All My Love - Production Roundup

I just opened my latest play for which I served as Lighting Designer. It is called All My Love and was produced by my longtime friend Tony Fiorentino with his company Diamante Productions in Chicago. The show is running at the Theatre Building Chicago (TBC) through May 10th, 2009. (Get your tickets now!)

Synopsis: "When a middle-aged divorcée decides to explore the world of polyamory, she must temper the jealous passions of her lover, while her teenage daughters search for the meaning of love through the prism of their mother’s unorthodox practice of relationships. “All My Love” is an exploration of alternative “lovestyles” and a critique of Western society’s most cherished notions of love, monogamy, and marriage. "

All My Love Reviews: The show has been getting positive reviews and even received a Jeff Recommendation!
List of reviews:
steadstylechicago.com
rosephase.blogspot.com
lasplash.com
cheekychicago.com
newcitystage.com
Timeout Chicago
Chicago Reader

Technical challenges:
As a lighting designer, one of the biggest joys I get out of doing this work is overcoming a challenge in an interesting and beautiful way. This play had a few of those that all came together to make a really pretty picture.

1. Using a CYC: The play was written to be set in a house that required multiple rooms; living, dining kitchen, 2 bedrooms, etc... Due to cost/space/time requirements, the idea of having multiple rooms onstage was thrown out. Though creative direction, we were able to condense down to just a living room and a bedroom. The set designer nixed 95% of the "walls" that you might normally have on an interior set in favor of 3 different height platforms and an upstage CYC (cyclorama). You don't see CYCs used much in smaller theatre because most small theatres don't have them available, don't have space for them and they are typically cost prohibitive to rent. In addition, if you use a CYC, you usually need to do some kind of CYC lighting. That requires even further expense to rent in strip lights, special wide throw CYC lights, or newer LED wash units - again prohibited by cost. And to do it right, simply throwing up a CYC is not always the only task involved.

For All My Love we were able to use a CYC donated to TBC from a previous resident company. TBC also had some strip lights that were old, but served our purpose enough that we decided to use them. The availability of these 2 items at very low cost enabled the use of the CYC for the this set. The existence of the CYC allowed me to use varying color of light to help suggest time of day and also to serve as a bright backdrop during certain transitions between scenes, which were always illuminated in some way.

2. Transitions: Speaking of transitions, this was another technical challenge to the lighting design. The director wanted to never go to complete dark during any of the scene-to-scene transitions, only going dark at the end of the acts. Having 3 colors available to mix on the CYC helped provide something interesting to look at during the transitions, as did heavy use of backlight, which darkens faces. This show used a lot of cross-fades with varying timing; good thing TBC is well equipped with their ETC boards.

3. Televisions on stage: Playwrights will always find something to write into their script which is just about impossible to achieve technically on stage. Dealing with a television on stage has been one of the greatest challenges of my career in lighting design, I have encountered the task at least twice prior to this show with varying results. Obviously, the best way to achieve a television effect would be to put an actual television on stage. This is not always desirable, as a television large enough to cast a high output of light is, in most cases, either too large to actually have on stage or cost prohibitive (50" plasma anyone?). In a small space you could scale down and use a smaller television, but you still need to deal with content on the television itself. This can usually be achieved by setting up actor/tech triggered content from a VCR or other digital output device, but if an audience can see what is on the TV, then the content has to be exactly appropriate for the script, which would involve extra cost for production or research.

Since the set for All My Love was not very realistic, we decided that the television effect could be accomplished by something other than a television. On a previous show I attempted to construct a "flicker box" that would randomly flicker a light and then point that light at the stage. I didn't have the budget to buy a real flicker generating device and the one I ended up making never worked right. We had to ditch it at the last moment in favor of a manually flickered submaster. For this show I decided that I wanted to use an LCD projector to project actual television images on stage. Different options were debated (projecting on the CYC, projecting on the floor, etc...) and eventually we decided to point the projector right at the couch in the living room on stage. Depending on the level of ambient light, you would be able to see the content on he actors faces, the furniture, the floor, etc... The content was pulled mostly from Youtube (thanks to VDownloader) and fed from a laptop in the booth via a simple powerpoint presentation. The lens was thrown out of focus as the actual images were not as important as the "look" of television. We ended up with 3 different scenes using the projector effect, including a pivotal scene in the play, and it actually looks really good!

