Weekend Update and Lies, Damned Lies, and Earthlink Lies
Lies, Damned Lies and Earthlink Lies
Do you have one of those days when you feel like a complete fool?
That was my Thursday. I talked to the IT guys at work about what Earthlink technical support had said about switching me from a frame relay to an asynchronous transfer mode circuit. I told them I was told that it would take up to fourteen days.
One of the IT managers fell out of his chair laughing at me. That hurt.
He said, “Chuck, changing a circuit is a couple of hours. Its an easy process to do. You let the customers know about the change in advance. You test all of the new circuits before you make the switch and then you make the switch when the users are most likely to be asleep. Piece of cake, easy to do.”
The head of the IT department said that they were playing with me and that was wrong.
I agree.
Earthlink lied to me when they said I requested a circuit change. They lied to me when they said it would take up to fourteen days. And, they really lied to me when they said I was an old long time valued customer.
Actions speak louder than words
In retrospect, Earthlink may have been right when they said it will take fourteen days. Maybe they are that incompetent and screwed up.
I gave them another call on Saturday morning. I wanted to see if things had changed any from Wednesday. The call center operator said no and then I asked to speak to a supervisor.
Asking to speak to a supervisor was probably a mistake on my part. The supervisor, James, certainly tried hard to make me feel good about Earthlink. I stopped him when he started to make his third apology for the service failures. I said that an apology was not to do anything to change my mind about the shoddy service and poor treatment that I had received.
James asked for one more chance to make things right with me. For some unknown reason, I decided to give them some more time to fix things for me. I doubt that they will be able to fix things by the close of my business [bed time for me] on June 7th. That is my self imposed deadline for the restoration of my DSL service. June 8th is “Hello, Verizon DSL service, how may I help you?” day.
Dial up connections just suck. It takes for ever to download a document or file.
Programming Note
This dial up connection is miserable for me.
I will be holding off on the Babe of the Moment project. Downloading .jpeg files on a dial up connection takes for ever and that is no fun, especially if someone tries to call me.
SPAM
I checked my Yahoo.com email account the other day, Wednesday actually. I had just over 15,000 emails in my bulk mail folder.
Incredible.
I guess that we are no where close to getting a handle on the proliferation of SPAM across the Internet.
The Big Guy
Doug called me on Friday. He wanted to talk to me about some of his plans for the coming school year.
The call was prompted by the possibility that his mother may be able to work from home soon and he is very unhappy with the idea of having to share the house during the day with his mother. He said that he didn’t think that sort of a situation, sharing the Internet connection and being home would out well for him.
Doug decided to get a job when he returns from his trip to Atlanta with his mother to see the Princess. He plans to work and save up some money, always music to Dad’s ears.
Doug is working on Election Day as a precinct worker. He said that he will earn about $90 for the time he spends signing voters in and handling the voters their ballots. It is certainly not the most challenging job but it is work.
He also asked about staying at my place when he has his internship next year. Staying here is closer to the entertainment industry and a shorter drive for him. This should work out for me. I should be finished with the dissertation and I won’t have as much need to be online at night.
We decided to talk about the ideas next weekend when we get together for lunch. I think we will end up at Albertacos since we were at The Original Tommy’s Hamburgers for our last lunch.
Mouse
The mouse that I have been using for four or five years died on me or is in its final death throws. It was functioning in an off and on manner. I could type two or three lines and the cursor would disappear. I had to left click the mouse to make the pointer reappear. This was just not going to work if I have a lot of writing to do.
I am now using the ThinkPad Trackball pointer. It works very nicely and is effective. I would prefer to use a mouse since it is more functional then the Trackball. This will do for now.
Pathfinder
I took the Pathfinder into the office to have it washed. It was well past the time for a wash. The crew that comes to the office did such an excellent job on the Prelude that I decided to give them a try. If nothing, they would be less expensive than the regular one with the mechanical washing system.
The crew did an excellent job on the Pathfinder. It looked much better than when the regular place washes and waxes the truck. My chrome wheels really shine now and the tires were treated so the truck looks younger than it’s eleven years.
