Life – Page 6 – Eclecticism

Summer Vacation ’09 Part IIe: Balboa Park

December 23, 2019March 14, 2010 by Michael Hanscom

View Summer ’09 Part IIe in a larger map

Previously: Exploring SeaWorld

After our full day at SeaWorld, we went out to meet Prairie’s cousin Dayna for dinner. She’d given us directions to a nice little Japanese restaurant not too far away from SeaWorld, so we all met there. After dinner we wanted to find a good place to get a picture of the three of us, since Dayna wouldn’t be making it to the planned family gathering later in the week, so we drove up to Balboa Park. As it turns out, since we weren’t exactly sure where we were going, and as Balboa Park is huge, we didn’t find the entrance that got us to where Prairie was aiming, but we still found a nice section of the park to take the picture. By this point, as the sun was down and Prairie and I were exhausted after our day at SeaWorld, Dayna headed home and we went back to Prairie’s grandpa’s to crash out for the night.

The next day had been left slightly up in the air as to our final plan. We only had this last full day for exploration, and had been debating between exploring Balboa Park and going out to continue our zoo explorations at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park. As tempting as the Wild Animal Park was, though, after spending all day out in the sun the day before, we ended up deciding that a day of poking around shady, air-conditioned museums at Balboa Park sounded much more bearable. We drove down to Balboa Park nice and early in the morning, got there right as the offices opened, and picked up Stay-for-the-day passes, which gave us admission to four museums for one discounted price.

Our choices for museums were…

The Museum of Man, a museum of anthropology, which had some neat exhibits of Aztec/Mayan (and related) artifacts and imagery and of Egyptian mummies.
The Museum of Photographic Arts. Small, only three exhibits, but this one ended up being our favorite. One exhibit was a retrospective of photographic portraiture; one was of insects in intricately staged scenes that ended up looking almost painterly, and the major exhibit was a retrospective of Ansel Adams‘ work. Though I knew of Adams, I’d never really explored his work before, and having my first real exposure be the actual prints in a museum setting was incredible. Beautiful stuff.
The Museum of Art. Nice, with some neat exhibitions (including a bit of Picasso and related artists). The two neatest sections were one of jewelry by sculptor Alexander Calder (whom I’d only previously known of by his big public sculptures), and one of photographic portraits by Richard Avedon covering his entire career.
The Museum of Natural History, with some neat dinosaur and other prehistoric animal exhibits. Once again, photography ended up being the star attraction, with the top levels of the museum hosting a showing of arial photos of geographical features and the top entrants from a juried competition of nature photos. The only downside to this museum was how many of the exhibits wanted to eat me.

Between museums, we wandered around and explored some of the park’s gardens, a pretty botanical garden building, and cooled our feet in a big fountain. When we decided we’d done all that we could do for the day, we headed back to Prairie’s grandpa’s, stopping off at one of the many local Mexican chains for some good southern California grub.

Here’s the slideshow of photos from the day, or you can see the day’s photos on Flickr.

Seagoth Survey

December 23, 2019February 20, 2010 by Michael Hanscom

Are you now, or have you ever been, involved with or considered yourself a part of the Seagoth (Seattle gothic) community? If so, please take a moment to help me out!

Note: I’ve had to remove the survey, as in about 36 hours I’ve received over 120 responses, roughly six times what my instructor expected us to collect, and I don’t want to bury myself in the data collation and analysis stage. Thanks for your interest and assistance, everyone!

This quarter, I’m taking a Research Methods class for the Law and Justice program at Central Washington University (Des Moines campus). As part of the class, every student has to do a small research project, and I have chosen to focus on exploring differences in self-identification as a member of the Seagoth community. To that end, I’ve assembled a short, fourteen item questionnaire. Please take a moment to complete this survey. In addition, if you could forward a link to the questionnaire itself or to this blog post to other members of the Seagoth community, I’d greatly appreciate it!

All responses to this questionnaire are entirely voluntary and completely anonymous: Other than demographic information, there is no personally identifying data being collected in the questionnaire. Participation is entirely voluntary (and greatly appreciated), but please — due to CWU requirements, all respondents must be 18 or over.

Thank you very much!

~~Complete the survey~~

No Olympics For Us

December 23, 2019February 13, 2010 by Michael Hanscom

While it’s not quite to the point of being what I’d call a “boycott,” it’s looking like the chances are extremely slim that we’re going to be watching much of this year’s Olympic coverage. We’d like to, but NBC has done a marvelous job of ensuring that we either can’t watch, or when we can, we don’t want to.

