where turned away in droves at one Circuit city this morning… how does this help MS? Does it somehow really increase demand and thus drive that non-existent critical mass?

The Retailers can’t drive up the price but E-bay and Craig’s list are going nuts. I counted about 70 entries for 360’s on Craig’s list ranging from about $500 for a core system to a 3k. Most seemed to be around 1k to 1.5k. Are you people nuts? Anyone who plays that game deserves to get fleeced IMO. How does this help MS, are those people really likely to feel kindly toward MS and give them a lot of business once the buyers remorse kicks in?

Anyway. Bummer but perhaps for the best for now, by january the next gen MCE extenders will be trickling onto the market and that was mainly the functionality I was looking for from the 360 since none the current games really float my boat.

Charise is going in for her surgery tomorrow morning (early). With a little luck will be done by lunch but given how long things took last time I’m not holding my breath.
My Mom is going to take kaily over night just in case there are complications.

Oh! I should have some new Kaily pictures up tomrrow or friday.

Well the bulb showed up on Tuesday, put it in, nothing… Shit. Took it out reseated it. Click, everything is hunky dory again and dam I must say the picture looks spectacular when it it’s working right. If anything I would say it’s even brighter then before, but maybe my eyes just got used to a partially functioning bulb or something.

Still no call from the service person.
Still no check.

It’s only been a couple days though, I’ll wait until the end of the week to give them a call back.

Edit: Got a call from teh service person on Friday, they will come out next whensday and replace the Ballace. They think that it might be causing the problem. So that will be Two ballaces and two three bulbs I have now had in this thing.

Well they called again this morning. Apparently the order fell part way out of system and they lost the credit card information to secure it. They ran it again and said the bulb should still ship today and arrive tomorrow. Will see, maybe the 3rd time is the charm. Seems their system could use some work.

Well, I’m still pretty mad but slightly mollified.

I found a special 800 number for the consumer affairs department. Apparently they do answer the phone on the weekends. Took about an hour on hold but I expected that.
I was ready to entertain myself with a slow and painful roasting of the person on the phone. I figured I would get a rock or some minimal have to talk to a supervisor type noises for Monday.
It’s hard (at least for me) to be a big mean jerk when the person on the phone with you is totally professional and starts by immediately apologizing and telling you how they will fix the problem. At the end of the day I am all about solutions.
I spoke with Doreesha, it took her a long time to pull up the original case notes (system problems) but she was totally direct about acknowledging the problems as being unacceptable and out of scope.

I faxed her my recite for the replacement bulb and faxed a copy with the case number over to a special 800 fax number for bulb exchange. Where it’s the old we ship you out, then you ship us the old one while we hold a credit card number hostages routine. Fine, everybody has done with mobile phones now.

What Panasonic promised to do:

Process my refund for the first bulb replacement. They said it should not take more then a couple days and they will send a check.

Overnight me a new bulb, this of course won’t go out until Monday, but I certainly understand that. I was impressed I got anyone today actually.

Have a service person contact me to arrange inspecting the set at my home to see if their is some sort of other mechanical failure or defect that is causing these ridiculously short lived bulbs. If any problems are found then get them fixed. All on their dime.

This is all good, and I didn’t feel like I had to push or prod for anything. Also good and different then the last couple times I had to deal with Panasonic.

We will see if they actually deliver all these things, and in a timely manner, and without more bumps.

I’m still feeling very down on projection technology and Panasonic quality control…I don’t think I would recommend rear projection to anyone now given my experience despite the cost to picture size being very favorable. I’m a bit more upbeat out the Panasonic support model though. Previous experiences where not so good, it was like pulling teeth and then only to get a little response.

One of the things that stuck me was that Doreesha was in sync and aware of the warranty changes, although she said the bulb had one year not 18 months (hmmm interesting). Still that is a lot better then 90 days, which is pretty much a joke IMO.
The warranty changes and a few other small cues I picked up makes me think their is going to be a class action suit over bulb life on projection sets at some point, whether against Panasonic or somebody else I have no clue… I can totally see why though.
My position is simple. If the bulb is rated for 10k hours then it should be covered under warranty for that life time or the equivalent amount of average or even high average usage time in years (which is something like 7 years). As a customer having gone through this rigmarole twice now I don’t think I would ever consider accepting something less then that now.
If it’s as Panasonic claims and they see very few issues outside of the one year mark for most owners then they should have no problem stepping up to the plate and supporting the full life expectancy, any thing else is just hot air.

