Nexel Shelves.... the worst customer service I have or ever will encounter.
So the other day my boss is talking about remodeling a room and I suggest to him we use the shelves we had at our last place. They are sturdy and easily adjustable. He tells me to look into it. Here is the humorous saga that ensued.

"Nexel shelves, can I help you."
"Can I talk to a sales rep about shelving? I have specific needs and want to figure out the best solution."
"Have you looked on our website? Everything is listed there. You can put together an order and enter it into the web form and we'll fax you a quote."
"Yeah, I am on your page and have put together a possible order but I just want to talk to a sales rep to be sure that I have it right."
"Well, what are you concerned about?"
"I will be putting aquaria on it and want to be sure that I order the correct type to be sure it will not rust and can hold the weight."
"Okay, well that info is on a pdf on the website. Go to the top of the page and click on catalog. On the third page it will tell you the weight loadings. Then enter it into a form and we'll fax you a quote."
"I would rather just talk to a sales rep."
"Just look at it on the website first then send us the info and a sales rep will call you."
"Uhh, ok."
"Ok, good-bye" Dial tone.....

Now continues the email dialog that continued-
The web form data I submitted:
We need 9 48" wide, 24" deep, 72" tall shelving units each with 7 > shelves on them. So my count is 63 shelves and 36 poles. Their most demanding function will be to hold 10 gallon aquaria filled with water. I think the EP series is what we will need. In essence, we have three walls 144" wide and are looking for the best solution that will support aquaria. Can you please give us a quote including tax and shipping? I tried calling to talk over options but was met with an abrupt woman on the phone who insisted I use this web form. If there is a salesperson that can call me, I would appreciate it. We are budgeted to spend $2000 including tax and shipping, so the closer you can get to that number, the more likely we will choose you to order from. THANKS! -Jake

The reply:
Not a good application for this shelving 10 gallons = 110 lbs including tank

Yeah, that's it. No phone call, no fax, no alterative solution. So I follow up...

"Nexel Shelves"
"Can I talk to a sales rep?"
"Have you been to our website?"
"Yes, I have. I submitted an order but was met with an abrupt reply that was not helpful. I would like to just talk to a rep to figure out a solution."
"Maybe I can help you?"
"Ok, well I need shelves for aquaria. I used your shelves at my previous University and they held up well so I just need a quote. The catalog you sent me to said that the shelf could hold 600 lbs and even by your estimate I can only fit four tanks on a shelf so this comes in at 440lbs. Truthfully they will not even be completely full, so this is worst case scenario."
"Well that estimate is for an evenly loaded shelf, so they are not designed for supporting aquaria"
"Well I would have four aquaria on a shelf evenly loaded?"
"Um, ok- well just resubmit a form with your order and I will make a note. Where are you from?"
"Washington State University"
"Ok, bye"
Dial tone.....

So here is the SECOND web form:
I emailed earlier about ordering some 48" shelves (see below). I have used these shelves for water before at my previous lab (UC Davis with Andrew> Sih- perhaps you could verify the order even). They seem to hold up fine and by my estimate we'll only be able to fit 4 10 gallon tanks on a shelf so if there were full (which they typically will only be half >full) would weigh less than 500 lbs. The shelves are rated for 600lbs, so by my calculation they should be fine. If you could fax me (509-335-3184) a quote (including tax and shipping) I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks, Jake Kerby Washington State University

The reply:
PLEASE FIND ANOTHER VENDOR FOR YOUR SHELVING / THANK YOU

That is it... Nothing else...
Then 3 hours later another email.

PLEASE FIND ANOTHER VENDOR FOR YOUR SHELVING / THANK YOU PS 500lbs x 7 shelves = 3500 lbs on a shelving unit that is rated max load even distribution of weight across each shelf total 4 shelves in a unit = max per unit 2400 lbs not 3500 lbs Again you are taking a very risky chance and if your doing it now on existing shelving better take extra precautions a disaster may be on the way!!

Ummm.... So since I am using a web form and not talking to a person- they don't know that I am ordering 7 shelves so that we can alternately use them to put small cups on for certain experiments. It is not even possible to fit 7 shelves of aquaria on the order I submitted. So I reply once more a bit frustrated...

Are you kidding me? Please just send me a quote! This could have gone much faster if I were able to talk to a sales rep like I requested last week! We are ordering 7 shelves because we will primarily be using smaller containers that are much shorter (that will weigh much less because of far less water). You cannot fit 10 gallon aquaria on 7 shelves... Again, I am estimating a worst case scenario but our tanks are typically only half full and so this falls far under the weight limit if we use 5 shelves (although most typically we will be using four shelves when aquaria are on them). Please just send me a quote...
Jake

And their reply:

Sir
I am Not Kidding You
Again Please find another vendor for your shelving.


