THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

So last week, my company started this new health initiative called Virgin HealthMiles. It’s apparently run at least somewhat in conjunction with our health insurer. Anyone else ever heard of this?

The basic idea is that you wear this special pedometer that tracks the number of steps that you do in a given day. You get points (they call them “miles”) for doing various things, chief of which is different activities, like getting at least 7000 steps in a day. Once you reach certain levels of miles, they give you money. The more you do, the more you make. The pedometers come with a USB cable and some software that automatically uploads your steps to Virgin’s website.

My company was giving out these pedometers to the first 400 people that signed up (normally they are $24.99 each) so naturally I scored one. You can get up to $150 a year by doing this. There are 5 levels and you get different amounts of cash for reaching each level. Level 1 is where you start out and is worth $0, then $25, $25, $50 and $50 I believe. It looks like the 5th level might be a bit hard to get, though we shall see.

They also have an “upgraded” membership which you can sign up for $6.99/mo. With that membership, you can earn up to $500/year. I think the levels are $0, $25, $125, $175, and $175. So if you can make it to level 3 (which is 12,000 “miles”), the upgraded membership pays for itself. After like a week, I’m at 3910 miles, though they give you lots of bonus miles when you first start out so I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up that pace. Still, Level 3 seems pretty reachable. I’m already almost to Level 2 (6,000 “miles”). You have up to 60 days to convert your membership so I’ll be seeing where I’m at around Day 58 but I expect that I’ll be upgrading at that point.

The other thing is that a few of us here at work that got the pedometers are having a little step-competition. We were trying to figure out what kind of ground rules that we could make to discourage cheating. It turns out that the website lets you set up challenges. These challenges allow you to set up teams as well as handicaps (to allow people at different step levels to compete on even ground). We have set one up but the system doesn’t seem to be working correctly.

I’m not sure if this is open to the general public or not - you’d certainly have to pay the $6.99/mo and the $25 for the pedometer, but even still, if you’re moderately active, it could be worth it. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

So this past Sunday night / Monday morning (a week or so), I’m laying in bed when I hear one of the kids screaming / crying. I’m kind of half asleep, and it wakes me up. In my half-asleep stupor I wonder where Carolyn is. Not that it’s her job to get the kids when they wake up in the middle of night, but typically she does that. So I roll over and I notice that a) it’s like 4 a.m. and b) Carolyn is not bed. Again, remember I am half asleep so I think “hmm well that’s weird”

The 2 possibilities I entertain are that perhaps she is in the bathroom, or maybe she is tending to one kid and a different kid is crying. So I think okay I will go investigate. So I start to make my way out of our bedroom and into the main living area. As I do this I start waking up and I realize that it’s not one of the kids - It’s CAROLYN who is crying / screaming. I hustle to the sound and she is laying down at the foot of the stairs in obvious pain.

The combination of dark, tired, pregnant (so not as agile as she once was) and a new house (so not as familiar with number of steps and such) caused her to miss the last step or two. I guess she thought she was on the last step and so took a normal sized step so she fell down the last step or two. Ended up breaking her foot and spraining her ankle. You can read her take here.

I was joking around and told her the other day that this was not a very convenient time for her to decide to break her foot! But then she told me that it would have been way worse say 6 months from now. Touche, touche!! My mom has come down from Cleveland to stay with us for awhile and we’ve had lots of friends come over to help unpack some and bring us over some meals and such. We are very grateful to all our helpers.

In further annoying news, everyone else besides me was driving home from the library on Saturday during a crazy thunderstorm when all of a sudden the van stopped really working. Power steering went out, the engine started overheating and in general craziness ensued. They managed to limp home but it turns out that the van’s drive belt slipped off its track. It looks like the belt itself is still in good condition but we were not able to get it back into place. And of course when I say we I mean I stood around and watched while one of my more car-savvy friends tried to do it. In an interesting coincidence, I had just called Midas the day before to bring in the van to have them put on our new tires that I bought off the Internet. I had already been planning to take the van there so this just made it that much more fun!!

