Fasinating how draining Twitter is…

At first it’s interesting. There’s a stream of “new” data and ideas.

You interact because some people are funny, and if you’re lonely you’re reaching out to other humans, trying to connect.

There are positive connections but generally they’re temporary. When they go away as they inevitably do, it hurts in a way. It’s not a major hurt but suddenly you’re unimportant in someone else’s life and you wonder if / what you did wrong that made them go away. What changed between this week and last week? Are they just busy, or did they find someone more interesting? With the possibility of thousands of followers all interacting or attempting to interact daily or hourly if you fall of the edge of the map it usually goes unnoticed.

This has the potential to make any loneliness a person may feel, much sharper. 

Some people will move on without paying much attention, after all, there are literally thousands of other people. Some people won’t notice, and others, those with few followers may be devastated.

Everyone is clamoring for attention “Pick Me, See Me, Talk to me”, and yet the satisfaction provided is not sustaining.

In my observations of the “Twitterverse” I’ve started to understand this and noticed a few other things too. 

Twitter has a lot of really shitty, stupid, and narcissistic people. I can only imagine what TikTok or other platforms are like.

For someone like me, seeing that level of stupid or meanness is super depressing. This is especially true when the Twitter Stream is like a broken sewer pipe of shit. It wouldn’t take me long based on a raw Twitter feed to decide that humanity needed to be nuked.

Even if Twitter represented only a fractional part of humanity, it’s pretty clear the species is doomed. Dropping nukes might be a mercy.

The fact that it’s monetized and you can apparently make reasonable money using Twitter, in some cases brings out the absolute worst in people.

The parody accounts are sometimes funny but in other cases are even more depressing because sometimes you’re transfixed by the sheer insanity. You’d never normally watch some of the shit, but it’s like watching an accident, you can’t look away. Then you have to try to unsee what you saw and are depressed about being pulled into it in the first place.

The “Free Energy” Twitter accounts are really depressing for someone like me. Time and time again, the “free energy” person has “figured out” how to make an electric motor.  Something that’s been known for 200 years or so. However, because apparently Science isn’t being taught in school anymore, these people think they’ve got something new. 

All the free energy people succeed in demonstrating is that a rather substantial part of humanity isn’t more than two steps away from seeking out an old crone to “cast the bones” about next years harvest.

That’s really depressing!

So much potential wasted, so many petty people, so much ignorance.

Much of which could be addressed and improved if sites like Twitter and the internet in general weren’t intellectual wastelands.

How many African American fights do I need to see happen in a fast food joint? How many weaves need to be snatched off a fat chicks head before any shame is felt?

Twitter and sites like it pander to the lowest common denominator. In doing so, they drag the rest of us down into the gutter.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Twitter is not healthy, not even a little bit.

I rather think that cigarette smoking is a healthier pursuit. 

I’m speaking of Twitter because I long ago gave up on FaceBook and all the rest. I have a twitter account and I’m considering deleting it. This is actually the second twitter account I’ve had. I’d forgotten why I deleted the first one. Now that I remember, do I delete this one too, or should I simply stop using it then check in only when someone sends me something from Twitter.

Yes, I know Twitter is called X now, but typing “X” in sentences play hell with auto correct and spelling subroutines.

After Years (more than a decade) T-Mobile & I end the relationship in a shitty way

T-Mobile logo pink.I transferred my number to another carrier.

T-Mobile acts these days lot more like the shitshow formerly known as SPRINT.

The relationship came to an end when one of TMobile’s representatives said, “The Plan is the plan” 

She was explaining to me that TMobile was still going to bill me $75, a full month of service, which also included service for my phone line, (cancelled on 5/31) when I was pulling the plug on the first of the month.

What’s really annoying is that I was just auto-billed my monthly $75, 3 days ago. I’d have thought that any services would be prorated.

I asked the representative if the billing was pre or post paid.

The little foreign girl didn’t seem to understand what I was asking and just repeated 

“The Plan is the Plan”

As if that answered my question or concern about their billing practices.

