I went in search of information on my local police department’s web site. Evidently they had a recent site redesign and boy is it pretty….too bad it’s completely useless!

One would think that a government entity’s web site’s primary purpose would be to provide information.  Oh, not in the case of Dekalb County Georgia’s Police Department.  In fact, I needed information specifically from their Animal Control division….and the link  I found by searching on Google (http://dekalbpolice.com/ac/) is a dead link…so I began my hunt on their main page. (Using the search feature only produced a results page and every link on it was broken, page not found)

Time to dig deeper…

Look at all of the pretty pictures of our acting police chief and police officers!  I can watch videos and even apply to the police academy.  I clicked on "Departments" then scrolled down through the listing of departments…finally finding a link to "Program Operations"….the description: "Click here to find information about the Animal Control Division, Personnel, Supply, Grants & Planning, Financial Services."….and click I did.

What did I see you might ask? A pretty picture of the Commander of Programs Operations, with a link to the names of all of his "Key Staff". Not a single bit of information.

Annoyed, I decide I want to use their "Feedback" button and tell them exactly what I think of their site. Guess what?!  The "Feedback" button only leads to one of those bogus web pages that contains absolutely nothing more than Google Adsense links. 

Extremely frustrated I visit the site designers web site, since a link was put at the bottom of the page of the site.  BAM! My browser was forcibly opened to its maximum size, which is one of my absolute major pet peeves! How dare a web site designer tell me how big my browser window should be, let alone forcibly reset my browser!

What pissed me off even more was that the design of the site did not need the full width of my browser, evidently the designer just likes the power of controlling my online experience.

But, alas…I think I have finally found what I was looking for!  Predominantly displayed on the front page of the site was a promo for a site redesign done back in June for….the NEW site for "Dekalb County Animal Service & Enforcement".  I’m on the edge of my seat with excitement as I get ready to click the link that was to take me to the site I originally was looking for….I hold my breath….low and behold, I get a site not found error! UGH!

I guess the next step is to see how well their phone system works… 

I have a Sprint Samsung A900 aka Blade. Overall, I like the phone but it is plagued with a lot of quirks. I had hoped that many of these quirks would be fixed with a software upgrade, but there has not been a single upgrade released since I purchased my phone and did the initial software upgrade to ZB12.

Actually the A900 I have now is the second one I’ve had. The first one I bought was a refurbished unit and it had tons of stuff wrong with it, including getting extremely hot during use, restarting all by itself and odd error messages when trying to do the simplest of things. I returned it and paid the additional amount for a brand new Blade, but still have problems that are common complaints among Blade users.

The bluetooth is hit or miss…I’ve gone through 3 different bluetooth headsets before I found one that works decently with the Blade. If I’m in a menu and a call comes in the caller gets directed to voicemail immediately. The phone book menu is so freakin’ slow! Every other phone I’ve ever had, when I type in the first letter of someone’s name I’m immediately taken to the corresponding letter in the phone book. Not with the Blade! There is a huge lag time between entering the letter and the cursor moving to the appropriate listing. This is such a pain!

So, I assumed some of these things would be software updates….but no!  Earlier this month Sprint/Samsung released the A900M….other than some small cosmetic differences (more plastic) the only other changes that have been reported are software related!

The A900M offers the ability to customize the appearance and features of the Standby Screen, Main Menu and My Favorites screens with a wide variety of downloadable themes. I’ve read that some people who have "upgraded" to this phone have found that some of the other issues have been fixed as well, although whether or not the problems with GPS (using TeleNav and Garmin) is still debatable. I’ve been reading reports supporting both views.

I’m also not happy with Sprint’s service right now. In an area where I used to have very good coverage I am often roaming or have no signal at all if I turn the roaming option off. I’ve tested this with my old phone, and friends also on Sprint are now having the same problem with coverage, even though their phones too used to work fine in this area.  Thank goodness for *2 and credit for a dropped call…at least I save a few bucks a month, since Sprint customer service insists that coverage is great in my area and I shouldn’t be having any problems.

I don’t understand why Spring/Samsung would release the A900M instead of fixing the problems with the A900. is their goal to piss of customers even more? It would appear so…

I have been fighting with Sprint because of poor service in my area. I’ve had Sprint for years and initially had some trouble with defective phones, but found a phone that worked pretty well in my area. After having the phone for two years (a Sanyo RL4920 BRICK!) I upgraded to a Samsung A900 (Blade).

