Modern Communications (Cell Phone Service)

I bought a network extender. I bought it on Amazon for less than 1/3 the (outrageous) price Verizon was asking for the same thing. After some ridiculousness with the delivery process, it arrived. I plugged in all the appropriate cables; all the appropriate lights lit up. It didn't help.

So I got online and search the support database, like the well behaved customer I am. I found nothing remotely useful. So I did the unthinkable: called technical support.

Well, about 40 minutes into this "adventure", I've had my call dropped once, got hung up on once, had my call accidentally rerouted while on hold once, so I've had to start over 3 times. What I've managed to find out is that I need to have a phone number for the extender registered with Verizon - which the guy who first wanted to sell me one did not tell me - and to get that I have to talk to the network extender department. But either the phone gods hate me or the network extender department doesn't actually exist because I have yet to reach them.

45 minutes.

Where's the nearest AT&T office?

An Open Letter (8)

Dear Aetna,

I clearly shouldn't have believed you when you said I didn't have to pay you any more money until March. But of course I didn't realize my foolishness until, on the last day of January, my pharmacy said you wouldn't pay for anything. You had your money by Tuesday. But could the pharmacy get any money out of you Wednesday? You're joking, right? Thursday? Still no dice.

Friday a young woman on your payroll - who was actually quite pleasant - confirmed that you had indeed received my money and you were indeed prepared to pay out on my behalf. And yet a few hours later the pharmacy still was unable to get you to fork over. Even after the very nice pharmacist (a rarity these days, but that's another rant) called you and confirmed that yes, you had my money, and you acknowledged willingness to pay for my medical treatments. But not to the pharmacy. Because apparently while every other computer system on the entire planet (with the possible exception of Egypt, currently) can transfer information between machines in seconds or minutes, yours take more than 72 hours to get data from one place to another.

So well done, Aetna: you've managed to find the only computers on the planet that are actually slower than the Pony Express. And if I'm lucky I'll get my prescription in three more days, because God forbid anyone in medical insurance work on the weekend. Oh wait... that would imply that they work at all.

Die and rot in hell.
Yours truly

Sometimes I Hate Winter

OK, ice storms make the trees look pretty. But everything else about them pretty much sucks. They cause damage, they make people fall and hurt themselves, and they get you up early in the morning just so you can spend that many extra hours stressing out about the appointments you can't get to. And wondering how it is that other people got out of their driveways so easily. And wishing you lived someplace where ice is known only as what clinks in your glass. Or that you at least had chains on your tires. Or maybe one of those ridiculous driveways with heating elements built into it so you could just switch in on when you woke up and by the time you had gotten dressed and eaten breakfast you'd have nothing but a little slush to clear away.

And really all I want to do - all I have wanted to do for about three days - is make hot, buttered popcorn and watch Beauty and the Beast on VHS. Yes, really.

Disappointment

When you have a shitty day, with people cutting you off and spewing unrelated information at you instead of listening to and answering your question, and everything taking ten times as long as it needs to, and air conditioning so cold you leave the building with a sore throat, and through it all it's nearly a hundred degrees outside, and on the drive home behind the asshole who insists on going 10 mph below the speed limit you decide that even if you can't have a slice of pizza or a submarine sandwich or really anything that you'd like to have for dinner when you eventually get home, as long as you can have a little chocolate cake you'll be okay, and then you get home and mix up your Betty Crocker GF chocolate cake mix and wait for it to bake and wait longer for it to cool and it has exactly zero flavor - that's disappointment.

Is this really necessary?

I'm writing cover letters, which is among my all time least favorite things to do. Honestly, I'd rather scrub the bathtub - at least then I'd know a nice bath was coming at the end of it. Writing cover letters just feels like useless bragging, a giant pissing contest against a bunch of people I'll never meet. I'm so not into it. If I could, I'd send this to every potential employer:


To Whom It May Concern:

I'm AWESOME. You should hire me.

Love,
Me


I mean, that's all a cover letter is, when you get down to it. Why bother dressing it up all fancy? Let's get real here, people. I need a job. You need someone remotely competent. This could be the start of something moderately unpleasant but generally beneficial for us both.

a/s/l ?

Living in a city where I know no one, and facing the task (rather daunting for the shy kids of the world) of meeting new people, I've been thinking about the phenomenon of meeting people and how it's changed over time, especially recently. (And since I don't know anyone I have oodles of time to sit around and think about these things - doesn't that work out well?)

This also coincides with someone I know trying out the eHarmony thing - the first person I know to give this particular site a shot. (I have, in the past, known people who've done the J-Date thing, and people who've done the Craigslist personals thing. No, not casual encounters, the regular personals. And people who've met significant others in chat rooms/on message boards.) I happen to think it's fantastic that this person is finding out who's online - it's just helped fuel my musings on the subject, hearing about the firsthand experience.

