The summer is now almost gone and the fall semester will soon be upon me. Arrrgghhh. It is good though. I hope to be able to really step out of this shell I seem to have formed around myself in the last few years. I am living with my brother, John, and some other guys in a house in Salt Lake so this next year should be a ton of fun.

I spent the summer back home in St. Louis (as can be read about in previous posts) and I just got back to Salt Lake City a few days ago. However, I didn’t stay long. It was less than 24 hours before I was on a plane to Long Beach, Cali. One of my oldest and bestest friends from high school, Heather Archer (now Shaw) and her husband Kevin, lives in LA. Since I’ve been promising to head out for a visit since they got married over a year and a half ago, I decided it was finally time.

The weekend was a blast! The first day, Heather and I went down to Huntington Beach for breakfast at the Sugar Shack and to hang out at the beach. I bought my very first pair of nice sunglasses with great hesitation as I lose sunglasses all the time but I figured that since my eyes seem to be getting more and more sensitive to light with each passing day, it was time for the investment. Plus, when we actually did head down to the beach I could stare extra long at all the hotties in bikini’s and not look like a freak! HA! Seriously though there was some major TNA, I love HB. We hooked up Kevin later and went to see Tropic Thunder. –> Hilarious. I loved it.

Kevin is the editor of Personal Watercraft Illustrated and as such was able to share one of his perks with me. He has access to some of the top of the line Sea-Doos and WaveRunners out there and was more than happy to take me out on them. Now the last time I rode on something like this was on a young-men/young-women church activity when I lived in Chicago. So roughly over a decade ago. The machines we rode were pretty cheap and we weren’t allowed to drive them without an adult on board. Not to mention we were in a really calm lake. I conveyed this information to Kevin on our way to try and pick up the machines (which is another story in and of itself). He got this fire in his eyes and started telling me all about where we were going and what I was going to be riding. He assured me that it wouldn’t be anything like my last experience. He was going to be taking us out into the open ocean; off Dana’s Point. He then told me I’d be riding a Sea-Doo RXT-X. This is apparently Sea-Doo’s top of the line “Musclecraft”. I pretty much laughed myself into a stuper when he told me it only weighed about 1000 lbs and had 255 horsepower with an approximate top speed of 65+ miles per hour. Yeah I know, I crapped my pants too. My Mitsubishi 3000gt has 220 horsepower. It was amazing. It took me a little bit to grow some balls but I got the speedometer up to 57 for a little bit at one point. But we cruised around 40 - 45 for the most part. Kevin and Heather rode a Honda we cruised up and down the coast for almost 3 hours. We stopped to check out the sea-lions on the bouys and we saw dolphins swimming no more than 50 feet from us. However, the highlight was when we stopped to rest just off the coast from the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant (its the one from The Naked Gun that looks like BOOBIES!). It was amazing and worth every bit of the hassle it took to get the boats. Sorry again to Kevin for that hassle because you’re the one who really had to deal with the headache. Seriously, it was amazing though and worth getting up at the butt-crack of dawn to drive to Dana Point. Thanks again.

Afterward, we were all pretty exhausted so we went home, showered up and took naps, at least I did. Then dinner and we went to see Pineapple Express. It was pretty ridiculous. It was really funny and I was glad to see that it didn’t meet my expectations in that it wasn’t all about sex and drugs. It was all about drugs but no sex. I’m sick of these movies that are nothing but sex and nudity and try to make it funny… like Step Brothers -> It had its moments but overall, stupid. I would highly recommend both Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder for as much as that is worth coming from me anyway.

Sunday was pretty chill. We went to church and then just chilled out and played some card games and grilled up some steaks.

Monday, Kevin had to fly to Florida for work and so Heather and I went and rented kayaks and paddled out to jelly-fish cove where there are hundreds of jelly fish that you can pick up and pet. It was pretty freaking cool. We then walked around Downtown Disney and watched The Dark Knight at the IMAX theater. I thought it was good in a normal theater but it was even better on IMAX.

So here I now sit in the Long Beach Airport at 6 am listening to a mixture of boarding announcements, tsa messages and the Beach Boys while I finish this post via my iPhone. I don’t want to go home cuz that means the vacation is over and so is my summer. Time to be a responsible adult again.. HA!

