NateSees(.com)

I’ve never been good about consistently backing up my hard drive. Hence, I have lost a fair amount of files due to crashes. Now that I work at home on my own equipment, I’ve been searching for a reliable backup solution. My first thought was to get a massive external hard drive, specifically a gigabit network attached drive that I could plug into my wireless router and access it from multiple computers. But those proved to be pretty expensive, and external hard drives (in my experience) have proved to be less reliable than internal drives.

I’m really glad I never bought anything because I recently purchased JungleDisk, a utility powered by Amazon S3. First of all, S3 is a fairly new service for storing and serving static content. JungleDisk is a simple tool that lets you access your S3 bucket from your local file system, and shows up as a network drive on your computer. Since all the files are stored on S3, the reliability factor is a googilian times better than an external hard drive. Cost is another plus. Jungle disk costs $20, one time. They also offer an upgraded service for $1/month with some added functionality. S3 has it’s own separate pricing, based on file usage and bandwidth, but it’s dirt cheap, too. I think my bill last month was like $0.44.

So, even if I ended up spending upwards of $3/month, it would still take years to equal the amount I would pay upfront for an external hard drive…which would probably fail in a couple years anyway.

I just found a letter from a few years back that I wrote to Capital One. Back when I was in college, they kept sending me notices of pre-approval for a credit card. However, when I tried to accept the pre-approval, they denied me. Here was my retort, dated April 6, 2000.

Dear Ms. Kauffman:

I recently received a denial of request for credit privileges from Capital One.  Please note the reference number: **********202.  The primary reason for your decision was stated as follows:

YOU WERE NOT THE PERSON SOLICITED

The person solicited (and who was pre-approved for credit) was one Nate Sees.  I assumed this was meant for me: Nathan Sees.  Nate is the name I am referred to by my friends and family; a nickname, if you will.  On the application that I sent in, there was a word of instruction that gave orders to correct any wrong information with regards to my name and address.  This I did to the best of my ability.  I circled “Nate” and wrote “Nathan” on the application because that is the name printed on my driver’s license.  I am curious as to why I (Nathan) was not considered the same person as Nate.  If you believe there is someone other than myself named Nate Sees who lives at the same address as me and also shares my driver’s license and social security numbers, then I suppose you have proper grounds to deny me (Nathan) credit.  However, if I may attempt to persuade you differently, let it be known that there is no Nate Sees, other than myself, who resides at 982 E. Quincy, let alone in the great state of California, as far as I know.  If you still disagree, I would challenge you to search for him and let me know when you find him because I have been receiving his mail, phone calls, and e-mails for the past 21 years.

I do not mean to sound facetious or rude, but this is the second time I have been denied credit by your company for the exact same reason.  If I have not persuaded you that I am Nate Sees (the person you pre-approved for credit,) then I will ask you to please stop sending pre-approved credit notices to Nate Sees, because apparently he does not live here.

With utter sincerity,

Nathan “Nate” Sees

Now that i look back on it, I think I was lying about the utterness of my sincerity. Please forgive me, Ms. Kauffman.

Over the years, we’ve managed to cause quite a few DVD and CD players to stop working. Some of this has probably been due to the fact that we’ve only purchased cheap inexpensive equipment. Based on this assumption, we splurged last spring and bought a Bose 3-2-1 GS home theater system. We really liked the fact that it only had 2 speakers apart from the subwoofer, and the sound it produced was amazing. We were also able to save $100 on it by purchasing a refurbished unit from a Bose outlet. We were stoked.

Unfortunately, after only 6 months of use, the DVD player started to intermittently freeze. We went through the owners manual and followed the troubleshooting instructions, but availed not. So I called the outlet that we purchased the system from and they said that it was still under the 1-year warranty, and that they would swap it straight up for another unit. Best of all, I only had to bring in the receiver, not the entire system. The only drawback now was to make the 6 hour trek to the store. Fortunately, it happened to be on the way to Santa Barbara, where I had already planned on traveling to.

I ended up spending about 10 minutes in the store and walked out with a new receiver that was covered under a new warranty for another year. Even though it was a bummer that we had problems at all, Bose definitely gave us good service to fix the problem.

I’ve never been that savvy with motorized vehicles and have therefore never been a fanatic of motorcycles, 4×4s, rocket ships, and the like. However, I was ecstatic when my wife bought me a stand-up scooter for father’s day last year. It was powered by a 49cc 2-stroke motor, and looked like a fun toy to expand my knowledge into mechanical things, as well as boost my ever-growing level of coolness.