We just tried to watch some of this afternoon’s coverage. In the roughly fifteen minutes before we couldn’t take it any longer, we saw three commercial breaks, four talking heads (with audio lagging about a second behind the video feed), a bit of an interview with the first medalist from this year’s games, and eight-year-old footage from that same athlete’s first win in 2002. We listened to Bob Costas tell us that he was in Vancouver and that there were sports going on. We heard — again — about the accidental death on the luge track. We heard an interviewer ask an athlete “how he did it” after winning (um, he practiced his ass off, you idiot — why are sports interviewers always at the very bottom of the “stupid interview question” scale?).

What we didn’t see was any actual sports footage.

Oh, how I miss watching the last Summer Olympics on CBC, the Canadian network that Comcast carries locally. Their coverage was leagues better than anything NBC had: fewer inane talking heads (which can be interpreted as fewer talking heads overall or less inanity from the talking heads they had, either of which is an acceptable and correct reading); less “we’re the only country that matters” mentality; comprehensive coverage of all sorts of sports, even those that are less massively popular; and coverage that wasn’t constantly cut into with edits, updates, promises of what’s to come, and commercials (we spent one afternoon watching an entire marathon nearly commercial free, in part because we could, and in part because it was far more interesting than we’d ever realized, simply by virtue of actually being able to watch it). The realization that CBC wouldn’t be broadcasting the Olympics this year — and, further, that the Canadian network that got the contract isn’t viewable locally — was a sad one indeed.

Lately, we’ve been enjoying my new computer’s ability to watch streaming video sites like Hulu and Netflix, so I went to the NBC Olympics site to see what was available there. They’re posting a number of videos of stuff that has already happened, but prominently displayed on the main page is a live video stream (only active at particular times and for particular events, however). I click that, and am asked to tell NBC who my cable or Internet provider is. Apparently, NBC will only serve the live video to customers of certain other companies that they have contracts with. Annoying, but hey, Comcast is right near the top of the list, and we have Comcast cable, so we should be good.

After choosing Comcast, I get directed to a Comcast login page. I log in to Comcast, and they direct me back to the video stream…which tells me I’m not eligible. What? I go through the process again, and this time, work my way through until I discover that even though NBC has a contract with Comcast, and even though I’m a Comcast cable subscriber, I’m not the right kind of Comcast cable subscriber.

See, Prairie and I don’t watch a ton of TV, don’t see the need to pay ridiculous amounts of money for hundreds of channels we’ll never watch, and don’t even have a digital TV — both of our TVs are old, square, analog sets. So, there’s no reason for us to subscribe to digital cable, and we’re quite happy with our $15/month bare bones, completely basic, plug-the-cable-into-the-back-of-the-TV-set package (and honestly, we wouldn’t even bother with that if we got decent over-the-air reception with a digital receiver box, but OTA digital TV is essentially nonexistent in the Kent Valley). However, it appears that Comcast has decided that people like us don’t count, and is only sending the video streams to customers who subscribe to a digital cable package.

Crappy.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at Comcast’s website — and after poking around there, I think that digital cable prices might be one of the biggest arguments against upgrading our TVs until we absolutely have to (when they die, that is). Right now, we’re paying $15/month for a bare-bones package that serves us more than adequately — in fact, we only pay attention to about 7 of the 30-some channels that are part of the package, so there’s an argument to be made that even now, we’re over paying. If we were to upgrade to a digital cable package, the least expensive package available is $60 a month! Of course, what the website says is $30/month, but that’s only for the first six months. I can’t think of any reason why I’d want to quadruple what I’m currently paying so that I can have more crap that I’m not interested in piped into my home, no matter how pretty it is or how much of it has surround sound.

Further down the page, they mention a “Digital Economy Package,” apparently aimed at people like us, that actually is $30/month — but, of course, you can only get that if you also get your phone and/or internet through Comcast, which we don’t. So, once again, that’s not an option.

(Heading off counter-arguments: satellite TV isn’t an option, our apartment faces the wrong direction; and outlying the money for a HTPC/Media Center of some sort isn’t a realistic option for both budgetary reasons and that nagging little fact that we’re still using “old school” TV sets. I’ve got a very nice Sony TV set that’s only eight years old, and my parents have a Sony TV set that’s in its 30s and still working, so we may well not be upgrading our hardware for a long time to come.)

