Holter: Art in Overdrive

The first year of my freelance career, after being laid off from my full-time gig in ‘06, I was fortunate enough to be busy with jobs full time. It looked as if things were going to be ok. My daily work routine hadn’t really changed much since I worked remotely from my home office the last six years of my employment at Ogilvy & Mather. The only big difference was trying to manage a business rather than drawing a salary, and the lack of insurance. I thought that after some time of building up a client base and settling into a process of billing and managing income that I would eventually be able to afford health insurance, put money into my 401k, and all the things that a person should be able to do while running a business. After the first year however, I learned two things: I am not good at managing my own business, and things were not going to get better or even level out.
The second year came and went, bringing new clients while losing others, and income did not increase. My clients had been the same people I worked for previously in the first couple years; fortune 500 companies and marketing agencies based out of large cities like Chicago and New York with budgets to create high quality work. Unfortunately, what I found in that second year was that even the large marketing agencies were operating with smaller budgets and most were pulling a big chunk of the work normally sourced out to freelance creatives like myself, inhouse. Along the way, some cut freelancers out of the budget completely and I was having to replace these sources of work with local based projects from independently owned businesses. It goes without saying that the budgets for creative projects that mom & pop businesses have to work with are minimal.
Now I’m past the third year and the only clients left are mostly local. Anywhere else a freelance designer would be able to make a reasonable living with enough local work while between bigger projects, but this is Detroit in a bad economy. I’m not from here, but I’ve gotten the feeling that creativity, especially as it pertains to marketing, isn’t highly valued in this area.
As the economy has gotten worse in the Detroit area over 2009, the value of creatives has declined with it. Business owners would rather spend less on professional creative resources (designers with experience and talent), opting for cheaper, less qualified help with their marketing and advertising with little or no concern for the overall quality of the work and ultimately a much poorer image of their business as a result. They don’t seem to care as long as they are saving a few bucks. Even worse, most don’t know the difference between professionally designed advertising and hack work. As long as it gets printed, whether or not colors are correct and in registration, or the artwork looks like it was created by a 9 year old that had to piss real bad while doing it, it’s all good.
There’s obviously no future for me living in this area; I have to leave to get back my clients, work and self respect. My problem now is leaving my family again to live alone somewhere else just to have a job. Time off is great on a temporary basis, but a man needs to work to maintain his dignity and self respect. I feel them slipping away with each day as long as I remain in this place.
I believe it’s time to move on.

After trying everything imaginable to get the new Wordpress app to work, I gave up and deleted the app. I’ve installed another one just to see what happens.

So far I’ve been able to save a draft to the server; a huge leap in progress from the previous install. Apparently the install didn’t take the first time around.

If this post is published, you’ll know it was a success.
I’ve read other horror stories about different unrelated issues on the WP developer forum however, so I will be updating if and when issues arise.

before I started my last post this evening, I noticed a new Wordpress app for iPhone notification as I launched WP. I love new apps and updates, so I downloaded it right away. all excited about seeing the update in action, I set it up and wrote an entire entry in my blog. then came the disappointment.
After my post was finished, I went to save a draft so I could go back and attach a photo. I received a barrage of error messages about my incorrect username and password, plus a host of communication error messages to top it off. I tried several times and even went back and checked my username and password before several more attempts, all with the same horrifying results. The last resort was to start over, checking my old app for consistency, and setting up a second blog account. Same results.

Finally, I had to copy my post from the new app and paste into the old app, which is configured identically, and had no trouble at all saving and publishing my post.

Is the new app just a problem for me or is everyone experiencing the same frustrating problems? I’d really like to know. Send me your comments and/or solutions.

I’m always telling my friends & family about apps/software that I’ve found, or maybe a cool new way to set up FTP folders for sharing files. I always try to convince them that it’s easy, no problem, but always get the same roll of the eyes and the “haven’t had time to try it yet”, which means I may as well move on and forget about it. When I came across Dropbox recently (my Cindy found it and showed me to be accurate), I saw immediately that this was going to be a simple, yet extremely usefull app that ANYONE can set up and get familiar with in a few minutes.