4. Projector light when you don't need it: While the projector idea was a lifesaver for this element of the show, it triggered another problem. Even projecting a totally black slide, there is still light clearly visible onstage during some of the darker transitions and the blackouts. So I had to come up with a way to block this light when we didn't want it, and allow the light to shine when we did. High end shuttering devices exist for this purpose, and super high end projectors have them built in, but this is a low budget show of course. We had a remote control, but the "eye" of the projector was facing the stage, not the booth. Besides, turning the projector on and off during the show might be distracting to the audience that is sitting only 10' below. The better idea was some kind of simple shutter that would block the light during the non projection scenes. During an early production meeting the set designer suggested "just use black wrap!" I was thinking something more complex, such as a model airplane servo or something, but black wrap would be simple and cheap. I ended up using a heavy duty gate hinge, a piece of wire from a coat hanger, some black wrap, and some gaffer tape to make a nice little swinging flap that would totally obscure the light from the lens of the projector. I mounted the hinge to the bottom of the projector mount (a square piece of 3/4" OSB), attached a long piece of black tie-line to the top of the flap, and ran the line back to the booth through two little pulleys. I had to add a little bit of weight to the string above the flap to ensure that it would fall down and out of the way of the lens as the length of the string had enough weight to counterbalance the flap itself. This totally worked and is pretty silent. I never heard it once while watching previews, though I did glance up to see if it was open yet prior to a cue and noticed it slowly lowering :) The other advantage to allowing gravity to lower the flap is that if there is ever a problem with the flap, it will probably be stuck "open" instead of "closed" and allow the projector to do it's job at the minimal expense of casting some unwanted light on stage.

Last week was a long week. At by the time I went home on Monday evening, I had no idea how we were going to get everything done prior to opening. By that time, I hadn't focused anything, and had basically placeholder cues setup. But by Friday evening's performance I had worked out just about all the bugs, at least all the lighting bugs. I had a few notes on Saturday, and a few cue modifications for Sunday, but otherwise everything was perfect by opening.

Here's to hoping I had something to do with Jeff's nod!
-Cheers

Changing Default Browser in Vista

I have been having problems setting the default browser in Vista. Originally, I had problems setting Firefox as the default browser for all functions computer wide, eventually, through some trickery and a tip found on CNET I fixed that problem. Recently I installed Google Chrome browser...which I like a lot in some ways. But again, I had problmes getting it to be the default browser. I searched for some tips on how to fix this, but the browser is so new, there is not much information. Yesterday I discovered Mozilla Minefield, which is the next version of Firefox, currently in alpha dev. It is still super buggy, but it did manage to take control of my existing Firefox install. This screwed things up really badly on my computer and I decided I had to fixe the Chrome default problme once and for all. 

A lot of my problems on this Vista install seem to be caused by user access level issues. Vista says this makes my computer more secure. I say it makes things break and not work correctly. I found a posting on Techarena.in which shows exactly how to overcome this default browser issue. Here are the steps to follow:

1) Make sure Chrome is closed.

2) Right click the Chrome shortcut and select Properties.
3) Go to the Compatibility tab
4) Check "Run as Administrator"
5) Run Chrome
6) Click the "Allow" selection in the UAC prompt
7) In Chrome, go to Tools / Option and select "Make Chrome my Default Browser" (this step is what most people suggest to do from the beginning, except it wont work unless you are running as administrator, and even then it might not work correctly.)
8) You may want to remove the Run as Administrator option as you will get hit with the UAC prompt every time you open Chrome or a new tab.

This process totally works, it fixes all of my default browser issues including default links from outlook and google desktop search. 

Confused about Obama vs McCain/Palin

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

 * If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

 * Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers,  a quintessential American story.

 * If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

 * Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

 * Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

 * Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

 * If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor,  spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of  13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

 * If your total resume is: local weather girl,  4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

 * If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

 * If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

 * If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

 * If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible. 

 * If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

 * If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude",  with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

 OK, much clearer now.

Google Chrome Doesn't Work with...

I have been using Chrome for a few days now, actively, at work. Here is my review:

Thinks I like about Chrome:

-Ability to pull a tab out of the window into its own window.

-Individual tab processes

Things I don't like about Chrome: 

-The way it handles multiple logins for a single page in the "remember me" functionality. It tries to suggest the login you want to use, rather than allow me to select the login I want to use as Firefox does. 

-Chrome seems to have trouble keeping Flash from crashing. This is partially improved by the ability to kill the Flash process and have it restart without restarting the browser

-Lack of extensions/add-ons that I am use to in Firefox (especially mouse gestures and session saver)

Things I have found to be broken or simply not work correctly in Chrome.

