Author Archives: Seth Cardoza

I got sick of having to reinvent the wheel with CakePHP every time I wanted to make a post with some feature I was missing. So, I finally migrated my site to WordPress. There will be missing functionality for a while, but I wanted to at least get the site up and running. Over the coming weeks/months, I will work on replacing any missing functionality on the site.

In short, their customer service.

Companies are bound to make mistakes. Orders will be misplaced, packages damaged during shipping, and products will malfunction or break. It’s how a company responds to those problems that makes them great, and I have consistently had a great experience with Amazon.

Most recently, I had an issue with a DVD I purchased. I had bought the I Love Lucy Complete Series (affiliate link) for my then fiance in October of 2010 (over a year ago). Well, since it’s 34 discs, we weren’t able to watch it all right away. In fact, we are just now getting close to finishing it. The second to last disc of the set gave us problems. It would not play properly, getting stuck in a loop on one of the production logos. We were unable to navigate to the menu or any other part of the disc. I checked the disc, and there were a couple scratches, which I know we didn’t cause because this was our first time handling it.

Since it was purchased over a year prior, I figured we were screwed, but I would try to contact the manufacturer. I checked the packaging, and found www.paramount.com/entertainment, so I try to bring up the page, but it doesn’t exist anymore. I can’t find any sort of useful link on the Paramount home page. I search for the CBS Home Entertainment website, which does have a contact page, but no contact form on it. They do have links to Twitter and Facebook, so I contact them through Twitter, and wait for a response.

In the mean time, I figure it won’t hurt to contact Amazon, since they are often very helpful, and maybe can at least get me in contact with the manufacturer. I explain the issue with the disc in an email, and ask if they are able to replace the single disc. I get an email within a couple hours letting me know that they cannot replace the single disc, but are willing to replace the entire set for me. They sent me a replacement, and are paying for the return shipping on the defective set. Their service is much more than I asked for, and certainly more than I expected, but why I continue to buy with confidence from Amazon.

I thought this old ad from one of my comics was neat. There’s a coupon to save $0.75 off each Sea World park ticket. It might not seem like a lot, but remember tickets were probably $20 a piece or less at the time.

I was browsing Google Maps recently and noticed how large Walt Disney World Orlando is compared to Universal Orlando Resort. In the image below you can see Disney in the purple, and Universal in the red. To be fair, the purple is only the land Disney owns, and not necessarily their entire resort. With Universal, all that red is the entire resort. As you can see, they have no room to grow. Good planning on their part.

With the recent update to Android 2.2 Froyo, the Samsung Fascinate has the ability to take screen shots. There’s no need to root your phone, or even install other programs. Simply hold down the back button and push the power button. You will see a message stating “Screen captured. Saved as image file.” At this point, if this is your first time taking a screen capture, a folder will be created on your micro SD card labeled ScreenCapture.