If there is one thing that I hate most about any company, it’s shitty customer service.  Look, I understand you can get busy, you can have a bad employee, might be overwhelmed with work . . .whatever.  Other than having a superior product, the only thing that will keep a business in business is the ability to give superb customer service.  Well guess what,

CERTEGY CHECK SERVICES SUCK BALLS!!!

Our company was hit with some freaking thief that decided to rip our banking information from our checks and start printing their own checks and cashing them. While we did catch it immediately, there were still quite a few checks that were being presented at banks up in the northeastern states. One day we had a call from a bank stating there was a lady trying to cash one of these fraudulent checks asking if we would approve the transaction. We told them she needed to be arrested but nothing was ever done.

Fast forward a couple of months and we learn of one small check cashing place that decided to cash the fraudulent check without validating it. Since they didn’t get their money, they turned in the unpaid check to Certegy Check Cashing Services. Oddly enough, this isn’t even the companies name. The real company name is Fidelity National Information Services. Which means I need to follow up this with another bold statement:

Fidelity National Information Services SUCKS BALLS!!

This is the most unorganized, worthless group of people I have ever dealt with. We had to complete an affidavit and fax it in. We did so, as requested, then I started getting more notes at our office AND at my home address!!! So I called them up and they claim the fax never made it. They tell me to re-fax and give me a completely different number, then tell me to call a specific number and enter an extension to verify the fax made it.

I follow the directions, fax goes through successfully and call the number to verify it made it. The menu options tells you no way how to enter an extension, so I just enter it and I go into hold mode. Luckily, I’m at the office and can put it on speaker while waiting. The office phone also shows how long you’re on a call. I finally gave up holding after FORTY FIVE MINUTES!!!!

I decide to give it a few days and then tried again today. Like before, the “on hold” music began. After 25 minutes, I wanted to get a cup of coffee and got up, went to the other side of the office and poured a cup of coffee. On the way back, I stopped by and had a little chat with a co-worker and we joked about how long I would be on hold. It then became the office joke. I step back into my office and yep, still on hold. At exactly ONE HOUR THIRTY EIGHT MINUTES (1:38), someone answers my call. It took me by surprise and I stumbled on my words.

I explained to this woman how long I had been on hold, then explained the first time was 45 minutes, totaling 2 hours 23 minutes of hold time, just to see if my fax showed up. After giving information to pull up my account, she promptly tells me she couldn’t see any faxed information until 2 weeks after it was received!!! I just laughed, then told her the previous lady I spoke with told me to call immediately after I faxed and they would tell me if it made it. After I said this, she simply said “It’s not in our system, call back in 2 weeks”. Certegy Check Services Sucks.

If I can do anything with this post, it’s to turn at least a few people away from using this company. Certegy Check Services or Fidelity National Information Services, whomever they really are, is the worst company when it comes to customer service I have ever dealt with. If this blog post isn’t enough to prove how much Certegy Check Services SUCKS, I figured I could back up my comments with some other reading for you. But before you leave, if you think Certegy Check Services sucks balls, PLEASE leave a comment below.

Certegy Checks Complaints

More Certegy Check Complaints

Certegy Allows Customer Data to be Stolen

Certegy Complaints Board

Even More Certegy Complaits

Certegy Ripoff Report

Certegy Check Ripoff Reports

If you have a Dell, dude, the recent Vista SP1 update didn’t treat you so well.  I have a Dell XPS 410 and my audio system that came with it stopped producing sound after the update.

I was going to post a fix for the bug, but what I thought would fix it, didn’t.  I was able to use the basic green audio speaker input/output to get a fraction of my suround sound to work, however, if I plug it into the full suite of plugs for surround sound, it stops working.

Anyone know WTF I should do to fix this?

So I’m sitting at home tonight, a Friday night, the 2nd of January, 2009.  I’m watching what there is on television and catch the end of the Jimmy Kimmel show that actually aired on November 26, 2008.  What’s important about the dates?  Well, let me continue.  I witnessed a huge collapse of one of my rock-n-roll idols, Scott Weiland.

If you’re like me, you scroll through the late night talk shows and see who the guests are, but most importantly, you see who the musical guests are going to be.  Being a music dork like I am, it’s really all about what cool band or artist is on these shows rather than anything else they offer.  The artist that caught my eye tonight was Scott Weiland on Kimmel.  The last time I saw Weiland was on some award show where he was presenting some award and he was sooo trashed he could barely say what he had to say.  With his past of addiction with heroin, I was honestly worried about him because he’s one of my rock-n-roll heroes.

