Bose QuietComfort 15 (QC-15) Long Term Review

Posted on February 26, 2012 by

IMG_1028

Three years ago, I purchased a set of the Bose QuietComfort 15 Acoustic Noise Cancelling over-the-ear headphones.  Here is my long term review of the product.

I’m easily distracted by noise.  A slammed door, shrill giggle, or foreign language conversation can destroy my productivity by pulling me out of the zone. 

So I after I flew back from Japan in business class, and used a pair (provided by American Airlines) for eight hours, I decided to purchase a pair of QC15s.  After 8 hours, there was no pinching, and pressure points.  Oddly enough, I wasn’t as mentally tired when I arrived in Houston. 

Since I would be wearing them for six to eight hours a day in a noisy environment, it seemed like a perfect fit.

What I liked

  • The cord is replaceable, so you don’t have to worry about a chair rolling over the cord and having to figure out how to repair the headset – you simply unplug the damaged cord and plug in a new one.
  • The sound quality is fantastic.
  • The headphones are very comfortable.  I wore them for six hours a day, only taking them off when I left my desk or someone stumbled into my cubicle.

What I didn’t Like

  • If you don’t have a battery, you don’t get any sound. I was using a battery every two weeks, so I had to keep a stash of batteries at my desk.  I switched to rechargeable batteries, and quickly found that I was changing the battery every week or week and a half.
  • Within the first year, the black leather in the ear cushions started to flake off.  I would end up with black specks of leather on my ears and face.  At first, it wasn’t entirely obvious to me it was from the ear cushions.  I would go into the bathroom, look up in the mirror and I had these dirty specks on my face.  This appears to be a common issue.
  • Next, the adhesive holding the fake leather to the inside of the ear cups gradually let go, exposing the foam insulation.
  • Lastly, during the third year, the headphones would develop a loud piercing high pitched feedback squeal. 

The squeal would start around the four hour mark and then if I turned my head I would get a high decibel squeal, like someone lets loose with an air horn.  I kept using the headphones, but the time to required to produce the squeal would decrease every week. 

I ultimately cracked the headphones open and cut the microphone in a futile attempt to get rid of the feedback.  It didn’t work.

I was using the headphones approximately six hours a day, five days a week, for 50 weeks a year.  That equates to 250 days, or 1,500 hours of usage per year.  $300/4,500hrs = $0.6666 per hour, or approximately $.40 per day to experience black flakes randomly appearing on my clothes or face with air horn quality shrieks.

Ultimately, the headphones lasted about 3.5 years and ended up in the trash can. I’m intensely disappointed in Bose.

I’m now using some Sony in ear buds that cost $20.  If they last 3 years, the cost per hour will be $4.444 x 10-3.  Much better bang for the buck and no flakes or shrieks.

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

How to Use RescueTime to Improve Productivity

Posted on January 30, 2012 by

Screen shot 2012-01-30 at 12.13.12 AMLately, I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks I need to accomplish. 

In the past, I’ve tried GTD with limited success, only to create a bunch of un-prioritized lists, categorized by context.  As a result, I ended up accomplishing a great deal of unimportant (yet satisfying) tasks, but ended up missing some deadlines with some painful consequences.

In one case, payroll provider neglected to deposit the required tax deposit on time and I was hit with a usurious penalty.  It wasn’t entirely my fault, but still it hurt.  It still took me months before I was able to properly fire them, move to another payroll provider, and fix all of the accounting issues.  It was a tremendous headache.

I learned a valuable lesson: prioritize your tasks, which doesn’t fit well within the GTD system.  GTD is focused on getting the most done, not the most important things done.

So this month, I renewed my focus on becoming a better manager of my time.

After I saw Randy Pausch’s Lecture on Time Management, I decided to audit my time with RescueTime.  I’ve been going on a week and so far, Randy was right on the money.  I was surprised at home much time I was wasting.

RescueTime is a great tool to help you get a handle on how you spend your time, and it compares your time against the average RescueTime user.  Today (Sunday) I’m hitting 74%, and I’m more productive than 91% of people.   There even a badge that highlights your efficiency compared to the user users.

A few days ago, I learned that I was spending way to many hours at home reading news and looking at MLS listings.  I stopped and my productivity shot upwards quickly.  Tonight, I’ve hammered out  a slide deck, completed several class assignments, and am coding again. 

Maybe you should give RescueTime a try too.  It is free.  What do you have to loose?

Posted in Time Management | Leave a comment

vWorker Marketing Fail (2012 Newsletter)

Posted on January 24, 2012 by

Personally, I’m not a big fan of vWorker.com (formerly rentacoder.com), especially since they jacked up their rates and added the “AccuTimeCard” spy app that periodically takes snapshots of you as well as your desktop.

