Customer Service – #fitbit

Posted on by

I spent nearly 15 years working in customer service – from the grocery store up until IT support.  I think it’s something that everyone should do, just to get a better appreciation as to how to deal with people.  It is generally one of the most thankless types of jobs that exist, one that generally follows with the pure misery of customer stupidity, but from time to time you get that one person who just makes your month.  As a customer, that experience makes you more empathetic to the other side of the fence.  And good customer service means repeat business.

IT services are commodity based, like electricity, you only notice it when it’s gone.  People don’t phone IT services to thank them for how well things are going.  The job is to take a frustrated person and turn them into a happy person.  In many companies, the immediate bottom line matters more than the long term prospects.  That’s one of the reasons telecom companies are notorious for poor customer service – the staff just isn’t empowered to help, nor are they terribly motivated.

I like to shop around, to get a good deal.  For quite a few things, that works out.  For other things, I prefer to pay a bit more, in order to get better service.  My gaming laptop is a custom build out of Vancouver.  I was able to talk to them over the phone and the service was top-notch.  I’ve bought various brands, if only to have the semi-lifetime support behind them.  I have avoided US automobiles after having a rather disastrous experience as a teenager, and now tend to stick to brands with quality cars that don’t require weeks in the shop on a regular basis.

Fitbit is one of those brands, where the support has been superb.  Sure, the technology behind the Aria needs some tweaking, but I can’t deny that their support agents tried everything to get mine working.

Recently my Charge HR started to come unglued.

20170206_192623

I’ve put in a lot of mileage on this thing, hockey games included.  The glue itself doesn’t seem to hold up to the combination of heat/humidity that comes from sweating, at least not once the initial seal is broken.  I read online for some options and sure enough, there’s a replacement program.

So I ended up sending an email late last night, around 11pm, with the attached picture.  7am this morning, I get a response and they needed a few clarifications.  After that, I get another email with a choice – either replace the device for free, or get 30% off another device.  That’s it, no bills, no esoteric questions, no shipping shenanigans, just “I see it’s broken, let’s fix that”.  The question then becomes, do I trust the company enough to simply replace what I have, or enough to keep investing in their products?

And due to the previous support, and this one that took all of 10 minutes once I got the first email, I opted to get an upgraded product – the Charge 2.  It has everything the first one had, with some nice upgrades.

Superior customer service means that I’m writing this post and telling my friends about it.

Cleanup Pays the Bills

Posted on by

Last week when I re-started WoW, a token was about 36,000 gold.  When Legion launched, I was making something around 20K per week with no concerted effort.  Suffice to say, I’m going to be ok for a long time.

That said, whenever I get back into it, I realize that I hoard a tremendous amount of crud in my bags.  The majority of which seems to have no use.  A scroll to teleport to Suramar?  Out.  Berries?  Out.  Monk brews to walk on water? Out.  Even my alts have junk I had mailed around.  Considering I like things to be neat and tidy, this needed addressing.

The best way to clean up bags is to visit the auction house (or use the mobile app).  I plopped a reasonable chunk last night (herbs, ore, pets, miscellaneous items) where it seemed to make sense.  I wasn’t going to flood the market with my 200 Felwort, but 50 sufficed.

This morning I woke up to over 60k in sales, just shy of 2 months of game time.  My guess is that I have another 20K worth of stock to flush.  Not too shabby, considering I was going to vendor most of it.

I will say that prices have dropped substantially since the last time I played.  Felwort was 600g, now it’s 150g.  Most herbs are 10g, compared to 80-100g.  Still, considering that I have a Sky Golem, which doesn’t dismount when collecting herbs, it’s marginally more effort to collect herbs than to avoid them.

Sidebar, I picked up ConsLegion to assist with leveling the Paladin.  This is a TomTom-like UI modifier that points you along the various quests, speeding up your leveling.  Given that I already have 3 characters at 110, I know the story.  Not so much speed here, but efficiency.  Side-sidebar, I still have no real plans to do Highmountain.  At least not until flying is made available.

Return to Azeroth

Posted on by

I was making some changes on my PC, clean up and whatnot, when the Blizzard updater started working again.  It’d bee a while since it was working properly, one of two reasons I had dropped WoW in late fall.  Sure enough, things were working again and I decided to give it a go.

