Canned Angst

They didn't block caller id

Vonage rocks. I now have access to detailed activity of my phone calls:

To: info@hallmarkmortgageservices.com
Subject: Unsolicited telephone call

Ken Huffman

Making Faces

Chris, to challenge an otherwise bored first grader, bought Marissa a math book for home. To encourage her to do the work, Chris promised Marissa a computer game if she finished forty pages in the extracurricular text book.

It came time to pay up this weekend. I took the girls Best Buy and Marissa picked out SeaWorld Adventure Park Tycoon 2.

The girls have been inching towards taking over my desktop machine as their own. And this was another game that required my beefier machine. They now run it, Disney Princess Magical Dress-Up, Brother Bear and Zoo Tycoon 2 on there.

Both SeaWorld and Dress-Up require Administrator rights to run, so I have given two 7-years-olds reign over my machine. This irks me to no end. I felt uneasy enough to backup the system tonight. I hope they don't figure out how to change my password.

Katie plays the Dress-Up game. You build a doll, picking a body shape, hair, eye and skin color and then you layer on clothes. Just like the old paper dolls without having to resort to messy analog scissors.

Even before she could speak, we have made Katie aware that she was adopted from China. She hasn't always known what that meant though. When she was four she asked when her hair would turn yellow like mommy's. We told her it never would and that almost everyone from China had black hair. A few months later she asked at what age her nose would "pop out." We let her know that, just like most Chinese people, her nose will always be small.

The Dress-Up software allows you to import a digital picture so your daughter can dress up a doll with her own face on it. With the girls gone to bed tonight, I imported Katie's beautiful China doll face from a recent birthday picture.

This takes a bit of effort as you have to indicate with an oval where the face is on the image. This allows the image to be cropped properly. Then you have to mark where on the face the eyebrows, eyes, nose and mouth are. This is allows the software to shade the face to make it look 3D.

The software makes some unfortunate assumptions on the range of real skin colors and facial shading. You can make some crude adjustments to the skin color, but you cannot adjust how much it shades the indicated features.

This is the picture I started with:

After a several attempts, this is what I ended up with (warning: not for the squeamish).

At least she'll never wish for a Western nose again.

Drive by spamming

A few minutes before her class is to end, I pull into a parking spot at Katie's gymnastics building. My phone rings over the car's audio system and I press the little offhook button at the 8 o'clock position on the steering wheel.

"beeeeep"

Oh no, not again.

It is a fax machine calling my cell phone. Annoyed, I hang up. I recognized the sound immediately as this has happened before. I knew, even before I checked, that the display on my cellphone would show it as UNKNOWN. There is no way to determine the source of the call. I cannot call (or fax) anyone back to tell whoever that my number is not a fax machine. Perhaps in a prior life my cell phone number belonged to a fax machine, but for over two years the number has been mine and the faxes have never gone through. And still they can't take the hint.

Occasionally, I'll be so pissed that I'll beeeeeep back at it with my vocal chords to confuse the machine, but of course it never falls for it. It doesn't make me feel better either.

But that doesn't stop the machine from re-trying. Five minutes later the phantom faxer calls again. At least I'm out of the car. I answer and hang up again. I don't bother letting it go to my voice mail. That would mean letting ring and ring for a half minute, followed by another ring when my voice mail tells me that I missed the call. Then I would have to erase the voice mail message. Been there. Done that.

Back in the car driving Katie home, it calls a third time. Nothing I can do to stop it. Annoying me and using my cell phone minutes to boot.

The faxes come in spurts. I'll go a few months without a fax call, then I can get a handful in a week. All with caller id: UNKNOWN.

At least I'm awake. In the past, they've called at 3 in the morning. Every five minutes.

Grrr.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today I am 42. Which means I am The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

enLIGHTenment

A friend of Chris's was kind enough to give me a Media Play gift certificate for fixing her computer. Last night I took Marissa and Katie there to cash it in. After what seemed to be an eternity, they agreed on a Polly Pockets toy. This was after Marissa vetoed Katie's My Little Pony selection and I vetoed the Baskin Robbin's Ice Cream Maker.

