DragonShark

Two Dragons from CBC Dragons’ Den are becoming Sharks on ABC. Find out who they are.

I am sure the two DragonSharks will have lots of fun. I just hope the ABC series will do the Dragons’ Den format justice.

P.S. Call me snobbish if you like, I love the original BBC Antiques Roadshow but the US PBS version is just too cheesy for my taste.

Robotic Brick Wall

Designing the Brick Wall of the Future.

Quite neat.

Excellent Customer Service – Moen

After blogging about this musician’s horrible customer service experience with United Airlines, I am happy to blog about something wonderful. So let me blog about my Moen experience. Specifically,

Moen Lifetime Warranty: All Moen faucets come with a Lifetime Warranty against leaks, drips and finish defects.

Our house came with a Moen Faucet in the kitchen and it was leaking a little this last few days. I got my nice neighbour to take a look of the faucet and we finally figured that the water is probably leaking from some very tiny tiny cracks/gaps on the faucet wand.

And when I called Moen to try to find out how much is the replacement wand, I was very pleasantly surprised that Moen is going to send us a new replacement – Free of charge! This is what I call great customer service and standing behind ones products.

Thanks to the wonderful and nice Moen customer service agent Denise, I am a happy Moen fan! I know Moen is a great brand but my personal experience has turned it into a Lovemark for me! Check out their bathroom and kitchen collections here.

United Breaks Guitars

Oct 29, 2009 Update: United loses luggage of ‘United Breaks Guitars’ guy

*******

The full story of how United Airlines’ baggage handlers in Chicago broke the band Sons of Maxwell’s $3500 guitar by throwing it around. And the first of three songs Dave Carroll promised to write and produce. Very nice song.

Lessons for United and other businesses: It is always cheaper to resolve problems and do the honourable and right thing in the first place. The bad publicity created for United is way more than the cost of the $3,500 guitar which was thrown by the baggage handlers!

[via CBC News (with video interview with Dave)]

New quote

I’ve added a new entry to quotes I love.

Robert McNamara Dies at 93

I learned a lot from reading this Washington Post article, and this following quote near the end caught my eyes.

“I’m not wealthy, but I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do, and I decided not to do anything that doesn’t meet two criteria: expand my understanding of the world, and allow me to apply whatever understanding I have in some productive way.” – Robert McNamara

News of the death of McNamara at TIME, NEWSWEEK, Washington Post, BBC, CNN, Guardian, Reuters, AP.

Here is Errol Morris’ documentary “The fog of war: Eleven lessons from the life of Robert S. McNamara“. (you can probably find the rest of the documentary online)

Have a listen to NPR interviewing Morris about McNamara and the “The Fog of War“.

Lunch Etiquette?

Are there any precedence that might have raised any concerns over comments and conducts by previous Warren Buffett charity lunch winners? I just hope my suspicious is wrong here as there is probably no way to impose any “lunch etiquette”. Hmmm …

Warren Buffett Lunch Winner: I Won’t Profit From Stock Tip Windfall’

P.S. Here is something less serious and more fun. Warren selling mattress at Nebraska Furniture Mart.

[via CNBC]

Ambassador to lead MI6 & his “Facebook Controversy”

John Sawers, British ambassador to the United Nations, will soon to be the chief of MI6 (UK Secret Intelligence Service). Sawers is in a “Facebook Controversy” at the moment as reported here, here, here, and here.

While I don’t know exactly when, but the day that these so-called “facebook controversies” becoming “non-news” will come.

P.S. People who honestly think that ambassadors to the United Nations don’t get fully profiled by friendly and unfriendly countries are much more naive that I can imagine.

green thumbs at greengate of heaven

Last week, I discovered (to my horror) that some insects were eating our roses and rose buds! Our neighbour gave us some tips and suggested we visit greengate garden centres in South West Calgary to see what the experts may suggest to solve our problem.

When we got to greengate, we were amazed by the many beautiful flowers and plants. greengate looks like a heaven for green thumbs! (see more flowers and plants at the end of this blog entry)

And when I asked a staff for help, she suggested we talk to Troy, one of their rose experts. Upon seeing pictures of the bugs that were eating our roses, Troy immediately identified that they are Rose curculio (also here and here). Tory then suggested a things we need to do to try to handle the bugs, without using chemicals and even without buying anything from the store! (see these pages) Troy suggested hopefully those methods should work and we can check with him again if our problems get much worst and he has other things we can try.

Before we left, we saw a copy of gardensense, a 100+ pages booklet full of good flowers and plants information published by greengate, and a friendly and helpful staff got us a copy to bring home. To gardeners, gardensense has many useful information and I am happy that I asked for and got a copy.

I don’t put ads on my blog. But when a store does thing right like greengate, I am happy to blog about how great they are. Free of charge! If you live it Calgary and love flowers and plants, visit greengate and check them out.

Is the future free?

Chris Anderson, Wired editor-in-chief, has written a new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price”.

Here is an excerpt of Malcolm Gladwell’s insightful book review (emphasis added),

The only problem is that in the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, “has so far failed to make any money for Google.”

Why is that? Because of the very principles of Free that Anderson so energetically celebrates. When you let people upload and download as many videos as they want, lots of them will take you up on the offer. That’s the magic of Free psychology: an estimated seventy-five billion videos will be served up by YouTube this year. Although the magic of Free technology means that the cost of serving up each video is “close enough to free to round down,” “close enough to free” multiplied by seventy-five billion is still a very large number. A recent report by Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube’s bandwidth costs in 2009 will be three hundred and sixty million dollars. In the case of YouTube, the effects of technological Free and psychological Free work against each other.

Dirty Tory ad

Does the political gain from using dirty political ad justify the deliberate distortion of honest disagreement?

Because of Bloc Québécois’Quebec centric outlook, I will not agree with the Bloc much. At the same time, it is unfair to accuse the Bloc of “protecting child traffickers” when they disagree with the principle of minimum sentences, which the Bloc thinks interferes with judges discretions.

To me, a difference in judicial philosophies is an honest disagreement. A dirty political ad exposes what these “Honourable” and “Right Honourable” politicians are made of.

Tone of everyday

A very cute and creatively shot music video made with the help of may fans.

[HT 周游]

Counter Ban for Park Shin Yang

I can’t believe the international campaign “Counter Ban for Park Shin Yang” to try to reverse the lifetime acting ban of the Korean actor Park Shin Yang is in its seventh month already.

Please consider joining in the July email campaign to help Mr. Park.

Steven Chu talks Energy Research @ MIT

Steven Chu talks Energy Research @ MIT

China plays by Teck’s rules

Three blog entries by Globe and Mail Andrew Willis on China Investment Corp.’s (CIC) $1.7b investment in Tech.

• China plays by Teck’s rules
• How a Chinese fund met Teck (nice background)
• Teck financing wins fans

P.S. It is a nice way for China to spend some of its massive reserve. With insights expressed in this blog entry “压低人民币汇率等于供养美国“, I think my friend Zhaofeng may agree.