the Life of Zim

If you use an Apple computer and/or the Adobe Suite — specifically the Flash IDE — you’ve probably encountered Apple and Adobe’s completely asinine use of your focus, or should I say hijacking of your focus.

Part 1:

I’ll start with Adobe because I just haven’t been liking them recently. Flash is a part of the Adobe Suite which includes Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign, and Acrobat to name a few. Basically what Adobe has done is make it impossible to “hide” Flash while it loads. Now, one thing I find interesting in all of this, is that to my knowledge, out of all the Adobe Applications I own — Adobe’s Web Creative Suite — only Flash does this. What happens is that when you open the Application and as it is initializing, the loading screen will rest on top of all other programs you have open and running. Resulting in something like this:

First off, I have to ask Adobe why? Why would it be important to have Flash steal the focus of my computer basically making it impossible to do anything else unless I work blind or carefully move my screens around the flash loader? What kind of user experience are you trying to deliver here? I’m already using the program and don’t need to be reminded of its magnificence as it’s loading. You’re an ass and need to get over yourself.

Part 2:

Apple’s part in the completely asinine use of focus is possibly, although definitely arguably, worse than that of Adobe. While Adobe completely hijacks your computer for a brief period of time is a completely dick move, Apple is just, well, stupid. You’ve probably noticed this before if you do a considerable amount of multitasking on your Apple computer and constantly have multiple Applications open at once. Somewhere at Apple, someone made the amazingly stupid decision to have Applications steal focus when they finish initializing. So lets say I’m looking at my email and open a link which in turn fires up Safari. As Safari is initializing I go back to my email and start a reply. In the middle of my typing Safari finishes initializing and steels my window focus cutting me off in the middle of my email. Thanks Apple, you complete ass.

Now this isn’t that big of a deal. The level of inconvenience is minimal, but there are two reasons this makes me want to choke Steve Jobs. First, to my knowledge, it is impossible to turn this nature off. I’ve scoured the Internets in search of a solution, a configuration setting, or some Apple or Shell script to run to change this. Nothing. If it was optional for Applications to behave in this way, I could deal with the idiotic default. Second, this behavior is totally and completely useless. It is only ever infuriating or otherwise useless. When would I ever want the program I’m loading to steel focus. Most people aren’t running defibrillator apps off their Apple computers that when fulling initialized need the program to take over for them immediately because otherwise someone might die. There has never and will never be a situation in which I will ever want an Application that does not currently have my focus to steel my focus just because it finished initializing. When I want to change my focus to a different application, I will do it. In the mean time do not hijack my focus. If this is an operating system bug that is difficult or impossible to solve, please forgive me and know that there is a great deal of interest in the community to have this problem resolved.

I can’t be believe how long it’s been since my last post. Nearly a month! I honestly couldn’t say if it’s been because I’ve been that busy or that boring for the past month. So, here I’ll try a little recap.

First off, this past weekend Laura and I signed a lease for a new place here in Portland. We’ll be moving at the end of October. We’re pretty excited about having a new location, but will definitely be sad to leave this house and of course our awesome landlord Erin. This house has really been awesome to live in and it still amazes me how much we lucked out finding it on craigslist. So why are we leaving?

Reason #1, because this neighborhood sucks. I’m sorry to all the die hard St John’s lovers out there, but I’ve gotta be honest here. St John’s has a lot of good qualities and it’s totally improving all the time, but as of right now it kind of sucks to live here. It’s a little on the ghetto side, and were Laura and I are right now, it’s kind of on the edge of the ghetto side of the ghetto. Then there was the “we got robbed” factor. It’s far as hell from anything exciting going on. We’re 4 miles from a decent grocery store. And for working from home and wanting to get out during the day once in a while, there’s nothing to do around here. There are about 2 coffee shops, one of which is never open. To sum up, St John’s is not why we moved to Portland.

Reason #2 is that we want to explore the city while we’re here. I think even if we loved it here in St John’s it would be good for us to move around a bit to get to know Portland better. If we’re here, I want to be here and experience this place to the fullest. We’ve done North Portland, now it’s time for Northeast Portland, and after that maybe Southeast, who knows.

