the ROCKS GLASS

Pencil sculptures: miniature masterpieces carved into graphite...

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:00:47 -0500

Pencil sculptures: miniature masterpieces carved into graphite by Dalton Ghetti - Telegraph

(via raurublock, yuco, flood, sakurasakuras, do-nothing, fukumatsu, yellowblog, semigoodlooking)

I’ll be honest. This is one of the shows I’m going...

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:45:10 -0500

I’ll be honest. This is one of the shows I’m going to miss most after we stop getting all our shows over the air.

(via extrememakeunder, hellnope, baileygenine)

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:22:00 -0500

(via extrememakeunder, hellnope, baileygenine)

Video

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:21:00 -0500

dalasverdugo: personalhomepage: (via drowsybutcher) I...

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:18:29 -0500

dalasverdugo:

personalhomepage:

(via drowsybutcher)

I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten that worked up over the outrages of a continental breakfast…

seoulbrother: Why would anyone do this? Why would anyone feign...

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:40:26 -0500

seoulbrother:

Why would anyone do this? Why would anyone feign disgust and repost this song? Why do I feel like I’m in an 80s shopping montage while I’m listening to this? Why do I hate(love) Kelly fucking Deal so much? SO MUCH@!

kellydeal:

purns:

bestrooftalkever:

“Invisible Gurls” (Katy Perry vs. Genesis) - Chambaland

Chambaland has made all necessary adjustments to Katy Perry’s first draft, and we now have the song of the summer.

Oh how I hate loving this with every fiber of my pop sensibilities. It makes me shudder.

(via semigoodlooking)

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:11:18 -0500

(via semigoodlooking)

You’re welcome, Internet. My pal Sean used this term in...

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:27:48 -0500

You’re welcome, Internet.

My pal Sean used this term in an email thread about iPhone apps this week. I loved it so much, I thought that it had to become part of the colloquial vernacular.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get myself a case of this. I had Mexican for dinner.

Photo

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:16:10 -0500

Balloon McQueen!

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:31:54 -0500

Balloon McQueen!

Regarding Lonelysandwich

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:43:00 -0500

merlin: The Pipeline #22: Adam Lisagor | 5by5 Dan’s spanking new interview with Adam is a pure...

//UPDATE #1: DirecTV contacted me via Twitter within 20 minutes...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:47:00 -0500

//UPDATE #1: DirecTV contacted me via Twitter within 20 minutes of my posting this. I will let you know the outcome of the transaction, but I’m at least impressed with their speedy response time.

//UPDATE #2: Their new DM (July 28, 2010, 11:01 AM) : “This has been escalated for special handling. We’ll check with the team to have them contact you ASAP. Thanks.”

Here comes a post that social media analysts hate when they show up, but when they handle them properly it turns them into heroes.

I’m going to write about a bad experience that I’ve had with DirecTV. Now, those of you keeping score at home know that I only just ordered DirecTV last week and won’t be getting the service installed until August. But, I’m already getting burned by their customer service.

I signed up for their advertised promotion last week. I received a letter in the mail yesterday that had what I thought might be an even better deal, so I called the number on the direct mail piece to ask a couple of questions and see if I could possibly get locked in to this better deal.

I got on the phone with Sharon, a very pleasant woman with a thick southern accent, and began to explain my situation with her. She said that since I had already placed an order, I would have to speak with another sales department to see if I could have the new deal applied to my upcoming installation.

I got transferred to one of their overseas call centers. I don’t recall this girl’s name, but again, very pleasant. I explained the situation again and asked if I could get the new promotion applied to my upcoming order, and she said I needed to call the number on the mailing I received. Once I mentioned that they transferred me to her, she put me on hold for a couple of minutes. When she came back, she explained that I would probably have to call the number on the mailer, have them cancel my existing order and start all over again.

I repeat to her, “So, it sounds like the best course of action is to cancel my order.”

She replies, “Yes sir. You will need to cancel your order.”

I had a few more things that I wanted to know before I could really know if this was a better deal than what I already got, so I say, “OK, sure. But first I have a couple more questions.”

Here’s where it starts to go south. FAST. In the time that it took me to utter that sentence, our eager customer service associate cancelled my order. No chance to clarify any fine print or get more details on the service I was interested in.

When she let me know she had already cancelled my order, I kept it together. In my mind, it’s not cool to get angry and abusive with call center personnel. They’re not the people you’re usually mad at. Except this time, she was the one I was mad at. She shouldn’t have been so quick with the mouse finger. She put me on hold again as she “attempted to get my old order back” and then came back and began the process of setting me up with a new order, complete with another credit check. I asked why she needed to do that again when I was already approved just days before. If I wanted any service from them at all, I had no choice. I begrudgingly gave her permission to do it again.

As we got deeper into the 20 minute re-ordering process, it turns out the new promotion really wasn’t better than the one I had already ordered. The new promotion gave you a free HD DVR and HD receiver with your order, but it required that you get a bigger programming package than what I had already ordered. It also required that you sign up for whole-home DVR service, which I had opted out of in the previous order. These were the things I wanted clarification on before canceling. Yet here I was, forced into ordering all of this just because of someone’s clerical error.

We’re getting close to being done with the order. She’s listing out all the services, discounts and fees when she drops another unpleasant bomb on me. My previous order came with free HD for the life of the account when I signed up for automatic bill payment. I lost that because of this mistake and now will have to pay an additional $10/month for HD channels. Mind you, she’s already gotten me for over $20 more per month than I was paying in the previous order before this unpleasant surprise.

At this point I mentioned that I had regretted making this call because I had a much better deal in my previous order. I wanted this to go on record “for training purposes” or whatever the hell they wanted to use this horribly failed customer interaction for. The girl admitted that this was all her fault and offered to cut the HD fee in half for 12 months.

