Usually American Express blows me away, but today their "Accept Pay" service failed me miserably. First of all I signed up online for the demo so I could see what features this service had versus the existing invoicing system that we use for business. This went fine. Then maybe 20 minutes or so later I get a call from their customer support. It was a guy who was "here to answer any questions I might have about the service".  Well I must have asked him the unheard of "how much of a percentage do you take to process a payment".

He replied with something like "I am not able to answer any of questions regarding the pricing, let me get you a blah blah support rep".

Well I am transfered to that guy and he is not allowed to tell me how much it actually costs until he finds out what industry I am in. I tell him consulting / search marketing, and he tells me they do not accept that. End of the call.

So these 2 asshats, already knew what industry I was in when I signed up for AMEX (4 years ago), know which industry I was in when I signed up for their demo an hour ago, yet call me and bug the shit out of me to get a sale to a service they do not support. LAME. Amex you failed me on this one. Tighten up your forms and your data between departments and do not waste my time. I will use paypal, since you do not seem to offer anything I cannot currently get right now.

So that was 10 minutes of my time today. Yesterday I bought a new car, which should take what an hour or two at the most to buy. It took me 4 fucking hours. I have no idea what took so long other than the 20 minute pitch to get me to buy some rust / dent / ding protection? Nuts to that.

Anyhow today I had to call a place I ordered floor mats from CarID.com – 800-505-3274 – I had to change the address on file since the shipping will take a few days longer than expected. Anyhow the hold message at this place is ridiculous. It is some dude talking about these various trivia and other bullshit. Things that are good luck like a spider falling on you. Just really weird stuff. He threatens about if you complain about the message it will take twice as long the next time you call in. It is interesting and something different than what you normally expect. Anyhow it is like a "down home" american male talking. I wait on hold for however long and it is totally a call center in India or somewhere. Bait and switch on the tech support, but they handled the issue once I got through and the dude was nice.

If you run an ecommerce store and do tech support give this number a listen to see how weird the message is: 800-505-3274

Lastly I have been using a new email filtering service because my email has been HAMMERED with spam. It seemed like it started out fine and then it went to shit. Well anyhow I call DNA Mail up today, and I get this rocking piano solo loop as the message. It is terrible. It sounds like an angry person just smashing the keyboard and it is looped. It is fucking terrible. So I threw my phone on speaker phone and typed this thing up while I waited. I could not handle it anymore and left a message. So DNAMails way of handling customer support is to delay the customer support action to a point where you either A) no longer need their help or B) the fire/urgency of the problem has died down by the time you call.

Hopefully these Jamokes will call me back while I am not busy doing anything else.

So here is todays customer support Scorecard:

1. American Express Accept Pay – F- you wasted my time, did not help, and do not even serve my kind. Your credit card department is usually great, this one; not so much!

2. CarID.com – B+ – You kept me entertained while I was on hold, and then you bait and switched me to an offshore company, BUT it was pretty quick and you handled my issue.

3. DNA Mail – Worse than an F. You play terrible music, keep me on hold forever and then force me to wait for a returned phone call. I am your customer and you treat me like shit. Might be time to change companies.

This is crazy it is not even 2am here.

I made a similar observation years ago in this post about birds singing early, but that was at 2:45. They are getting earlier.

Are the birds singing earlier by you too?

If you know me, you will know that I love a good checklist, and last year I decided to make a checklist for 2009 rather than some simple New Years Resolution like "be healthy" or "be nicer". My brain does not work like that. Instead I had to make numerous tasks and put a quantity that I needed to do. The goal of this was to improve my life.

I did not get everything completed but I did finish quite a few. Some of the more important ones last year were to start dating again, so my goal was to go on 24 dates. I actually did do this and met a nice lady in the process. There were some about travel, reading, camping, working out things like that. Overall I would say it was a success, but I did fail to meet many of the goals, just because I started really late in the year (I think I made the list in March) so time was already crunched, and it is hard to jump into some of the items without proper planning.