I began with the free iPhone app that I downloaded from the app store. Setting it up is simple, and I can’t emphasize enough the SIMPLE part. Once it’s been downloaded and launched, all you need to do is provide a username and an email address and you’re good to go. I did it while I was waiting for help at a salvage yard. Then a few minutes later while I was searching the yard for parts, I snapped a couple shots of some cool junk, uploaded them to my Dropbox folder, and shared them with other people instantly. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to see the potential of the app.
For a little more control over content such as photos and folders of photos, you will need to download the desktop app. It’s as simple as the mobile app to use and install. When you need to share a batch of images with others, you simply drag the files into a Dropbox folder that sits on your hard drive like any other folder. The app puts a nifty little menu in your top menu bar (on a Mac, I’m not sure how it works on a PC) that you pull down to open your folder. Drop your files in and you’re done! Now you have access to your work wherever you are, and you can share a single file or an entire folder with as many other people you want just by selecting the file/folder and choose the “share this folder” option from the pull down menu. You then add the email addresses of the folks you wish to include, click “share folder” and you are done!
What’s really cool is that when you share a folder with someone else, or vice versa, the folder appears in their Dropbox account when they log in. No navigating through someone else’s FTP folders for your stuff. It’s accessible right from your desktop or iPhone.

It really is very simple. I love Dropbox and it’s one of the most useful apps I’ve found yet. If you need to share your stuff with other people or just want to go to work without remembering Flash drives or other portable drives, this is the way to go. I recommend Dropbox to everyone!

Below are a few images from our trip to Bulgaria. These were taken in Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second largest city. Click on the image to view full size photo.

A Wolf in Sheep’s clothing. You really have to watch out for some places and some people in Bulgaria. The Communist influence on some Bulgarians hasn’t worn off, even after 20 years. The people aren’t to blame, it’s the way they had to be to make it. The cab drivers are notorious for scamming folks, or so we were told and their websites even mentioned it although we had no problem with any of them. In our case, we had some issues with the Hotel Gloria Palace. Specifically, one receptionist.

The day I arrived in Bulgaria, a day later than Cindy, the problems began. After a day in the air and two connecting flights to get to Sofia, I arrived with a migraine, fatigued, and without my luggage. It’s never happened to me before but it’s inevitable: if you travel by air enough, you will lose a bag somewhere. After standing in line and watching everyone else pick up their bags and leave, I was one of three people left after an hour and a half who’s luggage didn’t make it. I waited patiently at the service desk while everyone else bitched and complained to the one man behind the counter with no will left to deal with it. My first experience with Bulgarians set the tone for the rest of the trip: The man behind the counter pointed at me and pulled me to the front, helped me with the forms necessary to locate my lost bags and made everyone else wait. At that moment I realized that these people don’t need any shit from us and they won’t take it, so treat them with respect and everything will go just fine.

I walked out and found Cindy waiting for me with a big happy smile and hugs; just what I needed! We both made it and found each other in another country. My vacation was officially under way.

Arriving at the hotel, we stopped at reception to let the girl know that my bags hadn’t arrived with me and asked for her help. She was sweet, friendly and polite, and spoke english well enough to understand what had happened: we’ll call her Girl One since I don’t remember her name. She said she would be happy to call the airport and try to track down our lost luggage. Very helpful and pleasant.

Ruins on hilltop. Plovdiv, Bulgaria

The next day we (Cindy’s colleagues and students from the psychology conference) took a field trip on a bus to Plovdiv. When we returned to our hotel at the end of the day, we were met with my lost bag in the reception office when we stopped to check on the status. A different girl (which we’ll call Girl Two) was working at the time, and after a couple days we realized that the two girls worked in 24 hour shifts. Three or four days later as we were walking past the office towards the street, Girl One ran out and stopped us to apologize and let us know that she was still trying to locate our lost bag, and that she had been calling the airport every day for information. Girl Two didn’t even bother to tell Girl One or anyone else for that matter, that our bag had been found and delivered. We felt so sorry for her; you could see that she was worried and stressed out over the situation, which could have been easily avoided if Girl Two gave a shit about anyone but herself.

