Peter Wooley’s Blog

Yesterday, by a spark of either brilliance or insanity, Tyler came up with the idea of having the three of us in our office be rotating DJs from 2:00-4:00pm each day. We all finally got equipped with speakers (well, speakers through our monitors, but what’cha gonna do?) and, therefore, have the ability to drive each other crazy with ever-increasing music volume (Did anyone say Screamo? No, we did not.), which would be inevitable by mid-afternoon, when lunch is behind us and quittin’ time is still a while away. Tyler started today, as he brought in his entire playlist from home with ratings and all. Tomorrow is my turn.I believe I’ll be bringing in my playlist as well, so I’ve taken a few minutes to build a mix of some of my favorite tunes. I stayed away from whole albums, as I only began really enjoying albums in their fullness during college (save for Audio Adrenaline’s Underdog). The sounds are spuratic, to say the least. For instance, I’ve included Enya’s Pilgrim, along with Tiesto’s In My Memory, Weird Al Yankovic’s Weasel Stomping Day, and the beautifully orchestrated Bioshock title Welcome to Rapture.

We’re all given 3 objections, where, when used, requires the day’s DJ to skip to their next song. We didn’t use any today, which could mean Erik and I were being courteous, we were very involved with work, or we enjoyed the tunes. I’d lean to the latter.

I still have 18 minutes of music to decide on and maybe a bit more, just in case I get some objections. If you happen to be in the area, stop by the office from 2:00-4:00pm and feel free to jam.

Northwest Natural showed up this afternoon and turned our gas back on. We now have hot water, heat, and a working fireplace. Strangely, over the weekend, we had to open the windows because of excessive heat. I was able to turn on enough computers, TVs, and lights to get the house up to 70° F, which sure beat buying electric heaters. I have no doubt that our electric bill will be quite high.

Having no hot water turned out to be the hardest thing to deal with. We utilized Kara’s parents for their showers, which we appreciated immensely, but the whole thing just felt off. We’re not out of money, we aren’t between homes, but we had to use someone else’s shower; it just seemed wrong. I’ve realized that any of my dealings with Northwest Natural will always be tainted by this one experience. I had no real reason to trust them before (I had no idea who they really were), but now I do have a reason to mistrust them.

The rest of the day was rather gloomy. I never had a clear look at the sun and the rain, wind, and rolling clouds dropped my spirit, as well as my office mates, for most of the day. I did have some success toward the end of the day when Kara came in for a visit and a tour, I got my 401(k) account setup with a wonderfully nice fellow, PHP decided to bend to my will and properly open and display TrueType fonts in an image created with the GD library, and I had Chicken Flauta Rancheros at Who Song and Larry’s across from my lovely wife.

Now I plan on taking a (piping) hot shower and think about the benefits and drawbacks of utilizing automation classes in PHP that generate Database Access classes based on user-defined XML files.

[The rest of my Northwest Natural problem can be found with my first problem last night, the annoying follow-up this morning, and some progress made later.]

Well, I believe my Northwest Natural phone journey has drawn to a close. I was able to get a call back from a Supervisor, who was quite nice, and she sent me off to a private company that could, supposedly, turn things back on. Well, after calling and finding out that anyone other than Northwest Natural could not turn things back on, the supervisor I spoke with left me a message apologizing for the confusion, which I appreciated. I immediately called back and we spoke for a while more. I inquired about the possibility of doing it later tonight, but Monday was the earliest it could get done. Considering the time I’ve taken (my morning), and the fact that I got things moved up a little, I’ve decided to push no longer.

The trouble is, of course, the house is going to be cold, cold, cold for the next three days. I’m going to double-check with Kara and a few other people to see if we can do anything else, but I feel semi-successful.

Of course, I shouldn’t have to feel successful when dealing with any company, I should just be happy with their service. But, when I had to go through the escapades of crawling up the customer service tree, make several different calls, talk to six different people (even if many of them were quite nice), and finally get some changes and an apology, Northwest Natural doesn’t look so hot.

In our 24/7, always-on society, it surprises me that a company providing such a base service doesn’t have 24-hour services. I expected, at least, a 24-hour phone system that handled things other than just emergencies. I was hopeful for same-day service. And I dreamed of an automated system of stopping and starting. None of those things happened. Save for the first person I talked to this morning, Northwest Natural should praise their customer service staff for having to manage customers with such a poor system in place. With few ways to actually help their customers at such a crucial time, I pity the customer service department. Of course, there is always the chance that I was lied to, and someone could have come out today (I’m sure I could push hard enough, but I have limits.), but if their procedures say tell them to put people off until the person starts screaming, that procedure has to be re-written.