And of course Reason #3, is we’re kind of getting a sweet deal. Kind of. We’re moving to a really nice place in a really really nice part of town (at least compared to our current location). It’s right around the corner from coffee shops and restaurants, which will be awesome for me working from home. The house a little bigger, nice yard, and a garage. No landlord living downstairs — although, we haven’t had much to complain about having a landlord living downstairs here. This place is just going to be a better fit. It’s much more in line with what we wanted to move here for.

The downside of course is that it’s more expensive. Fortunately though, part of our deal is first that it’s “month to month”… basically if bills are getting tight, we have the option to give a 60 day notice and get out of our lease early. 60 days is a lot, but at least it’s there. So it’s more expensive, but pretty well priced for what we’re getting, and there’s a lot more flexibility. Of course we have a ton of flexibility now, but we just need to get out of this neighborhood.

It’s such an odd feeling moving. We’re both really excited for our new place for so many reasons; and we’re so excited to get out of St John’s for so many reasons; but we’re really going to miss this house for so many reasons. It’s just a really great house, in a not so awesome neighborhood. And I don’t say that just because of the robbery. There’s sirens often, cars speeding down the street, meth dealers in the house across the street — exaggeration Mom. It’s just not a sweet place to live. But this house, this house is awesome. We’ll miss it.

I’m sure there’ll be more on the move in later posts. I just need to make sure I’m making posts.

BTW: I’m really exhausted as I’m writing this, so if there are a ton of typos or if it just plain doesn’t make sense, my apologies.

Recently in the blog I’ve had a couple of rants regarding companies and their customer service — or lack there of. At the end of one of these posts I my “Zippo” story about the best customer service I’ve ever had. Well today, I have another story to share…

Vornado Air makes fans, heaters, humidifies — basically anything that involves moving air. Their products are awesome. Laura won’t buy any fan — or is at least very skeptical about any fan — unless it’s a Vornado. She’s experienced the best and can’t go back. Not to just hype their products, but I have to agree with her. They’re just good, powerful, quiet fans. Anyway, about a week ago our cat, Thomas, knocked over our fan; the cover popped off and one of the three blades on the fan snapped off. I should note that these fans aren’t exactly cheap. We have the Midsize 630 which is a relatively small fan and cost about $60 depend on where you get it. So, when the blade broke we weren’t exactly thrilled about having to buy a new fan. As a shot in the dark, Laura sent an email — from my email, which is why the reply says, “Dear Mr. Zimney” — to Vornado explaining our dilemma, more to see if we could buy a replacement part directly from Vornado rather than buy a whole new fan. Here’s the response we got:

Dear Mr. Zimney,

Thank you for contacting us. We appreciate your patronage. If you would please provide your address, I would gladly send this part to you at no charge via UPS.
I hope you have a great day.

Sincerely,
Goldie Pappan | VORNADO AIR, LLC | Consumer Service

I replied with our address and a very sincere, “Thank You” and a week later we had a replacement blade on our doorstep. I reinstalled the blade and the fan has never been better.

This is the kind of customer service I believe we should all expect from those we do business with. If I spend $60 on a fan, I should hope that if that fan breaks, the company has the dignity to stand by its product and say, “if it’s broke, we could have made it better and we’ll make it up to you.” To that, I think some people immediately get this imagery in their head of adolescent males throwing stuff off of parking ramps to see if they can break it, since it won’t cost them anything to replace it. And I say, while there is that risk for a company, I sincerely believe that treating your good customers well, will in the end reward a company with happy, life long customers. The sad thing is that as consumers, we are helpless to demand this kind of customer service. Anyway, I could go on forever here talking to numerous examples of shitty customer service from shitty companies. But that’s not my point, my point is simply that Vornado gets it and they deserve to be recognize for it.

I just got word that Artcrank is coming to Portland this year — October 1, 2009.

