Fossil Watches Are Evil

The Fossil watch company is dishonest and makes cheap watches. Also, Fossil does not respect their warranty. I would recommend that if you are in the market for a watch that you do not buy a Fossil watch.

My very nice watch broke after only two years, so I mailed it to them to fix. They were pretty quick at fixing it. However, Fossil did not honour their warranty.

On the form, I wrote My watch stopped running. I took it to a jeweller to replace the battery, but that did not resolve the problem. A second jeweller looked at the watch and confirm that the battery was fine and that the problem was, therefore, in the watch's mechanism. It was purchased at Sears Canada in 2004 and is under warranty. I also included a copy of a receipt proving the purchase date (2004). I think that is fairly unambiguous.

The Fossil form has a table that says:

Repair Type	Charge
Not under warranty (bracelet, strap, crystal, case - includes shipping)	$27.00
Battery Replacement (includes shipping)	$17.00
Under warranty (only shipping & handling)	$8.50

So I clearly expected to be charged only $8.50.

They sent back an invoice that says:

Description	Repair Charges
Movement	18.50
Shipping and Handling	8.50

And billed me for $27.00.

I shall now quote from the first paragraph of Fossil Warranty: Your FOSSIL brand watch is warranted by Fossil for a period of 11 years from the date of purchase...During the warranty period the watch movement, hands and dial are the only components covered under this warranty. These will be repaired or the watch will be replaced (at the sole discretion of Metro Service Center) free of repair charges, if it proves to be defective in material or workmanship under normal use. A $8.50 return shipping and handling fee applies to all warranty (excluding California) and non-warranty service...

So, clearly, the movement is warranted by Fossil until 2015 and will be repaired free of repair charges. So why did Fossil not honour their warranty? Because Fossil lies. Now I need to waste my time phoning and complaining. (Between the hours of 8 AM - 6 PM CST, Monday through Friday of course).

Daylight Savings

Leaving work while the sun was still up was a nice feeling. Dragging my ass out of bed in the morning was impossible though. I want my hour of sleep back! Somehow I'm really tired despite it being "really" only 10 pm... :-(

The good news is that after a ridiculous amount of work to prepare for starting daylight savings earlier and patching what seemed like a zillion systems, nothing broke a work.

Carded

Yesterday, I got carded when I bought a bottle of white wine at the grocery store. For crying out load, I'm 26 now. You can stop carding me already.

My hypothesis is that if I shave the morning before I get groceries then I'll get carded if I buy beer/wine. Conversely, if I haven't shaved in a few days (and look all scruffy) then I won't get carded. I've also observed, that if I buy beer then I'm more likely to get carded than if I buy wine.

Web Services

I transfered to the Web Services group at the start of October. It's a little strange to not know what I'm doing, anyone I work with, or anything about where I work (as it's in a different building in a different part of town). It's kind of like the start of a co-op work term all over again. I think I needed a change of scenery though and I'm excited to try out something new.

The people I work with seem nice enough and I'm slowly figuring out the project (which has a lot of subtle points). The location of the office isn't very good (no Tully's; not much in way of lunch choice) and the bus service reminds me way too much of living in Kanata - infrequent, indirect, and has an inconsistent schedule. What distinguishes Seattle from Kanata, however, is that it is unreliable, which is quite impressive!? (Disappointing!?) [Recall that I live in downtown and I work in downtown; whereas Kanata is the suburbs of the suburbs...]. The office does have great views though. I'll have to bring my camera to work some day and take a few shots of the Seattle skyline.

In case you don't know what Web Services are all about, the articles Amazon Web Services and Extending Web Services Using Other Web Services from Linux Journal should give a sense of why they are all the rage. (Although, what's described in the articles isn't really at all what I do, so don't read too much into them! :-).

Piecora's Pizza

I went hiking today with Prashant to Greenwater Lakes, which is a bit past Enumclaw (about an hour and a half southeast of Seattle). It was pretty decent - the forest was nice. The lakes were more like ponds though. And we couldn't find the "awe-inspriing western red cedar" that my guidebook called out.

I was too lazy to cook dinner (and don't have very much food in my apartment), so I decided to go to Piecora's Pizza, which was near my house. (I've never gotten a pizza there before). I phoned in my order and they said it would be 20 minutes. I waited a bit and then walked over there, about 15 minutes after I phoned. They hadn't started making the pizza yet even. It took nearly 50 minutes by the time I got my pizza and walked back home, so I wasn't very impressed. It was good pizza though. I'm not sure if it's worth going back though - too much time/effort. Heating up a frozen pizza is cheaper and a lot faster.

