Okay.

I found out that using Malbec instead of milk with your Cheerios isn't the best of ideas.

So, after starting the day on a so so note, sitting by the ocean, and drinking the rest of the bottle doesn't really help.

Damn near wore out my flip flops getting back home so I could climb into the hammock and take a nap.

I had a dream where I was falling. Damn hammock!

Wandered into the house, ate some cold tacos, and had a few bottles of Corona.

My quote of the day?

Neighbor asked me "What the hell are you doing?".




This change of lifestyle is tough.... ;-)

What about it?
At 4:45 AM - Mike asked me a question.
At 5:02 AM - I took a screen capture of the text messages.
At 5:32 AM - I posted it here on RC.

I'm still confused.

Mr. Stanley's life is just one lonnnnnnng day.


Guilty.


I knew a momentarily famous director was going to be trouble when I saw an invoice for $12 for a month's pager service had this scrawled across it:

Fight This

I did not realize that this comment was towards Mr. Stanley.

Sorry for the confusion.

KOT

My "worst customer ever" who's project was completed over 2 years ago is contacting me on a semi regular basis about things like this.
His new CI (poor bastard) is being tasked with "fixing" things like this and the now former client thinks he is being taken for a ride.

Former client said they gave him my contact info. On one hand I don't feel like I should help, on the other hand I hope he calls me so I can tell him "run bro…run and don't look back".

What's the back story??? Did you win the lotto, or are u unemployed??? Damn.

Shouldn't you be out finding your brother ?!?

The back story?


I started with two million, lost half in the consumer electronics business, and decided I should use the rest to help mankind.


What better way to help mankind than to support a vineyard and a brewery. :-)

It's a shame, some clients are suspicious over things like this. I'll bet they had one too many bad "salesman" experiences.

We had a very wealthy, cheap client who had to be in control of everyone and everything (and this was not in the smart home context). There were bits and pieces of A/V stuff scattered about. None of the rooms was quite right from a design and implementation standpoint and it seemed like each budget had been squeezed a bit more than it should have been. At first I blamed this on the installer (someone who I did not respect) not properly qualifying the customer, but after a while it became clear that the customer was too cheap to do things right and would not use some simple workarounds because "I shouldn't need to do that". Oh, and don't let me forget to mention that we bumped into a mechanical engineering company on site that was diagnosing a few little major issues with the air conditioning system that wasn't quite right.

We recommended replacing a few things and installing a more capable remote, but "I bought good equipment, and I should not need to do that." Eventually, we fired each other. A few weeks later we got a call from another dealer who had been working with this guy. Evidentially, he had been bad mouthing us. We and the other dealer respected each other and they had come to exactly the same diagnosis and recommendation as we had. I assume that they walked because ... A few weeks later we got a call from yet another dealer. It was almost the same script, except that this unfortunate dealer had installed some stuff and had not been paid.

Been there done that. The biggest "nah we don't need thats" are speakers and switches.

"we don't need big expensive speakers for the first floor..its just for low level background music". First party...speakers are not loud enough or some are blown.

For budget projects people dont want a switch. Cable box in each room is fine. You get there and they say "can we put a blu ray player in here too" then i explain we only have 1 HDMI in place so we need to order/install a second or get a switcher/receiver whatever. As soon as a solution pops up and its almost done..."i want to add an AppleTV to each room also..OH and can we play the video sources through the DA speakers?"

Of course you can but it sure would have been nice if you agreed to this when we tried to shove it down your throat 2 years ago when we planned this thing. Oh and now you want to view CCTV cameras on all the TV's? Really? And you still don't think you need a switch? Order a dozen AB switches i guess.

"No, I don't need a surge protector. That's what I have insurance for."


A mere few weeks later the house takes a hit, a claim is put in, the $1,000.00 deductible needs to be covered, but the damage is limited, so the bill is something like $750.00.


Then you get:

"Can you help me out with this? Give me a bill for say $1,750?"

Literally yesterday:
"Can you invoice me for a higher priced AVR, but provide me with a cheap one?" -- said a lady about insurance claim unit.

No, dumb ass, no I can't.

If one complies with a request such as this, your reputation is driven down because the customer assumes that, after you aided them in cheating the insurance company, you must be cheating the customer too.

I always refuse and indicate annoyance at being asked to do this. Usually, I continue with that customer and I always get recommendations through that customer -- resulting in multiple lifetime customers -- who don't push for similar "services". And, if we don't continue, this is good too, because I now know that the customer will attempt to cheat me whenever possible. I have lots of great customers, I don't need a cheat.

One of my sons is in charge of all A/V issues for a medical school. We got together recently after not seeing each other for a while and I asked him how the job was going.

He answered that often his main job was figuring out what people need, which is hardly ever what they want or what they say they need. In essence, he's a translator before he can get any A/V planning done. That's exactly what I've found in recent overseas work. My job is often yelling a comment into a conversation between two people who each speak some version of not quite English, different from one another. (It's amazing how much slang we use instead of plain words, without even realizing it!)

Anyway, the comment about Apple TV reminded me of this.

Prof says he needs an Apple TV installed in a huge lecture hall. My son is baffled, but asks the question I ask here a lot: what is it you're trying to do? Professor answers that he wants to view something he can get to on the internet with his Apple TV at home. Son shows him how he can do the same thing with the equipment that is already installed in the classroom control room. Done.