Then we went to dinner and a movie. Being 7-year-olds, they chose McDonald's and Ice Princess. (Chris informed later that she never goes to that particular McDonald's because its PlayPlace is a veritable peri dish for childhood communicable diseases. Good to note for the future.)

On the way home after the movie, the girls and I discussed the merits of traffic lights. Marissa wondered why the chose red, yellow, and green for their colors. She said she would have chosen purple for "Go". I pointed out that the purple is close in hue to red and that might be confusing, and they probably picked green because is further away on the color wheel from red.

The girls shot a hole in my theory by mentioning that yellow was kinda close to both green and red.

Katie said she was most confused about yellow. It sometimes meant "caution" and sometimes meant "slow". I tried to expain its true meaning, but Katie interrupted and said, to Marissa,

"when daddy drives, yellow means go very fast."

"...coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room..."

According to the Unitarian Jihad Name Generator, my Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Rail Gun of Desirable Mindfulness.

(I had to refresh a few times to get one I liked though.)

Anniversary Date

Chris and I went out for our anniversary Saturday. After dinner at BD's Mongolian Grill, we spent our first date in a long time at... Lowe's and Toys-R-Us. Hey, Chris chose the places and she is such the romantic.

We did end up seeing Fever Pitch which was a much better movie than I expected it to be.

Since the kids were left with the babysitter, we left the minivan in the garage and took my car. Yes, on day 51 of ownership, my wife actually sat in the car.

Her assessment of the car the next day at an extended family get-together: "It's... ok."

Success!

Congratulations?

So about that "Congratulations on Your Anniversary" card we received...

Shouldn't it be a plain "Happy Anniversary" card?

Is staying married between your 10th and 11th anniversaries so remarkable nowadays that warrants congratulations? "Whew, you guys made it another year."

Perhaps there was a reason the card was addressed only to Chris.

[Readers: feel free to leave snide comments regarding my starter marriage twenty years ago.]

My Wife was Carded

We received a "Congratulations on Your Anniversary" card from a friend who moved to Oregon several years ago.

It was addressed only to Chris.

At least wasn't a condolence card.

Use Smaller Words

Alot of the advice I've read on how to blog say that you should pick a topic and stick with it. You are more apt to build a repeat audience when you appear to be an expert and source of valuable information on something, rather than a collection of random thoughts.

Based on historical data, it appears my candidate topics are:

• My wife still hasn't sat in the family's sedan
• Intolerance of people who Aren't Like You sucks
• Rebates suck

Since my wife will sit in my car eventually, I'm figuring that is not a long term blog prospect. Update: The wife of a neighbor was in the car a few days ago, but not Chris yet.

There are alot of blogs on the second topic. Update: Bigotry still sucks.

So I am left I with whining about my latest rebate experiences...

When I filled my rebate form for my notebook mouse, I noticed that hidden in step 2 it said (in 6 point font!): "Acquire any new Laptop Computer from a Microsoft authorized reseller or a participating retailer on or between 2/13/05 and 4/16/05.".

Grr. So much for that rebate. (In the meantime the web retailer had lowered its price too.)

The one big rebate that I hadn't received yet was for the cell phone. I wasn't worried about it because I received an e-mail from the cell phone company on March 30th with the subject "Your Sprint Rebate is Being Processed". Cool.

Two weeks later, with no rebate check in sight, I followed the web link in the e-mail: "The Terms and Conditions for this offer require a 2-year Advantage Agreement with the activation of your new PCS Phone Number. Out records indicate you have not met that requirement." Great, the salesman didn't renew the contract when I bought the phone.

But when I go to another part of Sprint's website and they tell me that my "PCS Advantage Agreement" expires on 9/19/06. Ahem. It seems the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

So I go to yet another part of their website to click on the "Frequently Asked Questions" link. It gives me a 404.

Then I try their customer support web form. I dutifully enter all my contact information and explain, in the form's text box, what had happened and that perhaps their records are messed up. When I pressed [Submit], I got a "Your question is more than 500 characters." Huh? 500 bytes flying across the Internet is nothing. That's maybe a tenth the size of banner ad on the page. That's about 75 words. Can every customer service problem be asked in 75 words? Geez.

