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Then I got a threat of termination.
I called Sprint and went through 3 tiers of escalation. When I finally got to a supervisor, I was told that my credit had been denied. The reason cited was that I hadn't responded within the 3 month deadline for disputing an invoice.
When I told the supervisor that I had actually contacted them a year ago, he said that they had record of that communication, and that I had been "educated". He then said that someone had discovered "something wrong" with my account and sent me a text message. He could provide no transcript for that message, and had no idea what the content of it was.
He then said that they'd called in January. Since they tried to call me twice and I hadn't responded, no further credits would be provided.
15:40:07 System Thank you for contacting Sprint. My name is Nina. In order to assist you; may I please have your first and last name as well as the reason for your chat today?
15:40:30 ME Name is Chris [LAST NAME]
15:40:52 Nina Thank you, how may I assist you?
15:41:25 ME Yes. I have two phones on my account (one is mine and the other is my wife's)
15:41:39 ME I have Family Talk (550 minutes)
15:41:56 ME Here is where I get confused.
15:42:13 ME Family Talk is 550 shared minutes, right?
15:42:45 Nina Yes, they are shared minutes.
15:43:01 ME So why do I also have Free & Clear with 500 minutes?
15:44:37 Nina I'm showing both lines are on the Family 550.
15:44:56 ME So who has Free & Clear?
15:45:32 ME From my bill...
15:45:34 ME Free & Clear Plan - 500 Anytime Shared Minutes $40.00
15:47:02 Nina Please allow me a moment to review this for you.
15:47:10 ME Thanks!
15:50:32 Nina I do apologize, I have made the correction, both lines are on the Family 550 plan. I am applying a credit to your account for the Free and Clear plan for the last two bill cycles.
15:51:33 ME But I've been billed this every month for more than a year.
15:52:49 ME For all I know, this has been going on ever since I added my wife to the plan (2005).
15:53:42 Nina One moment while I review your previous information.
15:57:17 Nina Please bare with me, I am researching the last year on your account.
15:57:26 ME That's fine.
15:57:38 ME I appreciate the time and effort.
16:04:02 Nina Again, I appreciate your patience.
16:11:42 Nina Thank you for your patience.
16:12:57 Nina After reviewing your account, I've applied two credits to your account, both for $40. I must submit the remaining amount of $480, to my supervisor, who will review this information, and will get back to you regarding this issue.
16:13:14 ME Thank you for all of your help.
16:13:21 Nina Your current balance, after the credits just applied is $236.19.
16:13:24 ME When was this activated?
16:13:57 Nina The change was made last May, when the two lines were added. Your plan was changed to Family 550 on 5/13/2008.
16:14:08 ME Ah.
16:14:19 ME Well, thank you for all your research and help.
If you haven't seen it, or turn your nose up at it as a mindless action flick, you need to look again. The movie is subtly smart, and very funny. The basic premise is that there are these two guys: one is a rodeo cowboy and the other is slick biker. Playing these roles are, respectively, Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke.
Some big corporation is coming to build a huge skyscraper over their friends' bar, so they try to stop it. Along the way, they wind up literally fighting through greater and greater challenges until they go head-to-head with the head of the bank manager himself.
The movie was a commercial disaster. With a production budget of $23 million, it grossed only $7.4 million domestically. Critically, it was panned. Variety called it "a dopey, almost poignantly bad actioner". The Tomatometer rating for it is 29%.
Thing is, this movie is amazingly, and almost unintentionally great. It captures every fear of the global market, capitalist angst, and class warfare that has built over the past 20 years in a way that few documentaries or editorials have failed. And the weird part is that it uses the American commercial iconograghy from the past 100 years to do it.
Simply, the good guys are characters like Harley Davidson, Marlboro Man, Jack Daniels, and Virginia Slim. They represent the unwashed masses. At the other end are the wheeler-dealers: the slick bad guys who speak Japanese and act as robotic minions of the corporate elite. A young, bright-blue-eyed William Baldwin leads a team of drones who use high-powered, foreign-looking automatic weaponry and all wear uniform, bullet proof leather coats.
