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Sometimes I am amazed at how short sighted a company can be.  HTC had the opportunity to make me a very happy customer.  Instead they chose to leave me angry and I have no recourse but to blog, tweet, and respond to posts recommending people do not buy a Nexus One or any HTC products.  I bought a Nexus One phone for $530.  The phone is very nice.  The problem is that it is extremely brittle.  This is the second HTC phone I’ve owned and both are made with inferior quality parts.  The Nexus One fell out of my car (a distance of about 1 foot) and the power button is completely unusable.  There is no damage to the case or screen and the phone looks brand new except for the power button.  The cheap plastic power button is the only damage on the phone.

I called HTC expecting a Warranty repair but they refuse to do it.  At best they can fix it for between $55 - $335.  That is the best estimate they will give.  The drop should not have caused the damage it did and it should be repaired under warranty.  I could understand if the case or screen were cracked.  That would show severe stress from a fall and would not be covered under warranty.  However, I small fall that does not damage the case or screen should not damage the functionality of the phone.

After speaking with a “supervisor” I was told that he will “escalate” my issue.  I asked about the process and he said he will “send it in” (not sure what “it” is) to the repair center.  When pressed further he said he will get back to me “when they get back to him”.  He cannot give me any estimate in hours, days, or even weeks.  This is horrible customer service and leads me to believe that nobody at HTC is taking this seriously.  Unless they cover my phone this will be the last HTC I ever buy.

Fact # 1 - I dropped my phone from the bottom of my car to the ground (about 1 foot)

Fact #2 - The screen and case are still in new condition

Fact #3 - The power button has a tiny chip and will not depress

Opinion # 1- This fall should not have broken the power button.  The button is cheap quality and should be much better on a $500 phone.

Fact #4 - HTC will not repair the phone under warranty at this point

Fact #5 - HTC will “escalate” my issue but cannot give me any time frame when I should hear back from them

Fact #6 - Ben [last name removed] (A warranty Supervisor) has the authority to repair under warranty but refuses to do so

Fact #7 - This is the second poor quality HTC phone I’ve owned.  My T-mobile Dash fell apart and had to be replace once then fell apart again (not from dropping)

Opinion #2 - HTC has very poor customer service and support.  They should fix my phone or replace it as the fall should not have done the damage it did.

** Note before reading this it would be helpful to read Taming Cubicle Nation to understand my motivation for creating this solution.

Where I work we use many Microsoft SharePoint websites.  SharePoint allows you to quickly create sites to organize your team, perform meeting management, task tracking, and other common tasks that allow collaboration.   I often make custom lists to track lite processes.  With all these abilities SharePoint has become an important cog in many corporate environments.  One of the major drawbacks to using SharePoint is that it is generally very slow.  Every click requires a post back to the server (unless using Data Views).  In my environment simply loading a team site or custom list may take 5 - 15 seconds.  Other sites I access also have similar performance problems.

One common solution to solving this problem is to open multiple Internet Explorer windows open to the sites you most commonly visit.  This can really clutter your task bar and desktop.  Another solution is to open tabs for each instance of a site you commonly access.  While not a bad solution it is often difficult to know what is in a particular tab.  Clicking on a tab moves your focus from the web page.  The solution I decided on utilizes several iframes on a single Web Page to load and display the common websites that I access.  I use the JQuery library to hide and show iframes when I click on the appropriate link.  What makes this nice is that I can give the file to a co-worker and they can type in the links that they want to use.  No coding or design is needed.

To use this solution download JQuery from http://jquery.com/ and rename the downloaded file to “jquery.js”.  Then save this file to your hard drive http://www.leogodin.net/MultiLinkLoader.html.  Edit MultiLinkLoader to add the links you want and make sure it is in the same directory as jquery.net.  From there you can double click the file and enjoy faster access to slow intranet sites.

This is not an elegant solution but it works well in my environment.  I’d like to hear how other people are solving similar problems.

Pam Slim, the author of “Escape From Cubicle Nation” will help you leave the corporate world and follow your dreams.  This is a noble and worthy goal for many.  However, working in the corporate world has many advantages.  In my job I work with many talented people from all around the world.  On a daily basis I may speak with a resource planner from Israel or a System administrator from India.  I work with people from Malaysia, Costa Rica, Russia, and China.  I also have huge resources available for training, advancement, and mentoring.  These are all things I love about my job.

Just as not everything is bad about the corporate world not everything is good either.  Huge corporations are inherently bureaucratic. Security concerns require that much of the IT equipment works against your productivity instead of for it.  Standardization, which makes an environment supportable often meets the lowest common need while offering low performance.

If there are benefits and detractors in any environment why not try to emphasize the benefits and minimize the detractors of Cubicle Nation?  My newest passion at work is to do just that.  I want to find novel solutions to minimize the impact that various corporate constraints have on my productivity.  This effort will combine technical, process oriented, and cultural changes to make a super productive environment. I will chronicle this effort here on this site with progress reports and how-to articles.  If anyone is out there in cubicle nation going through the same process please contact me.

Your passion will draw others to your cause

There is something powerful about real passion. When a person is passionate about what they do their passion draws others to them. Are you passionate about something? Maybe it’s a charity or cause. It could be a sport or even a profession. I am convinced that passion is one of the key ingredients to living a happy and successful life. When you are passionate about something success is not measured by the world’s standards but instead by your own measurements. With passion you do not care how everyone else views your progress because your goal is to live out and feed your passion. In doing this you choose what is successful or even better yet, the measure of success is innate inside of you.

If you are truly doing what you are passionate about then you will draw others to your passion. As a kid, teenager, and young adult I hated writing. Any school assignments that involved writing were tedious to me. Later on I took a college English course taught by a tremendous teacher named Tracy Mendham. She was soo passionate about writing and reading what others wrote that I could not help but love writing. You see her passion drew others not so much to her but to what she was passionate about. I am now writing a novel. This never would have happened without the passion of a great teacher.

A more recent example is when my son and I took a free 15 minute golf lesson from a professional instructor. We had each played golf less than 5 times in our lives and had very old equipment. The instructor spent over an hour with my son teaching and encouraging. He also spent about 45 minutes with me. He was soo passionate about golf that we both got excited. His passion made me want to play golf. His encouragement and love for the game tremendously improved our swings. We signed up for a 15 minute lesson but he had time and there was nothing he would rather be doing then teaching us. This is true passion. I will certainly go back and pay for lessons (when I can afford it). This man will do well as an instructor not because he is phenomenal but because he absolutely loves what he is doing.

I could go on and on about various passionate people in my life. I may write posts on specific people from time to time. For now, just find something you are passionate about. If you are spending lots of time on things that aren’t your passion then stop and look for something better.