Category Archives: Issues

iOS Newsstand

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On my way to Grand Rapids with Scott I decided to investigate the new Newsstand feature in iOS 5. I had downloaded three magazines, Comic Heroes, Men’s Fitness, and Mac Format. I opened Newsstand and started to look through the issues I downloaded. I was under the impression that I had at least a free sample.

Boy was I wrong! These “Free” issues were just stub-apps with more prices and a place to subscribe. This fails to reflect the way people usually buy magazines at brick and mortar stores. You can open up a magazine and browse before buying. Can’t do that in iOS!

So it’s a gyp. A bait-and-switch and now it’s tarnished what piddling interest I had in those aforementioned magazines. It’s also tarnished the Newsstand über-app as well. It’s really just a trap. It baits you with free and then thumbs its nose at you with a crass subscription ask or a expensive per-issue price.

It’s simple enough to ignore Newsstand completely now. I had piddling interest in magazines anyways. All the content, really good, fresh, relevant content is on Flipboard or Google Reader, or hell, even Safari! Better yet, those options have a great price tag, free.

Reflexive Response

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An hour or so ago Scott told me that a Marine Corps recruitment detachment went to a gay resource center somewhere in Nebraska.

I was immediately upset, sure I was going to hear about gay bashing, or some unfortunate gun-related injuries or fatalities. The first words I said after hearing Scott mention this was “Oh God, they’re hunting” and all I could think of were all the regular citizens about to be victimized by “The Military” out of control.

Turns out, they were just recruiting. After the end of DADT, there apparently wasn’t any ill intent.

I got to thinking about my response, that I assume that if the word “Military” or any of it’s synonyms are used, like any of the branch service names, that innocent citizens are at risk of being hurt or killed. My attitude towards the military is really close to my attitude about police. I have no say in the powers that society has bestowed upon them, but I really distrust both. While the police are a general nuisance, a kind of endurable pervasive threat, the military is somehow worse. Perhaps it’s because of what we ask these people to do for a living, hunt and kill others on our behalf, that when they come home, we can’t shake the feeling that their original mandate to kill hasn’t stopped.

I still really don’t understand why anyone who is gay or lesbian wants to serve in either structure, Police or Military. Why walk into such threat and general unpleasantness if you can help it? You know that they don’t like who and what you are, so why endure it if you don’t have to? The same reason you don’t walk into any southern baptist church on Sunday (technically any church, but I digress). Why expose yourself to risk if you don’t have to?

I think that these attitudes will stay with me, likely because I’ve culturally iconified military and police homophobia and bigotry to such an extent that I can’t think of them as anything but threats to my happiness and safety. It’s very similar to the homophobia, bigotry, and hate pouring out of religions. I wouldn’t be caught dead in spitting (or stoning) distance of a church, just as much as I’d avoid a military recruitment detail. You don’t leap the fence at the zoo to pet the lions, tigers, and bears!

I’m sure this entire post is going to upset the usual suspects who don’t like my attitude about the police, the military, or churches. To them, all I can say is a lifetime of menace has done a number on me, and other people who feel as I do. You may not like it, and that’s too bad. You can’t really undo thirty years of menace and fear just by repealing an unpleasant law. This is going to take a few generations to work itself out. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting…

New York Regents Diploma

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LiveJournal 10/9/2003 –

New York State is going to lower the standards for the NYS Regents Examination System because it’s “too hard”. I got my little Regents seal on my diploma after years of studying (easy to study when your a high school pariah) and I took my Chemistry Regents Exam after a night of violent sickness – took it in the nurses office with a giant jug of pedialyte to remain conscious and balanced – passed out 3 times during the exam BUT even still, I achieved a 93% on that exam. I know that the little sticker meant nothing to anyone but me since attending a SUNY school was a foregone conclusion for a New York State resident and you could attend any of those schools with what, at the time, they termed “A local diploma”. I still have it with me, my high school diploma – with my shiny gold-leaf seal, and I value it highly mostly because I had to suffer to get it. Now they are going to be handing out those seals left and right to kids not as bright or as well taught as I was (another benefit to attending a “farmers school in the boonies” was my teachers didn’t have any qualms about screaming at students or setting their desks on fire while they were properly chained to said desk while it burned… 

Just makes it cheaper and less shiny now… Education isn’t about fun, it’s about suffering… and learning all you can from that experience. I fear I might be getting a little older because I was just about to say “Kids, these days… arrrrg!” which is something my grandparents have said.