All in all, I’m still disappointed in the entire experience. I’ve turned off everything I can to stop from blowing in cold air, turned on all the electronics in the house to warm things up, and have been able to get the hallway to about 64° F, but I doubt that will last through the day. I keep going back to the suggestion of a postcard, and am still astounded we heard nothing from a company that, for all they knew, was giving away gas for free. Then, when called on it, would insult me, an almost for-sure customer.

And I would venture a guess that they’re so sloppy because of little other options for natural gas in the Northwest (i.e., monopoly). I attempted to look around for natural gas in our area, but to no avail. If we wanted to switch to electric, we’d have to buy new equipment. In the Wal-mart sense of the word, we’re stuck: we don’t really have another option. If you happen to know of any, let me know in the comments!

And, if you happen to work at (or run) Northwest Natural, feel free to give me a call at 360\904\8516. I’d be glad to do discuss any of the ideas I’ve presented in these posts as well as others I haven’t (for free, of course, but I’d also love some free natural gas, as no one told me how much this was going to cost per month!).

So the continuing story of our Northwest Natural nightmare continues. I called my mom after the last post, to make sure I wasn’t crazy and see if she had any suggestions. We both came to the conclusion that I needed to call back and talk to a supervisor.

I called, talked to the first available person and was treated to a much more pleasant experience. The operator, who gave me her name, but I didn’t catch it, listened to a short monologue on why I needed gas turned on today, but, inevitably, she returned the same information as on my first call: no gas until Tuesday.

Using a similar tactic from the morning, I asked if there was any sum of money I could pay to get someone out here. With that, she said she’d look into after-hours services (which, obviously, cost more). I would have been fine paying more, but she returned with no solution. This weekend (a holiday weekend for some, apparently), they can’t seem to bring anyone out.

At that point, I asked if I could file a formal complaint, which she said she could and then pass along to a supervisor. With that word, I asked if I could get bumped up. She said they would have to call me back, but I pressed until she sent me up to a 2nd Tier Senior Representative. They, essentially, said that they would just have a Supervisor call me back because they couldn’t do anything, so I pressed that I get a call back immediately, and she indicated that she could.

I hung up the phone, a little worried that I wouldn’t hear anything, but I got a call back within a few minutes. Unfortunately, it was the Senior Rep. again, telling me that they could push it back to Monday and at no extra charge, to boot. I accepted and thanked her, trying to think if it was truly good enough. I’m going to think some more, and see if I want to press once more to move it back any further. I have a feeling that if I insisted on speaking with a Supervisor, I could get it moved to tonight, as they don’t work on weekends (and they better not think Friday is a weekend, it’s my weekend, but I don’t supply always-on utilities for countless homes).

The best thing to take away was that everyone was nice this time around. I’m guessing it had something to do with everyone getting their morning shot of caffeine, but the Senior Rep. actually empathized (real or not, it doesn’t matter) over the trouble of starting service with moving into a new home. Which, I’m happy she did, but, ultimately, it could be resolved for many new homeowners by taking my postcard suggestion.

Update (2007-11-09 10:02am): I decided to put another call in and just ask that I get a call back form a supervisor. That was well accepted and the guy that I talked to was quite helpful. He just got my information, sent it off, and now I wait.

I woke up bright and early, just after 7:00am, to give Northwest Natural a call as soon as customer service opened up. Last night, after my search and eventual discovery of our shut-off natural gas line, Kara’s dad came over and noticed that the lock had not been placed on the gas line, so, in all technicality, if we started our service, we could just turn it back on ourselves, re-light our pilots, and we’d be back in business. Of course, he also noted, that starting it before we were technically paying for it would be illegal.

With only a few too many steps through to a live person, I was talking with an unnamed woman, who appeared quite complacent with the whole matter of it being turned off, after hearing me explain it. To this, I assumed (once again assuming) this was more than common and could be easily remedied. I gave her all of my information, more than I recall giving to Clark Public Utilities (but I could just be romanticizing my relationship with other utilities) as well as Kara’s and waited to hear when they would restore the power: Tuesday. Yes, that’s right, 5 full days (or 3 business days) to get any form of power, in the way of natural gas, restored to our home.

Astonished, I then informed her that the when the service was turned off, the technician left the lock off and I could just flip it back on and light our pilots. She threw some liability concerns my way (which I’m sure, are liability concerns on their end), and said only licensed operators could turn the gas valve on and light the pilot lights. Then, as the American consumer I know I am, I asked if there was any amount of money I could pay that would get someone out here today (now, preferably), and she flat out denied it (which is simply not true, if carried to its fullest extent).

