Good Bye 2008

Well then, it seems that it is time to end another year.  It has been a crazy one with gas prices bouncing all over, the economy sucking and all.  There have been some good movies that came out and some good video games as well.  I personnally have gotten to do a lot this year, bunch of traveling and got married and all.  Hopefully next year works out fairly well also. 

Anyhow as far as a year in review, I'll leave it to JibJab.   I'm gonna go make breakfast.  

Tada!!!

Ok... real quick like.  Look to ths side of the page.  Check out the photoblog and my nerdy blog for info on the trip to New Mexico Skies.  It was really cool, and now it is nap time.

Goodies

Ok, so I figured I would post up some of the stuffs that I got for Christmas. Undoubtly I will forget stuffs, but it will give you all an idea.

Little Big Planet for the PS3 (it is a really cool game, and even Stella will play with me)
Iron Man Bluray
Indiana Jones Bluray (the new one)
A nice red sweater
A knit cap
Brad Paisley CD (the new one)
A book on being the president
A book about Eagle Scouts
An American flag flow on a combat mission over Afghanistan
A pail o' people chow
A set of coaster with pictures I took in them
A little multitool
Canasta deck


Again, I'm sure that there is more. I would like to thank everyone that I got something from and I hope you have all enjoyed your gifts as well. Go ahead, post up some of the cool things you got, either as a comment or on your blog.

As for me now, I'm enjoying another present. I am up at an observatory for a couple of nights. Hopefully there will be some really cool images to put up on the photo blog.

Christmas Morning Video

Christmas Menu

Just thought it would be fun to post up our Christmas Menus.

Wigilia

Caesar Salad

Platski

Dinner Rolls

Seared Salmon Steaks

Shrimp with Cocktail Sauce

Parmesan and Romano Rice

Vegetable Medley

Sparkling Cider

Christmas Cookies

Christmas Breakfast

Cinnamon Rolls

Fruit Salad

Mimosa

Christmas Dinner

Caesar Salad

Warm French Bread with Dipping Sauce

Honey Glazed Ham

Orzo

Green Bean Casserole

Garlic Mash Potatoes

Gewürztraminer

Ice Cream

Feel free to post your Christmas Menus as well.

Happy First Day of Winter

Well... unless you should be on the southern hemisphere... in which case, welcome to summer time!

Yes, once again we are in winter according to the calendar.  Today we will get the least amount of sun of any day of the year.  This will be much more noticable if you live in say, Alaska.  But still, less sunlight then any other day of the year.  

Turns out that meterologically we were in winter right after thanksgiving.  There is a very interesting thing about winter out here.  Yesterday I was wondering about in a tshirt during the day, but at night it dips down around freezing.  Oh, and there is snow in the mountains.  The ski resorts are open, but apparently only texans are there since there is only about 20 inches of snow. Thats right, 20 inches of snow and everyone is waiting for them to get real amounts of snow.  Last year the ski report had some with close to 150 inches of snow. And that is a lot of snow.

Now then... where are my tacos?

Christmasy Stuffs

Greetings to all of you,

  I know it has been a bit busy since I posted last so it has been some time.  But fear not, there has been much happening.  A lot of it has been work, which just hasn't been all that fun.  Also we finished out scouts for the year.  

Now then, as far as Christmas stuff goes, we have been having our advent dinners.  It has been really nice to get every one together and just get to relax.  As you may have guessed our last one will be tomorrow.  

The tree and inside stuff went up the friday after Thanksgiving.  A week or so later the outside lights went up and had a timer and all.  I should probably put a few pictures of them up so you can all bask.  It is not at the levels of Spud extravaganza, but I do have lights up outside. 

This morning I made Christmas cookies!  There are now happy chocolate chip cookies and not so happy oatmeal raisin cookies.  The oatmeal raisin cookies lack cohesion.  I think that I may need to get a new recipe for them.  But the chocolate chip ones came out quite nicely.  And they are red and green for the holiday spirit.  

Tonight we will be having a Holiday movie marathon.  I am working to watch all of our holiday movies plus a few that we rented.  I have made up a list of Holiday movies that we own (in no particular order):

• Bells of St. Mary's
  
• Muppet Christmas Carol
  
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (animated)
  
• The Year without a Santa Claus
  
• White Christmas
  
• Santa Claus is coming to Town
  
• Frosty the Snowman
  
• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
  
• Little Drummer Boy
  
• Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol
  
• Cricket on the Hearth
  
• Frosty Returns
  
• Christmas with the Simpsons
  
• The Simpson's Christmas 2
  

Now before you ask, I don't really know this Cricket on the Hearth business, it was in a set of Christmas DVDs and I knew all the others.

I need to look into getting Its a Wonderful Life as well and would like to get National Lampon's Christmas Vacation.  Feel free to add your suggestions too.

Happy...well, whatever today is, Saturday I think

So then... I know I haven't posted so much lately.  And there has been blogage by other happy bloggers, which is good to see.  Now then, that past week I have been busy as anything.  Getting up early and pting an then work and then other errands and then by the time I would get home collapse in bed.  

Thursday night we watched Horton Hears a Hoo on bluray which is really good.  The opening looks amazing from a quality standpoint.  It looks very realistic.  All of the movie is good, the opening is striking on bluray with a 1080P screen.  

On Friday I got to run around and get some stuff done.  I finally put up the outsite Christmas lights.  I have them on a timer with a photocell in it, so that they will come on a dusk and stay on for 3 hours.  Its pretty sweet.  Of course and added bonus of this was that I needed to get a staple gun too.  I was going to see about a ladder, but it seems they are a bit more expensive then I thought, so I am sticking with the step stool for now. That night was a tacky sweater party at one of our friends places.  It was a good time and there was some good eggnog, so all was good.  

