Originally I decided to go with ADT for home security at our place. There is a nasty spike in violent crime in our neighborhood and I figured an alarm might be a good idea for a first line of defense. So I give them a call and after some talking we come to an agreement. However I decided that $35/month and a 3 year contract is just too much on the backend for an alarm system and call back a few days later to cancel.

So today I get a call back from an "ADT Hit Man" who decides to offer me an extra year of free monitoring to sweeten the deal. After I told him that the main "pain point" was this 3 year agreement they're making me sign, they dismiss it with "well it's standard in the industry." Funny my alarm guys that I ultimately went with only asked for a one year agreement. Ultimately ADT does nothing to address my problem with going with them and a customer is gone.

I would have like to think that ADT might have been able to salvage the deal had they maybe offered to reduce or waive the contract in exchange for some more up front costs. Instead they tried to keep me longer even if a part of the deal was free. Not what I would consider smart selling. Also they tried to convince me my other alarm guys offered lousy monitoring for $8/month. Be VERY careful how you bash the competition in sales, makes you look unprofessional as well.

Oh well ADT, if you had played this right we might have had a deal.

So you're trying to leave for the day, but as you shut down, windows starts with "Installing update 1 of 36" *sigh* has it been that long? You now have a few choices

• Be late to wherever you're going
• Force a shutdown and risk corruption

I really do wish Microsoft would think about putting in a "cancel at the next install" option so you can cancel midway. This can just suck...

I know, been nearly a month since I last put up anything in my blog, anyone still there?

Well if so, sorry, see how much free time you have for blogging when you're buying a new house and starting at a new client in your job. Yup, I'm only now getting my sanity back.

Recent annoyance I didn't need though, about 1.5 months ago my Wife's laptop broke, no explainable reason, looked like hardware granted the power button wouldn't even work, always died on startup. So I get an RMA and send my laptop back to Toshiba.

I takes them about a month to get a new part for the laptop which was mildly annoying but if the part isn't available the part isn't available. In the meantime we reconcile to having only 2 computers in the house instead of 3. However when the laptop comes back, they've reformatted the drive, this was really annoying seeing as there was hardly a reason and I re-installed the OS 2 weeks before. Toshiba, was that really necessary? I would have appreciated a phone call asking if it was ok to hose my computer first. Fortunately I had a backup though, even though it was taken a week before it broke. So I re-installed over Toshiba's install and restored.

By the way, for a good backup system I'd heartily recommend IDrive as they've now been tested for a restore and passed with flying colors, for $50/year per user it's great stuff.

So I log in today to Yahoo and check my news and comics feed, only to discover my comics feed is gone, replaced by a new app saying "click here to setup your comics", so I click in to find that half my comics are gone, and the app makes the remaining ones impossible to read, WTF?

I start thinking about setting up RSS feeds for my favorite comics but for the most part the RSS feeds are crap, making you click on a link to view your comic (amidst a pile of ads). How dumb!

Oh well, one step backwards for the world of comics I suppose. I'm now forced to reading my newspaper for my comic fix.

First I did it not too long ago, signed up for one of those FREE RINGTONE services on accident, and wound up coughing up $9/month until I texted them a STOP.

Now it's my wife's turn, to the tune of $14/month.

I was thinking though, these services are strictly single opt-in online, if you wanted to be really mean to someone, you could sign them up online to every single one you can find for about $1,000/month. Anyone want to be my worst enemy now?

Wired Network Port on my laptop broke Monday, no apparent reason...was dreading the inevitable call to tech support and "have you plugged your cable in" type of questions...so I bought a USB network interface and continue through the week.

But today I finally get around to calling tech support, < 5 minutes on hold before I reach a human he gets all my pertinent info, asks 2 questions about the problem and BAM new Laptop is being overnighted to me...total time on the phone, 10 minutes maybe...

It's gonna be a pain Monday transferring everything over, but I <3 Lenovo now...

Cell phones, you buy 'em and you either pay another $200 on top of what you're buying already or you sign an agreement to stay with your cell phone provider for 2 years if you stay with the provider. Everyone hates these agreements because they can't switch over to the newest Iphone or other hot gizmo as soon as it comes out. I for one, really don't care, granted:

• You're not mandated to sign these agreements, just cough up the other $200 and you're fine.
• You do get these cell phones pretty cheap with these discounts.

The part I do hate is that the phones don't interoperate well on other networks. So you can take your phone number, just not your phone. I'd like to see everyone come to a common working agreement, but if everyone for example uses GSM phone technology, Sprint who is CDMA is going to be pissed. Or vice versa. Not sure what is the right solution here.

Well fall decided to move in early this year in Denver. As of right now we are 51 deg Fahrenheit and rainin'. Lovely

I think we're zeroing in on the house we want as well. I've got my eyeball on one for 140k in Loveland, good structurally but really could use some new paint and re-landscaping. Probably < 10k in overall work. Betcha I can get it for 130k :D.

Also, I'm starting a new business! Got a few ideas for some games we're gonna do for Facebook and Mobile in general. This should be fun if not a bit difficult.

Got a new handheld earlier last week, for those of you have Sprint, the HTC Snap S511 Phone is a wonderful gizmo. A Must buy. Also go to WebIS and get their Pocket Informant and email software. Great apps that are a godsend for the somewhat PIM challenged phone (my only real complaint, easily fixed).

And oh yes, today is 9/11. I still remember waking up to my roommate in College saying, "America's under attack!" my first thought "What did Canada invade or something?" then I turned on CNN and saw the horror before me. Still though to the official's credit, we haven't had a major attack since then....