Eliza Dushku is Jimmy Kimmel Cute

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

From Jimmy Kimmel, and JustJared…
A clip showing some details of upcoming Dollhouse footage, and discussing Eliza\’s winning of a Bronze in a triathlon…

Eliza Dushku drops by Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Thursday (March 12) to talk about her PETA’s little problem with her, her drama series Dollhouse, and the triathlon she placed third in.

The 28-year-old actress talked about her triathlon again-Jennifer Lopez participated in the same sports event and placed fifth.

Check out the clip below! Dollhouse airs on Fridays @ 9PM ET/PT on FOX.


Eliza Dushku – ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’, 3/12

(Via Just Jared.)

Picture Of The Week-If browsers were women « K-Log Blog

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Here\’s the odd link of the week. Someone decided to come up with \”Cosplay\” photos of the Web browser (eg. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc). Some of the descriptions aren\’t really too work friendly, for example web browser plugin extensions equated to bedroom activities…
But at least worth a chuckle or two…
This was found on K-Log\’s Blog… See the link…

Picture Of The Week-If browsers were women « K-Log Blog: \”Picture Of The Week-If browsers were women
Filed under: Things of the week — k @ 8:19 pm
Tags: Firefox, If browsers were women, opera, safari, chrome
Photo Source Via Sharenator\”

(Via .)

Customer Service 101 Rant

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Gosh darn it…
Customer Service is one of the most important things for businesses… It doesn\’t mean the customer is always right, but it does mean that you try to solve the customers issues…
Quite a few months ago, I was going around in circles with customer support representatives for a certain tax company, and I finally got part of it resolved… But it looks like, I will be forced to manually re-enter all of my 2007 tax information… (fun! ^ the n-th degree)
This company has several issues that prevent useful email support.

  1. The emails that are sent to the customer have no way to replied to, other than returning to the web form that you submitted the inital problem report.  Why is this a problem?  Because there is no way to hold a conversation.
  2. The customer representative know this, and seem to assume that they understand the problem, or throw the closest documentation they can find at the problem.  For example, I needed to export my 2007 records to a \”.tax\” file, so the customer representative just sent me the documentation to export the 2008 records to a tax file.  The next representative gave me instructions to search the hard drive for .tax files, when I clearly stated that I used the web based tax software (eg no .tax file on hard drive).
  3. When a customer includes a previous ticket number in their email, please read the previous ticket!  They included it for a reason.  Several of these email exchanges could have been avoided if they had read the previous tickets…
  4. I have been using this companies product for at least 7+ years, this is the first time that I seen anything about being able to export the web based data….  Why the heck does the company not offer that when they offer the option to print or save the records in PDF form?
  5. The companies knowledge base is filled with seemingly conflicting data, and it\’s search features are extremely poor.  It only seems to perform a title search, and even then it\’s a very narrow search.  In this day where anyone can embed a Google search engine into their web page, why do we have  to settle for search engines that this poor.?

I suspect that this will be the last year that I use this companies product…  Not because of the tax issue that started this customer service request, that was a stupid mistake on my part, but because it\’s been such a chore to work through their idea of a customer support.
I have done Computer help desk support, I currently am a level 3 Help Desk Specialist, and deal with odd issues all day.  I dislike spending 4 days trying to get my own records, and failing…

Utah passes pointless, worthless underage game sales bill

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

One of my pet peeves is the idea that playing a game, or watching a video, can make you into a aggressive, violent psychopath. But I think that Ars Technica makes the point Utah passes pointless, worthless underage game sales bill

A Utah bill that will open retailers to fines if they sell M-rated games to children (as long as they advertise beforehand that they won\’t) has now passed the Utah Senate. The bill made little sense originally, was completely defanged as it passed the House, and\’the Utah Senate has passed it with a 25-3 vote.
Patricia Vance, the President of the ESRB, passed Ars an open letter to the parents and leaders of Utah that detailed the proposed legislation. \’While the intent of this legislation would be to\’ hold retailers accountable for compliance with their stated policies—presumably in that negligible 6 percent of instances where they fail to comply—the unfortunate reality is that it\’ would introduce a liability that will likely force many retailers to seriously consider abandoning their voluntary policies and ratings education programs, undoing years of progress made on behalf of parents and their children.\’\’

This bill is completely unenforcable, as Ars Technica discusses. I\’ll say this again, if you want children to be responsible, then have the parents take responsibility for their children and their actions.
Stop passing bills and regulations that are \”feel good & do nothing bills\”. I\’ll stop ranting right now, follow the link to Ars Technica, and see what they have to say… Utah passes pointless, worthless underage game sales bill

MoviX2 Creates a Bootable, Self-Playing Video [Downloads]

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Isn\’t this an interesting idea, take a thumb disc version of linux, add an video playing application, and use it for presentations…
Life Hacker has some more details, but in summary:

MoviX2 puts a tiny Linux system on a disc or thumb drive that boots up and plays almost any video file you burn it with, making a handy tool for demonstrations or less-than-capable computers.

MoviX2 Creates a Bootable, Self-Playing Video

Woman buys used couch and finds cat living inside

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

From the AP, Woman buys used couch and finds cat living inside
SPOKANE, Wash. – The mysterious mewing in Vickie Mendenhall\’s home started about the time she bought a used couch for $27. After days of searching for the source of the noise, she found a very hungry calico cat living in her sofa.
Her boyfriend, Chris Lund, was watching TV on Tuesday night and felt something move inside the couch. He pulled it away from the wall, lifted it up and there was the cat, which apparently crawled through a small hole on the underside.
Mendenhall contacted Value Village, where she bought the couch, but the store had no information on who donated it. So she took the cat to SpokAnimal CARE, the animal shelter where she works, so it could recover, and contacted media outlets in hopes of finding the owner.
Sure enough, Bob Killion of Spokane showed up to claim the cat on Thursday after an acquaintance alerted him to a TV story about it. Killion had donated a couch on Feb. 19, and his 9-year-old cat, Callie, disappeared at about the same time.\”

iPod Shuffle 3rd Generation First Look

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

In a scene worthy of Psycho, we have a poor innocent iPod Shuffle (3rd Generation) in a shower, cleaning up after a day of cranking out the tunes…
Over the shoulder, we the viewers notice a person coming closer, backlit through the shower curtain. And then, iFixIt throws open the curtain, and opens the iPod Shuffle within an eXacto Knife.
Okay, it wasn\’t exactly like that, but their iPod Shuffle 3rd Generation First Look certainly gives us plenty of Techie Pron to look at… And plenty of revealing photos of the iPod Shuffle…