Geek On The Mountain

Samsung’s tech support is rather clueless. The situation was rather funny though…

I got a Samsung camcorder for christmas and it had the slight problem in which it couldn’t actually read discs at all. To Samsung’s credit, this particular camcorder had been a display model (only one in the store..) so it’s entire likely that the camcorder had been damaged in some way by customers playing with it. I figured the camcorder was pretty much dead because the disc wouldn’t even spin. At any rate, I thought I’d look around and see if there was a quick fix before returning it to the store.

I looked around online a little and didn’t see anything that would be at all helpful. At that point, I decided to call up Samsung’s tech support and see if they could give me any useful advice. Ha.

To start with, the guy wanted a bunch of information to set up an “account” with them. I actually do understand their wanting to do this because then they can easily track the situation and if you call back later you can just pick up where you left off. I didn’t really care for that though as I just wanted some quick answers. I told him I wouldn’t give him any info and, although he did seem confused for a moment, he went on without bugging me about it. I told the guy about the problem I was having with the camcorder and he only really had one solution. He said I should go to Samsung’s website, download the newest firmware for the camcorder, and then burn it to a disc.

I immediately saw a slight problem in this approach, so I went ahead and asked him if I could just update the firmware via USB instead. Unfortunately, he was rather adamant about burning a disc. I then had to break the bad news that it would be rather hard to do since the camcorder couldn’t read discs… The only other thing he could do was to transfer me to a “level 2″ tech, and of course he would need to grab that info from me that I earlier refused. I just said no thanks, I’ll just bring it back.

That’s some great advice though. If you have a Samsung camcorder that can’t read discs, just burn the latest firmware to a disc and stick it in the camcorder and that should take care of the problem. Duh.

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We were in Target last month and I happened to notice something a bit odd about our cart..

The Target credit card offer is nicely ripped half off so that you can see the child safety warning that it was covering up. Target has placed the value of an advertisement for their credit card over the value of a child safety warning… (Ok, so the warning is a stupid one that’s just common sense and is only there to avoid lawsuits, but still…)

Though perhaps the best part is what appears to be the word “care” scrawled across the bottom. I’m assuming that it says something like “because we care”….. what irony

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Huggies diapers suck.

I mean it. They’re awful. Huggies leak and they hardly absorb anything. I changed one of the girls one time and then fed her. She was sitting my lap as I was feeding her and she ended up peeing all over me. Not cool really…

Although we prefer to use cloth diapers, we have had some issues with rashes and in that case we end up using disposables to help keep the moisture off the babies skin. While the babies were in the hospital, they used Pampers. We’ve generally stuck to those and haven’t had any trouble really. The first week or so they would occasionally fall down below the baby’s butt, but I think that was just us not getting them on correctly as it hasn’t been an issue since. We haven’t had any leaks or anything like that.

Huggies on the other hand seem to leak around their legs. Also, they’re much less absorbent. I’d have to guess they can only hold about half the liquid that the Pampers can, and we’ve had times when they’re literally just been saturated and it started leaking everywhere. And it’s not like they hadn’t been changed in 5 hours or something either.

I must say that the only reason we have Huggies at all is because someone we know had various diapers she didn’t need and she gave them to us. I wouldn’t recommend actually paying for Huggies though..

Really, I assume that, just like bigger people, babies come in all shapes and sizes and probably some brands fit some babies better than others. Regardless of that though, Pampers are far more absorbent than Huggies.

And just to continue my bashing….I went the Huggies website hoping to find some slogan about how great their diapers are (I didn’t find one, though I didn’t look far), but instead I found that their site sucks as well. It literally goes to a big international page that makes you select your country from one of 20 or so selections. Would it really be that difficult to look at the IP and just guess at which version to display? A simple link at the top of the page to see international versions of the site would account for errors. I hate it when websites don’t bother to guess where you’re from..

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Should we assume the being elderly is accompanied by wisdom or should we assume that it is more of a handicap? Should older people have lots of common sense, or should they be treated like kids who just don’t know any better? I know the true answer really depends on the person you’re dealing with, but it seems as though in general society should expect one or the other.

Case in point. I was waiting in line at a store the other day. There was this old lady in front of me (in front of the person in front of me anyways) who was at the pickup window. Once her transaction had completed, she just kind of turned sideways and then proceeded to slowly open up her purse and try to find a spot to shove her checkbook into. She was very slow. It probably took her 20 - 30 seconds to finish and then finally move out of the way. Had she just taken two steps forward, she would have been completely out of the way. As was though, she blocked 75% of the window.

To me, it just seems like common sense to move out of the way. One might reasonably assume that sometime in the first 65 years of life a person should pick up on that. As such, it seems reasonable to tell this person to get the hell out of the way since they should know better.

On the other hand, some older people start to lose it a bit. She may not have even realized that she was in the way. One might consider her mental state to be somewhat equivalent of that of a child in regards to this situation. She just doesn’t know any better. It’s best to just give her some time without saying anything and she’ll be on her way.

Mind you, when I mention telling her to get the hell out of the way, I don’t really mean saying those exact words or just shoving her out the way or anything like that. I’m really thinking of just a polite “excuse me” or something of that nature. Naturally, you could argue that saying something or not saying something could apply to either case depending on what kind of person you are, so maybe it’s better to say how would you think about it?

Would you expect the person to have some common sense or would you think of them as not knowing any better? Should people in general think one way or the other?

(Now watch as I get one or even no comments since I’ve actually asked for feedback… )

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Over the past however many months now I’ve been amazed by the kindness of everyone out there. We’ve recieved a lot of different things (baby “supplies”) from different people both before and after the girls were born. Although Milenka knows everyone who’s sent things, we’ve gotten things from people that she hasn’t even talked to in a couple of years. And pretty much everyone is a stranger to me, so it just seems all that much more out there to be getting things from people.

I’m not a particularly emotional person or anything, but I can safely say that I feel rather touched by the generosity of so many people out there. I assume at least some of you stop by here every so often so I’ll take to say thanks here as well.

And if you aren’t someone who’s sent something, feel free to go ahe

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