21 Grams

The next movie in my Netflix queue is 21 Grams (which was recommended by Ramanan).

Netflix said it would arrive on Saturday, but it was late and didn't arrive until today. Just now I opened the envelope to pop it into my DVD player and the disc has a massive crack the size of its radius. Needless to say, it does not play. Thanks, Netflix. Now I will go an entire week without a movie. :-(

My first year with them went without a hitch, but this is the fourth time this year that I've been screwed, so I have a nagging suspicion that their quality is deteriorating.

Craziness & Irony

Crazy things pop into your mind when the fire alarm goes off. I'm chilling in my apartment watching Revenge of the Sith. It's the middle of the duel between Mace Windu and Chancellor Palpatine when suddenly a loud screech begins coming from my bedroom to retreive my pager. Who the f**k is paging me at this hour? I'm not on-call. And I starting walking to my bedroom. Wait. I turned off my pager earlier, so this wouldn't happen, what the hell is making that noise? ... Crap. That's the fire alarm (again). So I start to leave my apartment. Why is the fire alarm going off in my bedroom? So I turned back my bedroom. No fire. (I have no idea why I thought it was necessary to check). And I grabbed my keys and leave.

The people in my apartment go to be early or something. It was only 10.45 pm and a bunch of them were in their pajamas. Which sucks for them, 'cause it was nice today, but it got cold fast this evening.

Last time I commented about the firefighters. This time, the police officers caught my eye. There were four of them loitering around the apartment's entrance before the firetrucks even arrived. [Aside: I thought the Starbucks downstairs was closed at this time of night]. Everyone else was loitering around the entrance too. After a few minutes (and the firetrucks had arrived), the police decided they should actually do something besides chat to each other, so one of them told another one to shoo everyone away from the entrance. After (jaywalking) to the other side of the street with everyone else, I sat and watch the police officers loiter around the entrance still. Which was kind of ironic. :-)

Monday

Without a doubt, Monday is worst day of the week. I was woken up this morning by the fire alarm. After quickly throwing on my clothes, I went out of my apartment to be greeted by the delicate aroma of toaster-challenge neighbour. Naturally, it was raining too. No sleep + no hot shower + no breakfast + standing in rain = unhappy.

The firefighters didn't seem too enthusiastic either. (Is it bad karma to say that?) Two trucks came. One firefighter slowly got out and went inside the building and then back. Then another firefighter came out after another little bit and they both went into the apartment building. A few minutes later a couple more got out of the other truck and joined them and they all came out a few minutes later. Then the huddled, wet masses went back inside.

I had a 9 am phone interview to do too. I'm really more of a "the work day starts at 10 - 11 am" kind of person. It's always frustrating when the candidates can't answer simple things. I don't like to start my week frustrated. And there was the suggestion to change one of the on-call schedules again so I could be on-call again. No thanks. I'm just getting off on-call. I've already been on-call for 11 days this month. (And, yes, I know it's only the 9th of the month). And why does the on-call schedule need to change every other business day. What was wrong with the previous three versions?

I hate Mondays.

Narnia

I saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe last night with Nabeel and a couple of his friends. I was disappointed. The characters were shallow. The story was shallow and predictable. The whole movie was style over substance and it's style wasn't even that original. (Granted, the animated animals were impressive).

Seattle's public transit is also disappointing. I had to wait 30 minutes for a bus home and it was the last bus ever going that way. (I was going from downtown proper to the edge of downtown were I live at 12.40 am. So I think it reasonable to expect some bus service). Sometimes I think Seattle has got to have one of the lamest nightlifes around for a major city.

Gripe

I really hate charities that phone me (unsolicited) and then start off talking really fast with "Thank you for your past support...". I just moved here. I've never even heard of your charity, yet alone supported you in the past. If you did even a half-assed research job to get your intro accurate (and talked a little slower), I might care. It would be nice if the Do Not Call Registry applied to all these groups who pester me.

Rainy Season

It rained today. It rained yesterday. The forecast for the rest of the week is rain. I think Seattle's rainy season has begin. :-(

World Juniors

I'm back in Seattle. I was home for Christmas visiting my family and friends and watching the World Junior Hockey Championship. Canada is having a very good tournament, destroying every team they've meet so far. (7 - 3 over Slovakia, 8 - 1 over Sweden, 9 - 0 over Germany, and 8 - 1 over Finland). They play the Czech Republic tomorrow in the semi-finals.

Sadly, American TV is very lame and it doesn't look like the World Juniors be available on ESPN. It seems they only show occasional games where Team USA is playing. However, the American team is bad and unlikely to advance far enough to meet Canada. :-(