October 24, 2006

           Take a look at these sidewalk athletes. They had stopped at the convenience store next door, and youthful exuberance took over. The one was a boxer and he was fast, the one doing handstands. These are captured still from a video. In an equally important development, my microwave finally burned out. Another $28 down the drain, what is this world coming to?
           Interesting – it took twenty-five years for the system to send me a letter which I did not want. Jury duty. I find two things obnoxious about that. One, nobody should have to be on a jury unless they feel like it. Two, other “public” records were used to get my mailing address. I’ll just ignore it and see what happens.

           I have a policy against accepting anything in the mail that is unsolicited. There is a third equally disgusting event related to calling it a “duty”, and that is one American telling another what to do. That alone is cause for another civil war. You mind your business and you allow others to mind theirs. The hardest thing for some people is to admit that some things are not any of their business.

           I got more of the accounting done. Working on my own I got four times as much work done in the same time. Then over to Ruth’s to reset her AOL. She’s getting better, since she had it working by the time I got there. I charged her a half-hour of time for the phone calls y’day to discourage more of the same. Yes, somebody did contact AOL on Saturday and try to change her password. If you detected I was a little miffed by the time I started writing, thank AOL.
           Here’s why. Okay, to get into their system, I had to give a whole whack of information. Therefore, anybody else who did the same would also have to give them said information. (Such as the last four digits of their Social Security and credit card.) I wanted AOL to give me that information used by whoever made the Saturday attempt. AOL refused. Well of course they refused. They are AOL and that is one reason I never deal with such scum unless I have to. I advise you to do the same. The same AOL that lets spammers flood the Ether with Viagra ads.

           In the off moments, I rigged up the scanner for Ruth. She caught on to it right away, that plus it is a truly nice scanner, even for an HP. It works well with photos and she was able to email some around on the first try. I assured her she is roughly 25% along the path to proficiency and not to give up. Things will go a little smoother now that she sees the results can be fun.

           I must report that BellSouth tried to pull yet another fast one. It is obvious they use their demographic information to target new DSL users who can be tricked because they are more unfamiliar with the system The problem today was that I was there when Rick Curtis called from the “Call Center”. We know what that is. He falsely claimed that there was some “discrepancy” with my DSL service on their records, to the effect that another DSL provider other than BellSouth may be providing the service. He needed to “verify” we had the correct service. Wrong move, there, Rick the Prick.
           I tried to use the opportunity to get him to reveal the nature of these records, but it turns out even that was a lie. He lied through his teeth the entire conversation, until I finally got him to admit he was from the “Promotion Department” and was trying to upsell Ruth to the $150 per month shared T1 service. Rick the Prick should have known to back out gracefully the minute I began asking if he was the CLEC or the ILEC. He does not even know what those are, yet, he still tried to continue the bull.

           (For those interested, you can look it up. These are the Competitive Local Exchange Carrier and the Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier. In this area, BellSouth is the Incumbent.)

           Back at the shop, I paid Fred for the HP Pavilion, which is set up for Internet access. Oh, in the process, I noticed it was the same computer the G has, which he thought was so wonderful and modern. It is more like better than nothing. Fred has determined that the potential problem on slow downloads is the browser, Mozilla. Don’t look at me, I thought they worked hand-in-hand with Linux. Anyway, that is good since another browser will be easier to find. Maybe Opera.
           Next, to Home Depot to find they are fresh out of those cable tubes, the ones you use to hide all the wires behind your computer. Al’s mother does not like all them cables hanging back there, and there are around 15 of them on that setup. Why Al does not pop down to the store and get it done on his own is beyond me, but he pays cash so count me in. Fred and I have discussed running his cables through PVC, especially that hard to bend cable TV coax cable. My biggest worry is how to get the piping over there on my bicycle.
           Al reports minimal activity on his original adventure into computer marketing. That was the deal where they supplied him with leads for some sales pitch. If you figured out the leads were all picked over, good one. I still cannot figure out how these people who sell these home businesses are able to stay in business with such scams.
           I stopped at the book store on Hollywood for a five-year old National Geo, and had coffee next door. I chat with Little Heather, not my type, but I’ve always done well with waitresses. That should tell you what the average male customer must be like. She is a little cutie and I would not mind at all. The place was a former gambling den and went bankrupt shortly after this.