bunt sign

Man of Letters

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Fri, 17 May 2013 23:44:00 GMT

The yard guy was here by seven this morning, but he was gone by the time I got back from having coffee with Suzanne and Alex. Okay, he didn't have coffee. He's not even two and a half yet. He had water and strawberries and cottage cheese. He's a growing boy, although you'd need a finely calibrated measuring device to prove it. He will be a big brother in a couple of weeks, in age if not size. If Jacen turns out to be bigger, he wouldn't be the first bigger younger brother in the history of our family.

Alex probably won't have to get by on muscles, although he is perfectly happy to show you what he's got, with accompanying grunts and growls. He knows he's not scaring anyone. I can tell, because he giggles every time he growls. If a person can get by being charming and endearing, he'll do fine. He has those qualities in abundance.

He is also very close to speaking clearly enough to be understood, even by someone who doesn't see him every day. He says "big truck" and "lock the door" as clearly as can be. With a little prompting from his grandma, he called me "Uncle Mike" today (that's what all the kids call me). The fact that "uncle" comes out sounding like "kookoo" isn't relevant at all, is it?

We were sitting on the patio, just under the Starbucks Coffee sign, which is displayed in big block letters. Alex was all over that. He pointed up at the letters and started naming the ones he knew. He seems most confident with vowels. "O!" he exclaimed, then, "E!" And then, exhilarated by the thrill of discovery, he said, "Another E!" Such excitement, almost as good as a big truck (or a motorcycle) driving by.

He also sings to himself, which is another family trait we're all so very proud of.

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General Hospital: Trying to make sense of the three new characters (who look like old characters because they're played by the same actors): My totally unsubstantiated theory is that the guy who looks like Todd will turn out to be the father of the girl who looks like Starr. There must be some connection, because he knows Heather, who sold Jason's twin to Betsy Frank, and that baby grew up to be Franco, who is the father of Ava Jerome's daughter Lauren, and Kiki is also Ava's daughter (Katherine? Or Lauren, going by another name?) And Silas is the brother of a serial killer-turned-vampire. Or is he?

Baseball: You can play bad baseball but still play a good game. The Giants mixed the good with the bad again tonight in Denver. They were up by four, then down by five, which can be demoralizing. But did they give up? You know they did not. It's not for nothing that the Giants had beaten the Rockies ten times in a row. That streak ended with a 10-9 loss, but they were within inches of coming back from 10-5 in the seventh inning. As the song says, you gotta have heart. (That's a song about baseball, in case you'd forgotten.)

Quick movie review: I always go into a movie hoping to like it. Once in a while I'm disappointed. Tonight I watched Playing for Keeps, a purported romantic comedy with Gerard Butler and Jessica Biel. Some of their scenes together have the heart and the kernel of truth that are missing from the rest of the movie, which is a sad, sad mess. The moms who throw themselves at Butler's aging soccer star turned kids' coach are cartoonish, and the result is that two-thirds of the movie is an unwatchable, misogynistic bore.

Jungle Clearing

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:04:00 GMT

Yes, I know it's been almost two weeks, but the two weeks that it's almost been have been almost two weeks of intense (if not particularly interesting) work on the Big Project that I usually try to finish by the end of March. But what with everything else that's gone on this winter and spring, including three weeks of underperformance due to what became a Hundred Year Cold, I got a little off track.

And of course we still haven't reached the station at the end of the line. Just because I faxed all the paperwork off to the Boss yesterday doesn't mean I'm really finished. It's actually the beginning of review and revisions and endless, endless questions, some of which I can actually answer. Still, it feels like the end, whether it is or not. And that's a good thing.

My yard guy showed up at a little after seven this morning. He tried to be quiet and stay away from my bedroom window, but I was aware he was out there, even before I heard the droning of his weed trimmer. This was a major job, even though it has been barely two months since he was last here. I always think I can control it myself, but then it always gets out of control. The rain and sun came at just the right intervals this year to make the yard completely overgrown before I could register what was happening.

In fact, the yard this time was such a big project that he couldn't finish in one day. He told me he'd be back at eight tomorrow morning. It sounds like I'm in for another long day that starts too early, but it's better than having him come on a weekend, when nothing (usually, supposedly) keeps me from sleeping late.

He left his tools, so I know for sure he'll show up. I paid him already, so I don't have to worry about hearing a knock on my door before I have a chance to remember how to breathe. Getting to bed is a difficult process for me, but getting going in the morning? Much harder. I never count on accomplishing much before noon.

