A warning to anyone using iTunes and Outlook.  iTunes 7.7 has a huge glitch built in where it's effectively deleting appointments in Outlook's calendar function.  Here's my most recent post on the Microsoft help forums (which, shockingly, are quite helpful!)

 

Hi again,

Tried this... downgraded to 7.5... and the appointments are still disappearing every time I sync.

It seems that I'm having the same problems as everyone else -- essentially if the appointment comes up on the iPhone with a reminder, or if Outlook gives me a reminder that I "dismiss," the appointment vanishes from the day/week/month views [in Outlook] the next time I sync [using iTunes] -- even now that I'm using 7.5.

Any other suggestions?  It's clearly an iTunes problem but I'm not sure how it would still be occurring after downgrading.

On a side note, it's kind of refreshing to see people downgrading Apple products for once instead of MS ones.

Thanks again!

Neal

REALLY??

The X-Files movie is coming out in less than two weeks?!?!

http://www.xfiles.com/

 

Sweet!!!!

 

I'm kind of excited to see Gillian Anderson again! :)  OMG I can't wait!

This is how I've spent my weekend....

 

Bell Canada

Office of the Manager

P.O. Box 920, Station A,

Toronto (Ontario)

M5W 1G5

Dear Madam/Sir,

I am writing to file a formal complaint about the service (or lack thereof) I've received recently on a technical issue with my phone line. I recognize this will probably fall on deaf ears but I'm writing in the hopes that something will be done to resolve the problem. I would also appreciate some form of compensation for my trouble, as I've now been without phone and Internet service for a number of days, not only causing inconvenience but causing me to incur significant costs by using my cell phone to make all my phone calls, including repeated calls to 310-BELL. I apologize for the formality of writing a letter, but your online response forms are insufficient for me to provide an appropriate level of detail.

I arrived home on Thursday July 10th to discover that my phone line had a significant amount of static noise on it, which was consistent on a few calls I attempted to make. I called 310-BELL and spoke to a couple of service people (both of whom were understandably having difficulty hearing me) and I was told a technician could be here on Friday the 11th, and I was given three time options, all of which were between 4 and 6 hours long. I begrudgingly accepted, and agreed to give up the better part of my Friday night to sit here waiting for a technician from 5-9 PM.

Friday morning I woke up to find that my phone line was completely dead, and my Sympatico internet connection was intermittent at best. Given that the technician was coming later in the day, I put up with it, and waited. I work from home so this made my work day incredibly difficult, given that I use the Internet and e-mail significantly. The technician finally arrived around 8:20 PM, and spent the next hour between the inside of my unit (which, he informed me, was not the location of the problem), the outside of the building I'm in, and the phone box on the corner. The furthest he was able to get the line was to the point where the line was ringing as if I was making an outgoing call, though there was still heavy static on the line. It had gotten dark and he was no longer able to perform any work outside of the building (which is supposedly where the problem is), so he told me he would have to come back, or send someone else back, the next day (Saturday the 12th). I agreed as I recognized it was unsafe and unproductive for him to continue to work outside in the dark. I asked if he could give me a specific time and he agreed, saying that someone would be back at 2PM.

By 3PM on Saturday, no one had arrived, so I called 310-BELL on my cell phone. The first service person I spoke to, after rather dumbly repeating back to me the problem I had called about two days earlier, informed me that the service ticket had been closed with a note that no one was home for the technician to enter the unit. I told her that was not true, and explained the situation, at which point she insisted her system showed that the work had been completed. Both she and the supervisor I spoke to (see below) implied that I was lying to them about the service call, which is rather offensive to me. She offered to send another technician the next day, Sunday the 13th, to fix the problem, and offered me an 8-12 morning appointment or a 12-6 afternoon appointment. Given that at this point, I'd already wasted more than 6 hours of my time waiting for technicians who either didn't arrive or were unable to do anything, and that I had plans to be out of the house from 10-3:30, I asked if anything more specific could be given - or if a technician could be diverted to take care of things immediately. She refused repeatedly and I asked to speak to her supervisor.

