My Blog
The Lyin King
Wednesday, January 26, 2005 at 1:17 am
I don't know what I was doing - but I end up in all of the dark alleys of the Internet at one time or another. Today, I discovered that Lion King was really a rip-off of a classic Japanese cartoon called Kimba The White Lion. Take a look at these video frames. Look familiar? Yeah, I was kinda shocked by this. More than once, a company has tried to release the Japanese film in America or groups have tried to show it at film events, but somehow something always got in the way. In fact, the movie The Lion King was delayed during litigation surrounding one of these home video releases in America (that never ended up happening). Want to see more? Go to this web site and read the whole rant.
Call It *When* You Will
Monday, January 24, 2005 at 3:57 am
I'm going to be in Greenville next weekend and David and I are going to record the voicemail greeting for my new Lingo phone line. This is an Internet phone line, and has Internet-based management features. This means that I can upload my voicemail greeting as an audio file. This is much better than talking into a crappy phone microphone. That's why we're doing this in the Greenville College recording studio. David will have his guitar.
Question: What should my new greeting be? It should be awesome, over-the-top, and something I couldn't do unless I had such resources available. Got a suggestion? Post a comment on this entry and tell the me and the world. If you have any audio clips (of yourself, not copyrighted please) that you think I should include, send them to me by e-mail.
Quote of the day
Friday, January 21, 2005 at 5:01 am
As if last week wasn't full enough with words about Fishy's LiveJournal, her post today made my humor department smile. Here's what she said:
I've decided that I must lose weight. This is not new, but I've decided that I must lose weight even if for no other reason than to decrease the surface area of my legs...it takes WAY too long to thoroughly shave them. Less weight, less leg, less shaving time = happier me.
Guess I'll have to rent it
Friday, January 21, 2005 at 4:33 am
The title of this post is part of a great quote of a Weird Al song: "So if money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it."
Part two of my rental nightmare leads me to http://movielink.com and the nightmare ended. It was a dream. I am not about to pay $15 per month to wait for my DVD's to come in the mail. I am willing, however, to pay a little extra to see my movies instantly. Yes, I have digital cable and have the option of pay-per-view - but I didn't want to have to wait an hour for a good movie to be starting. Instead, I went to MovieLink, picked out a movie, payed $6, and in only two minutes I was watching my movie!! It really is a high quality &endash; the movie started playing right away, but it took nearly an hour to fully download over my high-speed internet connection. I rented the movie Sleepover, which was actually a pretty good teen movie with the girl from Spy Kids. It may not have been worth $6, but after all the trouble I'd already been through, it sure was cheaper than driving 20 miles to rent it. I can't say this is the last time either. Some of their movies are only $2 and every weekday they have a movie for 99 cents or less.
All in all, after moving my couch further away from my 13" TV and toward my 19" nice & sharp computer monitor, I am a happy customer. Until I can afford an HDTV and component video cables to connect my computer to my TV, I'm fine with that setup.
Customer Service Strikes Again
Friday, January 21, 2005 at 12:03 am
I tried to rent a movie this evening. And they decided firmly that they didn't want my business. In order to verify my identity and that I do indeed live locally, they asked for a telephone bill. First of all, that's a big pain - they only come once a month. Second of all, mine happens to not come at all, as I have a cell phone and pay my bill online. It wasn't enough for them that I had that very cell phone in my pocket or that I had a voter registration card in my pocket that said that I live in Carthage. They wanted to verify the billing address on that bill with my driver's license, which won't have my new address until I renew it in 2008. The store OWNER stood right there and told me this. She left, as I was standing there stunned. I try to ask the person behind the counter to clarify and make sure I understood the policy and the owner came back in, apparently trying to hold back a wildfire fury. She was angry that I wanted to be their customer and give them money. She offered to let me print out my phone bill and give it to her with my confidential account numbers on it. Again, I can't possibly stand for that - not in the age of rampant identity theft. I have a right to protect myself. She told me that she'd let me know if she changed her mind. I asked her if she would like me to leave a callback number and as I was saying this she scurried out of the room.
20 seconds later she comes back, no apologies. She asks me where I work and I told her and she looked like she had seen a ghost. She said that she would call my employer and get back w/ me. Now, isn't that great customer service? Even if I do get approved, do you think I'm renting there? Ha! Time to look into Walmart's movie rental service or Netflix. I'm not going to let her treat me like that and then get a customer out of it. This is probably on the top-three list of the worst customer service I have ever seen!