-Amazon MP3 Dowloading Service

-Some parts of facebook (friend suggesting)

Additionally, I cannot seem to figure out how to do the following:

-Make Chrome my default browser (which enables me to click on links and have them open in Chrome, also enables me to continue to use Google Desktop Search). Though I think this has mostly to do with the messed up way my vista installation works with my default browser. It took me forever to get it properly associated with Firefox in the first place, and now I forgot how I got that to work. 

Finally, major corporations that develop products and services that only work with Internet Explorer is still a huge problem, and is certainly not solved by Chrome. I am specifically referring to companies like JP Morgan Chase, ADP, American Express and of course Microsoft. I really think that designing your product to only work on one browser is massively anti-competitive and someone needs to bring suit against large companies that do this. 

My Amateur Radio License

I found my Amateur Radio License listed on the FCC website. Neat.
What is weird, though, is that I found it using a new search website called Cuil.com (pronounced "Cool")
See it here: KB9IVG - Matthew Arata

Outlook Slow? Use Archiving!

I was having major problems with slowness while using Microsoft Outlook 2007 with my company exchange server. I searched for some tips on how to speed things up and found this article. The article describes several different things you can do, but the one that clearly worked was using the archiving function. This option can be found in Tools->Options->Other tab->AutoArchive. I set mine to archive anything older than 12 months. I think it takes a while to move the items, but soon enough it had duplicated all the folders and moved mail from my inbox over to a replicated inbox in the "archive" folder. It seems to be having a problem moving items from a folder I called "old work email," even though it duplicated the folder and appears to have moved "some" items.

Overall, outlook is now running MUCH faster than it was earlier this morning.

Remembering Joe Wishnoff

Joe Wishnoff, my colleague and friend, passed away on 7/14/08 from a disease called IPF. He was very passionate about things like SEO, pagerank, inbound links, etc... So in an attempt to ensure searches for his name reach pages that are related to him, I am collecting links about him in this post.

Save JoeW - The site Joe Wishnoff started to coordinate his fundraising and chronicle his experiences.

ServerCentral Remembers Joe Wishnoff

WebHostingTalk Remembers Joe Wishnoff

Joe Wishnoff on Facebook

Joe Wishnoff on Friendster

Joe Wishnoff on LinkedIn

Joe Wishnoff, legacy guestbook memorial

Joe Wishnoff, obiturary in the Tribune

Link through Dennis' blog on an article on Joe Wishnoff, written by Teresa Geiger, Dennis also wrote several other posts about Joe on his blog.

Joe Wishnoff's Holding Company, Sion Networks

Joe Wishnoff included in the Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis 3rd Quarter 2008 Newsletter

Joe Wishnoff mentioned on the Host Review blog

Thread about Joe Wishnoff on WebHostingTalk Forum

Young punk to unseat old republican stodger

Kim blogged about this guy, probably after seeing it on digg, who is going to win a Kansas congressional seat simply because of the internet. All he needs is 3000 people to donate $8.34 a piece. I think he will do it, NO PROBLEM. He summed up his initial foray into politics with a great cartoon. I gave him my $8.34, and I don't even live in Kansas!

Classified in the new Millenium

Craigslist has made it possible for anyone to place a classified ad, and have it seen by hundreds of thousands of people at a cost of $0. This has lead to a new breed of internet troll - those that both search and post on the classifieds in an attempt to wreck general havoc and amuse oneself.

A co-worker of mine has recently made it his mission to destroy this little part of the internet by posting humorous requests and offerings. His theory is that there aren't any real people on Craigslist anyway (at least not in the personals) they are all trolls. So might as well amuse the trolls and himself in the process. Here are a few of his recent gems:

------
Cat lover wanted - 27
Date: 2008-07-11, 1:24PM CDT
I've had some relationship problems recently and I'm looking for a woman who is comfortable having sex in front of a relatively high number of cats.
If you're not, that's cool, but it's also a deal breaker. You can bring as many of your own cats as you like, but if they fight or can't get along with my cats, we will have to segregate them and they cannot watch.
Also, if you could dress in a cat suit, that's a plus, meowing, purring, and scratching, a definite plus.
------
BITCHES DON'T KNOW ABOUT MY LASER - 28
Date: 2008-07-05, 12:26AM CDT
Hi, I'm Doug, I'm a mild mannered construction worker by day, and a fireball throwing badass by night. I have red hair, and red flames. If we're going to be together, we have to get a few things straight:
1. I will fight evil by night.
2. No, you cannot come.
3. No, you cannot reveal my secret identity to anyone, Yes, you have to tell your friends you're dating a construction worker.
4. No, I'm not gay, and I won't wear tights with underwear outside my pants.
5. I may accidentally burn the house down one day, and you can't be mad about it.
6. I will not throw fireballs for your amusement.
7. If the president's life is in danger, I won't be home for dinner.
8. If, during love making, you are burned or injured, I'm absolved of all liability.
9. Just because I could end the war doesn't mean I will or should.
10. The following picture of me was taken tonight.

