Thor’s Trials & Tribulations

Thursday, February 2, 2012 by Dick.

!@#$%^ Comcast!

I use the “ecofriendly” auto pay to pay my (basic) cable bill + bundled Internet. I don’t get a paper statement. I don’t mail a check. Then !@#$%^ Comcast grabs whatever they want out of my checking account.

Mistake.

Big mistake.

An hour after I logged into my online cable account, I discovered a line item for $50 for “other services” like PPV or dirty movies. I don’t buy PPV or dirty movies; I can stream them free over the Internoodle.

We had a “service difficulty” around Christmas. Internet was slow, stupid, and balky for a couple of weeks. The !@#$%^ Comcast DNS server kept crashing. Life was lousy in South Puffin.

I called !@#$%^ Comcast and a week or so plus 3 hours later, a technician showed up. Nice guy. Name was Richard. He was pleasant, efficient, and pretty much had nothing to do since the problem was upstream.

!@#$%^&^ COMCAST BILLED ME FOR THE SERVICE CALL.

Good thing I noticed the charge was $50 higher than usual when I logged into my bank account this morning or I never would have known.

It took another hour this morning to load the “customer account page” and then wade through all the auto attends to get a live rep to get a credit. I really really really think they bill for these things and figure at least some percentage of their customers never protest.

Weeee! Free money. The credit will appear on next month’s bill, so they have yet another chance to use my money.

@#$%^ers.

Posted in Business, Dick's Dumps | 3 Comments »

Thor’s Trials & Tribulations

Thursday, January 26, 2012 by Dick.

Google Latitude showed my friend Liz Arden near the Howland and Baker Islands, off Papua New Guinea the other day.

Cool.

Except she was in California, about three blocks from the Googleplex itself at the time.

I tried to enter my own address. Google puts me in Elfrin, FL. Or in Marathon. Or, after I put in the exact street address, city, and Zip three times, down the block at 150 Abblesnaffy Road, South Puffin Beach, FL, 33040. Their map and satellite imagery are right for that location but not for 920 Abblesnaffy Street, South Puffin Beach, FL, 33099.

And when it shows my location, it won’t show Liz Arden’s which strikes me as pretty useless. After all, I know where I am.

Latitudes and attitudes.

Posted in Business, Tech Toys, Dick's Dumps | 4 Comments »

Peeved at !@#$%^ Comcast

Thursday, December 8, 2011 by Dick.

!@#$%^ Comcast is apparently readying us for the changeover to a set top box. It may happen in North Puffin. It may happen in South Puffin. It may happen in one but not the other. Or vice versa. It may not happen in either. It may happen in both.

Nothing on @#$%^comcast.com tells me for sure what they are doing and to whom they are doing it. Or what they’re going to charge for the boxes. Or when it’s going to happen. !@#$%^&ers.

Here’s what Rufus had to say:

“!@#$%^&ers indeed. But the basic boxes (at least 2 or 3) will be free. HOWEVER you will not be able to — at least I can’t — record multiple sessions on different channels while you are away, since you will have to change channels on the box.

“I have three DVRs and three boxes (but the timer software/firmware on one box is dead.) Anyway, I can record on three channels (or could if I hooked up the third box) (if I’m willing to set up each separately).

“There is NO tuner you can get that will deal with their signal. It is not just digital, it has proprietary scrambling.

“You’re !@#$%ed.”

Progress innit.

Posted in Business, Dick's Dumps | 2 Comments »

Persembe Peeves

Thursday, December 1, 2011 by Dick.

Victoria’s Secret used Kanye West and Jay-Z as their musical entertainment on Tuesday. Edgy. Popular. The beat was great for runway strutting but their lyrics are soooooooooo angry I wouldn’t use them to sell my merchandise.

Turns out Mr. West got 7 Grammy nominations last night including one for his joint venture with Jay-Z, Watch the Throne. I now understand why he and Jay-Z wanted to perform together on the Vicky runway.

I just don’t understand why Vicky wanted them.

Posted in Marketing, Business, Dick's Dumps | 6 Comments »

Eat More

Monday, November 28, 2011 by Dick.

Heh.

I don’t know about you but I still have a lot of turkey left over.

Different turkey here so I hope you stopped by for something other than the recipes.

Bo Muller-Moore is a folk artist in Montpelier, Vermont who made the national news today and not for his new spray paint/stencil prints at the Montpelier Art Walk. Those images at the Skinny Pancake honored some of the animals of Vermont and the cavemen that painted them first.

Mr. Muller-Moore has built a substantial home business around the words “eat more kale” which silkscreens on T- and sweatshirts. He calls it “an expression of the benefits of local agriculture.”

For the record, I put kale right up there with lima beans in the food pantheon but I will fight to the death your right to eat it. It is probably better for you than limas, too.

A couple of Mr. Muller-Moore’s friends, “Paul and Kate of High-Ledge Farm, penned the phrase over ten years ago when they special ordered two shirts for themselves. I must admit, I gave the design very little thought,” he wrote. “I drew the letters and cut the stencil in less than 20 minutes. I printed their shirts and delivered them at the next farmer’s market. The idea became ‘viral’ before people knew what ‘viral’ was, then quickly spread to all corners of the world.”

