So, I’ve been a Dell customer since forever. Loyal customer, that is. I’ve purchased not only for myself but for the company many many Dells.

I open my account and the history is there.

Two weeks ago I purchased a computer, all went fine and was delivered a week ago. Now, being a loyal customer, I purchase another one for my family this week.

Turns out there is a new policy: no international credit cards are allowed. Does the fact that I have a history of purchasing many computers and servers make a difference?

Why do being not from the US is suddenly a sin for Dell. They should be half smart and at least value their loyal customers.

I am beginning to hate Dell, I know they probably don’t care about one less customer as they have many already, but they should.

Customers are the foundation of their existence, but they seem like they no longer care…

Oh yeah… Iknow what they might probably say. Use your local web site, that is dell.com/cr. However, I don’t want to. Dell uses their local sites as the dump for computers they could not sell in the US. Computers are not only more expensive, they usually have lower standards.

Come on Dell, try to care at least!

Oh.. and one more thing. I connect to the sales chat. I am waiting for like 20 minutes. And then the guy connects, and in a minute or two tells me he has been waiting for me for too long and disconnects the chat. I was in the bathroom for Christ’s sake!

Well, a few months ago I would’ve thought this is something totally unreasonable. Now I tested a Windows Phone 7 and I actually did. The iPhone is just stashed in a drawer while I test the WP7. More on this soon

Chicha me da hoy cuando se me riega el cafe encima de mi teclado, el cual Amazon me recuerda que tiene 14 meses nada mas.

Pero mas chicha me da ir a Office Depot y otros lugares y ver que el teclado que en Amazon vale $28 esta aca a 40 000 colones, que son aproximadamente $80.

La pereza es que todo es asi, los carros valen un 40% mas, cualquier cosa aplica la regla de 10, que significa que si algo vale $10 aca vale 10 mil colones que son $20, es decir casi el doble.

Y dicen que no pagamos impuestos… Y la chicha de los impuestos no es pagarlos. Es pagar impuestos para que alguien del gobierno se los robe!

We all know Netflix is having a hard time keeping customers happy. So I guess they got very creative in how to retain customers. Look at this:

– I tried to cancel my subscription today

– And voila! I can’t! Nice way of keeping your customers paying month to month!

I got today this error, which is brand new to me. I like to write about uncommon errors that I bump into, so here goes an explanation of what happened (btw: me very dumb! hahaha)

I am creating an ASCX control for a .Net 3.5 site. I have an all white control and wanted to have a quick UI just to do a bit of testing and prototyping without having to spend too much time working on the UI piece of things. My motto is “get it to work first, and now make it look pretty”, which is not exactly what most devs do. Most devs do “get it to work, who cares about it looking pretty”.

Anyway, I created a Master page, copy pasted directly from the web and VOILA, besides an endless set of strings and multiple forms I also got the following line in my new master page.

Just delete all references to viewstate in the copy pasted text. Do the same for forms, simplify and use the new UI

Error text:
Server Error in ‘/PaymentsWeb’ Application.

The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted.

Source Error:

[No relevant source lines]

Source File: c:\Users\xavier\AppData\Local\Temp\Temporary ASP.NET Files\paymentsweb\8e1d30e5\5e7998b7\App_Web_smihqcyt.0.cs Line: 0

Stack Trace:

Foto tomada hoy desde el gimnasio nuevo por donde Pepe Figueres! Ya esta a punto de llegar el tren!!!!! Estoy feliz, si llega ahi entonces ya no ocupo tragarme todas las presas diarias atravesando la ciudad.

Being a loyal customer during my multiple trips to the US, I was THRILLED that finally Netflix is coming to Latin America. Until yesterday…

As soon as it became available, I signed up and went straight to my beloved Documentaries section. I am disappointed…

Look at what I found, there are only like 20 documentaries, mostly low quality :

Check out the equivalent US section taken at exactly the same time, it has hundreds of titles in multiple categories:

Netflix: will the Latin America service be equivalent to the US one? Please don’t disrespect us. Just because we live in a third world country, that does not mean that you should give us a third world service.

Also, don’t make the mistake of adding translated titles to spanish. We want the movies in their original language!

I was reading today this great article, Can you hear Apple’s iPad competitors sobbing?, and just thought to myself that instead of making a huge pile of Android devices – why don’t all these companies that built IPad look alikes and failed miserable – instead of just throwing them away they give them away for free to children in third world countries.

It is not exactly a one laptop per child, but it is a one internet-enabled-device-that-children-can-use-to-learn that could make a difference in the upbringing of many underprivileged financially minds that can also have potential for a better life.

It all makes sense to me, maybe not Nicholas Negroponte’s dream, but still it is a great way of helping the poor and not throwing a way those devices. Some of these companies might even get some good PR… you know… help the children… third world… which as we all know some big corporations would never give something away without a tax break or good PR in return. But who cares! What I care is about giving opportunity to those that don’t have one.

Am I being just too naive?

De ponerse a llorar…

Y tambien del otro lado

Pero aunque no lo crean… aun funciona y le paso un carro por encima…

Hopefully more to come, but this is my first dollar on a personal app 🙂