How Quaint!

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LiveJournal 7/16/2003 –

From CNN Money:

Deficits expected to reach $455B
White House acknowledges ballooning deficit and pledges for the first time to cut it in half.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House said on Tuesday the federal budget deficit would balloon to a record $455 billion this fiscal year after absorbing heavy costs from the war in Iraq, and then climb $20 billion higher in 2004, a presidential election year.

Terror Level Orange, Fear Level Bored

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LiveJournal 5/21/2003 –

The Department of Fatherland Homeland Security has raised our national terror alert status to the unrhymable Orange. I found this on salon.com: Department of Homeland Security officials initially provided few specific reasons for the alert, which will set in motion a series of security measures around the federal government. It also advises cities, states and businesses to take extra security measures. Now, what are these “extra security measures”? Are they in any way different from the same security measures already in place? And how should I react to my government telling me to fear, would it be plausible that by the DHS affirming a Terror Alert that they themselves are in some way engaged in an act of terrorizing the population? Does it really matter what level of risk we are currently at, couldn’t we just assume we’re always at risk and just carry about with our lives like we always have?

I never got my wish

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LiveJournal 4/6/2003 –

Well, surprise surprise surprise! It turns out that the US Military can’t find any of the much dreaded Weapons of Mass Destruction after all. So I can’t help but wonder why we are in Iraq? Oh yes, to free the people from their oppressive regime, so we can give them the same benefits of democracy that we’ve become accustomed to -=cough=-. The entire operation is starting to show it’s threadbare bits – why didn’t we just let the Iraqi people lead their own civil war or wait for their despotic leader to simply die of old age? First we beat the shit out of Afghanistan, now we’re bitch-slapping Iraq. I can’t but wonder what sandy oil-rich nation is next? Perhaps Saudi Arabia, they have a monarchy ripe for democracy, since Weapons of Mass Destruction is now a thinly veiled bid for popular re-election (er, re?) I can’t help but wonder what new excuse our proud and upright Misunderestimated Presidentiary will come up with next? We certainly have fallen off the beaten path when it comes to these wars:


Korea
Drugs
Illiteracy
Homelessness
Child Hunger
Terrorism

It’s definitely not manly to leave such wonderful opportunities for bloodshed unexplored Mr. Bush! I hate to state this of course, but wouldn’t the image of American and British troops flooding over your country while you were a small, impressionable little boy, watching your house and local hospital blow up because someone told someone who overheard it from someone else that there might be someone wearing black clothes somewhere in the vicinity of a city block from where you live – and that this psychological trauma, mixed with the notion that the United States needs to legislate Christian prayer during a time of war lead any small Iraqi boy to contact their nearest French or Jordanian weapons dealer, strap as much C4 as one can carry without tipping over and walk into something very fragile, like a fuel depot loaded with US Servicemen? Oh goodness no, our war for the “Hearts and Minds” of Iraq will be utter and complete I’m sure… I’m sure all the dead Iraqi fathers will be sure to tell their sons not to regard a white man in desert kahkis as someone to throw kerosene at… after all, dead fathers raise such balanced children. I just hope that the witless fool which is our esteemed President understands that while concentrating on his buff and raw masculinity in “Dealing with Saddam once and for all” that we’ve let all the other wars we need so very badly to identify us as Americans fall by the wayside and rot:


Kim Jong Il, case in point.

How many of your friends are hooked on something easily obtainable and dangerous?

Ask a random American to find two places on a globe: America and Iraq, then spin the globe and ask them to find China as quick as they can.

Our stunning Economic Boom has relieved us of the terror of unemployment and potential homelessness. The men and women walking around downtown with everything they possess in a shopping cart stolen from a supermarket are merely actors put on stage to remind people just how lucky we are to have such a caring and effective President when it comes to matters of Domestic Policy.