A day earlier we witnessed Girl Two in action trying to scam a little extra money from one of the conference students who was leaving the next day. While we were in the office to deal with our room switch, the girl that was leaving was trying to settle up and get ready to check out. Reception Girl Two spun the monitor around and informed the guest that she owed 10 Lev for phone calls. The debate began. The guest politely told her that she shared the room with another girl and made no calls, and in fact had no phone in her room. To this Girl Two replied, “oh well, you owe 10 lev, you pay.” I coudn’t believe the attitude. You just don’t see that ‘I don’t give a shit and there’s nothing you can do about it’ attitude in the States; people get fired for that. We learned that in Bulgaria (and other countries), some of the people will make a point of screwing you if they find out you’re an American, especially after George W got done making a mess of things for us. They hate us now thanks to that jackass. We were warned that cab drivers in particular, which I mentioned earlier, are known for taking advantage of us if they can. We didn’t have any trouble from them at all however, and in fact were taken care of well by the cabbies. I tipped them well for their speedy service. I also made a point of going back to the hotel the following day when Girl One was working and gave her a 10 lev tip for taking care of us. You could tell that they don’t experience that too often.

Also on the following day, I made a point of scheduling a cab to pick me up at 5AM to take me to the airport two days later. I knew that Girl Two would be on duty the day before I left and didn’t want to depend on her to get the time right or even make the call. Girl One politely and professionally handled my request, and we walked away relieved knowing I had nothing to worry about aside from getting up on time Saturday morning.

Friday, the day before I leave for home we are having dinner out near the pool and while Cindy and Roger were finishing up, I decided to go check on the status of my cab for the next morning and make sure it would be at the hotel on time. In fact, I decided to have the cab show up an extra half hour early just to be safe. Things were about to get really stressful.

Girl Two informed me that she was the one that made the cab call and scheduled it to be there at 5:25AM the next morning. I was already beginning to worry. I now had to request a second call to change the schedule. Would she follow through or leave me hanging there? Would she call some friend at some fly-by-night cab company to drive me around for an extra half hour to make a little extra money? She said it was no problem and would make the call to change the pick-up time, then she spun that monitor around again and presented me with a 300 leva bill for my stay at the hotel. News to me. Our room was to be covered by the school; part of the package for Cindy teaching the extra class and being there a week extra to do so. I told her that the school was responsible for our room charges to which she replied, “no, school pay for Cindy, not you. You pay 300 leva.” We went back and forth a bit and I realized I would need some time to think about the situation and find a way to handle it diplomatically, not like I do at home.

After giving this whole thing some careful consideration, I came to the conclusion that this girl has probably had a shitty life. She’s not sweet and pretty as Girl One, and sometimes life is a little easier for beautiful people. I thought about how I gave Girl One a 10 lev tip for being so helpful, and for the extra stress of having to deal with Girl Two’s lack of concern for anyone else. I thought Girl Two probably never gets tips or any kind of praise whatsoever, so she scams whatever she can and treats people the way they treat her. On the other hand, she doesn’t get positive feedback, tips or praise from anyone because of her attitude towards customers and people, which is a vicious circle. I decided a little insurance in this case would likely go a long way to smooth departure and I decided to reward her with a 4 leva tip for her help in making the cab call. She was completely surprised, like it was the first time she had ever been given a tip. She asked what for; I told her for taking care of us and for her help scheduling the cab ride.

I have never been more right. Also, I’ve never witnessed anything like what I’m about to describe.

We left the hotel and went into town to check Cindy into a different hotel where she would be staying for the remainder of her trip. After checking in, we turned around and took a cab right back to the hotel to finish packing for the following day. Earlier in the evening when we had stopped in to speak with Girl Two about the room charges, the issue didn’t get resolved so we told her we would return to work it out later. We explained to her that I was leaving in the morning but Cindy was staying and checking out later in the day. We wanted to just pay the 300 leva and work it out with the University later to avoid any unpleasant issues at the moment. Cindy asked her if we could pay with a credit card (Bulgaria operates on cash mostly) because we didn’t have 300 leva in cash on us, but to our surprise her response now was “not 300 leva, you don’t pay”. We didn’t understand. She pulled up my bill and began changing all the charges to zero. After all the adjustments were made, she spun the monitor around again to show us the new balance: 38 leva. We looked at each other in total amazement and disbelief. Right before our eyes, our bill was reduced from 300 leva to 38, all because of a 4 leva tip and a little politeness.

