Journal – Page 16 – Teel McClanahan

vehicle repair customer service comparison

I just got home from the Trailhead Bike Cafe, and on the drive home I couldn’t help but think about the difference between today’s vehicle repair experience and the one I had last week at Midway. It’s an interesting contrast of customer service philosophies, from my point of view. I went into each place to get some basic work done, and let them know I would be waiting while they did the work (rather than leaving and coming back later). I’ll give a thorough description of both experiences below, but here’s a quick table for comparison:

	Midway Auto Team	Trailhead Bike Cafe
Actual time required for work:	~45 minutes	~45 minutes
Initial time estimate:	6+ hours	We can do it today
updated time estimate:	~4 hours	We’ll …probably get to it today
revised time estimate:	2 hours	uhh… we didn’t know you were waiting for us to work on it…
Actual time spent:	90 minutes	over 4 hours

An important aspect of customer service is setting and managing expectations, and another key component is communicating effectively with your customers (which includes listening to them and understanding their needs). Midway set clear and specific expectations, and kept me informed as they were able to revise their estimate. Trailhead was unable to provide a clear estimate at any point, and seemed unaware for the first three hours I was waiting at their cafe that I was waiting for them to do the work on my bike (rather than just to kill time?).

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been years since I’ve biked

I’m sitting in the cafe part of the Trailhead Bike Cafe, writing from my iPad, waiting for them to basically overhaul my bike. I haven’t ridden a bike for more than a few seconds in about eight and a half years… which is why my bike needs an overhaul; it’s been in storage (or in the way), unridden and unmaintained, for about eight and a half years. I’ve been thinking, casually, of getting it out of mothballs (as it were), getting it tuned up, and riding it again for a while. I added it to the long list of things waiting for money, since I knew it would easily cost $100-$300 to get it back in condition for riding, and mostly put it out of my mind. Then last August I saw a Groupon for a $60 overhaul/tuneup (plus $10 credit at their cafe) for $30 at the Trailhead Bike Cafe. I looked the place up on yelp & around the web to see what other people said about them, and they looked okay, so I bought the Groupon… and then I put it back on the list of things waiting for money, since I knew the Groupon wouldn’t cover parts… and I’ve had parts replacement on this bike cost $150 over the cost of a tuneup when I was keeping it well maintained and riding it every day. As I’ve posted about recently, we had a bubble of available money this spring, so I penciled it into the budget… and now here I am, taking care of it.

As a side note, I ordered my mocha “extra sweet” and it seems to have come extra bitter, and the giant macaroon (the size and appearance of a black and white cookie, with one half chocolate-dipped) is half stale. ((What is it about independent coffee shops that causes their “good” (to the cool kids) coffee to be so much more bitter & terrible than the coffee [I make myself|I get at the national chains]?)) Meh. It’s good enough, they have free Wifi, and they don’t mind me hanging out here all day. I’ll take it.

In case you didn’t know me a decade ago, when I rode a bike everywhere, I’ll fill you in: I rode a bicycle everywhere. I didn’t even bother to get my driver’s license until I was 22, and then I only ever did the 6 hours of driving (with an instructor in the seat beside me, able to override my controls) required to get the license until a couple of years later. I started riding a bike to high school my senior year, then rode a bike to PVCC the three semesters I attended there, then rode my bike to the bus (and the bus to ASU) when I transferred to ASU… until I moved to Tempe after a semester, and then I rode my bike to school and work and all over Tempe for the five and a half years I lived there. I typically rode about 90 miles/week, though during certain periods (mostly when I was trying to go to school while working full time) I rode over 200 miles/week.
Continue reading been years since I’ve biked

My unfocused mind

In the heat of the moment, I’d nearly forgotten my plan for this year. In the busy-ness of the business of getting the Untrue Tales series written, edited, and published, then made into an eBook, and now into an audiobook… In the sudden long moment of everything involved in my Kickstarter project (My Life in the Future of Publishing) and its promotion… In thinking about (now planning the structure of, now worldbuilding) my upcoming vampire duology and in considering whether it’s a good fit to be made into a graphic novel… In signing up for, researching, and trying to decide on a project for Script Frenzy (which is like NaNoWriMo, but for scriptwriting – and I’ve next to no experience with scriptwriting)… Not to mention the beginning percolations of ideas for fresh art projects beginning to bubble up…

With all these projects and ideas and such burning to the fore of my mind, keeping me continuously busy for the first quarter of 2011 (and beyond), my initial plan for the year nearly faded from my thoughts. If you’ve also managed to forget it, it went something like this: My general goal is to write/publish 2 to 4 books per year and I’ve already done that much (with the Untrue Tales series), so there’s no real pressure (from my own goals) to try to finish any new books this year. This gives me the freedom to spend more time reading, to make progress on my “reading list,” as it were, not just books for pleasure but books for research (for several upcoming books I’ve got in mind, but don’t want to write without a lot of appropriate reading first). I’d also like to get some time invested in working again on my art, in taking it in a new direction, and in trying to produce beautiful artwork free from commercial concerns.