It’s been forever since a caring and well-educated Mother asked to trade her WIC and USDA food-stamp payments for Cigarettes while her svelt child looked on with pride and happiness.

By scarring the people of Iraq with the experience of War, we have saved them from the long drawn out agony of some sort of lengthy and dull diplomatic solution to the question of Weapons of Mass Destruction that, heh, might not really be there. I’m sure the proud and stalwart citizens of Iraq will have a good belly laugh about this whole thing once the US has established that we have won and that it is over Vietnam, and quite like the Vietnamese, welcome us with open arms and endeavor not to randomly explode busloads of Christian missonaries and the random US Embassy on accident.

Mr. Dubya Bush, YOU THE MAN!

I look forward to ANYONE ELSE in 2005! 🙂

Screws in the Past

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LiveJournal 3/5/2003 –

While reading the New York Times online, I came across an article relating to the upcoming war in Iraq, about how shocking Iraq may lead to a short war. This quote caught my eye: “He said disarming Iraq would define victory, not capturing or killing President Saddam Hussein.” Allright, so, simply disarming Iraq is what we are after, then is this a war or is it just mopping up after what we tried to do in 1991? Won’t this be just like a can of worms, sure, we can clip, nip, and tuck Saddam’s forces here and there because all of a sudden they threaten us with their WOMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction, which by the way is nearing complete hyphenation because it’s quickly becoming a cliche phrase) but wouldn’t that be rather silly? I mean, if we’re just after weapons then technically Iraq becomes a unwilling manufacturer of WOMD, selling their wares to us by trading expensive WOMD for aerial bombing? I get this intense feeling that we aren’t going to actually listen to anyone else, ie, the United Nations, but we’re going to forge ahead like the brainless oxen we are, missing out on dealing with the reason *why* Iraq makes WOMD and doesn’t want to play fair like all the other disarmed lands out there, like Angola, France, and North Dakota. That by simply bombing Iraq we can “spook” them into behaving properly, ie, the way we want them to. How likely will the Iraqi’s be in finding agreement with the United States out of fear of some future bombing attack? And how do we feel if Iraq suddenly turns on terrorist organizations and fights the “War on Terror”, will we ignore their WOMD just like Donald Rumsfeld did in 1983 when Iraq was at war with Iran? Curious…

Yesterday I was talking with my mother and another thought occurred to me, that The Gulf War was just like Vietnam. We didn’t really win anything, we just declared it was won, declared our intent to be finished with it, and left. If proper wars are to have an ignition, a duration, and some definite conclusion then we haven’t had one of those in quite some time. We apparently have another kind of war, one with ignition, building, and lame-duck wobbling away. Another thing just now, if there is a definite and clear winner, doesn’t that make the loser feel like post WWI Germany, wouldn’t that lead to the contributing factor of WWII, ie, make the loser so sore they have no choice but to pursue some grander scheme?

And we’re still ignoring North Korea. Gah… we’ll treat the Koreans with diplomacy yet we’ll bully Iraq when the clear and present threat is just the opposite! 

It’s a good thing that presidents have terms and those terms are limited. I wonder how close George Washington would be to considering forming a militia and taking that boat ride across the Patomac River… Dubya is the best thing to happen to the GOP in years, I hope they reap everything they’ve sown.

Saying Goodbye to Facebook

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Yesterday, July 19th, 2011 I said my final goodbyes to Facebook and announced my transition over to Google+. I went on Facebook and let everyone who could still see my wall, know that I was leaving that service for good and conducting all my sharing over on Google+. For me it was a matter of who built the better mousetrap. The services provided by Google+ far outweigh the headaches that I’d have to wade through to match on Facebook and I like the cleanliness of Google+ and the lack of baggage that comes with running a service that was at one point built for high school and college age kids to socialize on.

