Before today, I had a mountain bike. Before today, I enjoyed riding that bike off-road. But before today, I had never been mountain biking.

My wife and kids are at my parents’ house for the weekend, and without the need to coordinated schedules, I opted to go mountain biking with Aaron and Steph.

We drove to a little town called Ellijay and found a mountain bike trail that one of Aaron’s friends told us about. We rode about 6 miles uphill. There was some beautiful scenery, and we got to ride through the creek several times. It was a great ride, not too steep, but there certainly wasn’t much coasting. 6 miles uphill is a long way. My legs are pretty exhausted.

At the top of the mountain there is an amazing view. This picture is me this afternoon standing in the way of that view:

The picture doesn’t even do that justice. It’s amazing to see. I’ve got more pictures I’ll upload somewhere (facebook? flickr? …not sure where yet) in the next day or so.

We turned around and rode back down the mountain at blazing speeds. There was hardly anybody there, so we were able to really let loose and take the downhill with some aggression. After the 90-minute ride home, I was still on an adrenaline high.

What adventures did you have today?

It’s Wednesday, so if you’re in our office today, you’re expected to be found at Buckhead Burrito Grill for lunch.

Our lunch hour started like any other Wednesday lunch.  We were all keeping a very close watch on the clock, waiting impatiently for noon to come.

We got to BBG today and found they had new additions on the menu.  You may remember my post about the Snickerito last month.  Today there were new options: 3 Musketeers and Reese’s Whipps.  Wow.

I opted for the Musketeers.  It was excellent.  I think I still like the extra chocolate found in the Snickers bar a little more, but it was certainly the best 3 Musketeers bar I’ve ever eaten. They make it the same way as the Snickerito…wrap it in a tortilla and deep fry it.  Amen.

Tentative plans have me returning with the wife tomorrow during lunch, where we’ll probably try the Reese’s Whipps version of their fried awesomeness.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

Also today, I found out that somebody went there and told the owners about my blog.  That was cool.  Even cooler, they had already seen my Snickerito post.  So go there, and try some fried candy bar awesomeness.  Tell them you read about it here.   (Buckhead Burrito Grill is located at 3940 Cherokee Street in Kennesaw.)

They say that all fashionable trends come back around eventually. I guess it’s time for blog tag to come back. I blame this quality post on Geof, who was dragged into this mess by Jeff. Gotta be thankful for internet friends, right?

Here we go…

The Rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Six Non-important/habits/quirks about me:

1. I eat candy in 2’s. There’s a candy dish in the office (usually filled with chocolate, thanks to Sarah), and when I get a piece, I take 2. If I go back for #3, I’ve got to take the 4th. I didn’t think this was weird, but Sarah did. So I asked my wife, and she agreed with Sarah.
2. I like my baseball caps to come down close to my ears. I’ve got a cap with my company’s logo (technically my employer’s logo, but you know what I mean). I don’t wear it much because it feels like it’s barely on my head, and I don’t like that feeling.
3. I sleep with one foot out of the covers. I have no idea why, but I do. For some reason, I like the feel of the cool room mixed with the feeling of the warmth under the covers.
4. When traveling, I only stop at previously-approved gas stations. If the kids require a bathroom stop, and we’re 30 miles from the next approved exit, they just have to wait. (When on a route that is new, this doesn’t apply, because there would be no previously-approved bathrooms.)
5. When driving to a concert, I refuse to listen to anything involving the artist I’m going to see. “Involving” includes solo records, records where the artist was a member of the band, background vocals on another person’s CD, or even production. So, for example, when I drive to see Andy Osenga, I won’t listen to his stuff, any of The Normals or Caedmon’s Call*, or any record he’s produced. After the show, when on the way home, anything goes.
6. When eating chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream, I eat it in a bowl. I first eat all the frosting off the cake and then let the ice cream melt a little. Then I mix the cake in with the ice cream so that it creates this (kind of nasty) brown and white paste. Then I eat it. It’s the best (only) way to guarantee equal distribution of cake and ice cream in every bite.

Ok. Now for the victims in this blog tagging…

• Brandy
• Chris
• Tanya
• Allison
• Bryan
• John

Sorry guys…blame Geof and Jeff.

This post details the conditions where a grown male (18+) may wear stickers without having his sexual orientation questioned:

It is acceptable for a man to wear a sticker on his person in public if:

• The sticker is a gift from a direct descendant less than 8 years old.
• The sticker is a sticker that indicated he participated in an electoral process that day.

Some unique situations may require clarification:

1. The “I voted” sticker may only be worn on the calendar day that the individual cast his ballot at his voting precinct.

2. If the man gives his “I voted” sticker to his child, and the child then gives the sticker back to him the next day, he may wear it, but only in the presence of the child.

3. If the sticker begins to lose its stickiness, it must be discarded immediately.

4. The man may wear the sticker inside a private office or residence if it was a gift from a child that he has known for a time period no less than 6 months or if the child is a non-descendant relative. If he goes into public, he must remove the sticker.

If any questions on this topic remain, submit your questions in the comments below, and I will clarify for you.

Mom always said that all that procrastination would catch up with me.  I guess she was right.

It seems that I didn’t renew my domain registration in time. So if you tried to visit moreron.com earlier today and got adsense ads for Ron Paul, Ron Jeremy, some other Ron Davis, or “more” of something else, I apologize.

All is back in order now, and we’re good for at least another year.

Google Reader (and, technically, Technorati) pointed me to this review of Andrew Peterson’s book On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (coming in March, I believe). Money quote:

It is an epic tale: I rate it right up there with the Lord of the Rings and Binding of the Blade trilogies.