------
Attractive woman needed for sexual Monopoly. - 30
Date: 2008-07-04, 2:14PM CDT
I need an attractive woman, ages 18-30, to play Monopoly with. You will use the thimble, and I will use the car. You must let me win, and we will moan sexually throughout the entire game, which will last 4-6 hours, while I dominate you financially. If I feel you are attempting to win, you will not get to date me again.
------

Classics in the making. I wish him all my best.

Local Eating

Local Eating Concept = Eat only foods grown or produced within 100 miles of where you live.

My sister-in-law's family started on this adventure about 2 weeks ago.

They are chronicling their adventure on a blog called Eat Near Rockford, pretty interesting read. Some of the ways they are going about sourcing their food are much more easily done in a community situated in the midst of rural farmland. It would be near impossible for me to do this in downtown Chicago, and also because I can't make a giant garden. They have a large property to grow food, a large kitchen to can food, and plenty of storage space to store what they can. Good luck to the Holdmann Family.

The correct Matthew Arata

Once again, I am forced to guide google to the correct Matthew Arata. This profile at Facebook belongs to yours truly: http://www.facebook.com/people/Matthew_Arata/1234667788.

And while I am at it, this is the correct Matthew Arata on Linkedin.

And finally, this PR from one of the companies I work for about nLayer's Partnership with Juniper.

Any others out there, trying to creep up on my search engine rankings, please cease and desist!

Just kidding...

but seriously, change your name or something...

just kidding....

but really....

Movie Recommendation: SLC Punk

I highly recommend the movie SLC Punk. A simple story of 2 punks living in Salt Lake City in the 80s. Great story telling and an outstanding performance by Matthew Lillard.

Dark Lord Day 2008, my experience

Dark Lord Day 2008 was yesterday April 26th, 2008 at the Three Floyds Brewery in Muster, IN. The event centers around the brewery's release of their Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout, which is generally thought to be a top rated, award winning beer. The beer is made in a small batch and only available at the brewery on the release day. They have been making it an event for several years now, and this year was expected to see a large turnout.
Steve, Lauren, Fred and I decided to take a trip down there and see what it is all about. (note: Muster is "closer" than you think, as compared to Naperville). Fred drove, as he is "in training" and was planning on not drinking very much. Thanks very much Fred. The weather was pretty cold as compared to the previous week's weather, and it was very windy, but also sunny. We were moderately prepared for the cold, but I should have worn a stocking hat and brought some gloves (and sunscreen).
I will sum up our experience in one word: Unprepared. We had no idea what to expect and dove in head first. We got there right at 11AM, which is when the beer was scheduled to go on sale. First thing we noticed was the extremely long line, which was the line to buy bottles of Dark Lord. We quickly got in the line after walking around the various industrial park parking lots through which the line was winding around and around. Check this google map I made to show approximately where the line was.
Most of the day was spent rotating the 4 of us in and out of the line, going into the brewpub or to the tents they setup outside to buy drafts of beer and food and go to the bathroom and stuff. We did get to try all three different drafts of Dark Lord (regular, vanilla, and bourbon). And we did get to eat some really good BBQ, sausage and weiners all on pretzel bread, and it was all excellent. We made friends with the people in line in front and behind us and shared our beer and food back and forth with them.
However, after 4 hours of waiting, some of the staff came out and determined that a point about 30 yards ahead of us in line would be the end of the sales of bottles of Dark Lord. Fred and I walked into and out of the warehouse a few times trying to make our own estimates of how many people were in line in front of us. We determined the same thing, no dice for us. Failure. So we decided that we had experienced what we could experience, and left the line to go home.
If we decide to come back next year, we WILL be more prepared. We will bring a bunch of stuff to setup camp outside the brewery. We will bring plenty of food and drink to complement the beer and food that is available at the brewery. We will bring chairs and perhaps a canopy tent or something to sit around so that we don't have to stand or sit on the ground. We will setup a system to rotate people in and out of the line and we WILL get there much earlier in the day to ensure that we are able to buy our cases of Dark Lord. And after we buy the beer, we will have a sweet space to hang out in and carry on and stuff with anyone who may stop by.
Thanks Three Floyds for a great event, but make more Dark Lord next year!