Meanwhile Chick-fil-A, the second-largest chicken restaurant chain in the country, owns and aggressively guards the trademarked phrase eat mor chikin™. Chick-fil-A, the second-largest chicken restaurant chain in the country, sounds very Canadian to my ear, eh? I thought Canadians could spell, eh?

Mr. Muller-Moore has now filed a trademark application for “eat more kale.” About 30 seconds later, the second-largest chicken restaurant chain’s legal team sent him a cease-and-desist letter in which they listed at least 30 examples of attempts by others to co-opt the “eat more” phrase, attempts that they bullied into withdrawing. The letter ordered him to stop using the phrase and to turn over his website, eatmorekale.com, to Chick-fil-A.

This is not the first time a Vermonter has had to stand up on his hind feet.

Matt Nadeau’s Rock Art Brewery is a micro brewery in Morrisville, Vermont. A couple of years ago they introduced a beer called “Vermonster” that ran afoul of the Hansen Natural brand “Monster” energy drink folks. The two settled the case when Rock Art agreed never to go into the energy drink business. As far as I know, Ben & Jerry never went after Mr. Nadeau for infringing on their 14,000 calorie bucket with the same name.

At the end of the day, I kinda don’t think anyone will buy an ‘eat more kale’ shirt thinking it was a Chick-fil-A turkey.

Posted in Marketing, Licensing, Business, Politics & News, Random Access | 4 Comments »

We’re Number One!

Monday, November 7, 2011 by Dick.

“I’ve been trying to figure out why businesses aren’t insisting on single payer healthcare,” my old friend Enola “Fanny” Guay said, “and I realized it’s because we’re all in this great shift into being corporate serfs.”

Although I’ve known Ms. Guay for nearly 50 years and know how proud she is of her experiential learning, I also know she can be a bit blinded by her ideology. She’s a second generation member of Helen and Scott Nearing’s back-to-the-land movement in Vermont. The Nearings bought an old farm house and built a simple, self-sufficient lifestyle here, far from big government and rampant consumerism. Their descendants are now the power brokers and consumers of Montpeculiar.

Fanny Guay really really really believes in single payer. “All Americans have a constitutional if not a moral right to health care,” she says, “and a single payer plan would cover everyone by default for doctors, hospital, preventive and long-term care, mental health, reproductive, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs.”

Be nice if we knew how to pay for that.

“We won’t need as much money under single payer,” Ms. Guay said. “With all the patients under the single system, the payer has clout. The VA, for instance, gets a 40% discount on drugs because of its buying power. This monopsony explains why drug prices in other countries are lower than here. That’s how Medicare forces hospital and doctor costs down as well.”

Be nice if we knew how to pay for that.

“See, there is already plenty of money in the system now to pay for it because we already pay for health care.”

Erm, no. Rutland City Treasurer Wendy Wilton’s analysis shows that there is no pot of gold in taxpayer pockets.

She looked at all current state revenues. The property tax, already earmarked for education, is maxed out. Vermont is number four in the nation in property taxes, and just .05% behind number three Connecticut. (The property tax raises 42% of the state revenues.) General sales taxes plus the tariff on gas and booze runs a close second, raising 30% of revenues. State income tax, no longer coupled to federal, is likewise maxed out.

Vermont may grow rocks but there’s no more blood in the stones.

In fact, CNN ranked Vermont number one, numero uno, primo supremo, in the tax wars with a total state and local tax burden of 14.1% of per capita income. That’s far more than New York (13.8%), New Jersey (11.6), or California (11.5) or even Florida (10%).

“That does seem high, but we are a small state and we have a great quality of life.”

Can’t hide from the facts. Vermont will need another payroll tax.

“But we don’t need new taxes!” Ms. Guay said. “We just need to tap the insurance premiums we’re already paying.”

Ms. Wilton found that the state will need a new 14.5% payroll tax but is still going to run $300 million yearly budget deficits even with that new tax. She believes the Shumlin Administration is over-estimating the cost savings a single-payer system can deliver.

She also believe the Shumlin Administration is playing hide the walnut with how much they will have to raise taxes this year, next year, and the year after that, and so on ad infinitum.

The new Vermont legislative session begins Thursday. Guess what’s first on the agenda.

Ms. Guay wondered “why businesses aren’t insisting on single payer healthcare.” Pretty simple, really.

• Gov. Shumlin’s plan will drive the couple of remaining insurance companies out of business here.
• Gov. Shumlin’s plan will make it illegal not to provide health insurance to all employees.
• Gov. Shumlin’s plan will double the size of government (which doubles the size of taxes) overnight.
• Gov. Shumlin’s plan will drive the couple of remaining Vermont employers out of business here because a business can’t do business if they can’t predict how much their taxes will go up every year.

And no business wants to be legislated into being sort of a serf to the state.

Be nice if we knew how to pay for all that.

Posted in Taxed Again, ShumpleCare, ObamaCare, Business, Politics & News, Random Access | 3 Comments »