There was one little glitch, after I got off the phone with them they called back about 10 minutes later to say they had a systems crash and Doreesha needed to get my information again to resubmit the order. Hmmm well OK, hopefully it went through the second time I guess I will find out on Tuesday if I have a bulb.

I give Doreesha high marks though, I was all set to be mean and just couldn’t be, given the feedback I was getting from her. That takes some talent when handling a very upset customer who wants a solution and a pint of blood.

I didn’t even get to start yelling. Ah well I’ll save it for the next customer service fiasco.

That is IT. I am going to war on Panasonic.
I bought my Pany LC13 on 04-30-2004. Within 6 months the ballast went out. Naturally my in-laws where visiting at the time, just make my life even more miserable. This rendered the TV out of commission for a month, and it would have been a ‘lot’ longer if I had not called and made a big fuss with Panasonic. The service department was claiming 3 months to get the replacement part. Magnolia would not step up to the plate and give us a loaner even though this turned out to be relatively well know issue and common failure (yet Panasonic kept shipping?).
OK no more business for Magnolia, apparently they would have done something if I had shelled out an extra five hundred bucks for an extended warranty, what a joke, it was like a $3k TV full retail. This was all a total pain in the ass but I wrote it off as water under the bridge.
05-23-2005. The bulb blows. Just poof, gone. No reason. It had less then 2,400 hours on it. This clearly is a serious failing on the design of all rear projection sets be they DLP, LCOS or whatever. A single major point of failure like this is totally unacceptable in design when it is subject to totally random regular failure. The Bulb is supposed be rated to 10,000 hours, not great but a manageable life. Sure some things might cause that to be a bit lower but anything less then 80% is nuts.
Notice the date, this was almost exactly 13 months after purchase and just outside of the Panasonic warranty window. They warrant the replacement bulbs for 90 days. 90 days on a critical system element that apparently is heavily prone to spontaneous and seemingly regular failure with only a small fraction of it’s rated life spent. A part that is expensive and can be time consuming to get. This is absolutely unconscionable. This also demonstrates that Panasonic knows the bulbs won’t come close to living their rated life.
Magnolia service (*sigh*, the only one’s who had the part or I never would have given them more money), charged me $325.16 for a new bulb, on my just over one year old set.
I was pretty mad but stuff does some times happen. I did some research and apparently this has been sever enough of an issue that some Pany Consumer Affairs anger (Michael Marino Jr.) had made an open statement about what they will do for poor folks like me who apparently are just unlucky (because this is not some huge profit maximizing scheme designed to defraud customers out of money… hmmm 90 day warranty, $325.16 part, hmmm). He stated they will warrant the sets for 18 months and that all new bulbs will have a 18 month warranty. Mine said 90 days on the package and that is what Magnolia stated too. He also said in his open letter that Panasonic would reimburse anyone who had premature failure.
Anyway, so I called and tried to get reimbursed for the bulb. Panasonic was amendable enough on the phone and asked me to fax over my recites and what not. I did so. Nothing, not a word, not a hey we can’t read the fax. Not a we looked this over and just going to say no. Nothing, zip, zero zilch. I have a case number though, so I guess on Monday I will start there. Like I have time to chase people *sigh*
Why make this fuss, because tonight 11-05-2005, less then 6 months after I threw good money after bad, because I was just ‘unlucky’, with their bulb, the dam POS blew out, again.
Now I’m going to have to endure god only knows how many days of Kaily crying because she can’t watch Sesame street.

Anger does not begin to describe my state of mind.

Do not buy Panasonic rear projection TV’s. They are rigged to fail regularly and cost you hundreds of dollars out of pocket.
Don’t give companies money that act like this, vote with your dollar or they will not learn. That is what I will be doing from now on. Panasonic is dead to me regardless of how they handle this situation, which given past experience I suspect will be poorly. Another $325.16 out of my pocket? This set is not even two years old and I’m going to be into it for over $650 in repairs? I’m coming for you Panasonic and I’m bringing hell and possible (is that implicitly?) lawyers with me.
These bulbs should be warrantied for their full rated life, nothing less should be considered remotely acceptable on such an expensive TV set. The fact that they claimed to have changed their warranty shows this type of failure is clearly either a design flaw or revenue stream mechanism. This should be addressed through offering customers a full refunds or replacement/upgrades to new sets.

I’ll update on Monday I guess when I have had a chance to grind the bones of the customer service person, naturally they are not open for business on weekends.