The end result of all of this? NBC can bite me, Comcast can bite me, and the Olympics — well, it’s not really their fault, but come on.

Seattle Metro Tunnel Beating

December 23, 2019February 11, 2010 by Michael Hanscom

This is one of the most disturbing local stories I’ve seen in a long time. A 15-year old girl was targeted by a group of other teens at Westlake Center. She and her friend went down to the Metro Transit tunnel to try to get away from the group. Once on the tunnel platform, they approached the security guards to try to get some assistance or protection from the group that was following them.

The guards, however, did nothing — even when the group arrived and one of the teens was attacked, shoved off the platform (thankfully, no buses or trains were present), followed back onto the platform, knocked to the ground, and then repeatedly kicked in the head until she was left unconscious.

Here’s a local news report with security footage of the attack. This is not pleasant to watch.

There are so many things to be outraged at.

Apparently, the ‘security’ people are contract workers, authorized only to “observe and report” suspicious activity and attacks. This has been the standard party line from Olympic Security and from a number of other officials commenting on the incident, and their protestations of being “extremely disappointed” in the security guards just doesn’t compensate.

The girl approached the guards and requested assistance. Instead, they turned away from her. She tried to keep one of the guards between her and her attacker, and neither that guard nor either of his partners made any attempt to intervene or do anything except the contractually required radio call to the police. One guard actually walks away during the attack. Ten blows to the head and six kicks to the head later, they continue to watch as the attacker comes back for a final kick to the head.

There is no excuse, not even the “observe and report” language in the contract, that justifies the guards behavior in this instance.

They could have paid attention to the girl about to be attacked. They could have worked together to form a barrier between her and the group of teens. They could have surrounded her to keep her attacker away. They could have moved to block her attacker from coming back for that final kick. They could have made any number of non-aggressive attempts to intervene that would not have involved directly contacting any of the group of teens threatening the girl.

Futhermore, thanks to Washington’s “Good Samaritan” law, at the very least, they could have assisted her after the attack without fear of liability, instead of standing around her unconscious body. Even more importantly, according to this article, Washington has had a “Good Samaritan” law on the books since 2005 that “makes it a misdemeanor offense to fail to assist a person who has suffered substantial bodily harm, provided that the person could reasonably summon assistance without danger to himself or herself.” Unfortunately, I’m currently having trouble finding the exact language of the referenced statute.

Of course, that brings up a second point. The witness interviewed in the above video describes standing there, watching the attack, and wondering, “Why doesn’t anybody do something?” Well, lady? Why not? Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t anyone else do something? Why didn’t any of the other people on the platform do something? I’m not even talking about physically restraining the attacker or accosting any of the rest of the group, just get close, surround the victim, get some sort of barrier between her and her attacker.

Don’t wait for someone else to do something, because they’re all doing the same thing.

This whole thing is just disgusting.

Another troubling aspect to this that I’d thought a little about, but was brought up in a comment on the LiveJournal mirror of this post (which, unfortunately, appears to have been eaten when I updated this post with the news reports below):

A bigger problem, however, is that this incident has shown to everyone just how powerless the security guards are, so I would imagine that if people are inclined to commit violence against someone else at the bus stop, they know they an do it now without ANY fear of retribution.

Exactly. Given what we’ve seen, just what is the function of the “security” guards? And what’s to prevent more frequent and more severe attacks from happening, now that it’s been made abundantly clear just how little protection these guards actually provide?

More reports:

Tunnel assault on girl sparks security debate:

King County Metro Transit will change its security policy in the Downtown Transit Tunnel after a surveillance video showed a 15-year-old girl beaten in front of three security guards who didn’t intervene to help her, an agency official said Wednesday.

In the meantime, county officials have called for a full review of tunnel security practices.

Four charged in transit tunnel beating:

On Wednesday, prosecutors filed first-degree robbery charges in King County Superior Court against Latroy Demarcus Hayman, 20, Tyrone Jamez Watson, 18, and Dominique Lee Whitaker, 18. A 15-year-old girl was also charged in juvenile court.

Speaking with detectives, the girl said she’d expected the guards to come to her aid.

“I thought the security guards would defend me if (the 15-year-old) tried anything,” the girl said, according to court documents.

Following the attack, the girl said the same Seattle police officers who’d contacted her previously refused to take action.