Her supervisor is the only employee whose employee number I thought to write down, XXXXXXX. He got me no further. He accepted responsibility on behalf of Bell that significant errors had been made and recognized that many hours of my time had been wasted. His only solution, however, was to waste more of my time by offering me a 12-6 appointment. I repeatedly asked for a specific time, because quite frankly at this point I felt I deserved an improved level of customer service to resolve the numerous problems I have just described. He refused, suggesting only that he could make a note requesting that they come around a specific time, but that he could not commit to anything. The only financial compensation he could offer was to provide a reimbursement of the cost of the services proportionate to the number of days they were not available. Having no other choice, and rather desperately wanting to be able to use the Internet and my phone line again, I accepted an 8-12 appointment, specifically requesting that the technician be advised of a 10AM preference so as not to wake the other residents of my building with the need to access their backyard, and cancelled what was left of my weekend plans. I provided my cell phone # for a third time but instructed him that, since I live in a basement apartment, it would be easier to ring the doorbell (which the previous technician didn't think to do) as I might not have a signal.

Apparently, half an hour on the phone was not enough for any information I provided to your operators to be passed on to the technician who was assigned. Today (Sunday the 13th), I woke up at 8 am to my cell phone ringing and a technician asking where I was located. After explaining to him, he eventually arrived. When he did he informed me that he hadn't been told by anyone what the problem was, so I had to explain to him the whole story. To give credit where it is due, this technician (**, Technician ID XXXXXX) was incredibly friendly and helpful -- I really appreciated that he took the time to figure out and resolve the problem, and he was very professional, courteous, and prompt. He had the issue resolved within half an hour, after discovering that the previous technician had not only taken a number of shortcuts with the problem, but had likely caused part of the problem. Thankfully, I now have a working phone and internet connection.

I recently switched to Bell after over two years with Rogers because of the terrible, terrible customer service that Rogers provided me. But for all the awful things that Rogers did, including crossing my phone line with someone else's (which to this day I understand to have been Bell's fault, for that matter), charging me for services I never requested or received, failing to live up to product warranties, consistently mis-applying discounts and bundles, incessantly marketing services to me which I was already subscribed to, practically threatening to cut off my service for not converting my home phone line to their new digital service, and ultimately even refusing to accept the fact that I was cancelling my services with them -- they never provided me with service as awful as this. I switched back to Bell because all my previous experiences with your company had been, for the most part, quite positive. I'm now second-guessing that decision. I will be very carefully analyzing my usage of Bell's services over the next few months to determine which can be reduced or eliminated, because frankly, I am appalled at the service I've received and don't ever want to have to go through this again. I shudder at the thought, but I may even go back to Rogers if it's financially feasible - at least they're willing to correct the thousands of errors they make when they are discovered, which the numerous Bell employees I spoke to seem to have been incapable of.

From an unhappy customer,

Neal Jennings

 

I spent a long time this evening just walking.  I walked all the way from Dundas W and Bloor (at Dundas W Station) to home... I don't know what's wrong, why I feel like something's wrong in the first place, or what's going on... I'm enjoying these walks, it's nice to breathe (relatively) fresh air, see interesting neighbourhoods, and have time to myself.  I've been so incredibly negative lately in everything I've been saying or doing - it's depressing me, it's alienating my friends, and downright unhealthy.  Who knows what will happen... I feel like one time I'll turn a corner somewhere and it will all become clear. Things will make sense again...

I've been hearing this word a lot lately, it seems to be something a lot of people are engaging in lately, and something I really should inflict upon myself.

[From Dictionary.com]

mor·a·to·ri·um   /ˌmɔrəˈtɔriəm, -ˈtoʊr-, ˌmɒr-/  [mawr-uh-tawr-ee-uhm, -tohr-, mor-]

–noun, plural -to·ri·a  /-ˈtɔriə, -ˈtoʊr-/ [-tawr-ee-uh, -tohr-] -to·ri·ums.

1.	a suspension of activity: a moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons.

2.	a legally authorized period to delay payment of money due or the performance of some other legal obligation, as in an emergency.

3.	an authorized period of delay or waiting.

 

On a quasi-related note, the strangest thing happened to me today.  I was watching my tape of last night's episode of Degrassi.  The episode had a blackout theme -- the electricity kept going out.  I'm not sure if they intentionally stole this from an episode of the L-Word earlier this season or if it was just coincidence... anyway, in one scene where the electricity had just gone out -- the breaker blew on the living room circuit and I was left sitting in the dark staring at a blank TV.  I just sat there stunned for a minute, thinking it was an actual blackout, and went "weird..."  I discovered afterwards it was just the breaker, but still... weird!!