Category Archive

In Defense Of Common Sense

Dear Senators and Representatives,

This is an open letter regarding the “Housing Bill” you are currently considering in the Senate. And I have a message from your constituents:

DON’T DO IT!

Sure, there are a lot of people who are “upside down” in their mortgages, dealing with rising monthly payments, facing foreclosure, and some are even walking away from their homes…

But there are a lot more of us who aren’t.

It may surprise you, being politicians and all, but the majority of us out here actually passed second-grade math class.

And we know that buying a house is a big deal. A very big deal.

We know for instance that borrowing multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars requires more than a passing glance at a multiple-page contract. And, crazy as it sounds, might even require a lawyer.

We know that if a mortgage payment surpasses, say, the 50% mark of your monthly take-home income, then it *might* not be such a good idea.

A heck of a lot of us out here heard the term “adjustable rate mortgage” and thought, maybe, just maybe, that it might actually “adjust” at some point down the road.

Our supernatural spidey sense also told us that people with 5 maxed-out credit cards, 2 past bankruptcies, and make 40K a year *probably* shouldn’t be buying a 500K home. In fact, they probably shouldn’t be buying a home at all.

Some of us were actually alive, and paying attention when the dreaded “Tech Bubble” burst, way, way back in 2001.

Some of us lost money.

So, naturally, some of us had a sneaking suspicion, too, that “No Money Down!” might just not be the brightest of ideas when it comes to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. Especially hundreds of thousands of dollars that aren’t yours.

And we raised an eyebrow when “Flip This House!”, the reality show, debuted across the country in 2005.

We raised another one when “Flip That House!” appeared on a competing network in 2005.

However, we were fresh out of eyebrows by the time “Flipping Out!” debuted, on yet another network, in 2007.

You get the point.

You see, a whole bunch of us saw this whole thing coming from a mile away.

And we did something crazy.

We DIDN’T jump on yet another get-rich-quick bandwagon.
We DIDN’T over-extend ourselves and buy more house than we could afford.
We DIDN’T sign multiple-page contracts without reading them.

Most important of all, we DIDN’T take on unnecessary risk and expect the Government, via our fellow citizen’s hard-earned tax dollars, to bail us out.

We continued to rent.

We did what some would call “the right thing”. Even though that was merely being fiscally responsible. And just barely, at that.

Call it what you will, we did it.

And you know what? We vote

Look. Don’t bail out these selfish idiots. Especially the banks.

And unless someone was absolutely, and provably defrauded, you must resist the urge to come swooping in like some super hero savior. Simply let the market do what it does best: work.

America can’t afford foreclosure relief.

No matter how many sob stories make it into our glorious 24-hour news cycle. Resist the urge with every pandering, political bone in your body.

Sure, it may temporarily “depress” housing prices, including some of those who weren’t directly involved in this whole mess. But remember, when we see a 30% drop in price of a house that was twice as expensive as it should be, is still 40% too expensive.

The truth is, despite all the whining, the market is still over-priced. Everywhere.

But perhaps the real reason for your concern is that you’re seeing your property tax coffers shrink across the country? Well, much like the infamous home owners and their home equity lines of credit, buying boats and plasma TVs with phantom equity, perhaps you politicians shouldn’t’ve have budgeted on a bubble either. Eh?

So please, if you can, suck your crocodile tears back into your reptilian tear ducts, and stop this bill. Stop this insanity.

DON’T DO IT.

Because if you DO bail these people out, even a little teeny, tiny bit, you will have not only done the wrong thing. You will have made doing the right thing no longer necessary.

e

I’m writing this post in the brand-new-ish Microsoft Word 2008. But just barely.

The good news is Microsoft really kicked some ass with Office 2008, and made it better (mostly), sleeker, and “Mac”-ier. And most of the reviews out there say essentially that.

The only problem is that Word (the only program of the bunch I use every day) doesn’t work with Mac’s “Spaces” (a feature I use every minute).

It’s so bad it essentially renders Word 2008 unusable.

When you switch Spaces, you “take” a part of Word with you into the other Spaces; be it the main window, the formatting palette, or the menu bar. And when you click on any of these, you get zoomed back to another space, with another piece. And try-as-you-might, you can’t seem to get them back together again.

Like Humpty-Dumpty.

This is too bad, because almost everything else about Office 2008 is hat’s-off to M$oft. And 6th sense about these things tells me that the ball is in their court on this one.

Achem?

And they’re taking the case!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the situation (long-winded spew here), I essentially asked my NYAG to see if the ‘ol Get-Out-of-Your-Cell-Contract “net legend” -where if you don’t have a WRITTEN contract, you’re only liable for ONE year-… was bullshit or not. Apparently not. Or maybe. Whatever.