Admittedly agitated, the girl said she tried to tell the officers she’d been assaulted, according to court documents. When they did not assist her, she called her mother.

Her mother arrived at the scene, the girl told detectives, and contacted the officers on her daughter’s behalf.

“They told my mom that they were tired of all these kids downtown causing trouble,” the girl told police.

“It seemed like (one) officer put us all in one category,” the girl continued. “We were fed up with Seattle police but we wanted to press charges. It didn’t seem like the officers were (ever) interested in hearing my side of what happened.”

I’m a Winner!

March 7, 2022January 14, 2010 by Michael Hanscom

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across the Forgotten Bookmarks weblog, and started following his (?) Twitter account as well. Every so often he runs a simple giveaway contest, and it seems that today, my number came out of the magic hat!

What’s behind the curtain, you ask?

Giveaway includes these books: Romance of Da Vinci, 1928. Pocket Book of Verse, 1940. Robison Crusoe, 1930s…….

…….G. Eliot: Poems, 1909. The Moonstone, 1930s. Crime and Punishment, 1953. Works of Dickens, 1940s.

Pretty slick!

School Schedule, Winter Quarter 2010

December 23, 2019January 4, 2010 by Michael Hanscom

Well, even though classes don’t officially start until tomorrow, I’m already up and running and beginning to dig into the readings for my classes. Here’s what I’ll be playing with this quarter:

LAJ302: Criminal Procedure

A review of guidelines for police arrest, search, interrogation and identification procedures based upon rules of criminal procedure derived from the U.S. Constitution.

LAJ400: Research Methods in Criminal Justice

This course examines current research in criminal justice and research methods and statistics. Students will critique current methods.

LAJ403: Sexual Minorities, the Law, and Justice

This course examines sexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender/transexual issues related to the legal system. It provides a political and sociological overview of history, morality, law, and law enforcement practices related to sexual orientation.

Plus, I’m TA’ing for LAJ300 (Administration of Criminal Justice), which I just took this last quarter, and tutoring in the Writing Center four days a week. I’ll be busy, but it looks to be an interesting quarter.

Best Movies of the Decade

December 23, 2019December 28, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

Three lists follow, all yoinked from Slashfilm: first and second, the best-reviewed movies of the decade (10 from Metacritic and 20 from Rotten Tomatoes), third, the IMDb top 25 movies of the decade. For each list, I’ve italicized the films I’ve seen, and bold italicized the films we have in our movie collection at home (in other words, both seen and enjoyed enough to keep). I’ve also tossed in links to searches on my blog to mentions or reviews of the films I’ve seen, when possible.

Metacritic’s Top 10 Best-Reviewed Movies of the Decade

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Ratatouille (2007) (Cute, but has the usual Pixar problem.)
Spirited Away (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) (As with the entire LotR series, TRotK gets quite a few mentions.)
Sideways (2004)
WALL-E (2008) (Once again, the Pixar problem.)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) (Many mentions of TFotR have appeared over the years.)
The Queen (2006)

Rotten Tomatoes: Top 20 Best Reviewed Films of the Decade (minimum 100 reviews)

Man On Wire
Up (Cute at times, but on the whole, we didn’t like it.)
The Wrestler
Finding Nemo (My original review stands, but…well, by now, you know what the “but” is.)
The Hurt Locker
Let the Right One In
Spellbound
Chicken Run
Murderball
The Fog of War
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
The Band’s Visit
The Incredibles (I love the film, but…am I beating a dead horse yet?)
Sideways
The Queen
Spirited Away
Once
Capturing the Friedmans
Maria Full of Grace
Winged Migration

IMDb’s Top 25 Movies of the Decade

The Dark Knight (2008)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
City of God (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Avatar (2009)
Memento (2000) (One brief, rambling review from when I fist saw it. Used to own this one, would like to again.)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) (Once again, many mentions.)
WALL·E (2008)
Amélie (2001)
The Departed (2006)
The Pianist (2002)
Spirited Away (2001)
The Lives of Others (2006)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) (One very brief blurb.)
Requiem for a Dream (2000) (A brief mention from when I bought the DVD. Don’t have the DVD anymore, but this is another I’d like to have in my collection again.)
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Up (2009)
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
The Prestige (2006)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
Downfall (2004)
Gran Torino (2008)
Sin City (2005)
District 9 (2009)
Batman Begins (2005)

I haven’t been keeping up with my movie watching, have I?