I have an on/off relationship with WoW.  Aside from vanilla, I usually show up for the expansion launch and get to the X.1 patch, then move on.  I am no longer a raider, so there’s very little carrot for me on that front.  I consume the single player content, build a specific goal, reach it and move on.  Last time was to build a nice stock of lvl 25 pets, which I did a good job with.

Back at it.

I have a rather large stable of characters, most above level 95 – with 3 exceptions.  A warrior, priest and paladin.  I tried them all in vanilla, none I ever considered fun.  Mostly due to the very poor solo options at the time.  I still don’t like warriors or priests, but I wanted to give the Paladin another shot.  I really like multi-classes, what with a Monk and Druid leading my squad.  I goofed around a bit, then decided to bite the bullet and use my level 100 boost on her.  Yes, I still had it.  The boost is useless if all the characters you play are already at level 100…

I already know how to tank, DPS and heal, so the basic elements are pretty straightforward.  I opted to play Ciceroo as a tank, after the experience with the DH, Monk and Druid.  DPS are rather weak up until the later levels.  I did play some ret mind you, just not that much.  Holy was limited to the artifact quest.  Quick review.

Playing as prot. The artifact quest doesn’t make much sense to me, and aside from the last zone, the mechanics are humbug.  That last part is more puzzle than combat, which is a tad weird for a tanking spec.  The actual shield/blade looks cool. The rotation is epileptic and boring though.  Not as boring as bear, but ugh… I miss my monk.  Plus, I’m not a fan of proc-based rotations, which this one can be on longer fights.  The flipside is that this is the first plate-wearing tank I’ve played, and self-healing to boot.  I took on 4 groups at once and survived, which was very impressive.

Playing as ret.  The artifact quest was pretty solid and closed off some lose ends.  I enjoyed it more than most other classes, truth be told.  After doing all 3, this one seems to be the “default” quest, and they built the other two following it.  The look of the sword is one I’m not too partial, what with a giant marble in the middle.  The rotation is simple enough to get quickly.  I’m sure there’s something I’m missing to add some complexity to it, as I can only see cooldowns as the next level.  Poor stats mean I’m weak as a puppy though.

Playing as holy.  What is with this artifact quest?  The first half makes no real sense and doesn’t require healing at all, just damage.  The second half is good enough, where you keep a team of 3 alive through a cave dive.  The final timed-standoff is a fun healing bonanza, but I think mine bugged on the stairs and I lost the entire squad with a minute or so to go.  So I ended up kiting and healing myself across the room.  Done.  My stats aren’t strong enough to determine healing power as compared to monk/druid, but I did like the rotation.

The home base for paladins is pretty darn cool.  Very large, very thematic.  The run to upgrade the weapon is a bit long, but otherwise I think it does a good job.  I’m looking forward to more quests related to the hall.

Gameplay wise, the paladin isn’t scratching any itch.  I much prefer my monk’s toolset to the paladin, much more engaging.  From a lore perspective though, pretty much the entire Alliance storyline is built around it, with other classes pitching in.  It provides a different perspective on the various story bits, and I find that interesting.  I’ll keep pushing on, with rested XP, until 110.  Who knows, maybe it will grow on me.

Order in Chaos

Posted on by

I’m a borderline OCD candidate.  I have a few friends that I consider farther along that spectrum than I am, nevertheless I seem to be more than average.  It’s a running joke at work that my desk is so clear of papers that people feel intimidated by it.  (simple fact is that I prefer electronic copies than paper).  Yet it’s a mindset I have applied in numerous places in my life, mostly to manage anxiety.

My father in law is on the opposite end.  I remember the first time I did some repair work with him and went to his garage.  Stuff was everywhere.  It took me longer to find a saw than it did to use it.  My tools are not perfectly stored, but they are stored in such a fashion as you can clearly find them with a glance.  My better half originally thought I was crazy for spending time putting things back in the same place, but after a while of trying my method, the craziness of never finding something turned her around.

I’ve always had a passion for experimentation, the scientific kind mind you.  I learned quite early that you have to limit the variables to find much success, and that’s been my motto ever since.  Build a stable and secure foundation, have fun tweaking above that line to find better and better ways forward.