Here were my tasks for 2009:

• Read 12 Books
• Work out 120 Times
• Go On 24 Dates
• Try 12 New Restaurants
• Try 12 New Bars
• See 4 Other Countries
• Go Swimming 3 Times
• Go Camping 1 Time
• Have People Over for Dinner 6 Times
• Paint 4 Paintings
• Make 24 Drawings
• Take 24 Great Photos

And here is my actual list and what was completed:

Pretty good, right? Well at least enough for me to get one together this year, and start checking things off. Here is what I need to do / Plan on doing in 2010:

• Work out 104 Times
• 36 Blog Posts
• Frame / Hang all art work
• Hang out with friends 16 times
• Do 12 Cheap Things In Chicago
• Take 4 Classes
• See 4 Other States
• Go Swimming 1 Time
• Go Camping 3 Times
• Have People Over for Dinner 6 Times
• Paint/Wallpaper 2 Rooms
• 6 Art things
• Volunteer 4 Times
• Read 4 Books

Based on my experience from 2009 the major changes were to get rid of the art projects, reduce the workouts from 10 a month to 2 a week, replaced international travel with camping, more socializing, less reading (since I never find time to read), and added the volunteering and classes.

Even though I have been sick a week this month I did get the following done: 7 Work outs, 3 rooms have been painted (kitchen, bathroom and my office wall). I am looking forward to it warming up and hanging out with friends again. I hate doing anything in the winter. Looking forward to biking again and longer days.

What are your goals for 2010?

Maybe a year and a half ago I started to drink soda water with a lime. I would get it whenever I would go to a bar and then started to crave it at home. My options for that were to buy 1 or 2 liter bottles at the local grocery store. If I needed it in a bind I would get a liter at the 7-11 for about $1.79! This started to get expensive so I researched what my options were to make my own seltzer water online. It seemed like there were really only 4 options:

1. Get an old fashioned Soda Siphon – You know like the 3 Stooges would use to spray each other in the face. While these are stylish they are not all that practical. First off they contain a few parts which need to be cleaned out, and second they need disposable CO2 cartridges like you would need in a paintball gun or mini bike inflator. You can get a Soda Siphon for about  $40 online, and the Co2 cartridges run about 50 cents each in bulk. Each liter requires one cartridge, so about 50 cents per liter. I liked this option but did not like all the waste it would generate.
2. Build my own carbonation system using a bulk CO2 tank. This is the cheapest solution in the long run, but it requires a bunch of extra equipment and is a but bulky and industrial. You need a larger CO2 tank, that you can get a beer brewing store. You also need regulators, some hose, and you need to hack some soda bottles. The initial cost for this is probably around $150-200, but you can do it with a 5-50lb co2 tank which means YEARS of bubble water, for pennies per liter. I am not an expert at this, but here are some nice tutorials (found here). In the end it seemed like a lot of work and equipment for my already cramped house.
3. Get a commercial soda system. This is what they would use at a restaurant or bar. This would probably be the coolest system, but also the most labor intensive and expensive. It could easily run into the thousands of dollars, and take some serious hacking of my kitchen to get it installed. The plus side I would have a bad ass soda gun and an unlimited supply of bubble water. It would also require all the equipment in the homebuilt method, plus a compressor, and more. So I did the following:
4. Get a SodaStream Soda Maker. The units range from non offensive to pretty cool looking. The starting price is about $100 and should have enough CO2 to carbonate around 100 liters of water. So it is about $1 a liter to start, but when you get refills it is about 25 cents per liter. To me this seemed like a great compromise; little to no waste, a decent price, and no crazy equipment. Here is my review.

I love my SodaStream, there I said it. This is a product that works like it is supposed to. It is a relatively simple product, with a really specific purpose, but it does a great job. The first unit I ordered was the "Fountain Jet Soda Value Kit". I would not recommend getting this kit if you only want to make seltzer / soda water at home. It comes with a bunch of things that you do not need. Anyhow this kit cost me I think $130. It now is at $149, but there are coupons available.

