Customer Disservice: Walk The Line

I recently watched Walk the Line, the movie about Johnny Cash and his relationship with June Carter Cash. I really enjoyed the movie and I thought that both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon did an excellant job in their roles.

The dissatisfaction that I have comes not from the movie at all. Instead, it comes from the fact that someone (presumably at Fox) decided that what the movie needed was to start with a commercial accusing its customers of being thieves. Furthermore, because this message is so important, it is necessary to make sure that the viewer cannot jump from the commercial to the DVD menu. No, instead, the viewer must watch the entire commercial in which they are accused of being a thief.

It’s bad enough that we have to put up with the stupid FBI message at the beginning of every movie. Does anyone actually believe that this stupid message from the FBI, telling you all of the possible penalties if you violate copyright law, has ever prevented a single instance of a copyright violation?

Who first came up with the idea that the best thing for movie companies to do is to treat all of their customers as if they were criminals? Is this any different from a store posting someone at the front door that accosts any customer who walks in and warns them that they have to pay for the merchandise they are getting?

I am pretty sure that most people have a pretty good idea that it is illegal to copy a DVD and sell it. I am also pretty sure that the little PSA at the beginning of the movie is going to do nothing to stop thieves who are stealing the movies and instead, will act only to irritate and create a less pleasurable viewing experience for the lawful majority of the viewers.

Ernie the Attorney on a Paperless Office

If you have thought about moving toward a paperless workflow but have not yet made the commitment, check out this excellant post from Ernie the Attorney at PDF for Lawyers.

I think his last paragraph hits the point dead on:

If you don’t start purging paper from your desk you’ll never realize the full benefits of scanning. After a few weeks you’ll start to notice little things about how you used to deal with paper. Mostly, you’ll learn that people hoard too much paper, keeping it close by in case they need to access information. Soon you’ll notice that having too much paper around you makes it harder to find information, not easier. The less paper you have around you the less stress you’ll feel, especially once you learn to trust the paperless system.

I think this is the point most people don’t understand. They think if that if they keep the paper close at hand they can find things more easily. Instead, however, they just end up sorting through more paper to try and find what they want.

Ernie also emphasized another point that I think most people miss, which is that the electronic version of the document, is probably more secure than the paper version. You can lose the paper, or it can be destroyed by fire (or hurricane for that matter). With the electronic version, however, it is easy to have multiple copies of the same document.

For example, on the cases that I am working on, a copy of everything sets on our server. Those copies are regularly backed up as a matter of course. Additionally, for all of my active files, I have a copy of them on my laptop hard drive. The likelihood that all copies of these documents would be destroyed is fairly remote, and certainly much less likely than just the paper version being destroyed.

Check out the rest of Ernie’s post and, if you have not started to make the move to a paperless system, there’s no time like the present to get started.

Helpful Reminders

Do you sometimes have trouble remembering to make a call at 2 pm? Do your client’s forget your meetings? Do you fail to follow through on your new marketing plan?

Last week, two different bloggers pointed to two different tools to help with reminders.

First up is a service called Oh, Don’t Forget and it was mentioned by Matt Homan at the [non]billable hour. Oh, Don’t Forget allows you to send a text message to any phone at a predetermined date and time. This is great for reminding you to make a call or leave for a meeting if you know you are going to be in the middle of something. Of course, you could also use it for more interesting purposes, such as setting it to go off during a meeting that you fear will be boring and drawn out.

The second reminder service was mentioned by Julie Fleming-Brown at Life At the Bar. This service is called HassleMe. HassleMe explains their service as:

Not eating enough fruit? Forgot to feed the fish again? Need a little help keeping your New Year’s resolutions?
Tell us what to hassle you about, and we’ll nag you via email at semi-unpredictable intervals.

This is a great opportunity to have someone remind you to drink enough water, go to the gym, or call a referral source every week just to say hello.

