Person Who Allegedly was Plotting to Kill Saudi Prince Lives Close By in a Small Suburb

So the story on Manssor Arbabsiar came out yesterday.  He was one of the guys who was allegedly plotting to kill the Saudi Prince.

Here is the story to it.  Anyways, it came out that he lived in Round Rock, TX.  Now this is the same lace I live.  It is far from a small town.  It is a suburb of Austin of about 100,000 people.  Still, I do not think much of world espionage starting down in Round Rock, TX.

So, to put this in perspective, Manssor is allegedly working for Iran, which is like 7200 miles away.

He was supposedly trying to work with a drug cartel from Mexico.  Now that makes a little more sense for proximity.

From what I have read the plan was to kill the Saudi Prince in a public place near Washington D.C. and then potentially bomb the embassy there.

Round Rock seems like a long ways from these places, but I guess since there are direct flights from Austin to D.C. and New York, it makes travel easy.  Also, with all of the technology around now for communication, it makes it easy to hide and still communicate.

I do not know if this guy did anything or not, but I do find it scary that it is even plausible that something like this could be run out of Round Rock, TX.

Man Runs Over Mom on Ambulance Stretcher

Here is a bizarre incident that happened last night.  Supposedly a man and his mom got into a fight.  She was close to 70 and he was about 50.  She had non life-threatening injuries.  An ambulance arrived to take her away.  When she was on the stretcher, the son got into his car ran over her.  He killed her.  Luckily he did not take anybody else out.

Crazy story!

http://www.myfoxaustin.com/dpp/video/Police%3A-Man-Strikes-Mother-With-Car20110929-ktbcw#axzz1ZROeYvlm

USS New York and Other Carrier Groups

Here are some really cool pictures that a friend of mine sent me in a pdf.  They are of the USS new York and of some cool formations of carrier groups.  It looks really neat.  This is a ton of firepower in one place, for sure.

Have a Conversation with a Computer

Here is a link to have a little fun.  You can have a conversation with a bot.  It is actually pretty good.  Let me know how it goes with Cleverbot.

http://cleverbot.com/

Sprint Customer Service

In my opinion, customer service numbers are so ridiculously skewed because of the method of data collection used by companies these days.  I do not know how many times I call to get service to an item and the company ask if I will take a survey afterwards.  I almost always say no.  Even so, it seems that the representative that helps me feels that they need to explain to me that I may get a call for a survey to ask how my service was and they ask if they were able to fix my issue.  With some issues, it is apparent whether or not the problem has been resolved.  For instance, if I have cable and I do not see a picture.  I call the cable company and they get my picture restored.  I can then claim my issue is resolved, as long as this issue is not recurring where the picture continues to go out after a certain time period or something.

Now, here is my experience with Sprint!

I have been having issues with placing/receiving calls and internet sporadically for the last few weeks.  I called a couple of weeks ago and asked them to look into it.  they asked me to pull out my battery and restart my phone.  It fixed the issue.

That lasted for a day.  So, I was able to take out my battery and restart the phone every now and then to make it work when I needed to hoping Sprint would do something to fix an issue on their side if there was one.  All of the time I was doing this, i was collecting data of what I would see in order to help troubleshoot the issue.  Since this is how I fix software on my side and how we have fixed issues with other carriers, it seemed to make sense to me.  

So, after I could not take it anymore, I called Sprint back about 2 weeks later.  they walked me through the same steps as before and I had the same resolution.  Now, here is where the customer service part comes in.  they asked me, "Did we resolve your issue?"  I had to answer, "I don't know."  I mean the phone worked at that point, but that is not what I was trying to resolve.  I wanted it to continue working without it going out.  Since I did not answer that it did resolve my issue, this got me into a whole new queue at Sprint.

Now, they had people call me a couple of times a day to see if the issue was fixed.  They would call me and basically walk through the same steps as before.  then, they would ask me if they had resolved my issue.  I would have to answer the same thing.  "I don't know".  that would just result in me getting put back into the queue to get another callback that would walk me through the same steps.  

So, what finally set me off was when I called them because my phone acted a little different.  It still had the same symptoms, but I received a different error message.  I wanted to give them this new information.  I called in to see if they could help me.  The lady was nice and all, but when I asked her what she did, she said that she did something a little different and it would now work.  I wanted to get the difference so I would know what steps had been taken in order to avoid more issues and maybe to move on to better troubleshooting since they had wasted so much of my time.  She began to get a little upset that i was questioning her and what she did.  The, I could her manager whose name is Craig yelling saying that you fixed his issue.  his phone works.  you need to move on.  Don't waste anymore time on that call.  I asked her to put him on the phone.

I spoke to him for a few minutes.  He really did not want to speak to me.  He felt as though since I could use my phone my issue was resolved and I should move on.  Some not so kind words were exchanged.  I then spoke with a person for keeping customers.  Today, I am going in to get a new phone and I am reporting Craig to the main office.