I was very pleased with the outcome. The cost was less than the regular place and I did not have to take any time out of my weekend to have the truck washed and waxed. I was in the office anyway.
My Friend Lisa
Lisa and I worked at my old company. We were supposed to have lunch last month after she returned from her trip to Germany. We had to cancel the lunch because she had this nasty blood clot in her arm.
The last conversation that I had with Lisa was that she was going to see her doctor on last Friday. They were going to decide how to treat the blood clot. We decided that Lisa would call me when she went back to work.
Moving along to this week, I sent an email joke to Lisa and Vivian.
I got an almost immediate response from Vivian because the joke appealed to her sense of humor. We have a very similar sense of humor. She said she loved the joke and told me that Lisa had her arm operated on Friday after she saw her doctor.
I phoned Vivian to see how Lisa was doing. Viv said she was home and recovering; the surgery went well and there were no complications from the procedure. I was happy to learn that all was well and getting better.
This will obviously delay our lunch by a couple of weeks.
I sent Lisa a couple of very humorous get well cards on Thursday. She ought to have them by the weekend.
Lisa sent me an email this morning. She thanked me for the cards and thought about me when she was there. She had been in the hospital for five days and had four surgeries on her arm. Gee, you would think the doctors could get it right the first time. She is home resting and plans to go back to work next week sometime.
Lisa wants to play the role of the matchmaker so badly. I think she has taken on my singleness as her personal crusade to find me a female partner. Lisa said she met a wonderful nurse at the hospital and she told her about me. The nurse gave Lisa her phone number to pass on to me I guess.
I will have to have a long talk to Lisa about Nurse Beth.
Aren’t all nurses in the hospital nice?
Bad Tats and Belly Shirts
First, let me go on record as saying I fully support a young woman’s right to dress as she pleases; even if that will make her look very unattractive to me anyway. It is a free country and anyone can be foolish.
Let me also say that I like belly shirts on young women. A belly shirt is a tee shirt usually that stops somewhere between her navel and her breasts.
Summer in Southern California is an excellent time for belly shirts and shorty shorts. This is why Doug and I love the Summer.
One of the young female smokers was wearing a non-belly shirt that had become one because the tee shirt was too short to cover that portion of her pink stomach that was rolling over the top of her pants.
It was not, in my mind at least, a pleasant sight.
She was wearing light blue denim pants and a light blue or gray tee shirt; sort of a monochromatic look I guess. Then, there was this pink flash across her middle where her stomach peeked out for the entire world to see.
I choose not to look beyond my first glance.
Just as I feared, Summer has brought out more revealing clothing with the coz class girls. For the most part, I am more than happy that Summer is here now. But with more revealing clothing comes it’s partner, more bad tats to see.
I saw one coz class girl on Friday. She was dressed in black of course. She was wearing a sleeveless shirt.
She had tattoos on both of her arms than ran from her shoulders to her wrists. I suppose that she may have had more tats but they were mercifully covered and I, of course, did not inquire further.
She had more tats on her arms than any of my sailors from my active duty time in the United States Navy ever had. She had one of those ubiquitous spider web tattoos on each elbow. I think more than one of my former sailors would get a serious case of tattoo envy if they saw her arms.
Young woman had no real Southern California tan to speak of. She was mostly a very pale whitish color. This made her tats stand out even more.
I suppose there is a perfectly good reason why a young woman would want to semi-permanently mark her body. I do know that as one gets older the skin looses some of its consistency and stretches a bit. This changes the look of a tattoo.
Of course, there is one unspoken question on female tattoos. What happens if fashion changes and, sometime in the future, tattoos for women are no longer fashionable?
One answer will come from dermatologists and plastic surgeons.
Their answer will be, “Jackpot!” as they do a brisk business of laser tat removals.
Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when a 28.8 Kbps connection to the Internet was a smoking hot fast connection.
Job Searching and Interviewing
I think I mentioned that I applied for the President’s job at the company where I am working now. If I didn’t, I sent my resume in to apply for it.
Anyway, the executive search firm recruiter called me on Thursday to talk about my background, experience, philosophy, and stuff like that. We talked for about 45 minutes. I guess I must have had the right answers because I got to move on to the next level which is a written exercise.
