A most useless doctor visit

For the past few years I've noticed that my wrists have been getting sore after extended periods of computer use. Knowing what this could mean, I attempted to cut down my computer use, and started using programs that encouraged me to take regular breaks¹. The soreness became more frequent and came on with shorter periods of use (which is, I might point out, one of many reasons why my posting frequency has dropped precipitously), and then recently I started noticing tingling in my fingers and my mouse hand feeling itchy. So, I decided that enough was enough: it was time to head to the doctor.

The nurse who first saw me had carpal tunnel syndrome herself, and she shared her experiences. Unfortunately, they boiled down to “don't do what I did - I had to have surgery, and still can't use my left hand all that well.” Practical advice on how not to do what she did was rather lacking from her monologue.

So, in came the doctor. He did the usual asking what was wrong, and after my explanation he said, “Well, you've got carpal tunnel syndrome.” He made the diagnosis without ever touching me, or without asking any clarifying questions. Given that after reading online I'd found that there are a few possible conditions that have similar symptoms, I was surprised that he didn't. He then proceeded to explain what causes carpal tunnel syndrome (pressure on a specific nerve; it's always interesting to listen to how doctors dumb down explanations) and that if it got bad enough I might have to have surgery.

Did he bother to say what I needed to do to avoid said surgery? No.

He then asked me whether I used a computer at work, and after I replied with a yes (and that I had a suboptimal work arrangement), he said that that was almost certainly the cause.

Did he bother to ask me if I did other activities (like, say, playing the guitar, or blogging) that might be related? No.

He did, however, go on to talk about how employers are very worried about carpal tunnel syndrome due to the fact that it's the #1 worker's comp injury, and that I should talk to my HR department about getting something ergonomic for my setup (his primary suggestion was, I kid you not, “a gel wrist-pad”). Did he give me any real suggestions on what to do to make my workspace (at home or work) more ergonomic? No. Did he bother talking about any of the range of possible treatments, and discuss with me which would be most appropriate? Other than suggesting that I take off my watch and get a gel wrist-pad, no.

He did ask if my hands tingled when I woke up (which is a symptom of sleeping with bent wrists, an indication that wrist braces may help if worn while sleeping), but then quickly went back to talking about worker's comp.

After a nearly useless conversation, he briskly asked me if I had any other questions, and then shooed me out the door. I learned more in a half hour of web-browsing the night before the appointment than I learned from him, and I'm now left to search the web for more information.

¹ Initially I used Ubuntu's built-in typing break program (found in the “Keyboard” menu, at least for Ubuntu 7.04). While this was an excellent start, it was suboptimal (it didn't have an option for micro-breaks, and it would lock the keyboard without much warning, which was frustrating if I was in the middle of a sentence). I also tried a Google Desktop add-in, but that was even less useful (as it just brought up a popup window, which was easy to ignore if I was busy). Most recently I've started using Workrave, a free Linux and Windows program that appears to be excellent: it has both micro- and macro-breaks, gives plenty of warning when breaks are about to appear (I can finish my sentences now!), and is very customizable.

It is done.

I'm pleased to report that the semester is finally over. I finished my grades last night, and this afternoon I finished off all the fiddly end-of-semester work that I'd been putting off. My e-mail has an away message, my voice mail won't be checked for weeks, and I have nothing I need to do for work until January. Ahhhhhh.

How did I celebrate? By coming home and taking a nap.

Stay on target ...

The end of the semester has proven to be insanely busy. Even though many instructors at my college have already turned in their grades, I still have dozens of papers to grade and haven't even given my last final exam yet. This is even though my SO has been querying me for my name when I arrive home, thanks to me working solid 10 or 12 hour days for at least the last two weeks (including weekends).

Making things even more "fun" is that I've had the "pleasure" of turning in more than a dozen different students for plagiarizing this semester, most of them in the past week and a half. I've even set a new personal record for the greatest fraction of plagiarizers in a course: 50% of the completing class.

More to come once grades are in.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes, I am indeed still alive. My prior post on the topic of why I haven't been posting still applies: my new online course is keeping me insanely busy, and whatever spare time I have is being spent either sleeping, playing the guitar, or shopping for a new classical guitar. The only change I'd make to my prior post is to eliminate the "not stressed" part: I've fallen weeks behind on grading large assignments, and have barely been getting my online course's units created on time.