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General Hospital: Today for the first time since she lost her memory and came back from being frozen (as a different actress), I saw the old chemistry between Lulu and Dante. I think this recast is going to work, and not just because I want it to. They are one of my favorite couples. On the other hand, I don't like Laura and Scotty together nearly as much as I did when they were teenagers, way back before he killed her stepfather. Hopefully Lesley can put a stop to this madness.

Baseball: When the Giants left San Francisco Sunday, they were playing like champions (which, in fact, they are). In two games in Toronto a, they looked like a team that has forgotten how to play the game at all, much less like champions. Tonight in Denver it seemed to be more of the same, with the Rockies taking an early 6-0 lead. But this time the Giants came back to win, 8-6. This is what they've been doing all season, and it's what champions do.

American Idol: The two finalists were both long on talent and a little short on charisma, but the winner was the one I've been voting for during most of the last few weeks of the season. They keep insisting this is a singing competition, but it's really partly a popularity contest and partly a consequence of who connects with the audience. That's (a) not the same thing, and (2) not a bad thing.

The New SAD

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Sun, 5 May 2013 22:14:00 GMT

Upon further reflection, I no longer believe I have insomnia, at least not in the classic sense. I think I have Sleep Aversion Disorder. That's probably not the official name of the condition (in part because the acronym is already taken by something else I suffer from). But I know it's real, because I have it.

How it works is simple. I can always find a reason to stay up a little later, no matter how tired I am, every single night. There might be laundry to finish, or papers to file. One night about a week ago there was a humungous fly buzzing around the house. A couple of nights ago I was up at 1:00 am chopping vegetables because I decided to make minestrone in the crockpot the next day instead of on the stove, and I wanted to turn it on first thing in the morning. (Which, owing to how late it was when I finally went to bed, turned out to be closer to noon than morning.)

The other day (stay with me here; this is related) I got an email from AT&T, informing me that I had gone over the broadband data limit for the month. This was my first notification that there even was a data limit. That's apparently a new policy that they have imposed without asking me if it was okay. But they were nice about it. They would waive extra charges this time. And the next time they will send me an email when I get to 65% of my limit, so that I can cut back and get under it.

Isn't that swell of them? Also naive, to think that I'm going to stop watching Netflix and Roku, stop listening to Pandora and Spotify, or stop using my iPhone and iPad on my wireless network. To their credit, AT&T didn't threaten to cut me off completely. What they will do, they said, on the third offense is start charging me ten dollars for every increment of 50 GB over the 150 GB residential limit.

All day, after getting the email, I thought about this situation. Mulled it over and over in my mind, got hotter and hotter. About midnight I decided to do something about it, so I went onto the AT&T website and poked around, trying to find out how to monitor my own data usage.

But the AT&T website, like their phone menus and almost everything else about them, is nearly impossible to navigate. I have two land lines and two mobile numbers, and they have set up separate logins for each. I worked on getting through this maze for two hours before I realized I should have gone to bed two hours before. I would have been a lot less aggravated, and it might have been easier to get to sleep that night.

Because of where I live, way out here in the wilderness, I don't qualify for any higher speed plans, so I made the only logical decision. My decision was: Who cares? Go ahead, AT&T, and charge me ten or twenty dollars more each month. There is zero chance I'm going to start using less broadband, no matter what you do.

Of course, this rash decision was made easier for me by the fact that the Company pays my phone bill, including the $46.00 a month for what is ironically called high-speed Internet. The speed is barely high enough to support all my needs and all my devices. It's almost worth considering moving into town, where I can choose more modern services from a wider variety of carriers. Maybe I'll think about that tonight, starting at about midnight.

Sizzling

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Thu, 2 May 2013 21:13:00 GMT

Today was one of those days when I had to remind myself of all the promises I made during the long, bleak winter not to complain when the weather heated up. If the last few days are any indication, we're in for a sizzling summer here in the North Bay. It slowed me down a bit, at a time when I can't really afford not to be going at full speed, but I'm not complaining. I don't do that any more. At least until the next time I do do that.

Not only is it hot, but it's also dry and windy, and there are already wildfires burning here in the county. I just had my yard mowed a month or so ago, and the grasses are already higher than they were before it was mowed. David helped me out last week by cutting back the weeds in the driveway and a patch around the house, but he didn't have the tools to tackle the whole yard. I'm sure my yard guy will come by before the place catches on fire. If I had his number I might even call him. (No, I wouldn't. I don't do phone calls.)

