TIL: Anson Williams, Potsie from Happy Days, directed episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. Also, Beverly Hills: 90210, Baywatch, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and more recently 28 episodes of The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0930041/

He’s far from sitting on it.

Look, we all want to dress up Ryan Gosling in cute outfits and live vicariously through him.  Now you can.

If you haven’t seen Ryan Gosling in Drive, you really should.  At least see him try to pick up librarians.

You may have heard about the “Move Your Money” and “Bank Transfer Day” movements that occurred this past Saturday, Nov. 5th. I wasn’t going to do anything with my account at one of the major banks. They offer a feature that allows me to deposit checks from my iPhone, and that is a really wonderful feature for me, since I hate taking the time to get to an ATM or branch to make a deposit.

Then I was informed by a freind who banks at the same institution, that I earn only .01% on the funds I have deposited. Not one percent, but one tenth of one percent. This comes to about $20 a year. I took a look at the major credit union in Seattle, BECU, and found that they pay 6% interest on the first $600 deposited with them, and their money market pays .41% interest.

For my cash on hand, BECU will give me about $120 a year in interest, which is more than 6 times the interest that my current bank pays.

For me it’s not so much a political action, though I am happy to support any movement wanting to punish the finance sector for their terrible mismanagment in the mid 2000s. It’s a matter of simple math, and maximizing utility, which I am sure any financial institution can appreciate.

BECU makes it very easy to open an account with them online.  I needed my driver’s license, my checking account number, my bank’s routing number and about 15 minutes.

John Stewart and The Daily Show is holding a Rally to Restore Sanity in DC on October 10th, 2010. I think this is a very smart move.

In the case of other recent political rallies, such as the Tea Party rallies, or those political rallies that want to pretend they aren’t political rallies, the turnouts are not that great.  The Tea Party officially has only 67,000 members.  Surely there are orders of magnitude more moderate voters in the United States.

I suppose what appeals to me the most is that the Rally to Restore Sanity, while being political, casts a wide net. The organizers state:

Ours is a rally for the people who’ve been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) — not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority. If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence… we couldn’t. That’s sort of the point.

And who exactly should participate?

We’re looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it’s appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles.

If nothing else it will be good to compare the size of the crowd that this rally draws and see who indeed is in the majority. As a side note, you should definitely not attend the other rally that is going on in DC the same day.

This video of Panorama Search is very impressive, and it seems ideal for people who have a lot going on in their browser.

Panorama Search enables the user to open a large number of browser windows, group them by function and search them for content so that the window can gain focus if the search is fruitful.

Just three years ago, my parents bought a GE Hotpoint gas stove.  So, you can imagine their surprise when they came home from work on August 18th to discover that the black decorative glass panel on the stove door had fallen out of its frame and was shattered in hundreds of pieces on the floor.

The stove was two years out of warranty, but clearly this is a type of failure that GE might consider performing an out-of-warranty repair. My father took photos as he found it, swept the bits of glass into a cardboard box and hit the Internet for a way to contact GE. GE does have a feedback form on their appliances site, and my father filled it out that evening.  He received an automated response, but nothing more.

My mother mentioned it to me on the phone that Saturday, the 21st, and I mentioned that GE Appliances might have a Twitter account.  My folks aren’t that familiar with Twitter, so I decided to tweet on their behalf. I sent out the following into the Twitter void:

Mike626: The glass door of my parents’ 2 year old GE Hotpoint stove shattered into hundreds of pieces while they were at work. GE has a Twitter Acct? (1:37pm, Aug 21)

GE Responded on Sunday, less than 24 hours later:

GE_Appliances: @Mike626 This is Megan from GE. How can I help? (Aug 22, 10:28am)

They asked me to email them directly with my parent’s information and I provided them with a brief decription and my father’s photos.

Less than one day after GE responded to me on Twitter, I was copied on the following email to my father:

Date: Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 7:52 AM
Subject: RE: Stove Glass Door Failure

Thank you for reaching out to us concerning your parent’s range and providing the tracking number for your father’s e-mail.

I was able to research the e-mail and have sent your dad the following response:

Dear Mr. xxxxxxxxxx,

Thank you for contacting us. I share your concern over the inconvenience and expense involved when a product fails to operate properly and I am sorry to learn of the difficulty you have experienced with your gas range.

I have scheduled no charge service with GE Consumer Service for this Friday, August 27, between 8AM-12 Noon. Your service call number is xxxxxxxxxx. If this is not a convenient time to have the range serviced, please contact GE Consumer Service directly at 1-800-432-2737, Monday through Friday, 7:00am to 10:00pm, or Saturday and Sunday, 8:00am to 6:00pm, Eastern Time to reschedule.

I hope this is helpful. Should you need any further assistance or have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Sincerely,

Kim

Consumer Advocate
Consumer e-Response Team
GE Consumer & Industrial

The service technician showed up on time, and after the usual complications of ordering a part and the Labor Day holiday weekend, my father sent me the following email yesterday:

Date: Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 3:01 PM
Subject: Range Door

The glass in the gas range door has been installed.

GE IS OK BY ME.

I’m thoroughly impressed by GE’s Social Media response team on Twitter.  To get a response in less than a day, and a free service call scheduled within 48 hours is a huge customer service win on GE’s part.  That a company so large can provide such personal service is a testament to the power of a tool like Twitter.