I learned some valuable lessons on this trip. The folks working in service industries such as hotels, taxis and the like, put up with nothing but non-stop bullshit from travelers and tourists all day long; treat them nice, give them a break, reward them for their efforts and the quality of service will be much better and a helluva lot more reliable. Piss and moan and complain to these folks about every little detail and your likely to get screwed, or at the very least, ignored. For the most part, they are just employees and have little control over the circumstances that we are so quick to attack them for, like the guy in the baggage claim area at the Sofia airport for example. Everyone else directed their frustration at him like the lost luggage was his fault. Imagine dealing with that all day! They are there to help, if we let them.

Waiting....

Power

Luftansa... someone else's flight

The pics above are from the first part of the flight where I was crammed into a tiny little space next to smelly man.

The next part of the journey wasn’t quite as bad. Again I was in coach seated next to a guy almost my size. They pack us in like sardines with no thought going into the passengers’ comfort. I watched a show about air travel a few days ago and they broke down the expenses and profits of the cost of flying passengers today; after all the expenses are paid and fares collected, they only clear a couple hundred bucks if they fill every seat. Put more seats in, pack us in tighter, make more money… to hell with how much it sucks for us to be sitting so close to a perfect stranger that you are touching for 6 hours without a break.

Anyway, other than the discomfort of actually being pressed up against some guy from Birmingham that I’ve never met, the flight itself was pretty uneventful. In comparison to the first part of the journey from Sofia to Paris sitting next to Fidgety StinkMan, it was like an afternoon at a spa. I learned one valuable lesson about the process however, and that it to get online even earlier than I did and select a seat. I know now that I have to be on the right side of other folks, in the aisle if possible, for a right-handed person to be comfortable at all on a long flight. If you don’t fit into the space they’ve put you in and you’re a righty, it’s really a pain in the ass to eat or do anything without sticking your elbow in your neighbor’s face, even though they don’t seem to give a shit where their limbs are in relation to your personal space.

Finally, the longest part of the flight was over and we landed in Detroit. We deplaned and were funneled right into the Customs area where we stood in another line for 45 minutes. I needed a restroom break almost from the time the fasten seat belt sign went on and until we were cleared through Customs, there weren’t any restrooms. Immediately after clearing Customs I was stopped again by another Customs agent wanting to see my Passport and Declaration form. I made the mistake of saying “Jesus Christ, how many fucking times do you need to see my Passport here? I just need to get to a restroom!” This didn’t go over so well with her. A little authority over a passenger trying to piss and go home is all they have; threaten that and you have someone with a new mission. She looked at my eyes real close to see what kind of drugs I was on, said “Oh wow!” and let me go. I knew it wasn’t going to end there.

I realized as I was washing my hands and coming out of the restroom that I could’ve handled that better. I thought I should find the agent and apologize but I didn’t see her anywhere now. My luggage finally came around on the belt and I was on my way. I thought. Then another customs agent pulled me out of the crowd and asked me to follow him into the security area. I finally figured out where that other woman had gone: she was off to initiate to get the rest of the team on board with making my stay a little longer, to show me how much authority she really has. There were 3 or 4 agents running the inspection lines and I stopped in front of the first one. The woman on a mission was on the end and of course, and motioned me down to her line. All my bags were torn apart and thoroughly searched. I was asked the same series of questions that I had repeated just minutes before as I passed through the first Customs booth. The two agents directed to search my stuff did so reluctantly and were very polite in the process. They didn’t look in things that I would have certainly searched if I were a Customs Agent which indicated to me that this was all payback, they were part of it, and they knew it. There was only one more person in this area being searched at the time and he looked like a terrorist. They weren’t passively browsing through his stuff, they were probing and detaining. He had a worried look on his face the entire time. Maybe he had a little C4 in the toothpaste tube that they were getting close to.