AMC Theaters OKs Bringing In Drinks and Snacks

December 23, 2019December 18, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

Well, no, they don’t. However, they sure seem to be encouraging it, even if that’s not their intent.

This morning, Prairie and I went to see a matinee showing of The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s latest traditionally animated film. The film itself was a lot of fun, and we both loved being able to go out and see real animation on the big screen, something that happens all too rarely in these days of CGI and 3D gimmickry.

Unfortunately, as much as we enjoyed the film itself, we’re running out of reasons to bother with actual theaters, rather than waiting for video. The latest eye-rolling bit of obnoxiousness? It seems that AMC Theatres has discontinued all “small” sizes of drinks and candy.

When I went to the snack bar, planning on getting a small soda, the menu board had a blank spot under the “small” column for both drinks and candy. Scoping out the sales stations, I noticed that while they all had spaces for three sizes of cups by their soda fountains, only two were stocked. Asking the soda jockey behind the counter confirmed it: AMC is “reconfiguring” their snack bar options, and there are now only two sizes of drinks, medium and large.

While even the small drinks weren’t all that small before hand, it appears that now, the smallest size fountain soda you can get is a 32oz bucket, for $4.25. I have no real idea what they’ve done with their candy lineup, but I’m betting they just re-labeled all the “small” boxes to “mediums”, and knocked the larger “medium” boxes up to “large”.

Just one more reason (along with the barrage of ads euphemistically described as “pre-show entertainment,” the crappy customer service provided by the staff of most theaters, and the absolute lack of public decorum from the majority of other moviegoers) why my theater-going experience is going to be ever more rare. On those rare occasions when I do go — both Prairie and I are thinking that we want to see the 3D version of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which will be our first modern theatrical 3D experience (no, I’m not planning on seeing Avatar in 3D…at this point, I’m not planning on seeing it until it’s out on DVD) — I’ll be taking advantage of Prairie’s largest purse and bringing in my own snacks and drinks.

12/21/09 Update: According to this Get Satisfaction customer support thread, small sizes of soda and popcorn do still exist, bundled together into a “Cameo Combo”. A combo doesn’t thrill me, as I’m not big on popcorn and would only want the drink, but the representative did say that it should be possible to buy the small drink on its own. I’m still not entirely thrilled by this (it seems ridiculous that this is the only way to get a reasonably sized drink), but at least it’s an option (assuming that the kids at the snack bar know about the option).

Windows 7 + Digital River = Headaches

December 23, 2019November 6, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

Yet another item in the “why I’m a Mac user” file, and the “we’re never buying another Windows-based PC” file.*

Back on September 18th, I bookmarked an article detailing a special program Microsoft had set up for college students, offering the Windows 7 upgrade for $29 dollars. While I’m definitely a Mac user, we do have Hermie, our PC laptop, and this seemed like a reasonable deal. I went to the website, put in my college e-mail address, and got the process started, placing an order for the digital download and paying the extra $13 for a physical installation DVD to be set via snailmail.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before things started to go all pear-shaped. The following is the text of a support request I sent to Digital River, the company handling the digital sales and distribution for the program, through their website:

Selected Reasons: Order question – I received an error message.

Shopper Email: [me]@cwu.edu

Shopper Comments: Store error?

I just had what appears to be a catastrophic error when attempting to place my order for the $29 Windows 7 special student price. On my first attempt, I made it through to the final ‘checkout’ button, when the store stalled for a minute or two, then came back with an error message (unfortunately, I didn’t save the message, so I can’t relate exactly what it was).

When I reloaded the store and again attempted to place my order, I am now being told that I am not eligible for this upgrade, even though the initial check of my e-mail address indicated that I was, and allowed me to place the order (until the error message appeared).

At this point, I’m not sure if my order has been placed or not. I’ve not yet received any sort of e-mail confirmation, which seems to indicate that my order does not exist, but the ‘ineligible’ error message might mean that the system thinks I have placed an order, and is preventing me from placing a second order.

Additionally, I’ve been receiving the following error from the webserver while attempting to submit this error report:

Access Denied

You don’t have permission to access "http://drh.img.digitalriver.com/DRHM/servlet/ControllerServlet" on this server.

Reference #18.64d32d0.1253551495.12f2e3d

This forced me to find this customer service page on the main Digital River website, rather than being able to use the customer service page on the Windows 7 US Online Store.