Not good enough, I say.

Worst of all, her mistake forfeited my August 2nd installation date. Now I won’t receive installation until August 9th.

The only plus in the whole transaction was that I was getting refunded the $99.00 I had to spend on the HD DVR in the first order.

In the end, I’m getting a better service offering than what I ordered previously, but I’m also paying for a better service offering that I chose not to order the first time around because it wasn’t what I wanted to pay for.

Needless to say, I’m not happy. This could have all been avoided if the call center associate wasn’t so fast with her fingers. And, it seems to me that the solution that would make me happy would be very simple:

Give me back my free HD for life. Waive the whole-home DVR fee for 12 months. Give me back my August 2nd (or better) install date. It couldn’t have possibly disappeared that fast.

The programming package is a moot point. At the end of the 12 months I’ll just downgrade, since I’m getting it at the same price as the lower package in the first order.

DirecTV, I’ll be getting in touch with you soon with my complaint. If your social media analysts are out there keeping track, then you’ll find this and be in touch with me sooner than that.

Slides for this talk An audio-only version of this...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:07:00 -0500

I got up in front of people again last week.

The fine folks of the Independent Filmmaker’s Coalition of Kansas City were kind enough to want to hear what I have to say about creativity and how it might matter to them. Since, you know, filmmakers are heavily dependent on their creativity.

This was a very interesting talk for me to give. You see, I used to be very active in this group about ten years ago, and while very few of the faces in the crowd were familiar, the mindsets and desires of the people sitting in that old, musty theater were very much the same. Same as they always were. Same as I was so long ago.

I meant for the talk to be much more of a discussion than a lecture. it didn’t turn out that way. Perhaps I should have left the slides at home and just winged it. Who knows. What I do know is that the Q&A was one of the more interesting ones that I’ve ever had. Mostly from the fact that this crowd seemed to be much more engaged in the overall philosophy of creativity than most college students1, but even more so because of how the tone of the Q&A seemed slightly geared toward poking holes through my theories.

And, I liked that people were trying to refute my statements. It was a rare challenge. The one statement that caught most of my attention was that one person felt that I hadn’t given a talk on creativity at all. I had just given them a productivity lecture.

I think I answered well at the time, but I had additional thoughts the next morning that fell squarely into the “I wish I would have thought of that earlier” category. Here it is:

Having spent many years making a living out of being creative, I can assure you that it’s all about being productive. If you’re not productive, you don’t ship work. If you don’t ship work, you don’t get paid and you starve. Anyone who thinks that creativity isn’t about getting off your ass and working with laser-like focus until you’ve achieved your goal frankly hasn’t ever really done any work.

On the way home that night, thinking of that guy kind of irritated me. He had a bit of that “I want to prove that I’m smarter than you” attitude. Which, is fine. Like I said, I enjoyed the challenge. But I think what irritated me the most was that it almost seemed like he wasn’t listening. But, then I put myself in the mindset of where I was when I was active in the club. I had been laid off from a web design job when the company I was working for got bought out. I was surviving off freelance work that I was picking up from senior management that took huge buyouts from the purchasing company and were using that to seed new companies.

Basically I was jobless, slightly depressed and incredibly bored. I used the IFC as a way to get out of my apartment once a week and interact with people and do something that made me feel creative beyond the pedestrian stuff I was making to get by.

Had someone come to an IFC meeting and told me the things I said during this talk, I think I would have been pissed off too. Not because they were full of shit or trying to sell me an idea disguised as something else, but because deep down inside I would have known they were right and that if I didn’t get off my ass and actually make something that I felt was worthwhile, I would never actually be creative.

Not everybody wants to hear what I’ve got to say. Some people really would rather sit around and say, “Oh, man. That screenplay that I’ve got in my head is going to be so awesome. I think I’ll start writing it tomorrow, but first I’m going to play some XBox.” And then the cycle repeats.

To many, feeling creative (or simply seeming creative to others) is what it’s all about. Those are the people who won’t make anything.

Make stuff. Make a lot of stuff. Fail. Succeed a few times. Then, come back to me and tell me that creativity isn’t about being productive.

Don’t get me wrong. Not everyone there was like that. There were some very engaged people in that audience, and I had a discussion with one guy afterwards that I think really helped him get his mind around a dilemma he was facing in his own creative trials and tribulations. And, that is what means a lot to me. If I can help one person avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made in the past it’s the biggest reward I can receive.

I’m not saying that college students categorically don’t care about creative philosophy. Far from it. It’s just that generally their questions revolve around what it’s like to work at an advertising agency or a creative field. ↩

hothotjapanhot: I just can’t see why this brand never took...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:17:14 -0500

hothotjapanhot:

I just can’t see why this brand never took off.

I’d like to know what this jungle recipe is.

Photo

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:15:58 -0500

semigoodlooking: (via fruitfruitcup, 200troubledteenagers)

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:10:50 -0500

semigoodlooking:

(via fruitfruitcup, 200troubledteenagers)

The Fred Phelps B-Team. Apparently not all the crazies went to...

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:26:26 -0500

The Fred Phelps B-Team.

Apparently not all the crazies went to San Diego for Comic Con. They left a few at home so they could come to a military funeral near our house. Sad, sad excuses for people.

What does “Obama Burger” even mean?

Alabama Ignition Key. Delish.

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:07:09 -0500

Alabama Ignition Key. Delish.

There’s a lock screen that says “Back off,...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:01:05 -0500

There’s a lock screen that says “Back off, Tastee-Freeze.”

This is also awesome.

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:17:42 -0500

This is also awesome.