Clearly this applies to my gaming.  I try to automate as much of the rote stuff as possible, so that I can have more fun doing the different things.  I use map addons to mark harvest nodes, so I can try different flight paths.  I build and run simulators to focus on optimal skill choices and stat weights, then tweak as I go.  I’ll spend 20 minutes building a harvester so that it can mine for me for days and I can spend time building something else.  I’ll memorize board game rules just to find out if various tweaks can be applied.

Some folk ask how that’s considered fun, and I can understand that.  I lose a lot of mystery of “regular” discovery because I’m digging down at the underlying systems.  What I gain instead is pleasure in finding the things people didn’t think about.  In EQ I found a number of “exploits” where I could solo farm with limited risk.  I found features in the UO code that let me make items with near permanent usage and sold it for great profit.  I was in nearly every MMO beta up until RIFT launched, and logged hundreds of bugs in each.

I was watching some Awesome Games Done Quick the other day and wanted to show my wife.  She saw insanity, I saw practice and dedication.  They were finding all sorts of bugs in the code that allowed them to do amazing things.  Mario Maker seems to celebrate that mentality.

As I grow older, I’m finding that this need to find order in chaos is still strong.  As games become more complex, it’s becoming even more fun to find some of the weird stuff in games.  And I get an even bigger kick of sharing these finds with my kids and other gaming friends.

Stress is Good

Posted on by

Explicitly triggered by Syp’s post, but something my wife and I have been chatting about recently.

Plain and simple, people grow through challenge.  If you’re not challenged, you’re not growing.  And we all know people who have opted to stop growing.  One of the side-effects of challenge is stress, or out ability to manage the challenge.  Some people crumple, some people thrive.  Everyone is different and everyone has their own level of comfort.

I was on a course recently related to career progression.  I’m at the point in my career where the next step is not really an increment but a leap in responsibility.  The burnout rate at that level is substantially higher, and the training is supposed to help folks come to terms with that reality.  We were 25 in the course and after the first day, about 5 had decided it wasn’t for them.

On the 2nd last day was a group exercise.  It was a mining simulation where you mined for a particular resource in order to gain credits.  These credits could be exchanged at the local market for a variety of items, including the ability to automatically mine more resources.  There was a distinct lack of details and direction, and there was a rather strict time factor.  Every 15 minutes the prices at the store changed, the clerks either became helpful or impeding, and stock levels would go up or down.  It was very hectic.

As a player, we were tasked with collecting credits to leave the mine within the allotted time.  No one knew how many credits were necessary, you just guessed and tried a special door.  If you go through, there was no way to tell the others.  You needed to work individually for that goal, but in order to get resources/credits you needed to work with other people.  At various parts, there were rules and instructions.

I would think that most people reading this blog would have excelled at this particular game.  The wide majority of online games use this model.  So for me, I just went with the flow.  I mined the optimal path (after a few minutes of reading additional instructions), bought excavators very early and soon had a massive amount of credits.  I wasn’t sure how many were needed to win.  I found a rather obscure rule entry that stated I could buy and item (for half my credits) that allowed me to see how many credits were needed and then tell the rest of the group.  Time was short, but I did it anyway.  I found out I had enough credits, ran back to the group and told them if they had X amount to follow.  Those that had more, they could share with the others.

Of the 25 that played, 1 guy succeeded without group play and was sitting alone in the other room.  I brought over a dozen people with me.  When we finished the simulation and broke down what happened, those that didn’t get out had one of two responses.

  • That was too crazy, I had no idea what was going on, panicked and just gave up
  • I didn’t find it fun, so I gave my credits to other people and played dead

Which upon reflection is how most people deal with stress.  They either succeed alone, succeed with others, crash and burn, or simply give up.

While there were people on the fence before that simulation, once it was complete it was rather clear who was cut out for the next step in their career.  From 25, there were 3 of us left.  And that’s a good thing because everyone learned more about themselves.  Folk had started with assumptions, and through trial, they grew.  They all learned how they dealt with stress, and at what level they were comfortable.

I enjoyed it.  Not only for the actual activity, but for the lessons I learned about myself.  I found that I have great focus when under stress, and that I will make efforts to bring people along through the journey, if they want to.  I much prefer a team victory than a solo one, but that I won’t hesitate to leave someone behind who has no interest in success.  (side bar, my wife fills in that gap, with a very large heart for other people in times of stress).  There are things I can tweak here and there, some additional techniques that I can hone up on, but generally I am quite happy with the results.