This idea of corporate America as a group of unprincipled, continental zealots for capitalism, as compared to the uneducated an unrespected man on the street is something that strikes a chord--especially in today's society. Why else would RottenTomatoes track the critics reception of the movie at 29%, but the users at 60%?
Every ad I've seen for the car shows this angle. It's as if the rest of the car doesn't exist.
The target audience for this is obvious. It's the same group of young, techno-loving, 2 fast/2furious kids that are buying Scions. I guess the question is...when did young people go from loving cheap, fast cars to cheap, direct marketed cars?
He's probably going to make the circuit. He'll be on the morning talk shows. And good for him, too. He should be.
Better him than Joe the Plumber.
Also, is it me, or is it weird that Juan Williams is credited as either an NPR News Analyst or a Fox News Analyst, depending on the appearance?
So, what are we to take from this?
Here's a summary of what I think happened.
1. A woman made a leap (probably influenced by racial bias) that someone was breaking into a house
2. A police officer wound up (probably influenced by racial bias) getting upset that someone was so indignant about being asked for identification
3. That someone (Gates) was probably upset and embarrassed, as, obviously, someone in his own neighborhood mistook him for a criminal. Also, that he had forgotten his keys inside the house, and at 58, he should know better (hell, happens to me all the time. Doesn't change the fact that it's a boner move.).
4. Gates's indignation combined with the officer's confusion and his own indignation over being called, effectively, a racist, to cause this extreme over-reaction.
The simple judgement, based on the limited information I have, is that the cop over-reacted and should have known better. Gates was trying to break into his own home and was probably upset. The cop should have taken the abuse, been apologetic and moved on. That's what "To protect and serve" is all about. Arresting Gates is ridiculous, and will, hopefully, wind up costing some people jobs. If not, there will be more trouble.
And you know what? There should be. There's a perception issue, here. The perception (and, to be honest, it's more than perception) is that bias can be perpetrated against black people without repercussion. There must be repercussions.
- Mood:
aggravated
11:18:51 | System: | ShaRhonda has joined this session! |
11:18:51 | System: | Connected with ShaRhonda |
11:18:51 | System: | Thank you for contacting Sprint. My name is ShaRhonda. In order to assist you; may I please have your first and last name as well as the reason for your chat today? |
11:19:00 | Me: | [My Name] |
11:19:12 | Me: | I'm trying to access and update my account |
11:20:31 | ShaRhonda: | I will be more than happy to assist you today. |
11:21:01 | ShaRhonda: | Are you referring to your online account? |
11:22:16 | Me: | Yes and no. |
11:22:40 | Me: | I'd like to be able to access my Sprint billing information from my online account. |
11:24:31 | ShaRhonda: | One moment please. |
11:27:06 | ShaRhonda: | Have you registered your account on sprint.com? |
11:27:51 | Me: | I get confused when I see the things to "register" an account. I have a username and password to access information about my phone. Is that what you mean? |
11:28:31 | ShaRhonda: | Yes that is correct. |
11:28:56 | ShaRhonda: | When you access your online account with your username and password do you see billing and payments at the top of your page? |
11:29:53 | Me: | No |
11:30:29 | ShaRhonda: | To better assist you can I have the username and password for your online account? |
11:30:37 | Me: | [username] |
11:30:40 | Me: | [password] |
11:31:12 | Me: | I see Overview, Phone & Plan, Settings & Passwords, My Online Tools, and My Content Manager |
11:33:21 | ShaRhonda: | You will have to update your online account to add administrative rights. Since I am already logged in your account, I can update your account for you. |
11:33:51 | ShaRhonda: | For account security and verification, may I please have the 6-10 digit PIN number on your account? |
11:36:31 | ShaRhonda: | I know your time is valuable and I would like to assist you in resolving any issue or concerns you may have today. Are you still interested in chatting with a Sprint representative? |
11:36:34 | Me: | Is this the SSN? |
11:37:06 | ShaRhonda: | Your pin is a 6-10 digit pin that you set up for the account and the security question is, [security question] |
11:37:24 | Me: | [answer] |
11:38:06 | ShaRhonda: | That you for that information. |
11:39:17 | Me: | Just got a text msg |
11:39:41 | ShaRhonda: | Can I have the code that was just sent to your phone? |
11:39:51 | Me: | 9099 |
11:40:06 | Me: | That was the "From" info |