Well, Scott Weiland really disappointed me tonight.  Why?  It’s not because he was probably too fucked up to be on live television…but more because the product he was throwing out was absolute shit.  Usually, if you have a kick ass rock-n-roll voice, no matter what is thrown out, you can make it sound like naked angels falling from the heavens above (if that exists) with their naked bodies ready to be violated.  Problem was, this wasn’t happening.  The music was absolutely horrible.  I kept telling myself that the crazy looking bearded guitarist was the one to blame because he looked like a dork, but he was actually really good.  The problem was Scott Weiland and his singing.  He sounded like complete shit and I can only hope it was because he was on dope.  If he wasn’t on dope, that means he’s completely lost his skills.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a HUGE fan of STP and Velvet Revolver…but whatever this new incarnation of Scott Weiland is, I’m not a big fan of.  Especially if all his performances are like what I watched tonight.  Hopefully tonight was a horrible performance night and he hasn’t lost it, but I would have to say that performances don’t lie when it happens twice.  Either him and the band don’t click or he just doesn’t hear it anymore.  Scott, if you happen to stumble on this post and read it, go back to what makes you comfortable.  If being high and rockin with your old bandmates make you feel best, then make it happen.  Don’t force your new thoughts on people that don’t know you as a singer.  Those guys you played with tonight seemed more into their own performances than they did the music…which probably explains why you sucked.

Happy New Year Bitches!

What’s more aggravating than chatting with someone over your favorite instant messaging platform and you can’t really show how you feel?  Like someone pisses you off and you want to tell them to “Fuck Off!”, but all the emoticons are happy or not expressive enough.

I’ve seen this from time to time but never really put much research into what it is or how it works, but I really wanted to give someone the bird, or flip them off, but I couldn’t.  Then I remembered seeing someone that used the keyboard characters, or ASCII characters to show a picture.  It’s called ASCII Art, or ASCII Pictures.

Perfect example:

…………………./´¯/)
………………..,/¯../
………………./…./
…………./´¯/’…’/´¯¯`·¸
………./’/…/…./……./¨¯\
……..(‘(…´…´…. ¯~/’…’)
………\……………..’…../
……….”…\………. _.·´
…………\…………..(
…………..\………….\…

I think these things are great because they work anywhere.  You just have to copy/paste into your IM window.

For my own use, I’ll start posting them here.  Hopefully they can help someone else show their thougts.

Have you ever wondered what the point of traveling is?  Me too.  But I thought it out and think I have it all figured out.  Rather than just saying what I think, I figured I would bullet things out.  

• Get away from what you know, as life.
• To see new places that you might not have seen before.
• You enjoy planes?
• Local people are out to get you, in real life.
• You want to see porn, but you don’t want to be seen, seeing porn.
• You have an ‘out of town’ persona, so you’re cooler out of town rather than in town.
• Tobacco is good, when the significant other isn’t.
• Dale Hansen makes you naseaus.  
• Being cool means you’re not really all that cool.
• It seems like if you weren’t drunk, you’d be more in control of life as you know it?
• If you’re married, your wife understands shit.
• Shadows only exist if you’re scared.
• Sex toys aren’t quite as cool as Ron Jeremy said they were.
• That previous joke didn’t get any laughs.

If you live on the Gulf Coast or the East Coast, you probably view a Hurricane as frightening. Most other people view them more on the amazing side of things.

Hurricane Storm

It’s hard to find many places in the world where you aren’t threatened by some sort of natural disaster. Here in middle America, we have tornado’s to deal with during the spring time. West coast has to deal with earthquakes, wildfires and big storms rolling in during the winter. I don’t think much is more frightening than a big hurricane headed your way.

Think of a tornado and how destructive it can be. An extremely large tornado can be up to a mile in diameter. Now think of a hurricane and the fact a small one is HUNDREDS of miles in diameter. In a bad spring full of storms in the midwest, the biggest killer is the floods that come with the storms. A hurricane is not only a massive flood producing storm, but it basically picks up the ocean and pushes it up into the coastal cities destroying most everything in it’s path. It’s almost like a slow tsunami pouring into the coast.

I think it proves that humans aren’t really in control of the Earth.

Eyewall

Yo Pingsta, Ryze up. I Tagged a Consumating Friendster. Hi5 Zude! imeem, she did Yelp as I LinkedIn to her Facebook. But you Knol what? That Twitter pulled a Stickam in MySpace and I became Fubar. I had to either Flickr Orkut out and Biip her Badoo.