Now that the weather is heating up and I'm over the cold that had me down almost the whole month of April, I've finally been able to get to the store to pick up the fixings for the minestrone I was going to make before I got sick, back when it was still soup season. If I have to make it in the middle of the night after it cools off, I'm promising myself I'll make that minestrone this weekend. Tonight I made myself a potato-onion-fennel-tofu hash, so I'm not exactly starving myself. There are plenty of days when I don't feel like cooking, but on days when I come home from the store with fresh stuff, I need to overcome that laziness.

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Thank you, everyone, for the support (not to mention for coming back here after all this time). I have to say, I'm doing okay. There are others who are suffering more than I ever did, and nothing is fully resolved, but I can take the hit. Learning lessons the hard way isn't a bad way to go. I think they stick with you longer.

I'm not going to promise to try to post every day, but I won't let the days and weeks (not to mention months) drag on between entries. Now that the ice is broken, I can move forward. I just wanted to find a way to let you know what has been happening, without names and details that I'm not comfortable revealing. Let what I've said in the previous entry stand on its own. I think that's the way to go.

Again, thank you so much. You don't know how much your support and good wishes mean to me.

Burning Bridges

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Wed, 1 May 2013 22:15:00 GMT

It's no wonder people fall for con artists. When they're reeling you in, they can be charming and affable. They can make you feel as if you matter, even though what matters to them is that they gain your confidence, at least enough that when they ask for something, you are flattered that they chose you to ask. That's the name of the game. Confidence.

A good con artist must have no sense of shame. He has to feel he can put the same moves on the same person more than once and get away with it. He can victimize several members of the same circle, even the same family. He doesn't care that his marks talk to each other and compare notes, because he's good enough at his con that he gets away with it.

It's a fine line, but if you know exactly how much to embellish a lie so that it comes off as true, you could be a con artist. Maybe you have to believe the lie yourself, at least while you're telling it. Maybe you have to believe you're going to keep the promises you make, too, while you're making them. Sooner or later, though, everyone else gets wise, and they will know how much your promises are work. Charm goes a long way, but its effectiveness has a limit.

The best con is the long con, because the payoff is better. Cultivate the relationship. Recognize empathy. Play to sympathies. See the weakness and learn when to strike for the biggest reward. Tell yourself whatever you need to believe in order to assuage your conscience. And never admit anything. Blame someone else. Blame the victim. Make yourself the victim.

If you do get caught or called out, contrition is surprisingly easy to fake. If you've done it right, people want to believe that you're sorry, that you know what you've done is bad but you've reformed. Just don't start snickering until you've left them, possibly even with another wad of cash in hand. Hey, it happens that way. Trust me.

Apologia

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:32:00 GMT

For Bex (who asked), and anyone else who is still honoring me by checking in here, I apologize for the long silence. I'm struggling with how to write about (or around) the problems my family is going through. If it were only my problem, or my story to tell, it would be easier.

Just so you know, I'm okay, my mom is doing well, and the kids are fine. I'd be happy to answer any questions I can, if you have them.

There will be a day -- soon, I hope -- when I can go back to writing about the fluff and trivia that make up my days. I'm just not ready yet.

Detonation

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Sun, 6 Jan 2013 21:18:00 GMT

Friday night I'm putting yet another K-cup into my new Keurig (that was the first day; I've tapered off since then) and I see, out of the corner of my eye, a flash of light, like a bulb burning out. And I hear a pop (like a bulb burning out). But none of the bulbs that were lit at that time had stopped working, so I took inventory of that corner of the great room and found nothing. I even checked the circuit breaker box, but everything was in place.

My next thought was that something had exploded outside the sliding glass door, perhaps the bulb in the porch light. But there is no porch light out that door, and there was no indication that lightning had struck, so I went on about my business of drinking way too much coffee and tea in one day and (more or less) forgot about the mystery.

As the evening wore on and it got colder inside the house, I reached for my space heater, which was plugged into an extension cord that was plugged into the wall next to the sliding glass door. And suddenly the heater was no longer plugged into anything, and I noticed the bare end of the extension cord, still plugged into the wall but with nothing between me and all that juice.

Well, that's a little unnerving. I unplugged the cord from the wall and unplugged the heater from the dead plug. It wasn't a surge protector but just an old fashioned extension, one that I've had for so many years that I wouldn't be surprised if I hadn't brought it home from college a thousand years ago. I guess I needed a newer one, but who knew that they could explode and snap in two spontaneously like that? I'm just glad I didn't have it in my hand when that happened.

