Super Hero
I help people to get out of debt, budget, and save money. I must be accessible at all times. I am a small business person who prides himself on accessibility and service to my clients. With the right hardware and software, it is my intent to provide my clients the service and accessibility that they were not able to get from their big, TARP bailed out brokers before the financial collapse. That means maintinging retirement accounts, making transactions posible, moving assets when needed, and doing all of this from anywhere.
I have been in an ongoing search for the right handheld machine to accomplish these goals. Below, is my most recent story:
In November of 2009 I was eligible for an upgrade discount from my Blackberry Curve 8300 on Sprint. The Sprint isn't the saddest part of the story.
I was troubled. Should I get the Moment or the Hero? I was coming from a physical keyboard and was leaning toward the Moment, but HTC's Sense UI looked so nice.
I bit the speeding bullet and bought the Hero. With what turned out to be a not so much a leap of a tall building, but a short learning curve, I became familiar and actually liked the soft keyboard that I had chosen.
But there was evil afoot. My Hero went Bizarro. What was supposed to help me became my nemesis. Over the course of a few weeks, my Hero wasn’t there when I needed it. Calls for help would come in, and it wouldn’t answer. When I looked to it for guidance, it would decide that it needed to restart its day. On a trip out of town, it wasn’t there for me 5 times between when my plane landed at 2:30pm and 5:30pm.
I called HQ (Sprint) and was told that they could send me a new Hero or I could visit the local outpost. I found the HQ outpost with the appropriate abilities (service tech) and began my trek.
After waiting for about 30 minutes the local contact told me that they would have to look into the problem and that it would take them an hour. I decided to venture outside and become familiar with my surroundings.
When the deadline had passed, I found my way back to HQ where I was told that they didn't know how to fix my Hero and that they could send me a new one in 2-3 days.
This couldn't be! The people (my clients) could not be properly attended to if my Hero was not on the job. I spoke with the Commissioner (customer service tech’s boss's, boss's, boss's, boss). He wasn't able to offer any assistance.
Time was of the essence. I let them know that the people could not wait and I would not ask them to. I searched for another way.
The situation called for robot like precision. Where to go? What were my options? I could go over to the blue side and live inside an overprotective bubble. I could go to the pink side, where things are seemingly more open, but the citizens (again, clients) may not be able to reach me in times of need. I could opt to move to team red where I would be available at all times.
That choice was clear. The red team offered the coverage and precision that was called for, but who could replace my Hero? There was the possibility for Error(is) but things seemed too much like they used to be. The problems of the past might rear their ugly head. This left but one choice. It offered the hands on accessibility that I had been afforded before (keyboard) but even since I made the choice, the possibilities of being undersized (memory) and overpowered (Snapdragon) have been in the back of my mind.
Truth-be-told, I don't even find myself being as hands on as I used to be (don't use the keyboard).
Mine is a story of decision and uncertainty that I can only hope will be resolved in the next 24 days, or I will be forced to live with my decision, always wondering what might have been.