I got the written part in an email on Friday. It is only seven questions long but so far I have written three full pages to answer two questions. I have a lot more writing to do before I finish tonight. I hope to be able to return it tomorrow so the search firm can maintain their timeline.
The recruiter also talked to me about another president’s job her firm is working on and asked if I had any interest. I said that I did after she explained it to me. She sent along a written exercise for that position as well. She did not have a lot of good background information and what she did have was dated and not encouraging. I think I will ask her if she can provide some more current information so I can answer those questions intelligently.
Dragon Zakura
Dragon Zakura is the name of the new Japanese serial on Sunday nights with English subtitles. It looks like it is a cross between GOODBYE MR. CHIPS and THE BREAKFAST CLUB and maybe with a little THE DEAD POETS SOCIETY thrown in for good measure.
The concept of the series is a failing private school is on the verge of bankruptcy; a former motorcycle gang member turned poor lawyer is hired to liquidate the school for the creditors; lawyer sees something worth saving in the school; lawyer convinces creditors to give him time to turn it around and save their money; lawyers fights students and faculty who are opposed to the idea; lawyer convinces them to join him; lawyer saves the school; and lawyer marries the hot but bookish looking young teacher.
It is predictable I guess.
One of the big plusses is you get to see a lot of teenage Japanese female high school students run around in the halls in their short uniform skirts. That is positive don’t you think?
Johnny Guitar
Johnny Guitar was the musical I went to see last night. The play was an adaptation of the 1954 Joan Crawford film by the same name.
I think the play was fine and believe that most people would enjoy it. I did not enjoy it because the music is played too loudly and, for me at least, tends to drown out the singing. So, why go to a musical if the singing will be drowning out?
The star of the play was a great young singer Michelle Duffy. I think she is a local person but I could be wrong. I have seen her perform before and have always enjoyed her singing. It was too bad that a lot of her singing was over powered by the music.
Dissertation
The dissertation writing is going to take a big hit today from my work to complete the recruiter’s written exercises. Next weekend is a slow weekend with only a lunch on Saturday with Doug as the big events.
That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope your weekend was as good as mine.
Be well and stay happy
Do you have one of those days when you feel like a complete fool?
That was my Thursday. I talked to the IT guys at work about what Earthlink technical support had said about switching me from a frame relay to an asynchronous transfer mode circuit. I told them I was told that it would take up to fourteen days.
One of the IT managers fell out of his chair laughing at me. That hurt.
He said, “Chuck, changing a circuit is a couple of hours. Its an easy process to do. You let the customers know about the change in advance. You test all of the new circuits before you make the switch and then you make the switch when the users are most likely to be asleep. Piece of cake, easy to do.”
The head of the IT department said that they were playing with me and that was wrong.
I agree.
Earthlink lied to me when they said I requested a circuit change. They lied to me when they said it would take up to fourteen days. And, they really lied to me when they said I was an old long time valued customer.
Actions speak louder than words
In retrospect, Earthlink may have been right when they said it will take fourteen days. Maybe they are that incompetent and screwed up.
I gave them another call on Saturday morning. I wanted to see if things had changed any from Wednesday. The call center operator said no and then I asked to speak to a supervisor.
Asking to speak to a supervisor was probably a mistake on my part. The supervisor, James, certainly tried hard to make me feel good about Earthlink. I stopped him when he started to make his third apology for the service failures. I said that an apology was not to do anything to change my mind about the shoddy service and poor treatment that I had received.
James asked for one more chance to make things right with me. For some unknown reason, I decided to give them some more time to fix things for me. I doubt that they will be able to fix things by the close of my business [bed time for me] on June 7th. That is my self imposed deadline for the restoration of my DSL service. June 8th is “Hello, Verizon DSL service, how may I help you?” day.
Dial up connections just suck. It takes for ever to download a document or file.
Programming Note
This dial up connection is miserable for me.
I will be holding off on the Babe of the Moment project. Downloading .jpeg files on a dial up connection takes for ever and that is no fun, especially if someone tries to call me.
SPAM
I checked my Yahoo.com email account the other day, Wednesday actually. I had just over 15,000 emails in my bulk mail folder.