Now for another escape-the-room event…

 

 

Return to The Secret World

Posted on by

Wistfully, I re-installed TSW this weekend and gave it a good spin.

I jumped in on my character who had made it to Transylvania, which if I recall, is pretty much the final zone before end game.  I have ~30% of the skill wheel unlocked, which means I have all the skills I want for solo play.

Further, I’m at skill 10, meaning that I’m in the best solo gear I can find.  Any power progression is unlikely to come from solo play.  So, given that I like goals, let’s see what’s here.

Exploration – I can finish up the next zone (forest) and move on to the other chapters and see the story play itself out.  TSW does have the best story-telling out there, and I certainly find it interesting.  This zone in particular is less weird, and more Vampires everywhere, so I might just jump through as fast as possible.  There are plenty of other issues to give stock.

Killer – I don’t think there’s any PvP here, or rather I’ve not found any.  Murder machine this game is not.

Achiever – Specific achievements don’t really get to me.  Power increments are a goal, but only so much as a step to the next one.  I’d like to collect more costumes, maybe round out some other skill trees.  None of that would have much impact on gameplay.  I wouldn’t really call that horizontal progression either.  I would like to get through combat faster though, it gets repetitive quickly.

Social – TSW focuses a lot on the RP community.  That is not my bag.  Social would be a means to do group content, which doesn’t interest me either.

 

I keep coming back to TSW.  A few weeks here and there throughout the years.  The story and quests (with a few notable exceptions) are very well done and immersive.   Character progression is no where close to linear, and setting the various decks out means you reach a point where you can do what you want.  There are a few weak choices but not too many bad ones.  If you pay attention though, then you find the really optimal playstyles.  You could concentrate on affliction, or penetration, find some leech options… everything links with everything else in some form.

The downside is that combat is extremely boring.  It all revolves around building 1-5 charges and using a finisher.  With so many skills, it’s hard to find proper and distinct animations as well.

So I’ll keep giving it a go, in small doses, until the combat wears me out.  Maybe I’ll finally leave the zone this time!

Marvel & Netflix

Posted on by

I’ve watched both seasons of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and now Luke Cage.  All of them are rather highly rated, and I can see why that is.  That said, all 3 series are filled with dumbness.  Let me explain.

All 3 are superheroes with marginal powers.  By that, I mean that they are strong and have some toughness to them (DD is a bit more complicated).  That makes them more human than say, Spiderman or Thor.  Them being human means that we can relate to them more, and they are supposed to have flaws to support that theory.

DD has some form of OCD.  JJ is an alchoholic.  LC suffers from anxiety.  The issue here is that none of them ever seem to address those issues. They start flawed, go through the story, and remain flawed.

Let’s start with DD.  He begins innocently enough, then it just escalates to a personal vendetta to save the city.  And it never stops, no matter the sacrifice.  There is no epiphany here.  He loses the girl (s), his best friend, and the bad guys win by the end of the last season.  The reason that the Punisher stands out so much is because he actually has a character arc.  Hell, everyone has a character arc but the hero.

JJ is 5 episodes too long of moping.  The best progression is on her sidekick.  Killgrave is neat when you learn the backstory but after the 60th person that he mindcontrols to kill themselves, I get it.  He’s a douche.  I still don’t get the ending.

LC is JJ time two.  The entire series is about him being committed, then backing out of helping his community.  I dunno, but if I was 100% immune to bad guys, I would just walk in, take everything they had, burn down the house, and never look back.  The one where he takes the cash and then let’s the bad guys come back worse is just dumb.  The cops are dumb.  Cottonmouth and Shades are well-written.  Claire (Rosario Dawson) is well written.  Zip is not.  He tried to shoot Luke Cage in a half dozen episodes.  Like, at what point do you realize that he’s immune?

In all three series the hero makes decisions that go against all logical judgment.  They make a choice, then go back on that choice for “reasons” that make no sense.  To be honest, this reminds me a lot of the final two Matrix films.  At the end of the first, Neo understands his power and his responsibility.  He has a mission.  Then the 2nd one starts and he doubts everything.  What?  I get that bad things happen, I do.  Even with the best laid plans, things can and will go wrong.  But when the errors happen because of the heroes, repeatedly, that’s where it gets annoying.  Let the bad guy outsmart you.  Let the ally betray you.  Let the assumptions be proven false.