The online course is still going well; I'm learning a lot, and I think the students are learning at least a little something. Right now my completion rate looks like it's going to be around 2/3 of the initially enrolled students, which I consider to be pretty good for my first try (we've reportedly had online courses with completion rates of <25% at my campus). I'm already looking forward to teaching the course again in the spring. I'm also looking forward to winter break, when I'll have time to start writing more here.

I hope you have a relaxing, food-filled Thanksgiving!

Busy, yet not stressed

As regular readers can probably guess by my posting frequency, I've been busy lately. As I predicted at the start of the semester, my new online course has been consuming any time it can get its hands on: I'm easily spending at least 15-20 hours each week developing the content for it, and at least as much time in the course interacting with the students and grading their work. Add that to my regular in-person lecture and lab classes, and I'm one busy grasshopper.

I'm enjoying the new course tremendously, and even though I've been extremely busy, I haven't been overly stressed. The course is thankfully small, which means that I have enough time to get to know the students, and I can assign regular written assignments and give the students copious feedback on those. Creating material for the new course is a ton of fun; writing the material is much like blogging (all I'm doing is writing general summaries of basic biological content for a non-scientist audience), and finding artwork has been an enjoyable challenge (I'm attempting to build the course entirely from open-licensed artwork). I'm already looking forward to having time in future semesters to revise what I've created.

The biggest complaint I've gotten from students so far is that the course is too much work and that the exams are too hard. Since this is likely one of the first college-level science courses these students have taken, and these students have surely been exposed to the "online courses are easy" myth, this isn't surprising. It's hard to explain nicely that yes, this course is in fact challenging, and that no, I'm not going to make the tests easier.

Outside of work I'm not doing a whole lot other than taking another guitar class¹. This class requires far less time than my summer course (thankfully), but it's been an enjoyable distraction, and has helped motivate me to keep playing. It's hard to believe that six months ago I didn't even have a guitar, but now I can (slowly) play a growing number of tunes (the most complex of which are probably Dust in the Wind and Vals by Calatuyud).

¹ And attending a super-cool Genesis concert at the Hollywood Bowl. It was such a good concert that I didn't mind getting rained on for half of the concert, that they ended the concert a few songs early due to the rain (though I sorely missed hearing Carpet Crawlers), or that we got stuck in (non-concert) traffic on the freeway at 1:30am.

Another semester begins!

Another semester has started at Rhosgobel U. This summer was filled with fun visitors, an amazingly productive garden (we've been harvesting pounds of fresh tomatoes, peppers, and beans every week for the past month), and lots of rest and relaxation. This was a contrast to the past few summers (when I've done field work out of the country during the summers), and thus I'm feeling much more rested and relaxed than in recent years.

Regular readers will note that I've been silent for a while; I apologize for this, and should explain it. The primary culprit, as one would expect, is that other avenues have started taking up my time. First on the list is that this semester I'm creating a new online course from scratch. While I'm enjoying this (I've been planning something like this for years), it also means that all of my writing time is now dedicated to the course.

Additionally, I've found that I really enjoy playing the guitar. My summer course was a blast, and thanks to it I've improved a lot (though I'm still a complete novice). The course took a tremendous amount of time (at least 15 hours a week combined in class and practicing), and I'm still practicing for an average of half an hour a day. I'm finding that when I've got some spare time, I don't sit down at the computer (or, rather, I don't continue sitting at the computer), but instead wander over and pick up the guitar. Right now I'm focusing on classical guitar, and might even be buying a new classical guitar soon ( since I “need” a classical guitar to play classical music).

But never fear, kind reader, I'm not going to tell you I'm quitting writing. I've enjoyed this for too long to do that. Instead, I'll be reducing my frequency of posting; so, I'd expect something about weekly, though I give no guarantees.

That said, here's looking forward to an exciting semester filled with new things.

Ordering glasses online part 2: getting the glasses

About a month ago I reported that my SO and I had ordered some glasses from Optical4Less, an online retailer. As the glasses have now arrived, I wanted to post an update.

