Tricklin

Listening to:

Angels And Airwaves - We Don't Need To Whisper   
Great album from former Blink 182 singer, Tom DeLonge. Key tracks: ‘The War’, ‘The Gift’, ‘Valkyrie Missile’, 'Do It For Me Now', 'Distraction’, 'Good Day', 'The Adventure'.

Snow Patrol - Eyes Open   
Key tracks: 'Chasing Cars', 'You're All I Have', 'Shut Your Eyes', 'You Could Be Happy', 'Set The Fire To The Third Bar', 'Open Your Eyes'.

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I've always been a fan of Blink 182. So when I heard, from my brother-in-law, about Tom DeLonge's new band "Angels & Airwaves", my curiousity was peaked. So, I loaded up Rhapsody, searched for them, and quickly added their new album, "We Don't Need To Whisper", to my playlist. This new band consists not only of DeLonge as the lead, but also former Box Car Racer - another of DeLonge's experiments - guitarist David Kennedy, bassist Ryan Sinn of the Distillers and Offspring drummer Atom Willard. Sounds like a pretty star-studded band. Can you say "Audioslave", or maybe "Velvet Revolver"?

Well, after listening to this album, I must say that I'm pretty impressed. DeLonge has an extremely distinctive voice, so when you hear him singing, it's hard not to think of Blink 182. However, the lyrics and the music itself couldn't be farther from Blink. This is far from a bad thing. I definitely enjoy this album. Everything on this album is much more serious and deliberate. Think Box Car's self-titled debut and Blink's last album, but a little more grown up. As Stephanie Benson's review on Rhapsody states:

Imagine Blink-182's tattooed quirkiness clashing with Peter Gabriel's atmospheric art rock. It could end up one big mess of piercings and sledgehammers, but Angels and Airwaves are smart with their artistic experiments.

That's a great way to describe this album. It's perfect for thirtysomethings that aren't quite ready to admit they're not kids anymore.

A few weeks back, I wrote a journal entry about how I had some extremely bad customer service experiences lately. These experiences were so bad, that I thought customer service was dead. Wow, was I wrong! I just had an absolutely amazing customer service experience. Not to mention, it was from a rather large corporation. You may have heard of them. Does the name Dell ring a bell?

Dell Rocks!

I recently purchased a laptop from Dell as a graduation gift for a family member. Part of the purchase included a mail-in rebate offer as incentive to make the purchase. Well, it worked. However, one needs access to the packing slip, and to send this, along with the rebate form, to the rebate center within 30 days of the package being shipped. Since this was a gift, having access to the packing slip was a problem. Not to mention the 30 days had already past. After realizing this, I thought it couldn't hurt to at least contact customer service to see if the rules could be bent a tiny bit. Dell recommended using their online chat program to relay my issue. So, I complied, and after filling in some fields was immediately taken to a customer service representative. I must admit, I was not expecting to get very far, as I was pretty much to blame, but I went through with it anyway. And boy am I glad I did. This online chat service that they offer is fantastic. And the actual customer service I received was top notch. See for yourself:
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