Any assistance, including confirmation of whether or not my order has

actually been placed, would be greatly appreciated.

Three days later, on September 22nd, I got the following response:

Thank you for contacting the Windows 7 Offer online store.

We show that the payment for order number XXXXX has been received and is awaiting clearance through the bank. This process may take up to 14 days from the date payment was received. Once the payment has cleared, you will be notified via email. If you purchased a digital product, it will become available for download after the funds have cleared.

Order Number : XXXXX

Sincerely,

Mark V.

Windows 7 Offer online store

Customer Service

webhelp.v4@digitalriver.com

Email ID: 11915177

Time passes…

I never did get any e-mail confirmation of my order, and the payment took a lot longer than 14 days. Yesterday I checked my bank accounts online, and saw that the charge from Digital River had finally gone through on October 27th, more than a month after I had placed the order. Still, at least that was confirmation that they had received and processed my order. I went to the Digital River site, plugged in my order number, and was finally able to download the Windows 7 installation.

So, yesterday morning, I get the upgrade process started. The initial download was a small, 346k installation manager. I open that, and it begins the two-hour process of downloading the full Windows 7 installation package.

Two hours later, it’s ready to go. I run the installer, it chews on things for a while, checks for online updates, chews on things a little longer, and then tells me that I need to complete two steps before proceeding: I must uninstall iTunes, and restart Hermie because of some system updates the installer had changed. Okay, fine. iTunes goes away, and I restart Hermie.

Once Hermie restarts…um, well, now what? The installation process didn’t automatically restart. There’s no standalone installer that I can see, either on my desktop or in my Downloads folder. Odd. Maybe it’s all handled through that initial little download manager? I open that up, and a few minutes later, I’m watching the download counter slowly crawl through another two hour download process, as apparently whatever it downloaded the first time disappeared during the restart process. At this point, I have to head off to school, so I just let a few choice words fly and wander off, letting the machine do its thing.

That night, I come home from school. The download is finished, so I start the installation process again. This time the installer seems happy, and proceeds chug away, after warning me that the process will take “a few hours.” A few hours indeed — two hours later, it’s still installing, and I go to bed.

Which brings us up to this morning. When I check Hermie, it looks like the install has gone swimmingly, and Windows is happily sitting and waiting, asking me to type my Windows product key. “You can find your Windows product key on a label included with the package that came with your copy of Windows. The label might also be on your computer case.”

Hm. Well, since this was a digital download, I don’t have a package. Maybe, as this was a digital download, they just need the old Vista product key? I dig out Hermie’s box, find the Vista product key, type it in…no go. Okay, so apparently, I’m actually supposed to have a Windows 7 product key somewhere. Not really surprising, but I’m more than a little curious as to where it might be.

Back to Digital River’s site. I poke around the customer service pages and find out that the product key was supposed to be e-mailed to me. Hey, I’ll bet that that was part of the e-mail that I never got because the website crashed! Oh, goodie.

So, the following two e-mail messages go off to Digital River, this time directly to “Mark” at the e-mail address that replied to my first message:

Hi Mark —

On or about September 20th or 21st, I submitted a support request through Digital River’s main site regarding my issues ordering the special $29 student price edition of the Windows 7 upgrade. You replied to me on the 22nd, letting me know that despite my problems with the website, my order had been received and was merely awaiting clearance through my bank. I’ve included the discussion thread with my original request and your response below.

The good news is that the order did finally go through — I saw the entry on my bank statement yesterday, and was able to log in and download the Windows 7 installer. I let the installer run overnight, and everything seemed to be going well. Unfortunately, the bad news is that (I assume) because of the issues with the website when I originally placed my order, I never received an e-mail confirmation or receipt for my order. And, of course, it is this e-mail confirmation that contains the Windows 7 Product Key necessary to complete the install and activate Windows. At the moment, I have a computer that has a legally purchased and installed copy of Windows 7, but is of no more use than a doorstop because of the lack of a product key.

I’ve tried every avenue I can think of to find the key on the Digital River website. While I can log in and view my Order Details page, which verifies my order number, date, status, and billing and shipping addresses, that page does not display my product key. It does offer a helpful-looking button titled “View Invoice”, however, clicking on that, rather than showing me my invoice, instead sends me to the main Registration page on the site that asks for my educational institution e-mail address to verify that I’m eligible for the program.

