This Week With Angry_Games #1

So hello everyone that might read this (and contract cataracts or worse for being so foolish as to actually read it). No one really cares a whit about what anyone else blogs about, but some of us are still idiots and decide to blog anyway. I could go to Blogspot, or any number of right- or left-wing nutjob political blogs and scream with the rest of the crazies...but I prefer to actually use the main site. Got to dust off the cobwebs and get rid of the squatters so we can actually use the place.

Anyhoo, I guess I'll try to give a weekly breakdown of how much I don't like any of you. But then you'd only read it once and show up at my door with torches and pitchforks (instead of cash...what kind of friends are you people?). So instead I'll blog about just how stupid I am, and how much you all don't like me. That makes for much more interesting reading.

***

First up is Sprint and our cell phones. As younger persons might read this, I'll refrain from using an almost infinite combination of George Carlin's "7 dirty words you can't say on tv" in describing how I feel about Sprint. How I feel about just about any publicly-owned corporation actually.

My brother, 7 years older than I, and my lifetime idol, has just been "downsized" for the 3rd time in about 10 years. The first time, he was a manager with PrimeCo, one of the first CDMA mobile networks in the USA. He worked hard and made his way up the chain to eventually have his own store down in Dallas, Texas. Eventually though, PrimeCo was bought by US Cellular. As always, the employees were promised that nothing would change for the most part, everything was good, and look...anyone who had been accruing stock was paid mostly in cash during the buyout, and part of the deal (thankfully) was that any employees that were laid off within 12 months would receive a severance package. A decent one, but nothing you could live on as a bum for a year. Maybe 6 months, plus you could cash out any remaining stock.

Of course, within a couple of months of the merger, they started slashing jobs. Go figure, my brother was one of them. He and his fiancé decided to move to San Diego, where her family lived. With his extensive management experience, he was soon working for Gateway in one of their storefronts in the San Diego area. Again he worked through managerial training and was poised to open a new store, when Gateway started to go belly-up. And again, of course, they started closing most if not all of their storefronts and went back to the internet. And once again, my brother's job ended up being cut, and once again he received a severance package, and cashed in his stock.

(ps: for those wondering why he didn't hold onto any of the stock...it sorta works like this - why keep your stock in a company that is very quickly losing value on all of it's stock? why not cash it in and buy something solid and long-term like Intel/Microsoft/IBM? blammo, that's the answer!)

So fast forward now to the present. Last year, Sprint bought out Nextel. My brother...you guessed it, had his own Nextel store here in Boise. For almost 3 years he ran this store, always making his quota in sales, always winning the inter-company contests (like who can sell the most accessories in a month, etc). Once the merger was finalized, all of his Nextel stock was cashed out, and it was a pretty decent chunk (considering he is single, lives with us and has almost no bills, it was...a good thing he invested a good share of his pay back to buying Nextel stock). Sprint also had to abide by the merger agreement that anyone laid off within 18 months would get a severance package. But of course, Sprint personally assured every employee that came with Nextel that their jobs were ultra-secure, no worries here, wink-wink-nudge-nudge.

And as of May 31st, my brother once again received his severance and a pink slip. The problem I really have isn't so much because it's against my brother. Obviously I'm quite angry about that. Worse, however, are the large numbers of family providers that get the axe also. And there's always some idiot from the company that claims "they got a big severance package so it should take care of them until they find another job". Like jobs are a dime a dozen everywhere.

I don't mind rejects getting fired or downsized. By rejects I mean middle-managers who have really no responsibility except to browbeat and antagonize the real managers below them who run the stores. The guys that serve zero purpose in the company except to suck down executive paychecks that are usually six figures or more. How many vice presidents of each division does a company need? Wouldn't the millions of dollars that go to these guys be better served paying the real workers, or getting them at the least, better health plans? These aren't the only jokers that need to be booted out on their asses, but they are a significant chunk that get to stick around after these mergers and continue doing nothing for more pay than they previously received.

While my brother, an incredibly dependable worker, as well as others who are moms, dads, whatever, have to hit the unemployment line. But hey, Boise is famous for Micron Technologies, right? Go get a job with them! They are a huge employer here in the Treasure Valley (the valley that Boise sits in with other almost-suburbs).