11:40:37 | Me: | Didn't have any other code info that I could see. |
11:40:41 | ShaRhonda: | Did you open the text and retrieve the code? |
11:41:18 | Me: | It just says, "SprintFreeMsg. Your account PIN and security question & answer were retrieved at Sprint.com" |
11:42:11 | ShaRhonda: | You have to click on the text and open it to retrieve the code. |
11:42:59 | Me: | Click on what text? I clicked on the text message, and that was the message I received. |
11:44:29 | ShaRhonda: | The code that you provided 9099 is invalid. |
11:45:07 | Me: | This is a text message on my phone. I think it's just a notification that you accessed my security question as me. |
11:46:06 | Me: | Sorry to rush, but I have a meeting I need to attend in 15 minutes. What else do I need to do? |
11:47:46 | ShaRhonda: | I do apologize but the system will not allow me to update your online account because it states the code that you are provided to me is incorrect. I can provide you with the steps to update your online account for when you have time. |
11:47:56 | ShaRhonda: | Go to settings and password, under account click on add account. |
11:48:21 | ShaRhonda: | You will have to enter your account number which is [acct #] |
11:48:46 | ShaRhonda: | Once you update your account you will have to log off and sign back in to see the change. |
11:48:54 | Me: | Okay. |
11:49:09 | Me: | Thanks for all your help! |
11:49:21 | ShaRhonda: | You're welcome. |
11:49:36 | ShaRhonda: | Thank you for contacting Sprint. We appreciate your business. |
11:51:01 | System: | ShaRhonda has left this session! |
11:51:01 | System: | The session has ended! |
I love XKCD.
"With great power comes great responsibility"
-Ben Parker (Spider-Man's uncle)
"I couldn't judge it. It was too big. He was too big."
-Police Commissioner James Gordon (The Dark Knight Returns)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
<Tranlsated: Who watches the watchmen?>
-Juvenal (by way of Watchmen)
I've been thinking about these three quotes, lately. Specifically, I've been thinking about these quotes in light of the morals of Watchmen as a whole. The background of the first and third ones are easy. Just Google them. You should come up with a boatload.
The second one is part of a conversation a future outgoing Jim Gordon is having with his replacement. She asks him why he never went after Batman, as he's an obvious vigilante criminal. His response is an anecdote about rumors that Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor in advance and did nothing, in order to propel the country into war.
In his opinion, it was impossible for him to judge, as the stakes were too enormous.
Going over these three quotes within the context of Watchmen, part of what Alan Moore seems to be saying is that Ozymandias, taking the reins of Alexander, took an enormous degree of responsibility, and [SPOILER] actively made the decision to kill millions of people in order to save the world.
That's not the point, though.
At the end of the novel, even Ozymandias questions his own decision, and rightfully so. Any sane man would, given the circumstances, and (even though he went to extraordinary lengths), we are never given any reason to think that Adrian Veidt is crazy.
Yes, with great power comes great responsibility, but we all have responsibility, and when we cede that burden to someone else, we must accept the consequences. When we say someone is "too big" we are throwing up our hands and saying that there's nothing we can do.
Torture is acceptable. Wars are inevitable. Outsourcing is good for you. You don't really need a house. Let the banks regulate themselves.
We watch the watchmen. Every day. We, all of us, shoulder the burden of democracy.
All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing. No one of consequence said that. It is a statement that was formed by an unknown individual and frequently attributed to Edmund Burke. But there's a reason why the saying was created, and there's a reason why a search on the sentence brings up 65,000 hits.
It is absolutely true.
The power to choose is a great power, and it must be wielded carefully. Those people who lead...the ones who have struggled or fought or were chosen to represent many...we are often tempted to think they are better than us, or more capable, but I posit that they are not, inherently.
Don't get me wrong, I am a big proponent of respect. I think there are too few people who give respect to the accomplishments of others. However, I also feel that it's absolutely necessary to (for lack of a better term) "speak truth to power."
Neither Ozymandias nor Batman are inherently better than anyone in their fictional worlds, although their training and intelligence may be above others. Intelligence is just one compass along the path.
And no one is above questioning.