OK so for the past 9 weeks I’ve been battling HP over an accidental damage warranty issue.  It is finally resolved and so I will now proceed to keep my promise to them…

It day was April 8th, 2008.  I was studying for my upcoming Physics exam with my laptop and a Mega 100 gallon Big Gulp from the local Sev.  As I sat there trying to figure out the difference between radial acceleration and tangential acceleration, my mind fogged, my eyes glazed over and my proverbial “train” jumped the tracks and hit a wall.  After what could have been hours or only a few moments, I wiped the drool off my chin and reached for my beverage in hopes of getting my brain going again.  It was at this moment that all hell broke loose.  The cup evaded my grasp and tumbled over in slow motion towards my HP laptop.  As it landed, liquid splashed everywhere and I heard escape my own lips a sound that my roommate would later describe by asking me if “the queer [in the apartment behind us] had just been bitch slapped”.  The screen went blank and random lights flickered on and off and then nothing.  It was dead.  Good thing I had the foresight to pay $100 for the Accidental Damage warranty when I bought it… or was it?

The next day I went down to Best Buy, without the laptop, to ask them what I should do.  I was told that I could either bring it in or contact HP myself.  I was also informed that since Best Buy would have to send it to HP anyway, it would probably be faster and easier if I just went through HP myself.  So I called tech support.  The guy was barely understandable but troubleshot the situation and informed me that it would be covered under my warranty and they would send me a box and I would have it repaired or replaced in 2 - 3 weeks.

The next day, a box shows up.  I package everything up and drop it off at the nearest fed ex.  I get an email with a link to all the info and status of the repair and everything.  I have no worries at this point and promptly focus on more important things, i.e. Physics for Scientists and Engineers <vomit noise here>.  Time passes and I realize I hadn’t heard anything so I checked the website and it says I should be getting my computer back tomorrow.  So I used the 1800 number given in the initial confirmation email and I navigated via voice command to the “Check Repair Order Status” option. When the agent picked up he immediately told me to call a different 1800 number and hung up on me.  I barely had time to get the number down. I called that number, I got an agent who told me that I had to call the 1800 number I had just called. I couldn’t understand the explanation so I just hung up and dialed the first 1800 number again. I went through the voice commands again and was then put on hold for so long that I instead got on the internet to use the online chat support.

The chat agent couldn’t spell and continually gave me incorrect information. First he told me that my computer was fixed and should be on its way back to me.  When I asked for a tracking number, he gave me the HP Service Order Number and told me it was my FedEx tracking number.  I knew it wasn’t a tracking number so I asked him if it would work if I put it into the tracking page on FedEx’s website and he replied “yes, of course”.  Of course it didn’t so I called him on it and he disconnected the chat on me.  Besides lying to me about the tracking number, he was also unable to give me any information that I did not already have in front of me before I contacted him.

A few days later, I received a call from a woman who I could barely understand and she told me that my computer was NOT fixed and it wouldn’t be fixed for another 2 - 3 weeks. I wanted an explanation and she wouldn’t or couldn’t give me one.  Or at least that was all I could make out since she had obviously never spoken English before.  So I checked online again only to see that HP was STILL waiting on parts for my laptop. I still cannot understand why it would take over a month for a giant company such as HP to order, receive and install parts to fix a laptop. On top of this, I tried to inform this woman that the new date was after I was moving home and I needed to update my shipping address.  She told me that I couldn’t. (I think).  She said I needed to call back later to do that and that she wasn’t able to.  Eventually I was able to call back and change the shipping address.

The next deadline comes and I get another call from HP telling me that yet again my laptop is not repaired and won’t be for another 2 - 3 weeks.  I had many words for this person but they didn’t understand me and I barely understood them.  I told them that I needed a laptop and I was very very very dissatisfied with everything and I wanted a replacement since it seemed as though they couldn’t fix it.  She said she couldn’t do that and when I asked her to put someone on the phone who could she refused so I hung up.  I decided that I would wait for the next deadline, now May 20th.

May 20th came and so did my laptop.  I opened the box, plugged it in and turned it on.  Many of the buttons were still sticky and I couldn’t take the battery out because the slider was stuck.  I couldn’t turn off/on my wireless because that slider was too sticky.  I opened the RAM port and the hard drive port to see what was going on and I noticed that there was a ton of rust and white calcium corrosion inside these bays.  On top of this, the quick launch buttons above the keyboard didn’t work.  They didn’t even light up.  I decided to go to my other computer and write a letter.  There was no way in hell I was calling another 800 number and talking to some towel-head camel-jockey who couldn’t speak English.

I found a form mail on HP’s website to send a message to the office of the CEO of HP.  So I wrote a 4000 word rant detailing my experiences and sent it.  The next day I got a reply email saying they apologized and my email would be escalated to the proper people.  The next day I got a call from a man who spoke excellent English and resided in the good ol’ USA.  He was, however, just as unwilling to help me as anybody else.  He told me the best he could do was refund my 1 year phone support plan worth $130.  I told him that was unacceptable and that HP was going to either fix the laptop or give me one that worked.  He refused.  He went on to tell me that I didn’t have the accidental warranty and they had done all the repairs they did do as a “courtesy” for me.  So I told him where he could stick his refund and accidental plan and that I would never buy HP every again and that I would never recommend HP to any of my friends or family ever again.  So PEOPLE, don’t EVER buy HP if you can help it.  It just isn’t worth if, by chance, you end up having to deal with their customer service (if you can call it that) or technical support.