Pictures of Bastrop Fire

One of my friends from work sent some pictures out of the fire in Bastrop.  They really do capture the enormity of the fire and how the devastation could be so great.  Many people in our area have been affected by fires recently, but this fire was just so large.  Here are the picture he sent.

Just to give you a perspective, here are a couple with the Austin skyline in shot.

Hopefully, we can get through these dry time will less devastation than we have seen and maybe even get a little rain so there is some relief.

A Song Reminding Me of My Wedding

I was browsing around YouTube and I saw a video that brought up such happy memories.  It was a picture montage of some shots from the San Marcos area to the song Alicia and I danced to.  Since we got married at Reunion Ranch which is out in the country, it really hit home.  I guess I picked a good song at the time because it still totally describes what I feel.  here is to another 90 years of marriage!

BTW, here is the video I found.

Jimmy Lafave - Never is a Moment

Rick Perry the Platypus

I guess I was a little bored and I really wanted to see what would happen if we put that hair of rick on Perry the Platypus.  This is what I came up with.  Hmm.  Is there a campaign poster to be made?

I think I like him with his hat better!

Ha!

Aggies to Leave Big 12

The Eyes of Texas and the rest of the nation seem to be looking down right now on what is going on with Texas A&M and the Big 12.  It seems that the Aggies have said goodbye already.  The last article I read is speculating about who will come into the Big 12 in place of the Aggies.  Personally, I think it is great that A&M is going to a new conference.  With A&M in the SEC, TCU in the Big East, and UT in the Bug 12, there is a possibility of having an all Texas national championship game now.  I know the odds are low, but they are much better than they were last year.  I am a Longhorn, but I am also a Texan.  How cool would it be to have Texas A&M playing UT for the National Championship in Cowboys Stadium.  I guess all wee need now is Jerry Jones to pick up a BCS game.  

HOOK'EM HORNS!

One of My Friends from 9/11

One of my friends in NYC did an article for Forbes.  It just reminds me how lucky I am to have friends like him. Sometimes Being an optimist is hard sometimes.  It is good having friends that share similar ideas to help keep  your spirits up even during trying times in our lives.  Here is the article.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0912/focus-9-11-survivor-hero-john-paul-devito-second-chance.html

First Movie Production for Kids

Mom and the kids decided to make their first movie yesterday.  They were having a good old time with the Mario characters, Perry the Platypus, and Angry Bird's characters.  they all came together for their first movie.  It kind of cracked me up with stuffed animals flying everywhere.  At least the dog didn't eat any of them.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3CCLkcgybc

First Week of School for the Boys

So, the first week of school is under the belt for the boys and they have made it without having too much of an issue.  Hopefully, the rest of the weeks will go as smoothly as this one did!  Mom took pictures of them on the first day.  

Set-In-Stone Mobile Detailing Does Not Honor Their Vouchers and LivingSocial.com Does Nothing About It

So about 2 months ago I bought my wife a voucher as a surprise for her just because a voucher to get her car detailed from LivingSocial.com for Set-In-Stone Mobile Detailing.  Once I received the voucher, I contacted them via email because that is how it said to do it in the voucher in order to schedule a time to have them come out and do the service.  They never contacted me back.  A notice went up on their site that they were taking some time to get back to customers due to the demand.  Another notice went up that they had a death in their family and that was delaying some responses.  After multiple email attempts through their form on their website over 2 months, I still heard nothing back.

During this time, I was speaking with LivingSocial.com.  They told me that i was not the only one not hearing back form them.  They said they would also try to contact them.  After months, they also did not hear back from them.

So, what I have learned form this is that Set-In-Stone is not a reputable company and LivingSocial.com does not back their product at all.  They hide behind the merchants and do not make things right when things go wrong.

If anybody else has had issues with these companies, maybe you have some advice.

USS New York

One of my friends sent me this presentation.  It is pretty cool.  it shows 3 carrier groups coming together and the new USS New York.  With all of the stuff going on right now in our country, sometimes it is hard to remain proud and remember where we really stand.  Others are catching up, but they still have a ways to go.  This just helps me remember that!

Maybe it is just a blip and we can recover our lead or maybe we have really begun to fall.  Only time will tell.  Hopefully, we can help our kids to have that fight in them to want "it" more than we do as a country now.

Can't Wait for Football Season

As I keep hearing news about the Longhorns, I am getting excited about the season coming up.  Granted, none of the news is good for Texas, but it still is signaling the sound of the start of the season.  Can the Longhorns find a receiver to throw the ball to?  Will they be able to run the ball this year?  Will they be able to make tackles like the ones they make on city streets and get arrested for?  Let's hope they can!

Now, here is the song I keep waiting to hear in person:

http://www.watchcat.net/Blog_Files/longhorns_fight.mp4