DOOD.CA: Guy Stuff

I get my car insurance from ICBC. Well, not ICBC directly, but though a company that does my house insurance that also sells car insurance from ICBC. In BC, you have to get at least part of your car insurance from ICBC, which is government run, and you can get collision and comprehensive coverage among other things, from third-party insurers.

Now, in the past, I’ve always liked having ICBC because it’s pretty no-nonsense. When there is a problem, it is covered. However, there are a lot of people that feel there should be a competitive market for car insurance. Is this good? I’ve never tried private car insurance before, and I would be really curious to see if people prefer the service or not. It’s kind of like Private Gas resellers that sell you gas instead of Terasen. Those turned out to be a bad idea since the price went down recently.

Anyway, I would be especially interested in hearing from people that have made claims on private car insurance and how easy it was to do. In not only BC, but other provinces that have private insurance.

I’m sort of an on and off ebayer, and one thing I’ve noticed in recent months is the lack of actual auctions on ebay. More and more I am noticing that the things for sale are not being listed by Joe Blow like me, they are being listed by big companies and liquidation firms that have hundreds if not thousands of items for sale at any given time.

What does this mean to you?

It means less deals, and more of an actual storefront type of shopping. Searching ebay will not be like searching for deals on craigslist, but more like walking through a virtual mall, with many different vendors. This is Ebay’s new business model, obviously implemented by current CEO John Donahoe. I think John’s going out the door soon.

Ebay’s stock has plumetted to less than half of it’s value in the last six months. Perhaps partly due to the economy, but I’m sure the fact that declining visitors and revenues aren’t helping. The new pricing structure and feedback systems are all designed to encourage buyers and only benefit large-scale sellers.

When I search on ebay now, I see about 80% Buy-it-now products, which is fine, but the problem is, they are all online stores selling new stuff. There are many things that I do enjoy purchasing with buy-it-nows from businesses, but they are usually small ticket items. I think eBay needs to rethink their direction because abandoning the small time auction seller, which was their core business and the root of their success, is a bad idea. I’m all for new direction, but never forget your roots.

Last time I went to the Telus dealer Connect in Oakridge Centre, Vancouver, I talked with a girl that gave me some serious attitude. I went in to ask about if I could disable the line 2 on my blackberry curve since it always accidently switches to the line 2 when it is in my pocket. I’ve always liked Telus Mobility, but the commission sales staff in that store are absolutely terrible. Now both me and my Fiance have gone into that store and had some crappy service.

1. First time, the sales girl saw me come in first, and even made eye contact with me.. then proceeded to help a different couple that went into the store afterwards. Whatever. I can live with that, but then she treated me like I was such a hassle when I went in to ask about the line problem. I wish I checked her name tag.

I just can’t stand it when someone gets short with you when they are supposed to be customer service. Maybe it’s because we aren’t signing up for plans that they get commission on so they just dismiss us.

2. My fiance goes in to buy a pay & talk phone today with a $50 activation credit, that costs $49.99 as specified on the Telus website. She walks in, and talks to a fellow named Yang who doesn’t know what she is talking about. He’s very rude and then tells her that they do not have this product. He then goes on to charge her an additional $35 ACTIVATION FEE! He insists that this must be charged. WHAT THE HELL!?!? Damn commission greedy assholes. Not only that, but he says he needs to charge her another $10 in order to activate it with a Nanaimo number. I am so pissed off with the lousy service at the Telus in Oakridge. Yes, Oakridge is a classy, high-end mall.. but apparently it doesn’t prevent companies from hiring bottom-rung customer service that is a detriment to their company.

Now I have to go back to the mall with her to return the phone because those a-holes charged her something that shouldn’t be charged. Telus, don’t let your sales people ruin your image.

Forget Telus Mobility in Oakridge. I had a lot better service at the one in Richmond Centre.

UPDATE: DEC 30th, 2008
So I go into the location and talk with the manager Chris Cheung. He seems “upfront” about everything, but I can still feel that salespersons vibe. At first he tells me I can’t return the phone, only refund me the $35, which really does nothing for me, as I am stuck with a $50 phone and a $10 charge for some airtime which I dont want and won’t use.

I argue with him a bit, and even tell him I am going to file a chargeback and complain to Telus directly, and he doesn’t seem to care. Finally I convince him to return everything to me except the $10 fee for some sort of airtime. Which is still s slap in the face because now we’ve wasted an hour or two of my time, and I still gave those assholes at Oakridge Telus Connect $10 for wasting my time and pissing me off. He says he “can’t” refund the whole thing. I say bullshit. Bottom line is Chris Cheung doesn’t care about me as a customer, and he obviously doesn’t care about the reputation of his store.