I’ve paid for the software, the money has been deducted from my account, I’ve installed the software, and my computer is now useless due to some bug in the Digital River system. Please have someone find my invoice or receipt and send me my product key so I can use the software I’ve purchased…and my computer.

An addendum to the attached message that I sent approximately 40 minutes ago:

I have just checked my physical e-mail box, and though the charge from Digital River was deducted from my bank account on Oct. 27th (incidentally, more than a month after I initially placed the order), I have not yet received the physical DVD that I ordered (which I’m hoping would also have the product activation key as part of the package, though at this point, I’m less than optimistic). Do you have any idea when my installation DVD shipped, the expected shipping time, or (best case scenario) a tracking number?

In addition to sending the e-mail off, I also decided to see if I could call Digital River and actually speak to a customer support representative. Of course, Digital River doesn’t have a customer support phone number anywhere on their site that I can easily find, so I turn to Google…and boy, was that an education. Searching for ‘digital river customer service phone number‘ brings up a whole lot of reasons not to trust ordering anything from Digital River — including this battle from 2001, indicating that in eight years, they still haven’t managed to figure out their process — something that I wish I’d known before starting this whole process.

I do find a phone number for Digital River customer service listed on this customer service contact page from an entirely different company. Calling that number just gets me a recorded message from Digital River telling me that the number is no longer in service…but at least they are kind enough to give me another number to call.

For the record: as of November 6th, 2009, Digital River’s customer service phone number is (952) 253-1234.

So, at 7:57 a.m., I call. I speak to a polite young Indian lady who tells me her name is “Jay,” who checks and verifies my order, and tells me that I should get an email at my CWU email address in “about fifteen to twenty minutes” with my product key. The whole phone call takes all of about five minutes, so some small kudos to Digital River on that score: once you can find someone, they’re relatively polite and efficient. I thank her, and start writing this blog post. It’s now 8:52 a.m., long past the “fifteen to twenty minute” window that I was given, and no email has arrived yet. Yeah, any points Digital River got from their phone etiquette have been quite handily counteracted.

And that’s where the matter stands right now. I’m lucky in that Hermie is a backup machine, not a primary for either myself or Prairie, so it’s not catastrophic that it’s currently out of commission. I’ll keep fighting with Digital River, but if this goes on for more than another day or so with no product key, no physical installation DVD (with product key), and an inoperative computer, then I’ll be using the backup install DVD that came with Hermie to go back to Vista and start arguing for a refund instead.

What a completely crappy experience. Thanks, Digital River, and thanks, Microsoft, for choosing such a stellar business partner.

Update: After waiting for a full hour after the stated 20-minute window, I called back and spoke to another representative. This time, I had him send the email to my Gmail account, and kept him on the phone until it appeared. When it did appear, the email was very helpful in explaining how to download and install the Windows 7 upgrade…but said absolutely nothing about the product key. I explained this to the representative, even narrating exactly what happened when I followed the link in the email he had just sent me, until it finally sank in that yes, I had downloaded Windows 7, and yes, I had installed it, and yes, I still needed the product key!

Finally, he admitted that there seemed to be something going wrong, and read me my product key, character by character. Once again making sure to keep him on the phone, I read the product key back to him as I entered it in…and, finally, success! The box blinked away, and Windows 7 finally finished installing.

So, an eventual acceptable ending. But wow. What an incredible amount of frustration to get there. Any bets on whether that physical installation DVD ever shows up?

* A quick aside to the zealots: yes, I’m perfectly aware that this post details an issue primarily with Digital River, and only slightly with Microsoft. However, as I’ve never had a customer service experience quite this frustrating with Apple or an Apple-related company, and as I wouldn’t be having this experience were it not for attempting to upgrade a Windows-based PC, the Microsoft/non-Apple-PC side of things ends up being the target of my ire. Perhaps it’s not entirely fair, but that’s just how it is.

New iMac On the Way…

December 23, 2019October 20, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

I’ve been planning on upgrading my desktop for a while now, and almost ordered an iMac a few months ago. I’m so glad I waited for the next generation of iMacs to be released, though! They were released this morning, and mine is ordered and on its way!

My final configuration:

27″ screen
3.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
4GB RAM
ATI Raedon HD 4850 w/512 MB RAM
1TB Hard drive
8x dual-layer SuperDrive (CD/DVD)
Full (wired) keyboard with 10-key pad
Magic Mouse
iWork ’09 Preinstalled
AppleCare

It should be here sometime next week. Exciting!