So Sirius & I are done.

I’ve had  Sirius for more than a decade.

Originally, they were pretty cool and the variety of programming was a delight to listen to.

Then slowly things changed. The “News” Stations got more and more left and I just stopped enjoying the spin that was on everything.

I tried the conservative stations, and they were mostly people screaming all the time.

I settled on the Spa Channel and enjoyed it. It was pretty much the only channel I listened to. LA Freeway traffic is stressful and that channel seemed to be mellow all the time.  Except when Sirius decided to stop playing Spa and play something they thought was important. A George Michael week? Ugh!

As to many of their other stations, I simply wasn’t interested. I don’t like RAP. I couldn’t stand their ideas of a nice Rock & Roll set. Talk radio was like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard, and many of their other “Themed” stations were either annoying or completely mis-named.  No matter what, I always ended up on the Spa channel, and after a while, I stopped even checking out the other stations.

I’d purchased a lifetime subscription for my 1 Series and enjoyed never having to think about the Spa channel being on if I wanted it.

When the car was totaled in 2017 Sirius told me that I couldn’t have the subscription transferred to another car. (More on that later.) 

I went ahead and activated Sirius in the new car, and when I changed to the 440 I transferred that subscription. 

That transfer process was a nightmare and I really thought about pulling the plug more than once during that call.

Late in December 2020, I got an email saying that there was a class action lawsuit regarding Sirius and their lifetime subscriptions. With all the chaos around the election, my life, being unemployed, and oh yeah, my health insurance being cancelled. I never got back to the Sirius email. There is, after all only so much time you can spend on the damn phone before you’re over it!

What I didn’t notice was that the deadline to respond was Jan 12th 2021. Somehow I thought it as the end of January… I missed the deadline of Jan 12th. DAMNIT!

But I got to thinking about the Sirius subscription. 

With fingers crossed, I went to their site and OMG! My id and password actually worked. 

(This was surprising since the last few times I’d tried to log on, I was met with password and user ID issues.  These issues persisted even after multiple password resets. This is part of what made my last phone call to Sirius such a pain in the butt. Well, that and the fact that like so many companies they’ve put their call center in the Philippines so with a static filled connection and sing song English. Having a conversation is a challenge.)

Once I was logged into the page I saw the last bill which looked normal. Then I happened to notice that Sirius had changed the billing cycle from 1 year to quarterly. 

They were clever… They kept the amount the same but increased their profit X 3 with the quarterly billing. Great way to rip off your customers Sirius! 

Obviously, they were counting on the amount being familiar, and people’s short term memory being completely overloaded to hide what they’d done.

Now I’m very interested!

I call their customer service number, (conveniently hidden 3 menu items deep, with a warning popup that said, “Beware of Tiger!”

I waited on hold after dealing with the genuine people emulator call routing AI.  After a time, I was connected to a cheerful lady in the Philippines and asked her what gives?

I’m told that I was on some kind of promotion and that this reflected the end of the promotion. Uh Huh… When did the billing cycle change?  No answer. Uh Huh. 

Then I asked about putting my lifetime membership back in place which is what the lawsuit provides for. 

I get a bullshit line about that. In 2017 they claim they weren’t allowing lifetime subscriptions to be moved. I told the little lady I knew that, but that the lawsuit says they will now.  She doesn’t know about that.

She offered to give me a promotional special for a year on the two radios (Portable & Car) of $200. I tell her that since I only listen to one channel it’s still not worth it. And that Apple CarPlay works just fine in my car meaning I don’t have to have Sirius and that I have greater control over the music I want to hear.

She asked if I’d let her check another promotion.  I say sure why not?  She comes back and tells me that I have have both radios for $120 a year.

I think about it, and decide that I just want to not have a subscription at all. I tell her that and that I want the subscription to terminate as of the March 1st billing cycle. She fiddles around a bit more and tells me that she’s sorry she couldn’t keep a valued customer like me. I’m Like Whatever… I obviously wasn’t all that valued a customer.

So come March 1 2021 for the first time in many many years I won’t have Sirius.  Unless of course the court decides I can have my lifetime membership transferred. In that case, I’m calling them back with the case docket number in hand and demanding they re-instate the account.

In reality, I’d pay $60 a year for Sirius in the car. But now it’s a matter of principal.

I’ve said it before, If companies would just provide the service they’ve contracted to provide at a fair price, and not screw around with the billing because they think they can get away with it, they’d have a lot more customers and those customers would be a lot more loyal and happy.

