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Apple trying to redeem itself

I just got off the phone with Casey, a customer support representative with Apple.  He was extremely helpful and has taken at least some of the bad taste out of my mouth regarding the customer support side of Apple.  The frustrating thing is that it is impossible to find a simple email to send a customer support question to.  That’s all I need.  I understand you are a large company that would get flooded with email.  But that doesn’t change the fact that you are have customers who get really ticked when the support pages on your website all link back to the page you were just on, and claim that you can “Contact us.”

But Casey did go above and beyond, and walked me through fixing the problem, or at least diagnosing it, even though he is not technically a MobileMe support representative.  According to him, they are under a pile of complaints, and are so slammed they can’t even get traction.

Again, I understand you have a lot of stuff going down over in Cupertino.  But just say that out loud.  Say something on the support website like “Here are the problems we are aware of, and here’s how long it will actually take you to talk about this with a customer support specialist…” Or say “Live chat at this point actually isn’t live, and that’s because we screwed this product launch up so bad it makes Vista look bug-free, we will contact you as soon as we can to let you know when all services are running as expected and advertised”

Take a page out of Twitter’s playbook.  When it hit the fan over at Twitter, they said “Oh crap, it just hit the fan… we’ll fix it when we can, and we are working tirelessly,” and then updated folks on a very regular basis.  Apple puts out a blog “every other day” (which translated means we are gong to say something on the 25th, 27th, and 29th of July, and then not update it ever again.) to keep people updated, but they could do so much more.  We all know that you’ve got us right where you want us, and that we can’t leave for a better option, because there isn’t one… but that doesn’t change the fact that when customers pay you money (especially annual money), you should both bend over backward AND let people know that you are bending over backwards.

Welcome to web 2.0, where every Joe with a browser can get online and update by the minute how things are going.  Hire someone with the full-time job of blogging about how things are going.  Get a twitter account and tell us how things are going, what you are currently working to fix, and how long you estimate it will take.  Then the public will cut you some slack.  Stop acting like a giant corporation who has lost it’s soul. Being tight-lipped about how things are going was cool in 1998.  It’s smug and irritating ten years later.

And while you are at it, give Casey a raise.  He went the extra mile, offering support advice for a product he wasn’t actually trained to offer it for.

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183 Pushups

That’s not a misprint.  I (Ben) just did 113 pushups, split into 5 sets (27, 21, 21, 18, 26, with the last set being a max-out)  Jacqueline just did 70 pushups (16, 13, 13, 11, 17, with the last being a max-out)  That’s 183 pushups between the two of us.  My arms are resting on the keyboard, and I am not sure I am going to be able to pick them up.

If you had told me a month ago that I would have been able to do that many, I would have laughed at you.  But here I sit, exhausted but feeling good about our progress.  We are going to be one buff couple in a few weeks!  Stay tuned.

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The Struggle

It’s funny how my little man struggles to stay awake. I am sitting beside his crib, standing periodically to shh-shh him, and thinking about how funny we humans are.

We go to great lengths to prove how self-sufficient we are. Benjamin refusing to go to sleep has nothing on my refusal to submit to God some days. And what a silly thing to refuse… Like refusing to take food on an overnight camping trip, or a raincoat on a trip to Seattle. That’ll show ‘em. Luckily I have a heavenly Dad who stands beside my crib while I moan and groan, and continues to graciously put my pacifier back in until I finally realize what’s best for me.

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Golden Compass

I just watched the golden compass. Well produced film. It’s pretty sad that Christians made such a fuss out of not going to see this film, since that directly plays into the bias of the filmmakers. They are trying to make the point (as far as I can tell) that the church is in the business of surpressing the truth. What better way to prove their point than to protest their film? As Christians (and especially Protestant Christians) we ought to be about people seeing this film. It promotes standing against forces that keep us from discovering the truth. Sure, there is an anti-church agenda going on, but it is secondary to the pro-truth agenda. And of all things, I think the church should be about uncovering and exposing the truth. I agree with the filmmakers when they make the statement that the truth is far more valuable than church tradition. Furthermore, I agree that there has been some pretty jacked up corruption in the church, historically. Let’s expose the truth.

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Straight from the Cowboy’s Mouth.

Hundreds of people knelt in the audience.  The leader said “On the count of three, I want everyone to jump, raise their hands, and shout!”  Then, with hands raised high in obedience the ones who knew the songs sang the loudest, and others clapped along.  It definitely had too much of a mega-church, over-produced worship sort of feel for my tastes.  But then again, worship isn’t supposed to be about me, either.  But I had a strange feeling it wasn’t supposed to be about a sweaty, overweight man screaming “I’m gonna beat these drums like I am in bed with my girlfriend:” as the smell of cigarrettes and bodyodor wafted through the humid night air.

See, I wasn’t at a church.

I saw Cowboy Mouth perform on Saturday night, and as I told my brother and cousin when we drove away, I have only seen someone have that kind of control over an audience a few times in my life.  Make no mistake, Fred LeBlanc was a worship leader on Saturday night.  Kind of a worship leader who is a strange mix of Jack Black, Chris Farley, Space Ghost,(seriously he sounds just like SG when he talks:) and cocaine (as I twittered live from the show).

What I saw on Biltmore Avenue Saturday night was worship.  Worship of several little gods who can’t satisfy.  Gods like happiness, freedom from rules (which is in reality a new type of bondage), alcohol, and self.  At one point, Fred told us to just celebrate that “we can do whatever the hell we want to.”—the great American god of autonomy.

The Bible doesn’t discuss atheism.  It discusses idolatry.  Others have written far more eloquently on the subject, but I was struck by how true this is.  It’s not that we don’t believe in something (or someone) that is able to save us from our sin: it’s that we think that some created thing can save us from our sin (alcohol, music, cigarettes, money) or that we can ignore our sin (eastern philosophy) or that we can do enough to pay for our own sin (religion).  All three of those things are idolatry.  The last two are self-idolatry.

Fred is a very gifted drummer and vocalist, Cowboy Mouth is a very talented band, and I mean them absolutely no disrespect in this post.  I enjoyed the show, even.  But what caused me to enjoy the show was outright rejecting some of the things that he said.  I can’t do whatever the hell I want to do.  Praise the Lord I am not left to that wonderful “freedom,” since at times the things I want to do are self-destructive and wrong. Me left to my own devices is certainly not a blessing for me or anybody who comes in contact with me.

I can enjoy his talent as a drummer and singer without imagining that he will ever have the ability to save me.  I can celebrate the beautiful sounds of his music only because I am a slave to a much more beautiful God.  I can experience happiness and a taste of freedom from enjoying a cold beer on a humid July evening only because I know and love the Source of true delight who created those things for me to enjoy.

Don’t fall for the lie that says getting drunk and bucking the system while listening to New Orleans rock is the path to freedom.  It’s the path deeper into despair.  Jesus is far more satisfying, in the long run.

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