Verizon | lynette {radio}

SxSW Day 1 – A Whole Lot of Nothing

March 12, 2011 by Lynette ·

My very first day of South by Southwest started with a crepe and cappachino for breakfast. FAB! No breakfast tacos for me, I’m sticking with crepes!

Sadly, I only made it to one session today – Greg Verdino’s microMARKETING – and I got there late. For the record I think he’s a really smart guy and great storyteller, but I think SxSW is a tough place to be a speaker or attend a session to listen. I started walking to find the room 20 minutes early and still was late – this conference is big and all the sessions aren’t even in one building! The WiFi seems to be holding up, but I’m either snobby or paranoid – I bring my own mobile 4G hotspot on Sprint. Between the AT&T and Verizon phones and iPads, I at least keep a strong connection.

I am actively trying not to keep my head down staring at a phone or tablet while out and about, but see the majority of people sitting by themselves head down in conversation on their phone. Sad. Some people I walked by all day and they did nothing but clack away on iPads. Listen, I know for the most part ‘we’ all slave away on keyboards and computers, but it is possible to unplug and join the human race for a few days! (I am writing up my posts the ‘morning after’ in our hotel room – because I can’t sleep and get up way too early!)

Dave and I attemped a late lunch, and it took an hour and fourty-five minutes to get our meal (Champions across from the Austin Convention Center stinks!) so that’s why I missed all other sessions. We really only stayed in the main SxSW conference building, tomorrow we will venture out some more to venues and day events around the center. Of course we needed to hit the Screenburn tradefloor (gaming) and found some really cool social and interactive games and ideas. I hope to spend some time really hitting each booth and talking to the vendors.

As far as getting around, my feet held up well until after dinner. My brand new pair of TOMS shoes have a hole in them, I’m pretty ticked about that, but they are really comfortable. Our hotel is in the northern-most area of SxSW hotels so we drive in and park, but walk everyplace from there. Everything that I read before coming said dress comfortable, but my version of comfort looks sloppy. Maybe I’m just older than a good part of the attendees (the women anyway…) but my sense of fashion is lacking. The night time events seem to have the ladies dressed up, but in I walk looking like a bum. Oh well…

After conference closing time we wound up at the #140conf / TextPLUS party. I lasted 15 minutes. I just can’t do it. Loud, crowded, impossible to get a drink. Everyone thinks they have the next ‘killer app’ worthy of $10m in funding (my opinion on that later). No one *listens* because that would mean they need to *stop talking*. Not the party organizers fault, I get that, they mean well and provide exactly what a lot of folks want in a party. This is what I feared coming here. We haven’t met anyone at the conference, so there are no ‘smaller’ gatherings to attend. A handfull of people that I know don’t appear to want to meet up – I know a blowoff when I hear one – so Dave and I are left with a big fat zero in social options.

We ditched the big party scene and met a contact of Dave’s for drinks. Even though I’m not a developer myself, I like to listen to them talk – partly because Dave is in his element and partly because Isabella is from Quebec and has the most amazing accent. If SxSW were full of people like her and her team this conference would be amazing.

Wandering around 6th Avenue and seeing all the bars and music was fun. Loud and crowded, but fun to sightsee. We wound up at what looked to be a local crawfish haunt The Boiling Pot. Whoa was it good! The hostess was a lot of fun and the entire staff was friendly. Me… Well I had to get over my issues of touching my food while trying to eat it and the fact it still was looking at me. I knew that eating a bucket of shrimp and crawfish and a crab (WHOLE) was going to be difficult – not physically, but it really creeps me out. Try new things, right? Well I survived! If this trip is going to be a bust professionally and socially, I might as well strech out of my comfort zone and try new things, especially anything ‘local.’

Day 2 of South by Southwest will hopefully bring more connections and sessions. Fingers crossed we meet some interesting people to have a few drinks and great conversations with tonight.

