How many times these days do you have prob­lems get­ting sup­port for a prod­uct or ser­vice? Tons, I’d guess.

I joined Spo­tify Pre­mium a week or two ago. The con­cept is great — being able to have access to more music than is in iTunes and be able to have what­ever I want on my iPod (as long as I keep sub­scribed via the $10 a month subscription).

As I said, the con­cept is great. Real­ity? It doesn’t work. I was able to get only one album to sync to my iPod, and then no more music would sync.

Sup­port? I tried every avenue: Google search, their help pages, email help — nothing.

So I’m call­ing you, Spo­tify — help or I’ll quit.

(Updates 1. Spo­tify did respond by email, though their response did not totally solve the prob­lem. and 2. Thanks to a friend, I will maybe be able to get to the root of the prob­lem; see comments.)

A huge con­trast is 1and1 web host­ing. They are great! Real humans answer the phone, 24/7. I’ve called in a ton of times and almost every time, I get sat­is­fac­tion. Their rates are also among the best in the busi­ness. If you need to host your web­site or grab a web address of your very own, I’d highly rec­om­mend them. (Note that this is an affil­i­ate link; if you click through and sign up, I’ll get a few cents out of the deal.)

At the Den­ver Auto Show, the Saab dis­play was amaz­ing. Not for the cars (though I do like the new 9–5) but rather for the giant screen at the end of their rec­tan­gle. It was one giant TV. (Sadly, the top photo does not do it jus­tice.) It was made of LED pan­els that were assem­bled for the show. Think: one of those giant dis­plays at a big-city foot­ball field, only one that the road­ies can take apart and reassem­ble mul­ti­ple times.

The lower photo shows a closeup of the back­side of the dis­play. Each panel sec­tion was about 2 x 3 feet and was made of light­weight white plastic.

Excel­lent.

Rachel, our 9-year old, wanted some play money. So I took some real money and put it on our all-in-one laser printer. I intended to copy it on just one side, so it could never be used for real money.

What comes out of the machine? Red money! The printer was sophis­ti­cated enough to run that auto­matic coun­ter­feit­ing routine.

I thought, “Oh no! Every­thing will have red on it now!” So I copied some­thing else. The result was nor­mal as could be.