It took maybe a week for the kit to arrive and here are my unboxing photos:

You can see that it came with 2 gas tanks, the soda maker and a bunch of soda mixes. Now when I mentioned I would not recommend the “Soda Value Kit” it is based on all those soda mixes. I am not really a fan of them. I like just plain old soda water myself, so if you are drinking just soda water, get yourself one of the Seltzer kits instead of the soda kit.

Now you might be wondering how the SodaStream actually works. It is pretty easy, and there are not really any moving parts. You have one large tank of CO2, a sturdy plastic bottle, and a button to dispense the gas into the bottle and a little tube that goes into the water in the bottle.

You pretty much fill the bottles with water, refrigerate them, then take the cap off, put it on the machine, and hit the button. Here is a video I made myself, filming it with one hand while making soda with the other. It is really that simple!

Like I said, I love having a Soda Stream at home, and have given them as gifts.To date I have actually purchased 3 Soda Steam machines. I have given one to my sister as a gift, my old one to my girlfriend for her office, and a beautiful orange one for myself.

I think I have now ordered 10 tanks of gas which last me about a month each, less in the summer since I drink more than one liter of soda water a day. My next project will be testing various ways of refilling the tanks myself to further reduce the costs. It will be interesting, and costly, but it should pay for itself in the long run, as well as lower the cost of making soda water to all the people I know who have gotten themselves a SodaStream.

Now that you see how it works, and why you should get one, all you need to do is order one. You can get a SodaStream directly from SodaStreamUSA.com, but be sure to try out a few of these coupon codes if you are planning to buy a machine or gas:

SodaStreamUsa.com Coupon Codes:

BESTFRIENDS – This will Save you $10 Off  a new machine
SAVEBIG – This will save you 10%
MAKESODA – This will save you  $10 on a new machine
FREEMIX – This will allow you to get a free soda mix, you should be able to stack this with another coupon code, just enter this one in first and make sure you have a soda mix in your cart
Code MIKE or PATRICIA – should give you free shipping.

Do you own a SodaStream? What do you think of it?

I must have been a good boy this year, because the nice folks at Dyson gave me an early Christmas present of a Dyson DC31 Animal Handheld Vacuum cleaner.

You would think this is the first hand-held vacuum that I have received as a Christmas gift, but as I child I actually asked and received a Black & Decker Dustbuster, in I am guessing 1985. I was a special kid. The Dustbuster was a pretty cool, little vacuum, but it had some serious issues; it would fill up quickly and quit sucking, the filters were not washable and needed to be emptied and/or replaced, the battery life did not last too long, it was not that powerful even when empty. I also remember picking up things like screws and them falling right back out the second you stopped the motor.

I would say until recently (Or October 12th, 2006 to be exact) this was a common problem until Dyson released their first series of handheld vacuums, known as the Dyson DC 16 Root 6. The DC 16 addresses many of the issues that the Dyson full size vacs did when they came out. The DC31 is an even better version of the DC16 and has some unique features that will set it apart;

The DC31 Is even smaller than the DC16 weighing in at 2.9lbs, and is more balanced. There were some complaints that the DC16 was too heavy, and hard to maneuver. The DC31 should take care of that.

• They have added 2 power modes to extend the battery life. 10 minutes at lower power or 6 minutes at full power.
• They have included a motorized brush on the Animal version of the DC31
• It has a new “Digital Motor” which is lighter, faster, more powerful and more energy efficient than a standard motor.

Well since none of this matters unless the vacuum can pick up a mess here is my review of the Dyson DC31 Animal:

As usual the Dyson packaging was impressive. It is not as amazing as apples, but it seems to be designed nicely, well packaged and pretty easy to open. The first impression I had of the unit when I saw it was that I loved the color. The DC31 Animal comes in this amazing metallic purple color. The feel of the unit was that of quality. The outside is made entirely of plastics, but they do not feel brittle or flimsy in the least. The unit feels solid.