Our glasses arrived in the mail about a week and a half after we placed the order. The glasses were wrapped in a cloth and bubble wrap, placed in a hard case, and then shipped in a cardboard box. My glasses (a metal and plastic semi-rimless pair) arrived in perfect condition; all I had to do was adjust the nosepieces (which bent easily with my fingers) and they fit perfectly. I've been wearing them every day since, and haven't had any problems. While I can't verify that the prescription is completely correct, I'm seeing more clearly than I have in years ¹.

My SO's glasses arrived in apparently perfect condition, but upon close inspection we discovered that the lenses had several patches of minute scratches that caused blurred vision in a few spots. Our best guess is that the anti-reflective coating had been damaged during the lens shaping/installation, though we don't know exactly what happened.

Optical4Less responded to our e-mail about the problem within a day, and requested pictures of the lenses. Getting a good picture of the scratches proved challenging (as they were small and nearly transparent), but we eventually got a few good pictures and submitted them. Optical4Less got back to us the next business day and told us to mail the glasses back so they could be remade; this cost us about $4. Upon receipt of the glasses, Optical4Less gave us an $8 gift certificate good towards our next purchase.

A few days ago (about two weeks after returning the glasses), we got the replacement pair in the mail, and my SO reports that they're perfect.

Thanks to our success with Optical4Less we've already ordered more pairs (my favorite is a $35 pair of prescription sunglasses from Zenni Optical). So far we've ordered seven pairs of glasses from various retailers, and we've still spent less than it would have cost to buy one pair of glasses at our local optician. We'll never buy from our local store again.

¹ It had been more than five years since my last pair of glasses was made (in part due to the price of new ones), so the change was fairly major.

I can use the net again!

Shortly after my last post I did indeed go 'net silent' to avoid accidentally reading spoilers for Harry Potter. I'm happy to report that I have now finished the book without encountering a single spoiler.

It's so nice to be able to surf the web again. My apologies to anyone whose comments or e-mails I've ignored in the past few days.

A few updates

It's been a while since I posted, and thus I wanted to reassure folks that the slow posting is due to nothing more than being distracted with other items. On the list of (enjoyable) distractions are house-guests (which we'll have three sets of this month), guitar playing, birthday celebrating, and starting work on my new online course.

The guitar course has been going for a few weeks now, and I'm having a blast. The course is focused around playing classical guitar, which I'd never really listened to before this course, but am now finding that I quite enjoy (both playing and listening to). I've still got a long way to go before I can do much of anything with the instrument, but it's fun to plink away at it every night.

And, as is traditional, I cooked my SO a birthday feast on the big day. This year the feast consisted of cheese blintzes (which will likely be this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post), crab dip, chicken ravioli, and a white chocolate cake filled with lemon curd. Everything was homemade, including the ravioli:


While the ravioli took hours to make (I remember now why we haven't made them for about three years), they were excellent with a sauce of nothing but butter and Romano cheese. My SO should have birthdays more often!

Even limited exercise helps

One of the exercise mantras commonly floated about is that adults should get 30 minutes of moderate activity exercise at least five days a week. While this is a good goal, the majority of Americans don't get this amount of exercise¹. And, for a lot of beginning exercisers, exercising for 30 minutes a day probably seems like a huge commitment, if not an insurmountable challenge.

My SO and I have long viewed exercise in the "some is better than none" category, and thus try to do even little amounts whenever we can (e.g., walking to the store instead of driving, always taking the stairs at work, doing our own gardening). A recent paper (Church et al., 2007) has shown, via a randomized, controlled trial, that even small amounts of exercise are better than no exercise at all (at least for the subset of people they tested).

Church et al. divided overweight, post-menopausal women into four groups:

• Control: Did no exercise a week (other than normal walking)
  
• 4kcal/kg: Exercised about 70 minutes a week
  
• 8kcal/kg: Exercised about 135 minutes a week
• 12 kcal/kg: Exercised about 190 minutes a week

Participants were randomly assigned to a condition, and all exercise was performed in a lab². The participants exercised at their given level for six months, at which point physiological data were compared to data taken at the start of the study.

