I posted the other day about my disappointment in NewEgg.com for what I felt was a lack of genuine interest in my problem with the way my order was packaged. I felt that I was doing the right thing by contacting them to explain how my package arrived in the hopes that it could improve their service but ultimately, it felt like it fell on deaf ears. NewEgg is a pretty big company and I honestly didn’t expect much to happen from my post. It was a venting session mainly.
So yesterday, out of the blue, I get a phone call Mike Paulus, NewEgg’s Customer Service Operational Support Manager, as well as Kerrigan Hodnett, a director at NewEgg. Woah! Quite unexpected!
We talked for about 20 minutes during which both were very apologetic for the service I had received and the lack of attention to my concerns. What struck me was that they took the time to look me up in their database to get my contact info, read through my chat transcript with the rep (ensuring they had a complete picture) and actually called me to ensure that my concerns were addressed and to let me know that they valued me as a customer. I didn’t ask them to do it. I didn’t request to speak to a manager. They just did it!
This is really what customer service is about and I can’t remember the last time a company, especially the size of NewEgg, took the time to reach out to me about a problem. I’m still very much astonished by this but I’m very thankful that Mike & Kerrigan took the time to contact me. It really does speak volumes about the type of business that NewEgg is & how they care for their customers.
I let a lot of things slide mainly because I’ve been around enough to know some things are beyond your control. But today, the folks at NewEgg.com disappointed me. I’ve ordered plenty of PC gear from them and they’re generally very good. So when I saw the following, I was surprised to say the least:
The fact that the box was all messed up, while not a good situation, didn’t really concern me because NewEgg always does a great job of packing stuff to prevent damage. They also have very good customer service so if something got lost, I’m sure they would’ve replaced it.
What did bother me was the following:
That is just a terrible packing job and in my opinion is a sign of pure laziness. How the heck would anyone feel it’s okay to stick in a bunch of packing, lay the ordered product on the top of it and just close the box?! That’s a recipe for disaster. Having worked at UPS when I was younger, I know how packages are handled and that is NOT the best way to ensure something goes undamaged. Very disappointing.
When I spoke to a customer service rep about all of this, I have to say that I just got the feeling that it wasn’t a concern to them. She did offer me a $5 credit but really wasn’t interested in getting the pics that I took until I pressed her on it.
I just hope this isn’t a sign of things to come since it’s one of my favorite sites to purchase equipment from.
Update: I received a call from NewEgg the next day and they’ve totally redeemed themselves.
We submitted our daughter Brianna’s picture to the Elvis Duran Battle of the Babies. It’s a fun contest put on by our local radion station Y100 & since she turned 1 year old yesterday, we thought this would be a great memory for her scrapbook if she won (which according to my wife, she’s a shoe-in). I’m enlisting the help of all of my family, friends, readers, Twitter followers, & perfect strangers to help BriBri win!
So starting at 8am EST, I need everyone to go and vote for little BriBri!
Now, I know that every parent thinks there child is the most beautiful baby in the world and I’m no exception. So I’ll post some pics so you can see why my little girl is just absolutely adorable:
The picture I submitted to Y100:
Some other great pictures:
So be sure to click the button below and VOTE FOR BRIANNA!! 
Today I saw an interesting question posted on the jQuery support group asking if jQuery is virus & trojan free. I found it a bit of a strange question considering that:
- The jQuery Project has been alive and growing for 3 years
- The library itself is basically text
I have heard of occasions where Norton AV would throw false positive alerts on packer or minified versions of jQuery but that’s Norton’s fault for bad heuristics. So I wanted to address it here.
The jQuery downloads are basically text files that we manage. We have a tremendous number of users downloading and leveraging jQuery from our sites daily so the likelihood that we’d know something was up is VERY good. In addition, a ton of well-known companies are using jQuery and it’s a pretty good indication that everything is cool when you see who is using it:
http://docs.jquery.com/Sites_Using_jQuery
If you’re concerned about downloading it from our site or using the Google hosted version, we provide the code so that you can create your own copy of it. This gives you the best level of control over the build process:
http://docs.jquery.com/Downloading_jQuery#Subversion_.28SVN.29
Now, is it possible that someone is offering up a bad version of jQuery? Sure and that can be the case for Prototype, MooTools, Dojo or any other popular framework. We obviously can’t control what someone else does, only what *we* can provide via our site.
With that said, please only download jQuery from the official site or use the version hosted on Google’s CDN. Here are the official site links:
http://jquery.com/
http://code.google.com/p/jqueryjs/
http://jqueryui.com/ (for the jQuery UI library)
http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/
Downloading jQuery from any site other than the ones listed above is not recommended as we can’t ensure the validity of the code. And if you do find a version of jQuery that is doing some “evil”, please let us know so we can advise the jQuery community.
We want you to enjoy your experience with jQuery and provide the best option available for your usage.
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you heard about my recent decision to move off my dedicated server and onto a WordPress blog. It’s been an interesting exercise shifting off your own space and onto a cookie-cutter service, which is what I did yesterday when I setup my blog on WordPress.com. Overall it was a trivial task which only took a couple of hours to do from sign-up to launch.
The downside of using a service like WordPress.com is that you’re kind of bound to what they offer the general public and as a power user that can be immensely frustrating. It’s no fault of WP. Their business is to cater to a broad audience on WordPress.com and if you’re a power user, they offer the code for you to customize. So I’m not one to complain because they’ve got a great model going & they’re doing right by everyone.