I’m not sure how to even respond to the thought that the book rates on a critic’s list with something like Lord of the Rings. I don’t doubt Andrew’s awesomeness, but that’s not a comparison I ever expected to see. (Disclaimer: I’ve not read the book, so I wouldn’t know…)

Anyway, go check out the review. Also, the book is available at Amazon (pre-order) for $11.

Related Links:
“On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness” at Amazon.com
Review of “On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness”
Andrew Peterson (official web site)

I took 30 minutes today to listen to this recording of Andrew Peterson speaking at Belmont University.  Andy is a much better songwriter than he is a public speaker (I love the guy, but it’s true…), but this is worth hearing.

While Andrew’s discussion was intentionally geared at artists and their art, his thoughts on discipline apply to just about every other vocation imaginable.

Go listen; it’s worth your time.

I recently posted about the efforts my company is putting into improving customer support queries. It’s ironic that right after I posted that, I had to place support calls with 2 of my vendors. Those calls had significantly different outcomes.

Issue #1 - We’ve got a laptop (purchased 11 months ago) that needs a battery replacement. I contacted Dell to get it replaced. I got a little bit of a runaround from them before they told me that the 12-month warranty on batteries begins at the manufacture date, not at the date of purchase, so I’d have to buy a new battery. I pressed the issue, had it escalated, and they’re sending me a new battery. The problem was solved, and the customer is happy.

Issue #2 - We changed our company name last year, and the name that goes out on the caller ID when we make calls is wrong. I contacted CBeyond, our SIP provider, to get control of the caller ID name field. They said they had it resolved, and they closed my ticket. It wasn’t resolved, so I opened another ticket. They said they resolved it and closed my ticket. I called them this morning (rather frustrated) and had the opportunity to speak with a very rude customer service representative. Bottom line here is that my issue is still unresolved, and I’m pretty dissatisfied with CBeyond.

So what do we learn from this?

Do unto others… I’m glad we’ve got a customer service team who is focusing on high quality of support. Customer service is a critical area of business, and if you expect your vendors to treat you with a higher level of support, you should offer that high level of support to your customers.

Every employee is a marketing employee. The lady I spoke with at CBeyond wasn’t there to sell me anything, but if I had to choose a telephone company based solely on my experience with CBeyond this week, I would keep looking. Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to build goodwill. CBeyond is failing miserably in this area.

Use common sense. I shouldn’t have had to escalate the issue with Dell, but at least the manager used common sense - a 12-month warranty should start at the date of purchase. With my CBeyond issues, most of my frustration stems from the fact that they keep closing my support tickets before I verify that the work was completed successfully. They are so focused on clearing out their open ticket queue that they are missing the mark when it comes to servicing their customer.

What opportunities for improvement have you found when dealing with customer service departments?

We were sitting at lunch yesterday, and an interesting idea came up: a call center podcast.

We have a product that’s fairly young in its life cycle. It will likely be one of our corporate focus points in 2008, which is great because I really believe there’s a tremendous potential for the product.

As we move forward with this product, we need to know things like:

• How is our support staff is handling the calls on the product?
• How can we train support to be better?
• What is the topic of support calls?
• What is the (pre-sales) caller looking for in the product?
• And other marketing issues that this geek doesn’t really understand.

We record phone calls already, and they’re reviewed for things like training employees and improving our call center staff. For that we use Asterisk to record the calls to a .gsm file. (I can’t say enough about the awesomeness of Asterisk.)

I parse Asterisk’s queue log and store the records in a MySQL database. This allows me to look up information about calls and calculate things like average hold time, number of calls taken, average talk time per customer service representative. It lets us be proactive about customer service (which is always a good thing).

To do a podcast, I’d need to convert those .gsm files to .mp3 files. For that, I used SoX and LAME, whose command line awesomeness allows me to script the conversion of the files. So I do a SQL query to get the calls that came into that product’s queue, grab the .gsm file for each call, convert it to mp3 (if it hasn’t been converted already), and generate the XML for iTunes.

Now the appropriate management can just subscribe to that podcast (hosted internally on our network here) and be able to easily listen to those support calls. It’s quite cool.

Oh, and for anybody out there who’s looking for a way to use SoX and LAME to convert files from gsm to mp3, here’s the command I came up with:

sox -q filename.gsm -t wav -s -w - | lame –silent –resample 44.1 -h - filename.mp3

There are finally enough people who read this blog that actually have interest in my annual pilgrimage to Florida for Spring Training baseball so that I don’t feel bad when I post about the trip and bore the rest of you.

The itinerary has been finalized; the tickets have been purchased; the motels have been reserved. Here’s where we’ll be:

March 13 (Thursday)
7:05 p.m. - Phillies @ Reds (Sarasota)

March 14 (Friday)
1:05 p.m. - Braves @ Phillies (Clearwater)
7:05 p.m. - Nationals @ Indians (Winter Haven)

March 15 (Saturday)
1:05 p.m. - Yankees @ Tigers (Lakeland)

March 16 (Sunday)
1:15 p.m. - Indians @ Yankees (Tampa)
6:00 p.m. - Legends Game (Clearwater)

March 17 (Monday)
10:05 a.m. - Astros @ Dodgers (Vero Beach)

March 18 (Tuesday)
1:05 p.m - Nationals @ Detroit (Lakeland)

We’ll drive back to S.C. on the 18th. I’ll get a few hours of sleep and then head back to Georgia the morning of the 19th. Then we’ll probably wait a week before we start to plan for 2009.