Fitness improvement correlated linearly with the amount of exercise:



Figure 3 from Church et al. (2007)."Percent Change in Fitness Data for Each Study Group. The data represent the least-squares means adjusted for age, ethnicity/race, weight, and peak heart rate. The P values for pairwise comparisons of control with 4-kcal/kg, 8-kcal/kg, and 12-kcal/kg per week groups are P .001 for each variable. P for linear trend across groups .001 for each outcome. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals."
So, what this means is that even if you work out for only 20 minutes a day three days a week, you'll almost certainly see fitness benefits. And, once you start working out and getting used to doing it regularly, if you increase your workout durations (say, to 40 minutes a day three days a week), you'll see even more improvements. And, to help scare you into exercising, note that the people who didn't do any exercise actually had a small decrease in fitness³.

So, if you're one of the many sedentary Americans out there, take a look at those graphs and start exercising, even if it's only for a few minutes a day. It'll do ya good!

¹ As in "More than 60 percent of U.S. adults do not engage in the recommended amount of activity (30 minutes a day, 5 days a week)" and "Approximately 25 percent of U.S. adults are not active at all." (data from the 1996 Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity and Health, specifically from here)
² "Women in the exercise groups alternated training sessions on semi-recumbent cycle ergometers and treadmills." The control (non-exercising) women tracked their daily steps with a pedometer and were "asked to maintain their level of activity during the 6-month study period."
³ In fact, it was the realization that our fitness was slowly declining (and would continue declining until we would no longer be able to walk when we were 70) that finally motivated my SO and me to start regularly exercising (and tracking our exercise goals and progress here) a few years ago.

Church, TS., DP Earnest, JS Skinner, and SN Blair. 2007. Effects of Different Doses of Physical Activity on Cardiorespiratory Fitness Among Sedentary, Overweight or Obese Postmenopausal Women With Elevated Blood Pressure. JAMA. 297:2081-2091. Abstract.

Ordering glasses online

My SO and I just went in for our annual eye checkups, and it's finally time for both of us to replace our several-year-old glasses. As usual, after the checkup we were directed to the eyeglass sales area of the store, and a sales rep came out to help us pick out frames. We both tried on a number of frames, and selected a few to price out. The cheapest frame I had chosen was $200 after insurance, and the most expensive was more than $500 after insurance. Lenses would have cost about $100 extra. My SO's potential frames were in the same price range, but would have had even more expensive lenses. All told, we probably would have spent more than $1,000 buying new glasses at the optometrist.

Thankfully, we knew that we could find a better deal, as a while ago I found Glassy Eyes, a blog about ordering glasses online. While ordering glasses online is a bit harder than ordering them in person (you must enter your prescription manually, know your interpupillary distance¹, and analyze the frame sizes to see how they'll fit on your face), the price difference was astounding: there are multiple websites where you can find quite decent looking glasses for less than $40 a pair, including lenses.

So, rather than spending $1,000 at our local optometrist, my SO and I just ordered a new pair of glasses for each of us from Optical4Less, spending less than $100 total. While I'm willing to pay for the extra service an optometrist provides, and the convenience of a local store, said conveniences are not worth a ten-fold increase in price.

If these glasses turn out to be good, I think we're going to go on a glasses-buying binge.

¹ While you can measure interpupillary distance with a ruler, we did it using a binocular compound microscope with adjustable-width eyepieces.

Roger Waters live

Originally uploaded by DaigoOliva
[Spoiler warning: This post includes details about Roger Waters' 2007 tour]

My SO and I don't go to many concerts, but this week we went to see Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame). The tour advertised that he would be playing the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon, but he also played a great assortment of his other work¹ (list from here):

• In The Flesh
• Mother
• Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
• Shine On You Crazy Diamond
• Have A Cigar
• Wish You Were Here
• Southampton Dock,
• Fletcher Memorial Home
• Perfect Sense Parts 1 & 2
• Leaving Beirut
• Sheep
• The Happiest Days of Our Lives
• Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2
• Vera
• Bring The Boys Back Home
• Comfortably Numb

While our seats weren't terribly close to the stage, the venue had continuous video footage broadcast on large screens. Much of this video footage focused on the guitarists' hands, which I was appreciative of thanks to my newfound hobby of playing the guitar².

