Today topped of a very successful week. If I had worked steady throughout, I would have made $1500, comparable to a very good job or owning a good store in this area. I sure don’t miss the 40 hours a week, mind you. Let me tally it up, I worked around 16 hours.NetZero was back in focus. I got a call-out to hook up a VOIP, which I think from now on I may call a “Vonage phone” for convenience. We remember NetZero as the place that didn’t charge, except now it does even though that is what the Zero originally stood for. Well, they are advertising a HiSpeed line. This turns out to be bull and it has the wicked side effect of making people believe they have a broadband connection.
Wrong, the fine print on page four suggests that “certain text files” will load “up to five times faster”. HiSpeed is not High Speed, folks. In this process, the actually Internet service gets tested last, so I wound up having to charge the lady $100 for a setup that, in the end, could not work. I stayed over on my own time and helped check out her computer, but she has really gotten the runaround from Comcast, BellSouth and NetZero.
Now she has no cable, no phone and no Internet service. Way to go, NetZero. You even had me fooled for over an hour. I advised her to call Atlantic Broadband, a company I’ll have to find out more about some day. So many people want a Vonage phone to avoid having anything to do with BellSouth that I don’t even ask any more. In case I didn’t say, BellSouth managed to trick the dog wig place into an upgrade even after I specifically told them not to.
When the phone company was deregulated so that competition could occur, you think they would have gotten the strong message that they were doing things wrong and overcharging. They could trim the fat, but no, they got right to work updating their already contorted pricing models.
Face it, these unethical companies have taken advantage of consumer fog. (Did I just coin a term?) Most people here do not understand the unbundling that has taken place with computers and communication. They remember the days when you paid for something, it was delivered to your house in working condition. Even that might be a bad example once the power company becomes just the “magnetic pulse provider” and you have to “register” before they turn on the juice.
When I drove up to Jimbo’s to collect my gear, I thought I’d test the truthfulness of the Hippie’s assertion that he was playing in Johnny’s tonight. He was not, but the guy that does the hiring was sitting at the bar and he’d never heard of the Hippie. My guess on the renovations was not far off: they spent $1.2 million to get that 1990’s LA look.
He was very interested in the description of my act although I kept telling him it was not suitable for a room like Johnny’s. It could be I’ll be playing there before the lying Hippie. (The spelling “Hippie” is intentional.) That still does not answer the question of what he was up to. We know he didn’t drive across town just to tell me stories, he is far too cheap to do that for its own sake.
It was early enough to make a worthwhile run over to Borders [bookstore]. I spent an hour with a [Mandarin] Chinese phrasebook designed for businessmen. Talk about a cultural clash. The author was a native Chinese speaker who pulled what he thought were correct statements which are revealing in their perception of our society. “Can you direct me to an expensive and impressive restaurant so that my client may become a good customer?”
The entire book embraced a model of business that is no longer acceptable. The buyer who bases his decision by who spends the most on entertaining him. The executive who honestly thinks his expensive after shave will intimidate his competition. The closest thing that probably still exists around here is military procurement who seem to base their buying on complete senselessness.
Trivia for today concerns what I think should be outlawed. Roadside billboards. There is now a device that captures the red flash of your retina if you glance at the sign while driving past. The idea is to bill the advertiser by the look. The system won’t discriminate people like me who often look in order to avoid buying from companies who use this media. The inventor is from Canada, a country that didn’t even have a Bill of Rights until the late 20th century.
Remember those quiet moonlit strolls you never really took along the seacoast? There is now a tugboat that pulls a barge with a huge flashing LED moving sign up and down there at night, “Drink Pepsi”. Things were just a little too romantic and they couldn’t stand for it.