Complicating the matter was the fact that the side door had accidentally been left open all night, meaning that the battery was dead when we went to try and start it on Sunday morning. We managed to push the van out of the driveway with my mom’s car, and then I pushed it over to the side of the street. And of course by “I”, I mean I flailed around barely moving it until thankfully some random guy came by out for a walk and he helped me. It was much easier with 2 people, surprisingly enough :-). One funny thing was that we kept trying to push it over to where I had parked the little car (preparing for a jumpstart), and it was getting harder as the road was starting to go uphill, till I realized that maybe it might be easier to put the van in park and actually move the car that could actually work!?!?!? :-).

We jumped it and the van started up. I let it rev for awhile and put the window down so I could hear things. But as soon as I removed the jumper cables, the van died. I tried that twice with the same result and then decided to give up for awhile. I got ready for church and went there, and in the meantime, eagle-eye Carolyn noticed that there was something hanging below the van. That turned out to be the aforementioned belt. Perhaps by losing the ability to walk her other senses have been honed? I charged the battery and in the evening, our friend came over and we tried for awhile to get the belt back on. In the end, we just took it up to Midas. I guess you can drive without a belt but you don’t have power steering and you only have a limited amount of juice before the battery dies. So my friend offered to drive and I tried to follow him. But he was driving like a maniac because he wasn’t sure how much time he’d have. He passed a few cars on the double yellow and he told me he ran every red light :-). Good times….

We’ll see how much the damage is….

Time to follow up on my earlier note about complaining about Home Depot. Here is the note I received back today

Dear Dan,

Thank you for contacting The Home Depot Customer Care.

We appreciate receiving feedback from you about your experience at the
Pleasant Ridge Home Depot store. We apologize for not meeting your
expectations.

Please know that the feedback you have provided is taken seriously and
will be used in the overall evaluation of the services we provide to our
customers.

We would like to offer you a $25 Home Depot gift card in the hope that
your next shopping experience will be a more pleasurable one. In
addition, it is our way to ‘thank you’ for taking the time to provide us
with this feedback. By doing this, you are giving us an opportunity to
improve.

Thank you, again, for sharing your comments and bringing this to our
attention.

So there you go. I would like to take a bit of time to make the distinction between making up complaints just to get free stuff and complaining because you were unhappy with something.

I think companies want to get feedback about how they’re doing, and ways in which they are not meeting their customer’s needs. I also have been known to give positive feedback when an employee really goes out of their way above and beyond. I don’t do that very often because I don’t think it happens really often, but I remember emailing about a particular Meijer pharmacist that I felt really went out of his way to help me.

Anyway, I highly recommend complaining when you receive poor service. a) you are helping these companies improve their performance for all of us and b) free stuff!!!

And by it, I mean the move, and by finished, I mean mostly finished. Well, maybe somewhat finished. Well, there is a lot to do still.

But at least the new house is finished and ready to move in to. Well, how about mostly finished. Somewhat? Sort of?

Actually the house is for real for real mostly done. There is still some work to be done by the contractors but the essentials are all in. There are some lights, fixtures and other electrical work that needs to happen, and some minor plumbing, heating and other work to be done, but for instance I was able to take a shower today and the toilets work, and “tah” (what one of the kids used to call the TV) was able to be plugged in. There is no shower curtain but I just aimed towards the back wall of the tub. Well, let me correct myself - we have found the shower curtain, we just can’t find the shower curtain ROD. There are boxes and crap all over the house, but before I left for work today I was able to cordon off a safe zone for the TV and we will just keep unloading what we can. I expect by the weekend we should have things mostly in order.

So let’s recap the day yesterday, shall we? Around lunchtime I called up Time Warner to have them switch our high speed Internet over. Lady told me that the earliest they could have someone out was Sunday. So I said fine. Then I went online to Cincinnati Bell to also get the phone switched over. Expecting the same kind of leviathan performance, when they asked what day to change the service I put in the current day (since we were moving). Got an email about 20 minutes later saying our request had been “processed”. I called home and nothing. They had already put the service over to the new house. Where, of course, there was no actual telephone. Good times….

