Category: BullShit

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I hate Games in Business Transactions

I Hate playing games with vendors or suppliers of services.

All too often these days people seem to want to play games with your paycheck, they want to play games with your bills, games with your mail, your email, your online accounts. They want to play games with you returning things.

DirecTV after two and half weeks finally got around to sending me a “recovery kit”

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Do you know what’s in the recovery kit? Take a guess it’s not what you would think…

I was expecting a large box with a couple of return labels.  I was going to put both of the DirecTV receivers in the big box and then take the big box to the post office.

What I got was a package full of labels… No box, no packing material, nothing that I could put the DirecTV receivers in to make sure that they got back to DirecTV.

The first passing thought was slap the stickers directly on the receivers themselves and send that to DirecTV however I knew the post office wouldn’t take them that way.

So I found a couple boxes down in the garage.

The receivers are in the boxes covered in ghost poop, I’m not at all sure that they’ll survive the rough handling that I know the postal service will subject them to. At this point I don’t really care… much.  I do, the machines didn’t do anything wrong they’re in good working order and they shouldn’t be damaged because no-one cares.

I did pack them tightly and with what packaging materials I had available. I just wish that the idiots at DirecTV had sent me the proper boxes with appropriate packing.

Now it’s just a matter of figuring out how the post office wants the labels on the boxes.

Clearly DirecTV was trying to do nothing more than make it difficult for me to return their product

We came to an end of our relationship after eight years because of exactly this kind of game playing.

If I want to cancel my service I should be able to cancel my service, it should be no harm no foul.

I should be able to put the receivers in the box and I should be able to send the box back to DirecTV.

Instead I had to make three requests for the recovery kit

After the third request what I get is a package full of labels not shipping boxes.

I know what the game is about and how it’s played.

It’s all about them figuring “Maybe if we make it to hard for this person to get rid of the receivers,  if we make it so that he’s going to be charged a ton of money if he keeps the receivers for any length of time after the contract is up maybe he’ll sign up with us again, maybe we can continue to get the $120 or $130 a month.”

All I can say is they don’t know me very well.

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With me, the harder you make something, the more annoyed I get, the more likely I will go to the ends of the Earth to accomplish my goal.

In this case I’m going to make sure that I can put DirecTVs equipment straight up their collective ass.

So DirecTV not only did you lose a customer because I couldn’t make changes to my plan without having to go to some kind of unbelievable game with plan switches, and 2 year contracts all of which was designed to make absolutely sure that I ended up spending more money than I was originally, you’ve also lost a customer forever.

I cannot imagine myself doing any business at all with DirecTV from here on out I’m not going to say never.  But it is sure as hell going to require a lot of thought before I sign my name on any dotted line with these people.

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Stop bringing NAMBLA into the discussion!

Is it just me?

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Or has Mention of NAMBLA come up way too often in conversation about Same Sex Marriage?

In the linked article above there is a big difference between what the Justice Sotomayor said and what Dr Carson said. 

I’ll grant you they were both discussing the slippery slope issue, essentially asking; “where do you stop?” But Dr Carson chose a particularly inflammatory and to my mind distasteful comparison.

His intent was to limit disagreement by painting anyone who disagreed with him as someone who by extension supported child molestation.

Anyone reading the quote “be they gays, be they NAMBLA [North American Man/Boy Love Association]” could not help but make the comparison and incorrect hopefully temporary association that all main stream GLBT persons are pedophiles.

That was Dr Carsons intent. He chose to support his assertion in defense traditional marriage by shock and fear creating a horrific image in his readers / listeners minds.

The reason that Justice Sotomayor wasn’t ripped up for her question is that she framed it without the rhetoric. As questions and answers in matters of law should be framed. 

Dr Carsons intent was to inflame passions and he was chewed up and spat out over it. If you can’t handle the heat… Needless to say I have little pity for Dr Carson getting beat up but he is entitled to his opinion and his say.  The left, should have simply called him on the NAMBLA part of his statement and explained why it was offensive.

