A Writer's Life

Dell Hell Update

I received my replacement computer on Friday and, so far, everything seems to be working fine (though I did have to spend a few hours this weekend re-loading all my software). But as soon as I resolved my problems, another member of my family descended into Dell Hell.

Another Reasoner Update

The Weatherford Democrat wrote about the Reasoners in their coverage of the wild fires that raged   "from Johnson to Tarrant County lines" in Texas:

James and Livia Reasoner lost their home on Colby Lane near Flat Rock Tuesday.

James said he was sitting at his computer when he smelled smoke. He looked outside and found a line of fire reaching across his property, racing to his home.

“I grabbed a hose and got the dog,” he said.

Another dog escaped the blaze, but a family goat, three cats and a bird were lost.

“We lost everything,” Livia said. “All of our clothes — everything.”

The Reasoners are both writers and lost a book collection and ones they wrote along with family heirlooms and photos.

Wednesday, they were called back to what used to be their home, only to find it caught fire again.

An alleged illegal burn was to blame.

“I can’t believe after yesterday someone would be burning today,” Livia said.

The couple repeatedly thanked Silver Creek firefighters for their help in putting out the flames and saving a relative’s home next door.

Firefighters simply said it was their job.

“We’re all alive,” she said gratefully. “At least we had insurance.”

James let out a long sigh. “We’ll just start over.”

Dell Hell

I used to be a loyal Dell owner and an enthusiastic cheerleader for their products. They used to make great machines and they backed them up with top-notch customer support.

Those days are gone.

About two months ago, I bought a XPS M1330 laptop because its light, its fast, it was well-reviewed  and it's a Dell, which I associated with quality. I took it out of the box and before the day was over, the stickers on the back -- which say "XPS" -- had peeled off. I called Dell and asked for new stickers. But rather than sending me stickers, they sent a service man to my house who had to replace the entire back panel of my machine. Two days later, the stickers fell off again. I should have seen that as a warning sign.

A week or two later, and a day before going to Europe, I turned on my machine and couldn't access the operating system. I spent three hours on the phone with their support people...but they couldn't solve the problem nor could they tell me the cause. They only had one solution: reformat the hard-drive and re-load all my software. It took me an entire day to do it and it was a nightmare. 

On the airplane to Germany, the computer crashed (a blue screen "physical memory dump") and rebooted. And every day after that, at some point, the computer would crash and reboot again. I called Dell, spent more hours on the phone, and they couldn't find a solution. Their best guess was that it was a problem with my Norton 360 software. I called Norton and they said it was clearly a hardware problem.

So,  I lived with it, backing up constantly. This weekend, within hours of arriving in New York on another business trip, my XPS crashed again.  Only this time, I couldn't access the operating system. I called Dell and after another two hours on the phone, the baffled and frustrated support guy sought advice from a senior supervisor who told him  that this was a common problem with XPS M1330 motherboards made on the same date as mine. SO WHY THE HELL DON'T **ALL** THE SUPPORT PEOPLE KNOW THIS!?  WHY IS IT SOME BIG FRIGGIN' SECRET? They could have saved me and their employees hours and hours on the phone just by sharing this information with all their support people.

Those were lost hours that I didn't spend with my family or working on my books. It was time flushed down the toilet for no reason except Dell's ineptitude and disorganization.

I was furious. It was at that moment that they lost me, a loyal customer for ten years, someone who has bought four desktops and six laptops from them (for myself and my family).

I demanded that they replace my computer. They said they couldn't do that, but that they would send a tech to my house to replace the motherboard and hard-drive on the one that I have ...and the back panel with the missing stickers.

The tech came over today and spent a few hours installing my new motherboard and hard-drive...but they gave him the wrong back panel, so he has to come back tomorrow. So that's two days I have to sit around the house waiting for the tech and being here while he works. More lost time. More lost productivity. All because Dell doesn't know how to make computers or support their products any more.

