OMG! You don’t suppose…

Texas

I got a call from a young man this morning about a job opportunity in Dallas.

While I know there are a lot of folks that have problems with Texas, I’m not one of them. Every time I’ve been in Texas, I’ve found the people to be very nice and I’ve always been treated very well. So I’m up for moving to Dallas or pretty much any place in Texas. 

The young man is in Ohio and speaks with a very heavy Indian accent. Not unusual these days; we talked about my experience, and my expected salary range. All good.

Although, I must admit I wan’t able to get the guys name or his company name via the phone conversation.  That aside, it was when the young man sent me the job description that I found myself doing the Scooby Do “Whut Ro”.

There is only one company dealing in technology, in Dallas that matches the three letter company name… Wait for it, They’re another Indian headhunting firm! 

The Lion in Winter.

I’m reminded of a quote from The Lion in Winter. 

I wonder if that’s the way this works. One Indian Firm sells me to another Indian Firm to another and another and so on, each of them making money for selling a qualified lead but the “Lead” Me… gets nothing except spinning my wheels editing and revising resume after resume for nothing.

I’m beginning to think that’s the way of this particular encounter.

I just got a request from our young man to modify my resume to include something that IS listed in my skill set but which IS NOT part of my current unemployed life. He seems to think I should say that I’m using this particular bit of software which costs 5K a seat in my daily unemployed life.  I’ve already filled out his little checklist which DESCRIBES when and where I’ve used that particular bit of software last.

YouTrustThis

How can I take this seriously? This person has my resume in front of him, he found me through linkedin, he’s spoken with me and now has in front of him all the details and yet clearly he doesn’t have a clue.  So out of curiosity I go to his linkedin profile… WOW! The guy looks like a thug. Is this someone I want representing me?

Is this a scam, a spear phishing expedition, or simply some guy who’s fresh off the boat and has no idea what he’s doing? I think asking for my date of birth and SSN is not appropriate in an initial contact. It would be appropriate if a company was making an offer contingent on a background check but we’re not there yet, not even close.

Am I too suspicious? Perhaps.

But then again look at the Office of Personnel Management breach, or the Anthem, or Chase, or, or, or, or…

OK I’ve had enough!

BangHead

Computer won’t connect to a web site. Looking for a job but the website is down. Okay… move on to the next job site. Nothing there. To the next site, no connection. sigh. Next site. Got connection but horrendously slow. I mean slower than old teletype. 

Connect to phone hotspot. 

Get email. Huh! That email came into phone over two hours ago only now showing up on computer. Weird!

Now I can get to the web site that was down, oh, and the super slow one too.

Disconnect from hotspot

Reconnect to home wifi

Now web sites work. WTF?

Go back to phone hotspot… Can’t connect. Connect but no internet. GRRRRR!

TargetPractice

Reconnect to home wifi, websites wont load.

Connect HARDLINE Turn off wifi completely.

Websites won’t load.

Okay Now I want to understand what the hell is going on. Shit should consistently work OR NOT! Intermittently working isn’t going to cut it with me.

Hours pass. Time lost. I’m not looking for work, I’m not learning anything new, I’m not studying anything. I’m troubleshooting.

Grrrrr

Other half comes in after talking to the damn satellite people AGAIN! 

“I need to disconnect their box from the router and connect it directly to my computer.”

“Okay I’ll take care of it”

“Thanks”

A few minutes later,

“Their modem is connected directly to your computer.”

“Thanks.”

Tests running, more tests, leave disconnected for hours. More wasted time. Time lost. I’m not looking for work, I’m not learning anything new, I’m not studying anything. I’m trying to make the connection to the phone hotspot work. I’m troubleshooting.

FittingEnd

Except now I can’t research hotspot problems using the home internet. Doing the research on the phone while trying to FIX the phone is a major pain in the ass.

More hours, more frustration. Now I’m pissed off that absolutely NO COMMUNICATIONS in my home are working right. Suddenly I can’t even make a phone call because my phone is saying ‘No Service”

Is that the cause of the original problem? Has the west coast internet service taken a dump? Is my phone broken, my computer, my hotspot, my home internet, my router…

Fittingend2

Without the ability to have at least one fixed point of reference I’m spinning my wheels.

Then the freakin neighbor starts spray painting something on their rear deck. It’s a LARGE something and the fumes are blowing into the room I’m in. My sinuses immediately wad up, then start bleeding. Hey Thanks!!!!

At this point trying to learn anything new is pointless because I’m frustrated and angry.