For those of you unfamiliar with Artcrank, it’s “a Poster Show for Bike People”. The show, hosted by One On One Bike Studio, began in Minneapolis in 2007 and has now spread to Denver, Portland, San Francisco, and St Louis.

Here’s a glimpse of the 2008 show — music by Keston and Westdal:

Earlier this week a tornado touched down just south of downtown Minneapolis. It happen to touch down on my sister Kate’s block. Thankfully no one was hurt, but her block got torn up pretty good. WCCO News (Minneapolis’s CBS) interviewed her. Here are a couple of clips from the interview.

The general consensus on Mac OS X is that it is a very secure system. There is little to no threat of virus attacks and the operating system itself with the proper settings can be very secure. Unfortunately this isn’t as true as most of our perceptions would lead us to believe. I recently discovered that there is an extremely simple way to reset any administrative password on the OS X operating system. The only tool you need is a copy of the Mac OS X Install DVD. I won’t post the details here, but doing a quick Google Search results in some pretty shocking results; namely the Apple website has a very detailed page on how to change an administrative password in the case that you have “forgotten” yours, but has very poor details on how to prevent someone else from doing this to your computer. Don’t get me wrong, when the system is correctly put in place, Apple’s security is top notch. The problem is that by default these security measures are not implemented. Additionally, the existence and implementation of these measures are virtually hidden.

Before I begin on solutions to securing your machine, I must credit Orbicule. I recently found Orbicule’s Undercover software which is basically a “tracking” system for your laptop in the event your machine is stolen. It’s very affordable and I recommend it to anyone with a Mac laptop. Undercover makes a number of recommendations for making your computer more secure, which is what got the ball rolling for me.

To start there are a few basic settings you’ll want to put in place to make your machine more secure. In the “Security” panel of your “System Preferences” there are three check boxes you’ll want to be sure to have checked. These settings will lock your computer with your username/password.

The first is the “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” check box. This will make your computer lock any time it has been inactive long enough to put the computer to sleep or kick on the screen saver. More importantly, on a laptop it will require a password any time the lid is opened — essentially locking the computer once the lid is closed. Additionally, you can change the timing of your “Energy Saver” and “Screen Saver” in your “System Preferences” — personally I’ve just gotten into the habit of closing my laptop lid or starting my screen saver when I’m not using my computer.

The second check box to make sure you check is the “Disable automatic login” password. Without this, all of your other security measures are next to useless. Without the “Disable automatic login” checked all anyone needs to do to get into your machine is force it to reboot. This check box provides a login screen when you restart your machine.

The third item to check in the “Security” panel is the “Require password to unlock each System Preferences pane”. This will keep anyone from changes this preferences before they get locked out.

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Now, as I wrote above, it is extremely easy to reset any administrative password on OS X — or any user password for that matter. So, the smart ones out there are wondering, “Why the hell did I require myself to enter my password at every turn if anyone can simply reset my password?” Good f***ing question. A more appropriate question would be, “How do I prevent anyone from resetting my password?”

The big Lock that Apple doesn’t advertise: the Open Firmware Password Utility

The way to prevent someone from resetting your admin password is to “lock the firmware”. The way to reset a password on OS X involves booting from an Mac OS X Install DVD. By locking your firmware, the system will be unable to boot from any drive other than the main hard drive without entering a password. The only way to reset that password is again to boot from the Mac OS X Install DVD. The only downside to this is that if you forget your password, you’re pretty well screwed. So this solution is not recommended for the absentminded.

The Apple website will tell you to insert your Mac OS X Install DVD and find the Firmware Password Utility on the disk. For OS X 10.5 and later this will not work. You will need to boot from the DVD. To do this, insert the CD into the machine and reboot. Hold down the ‘c’ key as the machine is booting. This will allow you to boot from a “optional disk”. In our case select the “Mac OS X Install DVD” and press enter. From here you will reach the “Welcome” screen, select your language and click the “–>” button. Now, you may get a prompt saying you are unable to install the operating system. Ignore this prompt or any others that may appear. At this point you should be able to see a set of menus at the top of the screen. Select the “Utilities” menu, choose “Firmware Password Utility” and proceed as directed. And there it is. That’s how you can securely lock you computer. By doing this the only way to use your computer would be to replace the hard drive — which makes you computer far more secure, and your data incredibly secure.