I went home a bit early and packed a few more things and then headed off to get the truck. That went fine and I got back home about 4:30. I started loading up the boxes and such. Got a call about 5:25 from a church friend who was at the new house (since that’s the address listed in the directory). I gave him directions and he was the first to arrive. Soon after Carolyn arrived with the pizza and then the folks started coming and we started loading.

I assumed my standard job of “Tetris-master” i.e. putting all the boxes and such in the van to optimize space. I think we lost a lot of space with some of our shelving units. I have about 10 5-shelf shelving units that were in the basement that I had taken up and put in the truck. My thinking was that we could just put the various bins and boxes on those shelves and we wouldn’t lose space. But we left a lot of space there I think because the boxes and bins that we put on those shelves were not the right sizes to fill every nook and cranny. That was another problem - we have a bunch of plastic storage bins that I got from a deal at Staples awhile back (about 30 of them for free). And I had gotten a lot of big Dell computer boxes from work. But we didn’t have very many smaller boxes. Normally when loading up a truck you can get a lot of those smaller boxes back in “Mom’s Attic” and further back in the truck to really save on space (kind of the pebbles and sand in that “big rocks first” parable). But we had lots of really BIG boxes and bins and that hurt us I think.

As we were getting towards the end someone brought up the dreaded “M” word. As in “multiple trips”. Moving very close by (as opposed to cross country) has advantages but also drawbacks. The advantage is that you can make multiple trips and even multiple car / van trips afterwards to pick up loose ends. The drawback is that you can afford to be more sloppy with your packing and loading and so typically one takes advantage of that (and we were no exception). In the end I thought that we could get it all to fit but we had a lot of people just sitting around as we tried to pack things so we decided to just go over with what we had and came back.

We unloaded the truck pretty quickly. I tried to direct where various boxes and stuff went but I have been since informed that I did not do that great a job. Plus we did have a few instances of “Ooh the basement? How about ummmm right here? :-)”

Another reason I didn’t want to make 2 trips is I was afraid of the bailage. We had about 20 people there originally and all but 6 left. The scouts had to go get swim-certified for their upcoming Scout Camp and a couple other people had appointments and such.

We loaded up a few of the bigger things. We had to take the doors off the fridge and then we got the deep freezer, washer and dryer as well. Then it was just tons of “junk”. I can not BELIEVE how much stuff we have!!!!! The problems on this load were 1) We knew we had tons of room (24′ truck) so we were a bit haphazard with getting stuff in there and 2) Most of the stuff that was left was awkwardly sized, like a kids’ rocking horse, or a basketball goal, or a lawnmower, etc.

Hauling some of that big stuff was really hard. When we got over we realized that the fridge, even with the doors off, was not going to fit in the kitchen via the front door. So we went around to the back door. Of course, first we had to wheel it on the dolly through the dirt that is my driveway / back yard. Oh, and then we had to unscrew the door stop that my contractor had put in the back door to prevent it from opening. Why would he do that, you might ask? Well, because the deck is not yet built and so the back door opens 3 feet off the ground :-). The 3′ made it fun to try and lift all that stuff into the house, but we got everything in. It’s all around the house in various boxes and bins, and even some of the boxes are not in the right place, but it is all (most / some) in.

I want to give a big thank you to all the people that came to help us move. Ralph, Scott, Brent, Aaron and Jake Blackwelder, Abby Doyle, Matt Foister, Kent Huxel, Scott Cottrell, Rob and April Hopkin, John, Mike and Bob Tensmeyer, Chuck Salzman and 2 boys I didn’t know but I assume were either his sons or other kids from the scout troop, Brandon Brooks, Aaron Olmsted, John Whatley, Tim Gross and hopefully I did not forget anybody? Thanks especially to Rob, April, John and Aaron who were in until the bitter end.

So…. maybe I’m just not a very good Modern Major General, but I am having a hard time coming up with more than 1 cheerful fact about the square of the hypotenuse.