Yeah, except a couple nights ago, Micron, in their infinite wisdom, decides to lay off 10% of their work force now. Probably more down the road. Employees that they moved to Boise just a year or two ago from across the nation went to work yesterday and left within the hour with their belongings and pink slips. "Escorted off the property" was a favorite tag line on the news.

Boo hoo, right? Happens to everyone. Except here in Idaho, Micron talked sweet lovings in the ear of our politicians, who passed massive tax breaks and incentives with the HOPE of Micron building a new production facility here. Like just about every American corporation though, they got a better deal by building one in Asia, where the labor is so cheap the company can save millions of dollars all over the place. So now Idaho doesn't get the jobs, yet Micron got all the tax breaks and incentives.

Sheesh. Isn't there anyone out there who wants to buy a public company and take it back to private and actually worry less about profits for your shareholders and more about providing a decent salary and decent health benefits for workers? Money seems to be the driving force, and for shareholders, it seems to me like an addiction.

***


Number two on my list of crap this week is once again, Sprint. When my brother's job ended, we moved our phones over to his best friend's employee plan, who still works for Sprint. Somehow, Sprint cannot figure out how to do anything correctly, because all of the phones were switched over without issue, until Thursday. They all went dead all at the same time. It seems that Sprint doesn't know what Sprint is doing, and even though the move to another employee plan was approved and actually transferred (we already paid two bills since the transfer as we just pay his friend since it's his employee account), somehow it wasn't approved nor transferred. Our numbers were suspended along with our service.

Ok, no problem, right? So my brother calls Sprint to find out what has happened, and the nightmare began. It only took sitting on hold with regular customer service for over one hour before he got hung up on. Another 25 minutes on hold to get disconnected again. After about another hour, and multiple disconnects (yes, more! yay!), he finally gets to talk to a real human being, who promptly informs him that because it is an employee plan, they can't help him. He has to call Sprint's internal help division for employees.

The plastic of the phone is starting to melt to his ear by this time, as the rage is building. But again, no worries, we'll just call Sprint's employee support, and get it taken care of. How busy can their employee support be?

Oh, only about 239 minutes, which is the total time the cordless phone said he'd spent after he finally hung up and had everything restored. This is just with Sprint employee support. Not the 3 hours spent trying to talk to regular Sprint support for 'real' customers just to be told he had to talk to employee support.

During this 239 minutes of combined time, he was hung up on while being transferred multiple times. It was almost near the end when he finally got to talk to a real human. The guy on the other end was very nice, and explained that the call queue was at 300+ calls still waiting to be handled. But of course, he needed a passcode or last 4 digits of his friend's SSN to do anything on the account...which left us in a bind as the home phone was the only phone working, and no %#@$@ way was my brother hanging up to get that passcode or SSN digit and face another 3 hours or more to get back to this point.

Eventually though, the climax is that of course our phones are working again. But the phones don't work down where she will be working when we move, and reception at the house where they do work is pretty spotty...and Sprint gave us until August 9th to decide if we wanted a 2-year contract or to move on. I think we'll take my # and drop hers so she can get a more 'localized' number and go to Verizon or T-Mobile.

Sprint...kiss my fanny for the final time. Then share the kiss with Gateway and US Cellular (and Enron).

***


Third, Mr. Windbag is going to complain about wasps. Or yellow jackets. Or hornets. Or whatever the ^%@$ they are. I'm very angry. I was putting the lawnmower away yesterday when one of them rocketed out of the storage shed and dive-bombed me. Nailed me right on the outer lip of the middle of my ear. Nasty little bugger. I screamed and cursed like a good sinner, then calmed myself as best I could (in case I was facing a deadly allergic reaction), went into the house, got on Google, and looked at the symptoms of anaphalectic shock.

Well, I'm not dead, but %#@$# man I am %#@$#@ angry. Ya ya, I know, I know, they's just bein' bees (or wasps or whatever they is bein'). But bein' stinger-ey on my property doesn't settle well with me. I tend to reside on the side of ULTIMATE REVENGE instead of caution.

I called momma and told her to bring me some wasp atomic bomb spray home while I polished up my trigger finger, got it all active, stretched, and ready to pound wasp backside with a vengeance.

