Is waiting on hold your favorite pastime? Do you like navigating through the endless maze of menu options while trying to call a company? What a blast!

I have had some nightmarish experiences of waiting of trying to reach live human beings. It seems they are in short supply. In this modern world of computer automation live human beings have been replaced by senseless, generic, pre-recorded messages. Yes, we’re just too expensive to hire anymore.

I can imagine the company’s decision process when it comes to managing their customer service. Investors pressure the company’s managers to cut costs and streamline for maximum efficiency. VPs turn to the customer service managers for cutbacks. They decide to put in a more ’sophisticated’ phone answering system in order to minimize the amount of actual calls received. They think ‘if we just put in enough options and information upfront, why would they need to actually speak to us?’ And after a lengthy meeting in their conference room, the managers also decide that it would be a novel idea to mention their website URL at least 10 times during the hold process. Perhaps customers don’t yet know they have such a website. ‘Maybe if they find the website they would avoid calling us altogether!’

For me, I always call when I need to speak to a live human being and never call for any other occasion. If the situation didn’t require a call, I wouldn’t be calling. I don’t want to waste my time either. And of course we know about their stupid company website. Doesn’t everybody? We call customer service because we already exhausted all other resources.

Unfortunately, it takes a skill, like the skill of an experienced sailor, to navigate through the rough waters of the automated phone system. Remember, the system is designed so you will fail- that you WILL NOT find the cheese at the end of the maze. Their management doesn’t want you to talk to the live person- because it is inefficient for them. Too many calls, means they may have to increase staff, and expenditures, which really isn’t an option.

After calling, my strategy of connecting to a live person is usually pressing the zero button several times. This seems to work in a majority of cases.

But this doesn’t work for Sallie Mae. Sallie Mae is perhaps the worst automated phone system in existence. They are determined not to speak to you. Here’s a sample phone call:

1. Call 1-888-272-5543

(automated answer)

2. Do you want to continue in English?
[come on, are you serious? Of course I want English!]

3. If a customer press 1. Otherwise press 2.

4. Enter your nine digit account #.

5. We’re sorry, we didn’t get that. Please re-enter your account #.

6. Please listen to our 7 options, as our menu has changed…
[menus always change because they don't want us to memorize the path to a live person. They keep changing the maze!]

7. (Recording slowly speaks all 7 options and none apply!) or to repeat the menu press 9.

8. (more menu options [none apply]), for more menu options, press 5

9. (more menu options [none apply]), for more options, press 5

10. (press 0) for customer service

11. Our office is closed. Please call back during regular business hours. (click)

Sallie Mae’s automated phone system is worthless. Another kind feature is that if you press zero too many times, they will automatically disconnect you. Maybe they don’t want to deal with anyone too ‘impatient’.

Meanwhile, as you cannot reach a live human being, your monthly bill still remains incorrect- with those extra finance charges happily holding on, until one day, you might speak to a live human being and get it straightened out.

And you can rest assured that when/if you ever do get to the goal of the live person, that he/she’s sole purpose is to get off the phone with you. Because the more time spent talking to you, the more waste, and higher company overhead.

With this strategy in mind, the company decides it is best to outsource all live people. They don’t need to live in the U.S. or even have American English accents. Indian contractors will work just fine. Anything for protecting our corporate profit. Usually this person is only trained to handle bare minimum account inquiries. Anything requiring adjustment or correction will have to be transferred back to an actual customer service manager back in the United States, requiring even more hold time on your part. And if you’re lucky you might get disconnected and have to start all over again.

On hold for 10 minutes, 25 minutes, 45 minutes? No problem. They have to watch their bottom line, you know.

Other companies that are similarly worthless when it comes to customer service include:

1. Ebay (forget it- they aren’t available)
2. Amazon
3. Citibank
4. Bank of America
5. Comcast

‘We are currently experiencing a heavy call volume, please hold while connect you to the next available representative…’

…yeah whatever.

As a webmaster, there are a variety of tools used to track and monitor progress, links, rankings, and overall health of your website. The following 20 ‘tools’ are either URLs or actions you may take to gain valuable insight into the condition of your website.

1. Google Sitemaps
Want to increase website traffic? Add more pages to Google with sitemaps. Use the power of database-driven content to generate and submit thousands of dynamically optimized pages. Use an htaccess mod rewrites to clean up URLs and make SEO friendly. So, URLs such as this www.domain.com?keyword=title can become www.domain.com/title/ and be included as a separate page in Google’s index. One the power is harnessed, you can potentially have as many unique URLs as your database entries.

2. Google Analytics
Google analytics is your friend. The great benefits of this service outweighs any privacy or confidentiality concerns. Track accurate visitors, their clickpaths, goals, the ROI from Google AdWords, and more.

3. Nameboy.com – choosing domain names

4. Good Keywords – putting the keyword search tools all in one place.

5. Competitive analysis: compete.com / alexa.com

6. Check # of pages in your site: type into Google or Yahoo: site:www.domain.com

7. Check # of links to your site: type into Google or Yahoo: link:www.domain.com

8. Test value of text links:
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/link-price/

9. Compare links to your content with other websites. http://www.text-link-ads.com/blog_juice/

10. Useful all-in-one views for a website and domain: http://whois.domaintools.com

11. Yahoo Site Explorer - http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

12. Bulk PR checker: Copy and paste URLs from an expired domain list into this box. An easy way to see if it’s worth buying domains or not, or quickly checking the value of your own, in bulk
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-lookup/

13. Website grader - assigns a grade to your website, based on several criteria.
http://www.websitegrader.com

14. See what websites share your IP address (and how many) (and find an IP address for any domain): http://www.seologs.com/ip-domains.html You want to check and make sure you’re not associated with bad IP addresses (used for spam sites, porn, etc). Why this is useful:
a. It can also see if your host is giving you a good deal or not. If too many websites hosted, you may reconsider hosts.
b. If you ever have problems with your website (speed of page loading, etc), you can check the speed of the other sites sharing the same IP (since they are likely on the same server), and determine if it’s your site or the server itself.

