Apple scores again on my scale... or maybe not?

I was browsing around the Apple store in Bellevue square yesterday with a friend that wanted to buy a Mac Mini and ran into this:



It was love at first sight. It's too bad that I already very recently bought a Plantronics discovery 655 or I would have picked one up on the spot.

Though I am thinking it's probably a good thing I didn't pick one up considering the reviews I have been reading about them. It appears that the functionality of this slick bluetooth headset is not as impressive as its design.

The almost perfect car dealership...

As some of you know already, my car was slightly scratched up by one of the valet guys in a garage located in downtown Seattle recently. Fortunately, they were perfectly honest with me and told me right away. The manager also offered to take my car to Lexus of Bellevue where he worked in the evenings to get my car buffed out and fully detailed at no charge. So after a few back and forths, I decided that I was going to take him up on his offer but I would take the car in myself.



When I got there, I was thoroughly impressed. They had moved to a brand new location down the street since July. Basically, think of a multi-level elegant building with views of downtown Bellevue all around. They also have all the amenities you can ever think of. There's a showroom, surround sound theater, gift shop, cafe, TV area with fire place, a beautiful fish tank, LCD screens in multiple locations, children's play room w/ video games, work area, and most notably, a mini golf course!



Problem? yes... while I almost had a perfect experience waiting for my car to be finished, I hopped on their guest wireless to get some work done. My first impression was, "hum, decent speeds..." then I found a significant problem. I was unable to connect to any of my e-mail accounts via IMAPs or remote into the office with VPN or SSH. After some investigating, it seems that their IT dept. decided to block all outgoing ports except for 80 and 443 which make their guests only able to browse the web. You would think that a dealership for cars of such prestige would be more sensitive towards business usage when it comes to their IT amenities. Unfortunately, that's not the case. It's one thing to be security conscious but it's another thing to be unaware of customer needs.

Well, maybe I am just too critical.