Incredible.
I guess that we are no where close to getting a handle on the proliferation of SPAM across the Internet.
The Big Guy
Doug called me on Friday. He wanted to talk to me about some of his plans for the coming school year.
The call was prompted by the possibility that his mother may be able to work from home soon and he is very unhappy with the idea of having to share the house during the day with his mother. He said that he didn’t think that sort of a situation, sharing the Internet connection and being home would out well for him.
Doug decided to get a job when he returns from his trip to Atlanta with his mother to see the Princess. He plans to work and save up some money, always music to Dad’s ears.
Doug is working on Election Day as a precinct worker. He said that he will earn about $90 for the time he spends signing voters in and handling the voters their ballots. It is certainly not the most challenging job but it is work.
He also asked about staying at my place when he has his internship next year. Staying here is closer to the entertainment industry and a shorter drive for him. This should work out for me. I should be finished with the dissertation and I won’t have as much need to be online at night.
We decided to talk about the ideas next weekend when we get together for lunch. I think we will end up at Albertacos since we were at The Original Tommy’s Hamburgers for our last lunch.
Mouse
The mouse that I have been using for four or five years died on me or is in its final death throws. It was functioning in an off and on manner. I could type two or three lines and the cursor would disappear. I had to left click the mouse to make the pointer reappear. This was just not going to work if I have a lot of writing to do.
I am now using the ThinkPad Trackball pointer. It works very nicely and is effective. I would prefer to use a mouse since it is more functional then the Trackball. This will do for now.
Pathfinder
I took the Pathfinder into the office to have it washed. It was well past the time for a wash. The crew that comes to the office did such an excellent job on the Prelude that I decided to give them a try. If nothing, they would be less expensive than the regular one with the mechanical washing system.
The crew did an excellent job on the Pathfinder. It looked much better than when the regular place washes and waxes the truck. My chrome wheels really shine now and the tires were treated so the truck looks younger than it’s eleven years.
I was very pleased with the outcome. The cost was less than the regular place and I did not have to take any time out of my weekend to have the truck washed and waxed. I was in the office anyway.
My Friend Lisa
Lisa and I worked at my old company. We were supposed to have lunch last month after she returned from her trip to Germany. We had to cancel the lunch because she had this nasty blood clot in her arm.
The last conversation that I had with Lisa was that she was going to see her doctor on last Friday. They were going to decide how to treat the blood clot. We decided that Lisa would call me when she went back to work.
Moving along to this week, I sent an email joke to Lisa and Vivian.
I got an almost immediate response from Vivian because the joke appealed to her sense of humor. We have a very similar sense of humor. She said she loved the joke and told me that Lisa had her arm operated on Friday after she saw her doctor.
I phoned Vivian to see how Lisa was doing. Viv said she was home and recovering; the surgery went well and there were no complications from the procedure. I was happy to learn that all was well and getting better.
This will obviously delay our lunch by a couple of weeks.
I sent Lisa a couple of very humorous get well cards on Thursday. She ought to have them by the weekend.
Lisa sent me an email this morning. She thanked me for the cards and thought about me when she was there. She had been in the hospital for five days and had four surgeries on her arm. Gee, you would think the doctors could get it right the first time. She is home resting and plans to go back to work next week sometime.
Lisa wants to play the role of the matchmaker so badly. I think she has taken on my singleness as her personal crusade to find me a female partner. Lisa said she met a wonderful nurse at the hospital and she told her about me. The nurse gave Lisa her phone number to pass on to me I guess.
I will have to have a long talk to Lisa about Nurse Beth.
Aren’t all nurses in the hospital nice?
Bad Tats and Belly Shirts
First, let me go on record as saying I fully support a young woman’s right to dress as she pleases; even if that will make her look very unattractive to me anyway. It is a free country and anyone can be foolish.
Let me also say that I like belly shirts on young women. A belly shirt is a tee shirt usually that stops somewhere between her navel and her breasts.
Summer in Southern California is an excellent time for belly shirts and shorty shorts. This is why Doug and I love the Summer.
One of the young female smokers was wearing a non-belly shirt that had become one because the tee shirt was too short to cover that portion of her pink stomach that was rolling over the top of her pants.
