Category: Fail

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Microsoft, you’re not the only game in town…

I had not meant to get into this today. Unfortunately there was this huge rabbit hole and I couldn’t resist.

It all started out with me making phone calls. I contacted the mortgage folks, which led to them helping me get things set up on their website. Hopefully this will make my interactions a touch easier.

This started because I was looking at my bank account and noticed over the last 2 months the mortgage payment had risen by about 100 bucks.

It turns out this rise is due to two events. One was a change in the way that tax escrow account is handled. The second is our crack feds raising the interest rates. The mortgage folks were very nice and efficient in explaining what’s going on. This is seriously different from the way they treated me when they purchased the mortgage from JP Morgan Chase.

When it came to setting up the web access, that too was efficient and gave me access to a ton of unread documents.

Then I continued the search for someone to inspect the fire suppression systems Backflow valves. This is one of those things that has always annoyed me. The Country and the Water company demand this be done, but offer no help in terms of who to call.

I’ve been striking out on this one for a week.

Anyway I logged onto the Microsoft website to downgrade my Office 365 subscription from a family plan to a personal plan.

Unfortunately, there is no way to do that from their web page. I put a call in to them. The lady who tried to help had some difficulty, (caused by me,) I still had a credit card on the account that I’d actually closed. I didn’t realize it because the number was familiar and the account closure is pretty recent.

When I realized the problem I told the lady.

She told me to enter the new card information on the Microsoft website (Which I did,) then I made the new card the primary and deleted the incorrect card.

When the lady tried to downgrade the subscription, Microsoft’s Systems started rejecting the change. This meant that I’d have to go to a higher level support person who would have to call me back.

“Okay,” I said.

A few minutes later my email chimes, and now Microsoft wants me to type my name, the last 4 digits of the card to be used, the case number and something else into a blank document which is then to be screenshotted and the screen shot is to be uploaded to Microsoft on some weird link.

WHY?

The lady calls me back but has no explanation about why we’re doing this screenshot thing. I point out that they already have the data, but apparently this is the process to speak to a higher level person.

It’s at this point that I tell the lady that I’m considering cancelling the service entirely. I point out that none of this is her fault, but it is the fault of Microsoft who if I recall correctly is a software company and should therefore be bound by rules of logic.

Further I point out that none of this would be necessary if Microsoft provided a mechanism for me (the customer,) to be able to select one each, of the two plans offered for the service I’m attempting to purchase. Instead Microsoft only allows the customer to select the plan they’ve already got.

I tell her that this shouldn’t be such a pain and that the alternative is to simply cancel the subscription, especially since I have applications that are smaller in terms of storage, which work as well or better than the Microsoft versions.

This stuns her. Poor Indian lady, (dot not feather) that she was, this must have blown her mind. The poor dear was probably in Bangalore or Delhi.

I tell her that I’m going to think about proceeding with this renewal process. I hang up the phone.

I did think about it…

I’ve canceled the subscription.

Then I thought about it further, and have deleted my Microsoft account in it’s entirety. Apparently this doesn’t include deleting LinkedIn. Hmm maybe that is next! I could do without another social media service.

During the process, Microsoft went to great lengths on their website to tell me just what all I’d be losing. Including some of the Xbox games that I may have purchased. Hmm, there’s a reason to buy a PlayStation for myself at Christmas! The upshot is I lose access to all sorts of stuff that a) I never used, and b) represent additional access points for hackers to potentially do nasty stuff.

Over the past few months I’ve been getting intermittent notifications from Microsoft saying that my Outlook account was being accessed from Moscow. Well that’s not a problem anymore! There is no Outlook account.

I’m sure that I forgot to update contact email addresses at a couple of companies but lets see if I miss whatever notifications they were sending me. I had no problem flushing ZipRecruiter though. They couldn’t handle me changing the login email address and also uploading an updated resume. Honestly, I’ve found ZipRecruiter to be completely useless.