On the plus side, It’s one less online account for me to fart around with.


Update 1/22/2020

I got one of those little “How did we do” surveys fromSiriusXM

When I answered that I was not satisfied, the survey opened a tex block where I could freely type. I do hope that someone who reads this is able to understand the words written on the page. I’m not hopeful. There’s that old adage, if you don’t want to know the truth… Don’t ask the question.

I never got an answer as to who authorized or when they authorized a change to quarterly billing. 

I was told that I couldn’t reactivate that lifetime subscription on my new vehicle because the transfer wasn’t available in 2017,  regardless of the fact that I had a lifetime subscription, and there is currently a class action lawsuit pending about not allowing people transfer those subscriptions to new vehicles. 

Then when I said that for the 2 stations that I listen to (1 in my car and the other on a portable radio in the house) wasn’t worth $423 a year and that I wanted to cancel the account, I’m told that suddenly there’s a discount of 50% and when that wasn’t good enough the yearly cost was reduced again. 

Frankly, if you’d offered your service for a fair price in the first place and been upfront about your billing practices I’d still be a customer. 

However, given that you won’t let me transfer my former lifetime subscription and apparently have no trouble charging outrageous fees for your service it makes me question your business model.

I have Apple CarPlay in my vehicle which works just fine. I have Apple music and can use it throughout my home on all my devices. This ability makes your service redundant and excessively expensive.

For many years now, the few times I’ve called your customer service department it is difficult to understand the representative. In part due to the accent but the greatest part of the problem is static on the line or background noise in the call center’s environment.

The young lady I spoke with, to her credit tried to do the best she could and aside from the noise she was well spoken. My dissatisfaction is in NO WAY with her. 

My dissatisfaction is with SiriusXM’s corporate policies and practices. 

My feeling now is that I will not be purchasing a vehicle where I pay for the SiriusXM option installed. I will also not be turning on the SiriusXM option if it is supplied with a vehicle.

I will continue to seek out Apple CarPlay or some similar option.

I can only imagine that as your satellites age, and you continue to alienate customers that you will find it harder and harder to maintain service. Perhaps that is a good thing and your company will go the way of the dodo.

Enough Already!

That’s it! Let’s take all social media platforms down! Yeah I said it!

All podcasts, Twitter, FaceBook, Gab, and all the rest!

I’m sick of seeing yet another self righteous pundit, news organization, or whoever the hell else, BITCHING about people espousing views that they don’t agree with. We’re supposed to be a free country, we’re supposed to have freedom of speech, we’re supposed to respect people whose views are different from our own. RIGHT?

Apparently NOT!

The latest two examples of violation of free speech is this article in Breitbart. Followed by this little gem from The Washington Post.

The Breitbart piece talks about the AP, yeah, you read that right… The Associated Press making the case that Podcasts should be de-platformed due to “incitement” on these podcasts.

The Washington Post article describes Apple being sued in federal court to force Apple to de-platform Telegram. Telegram, don’t ya know is where all the Parler users went after finding out that Parler was going to be screwed over by Amazon Web Services.

Here’s a idea. Shut it all down. Our phone batteries would last longer.

That would have the benefit of keeping all the village idiots in their own villages. If you stop them from talking to each other, you’ll prevent them from gathering steam. You might also have a side benefit that if they never meet, we don’t have to worry about an every increasing number of idiots that we’ll have to put up with and take care of.

Then we have this brilliant Senior News analyst from CNN (Communist News Network) who’s trying to float a balloon about censoring OAN & Newsmax.

Both of which appear to be conservative oriented news broadcasters. I’ve not watched either of them, because by the time I learned about them, I was too disgusted by the way the country was heading after the 2020 election to give a rancid fuck.

This is so similar to the way that the NAZI party came to power I can’t stand it. If they actually taught history in schools today and didn’t sanitize the brutality of various regimes people would know this.

First control the narrative, then control the media, then censor anyone with differing beliefs, cast everyone who doesn’t agree with you as anti-(insert the noun de jour) BLM, ANTIFA, Left, Progressive, Equality, Woman, blah, blah, blah. Then take over the country. Next build the camps, then try the re-education, and finally kill EVERYONE!

But… humanity appears doomed to repeat the horrors of the past.

A couple thousand years from now, in a barren wasteland some guy will find a TESLA buried in the sand. People will oooh and ahhh and decide it’s from Aliens. One curious person in the group will recognize that it was made by humans, be curious about how we fell so far, and the whole process of a civilization crawling out of the muck will start over.

