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I always felt great knowing I shared a birthday with Mr. Spock. As has been said on the interwebs today, he did live long and prosper.

I took this 90-second video when I picked up Graecyn and Mia at Mama and Papa’s house. Graecyn was in a conversating mood.

Not too sure how I feel about this. I suppose it could be a worse title, right? I’m hoping that when the movie comes out that the only thing we needed to worry about is the title.

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Mia having fun during Susana’s birthday celebration. We were upstairs just finishing watching Susana open her presents when Mia decided to leap from a chair to a few pillows. This was captured with an iPhone 5S. Sure wish I had an iPhone 6, which can do 240fps vs the 120fps an iPhone 5S can do.

The girls are in the City once again. Farrah sent me the above photo from the Palace of Fine Arts. I wish I could be up there with them enjoying the day.

I had a similar conversation with Comcast when I was simply trying to find out how many Filipino stations they offered. DirecTV offers eleven Filipino stations. Comcast only offers five. I simply asked if they would be offering more, but the representative avoided the question and started talking about their other channels and how much better they are than DirecTV.

The one-sided conversation took off from there. The Comcast person started talking about pricing, channels, and other features that I was not interested in. When I pushed back he would ask, “Why?” “Why aren’t you interested in this great deal?” “Why do you need more Filipino channels?”  Perhaps because those channels are being watched by someone in my house?!?!?

It took some time with me becoming more agitated to be able to pry myself off the phone. I think I finally hung up on them as I simply said, “You are not listening to what I am wanting and asking about, so this conversation is over.”

I understand the person was trying to make a sale, and I was the one who called Comcast. But to turn around and try to thrust their services on me was very off-putting.

Listen to the below call. But be warned: you might get a little agitated after listening to it all.

This is a simple story of a bad customer experience turning into a worse one by the day.

My truck battery was on its last legs. I managed to get it charged so I drove it to the closest Sears Auto in Cupertino. I was able to be checked in fairly quickly about 11 am, and told my car would be done a little after noon - or within the hour.  This sounded great.

The mall in Cupertino isn’t that great, so I called Farrah who, with the kids, picked me up at Sears. We decided to have lunch at the local park and let the kids play. This provided a couple of hours of fun, more than enough time to get the battery changed in the truck. It was strange, though, no one called from Sears Auto during the time we were at the park. As we started driving back I began to wonder if they even started work on my truck.

It was a little after 1:30 when I got back to Sears Auto. I saw my truck in the same spot which concerned me a little. But then I thought, well all they need to do is pop the hood, disconnect the old battery and put in the new one. They shouldn’t need to move it far. In any event, I stood in line to talk to one of the customer representatives. I stood in line for about 30 minutes, a line only 3 people deep, before I got to talk to what apparently was the one working representative. This was strange because earlier in the day, just a few hours ago, there were at least three representatives working. The representative told me that they hadn’t gotten to my truck just yet but it should be done soon. He would make sure.

I was a bit peeved but was able to occupy my time with Farrah and the kids by going across the street to do some grocery shopping. This ate about an hour of time. I asked Farrah to drop me off and just head home with the kids, thinking the truck would be done. Boy was I wrong.

All I could do was vent through Twitter:

then

then

Unfortunately, according to Sears, I was sending my tweets to the wrong account. Instead of @Sears I should be sending tweets to @SearsAuto. Silly me. I thought that a service with the name Sears would be concerned about the bad customer experience several people were experiencing.

Hoping to get some resolution, I sent tweets to @SearsAuto. They responded the next day:

But they have been silent ever since.

I don’t believe I will be hearing from them. Even if  I did I suppose I would only get some half-hearted apology with no rational explanation for the problems experienced by the many people that day.

Thinking back on what could have been done differently by anyone at Sears Auto that day I could only come to this conclusion: they should have set expectations appropriately. If they couldn’t do the work in a timely manner, then they shouldn’t have promised it could be done. They should have stopped taking new work in. Continually building up the workload for a number of workers had only frustrated the customers.

I am guessing this trend will continue at Sears, uh I mean, Sears Auto. In any event, Sears, as a whole entity has lost me as a customer.

The Santa Claus at Stanford Shopping Center has been our staple Santa over the years. The only other time we saw Santa Claus elsewhere was in Hawaii. This year we waited until the weekend before Christmas to visit Santa. It seemed like a lot of other people had the same idea, given the long line we encountered early that Saturday morning.

But the girls were very patient waiting. And when it was their turn to sit on the jolly old fellow’s lap, the girls were well-behaved - for the most part. I think Graecyn is going through a little stranger danger/separation issue right now. But Mia was all in awe of Santa. Mia even spent several moments after the photo session talking to Santa about her gift ideas.

Mia tells Santa her wishes for this year.

Graecyn waits for Mia.

It’s always tough getting the girls ready in the morning. Sometimes they place nice, like this morning. This gives mom and dad the opportunity to actually get ready for work instead of rushing to work.

I love the time Farrah and I spent in Bath, London, and Paris. This video covers areas in Bath. It makes me want to go back again. Click the image to play the video.

Bath in Motion - A Hyperlapse of Bath from Jack Fisher on Vimeo.

Trying to calm Graecyn down, who is sitting in the back seat, with the iPhone camera. Of course I’m recording it.

General admission. Standing room only. A combination I do not look forward to in a concert. But if the artist and venue are right, I will endure. And Farrah and I did endure this combination, at The Fillmore, to see Lorde.

I was lucky enough to snag two tickets back when they went on sale a few months ago, before Royals was getting regular mainstream radio play. I don’t know if I’d be lucky to get tickets now seeing how big Lorde has become.  Funny thing was when they went on sale, they seemingly sold out immediately. But I persisted for a few minutes and was able to grab two tickets. 

We arrived a few minutes late to The Fillmore. Friday night traffic going up to San Francisco was ugly as usual. We caught a few songs from the opening act, Until the Ribbon Breaks. They sounded great on stage, so I immediately added a few tracks to a Spotify playlist. After their set people milled around, as usual, waiting for Lorde to take the stage.

The crowd started to fill up as Lorde’s set time was getting closer. The crowd was a good mix of ages, as The Fillmore can be depending on the performer. We were situated in a good spot, center and further back on the floor. Unfortunately, to Farrah’s left, a group of unruly 20-somethings decided to talk and bump around people through the whole performance. One couple just wanted to make out all night.  In front of us was an older couple, probably in their early to mid 50’s. Made me wonder how many concerts do they attend?

Getting back to Lorde -  she performed well for someone who hasn’t performed often on tour. She sounded well, though the bass was on the heavy side, making her voice sound muddled. From another review of the concert, it seems it was her idea to crank up the bass. She had energy, working the stage very easily. She talked between a few songs, using   Thank you, San Francisco, often, which elicited approval from the crowd.

Her set was short, about 12 songs or so, lasting a little over an hour. No encore performed with the lights coming up after her last song. I thought she could have done a few more songs, as her album came out that day in some places.

The annoyances of the general admission crowd are worth it sometimes, especially when seeing an up-and-coming artist. It is always nice to see an artist on the rise, seeing them before they get too big, in an intimate place like The Fillmore.

Other reviews of the show are at SF Gate and San Jose Mercury News and SF Station.