As one might guess, Roger has little love for George W. Bush, and thus included many jabs at him. His new song Leaving Beirut had a graphic-novel-style background including the lyrics, which included this bit:

Roger Waters_Leaving Beirut - Oh George! Oh George! Originally uploaded by Garry'

Oh George! Oh George! Originally uploaded by Garry'

He also had a floating pig covered in graffiti:


A Pig never lies
Originally uploaded by Ronaniversario
While our pig didn't look exactly like the one pictured above (after browsing Flickr it appears that a new pig is made for each show), the writing on our pig included such statements as "Torture shames us all," "All religions divide," "Impeach Bush," "What an asshole [with an arrow pointing to "Bush"]," "Fear builds walls," and "Habeas corpus matters."

My favorite was the addition of a quote from Bush in the background visuals for The Fletcher Memorial Home:


Fletcher Memorial Home
Originally uploaded by EddieBerman
Ignoring all the traffic getting to and from the concert, it was a great evening of prog rock. Up next: Genesis.

¹ I was probably one of the few fans in the audience who was sad that most of his solo work was left out.
² Methinks it will be a very, very long time before I'm able to come anywhere close to playing songs like them.

[Note: All images in this post are Creative Commons licensed.]

Big news for SC

Semantic Compositions has just posted some big news: he's starting his own company! This sounds like a great decision for him; I wish him all the best.

And, if he ever needs a biologist to consult for him, I'll be happy to give him my special friends-only discount rate (based on, of course, the rates his prior employer charges).

It is done!

My grades are all officially turned in, and thus the semester is finally over. This was easily one of the busiest (and worst) semesters that I've had to date (see here, here, and here for a glimpse why), and thus I'm ecstatic that it's over. It seems appropriate that I "celebrated" by falling asleep on the couch immediately after dinner last night. I'm so exciting.

While we don't have any major travel plans set yet (though a possible trip is in the works), my SO and I are both looking forward to spending time on our house. Our long-stalled bathroom and kitchen remodeling is first up on our list, though we have a number of other household projects we want to get through as well¹. I'll also be taking a guitar course, and will finally have time to start blogging more regularly (heck, just posting all the drafts I wrote up during the semester will be a big project).

Ahhhh, summer.

¹ So, any visitors to the Rhosgobel estate this summer are thus forewarned that they will be staying at a house under construction (and that construction work may be occuring during their visit).

Not quite there yet

Those familiar with my schedule know that my semester ended last week. However, even though I got to dress up in snazzy robes and look all official in the graduation ceremony, I'm still not done yet. I've got a huge stack of papers to grade, some letters of recommendation to write, and a few plagiarism reports to file¹.

I won't let all that stop me from enjoying the weekend though; I can finally taste the sweet elixir of summer.

¹ Will my students ever learn that I don't want to catch them plagiarizing? It means I have to spend at least 2-3 hours per case documenting the plagiarism, confronting them, and then writing a formal report to our dean. It'd save everyone a lot of time if they just cited sources properly; heck, I might even be done with grading if it wasn't for the plagiarism cases I'm currently dealing with.

Clear!

My mom just got the news a little while ago: where there was a lot of atypical ductal (and lobal) hyperplasia in the excised tissue, there was no cancer. This is about as good as we could have hoped for; there's still a high risk of cancer in the future, but it's a relief to know that there is none present now.

This afternoon we're going to get her an herb and flower garden going, and tonight we'll celebrate with slow-roasted pork ribs and collard greens, followed by an introduction to German-style board games.

So far so good

I'm pleased to report that all has gone well so far here in Colorado. My mom's surgery went about as smoothly as it could, and she was walking around and eating (and relatively pain free) within a few hours of the operation¹. We won't know the tissue test results until Friday at the earliest, but at least so far everything's gone about as well as we could have hoped for.

Unfortunately, however, things are not going quite so well back in California. My SO came home tonight (after a very long day of work) to find that our house was full of hundreds of buzzing, potentially stinging, uninvited arthropod guests. After some investigation (and careful shooing), my SO determined that we have a swarm (or other congregation) of bees in our chimney. As a friend in Oregon said when I told him about this: "So THAT'S where they've all gone!"

Anyone need some bees?

¹ In fact, my mom was feeling good enough today to head around town with me to help buy supplies for all the projects she wants me to do while I'm here. I should emphasize that I'm not complaining: many of those projects entail cooking, which I'm more than happy to do (and which I benefit from as much as she).