Another Fart Sandwich Update

The Great Fart Sandwich, documented heavily on this blog, also has a BoingBoing account.

GTA4

Ordering my copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 today. But I am not as excited as some other people in my office. I don't want to have any high expectations so that when I decide the game sucks, then I can tell other people...I told you so!

Gmat?

I can't believe I am finding myself at this point, but I am considering grad school. I swore that I never wanted to ever never ever go back to school after I was done with college. But here I find myself considering the idea.

Time to buy the Kaplan Gmat Book.

Dirty Jobs

I have watched the show Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel many times. The show's host, Mike Rowe, who does voice over and hosting work for several discover channel shows. Anyway, I was looking at the blog Post Secret, and came across this picture, I thought it was awesome.

SEO worked for my friend Fart Sandwich!

My SEO quest to get searches for "Fart Sandwich" to successfully display results for my friend, the great Fart Sandwich, was a success! Google searches for "Fart Sandwich" now list content relating to my friend as the 3rd through 5th, and 7th, 11th and 12th results. This is very good news indeed.

As a recap, Fart Sandwich is probably most well known for his amazing skills at Lumines Time Attack, where he placed 3rd in the xBox Global Arcade Challenge competition back in December of 2006. There is also a semi-popular you-tube video displaying his skill. Most recently, Fart Sandwich has been working on his Digg profile :)

Chase = suck, still

Banks are greedy, that is how they make money. But JP Morgan Chase Bank is VERY greedy. I paid my United Mileage Plus Credit Card (division of Chase) last month on March 9th about 5 days before it was due. I paid it online by logging into Chase.com, clicking on pay credit card link in the credit card box. (I also have Chase bank accounts). Using this feature initiates an ACH pull by the credit card from my bank account. Virtually 100% of my payments over the last few years to this card have been from the bank account side, initiating the ACH push from the bank to the credit card. This time, I noticed the easy link (been there for a while, I think I even used it once before), clicked on it and setup the payment. At the bottom of the initial screen, it gave me the option to set the date I wanted to pay, and it was defaulted to March 10th (next day). At the time, I said to myself..."Why would I want to pay this tomorrow? What is wrong with today?"I forced the date to the 9th, and neglected to notice that there would be a '$15 FEE ASSESSED FOR THIS PAYMENT'. Yes! Well. $14.95 to be exact. I didn't notice the fee, I just clicked submit, why would they ever charge me for MOVING MONEY BETWEEN DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS AT THE SAME BANK!!!!!

I got my statement last night, noticed this fee (it was obvious actually, a charge that didn't look like the other charges right in the middle of the statement, and right under the payment for the previous month's statement), and I was concerned to say the least. So this morning, when I was good and ready for a fight, I called Chase, told them that I never saw any warning(I didn't really see it at the time), and there was no way I would have agreed to a $15 fee for doing something "rush" when the payment was not late (true). There are at least 2 or 3 other ways I could pay the statement without incurring any fees. It would be rediculous to think that I agreed to this fee. Lady phone rep stood her ground. She said the warning (pop-up she called it, but I figured out today it was a 'somewhat' clear warning embded right above the payment confirmation information, and displaying the $14.95 as part of the payment) is always displayed, that the "charge" was valid, and that she could not reverse it. After 5 minutes of arguing with her, telling her it was rediculous, etc...I finally pulled the supervisor card. I was transferred to phone rep guy. He explained to me the fee again, said that it is clearly shown, and said that I probably just clicked right through and didn't notice (well...I did...but not that this guy would know). I went on to say that the guy was calling me stupid because I can't read (classic for me really, I never really read things completely). The guy gave a half apology, saying of course he wasn't calling me stupid and saying he wanted to 'work with me'. Good one phone rep guy. I offerred to meet him half way, but he was already ahead of me, saying he was going to waive the whole thing. He obviously didn't care to argue. Good for you Chase phone rep guy. You realized that I am not some dumb ass who would blindly accept being nickel and dimed to death by the giant mega-corp that you work for.

I was "" <-that close to having him transfer me to retention so I could get them to waive the fee or cancel the card I don't really need. There are a thousand credit cards out there, all of which would glady have me as a customer. I don't really need United miles, I don't fly that often, and any other card's rewards program is probably just as good for my personal financial situation.