Finally I called up Best Buy here in St. Louis and explained the situation.  They told me that the Best Buy in SLC had informed me incorrectly and that I had to go through Best Buy and that is why HP treated me the way they did.  So I took my laptop into Best Buy here and told them that they would either have it fixed or they would replace it.  They said OK.  Two weeks later, I got a call saying that I needed to come in and pick out a comparable laptop since they couldn’t repair mine.

Yesterday, June 2nd, I went in and found a Dell Inspiron 1526.  It has a 2.0 ghz dual core AMD Turion 64 bit processor with 3 gigs of ram and 160 gig hard drive.  So its much better than the one I had.  Plus its a Dell.  However, they didn’t have any in stock at the store and because I went to that store for my repairs, I couldn’t go pick this laptop up at a neighboring store.  They told me they’d have one shipped over from another store and it would take 2 weeks.  Needless to say I had a few words for them and I walked out of there pissed.  Well, today, June 3rd, I get a call saying it came in and I could come get it.

So the saga ends, almost 9 weeks later.  I finally have a laptop back.  I have had Dell laptops in the past and I have had to deal with their customer service and tech support before.  I also have had to go to them to honor an accidental warranty and I have nothing but good things to say about Dell’s service and support.

I have arrived!… in St. louis.

For those who do not know, I have transplanted myself from Salt Lake City to St. Louis for the summer. There are so many reasons for this move but mainly because Protective’s office is out here and they want me to work full-time for the summer so it’s easier to be here. Another good reason is that I needed a change of scenery. I mean Salt Lake City is great and all but… well, I’ll stop that sentence there so as to not offend anyone.

I left Saturday, May 3rd around noon and I finally pulled into my driveway here in St. Louis around 3 am on Monday, May 5th. It was a long and arduous journey. Saturday I drove for approx. 12 hours straight through to Colorado Springs to stay the night at my cousin’s house. Along the way I got pulled over twice. Both times right outside Breckenridge. The first time I was given a $50 ticket for “not turning from a turn lane”. WTF? I had no idea I couldn’t enter a turn lane then decide not to turn and get back on the main road. Later, I got pulled over by two cop cars. The cops had been following me for about 5 miles and clocked me doing 90 in a 45 and then 105 in a 60. I had no idea, it had been 10 hours of straight driving and it was 11 pm and I was exhausted and wasn’t paying attention. I told the cop my story and he took my license and went back to his car with the 3 other cops. Literally 25 minutes later he returned. He gave me a warning and told me to “never come back to Colorado if I plan to drive like that”. I have now been banned from a Wal-mart in Orem, my high school in Alabama and now the state of Colorado. HAHAHA! Awesome.

Later, coming through Kansas I got pulled over again going 110 in a 75. I got another warning. I am probably the luckiest guy in the world when it comes to being pulled over. My running total is now at 21 pull overs in my 9 years of driving. I have only been issued 4 tickets and of those 4 only 1 has been for speeding. The others were for stupid things like expired tags or broken lights and once the issue had been fixed, the courts tore up the tickets.

So I guess thats basically the story. I’m home in St. Louis now, living at home again. I’m working full time for the Asset Protection Division of Protective Life as a web developer. It’s a good time. A bunch of great people on the web dev team. Our leader is fearless and mighty. I’ll be taking a class at UMSL starting on June 9th I believe. When I can, I plan to travel a bit this summer, so I’m going to be pretty well occupied.

So far I’ve been to Chicago for my mom’s birthday/mother’s day. We went to a couple Cubs games and saw some sites. Best steak I have ever had was at the Chicago Chop House. Amazing restaurant. Now at second place is a place called Stoney River here in Chesterfield, MO.

I am planning a few more trips to Chicago over the summer as well as a trip to San Francisco for my buddy’s wedding near the end of June and a trip to LA to visit an old friend and her husband come the beginning of August.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here. It’s been a while since anything worth writing about has happened. These past few months have been nothing but study study study. I had this Physics class that was way intense. The final was last friday and it destroyed me. It was crazy hard. Turns out I really didn’t do so well on it but we’ll have to see how the curve works out. Now I just have to wait ’till final grades are posted.

I am moving back to St. Louis for the summer. This past week has been nice. I haven’t had to think about physics once and it has felt good. I’ve just been organizing and packing. I hate moving but I am pretty happy to be getting out of Utah for the summer.