When I made my goodbye status updates on Facebook one of my friends who usually doesn’t say much brought up a valid point. His issue with Google+ is their privacy policy, which he took exception to. The policy is composed of jargon and legalese such as “non-exclusionary rights granted by the … for the perpetual use and non-exclusive publishing rights of the …” and so on and so forth. I am not about to make people who read these policies feel less of themselves by denigrating this legalese as so much meaningless and incomprehensible bibble-babble, but I’m not about to let something like that interfere with the path of my life and the things I want to do. Aren’t I running afoul of a policy that strips me of my rights for what I share and what I post online? Don’t I care about the things I write and the music I share and the photos I share? Doesn’t that bother me?

No. Not in one small bit does it bother me. My life is dull. What I have to share is free for the taking. Why should I license what I photograph, what I record, anything at all, when it comes down to it! What am I protecting? If I were to get all worked up I’d be protecting an endless and mindless stream of inconsequential doggerel and pablum. My social existence is important for me, and the message is important for the people in my life, but ownership of that material? It’s utter dreck. So what if someone comes along and licenses all my photography and lays claim to all that I have written. Someone comes along and asserts ownership over my blog? You are welcome to it! Much like Jazz, the crap that I create comes from an infinite source of unceasing malarkey. Grab as much of it as you want, I’ll just shovel up more. I’ve got a big shovel, boundless energy, and you’re just running garbage detail for me. Knock. Your. Socks. Off.

Really what it comes down to is none of these policies mean anything to people like me because we go ahead and live our lives. These policies exist for people who thrive on the minutiae of life. The only times these policies get dusted off and opened up is when someone tries to be a dick. Society gives us a shorthand when people are being dicks and so, in this social fabric, as long as the howler monkeys aren’t hooting and hollering too loudly the rest of us shrug and graze and go about our plain and dull lives. I haven’t heard anyone get bent about a privacy policy whatever from Google and even when I read the policy bibble-babble, I don’t really care. Non-exclusive, penultimate, pejorative, permissible, persimmons blah blah blah. It’s important to a very small subset of people and if it keeps them happy and shuts them up, why should I care? If the service disappears, so be it. It evaporates with all my writing and all my posted pictures? Uh, fine. I’ll just move on to something else. In the end I don’t care! I don’t care if I win, lose, or whatever. This sort of thing doesn’t interest me and life goes on.

And that brings me to another point, one more general than all the others. If everyone uncorked all these very dull and very blah-blah-blah policies and we all decided to dwell in the house of the righteous and mighty we’d quickly find ourselves so wrapped up in legal jargon and rules that we couldn’t do anything. Liability to perform a bowel movement? Nope. How about walking outside in the sunshine? Nope. Eating? Come on. I bet a legal eagle could find a series of policies that outlaw respiration! When you have this amount of text and only a very small segment of the population with enough interest to maintain consciousness when exposed to it, you end up with people who take others statements on-faith. We can’t process the endless stream of legal mumbo-jumbo, so we hire people who we pay and we trust to do it for us and give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Truth to be told, once we honor them enough to let them have a say, we forget all about what they said and get on with life! People tell us that we really should have lawyers look at things, and so we do. Not because we understand or actively even care about the lawyers but we understand that lawyers must be fed. Nobody told us why, and it doesn’t directly impact our lives to see to their proper feeding, so we write the right things, we post the right things and we look to the special creatures called lawyers and we look for a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. That’s as far as it goes, kids! Life goes on! Work has to be done! Those agreements and policies are great, they’re done, yes! They were seen by somebody? Yes! Those somebodies were happy? YES! Well, good… WHATEVER. We move on.