This last thought is perhaps the central one; to move to a place where the work I’m doing is no longer driven by commercial concerns. I think I’ve got our finances structured now in a way which will allow me to fully realize that mindset before the end of 2011. …though not if I continue to allow myself to obsess over things like getting funding, like promoting & marketing my creations, and/or like trying to learn how to write commercial/normal/formulaic books (or screenplays).

Anyway, I’ve been having some trouble keeping my mind focused, lately. I’m pretty sure the proliferation of projects preceded the present peripatetic propensity of my thoughts. Either way, it’s too many things, within and without. All things I want to accomplish, but I’m not confident a hurry in any way enhances or improves those accomplishments, so I’m going to try to slow down and take things one at a time. Try to focus on each thing in turn, if I can, instead of focusing on none of them at all. I’m significantly less stressed than I ever was working for someone else, or working for money, but those things are like infectious splinters, wedging their way into everything and poisoning even the good in life – and I am more stressed than I’d prefer to be because of them.

If my Kickstarter project gets funded, I’ll try to focus on that. If not, maybe I’ll try to focus on screenwriting for a month. Otherwise, I’m just going to focus on reading and on gradually developing the ideas, structure, and meaning of my upcoming vampire duology… while I try to adjust my frame of mind.

iBook is dead, long live the iPad

iBook G4, dead As mentioned in my post (interrupted), my laptop died Sunday night. I originally ordered that laptop & received it just in time for NaNoWriMo, 2004. I’ve used it for the writing of over ten books, I used it to record (and edit, et cetera) at least four audiobooks, and it’s been my near-constant companion for almost six and a half years. 6 years, 4 months, and 27 days, to be exact:

RIP iBook G4, 11/2/2004 – 3/28/2011

It was at a particularly frustrating and liberating moment that it died… I’ve been going back and forth about whether to buy an iPad 2 since its announcement. When the original iPad was introduced, I wanted one, but resisted. Especially after the details on the iPhone 4 came out, I was sure that, if not for the iPad 2 then soon, the iPad would have a 300ppi or better display. As I’ve previously mentioned, specifically in an essay I wrote for Time, emiT, and Time Again, I’ve been waiting for 300ppi displays for over ten years. It’s like the wait for 28+ megapixel cameras to reach consumer prices, so digital imagery will finally reach the level of the 35mm film rapidly disappearing from the market; I’m eager for the point where digital begins to surpass analog at what analog is good at. To me, for displays, that sort of high resolution is the key feature. If the iPad 2 had been built with a 300ppi or better display, I would not have hesitated to order one. I would probably have stood in line to get one on launch day, opera-be-damned. (That’s a whole other story.) But the iPad 2 doesn’t have a so-called “Retina” display…

Continue reading iBook is dead, long live the iPad

About, Meaning, or Purpose

I don’t think I know how to write a book about something; how to create a book with a purpose. It’s something I have in mind for my next couple of novels, but only conceptually; I don’t have a clear meaning in mind, yet, just the idea that I’d maybe like these books to be about something. There’s a hint of the shape of a structural symmetry I want to build between the two novels I have in mind, but the structure looks like it’ll only really stand up when there’s meaning or purpose at its core.

I suppose in some ways I’m still a nihilist. I have trouble seeing the meaning in most everything. Life seems largely to exist without purpose. On the other hand: My faith informs me that the only meaningful purpose in life is spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, perhaps with living a life according to the example of Jesus’ life coming in as a distant second. I’m not as good at either of those things as I ought to be, or as I wish I were, and I’ve been trying to do better and to gradually work more and more of that purpose into my writing. A problem I’ve been having, mentally, is in trying to conform my mind to the Will of God… and still tell the stories I have it in me to tell, in a way I know how to tell them.

This is another side of the problem I’m writing about here. Sure, there’s the side where I don’t see that anything is really about anything. I can write and tell stories, no problem, but it’s all just meaningless. To me. On this other side I know about something meaningful, but I haven’t yet figured out how to write or tell stories about it.

Interruption: My iBook just died, which is what I was writing this post on. I was going to write more, but those 300 words sum up the problem pretty well. I may do another post later, to do the working-through-the-problem-in-words I’d meant to do, but a dead laptop is a more pressing problem right now. Help me deal with it: Go buy something I’ve created, even though I do find it all meaningless.