Saw :

Greg Verdino
Brad P. From NJ (title of this post inspired by Brad)
David Spinks
Dave from Edelman
Jon Radian 6
@Ohdoctah
@Thatdrew
Jeff Pulver
Isabella / Quebec
Jared Bienz

Filed Under: conferences, SxSW Tagged With: ATT, Brad P, David Spinks, Greg Verdino, Jeff Pulver, OhDoctah, Radian6, Sprint, SxSW, SxSWi, ThatDrew, TOMS shoes, verizon

Verizon Sucks, Part Deux

May 29, 2008 by Lynette ·

Our phones work. That’s a plus. What still sucks is 1) they never brought me my groceries and 2) I waited around all day for them just to get a phone call to say I didn’t need to be home. After the fiasco of waiting around and having Verizon tell me they came by my house when they didn’t, I was sure I’d get a visit from the neighborhood plumber-crack in a cherry-picker guy bright and early. Nope. All I got was a phone call – I hesitated to answer it thinking it was still for the crossed phone number – telling me my line was fixed. And just like that the tech wanted to hang up on me! Whoa spanky, what number did you call because the lines were crossed. He confirmed that it was my home number and tried to hang up on me again. Uh. NO. What about me waiting home for him to come fix my line? No ma’am (SHIT I hate it when old guys call me that!), we fixed the problem down the road at the switch box (they still use those?) or at the central office. He didn’t even know – which means he didn’t even do any work, a computer button-pusher someplace did.

Ok…I ask if my husband’s business line fixed? According to him, that wasn’t on his work order (yes it was), but if he’s not too busy he can get back to me in 48-72 hours and give me a status. All I could envision is kicking him in the teeth. Not very lady- or mommy-like I agree, but the guy was an ass. When I asked about my husband’s ‘business’ line he gave me a snarky answer that it wasn’t a business line (technically no it’s not, it’s just another ‘residential’ line) but a home office line. “Well, then, now, it’s not a BUSINESS line, is it?” in a horrifically condescending tone. My thoughts race to buying the most expensive ‘Sex In The City‘ Manolo Blahnik heels and wedging them right back to his molars. He hangs up on me.

A few minutes later I hear the office line ring. Then my house line rings again. He tells me the other line is fixed, you are very welcome. Then he hangs up on me, again.

For more reading on Verizon and how their customers love them, be sure to check out The Consumerist. They *love* Verizon over there. Riiiight.

Note to Verizon: Get a clue. Comcast helps their customers. Maybe you should take a lesson.

[tags]Verizon[/tags]

Filed Under: rant Tagged With: verizon

Call me…or not…

May 19, 2008 by Lynette ·

Why do companies lie? Flat-out in-your-face serve you bullshit? So here I am on a Monday morning, stuck in the house with the baby, missing a coffee date I had with some friends in the area. Oh? Car broke down you ask? Baby sick you ask? NO. The people that work in the customer support department at Verizon are habitual liars that apparently don’t care if their employees lie to them, and in turn lie to their customers.

Our house phone and my husband’s business line have been non-functional FOR OVER A FREAKING WEEK. How is that acceptable? The best part is, last week, after waiting over four days to get a service repair appointment, I was required to stay in the house from 8am to 8pm and wait for them to show up. Honey, if I had a meeting with a customer and told them I’d show up sometime in a 12 hour window, the client would say ‘kiss off’ and get someone else to do the job. Plus, the technician didn’t even show up! When my husband called them on this, they claimed they were by and tested the line at 4:20pm and it checked out fine. Really? I was in my driveway at that time making chalk drawings with my daughter. I have the digital photos with time/date stamps to prove it. I would have noticed if a truck pulled up and someone walked across my lawn.

You say the phone is working? Then why isn’t it? In fact, last night at 11:30pm our phone started ringing – for someone else’s phone number. My husband got to listen in on a conversation between some guy calling his wife from a business trip. No, he didn’t stalk them, in fact it turned into a ménage à trois of phone company bashing. Not nearly as sexy a situation as I’d always hoped it would be.

Why don’t we dump Verizon and go 100% with our Vonage lines? Well, we have one item in our house that must run from a POTS phone line. I am doing research today to see if there are other solutions. What really got me all worked up was when I realized that I’m home alone with two kids during the day and have spotty cell phone service (living semi-rural does have some drawbacks). What if something happened? Besides, no one has been able to reach us in over a week – including the parents of the birthday boy yesterday that had to move up the party because of rain. My daughter would have been heartbroken if she missed the party.

So to Verizon I say, you SUCK. Just because your technician was too lazy to actually show up at a customers house and say “customer not home” does not give you the right to lie – and infer to my husband I wasn’t home when I said I was. I plan to spread this post far and wide, maybe some Google search will place this in your queue in 10 years when you finally get up to date and look for things like this. You SUCK.

And while you are at it, I need a gallon of 1% milk, Gerber stage 2 baby food, diaper wipes, butter, apple juice and a new coffee date with my girlfriends. Since I can’t leave my house for another 12 hours again today, running to the grocery store for me is the VERY LEAST you can do.