There are a couple other businesses that I traded with who can’t handle changing the login email address. I’m weighing very carefully if I need to continue to trade with them.

Microsoft assured me that my account would be recoverable for 60 days, but they’ve already screwed around with the subscription to Office 365. The outlook mail account is throwing errors about passwords and such.

I’ve just deleted the Outlook account from my iPad and phone. I’ll check the access on the computer and if it’s screwed up too, I’ll delete it there as well. I’m kinda happy right at the moment. I can delete ALL the Microsoft related passwords from my systems without concern.

All they had to do was let me save $30 a year… But Nooooo! They had to make things annoying and difficult. So now I’ll go on without them, OR just to piss them off I’ll download the same applications from the Apple App Store, use the in app purchase model, and force Microsoft to Pay Apple!

Ain’t I a fucker?

Jeez, Microsoft, (and Apple) have gotten too big for their britches. Both of them are forgetting, or have forgotten, that they’re dependent on customer good will to survive.

Eventually, there will be enough people like me who are tired of being screwed with.

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What the holy Hell?

I’d heard of some singer doing something to the National Anthem and thought, “Goody, some of the mistakes are epically funny, I could use a laugh.”

I looked it up and was not amused in the least.

When I heard the lyrics;

“Oh say can you see by the blood in the streets / That this place doesn’t smile on you colored child / Whose blood built this land with sweat and their hands / But we’ll die in this place and your memory erased / Oh say, does this truth hold any weight / This is not the land of the free, but the home of the slaves! “

There was a time when the folks running the sound system would have pulled the plug on this kind of crap.

I wasn’t going to give this rancid bitch any more publicity but DAMN! Who the hell does she think she is?

Apparently, she was singing at the Essence Festival. Essence of what, stupidity?

Hypocrisy much CUNT?

This is a rich ass bitch who, if she was enslaved, would be paying all her money to Massa.

More likely if she was enslaved and if America was everything that she and people like her believe. Not Black necessarily, but weak minded, idiots the progressive leftists have deluded and corrupted, she’d be singing Camptown Races picking cotton in the fields.

I thought a number of much stronger things than I have written above.

Then I thought “Why did we bother to fight the civil war? After the war, there were some who thought that the Africans should have been repatriated to their country but that was too expensive. There were others who thought that the Africans should be put down like diseased beasts in the fields.”

Cooler, kinder heads prevailed. Sure there were still issues in the South, members of the KKK wrapped themselves in bedsheets and did horrific things.

But the incidents, while deplorable, were not nightly events contrary to what believers in the 1619 project might believe.

Members of the KKK were farmers and businessmen after all, they had families to feed and business to attend to, they didn’t have a lot of free time.

That’s one of the problems with revisionist history. Mine, Yours, Governments, or anyone else’s. There’s a tendency to frame the events and the people in contemporary terms.

Farmers in 1866 got up at dawn, fed the animals, hooked up the Ox, or Donkey, or Horses, to the plow or other farm implement and plowed a large an area as they could physically work. At night, they might read a bit of the Bible, after a simple dinner and then they’d go to sleep exhausted.

From their plot of land, they fed their families. They prayed to have enough rain, that locusts wouldn’t eat everything and hoped there’d be enough to sell come harvest time, to buy what goods they needed for the winter and the next year.

They didn’t have tractors, or much in the way of mechanized devices. They didn’t live long. A simple cut could be a death sentence.

The human equation was pretty simple. Work or Die. Just like all the rest of the animal kingdom. You have to realize that the term work encompasses hunting and gathering as surely as going to an office every day. Going to an office is just Hunting and gathering with extra steps.

Even criminal enterprises like robbing a train is technically work. The thing to remember about criminal behavior in the streets or towns back then is; crime was dealt with in brutal fashion. You’d be lucky to live long enough to see a judge or magistrate.