The stupid part though, is I already had some H-bomb spray. I had it right inside the doorway of the storage shed. About two feet in and three feet below a monster-sized wasp (or hornet or yellow jacket) nest. Heh. GO %@#$ YOURSELVES WASPS/BEES/HORNETS/BASTARDS!!!!

Mr. Brave grabbed a broom and proceeded to really piss those buggers off by trying to use the broom to quickly sweep the can of hornet killer out of the shed and to my feet. After about 10 minutes of sweating, screaming like woman as I repeatedly ran away when they came for me, cursing those buggers out both quietly and loudly right at them, I finally got the can. It had maybe 1/8 left in it, but that was enough.

I'm not sure what kind of bad poison is in this stuff, but it's damn sure nuclear weapon fusion when it touches them bugs. I got most of them angry but they flew off, though a few of 'em hit the floor and didn't get up. Next I grabbed the trusty broom and somehow, from around the corner and on the outside of the shed, got the broom up under the overhang right above the door opening, and got the nest to fall. I damn near did a celebration dance over the thing after I swept it out onto a paving stone. I made jelly out of them stinger-ey bugs hyuk hyuk.

And...I felt...powerful. I ruled them, then exterminated them. BOOYAH!!! I feel no sadness. I'm sure PETA will protest in front of my house, or some nerds at the Discovery Channel who love bugs (hey, I LOVE bugs too, I just don't like the mean ones invading my turf) will cry out that I'm a Joseph Stalin-esque monster. I might see if that nuclear bug spray works on humans if they gang up on me (protesters are no better than bugs when they set up the picket line in front of my house).

Today...I'm just itchy. Itchy-scratchy. It don't hurt no more, but man it's itchy. Which is ok, since every time I want to scratch it, I get up from the computer, go outside to have a smoke, and grab the new can of BUG-B-DED. Or Hornet Homicide or whatever it's called. Heh, stupid wasps. They keep coming back to remake their home, and I keep bombing them back into the stone age. You'd think at some point, the wasps flying in are seeing masses of dead wasp brethren (or sistren...they are females if I remember science class correctly), they'd be saying "hrmm...let's go build a nest in that other dude's back yard, he's dirty and NEVER mows it nor cleans it!".

I don't think bugs are as smart as we are though. Not that I am any smarter than a bug. I'm definitely more vicious. I payback 100-fold foolish bugs!

***

And finally, I'd like to rant for just a moment about Gateway Technical Support. I just got a new customer from a referral. This guy has a pretty dang nice Gateway that has a Core2 E6300, 2GB DDR2-800, 300GB hdd, etc. However, something happened (probably porno), and the machine got all screwy. This is a business machine too, keep that in mind.

A call to tech support got him the dreaded "put the restore cd in the drive and reboot" answer. They told him they would help him restore the system to a working state. As he's explaining this to me yesterday (before I even turned it on), I'm already thinking of the nasty job of going into Windows System Restore (which I disable the instant I install Windows on any and every machine) to find out wtf is going on.

However, they didn't bother to inform him that putting the restore cd in the drive and rebooting would wipe the entire hard drive and start back over from scratch, with every single document and such deleted and gone forever (overwritten by the new install).

I finally got to the machine this morning, and when I booted it up, it went right to the desktop but all big (800x600), and everything lagged when you opened any windows at all, which is a sure sign that either the machine is chugging under a serious cpu/RAM load (usually from a virus or malware), or it doesn't have any video drivers installed.

A quick look inside My Documents showed me...nothing. Just the My Pictures and whatever the default, fresh-install folders that are in Media Center 2005's My Docs folder. Not good. So I check the device manager, and sure enough, a billion yellow ?'s. No drivers at all.

So basically, as you have guessed by now, the machine got wiped. I had to call him and explain this to him and tell him all I really needed to do was install the drivers for all of his hardware. He isn't really all that happy to hear that every single document is gone.

However, as mad as I can be at Gateway for their tomfoolery and irresponsible tech work, I have to lay a little blame at the customer, as he hasn't bothered to back anything up. Remember, as I said, it's his BUSINESS. He has a pretty damn tight Gateway, and it definitely has a DVD-RW drive.



I just fix what I can fix.

Until the next long-winded weekly bunch of stupid crap that spews out of me, be nice to your spouse because she might take your life in the middle of the night.

(that's good advice, you got to admit)

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