- Location:Home
Then, something started to change. I don't know when it happened, but I know when I noticed it. I was watching the episode where Mr. Garrison gets a sex change operation, and graphic depictions of the surgery are shown. Then Mr. Garrison (now Ms. Garrison) decides to begin "scissoring" everyone he meets--rubbing his new vagina against everyone.
While I still found myself saying "that's not right," I was doing it without the laughter. South Park broke the one cardinal rule that no comedy show may break. It wasn't funny.
In place of the comedy, we had moralizing and a series of story elements that were increasingly offensive. Cartman indirectly murders two people, captures their bodies and chops them up as meat to be fed to their child. Chef gets mauled by a bear--his face is ripped off and (post-mortem) shits all over himself.
These just weren't funny. They were tasteless and offensive. And, as time wore on, the comedic elements seemed to be replaced more and more with these shock moments. I stopped watching. In fact, I was surprised, in researching this post, that the show is still on the air.
The other day, I was watching Family Guy, which has been a favorite of mine for years. It's been compared to South Park often, because it's another animated TV show that tends to push the envelope.
Then I watched the Stephen King episode.
It aired this season. There were several points where I questioned their choices, but what made me stop short was when they parodied "Stand By Me." There's a scene in the movie at the end where the boyhood friends walk away from the central character, and Richard Dreyfus (the narrator) talks about what happened to each of them.
In Family Guy, when it came to Quagmire, representing the character played by River Phoenix in the movie, the narration said, "Quag grew up to become a famous Hollywood actor. Unfortunately, about a week ago, he took an overdose of designer drugs at the Viper Room. He died, on the curb outside. And now we are left with a hare-lipped reminder of what might have been."
At that point, Joaquin Phoenix's photo slides into view on the screen. A trumpet sounds with a vaudevillian, "waw waaawwwww."
When they return from the commercial break, Peter Griffin appears, and says, "Joaquin Phoenix, if you are still watching, you're a good sport, and a trooper. And you passed our test. And you can be our friend."
It's been quite a few years since Jon Hein coined the phrase, "Jumping the Shark" to refer to a point in a television show's lifetime where it stretches its own premise past the breaking point in a desperate attempt to grab ratings.
Today, the threshold seems to be the level of taste the writers/producers of these shows are willing to ignore in a desperate attempt to grab news stories or viewers. Shows like Family Guy and South Park are particularly vulnerable to this. They've always delicately walked the line between good comedy and bad taste, but, as time goes by and writers change, it seems that the trend is to move from one side of the line to the other.
For my part, I just have to shake my head. Once that threshold has been crossed, I don't think it's worth it. Why should I have to sit through a television show that regularly shows insulting and offensive statements just for the one line that's vaguely humorous? Personally, I think THAT is not right.
Take statistics around missing children in a given geographical area (city, state, region), break it down by demographic, and then compare it to Amber Alerts for the same area.
One day, I noticed that the large majority of the Amber Alerts I saw were little, blonde children. I then realized that several missing children reports that were in the news didn't get Amber Alerts. The only difference I saw was that they were not white.
Sort of soured me on the program.
The first time I call a customer service line, it's a reconnaissance mission. I want to find out what I can get or what I can do, but I rarely want to make a decision on the spot. Salespeople will always push you into making decisions without thinking. That's how they make a sale.
So that first call is just to set the stage. And the stage always seems to look beautiful.
That first person I call is ideal. They can hear me as well as I can hear them. They speak perfect English. They really WANT to help me.
And, I get the information I want in the way I want it, feeling that I can call back confident that they'll address my issue when, inevitably, I call back.
That's when it all falls to shit.
Calling back, I get someone who barely speaks my language. This person has never heard of the policy that first person quoted. "Who told you about that offer? I've never heard of it." Everything must be escalated, and it all eventually ends up in the crapper.
What is it about that second call?
I know I'm doing the right thing when I don't make snap decisions. I need time to consider or talk with my wife. But, in the end, I wind up gripping the handset with white knuckles and yelling so the guy can hear.
Maybe I just shouldn't talk to people.
I can.
The American Science & Surplus store is filled with many different kinds of awesome. It's a completely random assortment of cool toys and tools for just about anyone. Military surplus, lab equipment, telescopes, anatomical models, novelty items, terrariums, aquariums, robot kits, models, and rockets are just some of the things they carry.