The Blind Side

Several months ago, Ernie the Attorney wrote about a book he had just finished: The Blind Side by Michael Lewis. I found Ernie’s initial description of the book interesting:

A few weeks ago I finished reading Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side, a book that starts quickly with a rapid-fire account of the 4.5 second play that ended Joe Theismann’s NFL career. Theismann, you may or may not recall, was brutally smacked from behind by defensive end Lawrence Taylor. Most people remember only the gruesome image of Theismann’s leg bone being snapped. Football is a strange sport, Lewis observes, in that none of the players ever sees more than a narrow slice of action. In football, as in other pursuits, what you can’t see can truly hurt you. Few of us ever get a wide-angle view of circumstances, and only someone like Lewis can connect the dots to create a bunch of fascinating social observations.

Ernie went on to explain that the book also detailed “the improbable life of a 350 pound black teenager named Michael Oher. His mom was a crack addict and he was homeless and illiterate, until his wayward path collided with that of a wealthy Memphis businessman named Sean Tuohy.”

I had previously read Lewis’s book Moneyball, which talks about sabermetrics and how the Oakland A’s were able to remain competitive with such a low salary. I really enjoyed Moneyball. Based upon what Ernie said, I figured that I would also enjoy The Blind Side.

About a week ago, I finally got a hold of The Blind Side and I read it. Yesterday. In less than 12 hours. Once I started, I did not want to put the book down. Lewis is extremely skilled with weaving together two seemingly unrelated stories: The story of the poor, illiterate, football player and the story of the emergence of the left tackle as a skilled position in the NFL.

Lewis not only weaves these stories together skillfully, he also takes football plays that I had seen on television many times before and make then interesting on the page when he described them. Despite the fact that I had actually seen the some of the plays he talks about and despite the fact that I knew how the plays turned out, I could still feel the tension on the page.

If you have even a passing interest in football, I highly recommend this book. I really enjoyed Moneyball. I thought that The Blind Side was twice as good.

Creating Captions in Word

In my earlier series on formating in word, I mentioned that I would later post about how to easily create captions using tables. A few days ago, a reader sent me an email and reminded me that I had never gone back to that post.

Thus, here is my post on how to create captions using tables. For your reference, here is a screenshot of what the captions that I generally use look like. If your captions usually have a different look, you may have to adjust my instructions. Also, as before, I am using Word 2003. How you do things in other versions of Word may or may not differ from what I am doing.

To create a caption such as this:

Open a New Document
Type whaever information you normally put above your caption. In my case I have the specific court information.
Select Table > Insert > Table
In the dialog box, select 3 for the number of columns and 1 for the number of rows
You will now have a document with a table with 3 equal sized columns. Take your mouse and place it over the left border in the center column. Your cursor should turn to a small black bar with arrows pointing left and right.
Hold down your left mouse button and drag the column to the right until the little triangle in your ruler is on the 3.
Go to the right border in the center column. When you get the bar with the arrows, left click on the border and drag it as far to the left as it will go.
You should now have a table similar to the above with large cells on the left and right and a skinny cell in the center.
Click in the left cell. It is time to enter the party information. Enter the information here as you normally would. Keep in mind, however, that to use tabs within a cell, you must press CRTL + Tab. If you just press Tab, you will move to the next cell.
Now go to the right cell and enter the case number information or the other information that you typically have.
Once you have this, you probably want to remove most of the borders. In my case, I currently use a border that looks like a bracket (]). You can also use a simple straight line. To modify the border, place your cursor in the lower left hand corner of the table.
When the cursor turns to a dark arrow pointing up and to the right, hold your left mouse button and drag your mouse to the right. This will select the entire table.
Right click within the table and select Borders and Shading.
In the left hand column, select None (it’s at the top) and select OK.
Click somewhere outside of your table. You now have a table with no dividing lines. Let’s add one.
Place your cursor at the lower left hand corner of the center column. When the black arrow appears, click your left mouse button once.
Right click within that column and select Borders and Shading.
In the dialog box, look at the right column, it has a representation of your column. If you click on an area, it will add a border in that area. In my case, I click on the top, the bottom, and the right side.
In the center column of the dialog box, you can change the style of the line, the color of the line, and how thick the line is. I usually change the thickness of my line to 1 1/2 points.
When you are done, select OK.

