Month: May 2013

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Welcome Komrade to Kalifornia

I’m really disturbed by the California legislators.

Recently, they’ve approved several measures regarding guns and ammunition. Individually these measures are innocuous but when you pull back and look at these measures as a tapestry, Then the picture is chilling.

First I think many of us would agree that the California legislators absolutely want to deprive Californians of their 2nd amendment rights.

However, they know that an outright assault on the 2nd amendment of the United States Constitution would fail.

Regardless of how stupid you might think the legislators are, they’re not stupid at all. (Always respect your enemy. Never underestimate their ability, doing so will cause you to make mistakes.)

They’re very cleverly creating a situation where you can own a gun. But you can’t afford to shoot it.

With the microstamping law, you can’t even buy a gun in California unless manufacturers decide to incorporate the microstamping technology.

Then there’s this lovely set of laws they’re OKing;

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Ladies & Gentlemen, this is how it ends. Our rights stripped from us in the legal wrangling of politicians.

These politicians are using State Law to circumvent the constitutional protection that the 2nd amendment confers upon US Citizens.

If these Bills and others like them are signed into law, California will become a gun free zone just like Chicago and Washington DC. Which means we can reasonably expect to see increasing crime until it reaches the same levels as Chicago and DC.

Is this what you want?

There have been at least two research firms that confirmed Crime Rates drop as Gun Ownership rises.  National Institute of Justice statistics show that over at least the past decade gun crimes are generally dropping not increasing.

One very interesting statistic is that 40% of the inmates who’d committed a crime with a gun stated they’d gotten their gun from an illegal source.

Why then is the Federal government and California State government continuing to pursue laws aimed at restricting the 2nd Amendment?

That’s the question to ask.

Read the statistics for yourself. I realize if you’re a reader of this blog I’m probably preaching to the choir. But if you can direct  other people to this blog then maybe we can educate them before bills like those above become laws.

Remember, other states look at what California does before writing their own laws.

Just Sayin.

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And Once again Verizon demonstrates…

Why so very many people hate them!

Internet goes down. 

Modem says problem Bad & at their end.

Call Verizon.

35 minutes of screwing around with their stinking voice obfuscation system which is all the while telling me that I can resolve my problems by visiting them on the web at www.verizon.com. 

To which I say If I could visit you at www.verizon.com I’d sign up FOR THE CARRIER providing me with the ability TO visit www.verizon.com.

Then I finally get to some female in god knows where but based on the static and her accent I’d bet she was in India somewhere. I ask her a simple question. “Is there a service problem in my area?” All I needed was a simple “Yes / No / I don’t know let me check”.

Instead we went down the rabbit hole which is all too common these days.

“What is your operating system?” – I’ve gotten in the habit of simply telling them UNIX. It’s true and then we don’t have to deal with the bullshit Windows questions.

“What is the Model of the modem you’re using?” – It’s a Netgear ADSL2+ DM111PSPv2

“Do you have a Verizon Modem?” – Nope, the one you sent me died and I didn’t feel like waiting 2 weeks for you to get ’round to sending me a new one so I bought this one a year & a half ago and it’s been working just fine since I installed it.

“Can you connect your computer directly to the modem?” – Uh NOPE, I’m not going to tear all my wiring out just so you can say I did.

“Is the modem connected directly to the wall?” – UH YEAH… the Modem reported to me that at 12:53 PST it lost contact with your DNS Servers and was no longer able to obtain a DSL address.

“What are the lights on your modem indicating?” – FUCK!!!!! Power Green, Ethernet Green, DSL Signal Green, WWW/WAN RED

“Do you have a wireless router?” – Yes

“What is the make of the wireless Router” – It’s an Apple not that it’s of any importance to this situation

“Is the modem connected to the Router” – GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!! Everything was working and has been working just fine. Can you please just run a damn line test?

“Can you directly connect you computer to the modem?” – Look lady, I’ve got 10 computers of various types, and operating systems all running and communicating to a bunch of hard drives just fine via the router that you’re obviously trying to blame for your companies failure to provide internet service.

SO NO I’m not going to rewire my shit unless you can give me a seriously fucking compelling reason to do so.

What is the result of the line test?

“Oh the line test has indicated a problem, can you turn you modem off and back on?” – Yes… climbs back up on the ladder to push the button.

Ok modem restarted…

Static ~ Static ~ Static ~ Long Long Long wait…

“I’m so sorry that you have been inconvenienced you will be receiving a phone call within 24 to 48 hours explaining when you can expect your internet service to resume.“

So the line test failed… “Yes, the line test failed, We have received reports that DSL service has been disrupted in your area.“

So had you received those reports Before or After we began this little conversation?

“We knew there was a service outage in your area“

Great! Thanks for wasting my time.

