House of Jorob

Lord of the Rings: The Viewer Puzzle

I don't get it.

TBS recently ran a Lord of the Rings marathon--all three movies in a row, same day.

And in my house, this was cause for celebration.

Sure enough, the set was tuned to the trilogy all day.

But here's the part I don't get:

We own the DVD set.

We can watch this any time we want.

And when do we watch it?

When the commercial-filled networks air it.

Unless I pull out the set myself, it never, ever comes out for play.

I'll be pondering this for a while.

Woodstock: 40 Years After

They're gathering at Yasgur's Farm in New York this weekend, kicking off a grand music festival of peace, love and rock and roll....

Please.

Stop.

Woodstock is over.

It's been over for almost half a century.

That's what 40 years is.

<sigh>

Okay.

I'll lighten up.

The concert is the Bethel Woods Music Festival.

I guess the Faithful can't be blamed for wanting to hear at least a passing resemblance of what their musical heroes sound like live.

So, rock on.

Even if it is for only one more day.

Still, I can't seem to shake the mental image of the line of ambulances needed to carry all the stroke and heart attack victims out of the place when the sun's finished baking the over-sixties types.

Credit Card Rigging

Philadelphia Daily News opinion columnist Elmer Smith published a story yesterday dealing with credit card abuse.

Abuse, as in abuse of the consumer by the credit card issuer.

He missed one.

The practice of card issuers to reduce one's credit line.

Works this way:

Customer gets a nice letter from the card issuer discussing how rough these economic times are on banks these days.

It's so very hard on their customers, too.

To that end, your card issuer wants to help you manage your credit.

To you can keep your credit rating nice and high.

Thanks to them.

So they're reducing your line of available credit.

What they don't tell you is what that does to your credit score.

Because of FICO.

FICO pays a lot of attention to the ratio of credit consumed to available credit.

FICO likes it when there's a lot more credit available than consumed.

It works this way:

You've got a $5,000 line of credit from PawYourWallet bank.

You've used $1,000.

You've used 20% of your line.

This is good.

Now PawYourWallet informs you they are helping you out.

They reduce your line to $2,000.

To help you out.

Without spending another dime of your credit line, you are now consuming 50% of your available credit.

If FICO used color, you are now an Orange Alert.

When you go to buy a car, or finance anything else big ticket, you're not going to get the preferred interest rate.

That belongs to people who can manage their credit.

Which you obviously don't know how to do.

You've rung up half your line already.

Blockbuster Video Policies Change Unannounced Except Where Announced

I have a Blockbuster Total Access plan.

A little one: Two discs at a time, 3 instore exchanges per month.

With tax, that's $18.01 per month.

Netflix gives three discs for that amount of money.

But Netflix is still throttling without telling you.

Even after they got sued for it almost three years ago.

Different media, then. Now its streaming vid. Back then it was on the disc-mailing thing.

But I digress.

I meant to say, "But Blockbuster has a store located less than half a mile from my house."

And those instore exchanges are neat.

Were neat.

Blockbuster changed the policy supporting the exchanges without telling me.

Way it used to be--up until last freakin week, anyway:

Bring a mailed vid to a Blockbuster, exchange it for a new one instead of mailing it back.

Take a week to watch this one.

No problem.

Meantime, the wheels of mail-order support started grinding right away, crediting my account with the exchanged vid, and launching the next one in my queue.

If you count it out, that's actually three vids in the cycle instead of two.

That was a feature promoted by Blockbuster--a reason to visit their local stores where they could sell me popcorn and video games.

That's gone now.

In a policy change that went into effect--behind the scenes, as far as I see it--the in-store exchanges now count towards my two-at-a-time rental cap.

Blockbuster's policy change is on their website, of course.

Now.

That's the beauty of the web. You can make page changes and nobody is the wiser unless you tell them you've edited the page.

Or you read the copy.

But I never got word of it in an email. Nor did my account site reflect the change.

Not a word.

I just happened to notice that my Blockbuster queue total now included "unidentified store rental" in my title list instead of the next title in my queue's list.

There's a debate ongoing over who got notification emails and who didn't.

I'm one of the customers who didn't get one.

Bleah.

I can't work up a righteous anger over the change--Blockbuster is doing whatever it can in order to stay alive.

If someone comes up with a decent monthly rental plan that feeds my PS3 I'm on it.

Sony's got plenty of movies and content available online for me.

But it's single-shot rentals only.

And I'm streaky.

And there is that store just a half-mile away......

Integretel: How I hate thee

Integretel.

The name's a pariah to me.

Especially if you actually read your phone bill.

Not according to Integretel, of course. Consider: "Founded in 1988, Integretel addressed a significant billing and collections need by creating a Service Bureau business model focused entirely on telecommunications billing. Integretel established a full compliment of billing and collection agreements with Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) including each “baby bell” and approximately 1,400 smaller, independent LECs. Integretel has been operating from its San Jose, California headquarters since the company’s inception and has processed over $6 billion in client transactions."