Proof, here:

It just occurred to me that some of you might want to see the “legal forms” I filled out concerning my challenge of Tmobile, and their evil insistence.

Of course, some of you would rather see a snuff film than legal documents. And that’s okay. You don’t have to partake. However, it is just 2 simple pages… frankly, a surprise coming from Government. Enjoy.

 

e

 

I hate T-Mobile with every bone in my adonis-like body.

And I recently tested the technique detailed here (wikihow, among other places) which says, essentially, that if the Cell Provider CAN’T produce a SIGNED contract… then they can only hold you to 1 year, the maximum for a verbal, legal contract.

A quick back story:

In November ‘06 I switched to T-Mobile from AT&T (who I liked) because my company had a nice discount with them.

Last year, I started my own business, and for the first time in my entire life, I went over my allotted minutes. Way, way over.

Shocked and freightened at the prospect of paying several hundred dollars in overages, I called them to see if they could help me out at all.

And for all their hip jibber-jabber “Oh… TOTALLY… BUMMER… I would be upset too… WOW… yeah, that SUCKS… ” they apparently have “no process” for protecting their customers from overages. Even if it’s due to a life-change, or other “understandable” event.

And, of course, they charge, like, $2 per minute above your ceiling. Which is pretty nasty.

Now, it’s not like I expected them to excuse the charges. Not at all. After all, I did go over my minutes. But because it was such a sudden, and insane increase, I was frankly expecting them to do a *little* bit, to help a good, loyal customer ease the pain.

But no.

And everything I tried, begging, pleading, talking to supervisors, et all… still no.

So I asked them to set me up on a plan “where this would never happen again”. And, after some hemming and hawing, I did. And it worked for a few months… until last month. And then BAM!

Another $400+ overage.

WTF?!

Of course, I’m an idiot, I guess. Because I can’t rightly keep track of every due date and every level of minutes, and dollars of all my stuff. At a certain point I just need to be able to not worry about this stuff… past a certain level of involvement.

So I called them to see what went wrong. And apparently, my new big client wasn’t on T-Mobile (I pay extra each month for “free T-Mobile 2 T-Mobile” service), and I’d logged an un-Godly amount of minutes with him.

And once again, I asked if there was any way they could lesson the pain for a loyal, on-time-paying customer… and they said, simply, I was SOL.

So I asked them if there was any mechanism for them (or me) to notifiy me (myself) if I was approaching my minutes limit. And, not surprisingly, there is none (although Verizon actually gives you a courtesy call, and offers to switch your plan for that month… must be nice).

So, I said, you know what…? Enough is enough. I want out. And they said “fine, that will be $300+ for terminating your contract”… and I said “Oh snap! …I never SIGNED a contract!” (which is 10000% true, I did everything over the phone).

And here’s the crux of this post (finally): from all the “get out of your cell contract” info on teh internets, there’s always the passage that states “ask them to produce a copy of your signed contract… if they can’t, then you don’t have to pay an early termination fee.”

Sounds pretty simple.. and that’s why, in late January, I put in an ‘order’ for a copy of my signed contract. Just in case. And to this day, they have not found it. Although I did get a call from their legal department, stating they “were still looking for it”.

So I called back, and pointed out this fact to a supervisor, and while he neither confirmed nor denied that “rule” he said quite matter-of-factly “if you cancel your contract before November you owe us $300+ … if you feel you don’t have to pay it, you’ll need to get a lawyer.”

ARRGGHGHHH!!!

So I did the next best thing. I called my State Attorney General here in New York. And they sent me a form to fill out, and send in.
Essentially, I asked them for 2 things: 1) if this “can’t produce contract, can’t enforce contract” information is true or not, and 2) if it is… help me get the Hell out of this thing!

I’ve shared this information with one of my favorite consumer sites consumerist.com, which is one of the original sources of my “information”. So… we’ll see, I guess. There had to be a guinea pig for this little “trick”, and it just so happens to be me.

I mailed it yesterday (05/28/09) and when I get a response, I’ll update this post.

And for everyone out there who’s in the Hell I’m in… drink copious amounts of alcohol to numb the pain.

That’s all I can offer for now.

e

Lots going on in the consumer world… we’re preparing action items concerning our 3 favorites here, due out in the next couple of weeks:

“Lacie, redux”

“T-Mobile, OMG!”

And, last but not least, a new ongoing series entitled:

“The MTA owes me some muthafucking money!”