Life has to find a way to trudge forward. These policies are meat for lawyers. The only time when you need a lawyer is when people deviate from the Golden Rule. Society pressures each of us to not stray from the Golden Rule, so for a lot of this, once penned, will never see the light of day again. This brings up another point that has bothered me for a long time, and that is the fine-print monsters. There are agreements everywhere and there is fine-print everywhere, you can’t escape it. There is what is written and there is what is understood and the two aren’t necessarily bound together! When someone decides to be a dick, to play the fine-print game, then the lawyers click their mandibles together and there is a feeding frenzy — for the lawyers! For the people in the drama, there is the victim of the dick, the dick, and the fat happy lawyers moaning in ecstasy and having little orgasms when they hear “billable hours”. So afterwards, the victim of the dick and the dick part ways and the victim has learned a lesson. The victim of the dick never approaches the dick again. This used to be the end of it. The dicks never really had anything else to fear from the victim because they were just one little meaningless nobody in a sea of meaningless nobodies. That is, until social media and social networking came to town. Now the victims of the dick can hop up on a soap-box and write about their experiences to all the other potential victims of the dick and warn them. “Dick is here, he’s after you, avoid him.” and so the dick starves and dies because his prey was alerted that he was in the tall grass and fled. This creates a new series of regulatory controls between the victims of the dicks and the dicks. Now that each one of us can instantly publish and amplify our warning hoots to everyone else, the dicks are on the run, scampering left and right looking for victims and finding nothing but pounded earth from the millions of victims that have fled. This is the natural order of things now, and this is why it’s important to not be a dick. The minute you are branded a dick, you are effectively ostracized from society, you are given a Scarlet D to wear and everywhere you go tales of your dickishness proceed you!

So lets get back to where we started… leaving Facebook for Google+. Do I care about the privacy policy? No. Why am I not concerned? Because I value nothing that I create, I WANT TO SHARE IT and because I’m using these systems, isn’t it obvious that I want to GIVE IT AWAY!?! So someone comes along and takes it, well, that’s part of the point. If there is a dick in the tall grass, it might bring down a bit of the storm but it won’t stop the storm from coming and overwhelming it. Even if the dick starts to rampage, it’s now just a matter of pressing a button and walking away, effectively annihilating the dick.

In the end I don’t care. Life goes on. There are more important things to fret over, like whats for dinner tomorrow, did I see the tight little bubble-butt on that twinkie gym-bunny, what are my plans for labor day? These are the pressing things, not “Oooh, Google came in and asserted ownership of my LOLCATZ pics!” There is an order to things, and frankly, bubble-butts trump rampaging company-legalese-dicks. Life goes on.

Verizon

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My day was poisoned by Verizon and Asurion, one of them is a nationwide wireless carrier, the other is an insurance company. They are the Reese’s Cup to my wasted blown-out day. Thanks guys.

Situation: Coworker breaks iPhone, takes it to a Verizon store, nothing comes of it. Coworker gives me the dead phone and I try to make heads or tails out of the knotwork that is Verizon and Asurion.

Email 1: (me writing to Verizon Rep, upset at being lead on a wild goose chase for most of the day, MIKGOVTEAM is an email to a bunch of people who are supposed to help me, a part of Verizon’s Customer Care … Team.)

Hello,
Thanks for the resolution on this problem. I have contacted Asurion and completed the affidavit. My client indicated that the report that the device was exposed to water is incorrect, it fell face-first onto a concrete surface. Because this is the word of our coworker versus a Verizon store we have issued new policies for our clients to not approach Verizon ever again because of these miscommunications. Instead all of our clients will route their phone issues through my office and we will contact Verizon directly where the conditions of the events can be exchanged clearly and without any of this miscommunication. We are unused to how Verizon conducts it’s business because of our previous relationship with Sprint and Asurion when it came to handling insurance. Sprint acted as our representative to Asurion, which differs fundamentally to how Verizon manages the three-party relationship. This too has changed our policies and procedures when dealing with your company and when dealing with Asurion. It is rather upsetting as a customer to know that Verizon stores cannot be trusted, cannot provide services, and that our only contact is MIKGOVTEAM.
The only thing keeping us as your customers is your network.
Pray for the health of that network.

Response from Verizon:
Andy, I am sorry to hear that you don’t seem to value the service my team and I provide. There are many reasons for VZW Government contracted customers to only be able to work directly through the Government team, the main one being security. The stores are restricted on what they can see, they can’t see government accounts.
I would be happy to meet with you to discuss the many other reason for our decision to not allow retail environments access to your account, I can assure you it is to your benefit.