They are the best representation of what when wrong with telephone deregulation.

They are a third-party biller.

You know, the one responsible for making sure your telephone bill carries the charges from outfits like Enhanced Long Distance, or Solo Communications, or OAN.

The ones whose charges can not be refused by the phone companies.

By law.

So don't go crying to Verizon.

Or Qwest.

Or any of the other surviving phone companies.

Because there is nothing they can do about it.

Except offer you a global block on such things.

But you have to ask for it.

If you don't ask, Integretel--or others, but Integretel is my best example--will continue to slag your phone bill with voicemail bill after voicemail bill, from now until doomsday.

Which might be in 2012.

Still, that's a couple years off.

Could get expensive.

Talk to Integretel reps, and they make sure you know that *you* are the one responsible for the goofball charges.

They'll even read you back the name of the website that slapped you.

The site that uses Integretel to affix the charges to your phone bill.

It'll be something innocuous:

FunGameLandWorld.

SurveyMeisterBeener.

Yep.

You got the charges when someone used your computer and hit a survey site, or a free-games site, or a travelquest site.

Couple of exchanges of personal information later (your phone number, a name) and boom.

Your phone account has just been tapped for an "enhanced setup fee" or a new monthly "enhanced voicemail account" charge.

Odds are, the person on your computer never saw the 6-point type disclaimer that said they were signing up for the voicemail account or long distance services by playing the game or interacting with the survey.

It is usually buried far, far, far down on the screen.

And they--Integretel--are very happy to have the charges removed.

The process takes one or two billing cycles.

And that's what makes Integretel so special.

They take the whole two billing cycles.

Which is actually THREE cycles, thanks to the way phone companies bill.

So when you short-pay your phone bill, paying only the legitimate charges (as if you really wanted the Enhanced Voicemail fromFunGameLandWorld) and notifying Verizon (in my case--what, like I could make this stuff up??) that the charges are being disputed, your next bill--AND the one after that--accumulate late fees.

From Verizon.

Who puts a disclaimer on the bill that says one is not obligated to pay disputed charges.

No wonder people are cutting their land lines.

Don't laugh, Mr. and Ms. "I-Cut-My-Landline-Two-Years-Ago."

Just wait until this kind of deregulation hits the cable industry.

And this crap starts hitting your cable bill.

The telephone portion of the cable bill.

Taxes I: Something's happening here

I got my borough tax bill earlier this week.

Borough real estate, sewage, and trash removal.

Real estate 10.1780 mills.

Roughly a hike of four percent.

Sewage is 5.70 mills.

Two percent hike.

But that's calculated against my water bill. Inbound water.

They figure most of the water that comes in goes back out again through the sewers.

After all, how much water can two people drink in a day?

But the trash removal is worrisome.

It spiked by over 12%.

The borough, bless their community-based hearts, included substantial explanations in the tax bill for the increases.

From what I read, my trash bill could have been worse.

Last year, Delaware County charged Lansdowne $600 for trash taken to the incinerator in Chester, PA.

For 2009, the County has raised the fee it will charge Lansdowne.

To $91,000.

Lansdowne is 1.2 square miles.

Home to 11,000 people.

The County covers 191 square miles.

Has 550,000 people living in it.

Lansdowne is just one of 49 municipalities inside County borders.

And my little town's bill is $91,000?

Here's the clincher.

According to the paperwork delivered by the borough with my tax bill, Lansdowne is not permitted to shop for a different incinerator contract.

Say, one with a lower freakin price?

Nope.

"By County law all collectors of trash, including municipalities, must deliver and dispose of the trash at the COVANTA incinerator facility located in Chester PA."

So.

We've got a price hike that's exponential in size.

And a law locking all participants into one resource.

Somebody stands to collect a bargeload of cash on this deal.

Rosetta Stone en anglaise

Anyone else ever wonder why the Rosetta Stone TV commercials never have anybody actually speaking the languages?

Big yellow box.

Bunch of homey, happy-looking people.

Everybody speaking about how they learned their new language.

In English.

They say things like "I tried classes, tapes, language school and nothing compares with Rosetta Stone...."

And

"Within a month of using <the> Spanish program daily, I had learned more than I had in years of lessons." 

And

"Now I can adequately hold my own in conversation--all within six weeks of purchase."

You ask me, I think a better endorsement would be an Italian native listening to a Rosetta Stone user.

In Italian.

When done, they turn to the camera and say, "Wow! I really understood what they were saying!"

LOL Phone bill

I keep a honeypot in the house.

It's my old land line. My dialtone service from Verizon.

Costs me all of $7.40 a month.

It'll go up soon.

In March, 2009.

To $7.87 a month.