Or, some other title that *might* be more fit for consumption

Stay tuned, and thanks for the hits.

e

If you’ve been watching TV at all in the last two weeks you just might have seen the latest Red Lobster commercial, advertising their “Jumbo Shrimp”.

What’s strange is, although this seems like your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Red Lobster commercial with the nautical imagery and the gratuitously suggestive lemon wedge squrtings… they’ve actually broken new ground in marketing. Yes. It’s true.

Normally, they would call it “Jumbo Shrimp Week” or “Jumbo Shrimp Extravaganza!!!”. And the copy would read something like:

“Come on in to Red Lobster during our Jumbo Shrimp Extravaganza!!! and get all you can eat buttery, golden-broiled shrimp”… blah blah blah.

But, since Red Lobster is now defiantly re-shaping the English language, the copy goes like this:

“Come on in to Red Lobster during Jumbo Shrimp and get all you can eat buttery, golden-broiled shrimp”…

….um, wha?

That’s right. Red Lobster has apparently run out of catchy “event” monikers, and have decided to just go with the proper “sea name” instead. We can look forward to “seabass”, “scallop” “fried clam” and even “cod” sometime in the near future. They were even too cool to simply put the word “week” after the damnd thing. How can we know how long it’s supposed to last?

So it’s “Jumbo Shrimp”. Now acceptable to be used like other terms meaning “extended length of time: eg, “Rhamadan”, “sweeps” or “finals”.

No, not the end of the advertising world. Just. Damn. Weird.

Well Bear Stearns, you did it.

Sure, there were a lot of greedy bastards in all of this, both on the bank side and the consumer side. But you, sirs, somehow managed to be such monumentally large douches, you’re actually taking the rest of the World down with you.

“Too Big To Fail” is the term that’s been bandied about.

And of this, I’m fairly sure you were well aware. I mean, why else would you ignore just about every news report for the last 3 years and somehow decide that actually *buying* these rotten loans was somehow actually a *good* idea?

Okay, you’re right. You were not alone. But you weren’t satisfied with merely being one of the pack. No sir ree.

Not only did you hold you nose and drink the tainted subprime tequila shot-for-shot with those other greedy douchebag banks, you chased it with a 4-foot bong of northern lights, a whippet, and then went streaking.

And before you say that’s the worst analogy you’ve ever read, let me clarify. …A little back story.

When I was in college there “the rich kids” and the “rest of us”. The rich kids were lucky enough, to have their parents pay for everything: school, food, housing, and even a little spending money for booze. Whereas the “rest of us” had to pay for everything ourselves, either through school loans, or if we were smart, actual jobs.

Well, somewhere between freshman and sophmore years, there was this rash of rich kids who went nuts with their parents’ money. They bought booze, drugs, music, clothes, and everything else you can think of like it was going out of style. Drunk with their first taste of freedom, and a little gratis spending money, they let loose.

And there was always that one kid who took even that way to far. And I knew one of those kids.

On top of the booze, drugs, clothes, music and what have you, this kid signed up for a bank account, and a credit card, and in a desperate attempt to gain some ephemeral small time fame, went and spent as much money as he possibly could buying booze, drugs, clothes and anything else he could think of, for anybody and everybody.

He threw parties. He took other kids on shopping sprees. And for about 3 full months, nobody on campus had to buy any beer or weed because he had it taken care of.

This lasted for several months, and by various accounts he owed well into the tens of thousands of dollars when it was all said and done. And when I asked him why the hell he did that… why, when his other friends were topping out at, say, $1,500… why he had to go so overboard?

It was simple, he explained. You see, those other kids ended up having to pay for their debt themselves, because it was relatively minor. He, on the other hand, was more conniving.

Or was it smart?

Since he had made his situation so bad, so untenable, he was in a unique position. And his parents were in an unenviable one. Since the level of damage was so great, their unfortunate choice was simple: either “teach their son a lesson”, and insist he pay for his monetary misdeeds, which would surely mean dropping out of school, a mountain of mind numbing legal problems, possible criminal charges, and assured bankruptcy? Or, in lieu of “ruining his life”… reluctantly bail him out, but with a stern talking to?

You know what happened.

And who can blame these parents for bailing out their son? As much as they probably wanted to see him suffer because of his idiocy, they couldn’t let his entire future get thrown out the window with the proverbial bath water. So they bit the bullet and did what they had to do.

This kid is Bear Stearns. And the Government is, once again, the parents.

And you thought that was a bad analogy.

So bravo Bear Stearns. Your plan worked perfectly. And only time will tell if you  threw the World’s entire future out the window with your dirty bathwater.

