James Cochran’s Blog

So much exciting stuff going on this year. Let me break it down so I’m sure to miss something.
My son, James Timothy, was born.
I celebrated my eighth anniversary with my beautiful bride.
I graduated with a BS in Computer and Information Technology.
I landed a great government job as a programmer with the D.O.D.
I got my season tickets for the Colts.

The latter meant I spent tonight at Lucas Oil Stadium watching the Colts first preseason game. Manning took six snaps and was sacked three times which was awful. I really like my seats though and I can’t wait until the regular season starts!

JT is getting huge! He had his sixth month appointment the other day and we found out he is eighteen pounds! He’s strting to do push ups and trying to crawl so I know it’s weeks before he is getting around. He’ll be happy when that happens because I can tell he’s been frustrated not being able to get around on his own power. That may sound crazy but have a kid and you’ll see and if you dont then your kid is lazy. I’m lazy too though so don’t take it personally.

So back to my point. This year has been awesome. I’m not looking forward to turning thirty but so far one amazing thing after another has happened. It’s nice to be done with school and to look to the future.

I’ve basically started a new chapter in my life this year and so far it looks like it’s going to be awesome! I’m hoping you’re having a great year too. And for those of you that aren’t don’t loose faith. -James

Around this time two years ago the wife and I were buying our first home.  It’s not huge but it fit the two of us perfect, especially after 6 months of searching.  Once we had our home we had to buy all new appliances and it was the perfect time to fulfill my dream of getting a big screen TV.  I did the research and shopped around and realized the flat panels were still way to expensive for the size of TV I wanted so we decided a rear projection would be great for us.  This is when we went to hhgregg and bought a Samsung 50″ DLP Projection TV.  Once we got it home I quickly noticed a rainbow effect while watching Tv.  It was driving me crazy so we went back a few days later and exchanged the Samsung DLP Projection for a Sony 50″ LCD Projection TV.  Specifically Model KDF-50e2000.  They brought out the new TV and took away the old one the next day.  No problems, no headaches, just great service.

I don’t know what has happened to hhgregg since.  Two years later the bulb in my TV went out.  Something I knew would happen which is why I bought the extended warranty.  I knew $400 was too much but when you figure a lamp is definitely going out and it is several hundred plus you get the service of someone coming out AND the peace of mind that if anything else goes wrong in 5 years it will be fixed it seems like it’s worth it.  Plus I’m a sucker when it comes to people selling me crap.  It’s all I can do to not order the Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter and I don’t even like tomatoes.  When I call to get it fixed they schedule me service for a few days later and all seems great.  A couple of hours later the people coming out call and tell me that the lamp is backordered from Samsung and it will be a few weeks.  First I say “Weeks?!?” then I say wait, I don’t have a Samsung.  She notifies me that I in fact do have a Samsung model something or other.  I assure her that no, I have a Sony.  I’ve been staring and the dang logo on the bottom of my screen and on the remote for two years.  To which she cancels the order and tells me I need to straighten it out with hhgregg and promptly hangs up.  Thanks I. A. Electronics!

I called hhgregg to figure out what was going on even though it was pretty obvious they never put in the information for the new TV.  It turns out it’s way more complicated than that.  GE Warranty Service is apparently who hhgregg gave at least a portion of my money to and who is now responsible for fixing my TV… kind of.  All they do is coordinate with I.A. Electronics to get it fixed.  GE won’t do anything because I have warranty for a TV that I don’t own.  hhgregg tells me that they’ll have to research it and get the proper information to GE.  The next afternoon I still hadn’t heard anything so I went to the store and was told that hhgregg corporate would have to notify GE because they wouldn’t believe the store and on top of that they still can’t find my invoices.  I bring in my own copies of the invoices and they email corporate with the invoice numbers so they can look them up.  Come Wednesday I still hadn’t heard anything so I called corporate myself to complain.  I gave the nice lady my invoice numbers and my TV model and serial number.  She says it will take a day or two to get the info updated.  I decided to call GE the next day just to check and amazingly they finally had the correct info for my TV!

I walk through getting an appointment set up and the guy at GE asks me what time Monday would be good for me.  I stop him and say that Monday is Memorial Day, a holiday.  He assures me that they will be working that day so I get everything set up and he gives me the contact info for I.A. Electronics along with my service number.  I promptly call I.A. to check on everything and when I mention I have an appointment Monday the guy on the phone laughed.  I mean he actually laughed out loud and then said “No, no.” still chuckling.  That made me a happy camper of course.  He went on to inform me that Monday was a holiday and they weren’t going to be working.  Being a computer tech I’m upset this whole time anyway because I know I could change that stupid lamp in 10 minutes if I could just get it in my hands.  So I ask the man if I can just come by and pick up a lamp to which he looks up my TV model and tells me that the lamp is going to have to be ordered and it will take 7 days.  Ugh.

So now it’s been a week.  My TV is still broke.  It’s most likely going to be broke for another week.  No one will take responsibility for any of the mistakes that’s happened and I’m going crazy here.

Fast Forward several weeks…

I finally resolved this issue.  Eventually GE Warranty shipped a new lamp out to the people who were going to service my TV so as soon as I saw it arrived I told them I’d be in to pick it up myself because I didn’t want to wait another 4 days on top of the 16 days it had already been.  Replacing the lamp literally took 30 seconds and I didn’t need any tools.  I just popped off a panel, twisted another panel off, pulled up on the old lamp, and then did all that in reverse.  30 seconds!  I waited 16 days and it was only 30 seconds worth of work!

Let this be a lesson to you, the extended warranty is a rip off!

<end rant>

The first 2.5 million people to download it can get in on the public beta of Windows 7 today.  The download link isn’t up yet so what that means is their site is going to get hammered all day long.  I’m monitoring the page using http://www.changedetection.com which will detect any changes on the page and alert me, hopefully immediately, so I don’t miss out on the opportunity to own a legit copy.  I beta tested the Vista beta RC 1 and RC 2 so I’ pretty excited to get in on this too.

If you are interested in getting a license you should be able to find it here later on today: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

It’s the day after Christmas and I have a ton of stuff I want to get done.  I had planned on waking up at some point and picking up the house and go shopping.  For some reason I woke up right at 8 am which is about 4 hours early for me if you ask the wife. What’s funny though is how much time I waste in a day.

As it looks now I’m not going to finish all the stuff I need to do.  Which basically means the house is going to be messy still and when friends come over later I’ll have to say “sorry about the mess” to which they will tell me to “not worry about it.”

What was originally planned as me going to Best Buy to spend my $70 in gift cards quickly escalated.  I bought Angi a neck message thing for Christmas which turned out to = teh suxor so I have to take that back.  Which means I have to get all the pieces together, find the box, take the batteries out, and pack it all up.  Not to mention figure out what I did with the stupid receipt.  There is nothing to eat around here so I need to either go out for lunch or get some groceries, or both.  I had a Western Digital HDD go out on me the other day so they sent me a new one 2 day air.  That’s nice and all but now I have to pay out of pocket to ship the bad one back.  Which means I have to pack it all up and write the RMA number no less then 45 times on the box.  At least with Apple they have the prepaid easy return labels where you pop the bad part into the same box and tear off the label.  Then I get a text from the wife telling me I have to return her Lego Batman game to blockbuster.  That of course means I need to get on the website to print off my free game rental coupon.  But wait!  I don’t have printer drivers installed yet.  So now I have to find some and install them.  And since I’m frustrated and already on the computer I might as well spend 10 minutes writing a blog post where I just complain and annoy anyone who may read it.

Maybe I should make a list…