I do have an active account, but I’ve never found a freelancer project that interested me.  I still go back every now and then and search through the posted jobs, but many of the postings skew to the bottom of the barrel, a split between build-me-a-copy-of-amazon.com-for-$500 and the impossible (like turn-my-iPhone-into-laser-gun-and-mind-control-device). 

While some coders have been able to wrangle enough work to scratch out a meager living through them, the site just feels amateurish to me, like it was done on the weekends by someone learning .net, someone who doesn’t learn very well.

Well tonight, I got their 2012 marketing newsletter, which I saw with interest they are now promoting client testimonials:  Screen shot 2012-01-24 at 10.21.03 PM

“… A traditional firm in his local area quoted him an astronomical €10,000. Fortunately, he was clued into vWorker on the recommendation of some online friends, and gave vWorker a try. In a short time, his vWorkers had created HotelHaggle.com at a fraction of the cost.”

I’ve had some miserable experiences with outsourcing projects.  I wanted to see it done right for a change. 

The only problem?  It wasn’t.  The featured site was down. 

Want to see what a team of virtual writers, programmers and virtual assistance can do?  Here it is:

Screen shot 2012-01-24 at 10.21.28 PM

How awesome is that?  I had a good laugh.

Posted in Business of Software | 3 Comments

I Fired a Real Estate Agent Today

Posted on January 23, 2012 by

We started looking for homes very recently. 

We’re looking for an affordable starter home that we could turn into a rental.  In this area, homeowners are walking away from their homes, which is not only decimating the home values, but they are also pushing the rental market up to the point where mathematically it just doesn’t make sense to rent any more.

I contacted a real estate agent (Agent C) to help, through Zillow.  More specifically, I wanted to look at a property my wife saw on Zillow. 

“No problem,” she enthused.  “But that home was sold in October.  Zillow and Trulia don’t update very often.  They are often inaccurate.  I have access to the MLS, so you should deal with me.  Besides, I have a another property close by for you to see.” 

I agreed, and told her the price range and area where we were looking.  She wanted to meet at the property and discuss the process of buying a home.  Before we hung up, she commented she’d be bringing her husband.  I thought that was a little odd, but assumed they were a real estate husband-wife team.

She immediately starting sending me MLS listings for properties in the price range, but outside the area we were looking for.

On Sunday, I drove over to the property to see her.  We talked for a while and she gave me a folder with some property listings printed out.  She gushed about her credentials, and told me about her husband (who wasn’t a real estate agent at all). 

I asked her about HomePath (Fannie Mae REO program), and she responded that Trulia and Zillow aren’t accurate at all.  Perhaps she didn’t hear me correctly.  But before I could ask again, she told me that she had access to MLS and would setup my profile so that I could see the realtor’s remarks.  It was a special setting she could enable to allow me to see this special, privileged information.

She showed me the remarks for the property – that disclosed that the FHA would not loan on the property.

I asked her why the FHA wouldn’t finance on the property and paused, and said it was probably because of the number of renters.  She never would admit it might be because the HOA might be in financial trouble, even when I prodded.  She wasn’t telling me the whole truth, I confirmed later with a loan officer. 

As I left, she whispered, “I think you should make an offer.  Offer one hundred thousand.  You should offer one hundred thousand today.  I’ve already gotten three calls on this property.  It won’t last long.”

I paused.  The real estate agent was telling me to offer $100k for a property listed for $89k, that the FHA had publically declared it won’t finance.  I thanked her for her time and left, but on the way out looked at the Realtor’s sign in the front yard.

The original property I wanted to look at was sold in October, but was relisted at the beginning of the year.  She should have known this because I sent her the address and asked her about it. 

Her initial contact email had her real estate company’s name – and you guessed it – it was the same company that had the listing.

When I emailed her to ask if she was the listing agent, she responded that she was a Dual Agent, and attached me the required disclosure form, entitled, “Agency Relationships in Real Estate Transactions.”

I see.  The agent steered me to a property where she would get a bigger commission, and she wanted me to pay $10k extra over the asking price in a decimated market, where the FHA wouldn’t loan on it.

I quickly hammered out an email and fired her on the spot.  

Posted in Investing, Real Estate | 3 Comments

Are Credit Card/Airline Miles for Suckers?

Posted on January 21, 2012 by

Update: American Express has removed the ability to see what purchases were made through their mall.  You can no longer easily track if your bonuses will post to your Membership Rewards account.  Furthermore, they are now stating that bonus points will be credited to your about 10 to 12 weeks after you meet the qualifying critera for eligible bonus transactions.

imageIn November, I signed up through a link that promised 25,000 Membership Rewards points for signing up for the Platinum Card.  At the time I searched for a better deal, but ended up signing up for the 25,000 points offer.

When the statement closed two weeks later, I called to make sure the 1 month spending window was from the date I activated the card and not the date of the application.  The customer service rep assured me that everything was ok, and the bonus would be applied within eight weeks.