Note: I did originally buy a refurbished Blade from RadioShack. It was defective and RadioShack was more than accomodating. They replaced the refurbished Blade with a brand new one, from their latest delivery. I paid the difference between the refurbished phone and the new one.  Every problem I had with the refurbished phone is not an issue with the new phone.  I wish the people at the Sprint store were even half as helpful or polite as the people I dealt with at RadioShack! Unfortunately, they can’t do anything about Sprint’s coverage…and my phone worked just as well in their store as their demo phone.

Some "upgrade"!  I’m having problems with my calls dropping in town around my house, not to mention in my house. I have other friends who are on Sprint and they are experiencing the same problems. I called Sprint complaining about the the lack of coverage (actually roaming in the same areas I previously had coverage with my brick phone)…they told me I had to go into the Sprint store and have my phone tested to make sure it wasn’t my phone.

I went into the Sprint store only to find out that because I didn’t buy their service plan for $6.00 per month they wouldn’t even look at my phone unless I paid a $15 fee!!!  I can understand not FIXING the phone, but I have to pay to have it tested?! That’s ridiculous!  It’s not just my phone having the problem, my friends phones are having the problems too…it just doesn’t bother them as much because they rarely use their phones in town.

Right now, unless I want to break down and pay them to TEST my phone, my only recourse is to use the *2 option. What is that you may ask?  If you dial *2 on your Sprint phone you are connected to customer service. You will be given the opportunity to tell the automated voice what you need to do….just tell her you are calling for "credit for a dropped call".  She will apologize for the inconvenience and credit your account for one minute at the highest local rate. The good news is…it’s a pretty high rate. I get $1.00 for every dropped call that I report to Sprint.

I don’t know if they limit this credit, but I may be on my way to finding out. So far within the past week I’ve gotten $6.00 in credit for legitimate dropped calls.

Come on Sprint…$15 just to TEST a phone?!  You just don’t want to test it, then you’d have to address the problem with your spotty service coverage.

Moral of the story:  If you EVER have a call dropped on your Sprint phone…CALL *2 and ask for CREDIT FOR A DROPPED CALL!

Today at work I got the munchies and finally gave into temptation and checked out the goodie box in the break room. Much to my surprise there was a package of Reese’s peanut butter cups in there, my fav!  This doesn’t happen often, so I was quite happy.

I went back to my desk and proceeded to consume my tasty snack. When I finished I looked inside the wrapper because there was some sort of contest advertised on the front of the package. Well, I certainly wasn’t an instant winner, but there was some code to get "2 points" I could register at Hershey.com…low and behold, that wasn’t it though.

Below the contest info was a disclaimer….yep, that’s right a disclaimer!

"Candy is a treat. Please consume in moderation."

WTF???!!! Disclaimers on cigarettes, disclaimers on alcohol but disclaimers on CANDY????!!!  Good grief!

I am used to leaving a tip at a restaurant or other service related establishments when customary. I tip based upon the quality of service received and usually tip generously, since I have known many people who work(ed) in the service industry and because it is usually a job I  wouldn’t want to fill.

Today as I treated myself to a Starbucks Frappucino on my way to work I couldn’t help but notice the tip box left on the drive-thru counter. I do leave a tip from time to time, but as I was paying for my $4 drink I wondered why I should be leaving a tip. (Yes, I am an idiot for paying $4 for a drink, but unfortunately it’s a craving I just have to fulfill from time to time)

Tipping was started to supplement the lowly wages paid to wait staff, since they work for much less than minimum wage. A friend of mine worked for Caribou Coffee and I know what her hourly wage was, which admittedly wasn’t extremely high, but was above minimum wage  and was considerably higher than the standard wait staff wage.

Wait staff has to claim tips on their income taxes, based upon a percentage of their sales totals. Employees of  Starbucks and other places like it do not…their tips are pure gravy since they are not paid on the wait staff pay scale.

So, I am rewarding a typical waiter/waitress for the quality of their service as well as adding to their measly hourly salary. At Starbucks, I am already paying $4 for a  coffee based beverage, which is a considerable amount of money. The staff is paid regular wages, not wait staff wages, yet am I expected to tip them purely because they were (hopefully) pleasant and got my order right?

How much does it cost to make a Frappucino or a cup of coffee? Isn’t there enough profit in pushing coffee beverages to pay the staff adequately? Why should customers buying overpriced coffee drinks also contribute to the hourly wages of the establishment’s employees?

I read that in 2005 Starbucks total revenue for the fiscal year totaled $6.4 billion….$6.4 billion!

With that kind of revenue why don’t they pay their employees enough so that they don’t have to beg for or rely on tips to make a decent living?! 

Just how much profit is enough for these corporations? Will big business ever be happy enough with their profits to actually give a fair share to the people actually doing the manual labor?

Oh  yeah, that could happen…