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Go the distance. Yes, that was ripped off of Field of Dreams (as was the title). But it’s an important thing in the world of Customer Service. Take today, where an expected bad customer service experience has turned into a really nice customer service experience.

I am a hockey nut. I love hockey. Anything to do with hockey. It’s time for the NHL playoffs, and in this round all out-of-market games are being broadcast on Versus. On Denver’s Comcast, Versus shares their HD channel with the Golf Network. So they sort of trade off on the programming, sometimes it’s Golf and sometimes it’s Versus’ programming (hockey, ultimate fighting, cycling, fishing, etc.).

Therein lies the programming dilemma. Not only is this the first bit of games in the NHL, this week is also The Masters, a golf major championship.

So the program listing on Comcast says that there’s a recurring show called “Live from the Masters”. The problem is that this is not actually live coverage of the golf, it’s just analysis. And it’s being repeated like 4 times tonight. When there are live broadcasts of playoff hockey we want to watch, it’s annoying.

So I called Versus, which is actually owned by Comcast cable (which I just found out today). They were not helpful so much, as there was nothing on their talking points sheet for the day which would explain this.

I then called Comcast, and after a decently lengthy wait time, I was redirected to a phone number that nobody ever picked up - 407-363-4653 - not really sure what that was all about.

In my research of this problem, I came across a press release from Versus’ about the creation of the Versus HD channel on Comcast. A little more research showed me that a guy from the press release named Marc Fein is now Versus’ Executive Vice President of Programming, Production and Business Operations. I couldn’t find an email address for him, so I poked around on Google to see how other people at Versus had their email addresses.

And then I emailed him:

I noticed you were quoted in a press release when the Versus/Golf HD
channel was brought to Comcast. As you know, Versus and the Golf Channel
share an HD channel. I live in Denver and have Comcast HD cable.

The regular SD Versus channel today 2 hockey games tonight and the
program listing says that they’re also available in HD. When I go to
channel 672 (your HD channel), there is a repeating “Live from the
Masters” program all evening. Since people can only play golf during the
day, this is appears to be a repeating highlights show or something.

The problem I have with this programming is that the hockey tonight is
LIVE TELEVISION, but someone has apparently decided to show 6 hours of
reruns instead.

Why would the hockey not be broadcast live in HD tonight? Please
explain. I’m annoyed by this move by the Versus/Golf HD channel and it
makes me sad to know that Versus isn’t giving hockey consumers the HD
broadcasts on this channel.

If you are not the correct person to be contacting about this, please
refer me to the appropriate person.

Josh Mishell

Ten minutes later I had a response from someone at Versus (the Director of Scheduling and Program Planning), telling me that the games are actually going to be broadcast on the Versus HD channel, apparently through a last-minute deal with the Golf Channel.

This tells me one of two things:
1.Versus actually cares about their hockey customers, and even though I was wasting some people’s time (including an Executive VP) they were happy to help me out.
2. Nobody watches hockey, so I was the first person to complain about it.

Either way, I’m happy that Versus was able to help me out and I like them a lot more than I used to, especially after this AWESOME customer service experience. Well, I’m off to watch some hockey in HD. Thanks, Versus!

Photo from flickr user brianpoulsen.

Late-night update: Flickr video has arrived. It is massively underwhelming. Flickr is armed with the financial backing and resources of Yahoo, I have to imagine they’re making Yahoo a bunch of money. I think that they should have done something groundbreaking to reinvent themselves, to show how people really should be presenting video in this day. But the addition is pretty minimal.

I’m sticking with Vimeo for my video needs, and to be honest it makes me a little sad. I really would have loved to use Flickr

But on a tangent, I found some awesome “thumbs down” images at Flickr while searching for an image to go with this post.

Image above from Flickr user ahmed.alsaati. Remember that you can click on most all my images, and the link should take you to the original photo on Flickr.

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Evidence being that Heather Champ has posted a video to the Flickr Blog. Judging from this sample, their video support is far from being something that is usable. TechCrunch has a review here.

I tried to embed the video, per Flickr’s video embed code, and it was a failure. Click the “Flickr Blog” text above to see the video.

Looks pretty crappy, actually. 90 second maximum clip length? Pshaw. Even crappy YouTube lets you do 10 minute clips. And only Pro users can upload video? I don’t see much added value when you can upload 500 megs free to Vimeo per week, with an amazing user interface.

One of the reasons flickr was so popular in the first place is that digital cameras were just taking hold on the world. People needed a place to freely share photos online, and flickr was by far the best designed and most user friendly sites to do that.

The problem with this flickr video is that there are already many established video sites out there (like YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo) and I doubt that people would just switch. Perhaps as it evolves, I’ll be more interested, but I don’t think I’ll be going near it for a while.