1. The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other 2 sides of the triangle.

Yes indeedy-do. There is no doubting that is a very solid fact about the square of the hypotenuse. But Major General Stanley clearly states that he knows MANY cheerful factS about the square of the hypotenuse.

So help me out dear readers. Give me some more facts. And no fair cheating and giving facts about just the hypotenuse. I need facts about the SQUARE of the hypotenuse

Here’s a nice email I just sent off to Home Depot.

I am writing because I was extremely dissatisfied with the tool rental at my local home depot (Highland Ave in Pleasant Ridge / Cincinnati Ohio). I rented a 2 man power auger to dig some post holes on Wednesday night. I planned on using it for 4 hours and returning it, but the bit got stuck in the ground.

I called up the store and spoke to Zach R. I asked him for assistance in how I might be able to get the bit out. He explained that the machine did not have any type of reverse motor and didn’t really have any ideas for me to try, but he told me not to worry - he would put a note on my account to only charge me for the 4 hours. This was great and really set my mind at ease since we had already been trying to get it out of the ground for an hour or so.

I have a full time job so I was not able to get back over there till the evening of Thursday (the next day). We tried various ways to get it unstuck, including snapping a metal pipe wrench in half trying to reverse the bit, but with no success.

Finally on Friday I took a day of vacation from my job so that I could get this thing out. Zach from the store had told me that he would only be charging me for the 4 hours, but I wanted to be sensitive to your time and return it so it could be rented again if necessary. Finally, by digging a hole all the way around it to the depth of the bit we were able to extricate it. We cleaned it off and returned it to the store by Friday afternoon at 1:45 pm.

But when I got there, the man (Lawrence R) insisted that he could not charge me for only 4 hours. He did eventually give me a credit for 1 day of use, so instead of charging me for $140, I was charged for $70. I found it strange that he would discount $70 but not the additional $21 (to get it to the $49 rate for 4 hours that Zach had promised me over the phone). His explanation was that Zach must have meant that he would only charge me for 4 hours if I returned it by Thursday (rather than Friday). But Zach did not say that on the phone and I don’t know how I possibly could have been expected to know that?

So, after being (in my mind) overcharged for $24.61 (the $21 extra fee, $2.10 extra damage protection and $1.51 extra sales tax), rather than continuing my shopping at the Home Depot store, I went 2 minutes down the street to Lowe’s and bought my sump pump, kitchen faucet, 3 light fixtures and 5 4×4x6 posts (total spent at Lowe’s was $196.26).

Since I’m in the middle of complaining about retail stores, let me paste one in I sent to GNC the other day

I would like to comment about an experience I had today at the GNC store
inside the Kenwood Towne Centre in Cincinnati, OH.

I was on a tight schedule so I left the rest of my family in the parking
lot so I could run into the mall when it opened at 10 to make a
purchase.

I got to GNC at 10 but the store was closed. I waited around for a bit
until the employee finally showed up at 5 after.

Without any type of apology, she greeted me with “It’s going to be a
bit” as she disappeared into the store to start the pre-opening
procedures.

About 5 minutes later she opened and I was able to finally make my
purchases at 10:10.

I was definitely disappointed since I was on a tight schedule. Though I
don’t shop at GNC very often so perhaps this is standard procedure at
GNC or mall stores. I understand that sometimes people are running late
but what got me the most was even the lack of an apology. Even a “Hey -
sorry I was running late” would have gone a long way….

That one snagged me a $15 gift certificate to GNC. Too bad I just stocked up on melatonin and I don’t really need much in the way of protein powder or whatever else they sell….

So as I thought I had previously mentioned but could not find, Lowe’s has been running 2 concurrent promotions. In each one, for every $1000 you spend, you would get a $100 Lowe’s Gift Card. One was called Lowe’s Kitchen and Bath (run here in Cincinnati) and the other was Lowe’s Spring Event (run mostly in places like VA, NC, TN, etc).