So I remove some introductory sentences and try again. Still too wordy. I remove the "please"s and "thank you"s and try again. It accepts my shortened 411-character reply. At 2am the following morning (I wonder in what country that employee is working), the problem is fixed. I'll get my check sometime in May. Yet another rebate successfully hassled. I think.

Meanwhile the price of the phone went down $40.

Feeling Powerless

There are two basic ways of operating a business.

The first way is to offer a good product at a fair price. There is a continuum here, because you could also offer an extrodinary product at an inflated price or a mediocre product at a cheap price. But I digress.

The other way is to gouge your customers. Give you customers a bad deal and hope they don't notice [insert link to a Marysville Ford dealership here] or hide the price from the customer until it is too late for him.

A several years ago, I had AT&T long distance and was paying 15 cents a minute for most of my toll calls. The plan was creatively called the "10 cent a minute plan."

When Sprint (the long distance company, not the cell phone one) offered me a no-monthly fee "7 cent a minute plan" with the first 50 minutes free each month, I didn't see a catch. So I switched and started paying 10 cents a minute for most of my toll calls. It too was a creatively named plan, but at least it was cheaper.

At least until I called my Canadian niece on her sixteenth birthday. They charged me the "overseas" rate of $1.55 a minute so the 38 minute call came to around $70. And I wasn't even aware that Lake Erie was a sea.

It doesn't cost near Sprint that much to route the call: It is pure price gouging. If you sign up for their $3 per month international plan, the same call is 3 cents a minute.

No one I know would willing pay $1.55/minute for a phone call, but they get away with it because they hide the price from you when you sign up of the phone service. Afterward, I looked on their website for the phone rates. It took numerous clicks to get to the PDF file that had the rate buried inside it.

What is surprising though is that they don't lose more customers after surprising them with this exorbidant rate. They certainly lost me. Had they charged me the merely outrageous rate of, let's say, 30 cents a minute I would have grumbled but probably stayed as a customer. But by charging me what they did, they almost guaranteed that I they would not have me as as customer the following month. They will generate $0.00 in revenue from me from now on.

Since I have broadband, I jumped to the Voice-over-IP company Vonage with their $14.99 plan for all my land line calls. So the big loser here is SBC who will no longer make $300/year from me. [Insert ironic remark here mentioning how my company sells networking hardware to SBC but not Vonage.]

The deal I found was for a free Linksys box [Insert ironic remark mentioning how Linksys is owned by Cisco, one of my company's competitors], free Vonage activation and a $50 Gift Certificate on top. Nothing is painless however: it required that I fill in 3 rebates that all were set to expire Saturday. And I hate rebates.

As I was checking out Friday, I pointed to the flyer I had brought with me and told him I wanted all three rebates. (I was paranoid about getting every rebate.) Although he told me they were all in there as he handed me the bag, it didn't seem like it and less than a minute after I exited the store I was back at the Customer Service counter showing another guy that I only had received two rebate forms at the checkout counter. The second guy took my receipt and had to consult with a third guy. Turns out I had to buy an activation card (for $0.00) in order to get another receipt and the final rebate form.

Friday night I unpacked the CompUSA bag and the receipt for the original VoIP box, required for all three rebates, was missing. Turns out guy number two had kept it in the mix up. So I spent Friday night putting together two girls bikes instead. Arguably that should have been my priority anyway.

Saturday I went back to CompUSA and, thankfully, guy number two was there so I didn't have to explain myself again. The receipt had since been thrown away, but he easily printed off another. This is good, because I had to activate the account over the Internet that day to get the rebates.

With a busy day, I figured I would plug everything and register with the computer after the girls went to bed. With a 9 pm ice cream run, that was later than it normally was, but would still have a couple of hours to spare. As we drove home from the ice cream place, we saw that the entire neighborhood was dark.

The power was out.

Sad Story

How does one learn hate?

Riveting read for today: God Was With Them

Red Letter Day?

On day 39 of the Acura TL purchase, the wife finally sat in the new family car!

Actually to be more specific, the wife of a co-worker sat in my car. (My own wife still has yet to sit inside it, let alone drive it.)