And I think the main issue with this is padding – stretching of material.  The movies have 2.5 hours to tell the story and a single bad guy plot.  The Netflix series have 13 hours to fill, but only a single story and only a single bad guy plot.  I can understand that the movies have really crappy bad guys.  Netflix addresses that by dedicating a whole hour to their backstories and motivations.  Fisk is extremely well done.  Cottonmouth is a solid one too.  Diamondback makes little sense.  Killgrave has some sense of pity.  Electra is solid.

Ok.  That leaves 12 hours to go. In each series you could cut it in half and it would be better for it.

The really sad thing about it all, is that it’s still miles better than anything DC/Snyder has released.

Cold Season

Posted on by

I have a head cold.  It’s one of those annoying ones where my nose runs like a tap and I’m feeling like I’ve had 2 hours of sleep, but it’s not enough to keep me in bed.  I’d prefer the flu, where you sleep it off and 24 hours later you’re back at it.  This feels like it’s going to stick around a while… I guess I need some more gin.

Fitness

I picked up the 45lbs weight plates the other day.  I will say that those two plates are more intimidating than an assortment of smaller ones to make up the same weight.  There’s something comical about a string of plates, compared to the solemness of just massive honkers of steel.  I remember thinking on the first set “am I really doing this?”, which got better later on.

As I mentioned to Isey, playing hockey and working out is not going to plan.  I am not a stay at home player, and I like to rush and move.  After having lifted nearly 3 tons of weight, the body needs some rest and hockey is not that.  I personally like progress and I’m at the point where I can no longer make progress in one without sacrificing in the other.  I need to make some choices.  I have about 3 more months of hockey mind you, so perhaps I can just delay for a bit.

I’ve also gone back to counting calories again.  Not for the minute aspect but for the trends and meal planning.  It also provides some evidence for the way the scale works and the way the training plays out.  I’ve tried a few apps for this but right now, MyFitnessPal taking the prize.  The app is straightforward and links to other things.  All good stuff.

All that to say that I should be hitting my fitness goals by the May timeframe.  Just in time for summer cottage/beer season.

Games

Simply put, I seem to be burned out on games in general right now.  I lack the free time to do much on the organized front, and I’ve played all the single player games I want to right now.  The emulator is fun.  Spending some time flirting with a few games here and there.  StarTropics is done, but Kirby is up.  Illusion of Gaia as well.  I’d play the FF series but I’ve gone through them all numerous times.

Let’s go over the big names this past year.

  • Overwatch – Not a PvP fan.
  • XCOM2 – waiting for the LongMod, otherwise superb game
  • Dark Soul 3 – played a few hours, ehh
  • Doom – heard great things.  Waiting for a sale
  • Civ 6 – still trying to wrap my head around it.  Load times and short play sessions don’t help
  • The Witness – played, stomped my brain, loved it
  • Dishonored 2 – still full of PC bugs, waiting on this one…
  • Firewatch – on my wish list
  • Stardew Valley – not a fan of simulators…maybe later
  • Deus Ex 2 – Better than the first one.  The missions are way better than the hubs.
  • Witcher 3 – A great game hobbled by the worst combat controls I’ve played in a long time.
  • The Division – I should go back now that the big patch is in…but end game is nearly all PvP.
  • Grim Dawn – super ARPG, put in a lot of hours here.
  • WoW Legion – I don’t have time to raid and my time expired with 4 max characters.  LFG not including all dungeons still ticks me off.  Never saw an artifact.
  • Tyranny – played it, cleared it, may go back later.

Not much that I haven’t had a hand in, that I at least have an interest in. I’ll be honest, I’m not missing it terribly.

 

StarTropics

Posted on by

Old school post.

hqdefault

I died a lot here.

I remember being a kid and going to the local corner store and renting this game.

In point of fact, I remember renting it numerous times as 3 days wasn’t enough to clear it.  The boss in the picture above was the first time I learned to think outside the box in gaming.  There was this item, a rod, which made ghosts appear.  You could not get through this level without the rod.  As the game was rented, it didn’t have an instruction manual and actually using the rod was a mystery.  It took a day to figure it out, and I finally cleared the boss.