I’m not sure why Apple doesn’t advertise this more. Or rather, why they make it so incredibly simple to reset an administrative password. I could see making it easy to reinstall the OS and wipe the machine, but allowing anyone to reset the administrative password gives anyone, with the means, access to practically everything on your computer. It’s also incredibly disappointing that there’s such a minimal amount of documentation on how to run the Open Firmware Password Utility. There’s definitely a good deal of documentation for the utility pre-Leopard, but all of that is next to useless for 10.5. My guess is that, sadly, there’s more demand from Mac users to know how to reset an admin password that they’ve forgotten than there is to lock the firmware. Most people aren’t aware of how easy it is to get around the administrative passwords and there assume that even if a computer is stolen, their information is secure. We just don’t think of it.

Anyway, I just hope this helps someone out. And again, I strongly recommend Undercover for a laptop — or any Mac for that matter. It’s a (seemingly) very effective way of adding an extra level of security to a machine. I would not, however, recommend Undercover for the iPhone. Unless I’m missing something, it seems to be pretty useless. From my understanding the crook would have to open the application in order to be tracked. In that case MobileMe is an extremely effective solution, which I wish I could afford (justify) the $99/year to pay for it.

Before he passed, the late Pope was given the opportunity to meet singer/song writer Lionel Richie. Shortly after this picture was taken, the Pope requested Lionel to sing a song. Naturally, Lionel declined, saying, “Not this time Popers.” The Pope had been praying for a private Lionel Richie concert ever since Dancing on the Ceiling was released in 1985. Lionel Richie is no longer allowed in Vatican City.

I’m starting to think I should change the title of my blog from “the Life of Zim” to “the Rant of Zim”.
It’s amazing how disconcerting Corporate America really is. Actually, I take that back, I’m not
amazed by it at all. It’s simply disturbing.

So, next up on my shit list is Adobe Systems Incorporated.

If you haven’t been following along on the blog, we were recently robbed. Someone came into our house and took our shit. It sucks. We’re still dealing with it a week later, and I’m sure we’ll still be dealing with it a month from now. Once again, it sucks. With that, I should point out that I do not blame Adobe for the burglary or think that it is their responsibility to compensate us for said burglary. My frustration with Adobe is rooted in their Customer Service, or rather lack there of. I’m am deeply disappointed by every aspect of their customer service that we have received up to this point.

A note for those of you that are unfamiliar with Adobe products and specifically CS4 or Creative Suite 4: You should know that the version of the Creative Suite that Laura had was Adobe Creative Suite 4: Design Premium, which costs $1,799. There is no comparable alternative to Adobe. For the line of work we are in, you use Adobe; it’s that simple. Now, it’s not Adobe’s fault for being the best at what they do, but I think it is important to note that they have a loose monopoly on the market. That said, between the high cost of their product and their dominance over the market, I believe, Adobe is in a greater echelon that ought to be held to a higher standard for the level of service they provide to their customers.

After the burglary, Laura bought a new computer. Upon attempting to install her copy of CS4 the software told her that the maximum number of machines (2) had been activated for her copy of CS4. The first activation was lost when the video card went out on her computer, which Apple replaced with a new MacBook Pro. The second when that replacement MacBook Pro was stolen a week ago.

CS4 comes with a License FAQ html file regarding possible issues you might run into. If you are on a Mac and have CS4 installed in the default location, you should be able to find the FAQ here. I was unable to find the FAQ on the Adobe website. The FAQ reads:

What happens if my computer is stolen or damaged and cannot be repaired?

If your computer is stolen, damaged beyond repair or the hard drive is completely re-imaged, the activation will be lost. In either case you can install and start using the Adobe product on your new computer, which will automatically detect the problem if you already had two computers activated. The activation process will guide you through the new activation, even if the prior computer is no longer available.