The Fearless One

Last January, Marissa's 7th birthday party was at the Dublin Rec Center pool. It has a giant indoor slide. Marissa, at 4'1", was tall enough to go on it. Most of her birthday guests were as well. Even though she is a good swimmer, 3'5" Katie wasn't allowed on the slide. To their credit, the pool will allow shorter swimmers to use the slide if they pass a swim test. Unfortunately the test had a (lower) minimum height requirement too and she was too short, by an inch, even for that. So, for much of the pool party, Katie stewed about being left out.

Something to check on for next time...

For Katie's birthday yesterday, Chris rented the party room at Field Sports. They have a minimum height for the blowup slide, bounce room, and obstacle course, but they weren't going to quibble about that extra inch.

Field Sports charges an arm and a leg per kid with an eight kid minimum. We aimed for that minimum, but in hindsight shouldn't have. One of her classmates had a birthday party the same day and on the eve of the birthday party, Chris called to confirm those who didn't R.V.S.P., and we realized we would come up (ahem) short. Way short. Chris trolled for other friends to join us at the last minute, but with it being the night before, she got no takers. The ratio of attending invitees to monstrous blowup rides ended up at 1:1. At least with our girls included, it wasn't as bad.

Not realizing how huge these things were, Chris did ask them if two-year-old Claire could go down the slide wiith daddy once or twice. He didn't come out and say no way, so Claire did the two-story slide with daddy. And then the bouncy room a few times.

The 27'x40' obstacle course came in three parts that were strapped together. The opening on either side of the face was 3 feet off the ground, so the first graders had to get a running start to jump into it. Because Claire saw what the others were doing and wanted to join in, I tossed her in and followed her. The first obstacle was 45 degree incline just a foot and a half tall. Claire kept on sliding back down each time she tried to get over it. Another shove from daddy got her over it. With daddy right behind, she completed the course.

And she immediately wanted to go again.

I tossed her in but did not follow as I did not want to carry her through the course again and again. I did not expect her to get far on her own, but I wanted her to come to that realization on her own so she wouldn't try to keep up with the big girls. Not surprisingly she got stuck at the incline again. From outside, I reached an arm in and gave her another shove over the little hill. (I didn't want her to encounter defeat at the first obstacle.) After that she was was on her own.

And wouldn't you know it, she did the rest by herself.

I waved to her when she reached the top and then caught her at the bottom of the slide. For about a half hour it was: toss, shove, ..., wave, catch and repeat.

Falafel-tunity

In case you hadn’t noticed, after a couple of weeks of near-daily blog postings, I only managed only one posting this week. It has been a busy week for me.

After posting this entry, I was annoyed enough to send an e-mail directly to John Gibson. I did not expect a reply.

But, lo and behold, John called me last week to apologize for his unintended swipe at adoptive parents. I accepted his apology. Jokingly, he said it would just fine if I were to be married to my wife even if we didn’t have biological children. At least I think he was joking. :-)

I mentioned that I was a blogger and that sometimes I mention things in haste that I later regretted. He said he could relate. It just so happens that Fox was looking into capitalizing on this (in his words) "blogger craze" and wanted to alter the format of his show by adding an short segment on the pulse of the blogosphere on the day’s current events. I mentioned that James Guckert might have some time free, but he didn’t appreciate the comment. He said he wanted to go with a Hannity and Colmes kind of spin and I joked that I read dozens of blogs, half of them political, and they by in large leaned a lot towards the Colmes side of things.

We disagreed on some topics during the long phone call, but he did appreciate my humor and conversation stayed friendly. He was surfing my site while we were talking. I could tell during the call he was mulling an idea over. Eventually the call turned into an interview for this amateur blogger/journalist position.

A few phone calls and a screen test at the local Sinclair affiliate later, I was offered a job at Fox News. Yeah, who woulda thunk it. With the opportunity to blog professionally and the iffy state of my current employer, I jumped at it. I kept this pretty close to the vest because I didn’t think it would happen, but sometime (probably before Memorial Day) look for your daily Angst-riddled minute on Fox News at 5pm by yours truly.

It has been a good week. I hope everybody else has had a good April 1st!