Okay that was a bad one.

e

To be honest, I didn’t think I wanted TIVO until I got TIVO.

Or, to be specific, until i got Time Warner Cable’s DVR, which is built into my cable box. But when I got it, I was instantly hooked. It’s everything they said it would be, and more. And although I don’t tape a ton of shows, the ones I do record are near, and dear to my heart.

Did I just say tape? I did.

Anyway, for some reason, this weekend, while I was away, my Time Warner DVD failed miserably to record “Real Time With Bill Maher”, “SNL”, and “At The Movies With Ebert And Roper”.

Wuh?

So I go online… and there’s not much besides some “tips” that are written for morons ala “what’s DVR?”. So I clicked on the “reach us via our ‘online form’” link… which is deader than a virtual doornail:

TimeWarnerCable: Contact Us!

So I call.

Already I’m WAY past my time quotient for dealing with this mess. And I’m on hold for almost ever.

And then… I get a dial tone!

I was cut off!

So I called again, and climbed my way through the phone tree only to get cut off yet again.

Kill.

The problem here is not that I missed my precious shows, and that I cried like a little girl. The problem here is that Time Warner NY has such atrocious customer service that I don’t even know HOW to go about reporting this, or somehow asking for their help in fixing it.

And that’s one of the more important aspects of good customer service, isn’t it? When something goes wrong, in this order you:

1) Make yourself obviously available
2) Etc

So…I must ask, ever so nicely:

Time Warner New York? WTF?

Turns out I’m not the only one. Check out today’s ComputerWorld blog by on the exact same topic:

Why I’m Done With Portable Hard Drives -Mike Elgan

My response:

“The external HD “industry” needs to be way, WAY more upfront about what users can realistically expect from these drives.

Most users who aren’t in IT buy these drives FOR backup. It doesn’t occur to them that they should be backing up that backup, and then even backing up THAT one to DVDs. On top of that, most of these drives are poorly made. Just do a cursory search and you’ll turn up failure, after failure, after failure. The industry, and certain manufacturers in particular (I’m looking at YOU LaCie) need to be more honest about the fact that their drives really *shouldn’t* be relied upon. They also should explain, upfront, that if something does go wrong “mechanically” with the drives, that they will NOT help, AT ALL, with the recovery of the data. Even though the data was lost due to a mechanical failure, which is their responsibility.

The “bigger disks” which are upwards of 2TB are very tempting at around $500. But what they don’t tell you is that if that drive (which is really 4 drives in a RAID) fails… upwards of 10k to recover the data. That is a BIG pricetag. And something that needs to be communicated CLEARLY to potential customer.”

-ed

And here’s a response to my comment on digg about the fact that LaCie should be “more upfront” about the fact that their 2TB drive is, in fact, FOUR 500GB drives in a RAID array:

“No, it’s LaCie’s fault. The reason it’s their fault is that they advertise their drives as perfect for backup but don’t tell the buyer that they acheived their 1 tb size using 2 drives linked using raid 0, worse they don’t tell buyers what this means. This omission is the suff of lawsuits and if a few more buyers lose their data probably will result in one.”

Here here.

The Lacie Boycott

In August of ‘07 I bought one of these:

linky

First of all, this drive is NOT 2 Terabytes. No sir ree. LaCie is misleading, at the very least, in their marketing. This is actually four 500 Gigabyte drive, shoved in one case, and laid out in a RAID array. Which means your data is written in little, tiny pieces on all 4 drives. So, if one of the 4 drives fails, you’re screwed. Or, as in my case, if the “controller” part of the RAID fails, and can only read 1 of the drives, you’re equally screwed.

I already had a couple of 250 Gig drives, and I got this one just to back up my DVDs and Music (the bigger stuff). And immediately I noticed some “rattling” noise, almost like something wasn’t attached properly inside. So I reported it to LaCie and they sent me a return box. I shipped it in, and they backed up my data (but only after begging them), they put it on a new drive, and sent it back to me.

Good, right? Well, not so fast.

Almost immediately after I got it out of the box, and plugged it in, it started spinning REALLY FAST. So, I emailed their tech support again. And they said “unplug it for 30 minutes”.

So, I did, but the symptoms persisted. I emailed them back… but nothing. I emailed them back again… still nothing.

Then, the drive started “dropping” from my system window. Just like that, it would “unmount”, randomly. So I emailed tech support again, and they told me to use a different power supply.

But then they emailed back and said “wait… DON’T USE A DIFFERENT POWER SUPPLY!”… which was very confusing. Because I was getting different emails from different tech support guys telling me to do, or don’t do, different things.