Maybe they’ll get it right the next time.

The fall of America to communism or socialism won’t destroy all civilization. But the pervasive backwards thinking cult of leftism in the world just might.

Some days I’m just too dark.

mockingtodo20201014.pngThere it is, the “Perky” reminder in my ToDo list saying that I should write something at least in my blog.

It’s overdue too.

Go on you little bastard, mock me!

I’ve tried a couple of different tangents. Trouble is, every time I try to put something on paper it takes a path leading straight to the bowels of hell.

I suppose I’m sick of everything! Although the salacious pictures of Hunter Biden do pique my interest. I’m curious about that 12 minute video… 

By nature, I’m a voyeur so my prurient interest shouldn’t be surprising to anyone.  

Way back in the day I was entirely fascinated by a grainy poor quality video of a 3 way staring a young actor (now famous) that made the rounds on videotape. Even today, the only porn that I can not look away from is of the home grown amateur variety. Much of today’s stylish, scripted, professional porn has become “ho hum” and unfortunately predictable. But the lighting is always awesome!

Along those same lines I’m curious to know what Hunter’s email, video, and pictorial evidence will do to his father’s election chances. 

Oddly enough, I don’t think it will matter one bit.

Joe Biden is under investigation in the Ukraine, has been accused of sexual harassment by Tara Reed, has been caught in at least three other lies where what he claimed was not in fact what was recorded in the public record, and now if the emails found on this computer hard drive are proven to be real he’ll be literally at the center of another scandal.

It won’t matter. He’ll never be subpoenaed, he’ll never be brought to trial, he’ll never answer for any of it.

Hence the blog takes dark turn. Any Republican politician would have already issued the requisite humble apology and been forced to resign. Captains of industry have been destroyed for less. We have police chiefs forced to resign for something their wife tweeted.

Against this backdrop of cancel culture and outrage how can Joe Biden still be a viable candidate? What happened to equality?

If specific targets (Conservatives) can be “Canceled” for these offenses, then everyone can and should be “Canceled” for similar offenses.

There is the crux of it for me. Patent, (dare I say systemic,) inequality. 

Either we are all bound by the same standards, rules, and laws, or none of us are.

If none of us are bound by these things, then why am I wearing a mask in public, not shopping in person, obeying stay at home orders, not looting, or any of the rest of it.

We already have anarchy. I should be out enjoying myself!

See, that’s why you’ll see me skip a few days blogging. It’s actually for your protection…

We’re all in this together!

Huh, First time I’ve seen that in a while.

About three months ago, I replaced the hard drive in the other half’s computer. I fought with the system to get a functional operating system on the drive but was finally successful and the other half’s computer was suddenly faster and stable.

I thought, “Cool,” and assumed that I wouldn’t have to deal with computer issues for a while. 

Think again! 

This morning, the other half was sitting there in front of the computer with a very puzzled expression. Innocently, I asked, “what’s wrong?”  There are times when you shouldn’t ask questions!

The other half said they’d tried to use the computer just now and were presented with a white screen and that the computer seemed very warm to the touch. I figured it was nothing, a simple hard reset would bring everything back up and then I could go back to beating my head against the wall in the heinous job search.

This was not to be, no amount of cajoling (a.k.a. swearing), incantations, or holding keys down during the boot up process gives me anything but the white screen. I can’t even get to the built-in diagnostics of the system and those are supposed to be in ROM and therefore independent of the hard disk. In other words, I’m wondering if the computer itself is dead because I should be able to get to something that would aid me in the diagnosis of the problem.

Generic SSDAn hour later I’m holding the nifty new SSD drive in my hand, wondering why it “sings” when I try to mount it on my computer. This is a solid state device… There are no moving parts and yet when I plug it in to my system the device very clearly makes a high pitched sound.

At the same time, the device refuses to identify itself to my computer at all. Placing the old hard drive in the other half’s  computer confirms that there is nothing wrong with the computer itself and in fact the machine boots happily.

I contact the manufacturer of the SSD and after a brief discussion am directed to please box up the drive for replacement.  The person I was speaking with (an American) recognized a kindred spirit and was pretty forthcoming. Instead of leading me through all sorts of useless diagnostics (which I’d already done) they responded to my question, “Did I miss anything,” with a laugh and said not that they could tell. 