The manufacturer claimed that the scooter would come 99% assembled which was encouraging. However, when I first opened the box, I realized that it was 75% assembled, at best. Still hopeful, I continued with the assembly, expecting this to be the biggest hiccup in my total scooter experience. I was wrong.

The third day I owned the thing, I managed to break the casing on the pull start, rendering it unstartable (if that’s a word). I quickly emailed the company and they sent me a new part. When the new part did (finally) come, installed it and proceeded to break it on the ninth or tenth pull. (Note to those who have never seen me in person: I’m 6′1″, 150 lbs. and I’ve never won any weight-lifting competitions.) I emailed the company again and was shocked to hear their response…they said that the pull starts (among other things) are not covered under warranty, and proceeded to state that the pull starts are “expected to break” after continued use. I was not happy to read this and replied to the customer service rep as tactfully as I could muster. They agreed to send me one more pull start for free, but explained that I would have to start purchasing the parts in the future. The pull starts sell for about $22. I was breaking one every week.I did the math and realized that this thing was going to cost me over $1100 a year just in pull starts to keep my scooter running.

I was able to start the scooter using a power drill, which fixed the aforementioned problem, but more continued to go wrong. Even with the drill, it was difficult to get the thing started. After scouring the owners manual and the entire Internet, I found an inconsistency in the recommended fuel mix ratio. The owners manual stated multiple times that the fuel ratio should be 50:1, and that the warranty would be void if a different mix were ever used. However, on the manufacturer’s tech support page for the XG-499, they suggest mixing the fuel as rich as 25:1 or as lean as 40:1 based on desired performance. In one of my emails to the manufacturer, I asked about this. They simply reiterated what was posted on their website and mentioned nothing about it being incorrect in the owners manual.

Sometime in the midst of everything else, the clutch went out. (The manufacturer did replaced for free). And the last time I rode the scooter, I got about 50 feet from my driveway when the motor unexpectedly died and i slowly coasted to a stop. At that point I walked it back to my house, parked it and never touched it again until I gave it away. All of these problems happened within about 6 weeks.

In conclusion, do not ever waste your money on this brand of scooters. You will probably find more pleasure in flushing $300 down the toilet. (But only flush bills…coins cause septic backup.)

My son, going on 2 years old, has continued to amass a large booty of toys in his relatively short life so far. Recently, his vocabulary has been growing even faster than his collection of playthings; some of which is helped by teaching him the names of some of his toys. However, one of his stuff animals (herein known as Buttercrunch) recently caused a debate between my wife and I.

May I first present Exhibit A (downloaded from puffins.com):

Cute? Sure, we both agreed to that. The issue that caused our disagreement may be best described in an email I sent to Russ Berrie and Company Inc., the manufacturer of Buttercrunch:

Hi,
My wife and I were recently in debate over the species of the plush toy at hand. “Buttercrunch” is one of our son’s most beloved toys, but we have differing opinions as to what Buttercrunch really is. My wife insists that it is a giraffe, but from my experience and knowledge of wildlife, I am quite sure that one of the defining features of the giraffe is its extra long neck, which Buttercrunch lacks. Therefore, due to the normal-sized neck of the plush toy, along with its name–”Buttercrunch” (butter->reference to dairy products coming from bovine-like animals)–I am under the strong impression that Buttercrunch is a cow. This has become an object of much debate, and I would very much appreciate clarification from the creators of Buttercrunch. If it is truly a cow, I believe that my wife will only believe it if she is convinced by your company. If Buttercrunch is a giraffe, I would very much like to know why its neck is so short…could it be a defective product? If Buttercrunch is neither a giraffe or cow, I would also appreciate further description as to what it truly is. Thank you so much for your help.

Fairly impressed with my own interogation skills, I anxiously anticipated a witty response from a Russ representative. Not a day later, I received this reply:

The item you are inquiring about is a giraffe. A longer neck could pose a choking hazard.

Period. No “thanks for inquiring”, “you and your wife need counceling”, not even a “Sincerely, So-and-so”. Evenmore, that has got to be the most ridiculous excuse for a short-necked giraffe. I tried with all the brainpower I could muster to figure out how a child could manage to choke on a long-necked Buttercrunch.

Needless to say, I still refer to Buttercrunch as a cow.