A bad year for tomatoes

No, I’m not quoting the farmer’s almanac. The Oakville Players theatre group is on stage at the Oakville Centre for Performing Arts and that’s the title of the show. I had the privilege of attending the opening night performance last night. Since my wife Kristen is in the show, I’m a little biased, but I will say it’s good entertainment value if you’re up for a good laugh. I had a great time, and the whole production is the same high quality I've come to expect from the Oakville Players. It’s about a crazy community of neighbours in the “sticks” who manage to make a lot of drama, and whole lot of silliness out of pretty much nothing. Krissie Rutherford from the Oakville Beaver wrote, “everyone knows those nosy neighbours who won't mind their own business” and that is a good summary of the plot foundation without giving too much away. I’m no professional theatre reviewer, but the comedy comes from the nutty characters (Kristen being one of them) that make up the cast. If you laughed at Three’s Company, or Gilligan’s Island, you’ll probably laugh at this show too. Show times, ticket prices, and availability are all available at the Oakville Centre for Performing Arts website.

For great customer service, try going online

Maybe it's because I spend more than half my day in front of a computer, or maybe it's because it's partly my job to come up with ways to serve customers better from the web, but I can tell you if you're frustrated with picking up the phone and trying to navigate the automated menu system, try going to the web. You might be pleasantly surprised.

I'm surprised with how few people actually do this. So I feel compelled to write about it. For example, back in July I needed to get my passport renewed. I barely knew where to get started so I Google searched "Canadian Passport". A few clicks later I ended up here: http://www.pptc.gc.ca/can/pol_on-line_form.aspx?lang=e. It's an online Passport application form. Unfortunately you can't submit the form online, but you can fill everything out, and then print it and sign it. That made me happy since it meant I didn't have to track down paper forms, and didn't have to manually fill out all the boxes with a pen. Once I had that done and printed, and had my photos ready and signed, I booked a whole afternoon to go the Passport office to get the forms processed.

When I got to the Passport office, I was in for the customer experience surprise of my life. Yes, that's right a Canadian government office was about to "wow" me with a customer experience, and it was the last place I would expect it. When I got to reception, they thanked me (yes thanked me) for using the online form, and rewarded me by putting me at the front of the processing line!!! Instead of waiting there all afternoon like I expected, I was in and out of there in under 10 mins!! All because I used their online process. I've since shared this experience with others, and they all reported back the same experience.

So what's the lesson? Always try going online first for customer service. It makes sense for smart companies (or in this case a government agency) to reward customers for going online because it makes their processes run more efficiently. So in return for helping them, they just might help you, and everyone wins!! I'm not saying it will always work out, but try it!!

Being sick sucks

Okay, so I'm telling you something you already knew, but I just had to say it. It totally screws up everything, and there's nothing much you can do but wait. For the average control freak, it just sucks. For the record, I tried Cold-FX this time around, and I think it made my heart race. So I went back to the tried and true - OJ, chicken soup, vitamin C, zinc lozenges, Advil cold and sinus for symptom relief, lots of water, and lots of rest. Today is going way better than yesterday. With any luck I'll be back up to normal by Friday.

One less thing to do

I was relieved to read this morning that there's one less social networking site you have to keep up to date. About a week and a half ago, in my "I'm now on Facebook" post, I talked about how it seemed impossible to keep all these sites up to date. Well, according to Ivor Tossell over at the Globe and Mail, My Space is dead - so cross that one off your list. Not to be confused of course with Windows Live Spaces (kudos to Facebook with being a little more creative with the name). In case you missed it, My Space is that "other" social networking site that was all the rage about a year ago. For the record, I never had a My Space page. In fact, I think I visited the site all of 2 times. I tend to agree with Ivor's points about it being too loud, and messy, and I thought I was a minority - apparently not. Will Facebook last longer? While it is prettier than My Space, I think the Facebook team will have to work really hard to keep it fresh because clearly the social networking crowd is fickle. I wonder what that means for LinkedIn and YouTube?

Why does travel have to be so hard?

So I flew into Austin yesterday morning, and apparently this is one difficult place to get to. To get here from Toronto, you basically have to connect through somewhere. I connected through Chicago. Others connected through such places as Dallas, Washington, and Denver. Connecting is always a risky proposition. To get technical, it's a study in probability, where the likelihood of one event happening (getting to your ultimate destination) is highly dependant on the outcome of previous events (your connecting flights). If a statistician is reading this and wants to propose a formula for fun, be my guest. Bonus marks if you can also somehow factor in the probability of your checked baggage arriving at your ultimate destination with you (I won't get into what it takes these days to ensure you can carry on your luggage and eliminate this particular element of probability altogether). Thankfully, my travel was actually right on schedule (including de-icing in Toronto, and Chicago) but others are reporting nightmare stories of delays, cancelled flights, and missing luggage. Why would anyone in their right minds make it so difficult to get here? It's really nice here! The weather (this time of year) is awesome, and the landscape is quite hilly for Texas, which makes for some beautiful views. I also hear the golf is some of the best in the world. If I was in charge of travel and tourism for this city, I'd make sure the airlines were working on more direct flights. Better yet, if I worked for an airline, I'd consider introducing more direct flights. I'm sure they would fill up. The only thing that would make this place better is if I brought my golf clubs, and my family with me.... Next time for sure.

I'm now on Facebook

Kristen said it best yesterday, "how am I supposed to keep all these sites up to date?". What she's referring to is everytime you turn around, there's a new online "community" to join. Windows Live Spaces, LinkedIn, My Space, etc. Well, if you're interested, you can check out my Facebook profile. Write on my wall or something! Add me as a friend! Join my network! Whatever. I'm apologizing in advance if it's not up to date, or if I haven't added you as a friend - yet.

Graduating from Windows Live Spaces

I've just spent the better part of tonight trying to get this blog up and running. Windows Live Spaces is so much easier to use, but I somehow feel like I've graduated to something a little more sophisticated. I feel accomplished, so far. We'll see how long this lasts..

On the couch

IMG_3587
Originally uploaded by steve_and_kristen.

His belly is not his favorite position...

I was just testing out the "Blog this" feature in Flickr with this post. It seems to work well.

Look how cute my son is....