This is how I lose entire days.

Complexities

Termsandconditions2

I’m probably just overly sensitive, maybe I’ve caught a case of Luditius. Maybe it’s just a case of all this technology crap isn’t “neat” anymore. Or maybe I’m just tired of feeling like I’m spending more time managing the shit in my life than living my life.

I keep getting panic messages from various entities. I no sooner sort out what the hell they’re bitching about than another company is demanding attention with another poorly worded email

We cannot access your account <— Former Identity monitoring company

We were unable to make a payment <— Alarm company <—Considering a replacement to them now

You MUST opt in to our bonus points program <— Credit card company 

It is MANDATORY that you login to your account to accept our new terms and conditions <— Bank

It is necessary for you to update your contact information IMMEDIATELY <— Former Bank

Termsandconditions3

Uhhh since when do the companies that work for me have the right to give me orders?  I don’t recall any part of their agreements, amended or not, that said I was subservient to them.

Last I checked… I wasn’t getting anything from these institutions but a bill. And they really should know, I don’t respond well to ORDERS.

(That’s the reason I didn’t join the military. I know that the military would probably have provided me with an interesting and rewarding career and many career choices after I was out of the military. But I also knew that I reacted very poorly to people barking orders at me. So recognizing and accepting that personality flaw, I didn’t join and I’ve always tried to support our troops in other ways.)

Maybe I’m just getting old.

Privacy Policy

For years, I’ve been tying to simplify my life. I’ve been trying to reduce the complexities that I had to deal with in my personal life, because I had so many complexities in my professional life.

It’s a losing battle.

Unfortunately, I’m also caught on the horns of a dilemma.

Privacy

On the one hand, I like the convenience much of our technology provides. On the other hand I don’t like the loss of privacy, and freedom our technology apparently demands.

Lately wherever and whenever possible, I’ve just been closing accounts with demanding vendors.

If they’ve asked, I’ve told them I don’t work for them, and their imperious tone implied that they thought otherwise. Often these folks try to blame the government. They claim that government regulations make it necessary to get my agreement to new terms and conditions.

Terms and Conditions

Okay, so why are they constantly amending their terms and conditions in the first place? For that question, these people have no answer. I however do have an answer…

Goodbye.

It’s about this time that they realize I’m serious. Then the customer service (laughable term) agent halfheartedly starts trying to sell me on their service but, by this time It’s far too late because I’m done.

I used to see this “accept our terms” crap, mostly with banks. Now I’m noticing it with services like my cell phone provider, utilities and even Identity theft monitoring services. (Necessary because of the Anthem data breach and of course the three previous employers whose employee databases were hacked, lost, or stolen.) I find it hard to believe that all of these people are amending their agreements at the behest of the government. Then again our government does seem to have its diseased tendrils in every aspect of our lives, so maybe it’s possible.

It does make me think twice about every interaction with any corporation I have.

Part of my Fugue is this time of year.

I guess lots of new laws and regs go into effect in July. “Happy Independence Day… NOW BEND OVER.” 

Another part of my mood is a recent encounter with the UltraViolet Customer Care Team.

UltraViloet Logo

For those of you who don’t know, UltraViolet is a cloud based video streaming service associated with several movie studios. They’re supposed to be competing with iTunes. They were horribly late to market and almost anyone with an Apple device iPod, iPhone, iPad, AppleTV or Mac had already begun building a video library on iTunes by the time UltraViolet rolled out their first title. Since that time it’s been a VHS vs Beta kind of thing and UltraViolet offers no compelling advantage for me.  I have a rather significant investment in iTunes music and movies.

If I purchase a BluRay disc of a movie, I’ll look for a digital version of the movie too. Typically there will be an iTunes redemption code and an Ultraviolet code. Recently I’ve seen a situation where the code was the same and all you had to do was choose your preferred delivery format.

VUDU

The other day, I bought a copy of “American Sniper” and at a glance saw that there was a DVD copy, the BlueRay copy and a digital copy. I should have looked closer because the digital copy was UltraViolet only. Grrrrr.   “American Sniper” is available on iTunes so I saw the words “Digital Copy” and figured we were good to go.  Once I realized my error, I wrote to UltraViolet and explained that I didn’t want to have yet another online account to manage. I asked if it would be possible to trade this redemption code in for one that worked on iTunes.