Now comes the part that surprised me. Well I guess for 2 reasons. It was charged out of the gate, which I found surprising. The second and more important reason why I was surprised is that when I hit the trigger it sounded like a jet engine mixed with a dentist drill. I would say that this is the Ferrari of handheld vacuums. It just sounds really powerful and neat. (I will post a video so you can hear it soon)

Since my house was pretty tidy the first thing I did was dump some flour on my counter and suck it up. It did not stand a chance. The DC31 snorted it up like Scarface with cocaine.

The next thing I went after was my girlfriends couch. It is a plush couch and it seemed pretty clean. I put on the brush and went to town. Tons of really fine dust came out of the cushions and a bunch of the hair that was once on Sarah’s head. Sarah loved that you could see what was sucked up inside the clear canister portion of the vacuum.

I tried all of the attachments and did not find anything that it could not handle. The battery did not give any signs of dying, but Sarah reminded me that it was a bit late at night to be vacuuming the house. So I figured out how to empty it and put it on the charger before going to bed for the night.

The next morning I heard some commotion coming from the kitchen and asked what was wrong. A little coffee bean spill. I jumped out of bed and started seeking them out. Whole coffee beans went into the DC31 like it were a shop vac. It was awesome.

I installed a closet this weekend and used the DC31 to clean up drywall dust where my dc14 failed. This little handheld is powerful.

The other way I used it was to clean up my hairy mess after I shave my head. I am also looking forward to using it to clean my keyboards!

After using it a handful of times it has easily become my favorite vacuum in the house. My apologies to the DC14 and my Roomba 550.

The biggest complaint I read about was battery life. I did not see an issue with this, but I could see me trying to clean my whole car or house and running out of juice after 10 minutes. I think if you use it as intended you will never have a battery issue.

Overall I think this is a great vacuum. If you have a pet or a kid you should get one of these. It would be way faster then taking out the full size vacuum and do a better and quicker job then a broom.

Here is a quick summary:

Positives:
Small, Powerful, No Filters, No loss of Suction, Good attachments, Great for hair/fur, Excellent feel and quality, Beautiful color, Awesome powerful sound, 2 year warranty.
Negatives:
Expensive, Short battery life if you want to clean your whole house, Too loud to use at night.

All in all I recommend this to anyone who thinking about buying it. It would make a great Christmas gift to those of us out there who actually like receiving useful gifts and tools!

What I would really like to see changed with this handheld vac are the following:

1. My old dustbuster had a charging cradle/wall mount. I would love to see something like this for the DC31 because it does need to be charged and plugged in. The battery is removable and can be charged while removed, but an all in charging cradle would be useful. I guess the best way to describe my feelings are I need to have this item at the ready. I want it in a place where I know it will be ready, and I can go and grab it, know it is charged, and choose my accessory and get back to the spill/mess and get it taken care of.
2. I am not sure if it is possible, but I would love to see an option to charge/power the item with a longer cord. That was I could run around my house and vacuum the whole thing if I wanted. Even like a 12v cigarette adapter would appease those who want to do their car.
3. I did not really like the build in brush/other tool. I like the rounded brush tool I have with my DC14. I think a small round brush may be useful. I will know if it is needed when I clean my keyboards though.
4. Charge time. The card/instructions say 3.5 hrs. How come my ipod can do 80% charge in 1 hour or my power drill can do a full charge in 18minutes? I would like to see a speed charge mode, if possible.

None of the complaints are deal breakers. I am really blown away by this handheld vac, and it is light years better than my Dustbuster was 20+ years ago. It has 100x the power of that unit, and I would say almost close to the suction that my DC14 does. Dyson congrats on another great project/product, and thank you for letting me play with it!

I would love to see Dyson try building a wet/dry vacuum or shopvac, and a robot vac to compete with Roomba.