Both activation instances should totally be covered here. I’m sure that Apple re-imaged the laptop that was sent back, and the other installation was stolen with the computer. So naturally, after reading this, we thought, “Oh, great! Looks like there shouldn’t be any problem at all.” Wrong. Opening any program of CS4 prompts for activation. Upon activation a message displays saying that the maximum number of activations has been reached and that you have 30 days — the trail period length — to resolve the issue. There is no direction on how to solve the issue other than deactivating the other installations — which you must have the computer that the software is installed on to do — and in our case is impossible, but apparently covered according to the FAQ?

Next step: let’s call customer service. Hopefully you’ve never had the need to contact Adobe. Navigating their website and specifically their contact information is fairly difficult. Links are difficult to find, and over all it’s a counter-intuitive site architecture. Once you finally find the list of phone numbers, there’s the question of which number to call — in our case a tossup between Customer Service and Technical Support. I have yet to find any email address to contact, which is very surprising to me. I suppose with an email they can’t just put you on hold until you give up.

Preface to calls to customer service:
All of the service representatives we spoke to were in India. I don’t have any problem with Adobe’s customer service department being based in India. I don’t particularly like that Adobe is outsourcing as I would prefer they kept jobs in the United States, but fundamentally I can’t blame them for it. Outsourcing is a cheaper way of doing things and I can understand how a company that grossed $3.58 billion in 2008 would need to save money where it can. However, speaking to someone with an Indian accent — as well as someone from India speaking to someone with an American accent — can cause some serious communication barriers. Additionally, for the level of service we received, I want to say that Adobe’s India employees are so far removed from the company that the quality of service has suffered. Of course that assumes that this isn’t all intentional on Adobe’s part.

First Call
Laura calls customer service and explains the issue she’s having. The woman says, “Open CS4, click on the ‘Help’ menu and select ‘Deactivate…’.” Laura says, “No, the computer was stolen, I can’t do that.” The woman replies, “Open CS4, click on the ‘Help’ menu and select ‘Deactivate…’.” — “No. Do you understand that the computer was stolen!?” — “Open CS4, click on the ‘Help’ menu and select ‘Deactivate…’.” — “F***!!!”

Second Call
Laura calls customer service and explains the issue she’s having, hoping that this customer service representative will be a bit more competent, sure she just got a bad apple. After explaining the issue, she is told that the CS4 has been deactivated on the other computer and everything is gravy. Great. Laura asks for the woman’s name so that she can have some record of her conversation. “Nancy.” — “Okay… do you have an employee id number? Or is there a confirmation number for this call? Anything?” Nothing. She hangs up. Opens up CS4 on her laptop, and the issue still exists. — “F***!!!” — to our knowledge the woman flat out lied to us and in fact did absolutely nothing but put Laura on hold.

We wait a day.

Third Call
Laura calls customer service and talks to the first person that appeared to be of any use. She explains the issue, again. The customer service agent, Enrique, takes down much of her information to confirm her account and in the end says she’ll have to call back tomorrow because their “Activation Queue” is down he is unable to deactivate the installation of the other computer(s). At this point Laura insists on speaking to Enrique’s manager, which he resists. Finally she is placed on hold for a considerable amount of time until she gets the manager. The manger explains that the “Activation Queue” is down and she needs to call back tomorrow. Laura asks again for names or call numbers and is told that the customer service representatives are not allowed to give out their information for their own protection. Keep in mind they are in India. If they need to protect themselves from people getting upset enough to fly across the globe, they’ve got some serious problems. She gets no customer ids, no call numbers. Nothing. She asks to speak to the manager’s manger. No such thing. The line stops there.

