Monthly Archives: October 2011

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m part of the Windows Champions Program. Basically I get to learn about windows all year long and I get the kickiest tech support a woman could ever ask for and in return I write a few blog posts a year telling y’all about how Windows can be part of your online life. Oh, they’re going to let me play with tons of tech too.

Our first webinar was about how to use hotmail and it was impressive. I’m using the interface a little bit and getting more comfortable with it. It’s possible that I’ll share it with everyone one day soon. I’ve got a video that I took… and a touch of ADD so we might not actually get there.

I missed the second webinar because they’re on Thursdays and everyone who knows me knows that I play tennis every Thursday for the rest of my life. I don’t work Thursdays, I never have, never will, and this will keep me out of therapy (that and the fact that I’m not particularly introspective).

The second webinar was about Windows Live Writer, which my friend Kristen had told me about. Actually Kristen had sort of raved about it with love in her eyes, so I was sad to miss that one.

A few days before the webinar I went and downloaded Live Writer (it’s a free download) and decided to check it out on my own. I don’t need a webinar to tell you that Windows Live Writer cut my blogging time by at least 30%. I no longer worry about a buggy connection, clicking through on a cumbersome dashboard or worrying that with WordPress what you see is not actually what you get (WYSIWYG).

I’m here typing my post into Windows Live Writer and when I’m done I’ll either hit publish or schedule it for later.

You may or may not have noticed that I’m using images much more often. You know why? Because you can just copy and paste images into this thing and they’ll resize for you. You can also watermark images, but I’m not all that concerned with anyone stealing my craptastic photos.

You can also use Live Writer for more than one account, so in theory I could be publishing here or at any number of other places. In reality I’m lucky I can get a post out here.

You won’t find Live Writer tutorials because there’s no need for one. It’s really that simple.

I would have completely forgotten about Windows Live Writer but for my neighbor not liking me. You see, my neighbor and I were at Kim Tracy Prince’s birthday party and she did not say hello to me. Since there were only a dozen of us there I was a little put out that she didn’t say hello. Naturally I didn’t say hello to her because I knew that she was irritated with me or she would have greeted me. Right? Right, work with me here.

So after the party I went home and explained to my husband that Romy doesn’t like me. He asked me if I said hello to her and I explained to him that I couldn’t possibly because she didn’t say hello to me and obviously… then he lost interest and muttered something about Mars and Venus.

I explained the scenario to my daughter who immediately understood. I told her that it was totally unacceptable for our neighbor to not like me and she nodded knowingly. When I was grating a thousand lemon rinds to make Julia’s Lemon Loaf Cake Jane looked at me and said, “Bring one of those to the neighbor and she’ll have to like you.”

So I grated a few extra lemons, actually if I’m going to be honest, Alexander grated a few extras. I brought the cake over to Romy who was surprised that I thought she was mad at me. Which clearly shows that she is a wonderful actress because I am never ever wrong. I gave her the cake and we chatted about blogging.

She spends a lot of time blogging. A lot. I explained to her that I’m a three hour a day girl and that if it can’t get done in that amount of time it doesn’t need to get done. Romy went on to tell me that she adds a lot of links and it’s time consuming… Oooh I can fix that! I practically jumped up and down clapping my hands. Try Windows Live Writer. Just do it, you’ll thank me.

And I’ll tell ya what, sometimes baking a cake doesn’t do a damn thing, but letting a blogger know how to manage their time, that’ll make them love you every time. Windows trumps Julia Childs in suburbia. Who knew?

As a blogger I have a unique opportunity to tell you about brands that I interact with on regular basis. It’s easy for me to tell you when they’re not doing things right, but it’s much more difficult to show you a brand that’s exceeding my expectations. Mostly it’s difficult because I have ridiculously high expectations.

For Alexander’s tenth birthday all he wanted was a pair of Reebok Zigs. So I bought him a pair, my mom bought him a pair, and then he looked online and saw that you can personalize your zigs. I swear that little red head of his almost spun right off his shoulders. He was so excited to build his own pair of zigs that he went a little crazy and built these.

On the inside they say “I rock”. Alexander’s self esteem appears strong and healthy.

There were only two problems with Alexander’s shoes.

1. They cost $135.12 after tax and shipping
2. They take approximately 5 weeks to arrive.

Again, since it was his tenth birthday and the boy really don’t love anything quite so much as a good baseball cap or a pair of shoes I went ahead and made the purchase. They arrived a little late (I had no clue when we went to order that it would take up to five weeks) but that was fine because he had his other new zigs.

Alexander went on to wear those shoes to school every single day from August 15th until last week. Last week the sole began to separate from the shoe. Since Alexander is a little boy I’m very used to buying new shoes in quick succession, but I’m also used to paying $60 or less for a pair of shoes. When they begin to fall apart I don’t typically feel upset by it. When I pay $135 I’m looking for my son to outgrow his shoes.

So I called up Reebok and spoke a really nice lady on the phone. I explained to her that the shoes were beginning to separate from the sole and that they were about 6 weeks old. She gave me an email address and asked me to please snap a picture of the defects and send it along.

I thanked her and hung up the phone and promptly forgot all about it.

The following day I came home and there was a voicemail message to please remember to email a picture to Reebok. Are you kidding me? They’re calling me to remind me to ask for my money back? I upload the pictures and about two hours later I get a call from Reebok. They would like to send me another pair of the shoes.

I thank them profusely because they really are doing the right thing, but with a 5 week wait time we have two issues.

1. Alexander will be at least another half size larger
2. Red and Blue will no longer be interesting to him

I was put on a brief hold and the customer service representative gave me a coupon code to be used on the website for the $135.12. Alexander can pick new colors… whatever he needs.

I’m a convert. Not only do I absolutely adore Reebok for going above and beyond in a clear attempt to delight us, but I love Reebok.com because they have all your order information right there and you can forget about paper receipts and putting on pants to go out of the house.

This is our friend Korei Mal on drums. Enjoy.