2004 December archive at The Reasoner

Archive for December, 2004

50 Gmail invites available • 12.20.04

I have 50 Gmail invites available to those who need it. Please contact me, or leave a comment with your name and a valid email address to send the invite to.

[Update] June 21st, 2005 - 3:06 pm

Please note that I need your email address to send the invitations. I get several emails sent through the website almost every day requesting a gmail invitation, and most of them have invalid or no email addresses in them. Without an email address, I am unable to send a gmail invitation. Thank you.

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[Update] August 20th, 2005 - 9:23 am

I have given about 73 Gmail invites so far. The last one I gave was yesterday, and now my Gmail counter is showing the number of Gmail invited to be 49. Usually, the counter went back to 50 repeatedly, and I could send more invites, and then after a few hours, the counter always showed 50 remaining invites. Now, it’s not changing. So here’s your chance to get a Gmail invite while it’s still available, or until Gmail opens to everyone.

Post a comment below with a working email address to get your free invite.

[/Update]

[Update] August 24th, 2005 - 12:01 pm

Google is offering free invitation codes itself if you have a cell phone. Get a text message with your free code over at Gmail.

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[Update] February 9th, 2007 - 10: am

Google has opened up Gmail for people in many countries. You can probably sign up directly without the need of an invite, and you can still request an invitation below if you wish.

[/Update]

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Car Wash - Take 1 • 12.19.04

Below are two pictures at the car wash; one is when the car in front is leaving the area, with the Shell [it's a Shell car wash] staff coming over to signal the next car in line to come forward. The other picture is with the staff standing next to the car, and the first car almost gone out of the view.

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The forgotten art of realistic “mannerism” - Part 1 • 12.19.04

If you call some of the big corporations with any questions you may have regarding the products you have from that specific company, you will no doubt be prepared to be placed on hold while the tech support is, as they say it, “looking into the situation.” Whether or not this “looking” actually refers to finding a solution or simply trying to understand what your problem is, the wait is a good waste of time.

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The new trend to solve this issue or to east it on the customers [or to make it feel like it has been eased, if you are the company], is to appear very courteous to the customer, and to keep asking them simple questions repeatedly. You can ask their name, their full name, and ask them to spell it for you. Then you can ask them their phone number, make them repeat it and then repeat it yourself also. If that does not buy you time, the best thing to do is to go through all the things that you, the technical support representative, think may be wrong with the “incident” and not listen to the customer at all.

Your calls to SBC, for example, will be answered in a very different manner than your calls with Edison. While Edison staff are available 24 hours a day, and they talk to you directly as if you were in front of them and any question you have, they answer and help you solve it in less than 5 minutes, SBC will first of all make you give all your information such as name, phone number, order number and the question you have at least 2 times [one time you say it, and then the customer rep. makes you repeat it], and then they themselves repeat it to confirm that it is the case. That alone takes up 3 or so minutes. After that, if you simply tell the representative on the other line that you know what the problem is and you wish to find out a certain thing [for example, that there was an outage in the routers or something related in Souther California earlier in the day, and what is the status on that issue], the representative will not understand, at least the ones I personally faced [over 7], that all you want is an update.

The canned responses start right there; “we apologize for this inconvenience and I will personally do everything in my power to help solve this problem and make this a wonderful day for you. Now, can I know your email address so that we can send you a little survey for you to answer letting us know how well your issue was handled by us today.”

A survey to answer before your question has been answered, and that by one of the top companies on Fortune 500? That sounds very considerate of them, unless you are a lonely person who had no friends, no job, and no life and want to waste your time and are happy interacting with at least one human being, even if that human being is giving you the run around.

[Part 2 of this will be coming soon]

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The art of complaining about weather - a Californian specialty • 12.11.04

For anyone who does not live in California, the general images that come to mind when thinking of this state are those of Hollywood, celebrities and the sunny weather at the beaches. One thing that does not come to mind is the cold weather. That the entire weather fluctuates wildly throughout the years in California along with many other states should not be a big surprise for many, and this year is no different. The next year will be have even more fluctuations in the weather..

One thing that most of the people cannot seem to understand is why the weather can be so cold in California. Radio hosts keep questioning this cold weather as if coldness is an unspoken evil that has covered the “surrounding lands.” Whether it is pure frustration “on the air”, or an excuse to hold onto a subject to fill out the required number of minutes in the morning talk shows, everyone keeps saying “What is wrong with the weather?”, as if it was bad luck to catch a cold once in a lifetime. Or maybe it is bad for many people to witness the rain with a jacket and a muffler on our bodies. Maybe many people need to know in California that the modern era of human achievements should and does include in many cases the ability to be satisfied with life no matter what the weather is, and to stop complaining.

Here is a random picture of an older lady sitting across my side of the train and reading a newspaper aboard the Amtrak, heading for Berkeley.

<%image(20041211-old-lady-reading-paper-on-amtrak.JPG|600|449|Old lady reading paper across me on Amtrak)%>

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Domain registrations around 5 dollars at Yahoo • 12.11.04

While the cost of domain names has increased for registrars like Godaddy by 25 cents because of ICANN’s recent budget plans, Yahoo on the other hand is slashing its prices for domain registrations to $4.98 per year for a limited time.

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Black Friday’s black magic - 2004 • 12.02.04

The recent Black Friday sale was a good way for the entire country to go out and buy the things they needed, and things they didn’t need. It was also probably what the country needed to put a small gold coin into the “unstable” economy.

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With prices so low on items such as electronics, apparel, books and other things, why would people hesitate to buy something they might need later on? People get up at 2 in the morning, and start waiting in long lines at 3 AM outside big stores such as Fry’s and Circuit City’s, making sure they go into the store as fast as possible when it opens, and get the items they need into their shopping carts immediately. Many items such as electronics sell out within minutes on that day. Of course, such days are not good for all businesses. Among some other [very few, though] businesses, restaurants suffer because people focus more on buying stuff than eating all day, on such days.

Apparel sales are different in terms of being “all out” of the merchandize. With so many styles to choose from, the only thing that can happen is to not find something specific on which you had your eyes on for sometime. Also, for some reason, apparel prices don’t go as low as prices for electronics or other types of merchandize; even then, however, people love to buy clothes on such holidays, and the discounted prices, even though they are not that different from original prices [sometimes discounts of $10 at places like Anne Taylor LOFT and GAP] appear to be terrific deals, and perfect deals for almost everyone who goes to such stores on those days. The next set of holiday deals, near Christmas and then near New Years, are on their way. These two holidays do not offer sales as huge as Black Friday, but when both the days are combined [theoretically], they do offer bigger sales, and they occur within days of each other. Those sales are already here, and will continue until the first half of the first week of January.

Here is a picture taken on Black Friday at Old Navy in Emeryville. As you can see, it looks like any other business day, though people keep coming in, and exiting quickly to compare prices on different places around the neighborhood.

<%image(20041202-emeryville-old-navy-black-friday-2004.JPG|600|449|Black Friday sales at Old Navy in Emeryville, CA, USA)%>

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