They said they were sorry but no. Then they suggested I create an UltraViolet account, and then create something called a flixster, or cinema now, or VUDU account and that one or more of these, I could log into using my Facebook account. Then after spattering my credentials and God only knows how much personal information around the internet, I could play the movie on my iPhone or iPad or computer. Apparently, AMAZINGLY… I could even use my iPad to connect to my AppleTV so I could use my big screen tv but it would only be in stereo not surround sound.

Voodo

Ahem… So what part of “I don’t want to create another online account,” didn’t they understand and how is creating one or more accounts satisfying my stated requirement? FAIL!  

I ripped and converted the DVD to a digital copy myself. Technically I suppose it’s illegal but you know what? The hell with them! I wanted the digital copy solely for my personal use anyway. 


I suppose I’m making the calculation; cost vs convenience.

I’m questioning the hidden costs we pay for the convenience. As I get older, I’m not willing to pay the price.  This no doubt means that I’m going to be shoved aside like the old folks that couldn’t program their VCRs. (If you don’t know what a VCR is, Google it.) I’m probably tilting at windmills too. 

Oldman

Embracing my new crotchety old man role, I’ve discovered a new pastime.

The next time you’re bored, pick a utility who has a customer web portal that you’ve used. Call them up & tell them you want them to delete your web credentials because you don’t want to use their portal anymore and you don’t want the account credentials active, since you’re worried about online security and ID theft.

I’ll bet you that you’ll get transferred to a few different people and in the end, you’ll not be able to actually delete yourself without closing the account entirely. It’s funny as hell trying to get the “helpful” children to understand what you want.

I keep score by how many people I speak with, my personal best thus far is 8 people.

After all that, the best solution they came up with was turn off my power, close the account, and open a new account. But the power would be off for a day or so.  The other alternative was to leave web account open and create a really hard password. 

In my case, since I don’t want to turn off my power, the best I can do is create a password that Beelzebub couldn’t figure out.

I’m reminded of the song Hotel California.

I’m not ready to check out… But I’m enjoying working the little smart asses nerves.

Technology is such a %^##&!

Satellite Dish

First of all let me start by saying;

Under no circumstances should you consider HughesNet satellite services.

When we signed up for HughesNet it was awesome, we were pleased and totally happy to get rid of Verizon.

We were so pleased that after the first month we upgraded our service. 

BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ, Danger “Will Robinson”, WARNING, WARNING, “Antimatter containment failing, Warp Core explosion will occur in 3 seconds”

HugesNet Dish

And that’s when it went to hell.

We opted for the super duper premium plan, the fastest, bestest, razzle dazzle plan they offered. Which still cost less than what we’d been paying the bastards over at Verizon.  

Unfortunately, this move resulted in a degradation of the service to almost total un-usability instead of an improvement.

One of the things you don’t consider when you think about communication satellites is that the satellite is essentially a reflector (That’s seriously inaccurate but for the purposes of illustrating this point, it will do.  For those of you that might not remember… Radio, & Microwave is all part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The practical upshot of this is that a lot of stuff in the EM spectrum acts like just like the flashlight you played with as a kid in your backyard.

Picture a flashlight pointing at the sky, in say, New York. If you wanted that light to fall in Los Angeles you could put a mirror in orbit and then reflect the beam down onto Los Angeles. It’s just a big triangle. But if you have heavy storms or cloud cover over either the source, the destination, or both, then the light falling in Los Angeles is likely to be obstructed or dim.

EMSPectrum

When the same model is applied to satellite service it’s easy to see why there will be good days and bad days. Satellite Internet has the added problem that all data requests are being sent from a little dish to the satellite, then being bounced back down to the HughesNet station, then put out on the internet, then the requested data is returned along the same path.

After explaining all of this to the other half and that we should expect that sometimes there will be transient problems. The other half said, “Oh that makes sense.” Which is why when we started noticing that the service was slower than it had been, we looked at the weather reports across the midwest saw all the storms and said, “meh,” it’ll pass. 

It wasn’t until later when we noticed things like our data allocation being chewed up when we weren’t home, that I started the investigation.  At first I thought someone had managed to compromise our WiFi password. No problem, I changed it to something a bit tougher. Now it’s a stone bitch to enter on some of our devices. 

Answers

After running through every single possibility and accounting for all devices on our network. I concluded that something else was going on. 

Even when we’d purposefully disconnected the satellite box from the rest of our network backbone and left the house, we still saw our network allocation disappearing, thats when we started asking questions.

The answers we got from HugheNet were not acceptable. 

To date we’ve been told:

Router

“Your router is always transmitting data to our network.” (Uh not really, a router doesn’t work that way. It may check daily for software updates but it’s not sucking up gigabytes of data by itself.)