You think it is time to give up? I have never encountered a company that worked so hard to not get my business.

Sorry for the delay in blogging- lots has been going on. I'll start by finishing the satellite story, since so many of you seem amused by my obsession with it. The Dish network folks came out last Thursday and hooked it all up. I thought it was going great until I realized I wasn't getting a bunch of my High Definition channels. So I went out there myself and adjusted it to pick up most of them, but not all. So they are coming back out on Thursday to adjust it right. Why is this so hard????
Now for the real drama. I thought I was going to get fired last week. So there is an undergrad that has been planning an experiment for her honors project and raising animals for the past 2 months. This means spending 9 hours every Weds to change the water on nearly 700 cups. Well, despite my caution in calculating the proper pesticide concentration for the experiment, I screwed it up by a factor of 10. So basically 120 animals died the next day. I nearly totally ruined the entire experiment but luckily had lobbied to make the different dilutions by 10x instead of 2x. That is just science talk to say that instead of ruining everything I only ruined a part of the experiment. I was totally pissed, devastated, depressed, you name it. I really thought that I was going to get killed by the prof I am working with and by the undergrad. Needless to say, they were both disappointed- but they have not killed me yet. So dumb. It was the one thing that I had to get right and I screwed it up. Ahh, I am still not over it.
Other than that, I have been working on getting everything flowing smoothly. Working on revamping the lab's website. Working on getting this dissertation over with. Working at home. - I mowed the lawn for the first time!!! We bought a lawn mower and I assembled it and put it to use this past weekend. The novelty made it fun- I assume that will wear off quickly. Rachel has been working on the planters. Pulling out the weeds that the management promised to do. We bought some plants yesterday- we'll see if she got to put them in today. I'll have to post some before and after shots of the yard. Rachel did an amazing job. Our bed is coming on Friday. We should have found a place up here to get it. We were so worried that this place would be total hickville and we wouldn't be able to find anything. It clearly does not have the selection, but so far we have found everything we need not too far away, if not in town. The people here are incredibly nice. We have gone to a few churches now and all have been welcoming. I think they are pretty used to new people coming into town and do a good job of welcoming them. Rachel actually was supposed to do something today with a mom from one church and another mom from another church. So hopefully Rachel enjoys their company. That's it for now. Hopefully you all are doing well. Shoot me an email at jkerby@wsu.edu or just leave a comment.

You gotta love this... Fishing in Idaho. We went out this morning to a fishing spot about 30 miles away. Rachel caught a whopper. 6 inch Sunfish! Photos are on the site. Life is going well up here. It's our 6th anniversary today- right now everyone is taking naps (I just awoke). It is hot up here this weekend (100) and sucks not to have A/C. We are keeping the house mild but it is still in the 80s in here. Work is going well, we are starting an experiment on Wednesday. It will be insane, but should be pretty cool. Disease, herbicide, insecticide- poor suckers don't have a chance. If we find some interactions between disease and pesticides, that will be big. Not many have even examined it in amphibians so this is cutting edge stuff... I might finally get my HDTV picture on Thursday. That is when my new appointment is. If they don't have the dish by then, I might just stay with Directv because this is crap. We also should be getting our King Size bed this week- so quite a busy week! We have been sleeping in the guest room on our old bed. I think that I actually like that room better. It is not as bright in the morning and the window is by your head so it stays nice and cool at night. Plus there is no attached bathroom- didn't think about how that might be annoying with Rachel and my different sleeping schedules. What else? Our garage is nearly cleaned out. I brought all my stuff to my office and set it up so now there are just some random things in there. I will hopefully move them to the basement tomorrow and then have some room in there to do some car maintenance. Ok, that's enough. I am going to upload some photos now. 