Aside from NAMBLA not representing main stream GLBT people, I find that NAMBLA being invoked by the Ultra Right, religious conservatives to be strange and offensive.

I never think of NAMBLA, I find it odd that so many in the religious right apparently do. 

Invoking NAMBLA in any way as a reason that Same Sex Marriage shouldn’t be allowed is in my mind akin to saying;

The South shouldn’t have voting rights because the KKK exists there.

Or that Idaho should have its federal funding cut because of the White Supremacist movement

Or African Americans are all terrorists because of the Black Panthers.

Or that independent breakaway religious denominations should be banned because of Jonestown or Branch Davidians.

We all have relatives that we’d rather not parade around.

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Most of the time, in the interest of good taste we don’t mention fringe elements much less attempt to present them as the “Norm” and why people should fear a particular group.

In the interest of civility can we all agree that NAMBLA is a minuscule minority element of the much larger GLBT community?

Proponents of Same Sex Marriage aren’t seeking to undermine Marriage. They’re seeking to be included equally in the institution of Marriage.

The laws concerning adulthood and age of consent will apply equally to NAMBLA as they would to all citizens of the country regardless of Same Sex Marriage.

So please lets pull NAMBLA off the table as a talking point… 

FOREVER!!!!

I’m going to regret having included NAMBLA in this blog. Now I’ll know how often that acronym is searched for, Thanks a lot conservative religious right. There are some things I’m really better off not knowing…

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And yet again overreaction… This time, to a cake

Ok, by now everyone knows that I’m pretty Pro-Gun.

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I was raised around guns and I owned a beautiful .410 from the time I was 14 or so. (that was a sweet gun which was later stolen from a relatives home… along with the gun safe it was in. Another Story)

I haven’t to date replaced that sweet .410

While I’m thinking seriously about picking up a few guns before getting them becomes a nightmare of bureaucracy I haven’t done so yet.

I can even have some sympathy for those people who sincerely believe that guns are out of control and who support legislation to impose control on guns, ammunition, etc.

But THIS STORY just really gets my blood pumping. Here’s another article.

I’ve go no problems with the bakers who refused to make the cake in the first place. They chose to exercise their rights and they chose to leave money on the table. Their problem not mine.

Where I get seriously PISSED off is with the people sending hate messages to the baker for making the cake.

Come on people! There is no excuse to hassle a baker for baking a cake.

as Wil Wheaton says “Don’t be a Dick”

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You have got to admit the cake looks fanfuckingtastic! It’s a work of art and just plain cool.

YES! That is a birthday cake!

Heres a picture from the article of the cake being held by someone, perhaps the birthday boy.

Thankfully Yelp and Facebook have removed the nasty comments. The most benign were that the baker was “insensitive” and “ridiculing the tragedy in Newtown”

REALLY?

The baker was commissioned to bake a cake, that cake was defined by the person commissioning it. 

The cake was also being given to a person that supports the 2nd amendment and presumably exercises his right to own guns.

There’s nothing insensitive or ridiculing about it. 

It’s a fucking cake!

I’d bet the same people that were sending hate messages to the baker, play “Call of Duty“,  sit on their couches watching The Expendables, or Ghost Rider 2, or any number of violent movies or TV shows. 

But they’ll get indignant about a birthday cake. Can you say Hypocrisy good, I knew you could…

I could see my other half getting me a cake like this and telling me it’s the only AR-15 I’ll ever own. Yeah, the other half might draw the line at me getting an AR. I dunno I haven’t asked.

I can tell you this, If I got a cake like this I’d be grinning from ear to ear, even if I couldn’t have a real AR.

Head to the Bakers Facebook page and tell her she did great!

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Cudos to SendGrid for doing the right thing… Or When Stupid is a crime

Or I could have called this… When Twitter is a weapon.

On Sunday 3/17/2013 a lady attending PyCon in Santa Clara overheard a couple of developers engaging in some sophomoric joking where they were trading sexual innuendos about poorly named devices.

Instead of doing the simple thing like turning around and letting these guys know they were out of line she photographed & tweeted their picture out into the twitterverse.

