Category: Things that make you say hmmm?

I sent my brother the link to this blog. For better or worse, now he’ll have the opportunity to read some of my thoughts and get to know me in a very different way.

Ive been considering just how comfortable I felt about my family seeing me as I sort out my thoughts and express myself.

My hesitation was in sharing some elements of myself. Then I realized that I’m sharing myself via this blog with potentially the whole fucking world so what’s the difference?

Well… the difference is that via the blog, I have a measure of anonymity.

My brother knows me, he’s eaten at my house, I’ve spent time at his place (not nearly enough). He is potentially going to be able to read details of my most intimate behaviors.

That’s where it gets personal and scary, I was worried about one of the most important people in my life thinking less of me.

In all fairness to him, he’s fucking cool. I don’t think he’s  going to have a problem seeing me as I am.

But Hell! We were raised in different households, we’ve never even changed clothes in the same room together. I know more details of the bodies of guys at the gym than I do my own brother.

As we grew to adulthood we spent very little time together, and as men even less. We’re like intimate strangers, we know a lot about our family, we have connections.  Yet  there’s a distance, I love him dearly but sometimes don’t think we KNOW each other.

So I’m going to be myself regardless of my brother reading this. I’m going to talk about the stuff that goes through my head and not worry about it. My Brother deserves to know anything and everything about me.

I think my biggest fear is summed up in this question.

If we weren’t family, would we like each other and still be friends?

I’d like to think the answer is yes.

Looks like everyone I know is still here. Hummmm, It’s possible that I’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd.

The LA Traffic maps still show that traffic is insane. Either the Apocalypse event didn’t happen OR LA is full of people that got left behind.

Based on the evidence I’m guessing that Preacher Campings’ version of The Rapture did not happen.

I feel a little sorry for some of his followers.
There was a radio interview with a young couple who had budgeted their savings to this end date.

They had both quit their jobs to spent their last months passing out doomsday pamphlets.

I remember thinking, On the one hand, that’s commitment, on the other hand what are they going to do the day after doomsday?

While I’m not terribly religious in any traditional sense, I do feel sorry for people like this. These folks have had their faith essentially used against them, it must cause a terrible crises of faith.

I do hope that someone in the religious community is keeping an eye on Preacher Campings followers in the event that some of them try to resolve the conflict by suicide.

As to the end of the world?? I suppose that we’ll just have to wait for the 12/21/2012 expiration date.

If the Maya were right, the Summer of 2013 should be great!

Uncrowded beaches, post apocalyptic anarchy, people running around in animal skins, you know, all the stuff that we’ve seen for years in movies

Until then party on folks.

I’m a happy T-mobile Customer. But over the past 2 weeks I’ve been having dropped calls here at home. This is very strange and it wasn’t until this morning that I remembered why it seemed strangely familiar.
Let me step back a bit so that you see where I’m at with this.

I was a happy Cingular customer. I had a family plan, tons of roll-over minutes, great service (even here in the mountains), and a bill that I could budget around. In short life was good on the phone front.

Then AT&T bought Cingular and things continued along for a while so I was still a happy customer. However, as AT&T began absorbing the Cingular network, and integrating the two networks into one the service went to hell in pretty short order.

First there were problems with dead areas that hadn’t existed before.

Next there were people I simply couldn’t call using my cell phone (These were folks that were on the AT&T network).

These calls, when placed gave you a fast busy signal or that annoying bee de beep “The number you have dialed is incorrect please check the number and dial again“. But dialing the same number from a land line phone, or from another cell carrier got you a ring, and you were able to speak to the party you’d dialed.

Then there was my best friend, who until the day I left AT&T for T-Mobile, I couldn’t talk to for more than 8 minutes per call.

Yes folks, 8 minutes from the time the call was placed until the call was disconnected. You could set your watch by it. Funniest thing about this one is that He was also a Cingular -> AT&T conversion.

Through all of this, there were dropped calls, incomplete calls even calls where you reached someone but you’d been routed to a completely wrong number.

The best was me dialing someone in the 310 area code and actually getting someone in the 317 area code.

Yep I dialed a number in LA and got the same number in Indiana. Oh and before you jump to the conclusion that I’d misdialed, this is a friend of mine and he’s on speed dial. When I punched redial I got the buddy in LA.

AT&Ts response to all of this was everything from flat out denial that there was anything wrong to “there is something wrong with your phone“, to the attitude of “Clearly Mr Customer you don’t know how to use your phone.” All said in that lovely and almost unintelligible singsong accent we’ve all come to know and love, attached to someone that has no clue what we’re talking about.


Yes sir I understand your concern. Yes sir your phone isn’t working. Is the phone turned on? Yes sir I understand your concern. Have you used your phone before? You know you have to push the buttons to dial… Yes sir I understand your concern….. 90 minutes of that and you want to throw the phone against the wall and go back to smoke signals!

I know that I wasn’t alone. Thousands of people if not millions had to deal daily with the inconvenience and disappointment of having had Cingular which worked very well and then being saddled against their will, with what was and still is shitty service from AT&T.

I stayed with AT&T for several years after the merger. I had more roll-over minutes than god. I had an iPhone which I lost in a house fire. I replaced the iPhone with a Blackberry and was more or less satisfied.

Until I needed to make a change in my telephone plan and AT&T made 60% of my banked roll-over minutes disappear. And then AT&T told me “by the way, since you’ve changed your plan minutes you’re now subject to our new data plan rates too.”

The whole point of me changing the amount of plan minutes was that I wasn’t using as many per month and the roll-over minutes were accumulating at an insane rate.

I was trying to cut my expenditure on the cell phone bill and by the time all was said & done, AT&T had fucked me and actually shoved the monthly bill over $250.00 a month. When began the call to make the changes the bill was $199.00 and the ever so helpful scumbag in Bangalore or wherever just followed their script without actually mentioning what these changes were going to do, despite the fact that I told him what my purpose in calling was.

So after I got the first AT&T RAPE bill, I went shopping.

T-Mobile was selling a great plan and their phones worked much better than my AT&T shit.

40 minutes after I walked into a T-Mobile Store, I walked out with a shiny new 3G Slide, my same phone number, a reasonable bill, and an unlimited data plan. I even PAID the AT&T bastards a premium to exit their fucking contract.

Flash forward a year or so and AT&T is supposedly buying T-Mobile. WELL, FUCK ME Runnin!

However, that merger is a year and congressional hearings away. RIGHT?

So why then, am I suddenly having problems with my T-Mobile phone dropping calls? It just seems a little too familiar.

Makes me wonder just a bit…