Last week, we were able to launch a new website for Sunrise Dental, a new dentist in Allen, Texas where Dr. Linda Jacob provides her patients everything from general dentistry services to complex dental procedures and cosmetic services like Zoom teeth whitening. Good luck with the new business Dr. Jacob!

Since I’ve never been to a dentist that offered them, I find it quite interesting that she’s providing massaging dental chairs! In hindsight, that seems like a no-brainer when you consider how stressful a check-ups can be for some people. Between these new chairs and an iPod/iPhone, one might be inclined to nap the next time you’re at the dentist. Can I just say that the iPod has revolutionized the whole dentist and lawn mowing experience.

Anyway.

Even before getting my wisdom teeth removed by an Army dentist in 1986, I’ve never really been bothered by my dental visits. I was guarding mobile Pershing missiles in Germany (back in the old days when there WAS a West Germany) and I’d been given a Secret Clearance (impressive, eh!?) “Without A Need To Know” (ok, not so impressive). So basically, if I walked into a room where the plans for world domination were being outlined, I’d be asked to leave but with no hard feelings. But in a crazed effort to get out of morning PT and the 5 mile runs in the German winter (while wearing what what was called a “banana suit”: wafer thin military issued sweats), I more or less “created the need” for a dental procedure by claiming that my wisdom teeth hurt and I needed to have them removed. Not only was I getting out the morning run, I was saving myself a potential post military expense. I really, really hate running. So no strategy to avoid them was too fantastic.

I made my way to the dentist across the base and eventually end up in the chair of a Lt. Colonel who read my file and announced that due to my secret clearance he’d not be allowed to fully knock me out and that I’d be getting a local. The argument being, I might start sharing national security secrets in my sleep. As a Private First Class, I was of course a treasure trove of national secrets. But the entire process was more or less pain free and I was even out that same night for some light recreation in the city of Ulm where I was based. My teeth weren’t impacted so I got off easier than most; no violent barfing or blowing up like a chipmunk. I won’t bring up the fact that later in the day, I actually extracted (with blood) some small slivers of toothy bits that the good Colonel has neglected to full extract. I guess you get what you pay for.

Footnote: I had been inactive about two years when I got a letter from the Army outlining the terms of my previously mentioned secret clearance. Per the letter, the information I had regarding the Pershing missiles would remain classified for a term of 99 yrs and that I was compelled to sign and return the attached form. I did. What did I care, eh? And about two yrs after that, I saw the Pershing again–face to face at a Smithsonian display.

“Sergeant, does this mean we’re through for the day?”

For literally years I looked forward to the UVERSE network upgrade that inched slowly-ever so slowly-toward my Little Rock suburb. I checked ‘availability’ about once a month (using an online tool) and even called in from time to time trying to glean even the most modest pearls of information. Have you ever seen an AT&T truck with the semi-rhetorical marketing slogan “Ask Me About UVERSE”? Well not once, but twice I did when coming across a technician in my neighborhood.

Jump ahead about 3 years and finally the day came. I made the appointment and within a week, I was enjoying an 18 mps download speed, fiber-optic television courtesy of UVERSE! We decided to go ‘all cell’ and didn’t install the voice service. Finally, the curse of storm-induced DishTV outages were over and better yet, I now had BBC America.

After two weeks, I called AT&T and dramatically downgraded my services. Here are the highlights behind the decision to end this honeymoon so quickly

• On my HD TV, I was able to cite a clear downgrade in HD picture quality. Sure I can be  a stickler over ‘all-things technical’, but my son noted the same, over compressed HD signal as a sub-standard when compared to the DishTV picture. I know many folks can claim the opposite to be true but in my scrutinizing eyes the picture wasn’t as sharp
• The UVERSE DVR remote allowed users to “skip” forward (we seem to use that much more often than the fast forward option) but it subjected me to nevertheless watch the video. Sure it was in ‘fast forward’ mode, but the clear winner here is DishTV. The same DishTV remote feature simply takes the viewer 30 seconds ahead almost instantly. Translation, tapping the “skip” button 4 times in a row on a DishTV remote lands me about 2 minutes deeper into a program. Doing the same multi-tap trick on a UVERSE simply doesn’t work as you have to ride out each “skip”, one at a time. You can’t “stack” the stick commands and it proved very tedious.
• Full and complete DVR features on two TVs: turns out it’s a DishTV exclusive (so I’m reading). While UVERSE allows up to four “satellite”‘ units to draw from the primary DVR, the secondary TVs can NOT pause live TV but can only pause/play/fast forward recorded programming. Within the scope of our decision to stay with DishTV, this ended up being a major factor.
• In my eyes, the 18 mps internet speed was the core feature of the upgrade. This was the cornerstone of my interest in UVERSE. Who would have ever guessed that tripling my internet speed (I was at 6 mps) would have been such a bland, milquetoast upgrade.
  • Yes, FTP’ing large files or downloading new music on iTunes it was clearly faster–no argument there. But even though I spend 8 hours a day working online, it turns out I don’t make many uber-large file transactions. Hardly any in fact. But even sites like YouTube seemed to load fast enough with my 6 mps connection. I mean the movie may load faster but it didn’t START any faster. So having it pre-loaded is of questionable value.
  • Emails with large attachments did not load any faster–Outlook seems to be immune to the speed upgrade. And for the most part, day to day browsing was likewise only modestly faster–at best. The one thing to remember about browsing the web is that you’re only as fast as your weakest link (the website you’re visiting).
  • Speestest.net is a great site for measuring your connection speed. Using a variety of test servers I found my speeds clocking in as low as 8 mps, regularly at about 10-12 mps and once in a while in the 16-17 mps range.
  • Cost to Value Ratio: This is what broke the back of UVERSE. Had the 18 mps rate cost less, I’d have kept it.  But upgrading my monthly cost from $35 a month to $65 proved too much to stomach based on my modest enthusiasm for the speed and it’s real-life results. If you download games all day (5 gig demos) or regularly transfer crazy large files like billboard size images it’s a keeper. But even as the power-user that I am, I just didn’t see the difference that warranted doubling my monthly bill.
  • For the total goobers: The gateway hardware is comically large (the size of  a Mom’s photo album) and the interface for managing connections, security and MAC id’s in pitiful if you’re used to a full featured set of options. And as one that grew to love DD-WRT I’m almost in tears.