With all the work we’ve been doing at the new house I’ve been attempting to double dip and use both of these promotions. I entered my receipts in at both websites but it quickly became apparent that they were actually smart enough to check and disallow that. The Kitchen and Bath one was a few weeks ahead of the other one so I focused there. I got up to $7000 in purchases which meant $700 in GCs, but all my receipts on the Spring Event promo were still showing up as “Pending”. I called a few times but was not able to get anywhere.

I didn’t want to fight too hard until my $700 in GCs arrived in the mail, in case I might somehow lose those. They arrived last week so I gave it one last try. I spoke to someone and she had me fax in my receipts. Just got the call though that they see that they’ve already been entered in to the Kitchen and Bath promo and are therefore no good.

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. I guess I’ll have to settle for 30% off (20% coupon plus $100 for every $1000) instead of 40%!

So I recently set up an account on Facebook. Well actually I had set up an account awhile ago but never really got around to doing anything with it. For whatever reason a few days ago I started adding friends and setting up a “real” page.

It’s interesting - I consider myself fairly technical. From programming in BASIC on my TI-994A (and saving not to a disk but to an actual audio-cassette!?!?), to “surfing” text-based BBSes on my 300-baud modem to seeing the evolution of Mosaic / Netscape and the beginnings of the WWW when I was in college, I’ve enjoyed technical stuff like this. I mean I am a computer nerd to the extreme after all!

But it seems like I’ve never been an early adopter of some of the more “social” Internet applications. I remember one of my friends sending me a link back in 97 or 98 to use this “new” thing called AOL instant messenger. I believe she was on AOL and it was recently after AOL had opened IM up to non-AOL users. I remember thinking “This is dumb”. I of course signed up later and now IM on a regular basis.

Similarly blogging - blogs were around long before I started in April 2005. I actually think I was a bit earlier on this one - I was certainly the first one in my (at least somewhat close) family to have one - a trend that has certainly expanded.

So now we are on to Facebook. Again as with IM, part of me thinks “this is dumb”. But another part of me thinks this might be a good way to keep in touch with some people. I was reading a comment on the Facebook page of someone I went to high school with saying something along the lines of “I wish they had had this when we were in HS - I lost touch with so many people” and that rings very true to me. There are lots of people that I was good friends with in High School that I no longer talk to. Of course there are also plenty of people that I’m glad to have lost contact with :-). So with that in mind, let me introduce Dan’s 5 categories of Facebook Friends!

1. The real friends. These are people that I am fairly close to already and / or talk to / see in person on a somewhat regular basis. People like say my wife or my mom etc.

2. Acquaintances / friends / family that I don’t see that often but that I am interested in following along with. This might be cousins or church-friends or work-friends etc.

3. Acquaintances / friends / family that I’m not really that interested in following along with but I added as friends because hey why not. If you’re not sure if you’re in group 2 or 3, I’ll let you decide

4. People that I’ve lost touch with and I want to see what they’re up to. For me, this is mostly friends and such from High School or my mission. It will be interesting to see how many people I catch up with here. It’s challenging to go from the “Hey what have you been doing for the past 10 years” to a real fake Internet relationship.

5. Then there’s the “friends” that I add just because I’m a “friend-whore“. They’re the people that you vaguely know. Like anyone that may have ruined the Forest Elementary School touch football game in 5th grade (yes he’s on there) or people that I barely knew in high school. Actually I don’t have too many of these (yet). I just haven’t brought myself to that point, much less trying to add people that I don’t even know (which I guess some people do).

Anyways we shall see how it goes… I do think that social networking sites like this (or MySpace or Twitter etc) are not going anywhere. As this technology matures and even more kids that have grown up on this start becoming adults, it’s just going to continue. My friend Jeff wrote a post about this the other day. He was mentioning what advice he would give new computer programmers and he said “The ability to communicate with others (read: business leaders) will be the single most important thing you can work on as a developer. Your ability to think and communicate effectively to your management will go MUCH farther than your ability to apply polymorphism principles to your application. Trust me.” I think this is very true.

So that’s about all I have to say on this. We got a renter for our place and will be moving to the new house within a week or two!!