Then it just plum died. Well, not totally. I could bring it up in “disk utility”, but it only read 1 drive, just ¼ of the RAID array. Meaning something wasn’t “connecting” the drives together.

I emailed them about that… but heard nothing back. So I called.I talked to a very un-inspiring guy who told me that it “looked bleak”, but offered to send me a new power supply, because in his experience the power supplies were “frying the RAID controllers”. Wait. WHAT?!?!?

So he sent me a new power supply that did absolutely nothing.I called back, and that’s when they told me to call a “data recovery” place, and gave me a couple of numbers to call…

$10,000.00.

Seriously.

$10,000.00!

And LaCie WON’T HELP AT ALL.

The don’t have even an “ad hock” data recovery function. Not even an enclosure they can put these 4 drives in and re-connect the RAID. They ONLY fix the drives (which makes absolutely no sense), and they ever-so-smugly reminded me that “in the fine print” it stated clearly, yet small-ly, that they don’t do “data recovery”. Ironic, isn’t it?

Never mind that this is a “hardware failure” in that the CONTROLLER that connects the drives together was FRIED BY THEIR POWER SUPPLY. I asked them very nicely, based on my extended, and storied back-and-forth with customer service, if they would “help” defray the cost.

They said, in effect, hell no.

Now, you may ask “why don’t you just let those movies and music go?” Well… because… and this is a funny story… right before the drive failed I got Mac OSX Leopard. And I wanted to use the new Time Machine backup scheme, instead of my (achem) LaCie SilverKeeper backup-to-backup scheme. So I moved my backup to another drive, and that backup to this 2TB drive (which again, LaCie ASSURED me was still fine)… and that very day, as if on cue, it gasped it’s final breath.

Here’s the kicker: it just so happens that at that exact point in time the ONLY thing that wasn’t backed up… was my entire professional portfolio. Seriously.

Look. I’m a backup fanatic. I have always had a backup of my backups (though previously only on FWdisks, not DVDs). But the one, seriously ONE time I flew by the seat of my pants (so to speak) for ONE DAY I got burned, and burned bad by LaCie, their faulty products, and their awful customer service. On a drive that was acting a bit wonky, but a drive that they assured me was a-ok.

The funny thing was I had read many, many, many BAD reviews of LaCie products before I bought this one (just do a quick Google search, or even check out the ones on the Amazon site link). I had read all the computer magazines reviews, and saw that almost ALL other drives consistently had better ratings than LaCie. But, unfortunately, I was suckered in by price, and a misleading description of the drive.

And false hope.

Well, now I’ve got to send in my drive to LaCie’s “partner” data recovery service (sound fishy?) and spend an ungodly amount of money to recover data from a drive that failed from 10000% hardware malfunctions. As in: LaCie’s faulty power supply fried LaCie’s RAID controller. As in LaCie’s fault*.

So learn from my mistake. Back up your back ups of your back ups. On DVDs as well. And if you’re going to buy a large external drive, find out if it’s a RAID. If it is, think again about buying it.And more importantly, avoid LaCie like the plague they are. In fact, tell everyone you know to avoid LaCie. Buy any other brand… well, except Maxtor. They’re the only brand with *almost* as many bad reviews as LaCie. Almost.

A call to arms. Boycott LaCie.

e

*Lawyers: a class action suit against LaCie would net you about a zillion dollars. But all I want is my data recovery expenses reimbursed.

HOLYMYGOD…

Linky: Sharia law in UK is ‘unavoidable’

It’s finally come to this, has it?

Millions of Muslims have literally flooded into the UK over the past century. And most, regardless of the circumstances, were grateful for it. They were grateful to be alive. To be free.

They also realized that Britain was graciously allowing them to keep, intact, an amazing amount of their own cultures; something many of their own countries were incapable of.

The UK didn’t force their version of Western “culture” down their collective throats.The UK didn’t ask them to stop being themselves.Unfortunately, many of those millions of Muslims (and other cultures as well) haven’t understood the nature of the bargain. And not only have they failed to willingly fold into the pre-existing culture of their newfound homeland, many of them have insisted on inflicting their way of life onto British society.

How rude.

You really expect a millenia-old culture, already deep, and well-established should bend to your ways of life?Immigration only works if both sets of the equation behave with respect. In this case, Britain has been more than respectful. They have bent over backwards (some would say too far) to welcome, and embrace Islamic culture. And now the back of Britain has broken. They have acquiesced beyond the point of no return.

There is no turning back.
Bring on the Sharia Law.

Another great response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM2dC1iWzww