--

I deal with people at Chase a lot through my own personal banking, but mostly through my job. Our company has extensive dealings with many different areas within chase. Generally I find the different departments to have varying levels of suck. I will list them in reverse order of most suck (#1=best at sucking):

#5 - Chase treasuery services. These people are in charge of wiring money. They have to deal with huge sums of money changing hands in split seconds. The average rep knows exactly what is going on and exactly what they are doing. They get annoyed with you when YOU don't know what You are doing. The people that setup these services have 95% clue and %5 suck, because they work at Chase, duh. Chase treasuary services suck the least of any people I have ever dealt with at Chase. They sent me a survey after my last interaction with them. I wanted to give a glowing review, but realized that their service wasn't really anything special, but in comparison to the bone heads I will mention below, they were OUTSTANDING! So I gave them slightly above average marks, with a extra note telling them as much.

#4 - Chase Credit Card services - Historically, I haven't had huge problems with these guys. They typically are easy to reach on the phone, speak Midwestern english fairly well, and can almost always fix your problem. They have even introduced a few GOOD services, such as improved fraud filtering, where it calls you to verify if some charges are against your normal pattern - annoying at first, but I appreciate it. However, over the last 1-2 years or so, even simple things have started to suck. My story above is the most recent example. Another great thing they have started to do is make you listen to a long advertisement for something you don't want while you are on the phone waiting for your new updated expiration date credit card to become "active." And finally, after several years now, they have still failed to intergrate at any meaningful level with the larger Chase organization, leading to the stupid problem I experienced above.

#3 - Business Financing - I appreciate these guys for the work they do with my company. Most of them are career financial guys just trying to make a decent living and support their families. However, they like to take their sweet time when processing your requests. Individually they don't have enough power to really help you with very much besides acting as a go between to their underwriting department (who, surprising I don't really have any problems with, they simply evaluate risk, not hard for people that specialize in that). They could probably do a bit better in their customer service I think.

#2 - Business banking - With the exception of a handful of people that work the business banking call center, the peope who work in the Chase Business banking divisions only care about how many new accounts/services/features they can get you to sign up for. They see businesses with nice fat wallets that they can milk because people in business say "oh I need that!" These people are former branch VPs who have successfully moved up the chain because they probably have really good sales (or some other equally revlent) skills. Of course, they are lacking a lot of clue when it comes to resolving simple issues your business faces, having to esclate to some person or department. They rely on other departments and staff below them to research your issues. I really wish I could say nice these about Chase Business bankers, but they just don't ever help me when I need them to do something.

#1 - Consumer banking - With the exception of the average teller (who couldn't give a shit about you, but is mearly concerned that their drawer blances out at the end of their shift, but they are usually very friendly and rarely make mistakes), peope who work in the Chase consumer banking division (similar to the business bankers) only care about how many new accounts/services/features they can get you to sign up for. The average "Branch VP" (age 25 and everyone is a vice president of course) only wants to get paid on new business, and could give two shits about servicing you after the account is open and they got their comission or promotion or whatever. They are also generally clueless on just about everything besides "opening a new checking account." These people are the very epotimy of everything that is wrong in corporate culture. I dispise everyone I have ever dealt with.

#0 - Higher-ups at Chase - These guys really take the cake in the suck. They get a 0. Worse than my scale even goes. In their ever present drive to inflate their own portfolios by getting that stock price up just another dollar, they force every department to nickel and dime and every angle. Bait you with enticing advertising and sell you crap you don't want. They dictate general policies on funds holds, fees, random stuff that generally makes my life more difficult and all for their own personal gain. They see their SMB and consumer customers as numbers. Numbers that they can squeeze on an anual basis for more $$. These guys are responsible for general customer disatisifaction that is RAMPANT among everyone I have ever talked to that has ever dealt with Chase.

In conclusion, I hope Chase can improve. Though I have strong doubts. Giant corporations generally grow and grow and get bought and sold and become big unwieldy giants until eventually they are split up and you are now apart of someone else, who equally sucks, but in a totally new and exciting way!

Photoshop express?

Adobe launches free version of photoshop called Photoshop Express. My first impression?

Loading, saving, startup, etc... are all really slow.
Lacking any useful that any previous user of photoshop would want to use.

However, one good thing, it appears to save your edit history...forever. Well the reason it can save your edit history for ever, is that your edits are not really edits, rather they are filters. You can do a bunch of filtering stuff, cropping, color changing etc, but you never actually change the original file.