“You should only have your computer connected directly to our satellite box.” (Oh?? Then why do all your commercials show families with their tablets and computers and games? That’s more than one device, would you care to walk us through the configuration???)

“Too many people are using the service right now.” (Really? So you’ve oversold your service to the detriment of all, instead of telling folks there’s a waiting list, while you increased service capacity?)

“We’ve been having problems with the “super duper premium plan, the fastest, bestest, razzle dazzle plan” (Then why did you allow us or anyone else to change to that plan knowing that it wasn’t working properly? And why when you’ve changed us back are we still having problems?)

The sound of silence, then suddenly, we got a month free. Even then the system is running the monthly allocation of data down in a matter of days.  They claim they’ve got us in a two year contract. I contend that because the service is not working properly, and is not functional for common activities that they advertise their service is fit for, like:

Netflix

Streaming media such as Netfllix, Hulu, Apple TV rentals, etc

Accessing the management console of my domain

Email with graphics such as family photos, not downloading or taking hours to download.

Constant disruptions to email retrieval

Web pages that are being apparently blocked.

That their two year contract is toilet paper.  

They’re in breach as they are not providing the services they’ve promised to provide.  No matter. The other half is dealing with it.  I figure at some point there’s going to be an attorney letter and HugheNet will be out here removing their dish from our roof. But I’m staying the hell out of it.

For right now I’m being a good little network technician and connecting or disconnecting the satellite from our network as requested, because I’m over it.  I’m sick of technology or maintenance of technology becoming all consuming. My internal shit is working just fine.

I’ve written and posted this blog as a warning  and follow-up to a previous post about the conversion to satellite. Bottom line…

DON’T go HughesNet.

As an aside, since the satellite connection has become so wonky I’m using my phone hotspot more often than ever before.

iphonehotspotscreen

It’s a little bit of a pain in the ass, but when I want email or web access I just connect that way.  Most of the time the one bar of 4G signal on my phone is faster than the satellite. So I’m running in “Burst” mode. I’ll queue up stuff and transmit it when I connect my computer to the internet via my phone. 

It’s interesting because I’m spending less time mindlessly surfing the internet. I’m not reading as much of the news and generally I’m happier. Oh there are things I’m reading that are mindboggling and I’ve got a lot to say about them but reading these pieces on my phone somehow diminishes the likelihood that I’ll write about them.

Xbox Live Gold – Your time is past!

Xbox 360

I have an Xbox 360. I even like most of the games. I don’t play a lot and I almost never these days play with other folks online.

I enjoyed playing online when a bunch of guys I worked with would play pretty much every night. I don’t really like playing an online game with a bunch of people I don’t know.

Since Microsoft kinda screwed me with their damn “buy our credits” then converted those credits back to cash, then wouldn’t let me spend the cash that I had on account the way I wanted to spend that cash. I gave it some serious thought and decided I didn’t need to have an Xbox Live Gold thingy.

Xbox One

So bye bye!

Then I was looking at something else about the game consoles, and noticed something very interesting. PlayStation apparently doesn’t charge it’s users to have an account that provides those users the ability to spend money on sony products, services, and games.

Humm isn’t that interesting…

I have a number of xbox games. Many do not have PS4 equivalents but many more seem to be available on the PlayStation. Even the Xbox One until recently couldn’t… (more like wouldn’t) play the older Xbox 360 games. So if you wanted to upgrade your console there was no compelling reason to stick with Microsoft.

Xbox Live Gold

You know, I’ve got a BluRay player that’s dying I wonder if it makes sense to just replace that unit with a PlayStation 4.

When I cancelled the auto renewal of the Xbox Live Gold account @ a cost of $69 per year, Microsoft’s web site asked me why. I clicked the little button next to an answer like Not getting value based on the amount of play. I wonder if they’re listening or are they still thinking their outdated paradigm will give them more revenue?

I’ve notice that some of my friends are using Xbox One. I’ve noticed a more significant absence of my friends from the Microsoft gaming platform in its entirety.

I know most of those guys have PS4s too.

PlayStation4

I think they’re simply playing games on a system that’s at least equal if not superior to the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, where the cost of the games is the same and the long term cost is lower. If you’re like me and only play once a week or so you’d be better off with a free system, or a pay as you go kind of subscription. A lot of the guys are in the same situation.

It’s time for Microsoft to revisit the whole situation and remember that the gamers aren’t just cash cows.