The two agents chatted with me the whole time. We joked, we laughed, it wasn’t painful at all. The woman running the show stood at the front and scowled through it all. The other agents apologized for not being able to pack my stuff as neatly as I had and sent me on my way. I really didn’t want to give the woman in charge any satisfaction for the added inconvenience, but I apologized anyway. After all, it was me who was the asshole to begin with while she was just doing her job.

My adventure to Bulgaria is over. I got in my crappy american car, pulled out onto our crappy american freeway and set the cruise at 100. As I flew past every other car on the road like they were parked, I couldn’t help thinking how nice it was to be home. I love to travel and see other countries, some I didn’t want to leave. But I’m always glad to get back to the USA and when I do, I realize how good we have it here. Even with the economy the way it is and all the other problems we have here, it’s still home and it’s a great place to be.

Now if I could just find a way to educate American drivers to get the hell out of the left lane unless they actually passing other cars…

Charles De Gaulle Airport, Paris, France

Charles De Gaulle Airport, Paris, France

Burned out travellers

Charles De Gaulle Airport, Paris, France

Just got back from a trip to Sofia, Bulgaria today. Two connecting flights totalling somewhere around 11 hours in the air and roughly 7 hours in the terminals dealing with check-in, passports, baggage, sitting on the tarmac and customs. After today I’m not sure if any destination is worth the frustration of the flight process.

The first leg of the journey, which was the shortest, seemed like a lifetime compared to the connecting 7 hour flight. The airline is irrelevant; it’s the person seated next to you that makes or breaks a flight. I was first in my row to be seated and I hoped and prayed for a short, skinny, freshly showered girl to be seated next to me, but luck was not on my side. In fact, my hoping and wishing seemed to work in reverse. What I got was an old man who hasn’t showered since the elections and apparently believes deoderant to be a product of the devil. In addition to B.O. that made my eyes water, he posessed another sort of funk that you only encounter around elderly homeless winos with wet pants which seemed to emanate from his clothing. Naturally a man this carefree could only be wearing sandals, another source of another funk that I can’t even put into words. To complete this concoction of horrific odors was a sporadic wiff of breath that smelled like the ass-end of a dead farm animal, bloated and rotting in the sun. This man’s reek was so foul it almost had color, he was pressed right up against me for next 3 hours and that was only half of it! As if the odors weren’t enough, it turns out he’s a fidgety spaz to boot! From the very moment his ass hit the seat until we deplaned, he rocked, wiggled, fidgeted, shuffled and moved about like a jumping bean on crank. I haven’t seen anyone twiddle their thumbs since grade school, but that was the start of it. While his thumbs were rotating at 300rpms, he would lean forward then back, look out the window to the front of me (I had the window seat unfortunately, he was in the middle), then behind me. Then he would stretch and look towards the front of the plane, then crane his head around to look back, then turn around and glance at his watch with his feet bouncing up and down the whole while. All of this random spastic movement took place in just 5 or 6 seconds, then repeat. And repeat, for 3 hours, with his freakishly hairy arm rubbing up against me the whole way. There was no escape; no matter how hard I tried to lean away he would compensate by taking up even more of my personal space.

I’ve said nothing but bad things about this man up to this point and that’s not fair. He was actually a very nice old man, just not very conciencious of the personal space of others and less than concerned or even aware of his own hygiene. This is a lesson for everyone: there is no such thing as personal space on a commercial flight so before you head for the airport, please take a shower people. Think of the people that have to sit next to you!

After nearly two weeks of posts, comments, complaints and other unpleasant correspondence with the folks at elgato about my EyeTV 250 problem, I ended up having to troubleshoot and repair the issue myself.  After repeat emails from Andrea Lindgren of elgato’s tech support offering no help, but asking for my date of purchase, I finally started posting issues on the eyetv lounge in hopes that someone would respond, or at least read about the trouble I was having. This seemed to start getting results. However, one of the results was a response from another woman in elgato sales dept, Kathleen, who basically told me I was screwed. Actually what she said was

Your case has been passed to me by Andrea of technical support.
There is a one year warranty on all Elgato items. We are unable to offer out of warranty replacements. There is no repair program for these devices, they are serviced by exchange.
I am sorry for this inconvenience.
Kathleen
Elgato Systems

And basically, that tells me that I’m just screwed. It tells me that I spent over $200 on some electronics that is useless if anything breaks because they won’t lift a finger to help a customer. Once you’ve given them your money, you are no longer of interest to them and you’re on your own.