Evolution of the dish... So I got the directv guy to come out and give us a free local dish upgrade. Luckily the guy was nice and mounted it on an old pole for us- so no more blowing over in the wind! Problem temporarily solved. Now if only Dish network were so helpful...
I plan on posting photos of the house with our stuff in it- I have added a link below (also under photos on the site). Going in to meet with the boss now- so my life as a post-doc officially begins!

http://www.jakekerby.com/Thenewplace/index.html

It has come to this. It works, believe it or not. As long as the wind stays calm... Today we discovered that they unhooked our free local channels that were coming over the cable. So do we sit tight with no tv for three weeks? Hell no. I can only take so much PBS. So I pulled out the old dish and set it up. It took awhile to find the satellite since I have no compass, but we got it. Then, we realized that there were no local channels coming through. This experience is really so loaded with irony it is silly. So I play with it all afternoon and evening only to get to a point where my tivo exhibits what is known as the green screen of death. No matter what I did I only got a green screen that says severe error... I was so bummed. I couldn't even pull up the saved programs so I was more worse off than when I started. Finally I just left it alone, and it actually fixed itself! Thank god. Then I called up directv and talked to them forever only to find out that I have the wrong dish for this area to get local channels. The tech guy said that I could get a free local channel dish update. So I get transferred to the scheduling lady and she says a tech will be out here Thursday to swap out my dish with one that works for free! I cannot wait to see the look on the installation guys face when he sees my dish in a bucket. I figure he will either just leave the dish for me to deal with it, actually set it up for real, or just tell me forget it. I figure that worse case scenario is right where I am so I might as well see if I can get it going. Then in a couple weeks I will shut it all down for dish network. This is really a ton of trouble. I just hope in the end it is worth it...  

Oh man, I am tired. I should be going to bed, but not yet… Yeah, going from Sacramento to Portland was an 11 hour LONG trip. I expected it to be long, so it really didn’t hit me that it took so long until I got there. Then, up at 6 and off to Pullman. I have been running off pure adrenaline for the past week. I can tell because whenever I stop and sit down, I get incredibly tired. Yet despite all the work and madness, our garage is still full of crap. The drive to Pullman was not that bad actually. I was playing beat the clock so it was pretty exciting. I stopped once for 10 min and pulled into Pullman about 1pm. Got the Explorer unloaded and went and got the keys. Unhitched the trailer, backed up the truck to the garage, and began unloading about 2pm. Went straight until 4ish and got about 2/3rds of the truck done. Then a guy from my lab showed up to help me move the TV, bed, several dressers, and the kitchen table. The we pulled out the rest of the small stuff. Was totally done by 5, headed to the pub. Ate for a couple hours, and finally had to insist to leave because I still had to set up the place. By the time everyone had arrived the next day, I had lucas’ crib reassembled, the guest bed setup with clean sheets, and most the boxes moved from the garage to their appropriate rooms. It was kind of funny, because I had been going non-stop and then when Rachel showed up I almost expected her to immediately get to work. Unload the kitchen boxes now! We didn’t do much more the first evening because I had done most of the necessary stuff. Today though, the unloading was in full force. The worst thing was that I spent hours on the phone trying to set everything up perfectly and then nothing went as planned. No internet, the stuff I need doesn’t show up for like 5 days, I am currently using my dad’s login though- so I worked that one out. The big killer is the dish. I was hoping to watch world cup in high def. Well the guy shows up 4 hours late for his appointment and then doesn’t have the right dish! It even said it on the work order, and he was like “we don’t have that one in stock.” I was so pissed!!! I should back up. First, I was already pissed because the realtor said we could have satellite and made no bones about it. Then when I ask for the “permission” sheet, it makes a statement that no holes can be drilled into the house. Umm. How does that work? Magic dish? It floats and then magically sends the signal to the tv? So I call the company and ask if it will be a problem, they tell me not at all. Then after waiting 4 hours, I hear the truck. So I am totally amped, and then incredibly annoyed to see our neighbor talking to the dish guy. Apparently, she owns the duplex and is freaking out about a dish being put up. I was pissed because first, I was like, who the hell are you? Then I was pissed because I wouldn’t have moved in if they wouldn’t have let me install a dish. And she was getting ready to shut me down. Then she realized the could install it on a pole and she calmed down. Good thing too because I was about to lose it. But then, because he had to install it on a pole he couldn’t use the dish he brought be had to use the one on the sheet. Umm… So despite the fact that I ordered a specific dish that he did not have, and despite the fact that I called them the day before and said I would need it on a pole, and despite the fact I almost beat up the landlord, he then has the balls to tell me that it may take them 2 weeks to schedule me another appointment!!! Sure enough, July 27th is the next available date. I say that is ridiculous, and he tells me that it is an easy job, and he will look out for me and as soon as that dish arrives he’ll squeeze in a time to install it. My ass, like I should believe anything… This is the most annoying of the moving stories I have, but I have several more. But… alas, I am fricking tired. So now I will go up and lay on my inflatable mattress (because my mattress isn’t showing up until July 24th) and stare at the walls (because I cannot fall asleep without a tv to lull my mind). Thank god, I managed a broadband connection or I might be completely insane.
More later...