Sincerely,
Jaiku Ning Vox

More than likely, you’ve seen someone wearing a shirt, hat or something that says “I (heart) NYC”.  I used to roll my eyes thinking most people wear it because everyone else does, plus I’m a huge Dallas Cowboys fan and hate the Giants.  It wasn’t until a few years ago when I took my first trip to NYC with a few friends for a long weekend that I realized the greatness of the city that never sleeps.  Although I would still never wear one of those shirts, I think it’s safe to say that I love NYC.  WTF did I just say?

In all seriousness, if you have never visited The Big Apple and you are one that likes to try new places, do yourself a favor and put it in your schedule.  There is no way you could do everything in a long weekend trip, but in the past 4-5 years I’ve gone, I think I might have only done a few ‘tourist-type’ activities.  The city is so alive and non-stop it’s like you’re in a complete different country.  The scenery is so great:

You can see more great NYC photos over at Flickr.  It is amazing to me, coming from Dallas, TX where everything is flat and spread out, how the city is so big but in such a small area.  The mass transit is so different than where I live and the fact you don’t need a car is mind blowing.

A few of my favorite things from NYC would be:

• Curbside Gyro’s
• Hidden neighborhood bars
• Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge

A few things that aren’t so great:

• Extremely expensive
• Too many people

I’ve been making the trip around October the past 4 years with some friends.  We usually make it happen on the tail end of one of our trade shows for work, which we have one lined up for this coming October and I can’t wait.  NYC absolutely kicks ass!

If you are reading this page, you more than likely have purchased a copy of Tunebite and you’re running into a few issues or questions that you can’t seem to find the answers to. Hopefully I can answer some of the questions you have because I had to learn the hard way.

I recently bought the Radiohead “From the Basement” video album. It is 10 videos of Radiohead performing songs from their recent release, “In Rainbows”. If you are a Radiohead fan, do yourself a favor and look into the music and their videos. Anyhow, back to the point of this post, Tunebite.

The reason I bought Tunebite is because I wanted to take these iTunes videos, remove the DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection, then burn the videos to a playable DVD for use in my DVD player hooked up to my TV. iTunes likes to throw this DRM protection on all music and video files you buy from them to thwart any type of theft. Lucky for us, Tunebite is the program we need to make the media we buy a bit more user friendly .

Now you have a copy of Tunebite and you are ready to rip the DRM off. There are a few things I came across that I was unable to find any type of support on, so I figured I’d post my ‘trial by fire’ experience and hopefully it will help a few people.

• If burning videos, Tunebite will play the video inside the iTunes video player. In my situation, it placed the video in the top left hand corner of my screen and began recording. What I did not know was if you move anything over the top of the video which is being burned, whatever appears on top of the video will also appear in the ripped copy that you are creating. See, it basically records a specific region of your video display so if you put an open window or your mouse cursor in the region where it is recording, that will become part of your recording. My suggestion would be to start the ripping and leave your computer alone. Once it’s done, do what you need to do, but during the recording, go in the other room and leave your computer alone.
• Another thing that took me 2 days of back to back to back to back attempts of recording was the syncing of audio to video during recording. No matter what combination of settings I tried in Tunebite, the audio and video were not syncronizing properly. Usually the voice was a split second behind the video and it made me think the ripped copy was going to be way off.

  Quite the contrary. I finally decided to let the recording finish to see what it looked like once it was completed. Much to my surprise, even though while recording the video / audio was way off, the final ripped copy was spot on. It was at that time that I realized I don’t need to pay attention to what I’m seeing and hearing, I just need to let it finish and see how the ripped copy turns out. Probably the best bet is to start the ripping/recording, turn the volume all the way down or mute it and then walk away until it is finished. Once finished, check the file to make sure it is exactly what you needed.

• What audio and video setting should I use? There are so many different options on each audio and video, I have no idea which one to pick. Look at it this way, the higher selection you pick of each option, the better the quality should be.

  Now I must let you know the higher quality doesn’t really mean a hill of beans. If your computer is remotely slow, then the high quality isn’t really all that effective so consider doing the bare minimum. It speeds the process up and produces a web friendly file but still enough quality to play on a DVD or CD.

  In my situation, I used the audio setting of MP3 (128 kbps) and the video setting of MPEG4 (VBR Q98). The video and audio quality was perfect to play on my DVD player and stretch out to the size of my tv without distorting the picture or audio.

These 3 things were pretty important while I was trying to learn the software. I visited their support section but was unable to locate the answers I needed. Hopefully this post will help at least a few people to make it worth the time spent to type it all out.

If you have other questions or just want to let us know it helped, let me know below.