WOW!!!!

Sprint Corp 742392705.This by the way is exactly how I felt when I finally terminated my relationship with SPRINT long distance years ago. I remember the same sort of billing bullshit and that is exactly why I avoided SPRINT as a mobile phone provider.

It’s just bad business practices and the corporate heads simply expect you to swallow it.

My new carrier is based in Georgia and their customer service folks are all American. T-Mobile’s customer service is at least partially out outside the country.

Worst case scenario I’m being billed the equivalent of Alimony for breaking up with T-Mobile. Thankfully it’s only one month.

Depending on what they do, I may or may not report their behavior to the FCC and Better Business bureau.

At this point, I could see putting T-Mobile on the “Avoid at all Costs” list. 

Recently, I’ve been wondering, am I the only person noticing that customer service is getting worse and worse?

Porting gone wrong!

Well that was an EPIC Fail!

I decided that I wanted to get a cheaper cellular plan. I’ve been with T-mobile for years and well, recently there have been some issues that have put me off on them.

$80 a month seems excessive even though I have multiple devices.

I’m also less and less impressed with their customer service.

Anyway, I found a plan, that was probably going to be workable and signed up. After an hour or two I got a notification on my phone that a new esim was available for installation.

That’s where it all went to hell!

I wanted to keep my phone number so there was supposed to be what they call a port of the old number to the new carrier. After a really long time I got a message saying that the esim activation failed.

Immediately after that I got a message from TMobile saying that there had been changes to my account and it appears that they deleted my phone number from their systems and in the process they took away my access to the account that still has my watch and iPad connected. 

Oh and my phone can no longer make or receive phone calls. Since this is my only voice line it leaves me in an interesting situation. I can’t call customer service to ask for them to help me out.

Don’t laugh! IT’S NOT FUNNY!!!!

(Okay, yes it is kind of funny.)

So then I write the new carrier an email and explain that something has gone horribly wrong. I’m still waiting for an answer.

I’ve also found that I cannot log into the new carrier’s web site as I was told I could do. So something else has gone terribly awry. 

I will get all of this sorted out eventually.

What remains to be seen is will I still have my phone number or will there be a new number?

There is a temptation to just not have a phone number at all. I can still dial 911 from my phone. Is that all I need?

I’ve been looking into getting phone service of any kind so that I can call the new carrier. I thought, “Hey maybe I can just purchase a new plan with a new number from them, then use that number to call custom support to clear up the first problem, then cancel the plan with the new number. 

I was thinking that would make everything contained in just one phone call. 

They won’t allow me to do that. Probably something to do with the pending stuff that isn’t working in their system. 

I’m thinking that I’m going to have to buy a burner phone or at least a burner esim to get voice communications up & running again.

Thus far I’m only mildly annoyed and / or amused.

This is why I was a good Software QA person. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong on my stuff.

I wonder if VOIP is an option. I’ve got 1GB fiber. Ughhh Google Voice! I hate Google.

Anyway, I thought I’d send up this flare to let anyone who might have been trying to call me the 1 or 2 folks that is, That I’m alive and well and just having some technical difficulties.


Well it only took 4.5 hours!

I now have my phone working again and My Apple Watch is online too. Oh and I’m able to log into the customer portal.

I’m now using the new carrier to kill the rest of Tmobile

Then I need to figure out how to wipe the google talk account. But I’m wondering if it might not be a good idea to keep it just in the event that I end up in a similar situation in the future.


The devil is in the details isn’t it?

Voice mail
SMS
MMS

I haven’t had to set up these things for years! I mean decades. Migrating phones on the same carrier is pretty dang seamless in the Apple Ecosystem. So easy that you can forget the little things completely.

Since I haven’t switched carriers in a very very long time, I’d forgotten about all the settings that I’d customized. 

It’s taken me a while and I hope that my voicemail is set up correctly now! Boy, the setup is very different than I remember.