It was refreshing to not have endless apologies and kow-towing. This was two professionals having a technical discussion about a piece of hardware that had died during what we used to call the infant mortality period. They weren’t defensive and I wasn’t angry sometimes shit like this just happens. It’s inconvenient on both sides but it’s reality and nothing is going to change that reality.

A new drive should arrive on Monday. 

Aside from a slightly long wait on hold dealing with the company was a real pleasure. The long hold time was due to lots of people upgrading their computers who probably shouldn’t have been inside their machines in the first place.  Apparently, a lot of “average” people failed kindergarten blocks and are unable to correctly put oddly shaped plugs into equally oddly shaped sockets. The tech & I had a bit of a laugh over that.

Now, the only problem is getting the OS back on the new drive… 

I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it!

Interesting

I’ve lived in this area for almost 30 years.

During that time I’ve seen a variety of wild life including snakes from time to time. Prior to this year I’ve seen only one rattlesnake.

This year I’ve seen two in the neighborhood. The first one was in my yard, unfortunately I don’t have a very good photo of it.

Yesterday, I heard some girls screaming that there was a snake. They’re children so as an adult it’s on me to insure they’re not hurt and that they don’t antagonize a snake that could hurt them.

I’m thinking it’s a California King snake, or a Gopher Snake and the girls are just being girls. I was wrong.

The snake had crossed paths, or rather one of the girls had stepped over the snake and it rattled at her. By the time I got there the snake had moved to a defensible position and was alert but not aggressive.

The girls guardians showed up a couple of minutes later, then the discussion about killing the poor thing began.

Generally speaking I’m not in favor of killing creatures just because they happen to exist. As it turns out the “father” shared my general opinion.

What surprised me was the bloodlust of the little girls. They wanted it dead. It had done them no harm, it had warned them to stay away, and appeared to be waiting patiently for the hubbub to die down.

I imagine that it would have left the area of its own accord had it not been for all the humans around.

Probably, if the snake had not been positioned as it was, it would be dead now. The thing is, there was no clear way to strike at it with a shovel or ax that would insure an instant kill. Meaning that if we’d struck at it, we’d have probably just pissed it off and it would have struck at us.

We had a rattlesnake standoff. Myself and the other male were discussing the options when one of the little girls was just rabid about killing it. She kept saying, “Kill it, Kill it,” in an ever increasing volume. Without thinking I said, “If you want something dead that bad, maybe you should be the one prepared to kill it,” and gestured toward her with the trenching tool I was holding.

She suddenly got quiet. I don’t know what was going through her head. I hope that it was the realization that killing anything isn’t trivial. Even if it’s not your hand on the instrument of death. I doubt that’s what she thought, she probably wasn’t old enough to make that kind of connection.

Eventually, one of the neighbors remembered there was someone in town who would relocate snakes to another canyon (unpopulated) so we gave them a call. They weren’t available, but they hooked us up with a lady who was. Twenty minutes later, the snake was safely in a box and heading to a place where it wouldn’t have to deal vicious blood thirsty humans.

The experience left me thinking.

I’ve killed snakes that were an immediate threat. I felt bad about killing ’em but given the circumstances there was no choice.

I’ve killed other creatures and ate ’em, in that situation it was because I was hungry. Even fishing, you’re killing another creature, which means that there’s supposed to be a built in limit.

You kill what you need, you kill whatever it is quickly and humanely, you eat what you kill, and you don’t arbitrarily or wantonly kill more than you need for yourself or your family.

Most men I know subscribe to the same principals. But wait, males are supposed to be the vicious killers aren’t they?

Why then were the little girls and the adult women screeching for blood? Why was it that the males were willing to take a watchful caution?

Had it only been me and the other guy, we’d have probably let the snake go its way and we’d have watched it go back into the forest. Two predator species respecting each other.

Because of the presence of women, we were under pressure to do something, anything, even if what we did was going to make the situation worse.

It occurred to me that almost every conflict I’ve ever been a part of, or witnessed was driven by women. Either the males were trying to impress, or the women were demanding action.

I makes me wonder…

I can understand that women might be genetically predisposed to eliminate any possible threat to their young whether or not the threat is real.

I wonder if men on the other hand, because we’re stronger, and usually have been the ones to get our hands bloody, might have an inherent respect for life & death that goes unacknowledged. We learn early on, that killing is bloody and final. We understand that when we kill, we’ve removed something from the world, on some level we understand that once gone it’s gone forever.

Granted some men acquire a taste for killing but most men I know have a deep respect for life, and don’t take it lightly, or for granted.

It’s strange how simple events get me thinking.