seanwillson.com

amy and i went to village cyclesport, our local friendly cycle shop this evening to get my bike fixed. i snapped a spoke a few weeks back, i needed a new back tire, and a wheel true. anyhow, we arrived at the schaumburg store only to see huge signs in the window announcing that they were closing the store. everything was 20-50% off. needless to say i was floored.


i’ve been a customer for the past 2 years. i’ve spent a pretty penny in there, told all of my friends about it, and brought them at least three high end bike purchases. no, i’m not saying they should keep the shop open for me, but that would be nice. i’m just trying to fill you in on the fact that they were a great shop that treated customers right. alan, the manager of the store always took care of us. if we had trouble with a bike he would fix it or replace whatever we were having trouble with, pretty much no questions asked. he treated customers like friends and valued their patronage.


when we went into the store we found out that they let alan go. kaput, gone, outta here … again, floored. their reasoning was that the lease was up soon, rent was expensive in schaumburg, business wasn’t as good as in the past, and construction was coming to golf road next year that would hurt business. two words come to mind, lame-ass excuses. believe it or not the owner was the one giving me those b.s. excuses. it’s expensive everything in chicago, they were making money just not as much (he said this not me), and construction is a part of any city. anyhow, angered and having to get my bike fixed still we were off to their other store.


i’ve been to their arlington heights store before. i’ve always felt like a number at that store. usually you enter the store, step into a giant queue, open mouth and empty wallet; today was no exception. right off the bat the repair guys seemed to either have attitudes or were to busy talking rather than working. they started out by talking down the schaumburg store and alan. i was pissed and had trouble not just telling the guy off right there and walking out, but i had to get my bike fixed. i figured i’d give them a chance. after a few more snide comments, a line of people all waiting with no service, a tech that looked lost replacing my tube, 45 minutes of waiting, and the owners brother bragging about all the business they get and my decision was made.


i will do everything i can to find another shop with good technical and personal service. i will use village cyclesport when i have to, but otherwise i will try to find another shop that values me as a customer and not just a wallet.

while surfing the web this evening i ran across this bag store called timbuk2, thanks for the link michael. they make a line of messenger bags that you can custom build to meet your needs. i just got a laptop for work and the bag they gave be sucks. i can’t carry anything other than the computer, a few magazines, and a few small things … no lunch, water bottle, or dare i say it … a book. it’s ridiculous. anyhow, bitching aside, these bags look sweet.


i priced out the guapo with all of the extras i wanted and it came to $147 dollars. those of you who know me know i prefer quality over low priced crap. that said, this bag has a lifetime warranty, it’s made in america, and with over 237 million messenger bags made can they be that bad? something tells me that last part is a bit of creative writing, aka fiction. nevertheless these bags look great. anyone every used one? own one? i’d love to hear about them.

oh yea, i added a temporary guestbook as well using haloscan. it’s kind of a hack, but it will work until i get my old one back online. have a great day everyone …

i just added a free commenting system to the site. i checked out a few different sites online and decided to go with haloscan. it took all of 5 minutes to create the account, edit my template, republish, and then play with my stylesheet a bit. you will notice a “comments (#)” link at the end of each post new. click there to open the comments window and enter your comments for that posting. i still haven’t created a custom stylesheet for the comment page but the generic one looks fine for now. anyhow, let me know what you think.

happy birthday to me. on this day in history:


1609 delaware bay explored by henry hudson for the netherlands

1907 united parcel service begins service, in seattle

1917 suffragists arrested for picketing to support women’s right to vote

1963 martin luther king, jr. gave his famous “i have a dream” speech

1964 race riot in philadelphia

1968 riots in chicago fracture the cold war consensus

1974 soyuz 15 returns to earth ( i was born here !!! )

1983 joseph kreckman sets record of 2,215 clay pigeons shot in an hour

1990 iraq declares kuwait its 19th province

1996 charles and diana divorce

1963 nba sues aol

i got my brother to start his very own weblog. he’s even showing interest in learning html. go check it out when you get a chance.

Is RSS 1.0 actually RDF? Then why is it called RSS? Dave asked and got a few answers. Pop on over to O’Reilly Network: RSS DevCenter for more information about RSS and RDF.