I won't be spending another moment in Dell Hell.

Japanese Cloning

Is it just me... or does the new Honda Accord look like a shameless rip-off of the BMW 5-series?

Scrapbooking Scandal

I got a kick out of this front page, LA Times article  about a "scandal" in the scrapbooking world. Scrapbooker Kristina Contes was inducted into Creating Keepsake magazine's Scrapbooking Hall of Fame based on an entry she did that included photographs of herself. Contes asked Creating Keepsakes to be sure to credit the photographer who took the pictures, which they did. When Contes' winning entry was published, with Contes and the photographer credited, scrapbookers went into a tizzy because the contest rules stated that entrants had to produce everything they used themselves -- and by using an outside photographer, Contes broke the rules. Apparently, neither Creating Keepsakes nor Contes realized the mistake until it was too late. But in the aftermath, Contes has been  ostracized by Talafan scrapbookers, accused of being immoral and the scrapbooking equivalent of Marion Jones.

I know nothing about this scandal except what I read in the article. But it strikes me as utterly ridiculous. Contes didn't try to hide anything. The "scandal" erupted because she honorably sought credit for the photographer, not because she was trying to pass off someone else's work as her own. Not only that, but Creative Keepsakes was aware of it and also didn't see a problem. So, basically, Contes made an innocent mistake and is being crucified by insane scrapbookers  for being honorable and doing the right thing.

What is really astonishing is that this non-scandalous scandal makes the front page of the LA Times while the Cassie Edwards situation, a real case of blatant plagiarism and dishonesty, is buried in a tiny bit in the Calender section.

UPDATE 1-13-2008: My sisters Linda Woods and Karen Dinino, authors of JOURNAL REVOLUTION and VISUAL CHRONICLES, blogged about this idiotic scandal. I laughed out loud at this comment from Jane Devin, one of their readers:

If all materials in the scrapbook had to be produced by the artist, as the article and apparently the rules state, where does this leave collages, magazine clippings and pics, special paper. . .or any paper for that matter? If rubber stamps were used, did they have to make their own? Did they have to use beet juice for paint, and if so who grew the beet?

And, as Maria pointed out, what about using childhood pics? Or some other tangible thing -- say a bead, or a matchbook? Would the rules exclude those because they were created by someone else?

 

Some Velvet Morning

I was saddened to learn today that Lee Hazlewood, one of my favorite singer-songwriters (and guilty pleasures), has passed away. He was famous for his work with Nancy Sinatra ("These Boots Are Made for Walking," "Summer Wine," etc.), but for me, his best stuff was the obscure albums he recorded after Nancy and during his years in Sweden. Even his bad songs were strangely interesting. I'm going to miss him.

The New York Times Publishes Morons

Craig Mazin beat me to the punch and perfectly skewers Brooks Barnes' inane editorial about TV & movie residuals in The New York Times. Barnes starts off by saying:

Jasper Johns isn’t paid based on the number of years his flag paintings remain popular attractions at museums. Rem Koolhaas doesn’t cash a check every time an architecture fan takes a trip to Seattle to see his space-age public library. So why should the writers, directors and actors responsible for box-office bombs like “Gigli” be able to pocket some cash every time somebody buys the DVD?

That just gives you a hint of the stupidity to come.  Barnes doesn't seem to grasp the difference between looking and selling. If someone wants to reproduce Johns' painting in prints or t-shirts, Johns gets a royalty.

Unfortunately, this is only the beginning of Barnes' idiotic rant which Craig does a wonderful job skewering, point by point. I just hope Craig sent his post the the NY Times as well.

"I Don't Think We're in Los Angeles anymore, Toto."

The New York  Times reports that fat is sexy is Mauritania, where women force feed themselves to put on pounds.

A 2001 government survey of 68,000 women found that one in five between ages 15 and 49 had been deliberately overfed. And nearly 70 percent - and even more among teenagers - said they did not regret it.