Unwilling to accept this solution, I took out my little mult-meter and began to test the hardware to find out why the receiver was not getting any power. I tracked the problem down to the AC power supply, a simple little device that plugs into the wall and supplies power to the receiver and probably costs around $10. I just happened to have a couple spares that came with old cell phones that I no longer use, so I swapped the ends out between the broken one and an old phone power supply, plugged it in and everything worked just fine.

After finding and fixing the problem, I got back on the eyetv lounge and posted my findings and complaints. One of their more helpful individuals, Nick Freeman, from elgato’s Customer Support department, actually helped me get things worked out and had a new replacement AC power adapter sent out to me.

So in the end, I’m not sure if elgato would have done anything at all had I not found and fixed the problem myself, and told them exactly what was wrong and what I needed to resolve my issues. I will say to their credit though, that they have at least one individual, Nick Freeman, who is willing to do what it takes to make a customer feel like he’s not completely alone with broken equipment. Since this last incident happened, I’ve been researching other products for watching TV on a computer and there are at least a couple to choose from. It remains to be seen if their support is any better than elgato’s, but they sure as hell can’t be much worse.

So just before Christmas 2007 I purchased EyeTV for my Mac. I figure I spend most of my time in front of this thing anyway, may as well watch TV while I work.

I was a more than a little reluctant to spend $200 on a little plastic box with some software to watch TV on my computer, but after looking at what I could do with it I decided to go for it. As it turns out, I absolutely love having TV running on my machine as I’m working. The EyeTV software is fairly easy to use, has some nice features for recording and converting video, and after the pain in the ass of setting up an account and getting the program guide stuff working it sits here and runs on my fourth monitor all day keeping me company while I’m working (I have no friends).

Then a week ago the unit just quit working. No power to the box, no more TV for me. I went to the company’s website to submit a ticket for service last Saturday, 6 days ago. This is the only way to get software/hardware issues resolved with their products; go to their website and submit a ticket. Then wait. And wait. And wait some more.

They finally sent a response on Wednesday in which they said maybe it could be serviced but there’s only a year warranty, so they needed the date I purchased everything. I replied immediately with that information, and I never heard from them again. Right now I’m really not sure how this will go. Is it worth $200 plus a software upgrade worth $40 every 18 months to watch TV while I work? Maybe when times were good, but when the economy is floating in the shitter and I haven’t had a project in a couple months it’s really hard to part with another $200 for something that I know is going to crap out on me again in the near future.

Normally I wouldn’t think twice about it, nor would I take the time to write about my frustrations, but when a company leaves a customer dangling like these people do, all I can do is bitch. I’m really hoping they come through and take care of the problem, but when a company that sells computer technology doesn’t have any way for it’s customers to directly contact them, I really don’t have much hope for resolution. It’s obvious that they don’t want us calling them. They certainly don’t want to be bothered with some pesky issues that a customer may be having; it’s just not profitable. I love how easy they make it to purchase their shit, but good luck when you have issues with it.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with their support and service. A couple months back there were some serious issues with their providers and programming service. I went through the same crap trying to get them to respond and just tell me what was going on. They didn’t even need to fix anything; they just had to tell me if the problem was on their end or mine so I could skip all the troubleshooting and hours of screwing around with the system on my end. That took more than a week.

No, I don’t have much faith in ELGATO as far as taking care of this issue. I hope I’m wrong. I hope I have to eat my words. If they come through for me in the next 24 hours and fix my unit or send out a replacement, I will take it all back. Well, not the part about the severe laps in response time it takes them to get around to dealing with stuff; that’s all on them. They SUCK at doing anything for their customers in a timely fashion. As far as dealing with ELGATO and purchasing their products, I wouldn’t recommend it. Not unless you have the patience to deal with the service of indifference. It’s just not worth the $200 bucks.

I guess I’ll post an update when this gets resolved, one way or another. That’ll give everyone some idea of how long it takes for these guys to get off their asses.