Eight weeks passed, and I never got the points credited to my account. 

I sent a message through the American Express website, only to receive a reply stating that the issue was being investigated and that someone would reply within ten days.  No one ever did.

I sent another message, only to receive a terse reply the next day that I won’t be getting the bonus.  I called American Express and was told by the representative that their computer system was down, so she couldn’t look up my account, but she could answer general questions about the Membership Rewards program.

I assumed it was a mistake.  Perhaps a Firefox ad blocker ate a cookie.  Maybe I clicked through a bad affiliate link.  I foolishly didn’t print out the offer or call to verify that a specific bonus ID was attached to my account.

Unfortunately, I’m not alone.  There is a long running post on FlyerTalk about American Express not honoring bonus IDs, and the absurd lengths people had to go to get their points by tracking down and calling special (unpublished) American Express phone numbers.

I simply don’t have the time or wherewithal to go the distance to get them to fulfill the deal.  I now put American Express in the same category as sleazy rebate processing companies. 

I’ve learned the hard way not to buy products with rebates attached to them; it simply isn’t worth the hassle.  Likewise, I’ve also learned that purchasing through mileage/cash-back malls is a loosing proposition as well (FatWallet is a notable exception; they actually honor their cash back offers).

Are Miles Earning Portals Turning into an Outright Scam?

Has Cartera (who runs most airline shopping portals) turned to the rebate processing industry as a profit model?  A model where you simply cheat unsuspecting customers? 

Customers who actually verify the miles/points haven’t posted after multiple months, who complain after eight weeks are subjected to a long “investigation” period to “resolve the issue.”  Rarely, some report that persistence pays off and they get their rebate, but most people simply give up.

There is tons of material posted on various credit card forums filled with the anguished cries of people who foolishly signed up for a credit card and started shopping at a mileage shopping portal, who never received their promised miles.

It appears as if companies like Cartera and FreeCause have discovered what rebate processing companies have known for years, you can just cheat people and satisfy those who complain loudly enough and get away with it.

Perhaps most shockingly, the volume of these complaints has increased in the last several years.

Here are just a sampling of some of the discussions revolving around scammed customers:

And the list goes on, and on. 

I guess the age old advice is still very relevant today: buyer beware.

Posted in AAdvantage, American Express, Delta, Priority Club, Reward Points, SPG | 1 Comment

Sorry, the Blog has Moved (but you’re in the right place)

Posted on January 13, 2012 by

imageIf you are seeing this message, you made it.  Congratulations and welcome to my new and improved blog (at least, half of it).

I’ve moved my blog from my corporate web site and split the blog into two blogs: one that covers my life in general and the obstacles encountered while starting and growing two small business (this blog) from a high level, and a second blog that only covers the gory technical details that I encounter while grappling with software development.

It seemed that I had two audiences, two distinct groups that don’t normally overlap: entrepreneurs and programmers.  The former would suggest fewer postings on the intricacies of git and more business stuff, while the latter would suggest the opposite. 

Since I started my consultancy some five years ago and started blogging about it, I never envisioned so many people would read my blog.  Over time, the readership has continued to grow.  I always appreciated all of the comments and support.

However, all of the comments are now gone as they didn’t survive the transfer.  Quite a few of the original blog postings didn’t transfer either, but I will manually try to resurrect the ones that were most visited.

In a way, I’m starting over.   And it seems like this was a good time to do it.  Looking ahead, this is going to be my busiest year ever.

I’m in the process of migrating my corporate website from ASP.NET to a LAMP stack, while completely rewriting it.  I’m launching several new iOS apps.  I’m also working on a second degree while taking in freelancing work.

So update your subscriptions to the new blogs (http://joe-turner.net/ and  http://coding.joe-turner.net/). 

Posted in Announcements | 2 Comments

Outlook 2010: How to View Multiple Calendars in Overlay View

Posted on January 11, 2012 by

Outlook is a god-awful application which is forced upon knowledge workers the world over.  Worse yet, once you get familiar with all of the obscure settings and context menus in Outlook, along comes another horrendous UI redesign wherein Microsoft rearranges the buttons and settings.

If you want to view multiple calendars, the default setting brings them up side-by-side.  This is totally useless; any other modern calendar defaults to having the events overlaid (merged).

Undoubtedly, if you are reading this, you are hammering Google to try to figure out how to accomplish this feat.  You probably already figured out how to do this with previous versions of Outlook.  Well Microsoft moved the options.

Here is how to do it.

imageSelect the multiple calendars you want to overlay.  This will bring up the monthly calendars side-by-side. 

imageNow you have to click on each calendar tab and select “Overlay.”  If you have five calendars, that is five clicks.

Then you will now have a merged monthly calendar view, and you can now see all of your appointments and events in a merged view, just as it is in iCal or Google calendar.

Posted in Time Management | Leave a comment