11/3/2009 7:29 AM
So apparently there is an election where I live in Greer today. And I don't care. However when the father of one of the candidates came stumping through my neighborhood this weekend and handed me a brochure advertising his daughter's candidacy, I couldn't help but be struck by the level of nonsense it contained. For instance his daughters political party membership, views on important topics and stances and on issues relevant to Greer as a community were not included in this pamphlet. However it did mention the church she was a member of, the fact that she was a small business owner along with where she went to high school. Apparently fixing that pothole that I hit every morning crossing Highway 29 via Arlington is not a platform issue. Which is a shame because without a commitment on that particular issue, I'll be forced to ignore the election as a whole.

Hell, even her website demonstrates this total ineptitude towards running a campaign. Check it out for yourself.

Moral of the story: Elections in the real world are much like elections in high school: Pure popularity contest. Unless of course you live in a fantasy world, your name is Pedro and you have an insanely nerdy friend named Napoleon that makes the rest of us nerds seem mild in comparison :)

10/15/2009 7:55 AM
So I watched the news this morning as Annette made me a birthday morning breakfast. Thank goodness I managed to go the entire hour without hearing about Swine Flu. If I had to pick one thing I've been hearing about lately that really ticks me off, it would be Swine Flu. I mean the media and the doctors keep telling us this is a serious issue, but the fatality rate is quite low, even lower than that of the normal seasonal flu.

But but but, we all need to be vaccinated or we will die! But only a handful of people are dying, right? But apparently the disease could mutate into a much more deadly variant. Okay, I accept that possibility. I also accept the reality that the vaccine I take to protect me from today's variant, would not protect me from tomorrow's evolved super killer. But as with everything in this country (war on terror, healthcare and any other issue of the moment) fear has become the overriding factor in our discussions regarding the issue rather than the facts. What's particularly amazing about our system is the ability of politicians and others in power (i.e. lobbyists) to harness this fear for their own nefarious purposes all while leaving us as a whole up the creek when it comes time to pay the piper.

For instance all of the news shows this morning have talked about, "The Recovery". Yeah the DOW hit 10,000. Who the hell cares? What difference does it make? More people are unemployed than ever, consumer spending is down all around, foreclosures are up and commercial real estate is literally imploding while the banks to scurry to hide the losses. But it doesn't matter, we are trumpeting a recovery of numbers that are fictional indicators clearly suffering from a massive disconnect from reality. The same thing is happening in regards to "Healthcare Reform" right now. Somewhere along the way reform became the same thing as handing out large wads of cash to the private companies that have been screwing us for years and hoping for the best. Let's not even talk about "Financial Reform" which has been largely non-existent outside of a few well written speeches here and there.

Bullshit. I'm a free market capitalist. I'm a libertarian. I'm agnostic. My socially liberal tendencies aside, I would've liked to have let the market solve some of these problems. Really I would have. But in all cases, we either missed the opportunity (i.e. bailing out the banks) or ignored the obvious problems for far too long. You can't take steps to subsidize a broken system and then play the "the market will solve it's own problems" card when presented with the crappy results your strategy has produced. But that's exactly what Republicans and Democrats are choosing to do.

But hey that's what we do in America. We employ the same broken strategies time and time again, regardless of their lack of positive results. There are dozens of examples of this. The embargo on Cuba, the War on Terror and the War on Drugs are great examples for starters. But still we persist. I think part of the reason for this is because the Democrats and Republicans have spent their efforts focusing the voters on pointless hedge issues like Abortion. How many people do you know that choose one political party over another based solely upon their feelings regarding Abortion? How stupid is that? It's legal and will likely continue to be legal into the foreseeable future. Why is it even a campaign issue? Why do people make a choice of political affliation based upon an opinion regarding an issue that has no realistic merit attached to it?

Is it because America is full of idiots? Perhaps. Is it because the real issues have become too complicated for the average individual to accurately grasp? More than likely. Is because most people in this country have confused religion and politics and adopted a strategy of "blind faith" when faced with the failures incurred by "their team"? You betcha.

9/5/2009 1:24 PM
Wow. So today I finally signed up with DirectTV and their HD DVR service. Little did I know that my biggest source of drama here would be with TiVo. Back in Jan of 2009, I had canceled TiVo after my original 2 year commitment was up and tried out the Cable company's DVR option. After about a month of suffering, we decided to move back to our low def TiVo (having already tried the TiVo HD and found that neither TiVo nor our cable company could/would get the CableCARD solution to work). Well apparently when I signed up for TiVo's special reduced rate of $12.95, they nailed me with a yearly commitment. Or so they say. My original documentation and emails on the matter indicate no such commitment. I do keep all of these things on hand for future reference.

So here we are. I call up TiVo today looking to cancel and they begin threatening a huge cancellation fee. I tell them that I've not under contract at which point they insist that I am. Then they tell me that it'll cost $150 for me to break that contract. I am then put on hold and left to stew for a few minutes. By the time the rep comes back, I've got my original documentation and the reminder of what I would owe them under the contract handy. They then decided to reduce the cancellation fee to around $65.00, which would be the amount left on my contract. Then I essentially tell them to fuck off and I'll be more than happy to make their collection agency cry on the phone after I get the bank to deny the charges.

They respond with, "Oh but we can reduce your rate to 9.95 a month without a contract extension!" So if I just leave the service activated until February it will now only cost me $50 instead of $65 to effectively cancel the contract. So for now I've opted to take this approach. That way when I call back up next month to cancel, it'll cost me less of my precious credit score to turn around and fuck them up their asses. Of course they may just lower the rate again, which only means I'll wait until the following month for another bout.

Fuck TiVo. Screw the Cable Company for their shitty DVR service too. At this rate, I really hope DirecTV's service is that damn good, because otherwise I'm going to be up the creek without a paddle when it comes to DVR service. I may just end up building my own Media Center or MythTV box.

What a bunch of drama. TV really shouldn't be this hard people.