Anyway, by this time, I was starting to get upset, she was undoubtedly annoyed that I was upset, and then I went in for the kill: I told her I’ve never had natural gas in a home, I was left with no information that I can locate about information on the gas, and even when a real, live person came out and turned a knob to stop that precious, rotten egg-smelling substance from entering my home, he (or she) couldn’t didn’t even leave a note to tell us who they were or why they had done it.

I’m going to have to claim ignorance on this one. We purchased a house. It’s kind of a big deal, and it felt as though every other utility wanted to help us pay them (we are helping them make a profit, right? No one’s a 501(3)c.). But, when pushed, she said they left the gas on for an entire month to give us time to setup the account (and, assuming again, even though we were entirely silent, they must have thought we were just taking our precious time calling, so they didn’t need to send a note). Of course, when we were unaware of the need, that month doesn’t matter; whenever the gas stopped, we would have figured out we needed to call. In the world of Web Applications, if something goes wrong, say, your premium account is about to expire, the most common and straight-forward thing to do is email the user and let them know what’s going on; you can’t expect them to pay attention to when they need to renew (i.e., pay you more money), you need to help them. That is, of course, only if you want them to keep paying you and not write blog posts about the ordeal.

As for the suggestion of improved service for Northwest Natural, I believe you should contract out a designer from the Portland area (Pop Art is good, CMD Agency is good as well) to design a quick “Welcome Home, would you like to continue your earth-saving and efficient natural gas service from Northwest Natural? Just give a call at 1-800-422-4012″ postcard. Yes, it could cost a quarter to mail it, and a few grand for the design, but think how much happier your customers would be when, in the flurry of their new lives as homeowners, they receive a beautiful postcard, helping them make their lives easier. Yes, you have the corner on the market of gas in the area (as far as I know, now), but you’re still a company who needs customers, and if you keep them happy, they’ll stay.

I’m unsure of my options, at this point. Legally, I believe it is within my rights to turn the gas back on myself and I’d just have to pay for my own hospital bill of something goes wrong, but I better research that some more. I could wait until Tuesday, but the house is already 62° F, and there isn’t any hot water left, so that’s the most unlikely. I could look into Gas alternatives, but that would more than likely take longer then 3 business days. It would, however, make a louder statement to Northwest Natural, which isn’t my first concern, but since I’m leaving this on the Internet, you can tell I want other people to know, and make up their own mind.

When it comes down to it, should I have poured over all of our move-in papers and located Northwest Natural? Yes, I most certainly should have. I mean, I did call up Waste Connections and start refuse take-away (two weeks after we moved in), but then we’ve never had them service us, and we were reminded by them rolling by on Fridays in their large green (branded) trucks (and our growing stack of boxes and trash bags) . In addition, they aren’t providing a constant-on service. Not like Clark Public Utilities, who has a simple enough Web process for changing your service, picking your on/off dates and forgetting about it. But, we moved our service, which is different. Just like we moved Comcast, because of their playful little TV ads that inform you to go to Comcast.com/move to move your service, and their nice Welcome Home packet that contain plenty of useless advertisements, but still says, “Welcome Home!” The people that delivered that packet sent us a note, as well: the United States Postal Service. They gave us a quick change of address slip, so we didn’t have to go to the post office, and then informed us how helpful they can be with their online services (And the postcard was in vibrant pink! A brave design decision.). I mean, even Blockbuster (who isn’t doing so well, financially), sent us a card, and they weren’t even informed that the previous owner was closing their account—mostly because Blockbuster doesn’t work that way, but Northwest Natural does.

Now, I understand workflows and processes are hard to understand, there may even be a reason why Northwest Natural couldn’t send a note our way. Perhaps, having the information that the previous owner was moving out, knowing that many of the always-on appliances in the home are gas-powered, and having the street address (and a quarter for postage), wasn’t enough. Maybe, even when the operator came to turn off the gas to the house, she (or he) wasn’t equipped with a writing utensil, company letterhead, or a piece of tape to place the note on our front door. Or maybe Northwest Natural tried this all before and it just cost them money. I would bet, though, that if they used to do it and stopped, they weren’t losing money, they were helping people make an easier transition to a new home. And I bet, if they started helping their new potential customers, they’d make even more money.

As for me, I’m going to bundle up in a jacket and a blanket and figure out how I need to heat my house for my family and get hot water so we don’t end up smelling like natural gas come Tuesday.

This morning, my shower was much colder than usual, but I didn’t have time to figure out why. Kara’s was even colder, and now I’m fairly upset at Northwest Natural. We finally got home tonight at 9:00pm and once I figured out our gas was entirely shut-off, I put a call into Northwest Natural (after searching for the carrier without any information regarding it, whatsoever). It turns out they have no 24-hour line for customer service (only gas emergencies) and their voice-activated self-service system is more of a joke than anything.