I have complained directly to Telus via the online route, as the customer service rep on the phone asked me to do this. I keep getting canned responses from them, which is pissing me off. HOWEVER, the rep immediately offered me a $10 credit to my personal cell phone plan, which is very nice. I have accepted it and now Telus and I are even. However, Yang and Chris Cheung at Connect in Oakridge mall are not finished yet.

If getting decked out in Christian Audigier Hoodies and T-shirt’s isn’t Gangster enough for you, try adding a little more CA to your life with some of the new accessories from the wildly popular and expensive clothing line.

Some of the new stuff includes Gangster Chains and Rings and even Watches. A bit pricey, but done with the traditional flair that all Christian Audigier designs share. $450 for this Sterling Silver Ring. Ouch. The ring is pretty cool though.

Now this watch is not really my taste. When Ed Hardy came out with watches, I gawked. I do not like fashion watches. I’ll take a nice swiss made automatic ANY day. Heck I’ll take a Quartz Tag Formula 1 over one of these. But someone must be buying them:

You can check out the whole line of New accessories here:
http://www.christianaudigier.com/Jewelry-s/120.htm

And watches here:
http://www.christianaudigier.com/Men-s-Watches-s/154.htm

See Part 3.

Finally we are back to talking about gear again. I enjoy gear much more than software, as for me, software is a means to an end, while gear is just cool!

The other two main peices of gear you are going to need to complete your system is a Mixer and Microphones. I’ll talk about speakers later, but I am assuming that you already have an amp, tv and speakers, and are just integrating a karaoke system into your existing home theatre system. It would be a bigger article to talk about setting everything up and making purchasing decisions for all of them. I am using a ceiling mounted front-projector for my karaoke setup, with a 105″ homemade screen – gotta save those pennies in these trying economic times!

Mixers
Choosing a Mixer is going to be a bit more easy than choosing a Microphone because there is a less drastic effect on the sound, and any decent mixer will give you good results. The important thing with the mixer is you will want at least 6 channels, with two of the channels designed as stereo CD/AUX inputs for the karaoke machine. The other 4 will be for microphones. If you think you’ll only ever need 2 microphones, a 4 channel mixer will suffice, though there aren’t too many with that few channels around.

The other feature you will want is mixer effects built in so you don’t have to purchase a separate effects processor. This will save you a couple hundred dollars, because you will want to be able to add a bit of karaoke echo to your vocals. If you plan to use a condenser Microphone for vocals in the future, make sure the mixer you choose has phantom power. Most professional mixers do have phantom power.

The unit that I settled on was the Yamaha MG82cx. I chose this mixer because Yamaha mixers have very good sound quality at a price you can’t beat. It also has 8 channels which is perfect, with a built in effects processor that can be adjusted for each channel individually. It also has high/mid/low equalizers for all the microphone channels, which allows you to do some minor vocal shaping to make your vocals sound better.

Because this is a professional mixer, you will want to use balanced microphone cables rather than the unbalanced 1/4″ plugs that come with karaoke mics. It will not sound right unless you used balanced XLR cables. Another feature of this mixer is the sub 80hz filter. It allows you to filter out low sounds from the microphone channels which significantly reduces microphone handling noise and slightly reduced pop as well.

When adjusting the mixer for the first time, it is hard to get all the settings right, but essentially how it works is every channel has individual gain and volume, and then there is an overall volume for the mixed (microphone + karaoke music) signal as well.

Here is a break-down diagram out how this will be hooked up:

The types of cables you need to hook the mixer up to your gear will depend on the type of mixer you buy. You will probably need at least one pair of 1/4″ TRS to RCA adapter cables since most mixers do not have RCA outputs. They will usually have one pair of RCA inputs, however. The Yamaha requires one pair of 1/4″ to RCA adapters.

Microphones

I’m not that knowledgeable with Microphones, but I do know that Vocal Condensor microphones sound really good, and a bit more natural than dynamic mics. I found after more expensive Microphones, the cheaper ones sounded sort of tinny, and less natural, especially at higher gain.

I ended up purchasing an Electrovoice Cobalt EV-7 and EV-9, one of which is a dynamic microphone and one which is a condensor. Both sound very good, and far better than the freebie microphones that come with consumer grade karaoke equipment.

You will have to buy and try your own microphones in order to determine what you want. Do remember to buy the balanced XLR cables to hook your mic up to the Mixer. You’ll also want to make sure you have a good pair of speakers that can really handle a lot of volume, and sound good while doing it. Some major Consumer brands that produce decent stuff would be Klipsch, Paradigm, PSB, Athena, Energy and Definitive Technology. A subwoofer wouldn’t hurt either.

So now, you should be all set to hook up your system and get rocking! Hope you enjoyed the series.