My final email to Verizon:

The entire reason for us having a mobile infrastructure is first and foremost for our major gift directors and engagement team to have as much of a reliable wireless connection as I can provide for them. Verizon was selected because Verizon’s network is the largest in the United States and therefore won by default. Verizon wasn’t selected initially in the past because of a difference in toolsets provided by Verizon and Sprint. Sprint has proven themselves to be grossly incompetent when it comes to managing a network and right before I migrated everyone to Verizon, Sprint was “Circling the Toilet Drain”. I have yet to be actually pleased by any wireless carrier as they all try to be more than what they really are. Verizon fought against this tooth and nail, doing everything in their power to refute being a “commodity carrier” but in the end, that’s all the customers really want. The value-added components I’m sure gratify other wireless customers and they’ve expressed their thanks to you. I do admit that it comes in handy, when it works as designed. Verizon provides the network and Apple provides the devices. It was 8/10ths the iPhone and 2/10ths the Network. I informed Sprint of this and they sent a fool to me and actually dared to argue with me about Droid. It was that meeting in which my Sprint contract died, because they sent a fool to actually pick a fight with their customer. I was paying a three-grand-a-month contract and they lost it because they sent a fool.

My attitude about mobile carriers in the United States is pretty much identical. Every company is pretty much all the same. Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The networks are different, the frequencies are different and the rest is a dart board of bullshit that the customers have to put up with in order to get work done. I’d like to say that any one company is better than their competitors, but they aren’t. Verizon has the network but the stores are chock full of slime-balls trying to sell as much accessory junk as possible. Sprint is incompetent but the stores are reliable. I don’t regard AT&T as even a mobile carrier as they are just Cingular wearing the Death Star’s face. It’s macabre and it fools nobody. Cingular was incompetent on their own and their only singular saving grace was the iPhone, as AT&T. So in the end it doesn’t really matter how much I like any one company. Sprint screwed me with a $6000 billing error and I had to go through at least four wireless field reps and even still not getting anywhere as they continuously screw up billing.

So now we’re predominantly with your company and we just have to face some rather grim realities. It’s a compromise that we make. We trade a really quite excellent network for pretty much everything else. I have yet to visit a single Verizon store here in Kalamazoo (and man, are there a lot!) where I’m not either a used-car-shopper or in one case mistakenly thrown out of a store because looking for an iPhone bumper case is something AT&T can help me with… :~|

This entire interaction with Trish’s iPhone really had to come about eventually. It exposed a situation that we were not expecting to happen. One of my clients broke her phone, this was eventually going to happen. It’s why we bought the TEP Insurance because I know my clients have butterfingers and these devices would eventually start getting damaged. I made a mistake, so did Andy M, my assistant. We wrongly assumed that if Trish walked into any Verizon store that she could lay her dearly departed phone on the counter, that the Verizon store representatives would look up her phone number, see that it was a Verizon account, and then offer to replace her iPhone. What I was really hoping for was that the Verizon rep could then help her program the Exchange information on her iPhone and she could limp along with her device until she came back to WMU to get it polished off. If there was any costs associated with this entire hypothetical event, that they would be simply posted to the account. At best I was hoping for Verizon to offer her a warranty replacement free of charge and at worst replace the phone and ding us our insurance deductible. All of this so that I could tell all my clients that they could, if out in the big wide world, spy a Verizon store and know that they were covered, because a helpful person from Verizon was in any one of the multitude of Verizon stores and that they, in a manner of speaking, had my back.

What turned out to be was not that. Trish went to a Verizon store, they erroneously noted water damage (for which I know both Apple and Verizon have it in their best interests to push as hard as possible, since water damage isn’t covered by warranties) and they indeed proved the device was shot. They told Trish that they couldn’t do anything at all. And then Trish had to bring her dead device to me. I started with MIKGOVTEAM and was told that I had to go to Asurion. What really got me was the vicious circle that the both of you created. Verizon pointing to Asurion, Asurion pointing to Verizon and I’m in the middle, with a broken phone, and no way to resolve the circle. The advice from MIKGOVTEAM was useless. Being told to “Call Asurion” when I have a page from Asurion that says “Call Verizon” is just stupid. That’s when I reached out for you and Kim, since I was obviously getting nowhere in a big hurry. The process with Asurion wasn’t pleasant either, when I got to that. I had to cover everything all over again with them, get yet another claim number, and fill out an affidavit proving I am who I say I am and then faxing it to them.