[...]Other cultures prize corpulent women. But Mauritania may be unique in the lengths it has gone to achieve its vision of female beauty. For decades, the Mauritanian version of a Western teenager's crash diet was a crash feeding program, designed to create girls obese enough to display family wealth and epitomize the Mauritanian ideal.

Centuries-old poems glorify women immobilized by fat, moving so slowly they seemed to stand still, unable to hoist themselves onto camels without the aid of men's willing hands...

I Can Finally Stop Running from Police For a Crime I didn't Commit...

From the Times-Herald Record in Middletown, NY...

Man surrenders in break-ins, copper pipe thefts

Over the winter, Lee Goldberg, 24, broke into 23 bungalows at the former Lake House Hotel on Lake House Road in Woodridge, said Fallsburg police.

Cops say Goldberg ripped out copper piping from each on the bungalows, doing between $80,000 and $100,000 in damage. They say he got between 300 and 400 pounds of pipe, which he sold at Weinert Recycling in Liberty for a total of about $2,000.

Police say Goldberg also broke into another colony nearby, taking about 50 pounds of copper pipe, which he also sold.

Police said they've been looking for Goldberg for a while, and on Tuesday he turned himself in at the Fallsburg police station.

He was charged with 24 counts of third-degree burglary and single counts of third-degree grand larceny and second-degree criminal mischief, felonies. He was also charged with 23 counts of petty larceny, a misdemeanor. Goldberg was arraigned and sent to Sullivan County Jail without bail, pending an appearance in Fallsburg Town Court.

Police said more arrests are expected.

It's going to be nice not to have to live in fear any longer.

I've Sold 150 Million Copies of My Books

Okay, maybe I haven't. But according to Clive Cussler, the number doesn't matter anyway.

Cussler is on the witness stand here in L.A. in a clash of lawsuits over the failure of the movie SAHARA, based on one of his Dirk Pitt novels. He claims the movie-makers breached a contract that gave him total control over the script.  Based on accounts I've read of the producer's testimony, it seems to me that he's right.

The producers claim he fraudulently inflated the number of books he sold to get more money out of them for the movie rights. Based on Cussler's testimony, reported today in the L.A. Times, it seems to me that they are probably right, too.

On Friday, Cussler offered myriad explanations for his accounting of the "Sahara" numbers. Asked if he pulled the numbers out of thin air, Cussler said, "Pretty much." He added: "I honestly thought I probably did sell 100 million books. That doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me."

[...]Cussler previously testified in a deposition that his agent admonished him in the late 1990s never to say how many books he sold because the amount was not known. Instead, Cussler said, he was advised to use the phrase "books in print."

Asked why he continued to use the 100 million estimate anyway, Cussler testified on Friday, "I slipped up…. I forgot."

[...]In June 1999, Cussler described his frustration with the entertainment industry in a handwritten letter. "Over a hundred million books sold worldwide now, and still Hollywood doesn't get it," he wrote.

In August 2000, Cussler's website stated that he had sold more than 100 million books. The number was updated to 125 million in April 2003. That same month, Cussler said on a "Sahara" promotional video, "They tell me now they've sold over 130 million."

The remark "meant nothing," Cussler testified Friday.

The actual sales of his books from 1973-2000, according to an audit by a forensic accountant, is about 42 million copes. I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty impressive number of books. You'd think Cussler would have been happy trumping that figure...without having to inflate it to 130 million. Then again, according to Cussler, it means nothing. If that's so, why does he keep jacking up the number?

The reporting on the trial over the last few weeks has been fascinating and informative reading. We're learning just how much people unapologetically and blatantly lie to each other in the movie business (as if we didn't know already). We were also treated to a line-by-line dissection of the movie's budget, right down to how much was spent on bribes.

As far as I'm concerned, both parties are at fault here. The only winners are the public, who are being treated to a trial that's a lot more entertaining than SAHARA was.