If you were paying attention, you’ll recall that I didn’t CANCEL my UVERSE account but rather only downgraded it. One, in spite of the hulking breadbox gateway, it does provide consistent speeds–both upload and download. The promised speeds of 6 mps down and 1 mps up are effectively delivered. With my traditional DSL I only got 650 kbps upload and about 4.5  to 5 mps down. The fiber-optic based UVERSE clearly manages and maintains the speed more consistently. Additionally, keeping the new configuration gives me the option to change my mind down the road. You never know—prices and feature sets change all the time. So with the hardware in place, I’m one step ahead.

My wife recently signed up with the Kohls mailing list in an effort to secure the occasional coupon and special offer as we entered the back to school and consumer-spending-frenzied-fourth quarter. And because she’s been around me just long enough, she used our mutual Yahoo email address vs. her personal account. And in case anyone wasn’t listening closely let me repeat that little pearl of advice: Secure a Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail account and use them specifically for mailing lists, registrations and similarly disposable instances. They are easy to get, plentiful and available from any machine with an internet connection.

The first marketing email came in this past Monday and congratulations to them for keeping very close tabs on new sign-ups and getting right to work. As one that spent several years in retail internet marketing, I know that’s important. And with retail taking it’s current economic beating, it’s the cost efficient life-blood of most companies that are paying attention.

Then Tuesday came along. And another marketing email from Kohls.

The sun rose on Wednesday and my inbox was swollen with another offer from Kohls

As I logged in this morning–you guessed it–Kohls was back like a toe fungus.

I was hip to the marketing groove by day two so the UNSUBSCRIBE option was taken on Tuesday. They threw in the broad caveat that I might still get marketing emails for a couple days while the request was processed. Funny how you can be added overnight but to be removed, it takes several days. Things that make you go “hmmmm”

What the marketing team at Kohls has done is abuse their marketing mailing list. They abused the consumer by bloating their inbox day in and day out and risk numbing the consumer to their message. One day Kohls will want to ‘give away the store’ with ‘super savings’ but because they’ve nuked me with daily messages, they’ve trained mailing list users to either ignore (and delete without viewing) the marketing message that’s become email ‘white noise’ or simply scan and perhaps ‘miss’ the marketing target.

Or in my case, they might simply annoy me. Plain and simple. Call me a cad, but if my best friend wrote me everyday it would get old and tedious.

Yesterday I went to my first University of Arkansas football game. It was a spectacular fall day…too warm for November 1st, that’s for sure. As we made our way to the cheap seats (that weren’t cheap at all–thanks for the tix, Roger. “Free is good”), we made the obligatory stop at the concession stand for an $8 souvenir mug of Diet Coke and a dog. We soon made it our seats and immediately took to eating the almost entirely tasteless “meal” of encased meat–it was a spectacularly bland dog. But just as the first wave of belches began to percolate in my still hungry gut it occurred to me: how was it possible that in this glorious steel and concrete shrine to Razorback pigs did the vendors miss the marketing gold that is the “Hog Dog” or it’s cousin, the “Hawg Dog?”

For those of you not living in “The Natural State” of Arkansas (where there is no formal recycling plan; turns out “Natural” is a slogan but not an actual strategy–who knew!), “hawg” is a recognized and oft used alternate spelling of “hog.” It’s especially common across of the tee shirted chests of profoundly overweight women that troll and shuffle down the aisles of the local Wal-Mart. For my money, it might be best to avoid the word “hog” on XXXXL clothing. But I digress…

Using the name “Hawg/Hog Dog” is so spectacularly obvious one must assume that the wieners are all beef parts (as we all know, there is no traditional meat in a hot dog). But even that seemed improbale. Or perhaps there is a copyright afoot and they’re not allowed to use “Hawg/Hog Dog”. But c’mon–if you’re savvy enough to sell me an $8 Diet Coke, then let’s run with that ball and score the clear touchdown that IS the “Hawg/Hog Dog”

I saw that some other blogger leached on to one of my posts and linked (a ping back) it to their blog. I guess that’s supposed to be the idea, but their site was a complete mish-mash of content with no real purpose-and certainly nothing to do with the brilliance I had dispensed…clearly my SPAM filter had appropriately quarantined it. But for a self-serving moment I must admit that I was inclined to allow their comments as some sort of limp wristed validation that I’d been “seen.” I mean, this is a new blog after all. “Is there anyone out there?” Echo….echo!….hmm.

Well suffice to say, I’m not that desperate for cheap validation. Yet.

And if you think I spelled “quarantined” without looking it up. Uh, no.
The god-send that is the built in spell checker in FireFox cannot be praised enough!

“And now for something completely different…”