Today has been a lot of home stuffs, cleaning dishes, laundry and the like.  Not all that productive, but stuff that needs to get done.  Then we have some errands to run and later today is the Christmas parade here in town.  Tomorrow is week 3 of our Advent dinners.  

Anyhow, I think that is about enough blogging for now, so I think that I shall stop and prehaps there will be more later.  Don't forget to check the twitter.

Fed Ex sucking continues!

As you may have picked up from the last post I have had issues with Fed Ex.  Being a customer and not being pleased with their relations to me (ie sucking at life) I wrote their customer relations department (see the post below), since they don't seem to have a customer service office.  This was their reply to me:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us.

I apologize, but you have reached FedEx Office Customer Relations, and
we do not have the ability to assist you with your request.  Your
inquiry is one that will need to be addressed by a FedEx shipping
representative.

For your convenience, I have forwarded your inquiry to
webmaster@FedEx.com. A FedEx representative will be contacting you
shortly to address your questions or concerns. Please feel free to
contact them directly by dialing 1-800-GO-FEDEX (1-800-463-3339).

Thank you again for writing.

Alisa Nielsen
Customer Relations

Now, since they have fowarded this email to Fed Ex shipping, just like they did last time, I'll give Fed Ex shipping till tomorrow to try to contact me.  Then it will be time to reach out again.  Of course, being confused that apparently the customer relations office is not about customer relations, I had to write back to them: 

Dear Sir, Ma'am, or Automated Machine that will tell me that this is not the function of your office,

I have emailed this address twice.  As far as I can tell you are customer relations.  As far as I can tell, since I have done shipping through you I am a customer.  In both of my emails I have complained that your customer service sucks.  I have written how I continually reach out to you and your company continues to ignore me.  This seems to be an issue with the way that you related to your customers, hence contacting customer relations.  However both of my emails have been replied to by saying that you can not help me that it isn't your office's job and then forward the email to Fed Ex shipping, who by the way is even worse at customer relations than you are.  I'm curious at this point, since your replies to my previous emails have led me to believe that your office (customer relations) has nothing to do with customer relations, so what is it you do?

Luckily their first response was quick, and automated!  Lets have a look:

Thank you for contacting FedEx Office!  Your comments are extremely important to us as they help us to improve our products and services.  Every email we receive is reviewed and in most instances responded to within 48 hours.  You may also contact one of our customer service professionals at 1-800-GoFedEx, 24-hours a day.

Please note if your email is regarding the change or cancellation of an online order we encourage you to contact us at our toll-free number listed above in order for us to provide you with immediate assistance.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us, we sincerely appreciate your business.

Best regards,

FedEx Office Customer Relations

More Fed Ex Grumbles

So Fed Ex is still screwing with me.  I wrote to their customer relations people (for the second time now).  Here is what I had to say (the subject line was epic fail):

Dear Customer Relation Person,

    Lets start off that this is a customer relation issue.  You have failed me, and I happen to be the customer.  We'll start off at the beginning.  I placed an order from Amazon, and had it sent to me via 2 day shipping.  It was scheduled to be delivered 20 Nov.  Its tracking number was 994133804353.  Checking both the Amazon site and your site it stated it was delivered and let on my door at 1445.  I arrived home that day at 1700.  The box was not at my door, so I called your 800 number.  I was told that they would contact the local office, who would talk to the driver and they would call me the next day.  Today is 2 Dec, 12 days after I was told I would get a call about this package.  You have failed me.

  Since I did not get the call that I was suppose to get I emailed via your website.  I was told in an email reply on the night of 21 Nov that you would investigate under the number  20081120026160 and you would let me know as soon as you located the package.  I never heard anything else from that contact.  Since todays is 2 Dec and there has been nothing more from this it seems that you have just ignored me, the customer.  You have failed me.

Since you have never followed up on that I suppose that you have yet to locate the package.  I have gotten the package, it arrived in my mailbox (opened by the way) last week.  Now I emailed your customer relations on 25 November.  In this email I let you know that my box has arrived and asked why your company never followed up.  Your response was that it wasn't a customer service issue, and that Fed Ex ground would be contacting me.  Now hear it is 2 Dec and I still have yet to hear anything from Fed Ex ground from that contact. You have failed me.

Now, I have reached out to you a number of times.  Each time I get one email immediately after I contact I get one response that we will get back to me at some point.  Then I don't hear anything more from it.  Since I am a customer and you have continually failed me, I view this as a customer relations issue.  I would like to know why you don't seem to care about customers.  Perhaps why you can't keep track of packages (which I thought was what your company was based on).  Might be nice to know why my box was open when it finally got here.

But of course, based on my previous experiences from this, you'll send an email that we'll get to you and then I'll never hear back from you again.  So this means that you get today's Epic Fail.

And today's epic fail goes to...

FEDEX

So they still haven't responded to me.  I am gonna have to re-email them.  First they failed to get my box to me on time.  Then when I called to let them know that I didn't get my box and they promised that I would be hearing from them the next day.  They never called.  So I emailed again, got an email back that they were investigating and would get back to me.  So after a while I emailed the customer service people.  They of couse emailed me and said that it wasn't a customer service and they told me that it wasn't a customer service.  So now I am going to have to email them once again to let them know that they have failed.

In other news we had the first of our advent dinners.  I have posted some pictures of the table all done up nice.  Stella was quite happy to get to decorate everything and make it look like a magazine.  Everyone said that it was quite grown up and amazing looking.  So it was fun.  Now we have several other dinners, they will be a different locations, perhaps a little less formal.  

Well... follow the twitter