So this is improvement?

Got my new computer – an Aspire 6930  Not the fastest thing out there, but a good solid, pretty fast computer.  I like it…that is except for Vista.  And then I went and bought some new software to go with it…Office 2007.  Now my computer really sucks…Excel and Word crash regularly…my Adobe Creative Suite CS4 is awesome and about the ONLY thing that doesn’t crash…so explain this to me.  How come Adobe can build an extremely complicated suite of products that works on Vista, but Microsoft can’t?   Does anyone else see the irony here?  I’ve just spent 2 weeks tweaking Vista so I can even use it.  It couldn’t move files, delete files, use my network or install programs or even LOOK at files…sheesh… Turned off a bunch of stuff and now I can move, delete and install but can’t print. It’s neverending… Do like the new Outlook however, it is better organized.  I have Corel Paint Shop Pro and it crashed constantly until I reinstalled it.  I can’t figure that one out.  Now it works fine.  A lot of my little programs no longer work on Vista (home premium).  Called and bitched out Microsoft and their solution was to send me a copy of Ultimate…I’ve yet to see it appear in my mailbox though.  I am just tired of dealing with all this – I should of gotten a Mac.  The only reason I didn’t is it costs more and I have a lot of stuff…yeah, I know your can run it in Parallels or whatever, but all my clients use PCs too so I thought it would just be easier…but I was mistaken.

I’ve got a flash for you Bush…

OMG, we are sending how much in food aid to where?  http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/15/whitehouse.food.crisis/index.html

That would be fine IF we could feed our own country, but hasn’t our insane president figured out people are hungry in the UNITED STATES?  With economic collapse imminent, we are sending our food stores to other countries?  With people going hungary and not able to feed themselves (and finding the food banks empty) we are sending food elsewhere?  Just WHO is Bush working for?  If I didn’t know better I would think he was the enemy not the terriorists!  I’ve got a flash for you Bush…those “reserves” are needed HERE…get out of your frickin’ ivory tower and look around you…

The Technologically Impaired

Just got our taxes form to fill out for the accountant. They are going “digital”. Yeah, right. I received an encrypted PDF to “print out and mail back to us”. So what’s digital about that? I called to try and help – tell them how to check the right box so it could be digitally edited with Adobe Acrobat and emailed back – but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO “the technology isn’t there yet” they say – Idiots. The technology IS there if you take 5 minutes figure out how to use it. It’s just checking a box for cripes sake – not that hard – but they can’t handle that and they are doing our TAXES. Scary stuff.

And if I’m going to rant anyway, I might as well rant about Windows updates. They have fried my computer again. This is like the 37th time in the past 6 months. I am really really considering a Mac! Just some of my stuff won’t run on Macs and I wonder what fun awaits me there. Can you tell I’m having a bad day?

What’s wrong with this car insurance scenario?

Where is the justice anymore?  Recently my daughter was in an accident – fortunately her airbags went off and she is fine.  However, because she just paid off her car and could barely afford to eat, much less pay for car insurance, she dropped it down to PLPD – what that means is she had no collison.  So here she is finally free of the car payment, actually almost able to afford her bills and along comes Ms. Williams and because she “didn’t see” my daughter’s car, totals it.   Williams gets a few dents and a broken headlight.  My daughter’s car is totalled – winshield broken, engine crushed, tire blown – undriveable – Totalled.  She can’t afford this having just taken a job that she NEEDS to drive to with no other vehicle.  Thanks to MICHIGAN’s no fault insurance laws – she is now out the entire cost of her car.  If she sues in court she’ll get $500 max.  Ms. Williams could well afford to fully insure HER car with Farm Bureau insurance.  Her car will get fixed.  My daughter walks 5 miles to work now because she can’t afford another car.  All because Ms. Williams wasn’t paying attention and hit her.  She gets off scot free, my daughter may lose her job, her car, and almost lost her life.  How is that fair?  According to MICHIGAN law, all she can sue for is $500.  Have you looked at the prices of cars these days?  You can’t even buy a beater for $500.  She had a nice sporty car she loved – it wasn’t new, but it’s sure worth a whole lot more than $500!  This is so unfair it makes me want to scream.  I’m not saying Ms. Williams is a bad person – I’m saying these are BAD laws.  When someone is clearly at fault they should be required to take responsibility. This is a case where the person that can least afford someone’s stupidity, pays.  Ms. Williams gets off scot free.  There is a police report and a ticket that says it was totally her fault, yet she doesn’t have to be responsible nor does her insurance company.  When I called them to see what they would do, they all but laughed saying “that’s Michigan law – too bad”.   Let this be a warning to you – don’t drive in Michigan.  Avoid Farm Bureau Insurance – their rude attitude was icing on the cake. Don’t come INTO Michigan unless you can afford to replace your car.  Wonder why everyone is moving OUT…. Our lawmakers are assholes and made no provision for a totally innocent person being harmed by the system.  

