easier said.

Seth Godin recently wrote about the importance of being on time. He used special emphasis when he wrote:

Boy that’s simple. Apparently, it’s incredibly difficult.

I’ve been paying more attention to this attitude lately, this assertion of what is easy. Recently on the Shoes mailing list somebody wrote the following(details omitted for clarity of the point here):

I was wondering if shoes could [do this cool thing]. [The system]
natively supports [this other cool thing that would be helpful for the aforementioned, desired but as yet unrealised cool thing], so it couldn’t be very hard…

Godin asserts that being on time and respecting the time of others is easy. This fellow on the Shoes list asserts that adding some desired behavior to his programs couldn’t be very hard. If the former were true, Godin wouldn’t have much of a blog post. If the latter were true, the fellow probably would have fixed his problems instead of going to the group at large for support.

Honoring others at all times is not easy. Programming is not easy. Many things in life are not easy. Sure, people make things harder than they have to be sometimes, but I think most love an easy win, too. Perhaps there just aren’t as many out there as we’d sometimes like to think.

Ender’s game: price overrides OR how I got the iPhone 3G for $199 despite The Man trying to screw me.

So, I went to the Apple store the other day to get the iPhone 3G in honor of my landing a new job and, yeknow, ’cause it’s faster and shit. As the baby blue t-shirt clad chap helped me complete my purchase, he informed me that I wasn’t eligible for the “upgrade price” because my current AT&T contract is less than a year old. Instead of the widely advertised $199 price I would have to pay $399. I had never heard of such a thing, and my quick appraisal of the notion only cemented my initial reaction of “WTF?” Why would they penalize people who had contracts less than a year old? I called up AT&T and they confirmed this bizarre rule. Pissed off and confused, I left that day without a new iPhone.

Yesterday, I went back, resigned to my overcharged fate. I just couldn’t bear the thought of the EDGE network and no GPS until next April. Another baby blue t-shirt clad chap helped me and also pointed out the ridiculous AT&T pricing rule. I explained how I knew and what I knew. “Weird,” he said. “I know,” I replied. “Let me see what I can do on my end,” he said and walked off to god knows where. Probably a room full of baby blue t-shirt clad hipsters.

Eventually, he returned and informed me that he was able to hook me up with a “price override” and that I would be getting my new phone for the upgrade price of $199 plus tax and some shady changes in my phone plan required by AT&T when upgrading to the new phone. Whatever.

The big take away here is that, should you find yourself presented with the same bullshit $399 deal, don’t quit there! Ask about “price overrides” or come back later and look for a nerdy lookin’ fellow named Ender (Thanks, broseph!). Just know that victory can be yours, oh yes.. it can be yours.