It's the era of the internet: chat online, bank online, buy clothes/books/furniture online, rent videos online, find apartments online, so why not browse for potential friends and mates online? Shopping for people, without all that messy interpersonal interaction. The fiberoptics and satellites keep everything nice and distant. Doesn't it sound perfect?

What I've started to realize is that so many of us are so lost when it comes to meeting people that these 'shopping' sites are the only ways we can figure out how to do it. I won't make claims about what caused this phenomenon, but I think a lot of you will agree that this is the reality. Perhaps there are still small towns somewhere in America where people grow up with their neighbors, marry their high school sweethearts, and spend every Fourth of July at block parties with the same people they've known for many years. In most places - at least in the densely populated places I've lived - the art of meeting people seems to be nearing endangerment.

People do still pick people up in bars (apparently), but how many people do you know who've had a relationship longer than 24 hours with people they met that way?

Perhaps I'm completely off the mark. Perhaps I'm simply demonstrating how out of touch I am with the social interactions happening all around me. But I can't count how many times I've had the same conversation with friends: "How are we supposed to meet people?!"

What I've begun to wonder is if this move to virtual, often carefully constructed meetingplaces is unavoidable. If half the people in this town are shopping on eHarmony and Match.com, does that mean they're not out meeting people face to face? Are they too busy 'reviewing their matches'? Does that mean that if I go out to meet people in 'real life' the pool will be reduced to half the local population? That sounds like more incentive to look online, and so the cycle is perpetuated.

In the end, though, is it really any better to look to meet people online than at the local coffee shop? The bottom line is still the same - you risk rejection either way. Is it enough of an improvement to be rejected in the privacy of your own home, in front of the computer, instead of in a public place, that it's worth losing the opportunity to to meet a whole person instead of some disembodied words? Is the face to face rejection really so bad that we'd rather stay in our houses and miss the chemistry that can happen when two people are in the same room? (Can there possibly be chemistry through the computer?)

This doesn't solve the problem, of course. We still don't seem to know how to meet people - where to go, what to say, how to not feel totally awkward or to be brave enough to take the risk. I don't know if there's a solution, but if we've reached a point where we're collectively becoming more and more okay with saying "yes, I want to meet someone badly enough to pay $30 a month for the chance that I'll find someone whom I like who likes me too, and who also happened to sign up for the same website" then maybe - just maybe - we can take one more leap and say "I want to meet someone badly enough that I'm willing to go out into a public place and be awkward and say the wrong thing and hope that someone else is willing to be awkward and possibly foolish too, and if nothing else we can share our awkwardness (because the odds of encountering someone totally smooth and not awkward at all seem incredibly small)."

Could we say that? If we're brave enough to have adopted the once totally stigmatized world of online dating into the mainstream, can we be brave enough to turn to a stranger and say hello?

Have I just talked myself into something?

An Open Letter (2)

To the drivers on I287 approaching the Tappan Zee Bridge this evening around 7:00 (and really to all drivers in the Northeast, and possibly everywhere),

Perhaps no one ever explained to you one of the general concepts behind driving a car, so let me try: You are intended to progress in a forward direction. Occasionally you go backwards, or even stay still, but when you are on I287 approaching the Tappan Zee Bridge you should, indeed, be moving forwards.

I do understand that sometimes you need to change the radio station, or eat a sandwich, or put on mascara, but these things should be handled in such a way as to not impede your forward progress. Because, you see, when you stop moving forward, I stop moving forward.

When I'm on I287 at around 7pm on a Sunday night, I really would rather continue moving forward, and I'm pretty sure the other drivers around would too. So please, even if you're going up a hill, even if there's a car carefully merging onto the road, even if you suddenly realize that you forgot to turn off the oven before you left town for two weeks - please continue to move in a forward direction. We will all appreciate it, including you when I don't decide to drive my beat up old car directly into the back of your cute, brand new car, with as much force as I can muster from a standstill with one car's length run-up.

Thank you, and happy driving.

Wishful Thinking

I wish I could make the mail arrive faster.
I wish I could rearrange geography.
I wish I could fix the things that upset my friends. I wish I could do more to help.
I wish I could see the future, just for a second.
I wish I would get a check in the mail for a million dollars, tax free.
I wish I could park my car for more than fifteen minutes, anywhere, without worrying about getting ticketed or towed.
I wish I didn't hate how I spend half my waking hours.
I wish I could worry less about everything and everyone.
I wish people could and would just say things, without all the complications.
I wish the weather could be perfect more than three days a year.
I wish my phone wasn't starting to suck just a little.
I wish I could spend more time with the people that matter to me.
I wish the places where I feel truly safe were places I could stay and not just pass through.
I wish there was less waiting.
I wish I was too busy with all the good stuff....