Meanwhile…
…at Analog Interactive, my boss Shawn Sheely has been dealing with my installations of CS3 and CS4. Luckily, my CS4 had only been installed on one other computer (the one that was stolen) and so it activated fine. However, my CS3 had been on two machines previously — same story as Laura except I had a pixel out on my monitor instead of having the graphics card fail — Go Apple! Either way, Shawn had to call and deal with Adobe to sort out both copies, first so we could get CS3 working, and second to avoid future trouble with our copy of CS4. Shawn decided to call Technical Support instead of Customer Support. He called, talked to someone in India, and had the issue resolved almost immediately. Note, he made this call within two hours of Laura being told the “Activation Queue” was down and to call the next day.

Fourth Call
Laura now calls Technical Support. They add another activation to the account. CS4 runs fine. They give her a case number for the call. She also gets an email regarding the call with the case number. Everything is dandy.

WTF!?!?!
Adobe is a not a fortune 500 company, it only ranks 601. Even with such a low standing in the realm of the largest corporations in the world, I expected more form Adobe. I have been so utterly disappointed at this point that there is no possible way I will be able to look at Adobe the same. I thought they were one of the “good” corporate giants. Turns out I was wrong. Their customer service department purposefully gave us the run around three out of three times. If they actually knew how to do their job they simply could have told us to call Tech Support. How f***ing hard is that!? Why couldn’t we get a case number or an employee number for the customer service calls? Either Adobe has no idea how shitty their customer service is or they are promoting the behavior. It’s just bullshit.

Continued Ranting…
I hate that we, as a society, keep falling to the lowest common denominator like this. I would think, that a company in Adobe’s shoes, with such a huge dominance over a market, with such a high end product, would take that profit and continue to develop the best product possible with the best customer service available. You would think after spending $1799 on a software suite you would be treated like f***ing gold. Instead you have these huge corporate giants like Adobe or Microsoft or Apple, just to name a few, that seem to have a breaking point for integrity. Microsoft started out as amazingly innovative company that was the best at what they did; and slowly but ever surely they ended up taking nearly a decade to develop a worthless piece of shit like Windows Vista. As for Apple, I generally believe they have a superior product with, relatively, superior customer service. However, with their growing success I truly feel that Apple is starting to slip down the same path — specifically the bullshit that has come with the success of the iPhone and their affiliation with AT&T.

The best customer service I have ever received was from the Zippo Manufacturing Company. Zippo has made a vastly superior product with the most outstanding customer service I have ever come across in the course of my life. Their lighters are great. So great in fact that Zippo stands by the quality of a Zippo and will replace any Zippo if it breaks or fails for any reason, ever. I used to have a Zippo; I lost it to an airport post 9/11 — don’t get me started on the bullshit of Airport Security. At one point the hinge of the Zippo broke. There’s a pin that holds the top of the Zippo on, and that pin broke. I could have sent the Zippo in and had them repair it, but since it had some sentimental value, I didn’t want to send it through the mail. Instead, I emailed Zippo, telling them I just needed the pin and could probably fix it myself. Immediately, no questions asked, Zippo mailed me a package with two replacement pins, a few extra flints, some info on Zippo, and a prepaid envelope that I could use if I wished to send in the Zippo to be repaired. They also sent a keychain what was an encased penny, and the casing was engraved. It said: “The penny you’ll never spend to replace a Zippo.” They didn’t ask for any proof that I owned the Zippo, they didn’t care. To them I was a customer that needed service and they provided the absolute best service possible, going above and beyond my requests, and it didn’t cost me a thing. I bought the Zippo for $20 and it got me the best customer service in the world. Why should I expect any less from anything else I buy, especially if it costs nearly 100 times as much? I do wonder though, what would Zippo be like if 90% of all people who owned lighters only bought Zippo’s. Would Zippo still have the same level of integrity? One would hope so, but based on experience, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Last night we were robbed. It’s horrible. It sucks. I hope it never happens to any of you, but unfortunately it might; and so you probably have renters or home owners insurance. How good is insurance though? Good enough that the first thing you discuss in your blog is how fantastic your insurance company is, before even mentioning something bad happened? Or so bad that the first thing you think to write is “Who is more criminal? Liberty Mutual, or the man that robbed us?”