You could just call it "A store for things that are cool," and you'd get the point. We went the other day and bought:
1) a wooden toy boat powered by a balloon
2) replacement bubble wands
3) miniature, flexible camera tripod
4) light-up yo-yo
5) box of 48 magnetic wooden letters
Considered buying a robot, but I know my 2-year old would destroy it.
It made me think about these news entertainment shows and the propensity to throw up disclaimers regarding their own validity. Even comedy shows that I love, like The Daily Show, is guilty of this. Yeah, it isn't really a news show, but all they talk about is the news.
And they constantly have experts on, who also talk about the news.
So if the information they're providing isn't the news, what is it?
Satirical content, in my opinion, must be recognizable. Otherwise, it doesn't work.
But what Beck does isn't really satire. It's like Jerry Springer wrapped in an American flag.
But he expressed this as a mathematical construct.
In other words, the percentage of life span represented by a given time unit (day, minute, etc.).
It made me think. So I started doing some figuring, using my son (aged two and a half) and myself (aged significantly more than that).
And after crunching a few numbers, I discovered that, using this formula, for every minute, hour or day that I experience, my son experiences 14.4 of them.
Every day I live is about two weeks' subjective time to him. Every minute is a quarter of an hour.
It's an interesting piece of trivia, but it's fundamentally flawed. I mean, mathematically quantifying perception is a slippery activity. We've been trying to do it for years.
Still, the next time I decide how long to put him in "time out", I might do a quick calculation first.
He did The Machine is Us/ing Us...the viral video that first hit the web in January of 2007. Wesch's domain is Web 2.0, and he has done some interesting experiments into social networking.
But anthropology, RSS feeds, documentation, text mining, video streaming and the other sciences that exist out there don't account for the poetry and inspiration that can be found. Wesch's poem, owing to Sagan's beautiful essay, which owes to an image taken from a satelite 6.4 billion miles away, is poetry, not just by definition, but by execution.
The YouTube star and DJ called Kutiman is another example of this. He creates beautiful music using YouTube clips from all over the world. Each clip has its own story. Each contributor unaware of her contribution or the life her creation has taken on its own. I write these words that may cause someone else to write their own.
Is this the immortality that writers, poets, artists and composers wish? Imitation, collaboration and the lives of their works far transcending their own deaths?
You know what it makes me think about?
Shrek
Follow me for a second, here.
Shrek was, in many ways, a parody movie that lampooned and/or honored Disney fairy tale movies of the past 50 years. These movies (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc.) were based off of fairy tales that were compiled by Mother Goose, the Grimm brothers and others. These compilations were simply collections of stories that the collectors heard...putting pen to them, and getting them published.
More than 350 years passed between the first known publication of Sleeping Beauty (Pentamerone, by Giambattista Basile II 1634) and Shrek.
Or, think about Leonardo DiCaprio. He was in Baz Luhrman's William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. Obvious connection, right? But not so obvious is Shakespeare's connection to William Painter's Palace of Pleasure, published a decade before Shakespeare's tale of star-crossed lovers, which included Arthur Brooke's The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1563): published 20 years before that.
And many believe that Brooke took his inspiration from a poem by Frenchman Pierre Boaistuau (1559), which was based on a poem by Italian Matteo Bandello, which was published in 1554.
So Shakespeare first publishes the piece in 1597. Not including the actual folklore that fed Bandello's poem, the story already existed for more than 40 years when he set pen to paper.
This confluence--this digital concatenation of content--merely speeds up the same thing that's been happening for centuries. From Bandello to DiCaprio. From Giambattista Basile to Mike Meyers. From Carl Sagan to Mike Wesch. While the printing press enabled events to lead to counter-events and cultures to spawn counter-cultures, blogs, user generated content and user filtered content has sped that up exponentially.
Have to wonder if this is going to keep up.
Excerpt from Pale Blue Dot, by Carl SaganThis piece was written by Sagan upon seeing the image (to the left) of Earth as taken from Voyager 1 in 1990 from a distance of 6.4 billion miles.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
( Read more... )
There are more, but I don't want to post them all here.