Vimeo still seems to be the hosting site of choice for me. But I really want to be able to use Flickr for video sharing. Really badly.

I am really enjoying this jott.com, way to post twitters and blog entries by my phone. All I need to do is call a 800 number and talk into recording and somehow magically it gets transcribe into blog entry so I can talk as much as I want and I can say things like dewsh(?) bag just to see if it actually gets print down properly, so you know well see how that goes by that. It’s pretty cool, I am really looking forward to using it when I don’t want to type so much on my stupid little telephone. listen

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I forgot how much I hate going to the airport. It’s totally a waste of time, it’s like 30 miles…I am tired of having to go to the airport. Throw in the fact that it’s snowing right now, it doesn’t make it any better, but uh, you know, that’s life. listen

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Flying Dog Brewery released a new Spring seasonal beer this year - it’s a Biere de Garde (a traditional French farmhouse style) and we’re calling it Garde Dog. I shot some video on Friday featuring Executive Brewer Matt Brophy and PR & Event Coordinator Steph Kerchner. Take a look at the HD version.

As for the beer, it’s a tasty beer with a nice crisp finish. Definitely a nice Spring/Summer brew, good for warm weather. It’s not super hoppy or malty, which is nice for those of you who aren’t insane bitter beer drinkers.

I also really love that I was able to secure http://vimeo.com/beer for Flying Dog’s URL at Vimeo. There’s just something cool about getting to use a generic term for a specific brand. That’s the beauty of being an early adopter.

• My co-worker Neal (Flying Dog’s Prime Minister of Marketing) administers a wonderful turkey sandwich blog. He wrote about his experience at one of the Cheba Hut locations in Fort Collins, and was contacted by one of their employees about developing a turkey sandwich. Cheba Hut is wonderful, not to mention unafraid to build a brand around the colorful terminology surrounding stoner culture - check out their menu at chebahut.com. If I got to name a Cheba Hut sandwich, it would be one of the following:

• Willie Nelson BBQ Chicken Sandwich - there’s the Whiskey River BBQ Chicken sandwich at Red Robin, but I heard about someone once asking for a Willie Nelson burger instead. And Willie likes the nugs, if you get my meaning.
• The Kumar - Curry chicken salad sandwich
• La Mota - Chorizo sandwich
• The Wake & Bake - Smoked sausage, egg and cheese

• My boycott of the Spicy Pickle is about to enter the third month. As you may recall, they removed “white filone” as a bread option. And it makes me upset. Don’t worry, though. Fat Jack’s, Pat’s, and other local Denver sandwich establishments are profiting from their costly mistake.

• I may go to Lyons, Colorado on Tuesday for the Oskar Blues Bluegrass Jam - and if I go, I’ll be swinging by Snarf’s. And if I do, rest assured you will get a full report.

There is a bill in Colorado that will charge a $5 toll at the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70. This tunnel runs right through the Continental Divide and is Denver’s link to various ski towns (Vail, Aspen, Breckenridge, etc.). There is a bunch of opposition about it, but I feel that something needs to be done to relieve congestion. Is it a toll? Is it through taxes? I don’t know the best way to take care of this, but I do remember the awesome talk about the monorail a few years back, and that definitely isn’t the solution. Although it would have been cool to be on a monorail that goes like 90 miles per hour up and over the continental divide (which is a ridiculous concept).

I’m a ski bum, so I’ve driven through that tunnel a bunch of times, plus having lived in Vail for a while. My parents moved to Winter Park a few years back and Winter Park is now my new mountain home base.

The good news for me is that Winter Park is not right on I-70 and our exit there comes before the proposed toll area. The bad news for me is also that the Winter Park exit is before the tolls because this will probably add a lot of skier traffic for me. Winter Park is only about 75 miles from Denver, making it one of the closest ski areas - and their season pass cost (this year was $319 or $349) is much less than say, Vail’s ($1600).

I feel if this gets passed, I’ll be spending a lot more Thursday and Sunday nights up there, just to ensure that I’ll have an easier drive back to D-town.

The Denver Egotist wrote about Flying Dog’s packaging redesign, something I worked on. I got a nice little name drop. Just something to boost my ego a little bit. Well, it’s nice to get some recognition.

That’s something I never thought I’d write. But Denver native Sinbad has conflicting reports about his trip to Bosnia with Hillary Clinton in 1996. Yes, ladies and gentleman, Sinbad. A B or C-list celeb has the authority to smash a campaign into pieces.

The WCHA hockey tournament is played in Minnesota at the Xcel Center every year. One of the five teams in the tournament, University of Minnesota gets to essentially play home games during this tournament. Every year. Minnesota beat Colorado College last night in overtime. It’s pretty much a crock of shit to get to play in your home state every year in a very meaningful tournament. CC should still make it into the NCAA hockey playoffs, but I think the location of the tournament should rotate on a yearly basis.