I wish I would have taken photos of my unit when it was clean… I will post what it looks like to the site shortly!

More to come… I am currently in Las Vegas on a crappy internet connection, but will be playing in a poker tournament where some of the winnings will go to a charity of my choice.

Business/Financially:

Business has had its ups and downs, but I am involved in a new project that has taken a ton of my time up. It is finally live, working out some of the remaining kinks but it is finally good to go. This is a giant weight of my back, as I have been stressing out about it for a long time now, and now it is finally done. WOO HOO.

Another thing that has happened with business is that we got a new office in Logan Square, and that has been been pretty good. A nice little walk or ride to work every day, and when I get home I leave 90% of the work at the office.

Finally regarding work, I have worked 2 times now as a bouncer at a local bar. LOL. Tuff GUY!

Socially:

My social life has seen a similar trend as my work life. It has had quite a big up this year, as I have met a nice lady friend. The downside is I need to better balance a relationship, some friendships AND work. Good luck with that. It will be a work in progress. But yeah, I met a girl and I am really happy with that. Seems like we have been together longer than the 6 months.

Physically:

This is where I took a big dip. I was working out all the time and becoming a beef cake (not really – but I was working out). Being really busy got me to cut back on working out. Once that happened, it became easier to blow it off completely. Anyhow due to the excessive working, and possibly my new bike, or just being old, I fucked up my wrist. Not sure what it is/was, but I think carpal tunnel/getting old. Long story short (more to follow?) I had to go to the doctor, take massive doses of ibuprofen, and finally got a shot in it. The shot seems to be helping, but I want to make it last.

Today I actually worked out again, and feel it a bit in the wrist, but it may be partially due to being a pussy, and not "hitting it hard" in a while. Tomorrow I need to work out again… and the next day, and the next day. Get back on a schedule of sorts.

Emotionally/Mentally:

I am going to say I am feeling pretty sound. Was bummed out by the wrist, but feeling better since it seems to be working again. The next big drain on me was the work, and that is now an UP. Other than that I had one big hit this year in the family, but we all seemed to handle it pretty well.

That is that… If you read this and I know you, drop me a line.

-g

He had me sign and I had an unexpected package in my hands. On my way in I saw it was from Dyson. I was a little confused because I did not order anything. I came in and opened it up and found the zero day old Dyson Air Multiplier. I really had no idea what this thing was. I saw that it was sent to George Kepnik aka "Werty" which I thought was pretty funny… for 2 reasons. One my name was spelled wrong and two, it was obviously from this website.

Well I open it up and I see I am #13 of 65 lucky people who got a free test "fan" sent to them. Inside there was a retail box, inside that there was a hand signed letter from James Dyson. That is pretty fucking awesome. After looking at the thing I decided to look at the instructions. A few seconds later it was together, and a second after that it was moving the air.

I played with it for a few moments and did some test videos to see how it actually works. Unfortunately I had to go to work and was not able to play or post about it until tonight. Today at work I looked at a few videos and listened to a talk with James Dyson. Seems like a pretty interesting guy, at least in regards to his views on engineers and manufacturing. Dyson is helping the UK put in some engineering programs for younger students to help them get into the field. That is pretty cool I think.

Anyhow back to this Air Multiplier. All over the web you can see some detailed info on how this technology works due to press releases and interviews. More or less it uses a small fan in the base of the unit, blows the air into the ring structure, over a surface like that of an airplane wing. his forces the air to combine with air from behind, as well as air from above/on all sides after it exits the ring. This is how it "multiplies" the air. They say 16x the air that goes through the base is actually moved by the rest of the unit.

Well on to the testing of it. My initial impression of it is less of the standard "oh where are the blades?". I think it looks sort of goofy and is a bit tall. I have it sitting on my counter by a stool and it could easily be mistaken for a hair dryer like you would see in a beauty salon… the type that folds over on top of your head.