Outsourcing a GOOD thing? Ask Michigan…

Someone recently asked if Outsourcing is a bad thing….well, I have one word: Michigan Outsourcing has ruined our state. There is nothing left here but government jobs doing work for the defense department. The only non-govt jobs left here are retail like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s. Everything else has moved overseas or is being outsourced there. Businesses everywhere are squeaking along  and if we weren’t used to living on the cheap or  have a normal – non- subprime mortgage – we would be living in that proverbial cardboard box with our dogs too. Michigan is dying – all thanks to outsourcing. While the rest of the country tries to figure out if it’s a recession or not, here we KNOW it’s a DEPRESSION. We’re the canary in the mine due to the auto industry. Every 5th home was vacant on a recent drive we took to a store an hour north of here, the unemployment rate is double the national average (what they admit to and what it is are very far apart – when you run out of benefits you’re no longer counted and a LOT of people are out of benefits). The food banks are running out of food. Many people we know are losing their homes and are so in debt to credit cards they’ll never get out (and it’s not from frivious spending – it’s from eating).  That joke of a rebate will only go to paying bills and if someone is doing well enough, to buy something that is made offshore. If everyone makes minimum wage, who do you think is going to buy your (our) products? Our children will be indentured servants to their student loans because because they can’t find a decent paying jobs and end up at QuickMart? No, outsourcing is a BAD BAD thing…

Princeton Eggs

For the last few days I’ve been mesmerized by the Princeton EGGS - the Global Consciousness project.  If you haven’t noticed, they are almost all RED – which is supposed to mean we are all thinking in the same direction (probably a bad direction). It’s bothered me though, that nobody will tell you where the eggs ARE.  I’ve found a couple of links with dots on a map, but nothing that will correlate to a specific “egg”.  So I took it upon my self, computer locking up the entire time, to figure it out by right clicking which egg is which.  This is more easily done in Firefox than IE since IE tended to crash every time I clicked.  Regardless,I’m trying to guess by the cryptic names given some of the eggs – where they are… (some eggs had no id whatsoever).  The reason I’ve been watching them is they have been ALL red for the past few days, foretelling impending doom if you believe what you read.  The only people thinking happy thoughts are the people in Denmark – they had a blink of yellow today.  Someone just now looking would tend to wonder are there any other colors – there are.  Last time I looked it was mostly blue and green with an occasional yellow or orange – I don’t recall seeing any red.  That does not bode well for our cosmic consciousness…

#1 pearl196 (what’s that supposed to be?)

#28 noosphere.egg (duh!)

#37 Switzerland

#105 Paris, France

#106 crasher2.ttgcitn.com (??)

#108 Brazil

#111 New Zealand

#112 Switzerland (Formilab)

#115 Canada

#116  Austria

#111 New Zealand

#134 atu-zero (?)

#142 Denmark 

#226 London, UK

#231 Denmark

#1004 Nothpole, Alaska

#1021 Culver.net (?)

#1022 Germany

#1101 Japan

#2000 egg.psistudy.org (?)

#2001 egg.boundaryinstitute (?)