So I was chatting with my friend David Walsh, who BTW is a really talented developer & bares an uncanny resemblance to Kid Rock, about my migration and sharing some of my pain points. Well, here’s what he said:
David Walsh: i can’t let a brotha live on wordpress.com
From there, he proceeded to totally hook me up with a self-hosted WP account of my own; DNS updates and all! That was a very cool thing to do and I’m grateful for his help. This now gives me so much more flexibility to tweak things as I see fit and even dive into PHP a bit, something I’ve been wanting to do but haven’t found the right circumstance to do it in.
This also means that I may have a chance to save the posts from my original blog software, BlogCFC. I have to say that I’ll miss BlogCFC and the tweaks I made to it (some of which ended up in the software). Raymond Camden continues to really make it a great blogging platform and if I was back on a ColdFusion hosting provider, it’d be the first piece of software I’d install. Raymond also offered me BlogCFC hosting (which I am so grateful for as well) but David had already gone through a lot to set me up and I wasn’t going to back out at that point. And I think I’m ready for a new challenge as well. WordPress is a different monster and it’ll force me to rethink some things.
The final change you may have noticed is that the blog is now on its own subdomain. Originally, when you would venture to reybango.com, you’d see the blog. In hindsight, I really should’ve separated out the blog and used the main domain for something else. That’s the case now with the blog residing at blog.reybango.com.
So I want thank David for totally squaring me away. It’s amazing that a person that I’ve only chatted with on IM would be willing to help me out. It truly is a testament to the power of the Internet but I also think it’s a little bit of karma. 
Yep there are some big changes being made, mainly driven by pure economics. I’ve decided to shift over to WordPress.com for my blog hosting. I already use WordPress at work and on Ajaxian.com so it’s a natural fit for me. In addition, I’ve switched my email management to Google Apps which, like WordPress.com, is basically free. It had become increasingly obvious that the expense of a dedicated server wasn’t doable so moving to these services made sense, especially since apart from my blog, I host only one other application, GotCFM.com. Ben Nadel was kind enough to allow me to host the site on his VPS so that’s one less worry I have. Ben’s a great friend and I appreciate his support.
Yes, times are tough and while I’m not in the poor house, I’m also not flowing in big bucks that could justify the $100 monthly hosting cost. I’ll certainly miss the flexibility of having my own little rental spot on the web but I’m sure I’ll find some other plot of land to call my own for my own little projects.
The main drawback is that I’ve pretty much lost all of the other posts that I’ve done throughout the years. Since this isn’t a WP instance that I’ve installed but a hosted instance at WordPress.com, the scripts that migrate from BlogCFC to WP won’t work. That kind of sucks.
I guess starting fresh has it’s advantages as it allows me to rethink what I want to chat about.
So please be sure to update your feeds so you can keep up with my madness.
Tomorrow I'll be at BarCamp Miami & will be signing up to do a presentation on the opportunities available with add-ons built on Mozilla's platform.
I've be uploaded my slides so that you can get a peak at what I'll be talking about:
If you're in the South Florida area, I would urge you to attend this great (and free) gathering. With over 500 registered, it's sure to be an excellent opportunity to learn and network.
You can register for the event here: http://barcampmiami09.eventbrite.com/
My friend Brian Rinaldi of UniversalMind asked me to help him get the word out about the Adobe Flex Camp taking place in sunny Miami, FL. While I'm not a user of Flex, I do support my friends and hope that this event goes great for Brian and the team at UM.
From the site:
We have already lined up a list of some of the top speakers from the top companies in Flex and AIR development. We are still working on supplying more details for our agenda but you can see it is going to be a “can't miss” event for Flex and AIR developers from beginners to advanced.
The event will be held on March 6th, 2009 at the BankUnited Center on the campus of the University of Miami. Full details can be found on the event page.
Good luck Brian!!
I had the chance to hang out with Aza & Atul over at Mozilla last week and we chatted a bit about evangelism. Having quite a bit of experience with this due to my work with the jQuery project, they were interested in how to best promote Ubiquity and garner more mindshare. One thing led to another and I'm now heading up evangelism for Ubiquity!
This won't be my full-time job and I'll be volunteering, just like I do with the jQuery project. But like the jQuery project, I see so much good in Ubiquity and how it can help to shape the way that browsers are used and that gets me excited. The user community is absolutely incredible already having contributed a ton of commands and being extremely supportive. The traction behind Ubiquity is equally impressive. Even prior to my chat with Aza & Atul, I had already seen a number of sites creating their own commands to make their sites easier to use.
I think it's only appropriate that my first Ubiquity blog posting details the great resources available for using, and developing for, Ubiquity:
Links:
Twitter:
- @mozillaubiquity: The main source of news & info about the Ubiquity project via Twitter. Be sure to follow.
- @azaaza: Mozilla's co-lead developer for the Ubiquity project
- @toolness: Mozilla's co-lead developer for the Ubiquity project
- @reybango: Evangelist for the Ubiquity project
- @theunfocused: Fellow Mozillian Blair McBride
- @_abi_: Created the Devo Firefox extension which provided a keyboard command launcher similar to what Ubiquity is today.
- @fernando_takai: Major supporter of Ubiquity.
Blogs:
Support:
