JasonDSlade.com

According to recent research released by the Consumer Electronics Association, consumer electronics gift spending will reach a record high. This is a bold prediction because of the recent decline in overall gift spending. Of course consumer electronics are once again touted as the hot item to give and receive. Consumers are excpected to spend around 750$ on holiday gifts and will $232 on an electronics gift. 50% will buy an electronics gift for their children, 40% will buy an electronics gift for their spouse/significant other, and 29% will buy an electronic for themselves. But enough talk about dollars and percents. I know you wanted to know what electronics are on everyone’s wish list this year. Read more…

My job consists of product and inventory support. We recently had a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ come into our department that did not power up at all. Nothing at all came on. That means, no lights, no fans, no hard drives spinning up, and definitely no LCD panel. We figured out that the NAS had a pretty good warranty. It was a 5 year warranty. Sounds pretty good to me. So we registered the NAS with Netgear support, and opened a troubleshoot ticket.

The service technician was prompt in replying to me, but it was quite unoriginal email. I explained to him exactly what I originally wrote in the original ticket. The technician then authorized an RMA placement, and told me to call a certain phone number in order to complete the RMA processing.

I called the number. Once on the phone with another technician, I verified who I was, and then Netgear tried to get me to pay for the shipping. I was completely shocked. Here I was trying to get a RMA for a defective unit, and he is telling me I have to pay $29.99 for shipping and handling.  I was ticked off, and said “Wait, this is a defective unit and still under warranty, and you want me to pay for shipping and handling?” Without hesitation, the technician on the line said, “Oh, your device is under warranty. We will wave your shipping and handling cost.”

This was crazy. The technician and Netgear were trying to recuperate their losses for a defective unit, by making unsuspecting consumers pay for something that they shouldn’t. Needless to say, they still got away with one, because I never received a prepaid shipping label for the RMA. That of course, was paid on our dime. So in the end Netgear only pays for one shipping cost, and that is to me. Let this be a lesson to you all. Fight for what you want, especially when it is right, and don’t settle once you have a win. Keep making things right.

Is it just me or does the majority of sci-fi movies out there have the strangest tradition of an alien race annihilating the human race. Not only that, but these aliens basically succeed in defeating the humans. At the last moment these people, who normally would be defeated and have no chance of survival somehow succeed. The number one reason that I see in these sci-fi films is the redeemable quality reason. This one reason I am completely sick of. Read more…

One powerful quote that keeps me going is from Thomas Jefferson on The Necessity of Taking Up Arms 1775:

“…we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.” Read more…