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In other news left over from last week, now that the interior remodel of Raley's is finished, it has become my favorite supermarket again. I was shopping there last Wednesday, though, when workers came along and blocked the very entrance doors where I'd walked into the store. Then they blocked off the sidewalk between the doors on the other side and the area in the lot where my car was parked. And they drove a truck up onto the sidewalk and started tearing tiles off the roof and tossing them into the back of the truck.

That would have been fun to watch from a distance, I have to admit. It wasn't so much fun to have to push my shopping cart out into traffic to get around it. If they haven't finished the roof job by my next shopping day, I might be looking for another temporary favorite market for a while.

All Abuzz

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Fri, 4 Jan 2013 23:04:00 GMT

The time has come, I think, to stop spending money on myself for things I don't need. But before I made that decision (at about midnight on New Year's Eve, so you can already tell how strong a decision it was), I ordered for myself, on the recommendation of absolutely no one except a bunch of anonymous Internet posters, a Keurig one-cup coffeemaker.

Yes, I know all the reasons I shouldn't have done that. I know about the acid and caffeine in coffee that do terrible things to a person's body. I know that it's an expensive way to do something that people have been doing on stovetops for generations. But I did it anyway. So, go ahead. Fire away.

Anyway, it arrived today, and I already love it beyond all reason. The first cup of coffee I made with it was better than any other coffee I've ever brewed in my life, no matter what the method. It's a good thing I stocked up on decaf K-cups before the machine got here, because the samples that came with it didn't include much decaf, which is what I drink in the afternoons. It also makes tea, apple cider and hot chocolate, and it can be used for iced tea and more.

Fast? It took four minutes to set up and one minute to brew my first cup. Easy? Anybody can operate it. Obviously, if I can. And I walked through the coffee aisle at the supermarket earlier this week and found dozens of different kinds of K-cups in all sorts of roasts, flavors and types. (Okay, I'm finished sounding like a commercial now.)
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This is probably the end of my self-indulgent spending spree for a while. I have to save my money for actual necessities. For example, I need a new iron. Sexy, eh?

Frosting

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Thu, 3 Jan 2013 23:02:00 GMT

With good reason and after years of bitter experience, I almost wrote today off before it really got started. When I get up in the morning and immediately learn I have no running water in the house, I can't be blamed for thinking the best thing I can do is crawl back into bed and stay there.

But I called the landlord, and it turns out his house had no water either. (We draw from the same well, as I'm sure you'll recall.) Since the wild grasses outside my door were still crystal white from the overnight freeze, it was obvious where the problem originated. The North Bay Cold Snap of 2013 had struck.

But since this is the North Bay and not the Yukon, by the time the landlord took a torch to the pipes, the water had already started to flow through them. By 9:30 am I had full function. That's early enough for me on almost any day.

Next time I'll probably just wait for the thaw instead of panicking. If I could ever know when it was going to freeze, I'd leave the water in the sink trickling away through the night. But it doesn't happen often, and in fact the forecast for the next few days indicates a warming trend, both overnight and during the daytime.

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By the end of the day, I almost wished I'd stayed in bed after all. Working with the new software is frustrating, not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I tend to try to do too much too soon, with too little information to go on. I keep forgetting that there are ways to find out how to perform tasks, without trying to do them on my own.

It's not that I'm discouraged, exactly, but I'm tired of how tired it makes me to do this much extra work, knowing that it's only necessary because someone else might have to do it one day. Nobody can adapt to my old system, so I have to adapt to the system my replacement will use. The incentive to do that is kind of illusory, you know?

Validation

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Wed, 2 Jan 2013 23:15:00 GMT

Success! I think. Anyway, thanks to loyal readers for help and encouragement, and thanks also for the warnings. I'll be on my guard, but at this point I seem to have QuickBooks working as well as was ever likely for someone who (a) doesn't know what he's doing, and (2) just installed it one stressful day ago.

The big roadblock I ran into yesterday, it seems, happened because I hadn't registered the product or the company. I didn't know that wasn't automatic, because there were no warning screens or invitations that told me to register. In fact, as soon as I installed the program, I noticed at the bottom of the screen a little note that told me it was communicating with its own website.

