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After this post made was highlighted at the Consumerist, I got a call from a local radio station to tell the story. I love the Consumerist! Not just for the traffic, but because the kind of Journalism the consumerist does is Journalism that matters.
So, this morning, I did a ten minute segment on Glen Gardner's morning show at WTDY in Madison. Didn't have my recording setup at home with me, so I didn't capture the interview to share, but I did have a nice conversation. My favorite part was when we started talking about how Justice was really my motivating factor.

Regardless, it seems like a decent station that WTDY.

Also, my brother-in-law Jessie made a cameo on Fox 6 last night. I'm not really sure what he's doing there with that plank, but that's ok. He had to have tons of dental work once because of an accident that happened while he was working on my car.
Fox6's links go away after a time, but here's a screencap:

So, I'm trying to make some changes to my Cingular/AT&T account. I can't log in and I end up locked out so I click the "Live Chat" button. The Chat Window teeny-tiny so I grabbed the corner of the browser window and lo! It doesn't resize anything.
Broken.
If I can't resize the window, disable the resize window please.

It gets better though. As I'm chatting with the lady, the window refreshes automatically and gets me this:

Nice.
So I shut down my whole browser, bring the page back up and try again:
Here's a clipping of the conversation:

Jamison: May I have the last four digits of her social security number?
Gabe: I don't know her social security number.
Jamison: I apologize, but I need that before I can assist you.
Gabe: I apologize, if I knew that, I wouldn't need you.

I have been, by and and large, disappointed with my Sansa e280. The update software is garbage and the integration with Windows Media player is marginal at best. Maybe someone here can help me with some issues:

1. There are certain songs that I cannot, for the life of me, get to register with the player. No matter what I do, the song only appears as Unknown artist, Unknown album. The only way to find the song is to track it down via its track name. I've checked the tags with third party tag-writing programs, as well as with windows and even with iTunes, but no matter where or how I put in the missing Data, the e280 will not recognize it.
2. Album art recognition is marginal at best.
3. I cannot get a playlist _into_ the machine. If I drag a playlist into the e280 via the sync tab in Windows Media Player, it synchs the songs, but not the playlist itself.
4. Podcast Support is completely absent, and unworkable mostly because of the issues I seem to have with creating playlists.
5. Only about half of the time do videos I want to add to the player actually convert. And then only a select few actually play.
Look, guys, I'm not expecting the Sansa to be an iPod. I don't care if it doesn't have the nicey-nice iPod features that come with integration (and being locked into) a proprietary software/synching mechanism, but this e280 is no iPod.

It can't even start to compete.

Yesterday at about 2 p.m. the spigot for the hot water on the kitchen sink broke. Something stripped out and it wouldn't turn off all the way. So.

First things first. Turn off the water. I crawl under the sink and learn-- after living here for the past 5 years-- that there are no water valves under the sink. Not that I can see, anyway. I go downstairs into the basement. There are no valves for just the kitchen. So I turn off the hot water to the entire house. It was the only choice.

I take the spigot apart and I realize that now that I've taken it apart, I actually don't have any idea of what is wrong or how to fix it. So, upon advice from my delightful wife Jenifer, I take apart the cold water spigot. And make a mess. Because I forgot, I only turned off the hot water. Shit.

So I run downstairs. and Lo, I can only turn off the cold water to the house entirely. So I do. Great. Now the whole house is without water until I fix this.

After considerable debate about the best approach to take  (Should we replace the faucet, broken part, or whole damn sink) I am authorized to buy a new faucet. (Taking the sink off seemed like too much work, considering that we plan on replacing the countertop in the next few months.) So I go to Home Depot.

Did I mention that we got seven inches of snow yesterday? So it was a long, slow slippery drive.

I got to the home depot, they didn't have the sink I wanted, so I had to buy one for $20 more. Urgh. So I jotted this.

Then I got home and finished taking the faucet out. Then I got the new faucet out of the box and realized that it had a hole in the neck. So, I grabbed my receipt and went back to Home Depot. So I jotted this.

At Home Depot, after another treacherous drive, I take the faucet to the service desk, where I am told, "That's not even the faucet that is supposed to come in that box."

"That's what I just bought, which is why I'm returning it," I explain.

Great. "Hold on." the woman says and she calls a manager. I smile and start chatting with the cashier who tells me that I should be more angry. I smile and think about the Jott I just recorded, wondering if Jott has some kind of profanity filter. It does not, I now know.

After a half hour the Cust. Service lady finally tells me just to go. To take the new faucet and go, because there's nothing to exchange. I'm not sure that that means, but I took my new faucet and went. End of drama, as far as I'm concerned.

I hitch up the sleigh and tiny reindeer and fly over the city back to the house where I install the new faucet with only three different incidents wherein I am soaked. Hooray.

However, by 5:30, sink project was complete.