I Hang up.

Why the hell is it so damn hard for people to just answer the question? Better yet why the hell didn’t Verizon route me to a recorded message based on my phone number that simply said

“DSL Service is Temporarily Down in your area. We are working to resolve the problem.“

That would have saved me the annoyance, and the “Technical Support Monkey” in India a lot of frustration.

This blog will not have any pictures…. I may add some when the internet comes back up.

How did I post this you ask????

I’m using the hotspot in my cell phone. It’s only a 2G connection but it’s working.

Sigh…

Saturday Update:

They’re at it again.  This morning Verizon was giving my modem an ip address… every 20 seconds. However the data rate was 2000 BITs per second.

Rough math says that’s about 250 Characters per second which means that if you were just reading text based information you’d be able to easily keep up as the text scrolled across the screen. That is assuming that you can actually read… I guess if you’re here reading this blog you do know how to read… Good for you!

However with todays content rich websites… the reality is that you’ll see nothing but a blank page.

After restarting every single system in my network (Modem, Routers, Computers, WiFI extenders), I realized with horror that I’d need to report the problem to Verizon. 

After Irishing my coffee… I was once again on the phone working my way through the insanity that is Verizons menu system.

It’s all voice activated and apparently tuned for non English speaking people because even when I’m speaking to it calmly (Before it pisses me off) it doesn’t understand me. 

As an aside… I really hate voice recognition/prompts that have Genuine People Personalities I find them annoying and condescending. 

This time I tried to work with the damn machine.

I was able to get it to run a line test. It determined that something was wrong and told me that it was going to transfer me to a human being. 

“Cool” I thought. 

Then for my protection, it wanted me to enter the last 8 or 10 digits of my account number. As If I had that handy!!!! Failing that… They wanted me to enter the amount I’d last paid them. UHHH Yeah! RIGHT! If I don’t have the account number handy, I’m sure as hell not going to have the last amount I paid handy.

I mean I could look it up ON THE INTERNET except that I can’t get to the Verizon web pages.

You know… The web pages where we’re all asked to “Go Green” and Save paper by signing up for automatic payments? Yeah… THAT page.

Which takes me into the loop where the Genuine People Personality tries to get me to pull this information out of my ass.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

At this point I’m heating up for a full on explosion.

Then I remember being told once swearing foully at these systems can get you to a human being. So I channel the spirits of some of my favorite Marines!

It did break me out of the loop… and I felt better too!

Then I’m in a hold queue where a very nice voice complete with Indian accent is telling me they’ll get to me in less than 15 minutes and that she’s sorry for the inconvenience.

I’m calmer. I go back to my desk. I’m watching the modem performance statistics.  

The indian accent lady is telling me they’ll get to me in less than 15 minutes and that she’s sorry for the inconvenience. AGAIN

When all the sudden the stats jump way up Bits… Kilobits… Megabits… per second. the throughput stabilizes at 2.96Mbps (normal)  for my DSL service.

Still, the indian accent lady is telling me they’ll get to me in less than 15 minutes and that she’s sorry for the inconvenience.

I hang up. 

Whatever the hell the problem was… they must have gotten thousands of calls about it.

I’m guessing that was enough to light a fire under them. 

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Good! 

Remember these Utilities WORK for YOU!

They need to be reminded of that on a regular basis. 

Yeah… I’m all Nebari today. So what?

I’d decided that I was going to refer to whoever I spoke with at Verizon in the Nebari way.

“Servicer… I will give commands, you will execute commands“

I probably wouldn’t have made and friends… but I sure as hell would have felt better!

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On this Memorial Day…

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I know that it’s not Veterans Day but I think that we should say thank you to our warriors today nonetheless.

I want to thank my brother for his service. I love you bro, you’re a good man and I know Dad was prouder than shit of you.

To everyone else active duty or not,

Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Thank you for believing in We The People.

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Thank you to my friends & family who are no longer with us for their service. I humbly pray that they rest in peace and are not forgotten. 

John, I miss you, love ya man. Keep the beer cold and the party hot I’ll see you again.

Dad, I miss you and I love you more than I said in life. I think of you often, and god knows I’m trying to be a good example of our family. A little nudge in the right direction from time to time would be appreciated.

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Grandpa E. You were like the Tanks that you drove in WWII big and rumbling. I didn’t understand you very well, But you loved me and that was all that mattered. 

For all those who have given all that I didn’t personally know.

Thank you for my freedom, my rights, and the thousand little things that I take for granted every single day. I may not know your names but you’re my heros anyway.

Have a very loving Memorial Day.

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Give a vet a long strong hug. They’re remembering lost friends and need to know they’re loved, respected, appreciated, and that we’re grateful to them.