Complaints

As a public service I will tell you how horrible Internet Explorer, Net10 Phone, and the Westin LAX are. Really, I'm just looking out for your best interests. :-)

1. Internet Explorer
It started with IE refusing to open certain websites (get your mind out of the gutter - it was innocuous sites like the Cleveland Jewish News). Then it refused to play certain video (again - mind out of the gutter - it was video from sites like Slate.com). Finally, it started crashing on a regular basis. I would guess that I could have found some technical fix but I decided instead to just switch to Mozilla Firefox instead. So far it has been a dream - absolutely no problems whatsoever. A bit of research indicated that I am on the cusp of a wave. Join me.


2. Net10 Phone
Our relationship started off a bit shaky but then we had a good run; in the end it just wasn't going to work out. Net10 is a pay-as-you-go phone service. They wouldn't let me purchase a phone or service from Japan but we got past it and my sister was kind enough to buy it for me. Yumi and I used it in Hawaii during our wedding and honeymoon and it worked out great. It was $30-35 for the phone and service. The problem was when I tried to recharge the credit when I was in Cleveland in December. I called and bought credit but 24 hours later it still wasn't working. I called again, typed in about twenty-seven 19-digit codes and was told to wait another 24 hours. Again it didn't work. Finally, I called back and spent about 2 hours on the phone just to get my $30 back. Their customer service was horrible and ridiculously scripted. Never again.

3. Westin LAX
The price guide for the room said that local calls are $1.75. Pricey, but easier than running down to the lobby. Imagine my surprise when I went to check out and was charged $23 for a local phone call. In my lifetime of making phone calls, I've always understood "local" to mean nearby area codes to which long distance charges do not apply. Apparently the Westin LAX has a different definition, namely, locations within 3 miles of the hotel! Talking to the receptionist did nothing. She spoke to the manager who did nothing. I later talked to Mr. Cliff Sunajo in person and he did nothing. I can't believe they can be so stupid. $23 is nothing to them and surely is not the real cost of the phone call. Is it really in their best interest to antagonize or alienate customers with ridiculous charges and lose their future business? Oh, and just for icing on the cake, the room in this supposed 4-star hotel had a horrible view, the settee was grungy and the carpet was stained. While the Internet Explorer situation resolved itself with Firefox and Net10 did eventually give me my money back, the Westin LAX is far from over. They will be getting a tersely worded letter sometime soon.

Other Random Thoughts

1. Irony: The only website which regularly crashes my MICROSOFT Internet Explorer is MICROSOFT (Windows Live/MSN) Hotmail.

2. One day Yumi was complaining about my internet usage (with some validity) and called it the axis of evil (I asked her to spell it). I thought it would be better labeled the access of evil.

Apple Safari

I feel a bit torn about the Apple Safari internet browser. On the one hand, it was surreptitiously downloaded onto my computer by Apple via my Apple iTunes update which is a pretty shady thing to do. On the other hand, I love iTunes for downloading my podcasts and I just started using the Safari browser and like it a lot. Internet Explorer was driving me crazy because it crashed 2-3 times a day. Poof, all windows gone. So far Safari has proven to be much more stable and at least as user-friendly. If only they hadn't been so sneaky about loading on my computer.

You Gotta Love Japan

Yesterday, Yumi and I moved to our new place near the seaside in Yokohama. I am acquiring quite a backlog of topics to write about but with work, moving, the PhD still looming and the wedding, finding blog time is more difficult. In any case, I'll try to address the move (it was largely uneventful and went pretty smoothly) and new apartment in another post but I do want to mention two related items.

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First, last night after the move and some unpacking we treated ourselves to a sushi dinner. I love sushi and there is something about the restaurants with the conveyor belts which carry the sushi around that I particularly like. It's so unlike any other dining experience -- very Japanese. The coolest thing was at the end of the meal. As the plates come around you just take the ones you want off the conveyor belt, eat them, and stack up the plates which are color-coded by price. Typically, at the end of the meal, a young woman comes over and totals up the bill by adding the price of each plate. Last night, she came over with some scanner which I had never seen. She waved it over the stack of plates and that was it! Instant electronic bill. How cool! The other thing is that one of the two trains I now take to work is driverless! I envision a futuristic science fiction plot where the train becomes possessed and out of control driving us to our deaths. This all reminds me of a great faux article I read in The Onion about a fictious Japanese earthquake and how it took the country back to the year 2147.

Technology

I've often said that if you are not completely astounded at current technology, you're not thinking about it. Cell phones, MP3 players, laptop computers, DVRs, PDAs, GPS and the list goes on and on. Back when I was a kid, we didn't have cable TV, music technology was the cassette (even LPs and 8-tracks), computer memory was measured by the kilobyte not gigabyte, and cell phones were the stuff of science fiction.

The biggest change is arguably the internet. I'm sitting here in Japan with a computer on my lap which can be held in one hand that is thousands of times more powerful than those of my youth and can do amazing things. I'm listening to NPR radio broadcast thousands of miles away, ordering books and gifts, making hotel reservations in Thailand, catching up with headlines from the NY Times, Washington Post, and ESPN, sending email, and making phone calls! All with a 5 or so pound piece of plastic and silicon. Simply amazing.

There is a downside, however. Aside from hours which can be wasted surfing the web or playing sudoku online, websites can be infuriating, especially when trying to order things to be shipped overseas. While I zipped through dozens of transactions for gifts and hotels, I was stymied by one book order. For 3 weeks, I've tried to order the most recent edition of a book by my PhD examiner, Christian Reichardt and have it shipped to Japan. Several websites weren't happy with an order to be shipped to one country but paid for with a credit card in another. OK. So then I tried using Yumi's credit card but other problems ensued. After three weeks, three different websites, and literally a dozen hours trying to sort it out, I gave up and bought it with my US credit card and had it shipped to my sister who will have to ship it to me here.

It reminds me of a good book I read a couple of years ago: Better Off by Eric Brende. He and his wife lived with the Amish for a year and a half and the lesson they came away with is that when in doubt, less technology is better than more. They do dishes and laundry by hand, bike most places, have no TV, etc. I'm not sure if I completely agree with the degree to which they eschew technology (I have no desire to wash my clothes by hand for instance) but I do agree that we should explicitly choose our technologies and other material goods and be conscience of material and energy consumption, knowing the tradeoffs; the costs as well as the benefits. It's easy to get carried away in our modern lives and forget that we have choices about how we live; how we spend our time, what things we buy, and what impact we have on the Earth.