I just got off the phone with Russell Jackson, who apparently is of the belief that Liberty Mutual is the great light guiding the way of insurance companies everywhere. Russell Jackson is our claims agent at Liberty Mutual. Laura had spoken to Russell shortly before I had for a least 30 minutes discussing the ins and outs of our work lives, the robbery, and items taken from our home. By the end of the conversation we both felt more violated and taken advantage of than we had felt all day. Russell told us that if anything that was taken from our house was used in any part for business use, there is a cap on how much they will cover in cost. Why does it matter what something is used for? The only answer I can come up with: it’s just another way for the insurance company to get around giving out a claim.

Society has come to understand that insurance is a way of life. And with that, we have come to understand that the rules the insurance companies make are the ones we have to live by. We don’t have a say in the rules. The political representatives don’t have our best interests in mind. And this is just the way it is, so deal. Last night we were robbed. The past week or so it has been above 90 degrees. So last night at an attempt to keep cool, we decided to sleep out back in our tent. As we slept not 20 feet away from our back door, someone entered our home and stole two laptops, a camera, two bags and a purse — plus various other things. All of which had considerable personal value to them. We’ve barely slept in the past week and now feel unsafe in our home. The only place we really had to turn to bring our lives back to normal was our insurance. And in the off chance that you really need your insurance to come through, do they? Absolutely not.

Liberty Mutual has “language” in their policy that states that items used for any business related use have a cap on them for claims. This means that because both Laura and I use our personal laptops for work related things — on any level, we are unable to receive the full amount allotted for the items stolen. Regardless of if a business owns the computers or not, we are unable to receive our full claim. Could someone please, in non Sarah Palin logic, explain to me how this makes any sense at all? Why does it matter what I use anything for!? The only logical explanation I can come up with is that it’s a loophole so that the insurance company doesn’t have to hold true to the claim. That is the only thing that makes sense to me and it makes me feel far more taken advantage of than someone stealing from me. At least I wasn’t paying the thief to watch my stuff. I’m also guessing that the robber was stealing for survival and necessity; whereas the insurance company is refusing our full claim due to greed and laziness. Laziness because they are unable to properly run a business that doesn’t require them to screw people over by default.

So, long story short, I feel more wronged by our insurance company than that man that robbed us. It’s probably due to the fact that I’ve had a day to reflect on the robbery and have had the ability to have (part of) my peace with the silhouette of a person that robbed us. But I highly doubt I will gain any peace with our insurance company. We’ll just have to forget about them. I can tell you this, I will never trust Liberty Mutual if things continue as they are. They have behaved exactly as an insurance company is expected.

This past weekend, my friends Wes, Mason and Amy came out for a visit in Portland. It was awesome having them around and getting a chance to show them Portland and the Oregon Coast. The only downside to the whole trip was that it was only four days long. They got in on Wednesday and we tried to keep it simple night. Hung out at the house for a bit and then met some friends out at the Leisure Club here in St. John’s. It was a good night, but we did get a little rowdy. Towards the end of the night we met a couple who live here in St. John’s who invited us over for a bond fire. We accepted and were able to give the gang a little extra Portland flavor by mixing with the locals. For Thursday and Friday we headed out to the coast which was really the bulk of the trip. The weather was the best I’ve seen on the coast since we moved out here. Absolutely perfect.

Our final day was quite exhausting. We’d gotten ourselves a trike from Toys R Us a couple of days prior and decided to give it a test run. Mason Wes and I headed out with the trike on a bike trailer to Mt Tabor Park, which is basically the highest point in Portland. I didn’t know until after the fact, but I guess it’s actually an active volcano. Hauling the trike out was quite a chore, but well worth it. No one got seriously injured although Mason took quite the digger on the bike ride home. We were all pretty exhausted by the end of it.

The trip was concluded with a trip downtown with dinner at the Montage and a night cap at Huber’s. By Sunday morning we were all pretty wiped out but still sad to see each other go. Miss those guys a lot. I get to see them again in a couple of weeks though, which brings a smile to my face.