Now I’m giving it a shot on my Pi and the game is a pile easier than it was before.  Save states certainly help with that, as the controls are still rather unforgiving and there are spots where lack of input, or taking the wrong path is just plain death.  I can remember the frustration all those years ago of a screen filled with fireballs and having to jump on the exact right spot to move on.  Very annoying.

To top it off, StarTropics is renowned for one more thing – a code within the instruction booklet.  At one point, you get an in-game message that says something like “Remember to dip my letter in water”.  Well, the instruction book came with a small letter, and if you did dip it in water, then you had a code appear.  This code (747) was used to progress in the game.  Without it, you needed to bruteforce the way through.  I think this was the last time I saw this type of DRM used.

Anyhoot, back to the game.  You’re a young guy, armed with a yo-yo, exploring islands and dungeons, killing bats, snakes, minotaurs and finally aliens, all on your way to find your uncle.  The plot is actually pretty good, considering some of the stuff on the NES.  The controls are directional, with no diagonal movement, making some sections quite difficult.  There are various alternate weapons, like a bolo, or a baseball bat.  Enemies have patterns, you have life points, bosses are tough as nails.

It’s a hard game, but one that requires planning versus twitch movement.  With only a few places as exceptions, you can always see what’s coming ahead, and a quick pause can lay out the enemies to plan the attack. The largest issue is the lack of diagonal movement, which the sequel gets rid of (but introduces other quirks).

I have fond memories of the game and it’s certainly longer than I remember.  I thought perhaps I had rose colored glasses here, but StarTropics does a really solid job of holding true over time.  Well worth the trip down memory lane.

Writer’s Block

Posted on by

Plenty of ideas rummaging through my head but I’m finding it really difficult to put virtual pen to paper.  I am reading a lot of blogs mind you, and everyone seems to have something interesting going on.

Games

Kids are enjoying the Retropie.  There are nearly 2000 games on it right now, and browsing through the selection is a pain.  How do you pick one of 700 NES games?  So my kids found 1942, if only because it’s alphabetical. They also like Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario World (an oddly difficult game compared to memory) and PacMan.

I’ve played a bit of StarTropics, DKC, Illusion of Gaia, TMNT4…dabbing around here and there.

We also played  a fair amount of Lego Star Wars Force Awakens together.  The game feels like some quantifiable progress in the genre.  I won’t hit 100% because, why?  96% has unlocked everything of merit.

Aside from computer games, we’ve played a lot of Ticket to Ride:Europe (kid mod: remove destination tickets) and Fire Rescue (play family mode).  TtR:E can be played with 2 players, but like Monopoly, it’s more fun the longer you wait between turns.  Long-played strategies are easy with 2 folks, but I can see them being derailed (yeah, I did that) with more players.

Fire Rescue is an interesting beast.  I’ve never lost family mode, or really come that close.  Hard mode, the closest to a win is missing my 1 marker.  I don’t think it’s doable with 2 players, and even with 3 requires a tremendous amount of coordination.  Lots of fun.

Both games are recommended for family play, and I have a 4 and 6 year old.

Other

I built an ice rink in the backyard.  Weather hasn’t been terribly helpful.  Kids enjoy it and have seen dramatic improvements in just a few days of use.

I’m working on an interesting project now that should dramatically change the way that the Canadian government does mobile work.  Finally catching up to the rest of industry.  It’s a project that will impact about 400,000 people, so there’s some kick in the risk/reward facet here.

Health-wise, I didn’t really make any new year resolutions.  I’m finding it very hard to play hockey multiple times a week and continue to strength train.  I’m at the strongest yet, and my legs have grown a fair amount.  Heck, I need to buy new weight plates.  I also need to re-jig my nutrition – I can feel something is off, so time to strip away and go back to basics.  I should be down to high school weight by the spring.

All of that to say that I am realizing that I need goals to function.  I do not do well by just fluttering in the wind.  I have, both luckily and not, achieved a fair set of my goals much earlier than I had anticipated.  Some of which I didn’t expect for many years.  I need to sit down with my better half and do a rejiggering.  Adulting, here I come!