My name is Jeff Gordon and I build websites. When I'm not working, you can probably find me daydreaming about things like space ships or dinosaurs. Maybe a dinosaur flying a space ship. That's awesome.
It's been a fun ride, guys. I've been thinking about this for a while and I finally think it's time I throw in the towel. I'm not cut out to do this anymore, in fact, I'm not even interested in doing this anymore. I've told my boss that I'm quitting. It's not about the money. I've just lost all desire to continue down this path. I told Billie that I have to leave, and after a few hours of discussion, she agreed.
I'm going to be selling most of what I own. My car, my electronics, CDs and DVDs, and I am just going to take off. Everything else can stay here. I haven't decided exactly where I am going yet, but it's not important. Somewhere overseas, for sure, though. I'll buy a plane ticket to France, maybe. Then take a train to Italy. Then hitchhike to a small town or village and start a new life. Get lost, forever.
I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people that will scoff at this idea, but it doesn't matter. I know it's going to be hard, but what isn't? I know I'll still need to work somewhere, but I don't need to earn a lot. Just as long as I can make enough to eat, and find a place to sleep, I'll be happy.
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
- Carl Sagan
When I got my new cellphone a few months ago, I had to manually add all of my old contacts into the new phonebook. As you can imagine, there were several that got lost or forgotten in the process. Skip ahead to just a couple weeks ago, I received a seemingly random text message from a number I didn't recognize. I was secretly wishing it was a stranger who accidentally sent a message to the wrong number, but after asking around, I found out it was actually from somebody I knew whose contact information got lost during the transition to my new phone.
This gave me the idea of sending text messages to random local numbers, asking them questions when I am having trouble making up my mind. Much more fun than asking somebody you know. So I set about making up five random local numbers, and sent them all the same message: "What should I have for supper tonight?".
I got two responses:
Me: What should I have for supper tonight?
Them: Who is this?
Me: Just wanna know what I should eat
Them: Well I think you cant go wrong with lasagna
Me: What should I have for supper tonight?
Them: Beans. Green beans.
Me: Thanks.
Two out of five ain't bad for a first try. I saved both numbers in my phonebook as "The Oracle".
People always tell me that I am too indifferent. Not anymore.
If you found this via Twitter or Facebook, it's because I've got my blog automatically publishing new articles on Twitter now. The Twitter application on Facebook also automatically sets my Facebook status to whatever I "tweet". Amazing. Now I can shamelessly plug my own website in a much more trendy fashion.
So if you've subscribed to my website's news feed RSS (different than the regular blog RSS), then be ready for some insane redundancy.
Jan 17, 2010 Update: I've changed my blog around and this link no longer works.
Billie and I had a really bad experience with The Brick recently. I wrote the regional VP of The Brick about it a few days ago, but I haven't received a response. Instead of retyping everything, I'll just copy portions of the original message I sent. Sorry for the wall of text:
I bought a 5-piece dinette set from The Brick and had it delivered to my home on March 10th. Upon unpacking, I noticed two of the chairs had significant damage to their backs, so I called the store and they had two replacement chairs delivered to me later in the week. I understand things like this happen from time to time, so it didn't bother me too much.
When I unpacked the replacement chairs, I assembled them both and noticed one of them had a leg that was about half an inch shorter than the others. As a result, you can imagine the chair was unreasonably wobbly. For a second time, I called the store and arranged to have another replacement chair delivered to me.
The replacement chair arrived a couple days later and I unpacked it. Immediately, I noticed the base of the chair was completely cracked. Not just a little fracture, the wood was broken in half. Frustrated now, I called the store a third time to have yet another replacement chair sent to me. This time, I was told that I had to wait significantly longer to receive a replacement, so I decided to drive to the warehouse myself to pick up the replacement. I explained to them that this was the 4th chair that I was returning, and I requested that the chair be assembled at the warehouse by somebody in the staff. I wasn't about to drive home with yet another broken or faulty chair. The man I spoke with (whom I forget the name of) insisted that nobody at the warehouse was able to assemble the chair for me. I politely explained the story to him, how this was the 4th chair I was returning, how it was an incredibly frustrating experience, but he still refused to help. I get it, policy is policy, right? The warehouse staff isn't supposed to assemble furniture, not even a single measly chair, so I was out of luck. Maybe they just didn't have a screwdriver hanging around. Defeated, I looked over the chair the best I could, didn't notice any obvious damage, and drove home with it in my back seat.
I neatly laid out the individual parts of the chair on the floor. Everything seemed to be there. I had all the proper screws, nuts and bolts. Time to assemble. Wait... What's this? Why won't this leg fit properly to the base? OH! It's because the warehouse staff gave me TWO LEFT LEGS.
Again, I called The Brick and explained the situation to them. This time I had them deliver a chair to the store and had them unpack and assemble it for me. A couple days later I was able to go to the store and pick it up.
I had to return five chairs. Five chairs from a dinette set that comes with four. That is worse than Ikea, the company that is known for selling the most mass produced cheap furniture. Something is seriously wrong there, and during the entire experience, I never heard a single "we're sorry" from anybody at the Brick. Even the regional VP who I wrote personally hasn't been able to get back to me.
If you're in the market for new furniture in the future, don't buy from The Brick.