You now have a caption within a table. Let’s save this as a template, so that you don’t have to create it again. Click File > Save As. At the bottom of the dialog box, after Save As Type, change that to Document Template. Word should automatically take you to the folder where your templates are stored. Simply give the template a name (I cleverly chose the name Caption) and save.

You are all set to go. You can now easily create a caption just by selecting the Caption template.

Of course this is only one variation on the variety of captions that you can make. I make my caption using three columns instead of two simply because I like the spacing better.

If you wish, you can download my caption template from my Files page. Please note that this template uses Cambria as the font. For an explanation of why I use Cambria, see Ken Adams’ post It’s Time for a Typeface Change. I agree with much of when Ken has to say here, which the minor quibble that I prefer as serif rather than a sans serif font.

Printing Windows Directories

One of the (many) inexplicable shortcomings with Windows is that it fails to include an easy way to print a list of files in directory tree. Several utilities have been written to provide this functionality. These programs include Directory Printer and Karen’s Directory Printer. These programs work well and I usually have one or the other installed on any machine that I use.

Recently, however, I have discovered a new directory printing utility: dirhtml. The cool thing about this program is that it not only creates a directory list, but it also creates an html link to the particular file.

If you want the ability to print a directory tree, you may want to check this utility out.

More Computer Bag Choices

I love computer bags. If my wife would not throw a fit, I would own dozens. Thus, I was quite happy to see this post from 43 Folders. The post details 5 cool bags that you probably would not just happen to run across.

One of the cool bags is a wooden briefcase, which I hadn’t seen before. On the other hand, if you are into pockets, Oakley has a great briefcase with lots of exterior pockets. Regardless, of your preferences, if you like computer bags, you should check out this post to see 5 bags that might entice you to open your pocket book.

Customer Disservice: AT&T

I am constantly amazed at how difficult some companies make it for their customers to deal with them. I understand why companies use automated answering systems. In fact, there are many occasions when I am glad that companies use automated answering systems. For example, if I want to know the balance on my account or whether a company received my last payment, I like the convenience of being able to find out that information without having to talk to a real person.

What I cannot stand, however, is when companies use automated answering systems in a stupid manner. Recently we had a telephone line at a house that we owned that we were renovating. We reached the point where we wanted to cancel the telephone service.

When I obtained the service, I was able to do so by signing up over the internet. When I wanted to disconnect, however, I had to call my provider. I had no ability to disconnect the service without speaking to a real person. Fine, that annoys me, but I understand why they do it.

So I pick up the phone and call AT&T, f/k/a SBC, f/k/a Ameritech, f/k/a Illinois Bell. The first thing that the automated system requests is my telephone number. This is not a wholly unreasonable request. After a couple of prompts I am told the current status of my account, when the last payment was made, etc. Based upon this, I know that the system has now pulled up my account records.

I then get transferred to a live person, who can finally disconnect my phone service. Of course, as soon as she picks up the line, she asks me for my phone number. WTF?

I have already given them my phone number. AT&T has already accessed and pulled up my account records, but the live person that I finally reach cannot help me until I again give her my telephone number.

What idiot created this system? It’s bad enough that I have to slog through the automated answering service and talk to a person to disconnect my service anyway, why does AT&T deliberately make the entire customer service process unfriendly and difficult?

It was customer service issues like these that caused me to entirely abandon AT&T (then SBC) in December 2003 when I switched to Comcast for my internet service and Vonage for my telephone service.

Given that the poor customer service in trying to cancel the service was just one of several bad experiences that I had during just the few months I was working with AT&T, this most recent experience convinced me that I had made the absolutely correct decision to leave AT&T behind.

Who is Your Computer Talking To?

Dish I picked up an interesting tip from Tom Mighell the other day. He explains that you can create a log file to see what programs on your computer made an internet connection. You do this by:

— Bring up your Windows Run box.
– Type “cmd” in the box.
– When the command prompt comes up, type “netstat -b 5 > activity.txt” and press Enter.
– After a few minutes, press Ctrl+C, and the type in “activity.txt”

This is an interesting exercise, just to see what programs on your computer are contacting the mothership.