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Her action caused the two developers to be removed from the convention, one of the guys lost his job and ultimately so did she. This Article is pretty brutal about how they report it.

There is so much that is wrong in this scenario.

This woman had options:

She could have done the human thing and asked the guys to cool it, explaining that they were being offensive.

She could have moved, thereby taking responsibility for her own feelings. (I’m not saying that she should have been required to move, but she could have removed herself from the annoyance.)

She chose to be passive aggressive, snap a photo of the guys (without their knowledge / consent or modeling release) then broadcast that photo to a presumably wide public audience captioned with something identifying them as pigs. Saying essentially HELP ME THEY’RE SEXUALLY HARASSING ME! 

We’ve all sat through sexual harassment training. As I’ve sat through those classes I’ve often thought that the Harassment brush was just a little too broad and biased against men. Women have far greater latitude in what they can say to men and we men have to take it.

I’ve been asked in the workplace if I was circumcised, and how big my dick was by crude Women. I’ve also listened to endless gay jokes and disparaging remarks, from men.

Hell, I’ve been present in rooms where the evil of the WHITE man was being discussed and the suggested solution was that all the white people should be punished. Yeah racism isn’t solely the domain of white people. Racists come in all colors shapes and sizes.

So WHAT?

Next! I simply exited the area when the conversation turned to stuff I didn’t want or need to hear.

I’ve watched woman after woman end good mens careers with the corporate Nuclear weapon of “Harassment” it’s not a new phenomena. I’ve also seen men laughed out of an HR department when they decided to report a woman that was harassing them.

I remember laughing my ass off several years ago when after considerable publicity a female sports reporter was allowed in the locker rooms of male professional teams.

She was then offended by naked men walking around in the locker room. I thought it was a joke, but quickly it escalated into something more. After gaining access to the male locker rooms, she decided that the men should be clothed when she was there. The insanity came to a halt when the teams simply stopped talking to her.

I remember thinking, “Lady that’s why we built locker rooms. Guys would be just as happy changing clothes and showering outside. We created the space so that women and children wouldn’t be offended.”

At the time a number of male sports reported speculated about gaining access to female locker rooms but that was considered creepy.

This situation is also about our collective thin skin, and our psychotic enforcement of  Politically Correct standards on steroids.

You can reasonably expect to be offended by something anytime you’re out in public.

For that matter you can expect to be offended by the crap that passes for entertainment on TV, not to mention the commercials. KIAs booming hip hop commercials come to mind. The Kardashians, uhh hello???

It’s the kid with his pants hanging down his butt.

Or the morbidly obese guy sweating like Niagara Falls in front of you at a fast food joint ordering 2 mega cheese burgers super size fries and a gallon cup of diet coke.

It’s the plumber proudly showing off a hairy plumbers crack.

The gang member flashing signs at an opposing gang in front of a crowd of kids, daring someone in the opposing gang to shoot him, thoughtless of the collateral damage.

It’s the past middle aged woman whose been around the block once too often, braless dressed like a teenage slut.

And it’s the teenager dressed like a slut being upset because people treat her badly.

It’s the Middle Eastern guy screaming and shaking his fist at a veiled woman in a mall, as she shrinks away.

It’s the profane, the obscene, the morally ambiguous.

It’s the self centered dumbasses more interested in texting while they’re driving or walking expecting you to move out of their way because they can’t be bothered to pay attention to someone as lowly as you.

It’s signs with messages you find offensive. Do I need to see salacious advertising for the latest “Falling Star” from Hollywood?

How about booming music with lyrics talking about killing whitie or slappin dat ho ’cause she don’t suck you right.

It’s the gas pump TVs screaming at you while you’re just trying to put gas in your car. while you’re thinking, “why am I paying 4.80 a gallon to be forced to hear this shit?”

In short it’s all the things that we each find offensive, yet put up with and ignore.

These things we take no action about because after all it’s about freedom of expression. Well, freedom… and the undercurrent of fear of getting involved. 