#2006 London

#2007 Juno Beach, Florida

#2028 Netherlands

#2120 Toulouse, France

#2173 Toulouse, France

#2178 egg. hearthmath.pet (?)

#2220 avalon01 (?)

#2222 solesmic.biolamaly (?)

#2225 Israel

#2235 Russia

Ok, that’s my list.  They don’t seem to be distributed very evenly, which makes me wonder why.  Or maybe it’s not necessary since it’s supposed to be reading our minds.  I don’t know.    Don’t ask why I want to know where the rest of them are, as it probably doesn’t matter to the research, but I am just curious about such things. 

Chasing my tail

Why is it lately, all I seem to do is fix everyone elses mistakes.  I spend all my time on the phone getting refunds someone forgot or fixing bills that are wrong.  Examples?

• Comcast has screwed up my bill for over a year and still can’t seem to get it right (doesn’t count the terrible service I spent almost every day on the phone for 6 months trying to get fixed).
• The vet wants to give my dog drugs that will obliterate his liver, cause ulcers, kidney problems and basically kill him – all because they can’t admit they made a mistake in reading his chart and don’t want to give him something he’s doing well on (gawd, might mess up their egos you know). 
• Irobot owes me $6 in discounts I didn’t get on my order. 
• Ordering a SSL certificate for one of my websites has turned into a nightmare of red tape.
• Getting billed for emergency room services by Emerg. Phys. Services that weren’t performed and after 3 requests am still waiting for an itemized bill – all they know how to send is another insurance request form.
• Ordered a program and it doesn’t install right.
• Amazon’s rebate form didn’t work – so about 10 phone calls and emails later still haven’t got my $50 rebate.

There’s more, this is just from this week….I spent 2 hours on work today and 6 straightening out messes (that are still not straightened out).  Can’t anyone do their job right?  Does everything have to turn into a ***** nightmare?  Sometimes I feel I live on the tech support lines.  And it doesn’t help most of those calls are routed to India or Mexico where the accents are so thick you can’t understand a word they say.  Thank GOD Godaddy uses American tech support people!  I could hug them for that – at least I can understand them even if some of their people are clueless and the red tape is deep.  I don’t mind if I can understand and can at least explain the problem – but when your English is marginal, accent so thick it’s intelligible - should you really be doing tech support for a large company like Amazon?

I have so much to do with the Holidays approaching and all I do is spin my wheels and chase my tail following up on things that should’ve been right the first time.  Frankly, I’m sick of it  but can’t think of a solution other than to ignore my $50 rebate – which would be ok if I were Bill Gates. (I’m not). 

Complications

Life has become so complicated.  I can imagine a caveman (not the Geico one) dropped into our time and having to cope with everything.  Insurances, Credit, online shopping – yikes.  The thing that really bugs me though is how it seems lately you’re always fixing someone elses mistakes.  Just this week I had to: fix an insurance error, negotiate with Comcast about their screwed up billing, argue with Emergency Physicians about their vague bill (I doubt they did anything they said they did), pay a bunch of bills for things that are marginally necessary (associations, things like that), and fill out some form because I somehow am on the list for a credit card settlement (which I doubt I’ll see anything from anyway).  There was more, but you get the idea.  It’s all this piddly shit that takes up all your time and you don’t have any time to do what you want to do.  You spend your life on “hold” making phone calls to straighten out $2.00 mistakes and correct bills that shouldn’t be wrong to begin with.

Can’t anyone do their job right these days?  Must EVERYTHING be fixed because someone was too lazy to do it right the first time.  They say America is falling behind – DUH.  Because you have too many screw-ups that just don’t care.  My recent favorite is the convenient double billing health providers do – they send you a bill, then send you a bill saying the insurance may cover this, then send you another bill saying what they THINK the insurance may cover, then another saying what it did cover, and lastly (ha) one saying what they didn’t cover and you owe.  If you’re not careful, you can pay that same bill multiple times.  Of course, forgot the bill you get when your check crossed with their deliquent bill…geez.