After you get over that, come down to performance and functionality. I hit the power switch and was a little shocked by the sound it produced. At high speed it is a bit noisy. To me it sounds like a quieter version of their vacuums. Imagine if you had a computer fan on high speed. Then multiply that noise by 5times and you have the sound this fan makes. I was hoping the unit would be totally silent and use some sort of "over my head magic" to move the air. I guess it does use that, but it is air moving air, propelled by motors. Not something like electricity + static + magnet + magic=silent ring of wind in the face.

The amount of air it moves I think is impressive, also it does seem to provide a more gentle and constant stream of air than a traditional fan. Some say it is similar to the air moving if you had a window open, and I agree. I also think it is similar to the air that comes out of a vent if you have your furnace on. It is just a nice steady flow of air.

The oscillation built into the fan is one of the cooler parts. It seems almost robotic. It must have a separate motor for the oscillation since it is so smooth. I am thinking I have to be correct because due to some glitch mine will still oscillate w/out the unit being powered on.

As far as the price goes, I think it is a bit crazy. It is $300, and unless it makes the air cooler, warmer or cleaner, or was totally silent I think that is too much to ask. Also I think by not actually having anything I can see working I am not too impressed by it. I would love to see smoke or something go through this just so I could actually see it moving the air. Lastly I think durability will be a major issue for these. Mine had an issue with the oscillating button within 4-5 short uses and now has a mind of its own. I actually do like it as just a rotating object though.

I think it is a pretty cool thing though and wonder how the invention of it will translate into other industries if at all.

I know water has different properties than air, but I would think something similar could make efficient water pumps or "propeller-less boat motors". Also I would think something like this could be used in a car to force more air into the engine, or move a plane.

So to sum things up, I think the idea is cool, the quality of mine is questionable, the price is high, and the wow factor is pretty high. Also if you have kids, this is probably the only finger safe fan out there.

If anyone from Dyson reads this, please continue to make me a product tester, and thank you very much.

I plan on framing my letter signed by James Dyson.

Here is how to properly start and put out a toaster oven fire:

1. Put bread in toaster
2. Set it to toast
3. Go to remove finished toast from toaster
4. Knock piece of Toast through the rack on to the heating element.
5. Ignite toast on fire
6. First piece of toast should ignite second piece of toast on fire
7. Close door and hope it puts itself out
8. Realize it needs to be put out.
9. Unplug toaster from wall
10. Spray with fire extinguisher
11. Air out apartment
12. Enjoy huge mess
13. Take photos, spread story on internet
14. Put off cleaning up huge mess

I am guessing I should just throw out the toaster over, since it is now covered with fire powder.

When is the last time you lit something on fire?

Also just as a note… if you rent/own/stay at someones house with a kitchen, you should spend the 10-20$ on a fire extinguisher so you do not burn the fucking place down "When Good Bread Turns into BAD TOAST!"

I took a look out of my windows and it was crazy outside. The storm was heading straight south, I face north. I decided to take some photos and make a few movies.

I set up my nice camera to take long exposures of the sky… and with my other camera I filmed a movie.

The first clip I posted was of me filming once it started to rain. I zoomed in to see if I could get a better view of the rain coming down. To my surprise a giant bolt of lightning hit the roof about 50 feet from where I was filming. It was crazy loud and totally freaked me out. It happens at about the 14 second mark.

The second is a movie made from the time lapse photos and stitched them together.

This was not the craziest storm I have seen since I have lived here, but it was the closest lightning strike I have seen in a while. Last year my sister was over and we were making her wedding invitations when my biz partner called me and told me there was a tornado headed towards the city. We got out of the office and looked out side and it was just waves of rain. The roof next door had whitecaps on it. My entire wall was covered with water. The windows and doors were pulsating with the wind. I thought they were going to blow inward. We ended up going to the bunker like basement of the building that is attached and waited for it to pass over. There were others down there as well. When it was over we called our mom and told her we were alive. That may have been the worst storm I have seen.