I have a generous local calling allowance on the line.

0.25.

Total.

At 0.05 per minute, that's five minutes in local calls before I have to pay anything beyond my $7.40.

I had to fight like hell to get Verizon to give me this rate.

The first-line sales rep had never heard of it.

Her manager had, however.

It has nothing on it.

• No call waiting.
• No calling plan.
• No caller ID.
• No long distance.
• No toll calling.

It exists in my house for one purpose: Every bank, car dealer, political party, charity, and window replacement company in the country uses it to call me.

And I call 800 numbers on it.

Here's the part that galls me:

The telephone service costs me $7.40.

The taxes and fees are $8.42.

My monthly phone bill is $15.82, and over half of it is made up of taxes and fees.

• 0.41    Federal Excise Tax
• 0.35    PA Gross Receipts Surcharge
• 0.08    PA Relay Surcharge
• 1.00    E911
• 0.67    Federal Universal Service Fee
• 5.91    Federal Subscriber Line Charge

There was a time when a lot of this stuff didn't exist, or when it existed, it was absorbed by the telephone companies.

It was called overhead.

Now, it's a pass-through.

According to my phone bill:

• The 5.91 "Federal Subscriber Line Charge funds part of the cost of providing long distance companies access to local telephone networks." Otherwise......what? The long distance companies would have to pay more for access to the local telephone networks?
• The 0.67 "Federal Universal Service Fee helps keep telephone service affordable for high cost areas, rural health care providers, and library internet access." It costs less to wire libraries and farms with telephone service than it does to let long-distance companies connect to local telephone networks?
• The 1.00 "E911 charge funds my community's 911 system." According to my phone bill, this fee is sent to my state/county treasury.
• The massive .08 "PA Relay Surcharge funds telecommunications service for people with disabilities."
• The 0.41 Federal Excise Tax and the 0.35 PA Gross Receipts Surcharge just plain suck.

There's a shiny pony in all this horse manure, if I could just figure out how to play it: There's enough altruism in some of these fees, I should be allowed to deduct it under charitable contributions on my income tax.

World Clock, Spiritual Awakening, and Where's the Joy?

This is the World Clock.

A neat idea.

On the surface.

But the damn thing is soooooooo subtley negative. Right there, under the coolness of it all.

Negative.

Which is really ironic.

Considering Peter Russell is a spiritual kind of guy. And a bit of a pioneer. He's had a website going since 1996.

That's the stone age, as far as the Internet is concerned.

Back then, you coded by hand.

In Notepad.

And uploaded on a 56K modem on your house telephone line.

The hell with everyone else in the house wanting to use the phone at the time.

But to return to the point.....

I don't think the negativity is intentional.

But the choice of what's being tracked is what's doing it.

Births. Deaths. Population growth.

Deforestation.

Communicable/noncommunicable diseases.

Species Extinct.

Abortions.

Hot-button items, all of them.

Each stat is rising, of course, because the figures on the clock are approximations based on past stats and estimates, and then aggregated since the thing started counting, whenever that was.

And when you're done being impressed with the stats, the negativity kicks in.

The world sucks. People suck. We're killing ourselves.

<sigh>

Where are the counters for:

• successful organ transplants
• dollars donated by individuals for disaster relief
• babies and older children adopted
• spayed and neutered puppies and kittens
• teenagers getting their driver's licenses
• weddings
• barrels of single-malt whiskey
• pounds of aluminum, glass, and paper recycled

I mean, if you're going to seek spiritual enlightenment--using these clocks--why not leave a little joy around for others to find?

SUVs will kill NFL Football

How automakers' pigging out on SUV sales for the last decade could cause the end of professional football as we know it:

After a summer of $4.50 a gallon gasoline wiped out roughly $100 a month in disposable income from every single American who owned a car, the fall months witness unprecedented numbers of new-car buyers staying home.

GM, Chrysler, and Ford collapse.

Bankruptcy or complete wipe-out. For this scenario it doesn' t matter.

All three are heavy, heavy advertisers on NFL football broadcasts.
That money is now gone, leaving huge holes to fill.
The holes don't get filled.
The broadcasting networks, standing on an already shakey pillar of revenue now shot full of holes during their last 8 weeks of the football season, have lost a large chunk of money that is supposed to pay for their NFL broadcasting rights. They can't fulfill their contracts.
The teams share of NFL broadcasting dollars is wiped out, cutting into team money that's supposed to pay player salaries, stadium operating costs, and expenses.

The lower third of the NFL franchises, now starving for money that can not be replaced by 40% increases in ticket prices since at least 30% of their ticket-buying base either worked directly for one of the now defunct automakers or for one of their suppliers and remain out of work, nor by  selling stadium advertising to non-existent auto manufacturers, go up for sale.

Unable to find buyers for a third of their franchises, the NFL is forced to contract for the first time in a bazillion years.