The truth is;

It was then, and is even today, cheaper to put a bullet in someone’s head, or cut it off, than it is to house them, feed them, and clothe them, in jail or prison.

Nobody gave you anything for free. That was pretty much a true statement right up until the 1930s.

Farming wasn’t the only option, but generally speaking no matter the profession, life was hard work.

Sure, there were some rich people, there are always rich people, but the average person was living hand to mouth.

The lyrics this lady sings make it sound like slavery is still a thing in this country. That offends the shit out of me.

Why aren’t people like her singing about real slavery going on today in other countries? Why aren’y people like her singing about child sex slavery south of the border and now moving north. Why aren’t people like her applying their immense wealth to stopping any of this?

Oh right these people are still bitching about something that happened 150 years ago. Something that no one alive today was a part of.

This bitch has said publicly that she’s considered leaving the USA.

I say, “your terms are acceptable.” I’d love to see her hustled onto a plane, flown across the ocean and dropped in Lagos. Give her $100.00. Put all the rest of her money in trust to pay her debts off.

Perhaps I’m being cruel. But I have gotten really sick and tired of this kind of shit.

Yes, we have problems, but what these people are doing isn’t helping anybody at all.

I hope her career crashes and burns. I don’t listen to R&B so I can’t boycott her. The best I can do is ignore her, and anything she says or does from here on out.

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I don’t recall being this angry with any President since Bush

I happened to have the radio on while Biden spoke about the SCOTUS ruling on student loan forgiveness.

I have never been so angry.

Biden, as The President does not have the right to forgive that debt. Generally speaking The Executive Branch doesn’t have access to the purse stings. That right belongs to the Legislative Branch.

If you read the founding documents of this country, even without a law degree it’s pretty clear how the separation of powers works. By the way, when I was in elementary school, middle school, and high school there were entire units of curriculum where we actually studied The Constitution, Amendments, and Declaration of Independence.

The theory was, if students understood these documents they would be better citizens and voters.

Biden was wrong the moment he made the school loan debt promise. Even after the SCOTUS ruling, Biden, (more properly, the Biden Administration,) still hasn’t learned a damn thing.

Allocating those funds is the responsibility of Congress.

Biden had the audacity to claim the Republican Party was why the “Hope” he’d given so many Americans, was cruelly ripped away. Again incorrect! The Supreme Court may be conservative, it may be liberal, ultimately it’s sole purpose is to decided the constitutionality of cases brought before the justices.

Biden is the person who gave thousands of people false hope. He demonstrated once again, that he’ll take credit for shit that he had nothing to do with if its good. Unfortunately the majority of the Biden era has been about sleepy Joe telling everyone Shit he’s done that’s failed miserably, wasn’t his fault.

In reality Biden’s speech writers and administration said this. Clearly indicating whoever was writing the speech, has no idea how our government works. Biden sat in congress for 50 years, he’d have to have learned something in that time just by osmosis.

While I was feeling my blood pressure climbing, I realized there was another part of Biden’s speech that was freaking me out.

Biden kept dropping into this creepy old man voice.

Just based on that, whatever he said in that voice I immediately discounted. He sounded like a guy cruising around schools in a van saying, “Hey little boy, you want some candy?”

How the hell is this guy and his entire administration not GONE? There is more than enough observable failure in this administration that they should have been fired!

I know we have to do it all by the rules of The Constitution I’m good with that, but damnit Congress, enact the 25th, then impeach the whore and fire all the remaining staff. Let’s see what the Speaker of The House can do.

I wouldn’t hold my breath, but it might be better.

For me the fundamental question is this; is it right for the taxpayers to pay for bad decisions of borrowers who knowingly entered into educational loan agreements?

What about those people who took out these loans and paid them back? Will they get refunds?

What about those people who have never taken out loans for college, instead these people chose to go to work. Why should they be called upon to pay for someone else’s loan when they themselves didn’t borrow or benefit from college?