I sent in a comment/complaint (more the latter) through the Web site, just to solidify my anger:

My wife and I just moved into our new home (1302 NW 26th Ave., Battle Ground, WA 98604) and were treated with a surprise this morning with no hot water. When I finally got home this evening, I attempted to solve the problem, and found the gas was simply no longer flowing. Being that I’ve not had natural gas, I was slightly confused and attempted to call to get things rolling again, but to no avail. We were not left with any account information from the previous owners and have received no requests for payment or notices of shut-off. I understand I *should* have thought to call, but, as I stated, I’ve never had natural gas and was not informed how or when to pay; in fact, my assumption was that it was rolled into other services. I do not feel as if I’m asking too much to be able to call at 9:00pm on a weekday and, at least, use an automated system to get things restored with my street address and credit card information. We have no issue paying, as we’d like hot water, heat, and a fire, but we’ve heard nothing up to this point and are quite upset we’ll have to wake up tomorrow morning to cold showers once once.

I’m going to try their super-special Gas leak emergency number now.

No, no, no!

“Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With all the features professionals use and novices want, it’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photosharing sites, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress.”

Why oh why did I have to stumble upon this? Not only does this do a better job of what I ever dreamed Drawp would do, it’s fun to use. I made this in about 35 seconds:

Much of the Photoshop hotkeys are missing, but when I started reaching for hotkeys in a Web application, I knew it was something special. If the goodness of Web Apps was rated on a level of Synergy with other Web Apps, this thing would score a “Saintly.” It hooks in with Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, as well as saving to your local filesystem and the SplashUp service itself.

I can’t believe I’d never heard of this, but you can believe I’ll be playing with it for the rest of the weekend.

Geez, I mean… geez! The online version of Photoshop that Adobe’s working on is going to have to be freaking awesome to beat this in features and functionality.

I can’t find any source, so it doesn’t appear to be open, but it is hot. Maybe there still is a place for Drawp, I’ll just have to Synergize.

Life is a teeter-totter I’ve yet to balance. Ever since I’ve gone full time at US Digital, I’ve been going to sleep extremely early and have had little energy when I get home and even on the weekends. Kara and I have scheduled plenty of activities and been quite busy, but I’m only ever awake for the time we’re actively involved. As soon as I can just sit, think about things I need (and want) to do, and decide to do them, I get extremely tired and yearn for my big blue pillow. Inevitably it’s past 9:00pm and I figure I should get as much sleep as I can before the alarm goes off at 5:40am. During the first week of full-time work, that seemed logical, but now it’s a cop-out. I have a ton of things I want to work on, lots of games I want to play, as well as other projects that I need to finish, but I keep falling asleep.

The other night, I decided I’m in a state of Perpetual Exhaustion. I’m always tired, and when I have the option to rest, I take it. I feel that I can blame this on the fact that I have to get up before the sun’s rays shine on my albino skin, but that can’t be the only thing. I would get less sleep while I was in school, but I feel like I accomplished more back then. Granted, it wasn’t always top-notch work, and certainly nothing like what we’re producing at US Digital, but I was enthusiastic and I only ever went to sleep when I simply couldn’t navigate my mouse within 50 pixels of my intended goal.

It’s after 11:00pm as I write this, so at least I’m pushing myself, but I’m thinking I’ll have to push myself every night until I can do it out of habit.

Anyone else out there feel like they’re exhausted?

A baby shower is currently taking place in my house, just down the hall. While Kara and Mom were setting it up, they asked me to put together a Word Jumble that people at the shower could do. My first thought was, “How fast could I build one? I’d have to figure out how to arrange the words, but I could do it in JavaScript to make it easy enough to print.” By this point, I’d totally miss the concept of a word jumble and was on to a Word Search. After realizing I’d have to spend more time than 20 minutes on the code, I decided there had to be a Web-based and/or Open Source solution already available. I spent a bit of time searching for “open source word jumble generator”, but that was just turning up freeware that was… less than optimal. I change my terms and was treated to a site titled, “Make your own word search puzzle“. Not only did the site reference Tux, but it allowed you to enter in a bunch of your own terms, specify color and fonts, and get both a printable version and answer key in both HTML and PDF. The HTML source isn’t going to win any Semantic awards, but it was easy enough to manipulate and print.

Plus, I emailed the person that made it to say, “Thanks”, and he responded within minutes. Ah, the glory of the InterTubalWebs.

Update: No, the baby shower was not for Kara and me, it was for Christian and Amy Crockford.