An unexpected trip

About two and a half weeks ago my mom had a breast needle biopsy to check an area that had changed suspiciously in two subsequent mammograms. The biopsy came back with a diagnosis of an "atypical ductal hyperplasia."

After talking with our resident pathophysiologist (it's convenient working at a college with a good human anatomy and physiology group), I've learned that atypical ductal hyperplasias fall into a category known as fibrocystic changes, meaning changes in the breast that produce lumps, yet are not full-blown cancerous growths. Some fibrocystic changes are associated with an increased risk of cancer (they're pre-cancerous, if you will), while others aren't. Unfortunately, it looks like atypical hyperplasias are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in the future, and, based on what my mom has been told, sometimes atypical hyperplasias are even found around cancerous tissue.

My mom had a consultation with a surgeon this past Thursday, and he scheduled her for a full biopsy (essentially a lumpectomy) Tuesday. The quick timeline took us both by surprise, though it seems like a good idea.

My mom lives alone near Denver, and thus I'm going to be flying there on Monday to be with her during and after the procedure. While the operation sounds like it should be routine, I'm planning on staying the entire week just in case (and so I can be there when the tissue test results come in). Being that we've only got two weeks left in the semester, this is not an ideal time to be away from my classes (in fact, it's a crazy time to take a week off). However, I suspect my students can somehow manage without me¹.

From stats that my mom was given, no evidence of cancer is found about 85% of the time atypical hyperplasias are excised. Funny how statistics are not nearly as comforting as one wants them to be.

¹ Though I will be pre-recording my lecture and distributing it online, so my students can still get their daily dose of Prof. Radagast, if they so desire.

A tale of two music stores

Or: how to get your customer to buy from the competition in five easy steps.

[Warning: A long, boring post about troubles purchasing a guitar follows. If you're interested in problems with new Washburn D10SBs, or a comparison of Musician's Friend's and SameDayMusic.com's customer service, read on. If not, don't.]

Regular readers will remember that back in March I decided to start learning to play the guitar. The first step was to obtain a guitar, which I attempted to do by placing an order for a Washburn D10SB from Musician's Friend back in late March. It took me until yesterday to actually finally have a working guitar; in this post I'll recount this tale of woe, and review the customer service of both companies I dealt with.

Musician's Friend shipped my package the day after I placed the order, and it arrived via UPS ground in the usual time. The order consisted of my guitar (which came in a hard case), another hard case I ordered for a friend, and some other miscellaneous items (a guitar stand, extra strings, and some picks). Unfortunately, Musician's Friend had packed everything into one (giant) box, and had put exactly two sheets of paper into the box as padding (my guitar's hardcase wasn't even in a plastic bag). As one might expect, the UPS elephants had had a blast with the package, and thus virtually everything in the order was damaged. Even the box of picks had been broken open during shipment, and thanks to a minimal taping job of the box's seams, most of the picks had fallen out during transport. Most distressing was that the two cases had rubbed against each other, leaving large gouges on both.

Musician's Friend was quick to respond to all of my e-mails, but unfortunately their responses were often uninformative. For instance, the first e-mail they sent said that I should ship everything that was damaged back to them, and that they could either exchange everything for new items or give me a full refund. I still wanted a guitar, so I said that I wanted to do an exchange. Only later did I find out that by "exchange" they meant "send us back your guitar and four days after we receive it we'll place a new order for you," while by "refund" they meant "we can place an order for a replacement guitar immediately for you."

I packed the guitar up and sent it back the next day; it took the usual time to get back, and then a few days later I got a notice that they'd placed a new order (X') for me for the replacement items. The next day I got this:

Dear Radagast:

Thanks again for your recent order #X'. The items which were in stock have been shipped, and we've sent your package tracking information via a previous email.

As you may recall from the Item Status on our website or from speaking with us when you placed your order, the item(s) listed below are not in stock. Our orders for this gear have been expedited through the manufacturer, and we are still expecting to ship your products within the timeframe originally quoted. If we anticipate an extended delay, we will contact you again to verify any changes you may wish to make.