It was not, in my mind at least, a pleasant sight.
She was wearing light blue denim pants and a light blue or gray tee shirt; sort of a monochromatic look I guess. Then, there was this pink flash across her middle where her stomach peeked out for the entire world to see.
I choose not to look beyond my first glance.
Just as I feared, Summer has brought out more revealing clothing with the coz class girls. For the most part, I am more than happy that Summer is here now. But with more revealing clothing comes it’s partner, more bad tats to see.
I saw one coz class girl on Friday. She was dressed in black of course. She was wearing a sleeveless shirt.
She had tattoos on both of her arms than ran from her shoulders to her wrists. I suppose that she may have had more tats but they were mercifully covered and I, of course, did not inquire further.
She had more tats on her arms than any of my sailors from my active duty time in the United States Navy ever had. She had one of those ubiquitous spider web tattoos on each elbow. I think more than one of my former sailors would get a serious case of tattoo envy if they saw her arms.
Young woman had no real Southern California tan to speak of. She was mostly a very pale whitish color. This made her tats stand out even more.
I suppose there is a perfectly good reason why a young woman would want to semi-permanently mark her body. I do know that as one gets older the skin looses some of its consistency and stretches a bit. This changes the look of a tattoo.
Of course, there is one unspoken question on female tattoos. What happens if fashion changes and, sometime in the future, tattoos for women are no longer fashionable?
One answer will come from dermatologists and plastic surgeons.
Their answer will be, “Jackpot!” as they do a brisk business of laser tat removals.
Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when a 28.8 Kbps connection to the Internet was a smoking hot fast connection.
Job Searching and Interviewing
I think I mentioned that I applied for the President’s job at the company where I am working now. If I didn’t, I sent my resume in to apply for it.
Anyway, the executive search firm recruiter called me on Thursday to talk about my background, experience, philosophy, and stuff like that. We talked for about 45 minutes. I guess I must have had the right answers because I got to move on to the next level which is a written exercise.
I got the written part in an email on Friday. It is only seven questions long but so far I have written three full pages to answer two questions. I have a lot more writing to do before I finish tonight. I hope to be able to return it tomorrow so the search firm can maintain their timeline.
The recruiter also talked to me about another president’s job her firm is working on and asked if I had any interest. I said that I did after she explained it to me. She sent along a written exercise for that position as well. She did not have a lot of good background information and what she did have was dated and not encouraging. I think I will ask her if she can provide some more current information so I can answer those questions intelligently.
Dragon Zakura
Dragon Zakura is the name of the new Japanese serial on Sunday nights with English subtitles. It looks like it is a cross between GOODBYE MR. CHIPS and THE BREAKFAST CLUB and maybe with a little THE DEAD POETS SOCIETY thrown in for good measure.
The concept of the series is a failing private school is on the verge of bankruptcy; a former motorcycle gang member turned poor lawyer is hired to liquidate the school for the creditors; lawyer sees something worth saving in the school; lawyer convinces creditors to give him time to turn it around and save their money; lawyers fights students and faculty who are opposed to the idea; lawyer convinces them to join him; lawyer saves the school; and lawyer marries the hot but bookish looking young teacher.
It is predictable I guess.
One of the big plusses is you get to see a lot of teenage Japanese female high school students run around in the halls in their short uniform skirts. That is positive don’t you think?
Johnny Guitar
Johnny Guitar was the musical I went to see last night. The play was an adaptation of the 1954 Joan Crawford film by the same name.
I think the play was fine and believe that most people would enjoy it. I did not enjoy it because the music is played too loudly and, for me at least, tends to drown out the singing. So, why go to a musical if the singing will be drowning out?
The star of the play was a great young singer Michelle Duffy. I think she is a local person but I could be wrong. I have seen her perform before and have always enjoyed her singing. It was too bad that a lot of her singing was over powered by the music.
Dissertation
The dissertation writing is going to take a big hit today from my work to complete the recruiter’s written exercises. Next weekend is a slow weekend with only a lunch on Saturday with Doug as the big events.
That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope your weekend was as good as mine.
Be well and stay happy
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 11:34 AM
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