But two men, having a laugh at bawdy innuendo at a convention in public who happen to be in earshot of a woman… and the shit hits the fan.

I think that SendGrid did the right thing firing this woman, I also think they should apologize to the developers who were removed from the conference and they should pay the developers companies for the lost conference fees.

Moreover, I think this should serve as a call to arms.

The time for draconian Politically Correct enforcement is past. it’s time for some of us to grow thicker skins, and stop trying to see offense in every situation.

It’s also time to stop denigrating being Male.

Face it men are different. Aside from our cocks and balls. We think differently and look at the world differently. As a result our jokes and what we find funny will be reflective of those differences. 

It’s time to let men be men.

Ladies, believe it or not, if you simply ask us to play nice… We will.

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N.Y. mayor ‘shocked’ by soda law ruling

I saw the following headline this morning. This link should take you to the whole article.

N.Y. mayor ‘shocked’ by soda law ruling, takes shot at Mississippi law

I couldn’t help myself…

 

 

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Dear Mayor Bloomberg.

First… REALLY???

You really don’t understand why Mississippi has passed an anti Bloomberg law?

You really were shocked that  the Judge ruled against your soda law? Obviously you must have forgotten about a little thing called freedom.

You can’t be that clueless, therefore you have to be working at being purposefully obtuse.

Let me explain this to you in a way that perhaps your sycophant aides won’t.

Mississippi, isn’t legislating in favor of obesity they’re legislating against government interference in their lives, a phenomenon all too present these days.

I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand this concept, you’re so sure that you know whats best for everyone.

In your arrogant conceit you assume that no-one is capable of thinking for themselves or making their own choices. Further, you seek to remove any choice that could have deleterious effect.

Where Mr. Mayor would you stop?

Would Steak and all red meat be outlawed in the city of New York? Would you further legislate that only a vegan diet is acceptable? A healthier lifestyle requires less in medical costs doesn’t it?

Would you ban all alcoholic beverages from your city? That should put a stop to drunk driving. It would also reduce employee absenteeism thereby making your city more industrious and productive.

To protect society and New Yorkers Would you criminalize sex out of wedlock? Or Would you simply pass legislation to enforce reversible sterilization? This would prevent the poor from overly burdening themselves with children that could require assistance from the state, or who might become criminals.

How about requiring registration and licensing for use all cooking knives over 5” long?Those too can be used as deadly weapons.

Would you decide that fashion envy is a threat to the stability of your city and require uniforms to be worn by everyone?

Would you try to engage in eugenics, assigning men and women to each other for the purposes of reproduction. After all, in just a few generations you could erase or significantly blur the color lines in your city. Homogenous is good isn’t it?

Would you outlaw religion? Or will you simply define a State religion, thereby removing any potential conflict over beliefs?

When your ideas were rejected and the people engaged in protests and other forms of civil disobedience would you give the police a shoot to kill order? Would you bring in the national guard to enforce your will? I suppose you wouldn’t need the national guard, NYPD does seem to shoot and kill innocent people with frightening efficiency. 

Mr Mayor…

As insane as these ideas sound. To some extent throughout history been tried in various times and places, thankfully for the most part they’ve failed or at least been mercifully short lived.

Despots, and Dictators seem to start out by enacting laws “For the safety and Security of their people”. Historically, it doesn’t end well.

Thankfully you’re not in a position of national power. You pose little threat to the rest of us. 

The people of Mississippi and indeed other states are using you as a means to voice their opinion by saying no to the Nannyism which leads to a dark path, a path that is anathema to the core beliefs of America and her citizens.

That Mr Mayor is why you’ve become a laughing stock in so many places.

That’s why a Judge has ruled against your silly law. That is why other states are etching your name in the annals of their books of law as someone who is on the wrong side of common sense and freedom.

That’s why you’re becoming largely irrelevant.

Mr. Mayor, you do serve one purpose, You’re an example to our politicians about what can happen when you go too far.

I hope they get the message.

I look forward to the phrase “He’s a / Thats a Bloomberg” entering the national conversation as a euphemism for someone or something which is largely irrelevant.