So where we stand now is we can’t really trust any Verizon store. They run the gamut from used-car-salesmen to barely verbal thugs. They “note” water damage when there really isn’t any just to weasel out of having to put up with a warranty issue and then all of this that happened. If we invalidate all the Verizon stores and all I get from MIKGOVTEAM is “Call Asurion, 888-888-8888. Talk to them.” messages, then where exactly is the customer care, because I certainly don’t see it. So… to cope with all of this I’ve told my iPhone-using coworkers to just avoid Verizon stores altogether and bring their phone issues to me directly so I can corral all our dealings with your company through my office. It’s just another compromise. I am trading all that I wanted, the idea that even if my clients are in Houston, Texas, with a dead iPhone, that they will be able to get it fixed quickly for Verizon’s nationwide network. In the end, that’s what Verizon is to me. It’s the network. What I was really after isn’t possible and really all I need to know is that is how it’s going to be. I lower my expectations to match and we’re back to being happy customers.

When my clients get to Houston, Texas and realize their phones are dead they’ll have to find a Kinko’s and ship their phones to me so I can initiate an insurance claim, wait the days for Asurion to get to whatever they have to do, get the phone back to me and then FedEx it overnight to my clients. It’s messy and inconvenient and painfully expensive, but this is what we have to do in order to compromise.

If Verizon decides to make any of this better, I’ll be first in line with a smile and ready gratitude. I will admit that the website, when it works, works well. But Steve, you have to also know that it took Verizon nearly a month before I could reliably purchase iPhones through my website portal. The first half dozen iPhones I had to order manually through Kim. I’m sure there are other things that you and your team can do for us, but how much of it will be actually needed beyond ordering new devices, dealing with damaged devices, and the assumed-it’s-coming billing fiascos? Most of which I can already do through the website, and the billing fiascos, well, those will certainly be treasured moments yet to come. I don’t expect much and really all I’m after is the network, so don’t feel bad. It’s the best we can do with this compromise.

After my numerous experiences with Verizon stores, I certainly understand why you’ve established a walled garden around us all. I certainly don’t expect Verizon to change, but it will help you to understand that what we’ve lost stings quite badly. I can hope that we’ll never have another broken iPhone to deal with, but we both know it’s just a matter of time. At least now I know not to expect anything from the stores and I can skip MIKGOVTEAM and just contact Asurion directly. The only other reason I would need to contact you would be to help resolve problems with Verizon. The only eventuality I can think of is when Verizon screws up billing, and that might never happen, so if the world works out for the best, I won’t need to contact you or your team at all. If that isn’t the definition of a happy customer, I don’t know what is.

Now all we have to wait for is the other shoe to drop and witness the three-ring-circus that is Asurion. I fully expect that they’ll screw up and send us an empty box full of shredded newspaper and a $9000 bill, 60 days late with a collection notice rubber-banded to the box. My professional expectations start out at raging incompetence and there is nowhere to go but up!

State Of The Ocean: 'Shocking' Report Warns Of Mass Extinction From Current Rate Of Marine Distress

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State Of The Ocean: ‘Shocking’ Report Warns Of Mass Extinction From Current Rate Of Marine Distress.

It’s funny to me to see people throwing fits now. It’s far too late to turn the tide. Sorry for the pun. We had our chance in 1982 and we missed it. Now we’re on a rollercoaster that has as one little hill this particular outcome. Just wait until the big drop at the end. That will be something to behold.

And just what will we do then? At the end. I’m sure we’ll complain to our elected officials and we’ll fret and we’ll end up doing absolutely nothing. Why? Not because we lack the willpower, but because there is no solution, the planet will correct the imbalance all on it’s own.

It’ll just have to include a rather nasty inhospitality to human beings. Life will go on, it just won’t be us. We’ve helped the planet select against us and it’s just getting started.

And save your breath about the children. If anyone really spent any time thinking about their world that they’ll inherit we wouldn’t be wasting our time and energy on bullshit wars, stupid religious aggression and turning the climate inside out. All that’s left is a grim acceptance and to make your best effort to avoid what is coming.

Good Luck!