15. HTML/XML validator: http://validator.w3.org/

16. CSS validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

17. Check Google listing position:
http://www.iwebtool.com/search_engine_position

18. Keyword suggestion tool:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

19. Website server speed tests: http://www.selfseo.com/website_speed_test.php
http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test

20. Keep track of RSS subscribers and share feeds: http://www.feedburner.com/

To become a competent web marketer is to dip a foot into each of the numerous social media networking pools. I will tell you exactly which these are right now:

1. Facebook.com
2. Myspace.com
3. Linkedin.com
4. Digg.com
5. Twitter.com
6. Meetup.com

Besides the social media, you will also find benefit in involvement with:

1. Craigstlist.org
2. Evite.com
3. Stumbleupon.com
4. del.icio.us

To be successful in the popular online social media networks, you must be involved in the websites above. Create a profile on each. Interlink them. Build your network by adding friends and connections. One way to add glue to your overall social media marketing mix is to have a blog. Ideally, host a blog on your own server, such as WordPress, which is free. You can then add content, and syndicate it using the help of FeedBurner.com, and you can get an idea of how many subscribers and contacts you have.

Post to your blog regularly and get Google and other blog search engines to scan your site. When you start posting regularly, you’ll be surprised how fast Google will spider your blog. It’s hungry for fresh content!

After you post to your blog, add your postings to Digg and other user submitted news sites. You may also want to twitter your blog postings. After time, you will have ‘followers’ on twitter- just more contacts established for future web marketing.

It does take work to build up subscribers, friends, and contacts, but it is a worthwhile effort if you intend to do business online. Good luck!

Today at approximately 2:45 there was a fatal car crash on I-5 in Kelso, Washington, near Longview, Washington, USA. Longview borders between Washington and Oregon along the Columbia River in the United States.

I personally was stuck in the traffic jam that followed. It took exactly 1 hour to drive from the I-5 southbound onramp near the Three Rivers Mall to the next I-5 exit at Highway 432. The drive was from 3pm - 4pm on March 29, 2008. Traffic was totally gridlocked and still for the first 20 minutes and people were standing along I-5 talking and standing on their vehicles in hope to get a view of the scene ahead.

The main accident, noted as a red circle on the map below, was I-5 southbound just before the the Longview junction 432 interchange. Weather has been bad- with a random assortment of sleet, snow and rain. The main accident involved 3 cars. The main impact was on the drivers side of a vehicle, which completely demolished the door- pressing it into the middle of the vehicle. Without knowledge of the condition of the people, I feel safe in saying it was fatal for at least one person, just looking at the severity of the T-bone impact to that driver’s side door.

Another accident was probably caused because of the first accident- note the yellow circle on the map. Accidents can breed more accidents, with the sudden starting and stopping. It looked like a bad rear end job. I believe it was a minivan that was hammered on the rear with a few feet of the rear compressed. This second accident appeared to involve 3 cars as well.

In total, it appeared at least six cars were damaged as a result of the accident, with at least one fatality.

I feel very sorry for the families involved.

Want to improve your racquetball game? These tips helped me; maybe they will help you as well.

1. Always look at the ball. Sounds simple, but many people don’t. I think the reason people don’t always look at the ball is we tend to protect our face, especially when standing between the opponent and the front wall. It can be unnerving to look back at the ball while the opponent is hitting it- especially if it is close to us. But you have to- because if you ever take your eyes off the ball, you lose your sense of where the ball is going and are more likely to get hit or lose the rally. One solution is to use your racquet as a shield and look at the ball through the strings of your racquet.

2. Raise your arm and keep cocked as soon as it’s your turn to hit the ball and know whether you will hit a forehand or backhand shot. Keep your elbow up when cocked for a forehand, then when swinging, lead with your elbow and follow through with the rest of your arm. Notice how pro baseball players swing their arm with their elbow leading- pointing toward the direction you are hitting. Your arm is like a whip. Your hand should be firmly gripped on the handle, but arm and wrist should be loose and relaxed. You can add last minute corrections to the direction of your hit by changing your wrist, or if using a forehand shot, add a little snap to it. The wrist is usually loose and centered on your backhand swing, though. Take a smooth swing with a smooth follow through. Use the power from your hips turning and let your arm follow through. It should be a natural, smooth motion. If not, you are likely to get tendonitis (tennis elbow).

3. Keep your feet planted and settled before you swing. Use a quick shuffling motion to get your feet setup as fast as you can before your shot. If you run out of time and don’t have your feet planted, then try a ceiling ball, or a lob.

4. Always swing your racquet flat. Meaning, your racquet should always be perpendicular to the floor and ceiling. This way, if you accidentally hit the ball early or late in your swing, the worst that will happen is you’ll hit the side wall first before hitting the front wall. If your racquet swing is not flat, you will likely skip more balls into the floor or hit into the ceiling.

5. To reduce the risk of tendonitis, keep your elbow tucked in. Don’t extend your arm way out to stretch for a shot. Ideally, you will use quick footwork to position your body closer to the ball, and keep an easy consistant swing to hit the ball close to your body each time. It’s less stress on your arm.