Dr Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk

TED 2008 just wrapped up and in no time, they’ve started to post some of the talks on the site.  I’ve been interested in the brain and how it works for years.  My Uncle had a massive stroke about 10 years ago and lost much of his ability to communicate through speech.  Dr Taylor is a brain scientist who lived through a stroke of her own and a long recovery.  This is a great talk about seeing a stroke and some of our brain functions through  a scientist’s eyes as her own brain starts to unravel.http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf
Her book is on lulu here.My Uncle Don passed away in January.  I wish I could have shown him this talk.Mono Mono

Customer service done right

In stark contrast to my Vonage and Sprint customer service nightmares earlier today, I contacted VMWare support via the online tool. I got an email back in 7 minutes with the correct answer and the change was completed.
Total time for my personal involvement was around 25 seconds and my problem was resolved asynchronously in less than 10 minutes.

Customer service nightmares

I spent several hours on the phone separately with both Vonage and Sprint this morning.  Both calls should have taken less than 10 minutes and each took almost 90 minutes.  Both calls required multiple unnecessary department transfers and either broken english speaking reps, or reps who spoke english well who were rude. Really rude. Unnecessarily rude.
Both companies made me give the account number no less than 10 times.  10 times!

In the end, I felt like a victom. Vonage ended up getting my change wrong, billing me for something they said they were going to give me for free for my throuble, and now my service doesn’t work.

Sprint double charged me for my change request.

Now I have to call both call centers again.

A work from home challange for me

I have the luxury of working from home 3 or 4 days a week.  I have several clients who are very accomodating of this.
I’ve been doing this for years now and I’ve noticed a trend about my productivity.  It’s directly tied to the amount of actual user interaction I recieve on a personal basis.

For example, an 8:30am phone call from someone who has a new idea, is excited about something, or even has a problem can set my entire day moving.  I’m productive, creative and engaged.

In contrast, if I don’t recieve personal touches by lunchtime, in the afternoon I find myself letting calls go to voicemail because “I just don’t feel like it”.

So here’s your chance, contact me early in the morning.  You could just change my entire day.