Every once in a while I hear someone mention Twitter, and it usually goes like this:
Why do I care what someone ate for lunch?
I tell them that it's not about that and tell them about who I follow and why. I'm not sure what took them so long, but Twitter finally made a little promo video that pretty much sums it all up.
It really is worth checking out. :)
The first photo this week is one that I took for a DailyShoot and ended up choosing another one. I think this one might actually be nicer. I didn't choose it because it had less green for the assignment.
I'm attempting to grow an avocado plant at work. This was day 1.
A DailyShoot assignment where my hand had to be in the photo. It was tricky to shoot. Holding and operating a camera with my left hand was not easy. :)
My sister got some new bridal gowns in her shop and asked me to shoot photos of them for her web site. My family and I visited the shop on Friday and her infant son was there. This is my wife holding him beside a large mirror so he could see himself. :)
My favourite dress from the shoot.
Shooting dresses on a mannequin involves a lot of waiting, while my sister and my wife change it... or her? 2-3 seconds to snap the shot, 3-5 minutes waiting. While I waited, I looked around and saw one of the mannequin's hands in the sunlight in the front window. I liked how the light fell on it, so I had to shoot it. I really like this one.
Grapes! I ate a lot of these today.
This morning I weighed 240 lbs. So now I'm 27 lbs down from what I was when I started.
That's a big milestone for me. Not because I lost 3 lbs since last week (that's great too!) but because every pound I lose from here on basically puts me at a weight I haven't been in about 25 years.
I also reached the #2 spot on the Your Shape Fitness Evolved leaderboard for Canada earlier this week. :)
I really need to go buy some new jeans.
I lost track of time, so my posting is a bit late. :)
Once again, I ended up short for photos this week. I decided to walk around my house and look for some of my favourite things to add to the shots. Not so creative in some cases. Anyway, here we go...
First, a DailyShoot contribution from earlier in the week. As it turns out, this is also one of my favourite things. I love this stuff.
Next, another DailyShoot contribution. Ice, in a glass of water. It didn't quite look the way I wanted, so I added a bit of a blue tint to it during the post processing.
What would a week be like without a shot of my cat. :) My son was holding her and I was trying to get a close-up of her eyes. She doesn't like cameras invading her space, so she kept looking away. This was one of the best I could do.
On to my favourite things. My Sens jersey. We won't talk about how the season went.
My Rock Band guitar. It's also an addiction.
I love my 100mm lens.
We'll end off with today's DailyShoot contribution.
There was very little progress this past week, but any progress is good so I'm happy. As of Friday morning I was down to an even 243 lbs.
As far as the Your Shape Fitness Evolved game that I use for my workouts, I am in 25th place worldwide for most calories burned, and I am nearing 2nd place in Canada. One workout today should put me there. :) 1st place is going to take a while, and that person seems to workout very often so it may even be unreachable unless they stop, or I double up on my daily workouts. I currently spend 45-60 minutes per day and it's unlikely I'll do more.
I'm a believer that a product is only as good as the support that backs it. Unfortunately for CrashPlan, this is where their product falls short.
CrashPlan is a data backup service. For free, you can back up your data to an external hard drive, or to a friend's PC across the internet. For a subscription fee, you can also back up your data to their servers — CrashPlan Central. The big draw to their service is that they have an unlimited data backup subscription.Some time at the beginning of February, I decided to try out their 30-day trial of the service. It worked well. So well that I was impressed enough to subscribe for their 4-year unlimited plan within days of trying it.After activating my subscription and backing up more data to their servers, I noticed that most of my data was no longer appearing under the restore option.I used the search function to look for files that I knew I had backed up. It found them, so I was confident that they had the data backed up. But that's not very functional if I needed to restore a folder full of files where I may not know the names of every file in that folder.I logged onto their web site and submitted a support ticket. Within minutes I received an automatic reply informing me that I could expect a response within one business day.Two business days passed with no response.Only after expressing my displeasure on Twitter, twice, about not receiving any response I received one — two weeks after the original submission.They asked for more info and screen shots. They also apologized and credited me 30 days. I provided the requested info immediately.Another week passed with no follow-up. Again, via Twitter, I got another apology and then a reply to my support request appeared in my email inbox. This time they asked for the log files, and instructed me on how to provide them. I provided them.As of today, that was two responses in 26 days, and no solution, and I think the only reason I got any response at all was because I commented publicly on Twitter. Or was it a coincidence? Twice? I have serious doubts that I would have received any response if I had remained quiet. I have since seen other people comment, in their support forum and on Twitter, about the response times.My original intent was to wait a full four weeks before canceling, but the more I thought about it this morning, the more I asked myself "Why?" Why should I bother? They've had almost four weeks to at least provide me with a little hope that my issue would be resolved soon. And what if I needed that backed up data immediately? Could I trust that they would be there to help me when I needed them?Nope.I logged onto my account and tried to cancel. It failed, and informed me to contact support@crashplan.com. If there were any doubts in my mind about the decision before this, they were gone now.It took three or four attempts to cancel before it actually worked. Oddly enough, the one that worked was the one where I didn't bother to add a reason for canceling.Minutes later, I received an email from CrashPlan informing me that my subscription was canceled and a refund — minus $2.86 for the month used(?)... so much for that 30-day credit — would be issued.It's too bad that they weren't as quick to keep a customer as they were to let one go.