Ok, one more post before I go... Oh man am I dreading tomorrow. Not because I have going to have to say goodbye to some of my closest friends- but because we have a ton of crap to load up!!! I have recruited my boys to help- but man. Over 20 pieces of furniture and over 100 boxes!!!! Not mention all the other random crap- wakeboard, snowboards, guitars... This is going to be nuts. The crazier thing is that I am basically going to unload it by myself. I have a guy from the new lab to help me with the heavy stuff. I might have to give it up and wait for the family. As long as I get that tv hooked up! Ha.
It's kind of funny about the timing of our leaving. I remember we decided to stay through 4th of July so we could celebrate it. Then a few days ago we realized that we had no plans for it! So we invited ourselves over to our friend Tony's. I had visions of going and seeing the Davis fireworks one last time, but now that we are parents the closest I got to the fireworks was when I could hear them as I was taking out the trash. Last year we went downtown and Rachel was running like a refugee because we were right where they shot them off and they were super loud. Rachel was shielding Lucas' 3 month old ears and running to protect him from becoming deaf. No such excitement this year. We had fun with friends, a nice BBQ. A good last gathering. Although I think we are hanging out with folks tomorrow after we pack up the truck. Tomorrow night will be the most interesting. We will have nothing at all in our apt. Lucas is going to keep us up all night, that is if sleeping on the air mattress doesn't. Lucas will be in a borrowed pack and play crib- oh boy... ugly. No Wiggles for the tv... UGLY. Oh man- I am praying for Sunday. If I can make it until then. I'll blog more in Pullman. Thank you Davis, you have been very good to me. Good for my career, good for my spirituality, my heart. I have made many lifelong friends here and this place has shaped who I am. I have no idea where the road ahead lies, but Davis will be a step that I will always remember and think back to fondly. It is always tough to move on, but this place will easy to leave- it's the people that will be hard as hell to say goodbye to...

Time is moving! One more week in Davis, so ends an era. I packed up my office today, a trip down memory lane primarily because I have not cleaned out my desk in the 5 years I have been there. Weirdest thing was welcoming in the newest student. Out with the old...
Luckily I have not had much time to think about it. Working on the dissertation, moving, setting up the new place, taking down the old, staring in awe at my tv... I started freaking out that the truck we ordered would not be big enough. So I measured out 22' in our apt. It is nearly 2/3 the entire length of our apt. So we might actually just be able to set up the rooms inside the truck! Ha. Packing it up on Wednesday, driving to Portland Thursday. I think I am going to go solo to Pullman on Friday and get stuff somewhat setup. I got a guy from the new lab to help me with the big stuff and the rest I will just throw in the garage until everyone else arrives. I am excited about the new place. It will be nice to be in a house and out of the apartments. It is exciting to think about what life will be like. Getting to know new people, trying to find a church, and so on. Hopefully our transition to Pullman will be easier than our transition to Davis. Good thing is two years goes fast. My masters stint seemed so quick. Of course the bitter cold winters might stretch the time. Well that is the update, likely this will be my last blog in Davis. I'll catch you all in a while in Pullman.

I win! I have lost the nice car, owning a house, having a real job- but as for the big screen tv, I win! I totally stole it off craig's list from some guy in Modesto. Basically got it for half price, which still was a ton of money. Graduation gift from Dad, THANKS! So the coolest and weirdest thing ever is that I can get HDTV programming (the best resolution) over a cheap $30 antenna that I bought 5 years ago and gave me the crappiest reception (still does with the analog signal). Apparently, the digital signal is all or none. So if you get any signal, it comes in perfect- and above that, I get a better picture than I can with all that fancy directv equipment. So needless to say I am living it up now! I just keep staring at it... I can actually read Conan's notes on his blue cards! So awesome... 

I graduated last night!!! It was awesome. I feels somewhat surreal actually, having worked so hard for so long and to have finally reached this point. If I think about it, I wanted a PhD since 1992- so that is 14 years, almost half of my life! Of course back then I wanted it in Psychology- and was even enrolled in a Psychology PhD program for most of a year before deciding that was not the field for me. One Masters in Biology and 5 years later -bam. To graduate in the field of Ecology from UC Davis is somewhat unreal as well. Particularly since it was just ranked by US News and Reports as the #1 graduate program in ecology and evolution. To give you some perspective, Harvard was #3! Soon I'll be off doing the post-doc thing, and perhaps before I realize it actually realize my dream of becoming a professor. A proud day for sure. The best part of the whole ceremony was right after I was "hooded" I looked up to see Lucas in the stands and he pointed at me. Weird how being a dad puts a whole different perspective on things...