The Suckage that is Sprint PCS^TM

• Sprint PCS sucks in Austin (click here)
• Sprint PCS sucks in Boston (click here)
• Sprint PCS sucks in Denver (click here)

Remnants of Work^TM

• I spent some time working on stuff for my communications boss today, so hopefully he realizes I still work for him.
• As for EMS, we figured out that a bad router allowed the wrong database be updated. So all of the education and testing yesterday were done on the live server. Big ol' d'oh!
• Another feature that DEA wants to sell us is this system that will allow us to display current schedules on television monitors (think of airline departure and arrival monitors). I don't know why. We could do this ourselves with an old PC that can run a browser and some very simple SQL code. I made a proof concept this afternoon that displays a map of the campus, an aerial view of the campus (both color coded - it was fun colorizing the aerial photo kinda looks neat) and displays the next five upcoming events. My communications boss was asking how useful it would be and my tech. boss thought it was pretty neat, but he only saw the initial mockup with no design. Either way, I'm going to put it live on the one self-service kiosk we have near the reception desk. Every few minutes, interspersed with the ads, it will flash upcoming events on the screen. The next step would be to develop some kind of scrolling or cross-fading type system, something to display more events at one time.

More Commercials I Hate^TM

• There's a Mercedes commercial where a young guy and an middle-aged guy are looking through a window and the older guy says "first one?" and you think that they're in a hospital looking into a room of newborns. The young guy confirms and the old guy announces "This is my seventh." And then adds "For now." Ok, either (a) this guy is a really bad driver and keeps wrecking them... (b) he collects them (he must be rich... I can't identify with a guy that owns seven) or... (c) Mercedes are of poor quality and he has to keep trading them in because they keep breaking down... or (d) he likes to keep trading in for new cars (again... rich guys I can't identify with). In the end, the young guy is kissing and embracing his car. Oh, please.

The Other Side of the Coin^TM

I really like the two Kia commercials. There's one where they race against other SUV's. Funny. There's one where they hog-tie the accountant and stick him in a closet and priced the car under $20 grand. Really funny. And then there's one where a girl sort of travels through time. She passes through decades (Kia didn't even exist back then) and her puppy grows up and becomes a dog. She's got a different boyfriend in each decade and quick glimpses make you see how wrong they are. At the end, she runs out of gas and they intimate that the AAA guy might be the one. It would have only been better if the AAA guy had a dog in the cab of his tow truck.

Lastly...

• Ok, Dreamcatcher looks freaky. And rain overnight and tomorrow. Yay.