As you might guess, at no point before this did Musician's Friend ever mention that they were out of stock. In fact, I'm fairly certain that they had a D10SB in stock when I initially shipped back my damaged guitar to them. At the end of the e-mail they informed me that the soonest they'd ship the guitar was now May 11.

I was furious. It didn't help matters that Musician's Friend had never once apologized for anything; the words "apologize" and "sorry" are completely lacking from any of the numerous e-mails they sent me. While the other replacement items did ship the next day, they arrived with the same mediocre packaging (no bubble wrap, and all the small items were put loose into the same box as a guitar case, which led to the new pick package breaking open and spewing its contents all through the box).

After doing some shopping around, I found SameDayMusic.com, another online music store that seemed to be fairly large, had a good return policy posted, and had the D10SB in stock, albeit for a higher price. SameDayMusic had a price match policy on their website, and within a day of finding their site I had a URL available to purchase an in-stock D10SB for $5 less than I had paid at Musician's Friend. I placed an order with SameDayMusic, and took great pleasure in cancelling my Musician's Friend order (though I only later found out that the customer service representative "incorrectly" cancelled my order the first time, and thus it took me multiple e-mails and more than a week before the money was refunded to my credit card).

SameDayMusic lived up to their name and shipped the guitar out the same day I ordered it. It arrived the usual time later, and I was ecstatic to find that they actually knew what bubble wrap was¹. Unfortunately, the guitar case arrived missing one of its feet, and the guitar had a few small scratches on the side. The case was packaged in what appeared to be the manufacturer's bag, and there wasn't a foot in sight, so it seems likely that the foot was broken before shipping.

SameDayMusic's response to my e-mail was refreshingly thorough and kind. The very first sentence of their e-mail was apologetic (including "apologize" prominently), and they clearly explained all of the options for either exchanging or returning the guitar. Unlike Musician's Friend, they made it clear that they would ship out a replacement item the very same day, even saying that they'd only charge my card if they didn't get the return item within a few weeks.

SameDayMusic did indeed ship out a replacement guitar the very same day, and they did one better: they shipped it out second-day air (Musician's Friend shipped out their replacement items standard ground). This replacement (the third guitar and case I was to receive) arrived two business days later, and again was packaged with bubble wrap.

The case was in great shape this time, but the guitar had a dent on the front. The guitar and case both appeared to be packaged in the manufacturer's bag, and there was nothing in the case that could have caused the damage, so this damage again appeared to have happened before shipping. I informed SameDayMusic of the damage, but unfortunately by this time they were out of stock of the D10SB as well, and wouldn't have it in stock until June. To their credit, SameDayMusic apologized profusely, and reported this problem to me in the very first e-mail they sent after I told them of my damaged shipment.

At this point I had two guitars and two cases (as SameDayMusic's return shipping label hadn't arrived yet), but fortunately one of each was in fairly good shape. One case was perfect, and I could live with the scratched guitar (as the scratch wasn't too noticeable, and was only in the finish). I proposed that I'd be OK with keeping the better set of items if I got a small discount; SameDayMusic wrote back the next day saying that they'd be happy to give me a 20% discount for the trouble. That was more than I expected, and thus I'm pleased to say that as of yesterday I finally have a guitar I can keep.

Thanks to their excellent customer service, SameDayMusic has now won a customer for life. Musician's Friend, on the other hand, won't see my money again. It's amazing what an apology, a speedy replacement shipment, and some flexible thinking will do for you.

¹ To clarify, while SameDayMusic's packing was better than Musician's Friend's, it was still sub-optimal. The guitar was packed in its hardcase, which was put in a plastic bag, but then the case was put into a box just barely bigger than it was, with bubble wrap was stuffed into one end of the box to attempt to lock the case into place. I would have preferred it if the entire case had been wrapped in bubble wrap, or if it had been double-boxed.

Yes, I'm still here.

Sadly, unlike PZ, I've still got three more weeks of classes to go, and they're going to be crazy. I'm miles behind on grading, am leading a committee that will be actively working through the end of the semester, and am being asked to give multiple presentations to campus groups in the next few weeks. Not helping anything is the fact that the past three weekends have all had at least one day (and one weekend had two) taken up with on-campus work or field trips.

I'm exhausted; the next three weeks can't go by fast enough.