Anyway, the first call was to the payroll department, to find out why I couldn't purchase their software. Unfortunately, I never got to speak to an actual person during that first call, because an automated voice kept telling me to input my phone number, and then it kept telling me that it didn't recognize the number and demanding that I enter it again. At some point during this tedium, I pushed the wrong button on my phone, so that by the time a real person came on the line, my end of the conversation was muted. I don't blame that person, whose voice wasn't exactly made for phone communication anyway, for hanging up on me.

When I called back and realized what I had to do so the new person could hear me, he asked me questions about registering that I couldn't answer. I think I realized before he did that I hadn't registered, so he told me how to do it. It was a couple of clicks, and... guess what... another phone call. To get a validation number to complete the registration.

So I called the new phone number and talked to Max, who asked me a few more questions (and a few of the same ones) before he could tell me what I already knew, that the product wasn't registered. Uh, yeah, Max, that was the reason I called. So thanks. He gave me a registration number first, and then (after a wait of about fifteen minutes) the validation number. I made sure to input it while he was still on the line, but it seemed to have worked. I said goodbye to Max and moved on.

The next time I tried to add the payroll service, everything was working fine, or so it seemed. Naturally, I couldn't just leave it at that. I took a quick break, then proceeded to the next step, setting up the payroll itself. I didn't know how long it would take, and I didn't want to be working all night again, but I lack the will to chill when there's something to be done.

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Fortunately, we have only seven current employees, so it wasn't hard to input all their data in one session. One long session, though: I was still working as night fell and the room grew dark and the only light was from the computer screen. But we're ready, I think. I guess I'll know for sure next week, when I have to run an actual payroll. Maybe I can even get the time cards early enough to get a head start, just in case something goes wrong. (Yeah, no. That probably won't happen.)

The Wall

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Tue, 1 Jan 2013 22:38:00 GMT

For all my determination to face the new year on the front foot, the first day of 2013 set me back on my heels. It should have been just the opposite. I was actually looking forward to setting up QuickBooks for The Company, having finally (at the last minute of last year, nearly) got the go-ahead from the Boss to buy the software.

He's been actually more interested than I have in introducing some sort of accounting software to the company, just in case something should happen that would keep me from continuing to use the old system that I set up on a spreadsheet program in 1986. He likes the reports I've put out for 26 years using the old system. Likes them? He loves them, and that's the only thing that's kept him from encouraging (or forcing) me to use commercial software long before this.

But he'll be 74 this year, and I'm only ten years younger, and he's been contemplating the continuity of the company. It's his legacy, after all, something he created more or less from scratch, and his own ingenuity and skills. So now that it's 2013, we're finally ready to face the twenty-first century.

For a while today, I thought I was doing okay. I set aside the holiday to input as much of the company data as I thought I'd need to get going, having bought not one but two manuals, and having gone through them fairly exhaustively over the last few days. I was pretty sure I knew what I had to do, and for a time I seemed to be right. But then I hit a snag, and another snag, and Help was no help and Support was taking the day off. Which, in afterthought, I kind of wish I'd done myself.

Actually, I never intended to do anything but run the new software as a parallel system to the one I've used or so long. I'm still hoping to do that. I managed to input the current payables and receivables. It was only when I got to the payroll section that I started tearing my hair out and looking for something to heave through a picture window.

It shouldn't have surprised me that the payroll function would require a subscription that would cost more than the software (and manuals, don't forget) over the course of the year. It took me a while to make the decision to spend the money, but once I did, the provider couldn't figure out how to accept my payment. I kept getting the same message: that I needed to make a phone call to see what he problem was.

Well, you know how I feel about making phone calls in the first place. And I wasn't even about to try it on a holiday. So after numerous aborted attempts, I gave up. I will make that phone call, probably tomorrow but certainly before the first payroll run of the year. And I hit the wall at an opportune time, when I really needed to quit for the day before I did any actual damage to myself or the picture window.

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Tonight I find myself tired and sore and working at fulfilling my promise to ease up on the intensity that sometimes tears me up. It has taken some time away from everything I put myself through today to start getting past it. It isn't really that big a hurdle, probably. Chances are that a phone call will get me on the right track. I can wish I'd been able to handle it all today, with no help, but I don't have to obsess over solutions. I'll just wait a day, get some distance, and forge onward. I have a lot of experience doing that.

Wishes

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 22:37:00 GMT

If you can look back over the last year with your good humor intact, congratulations. You have mastered selective memory in the best possible way. I see big black holes in some of what went down in 2012, but even so, I can find enough highs to keep me almost on level ground. I guess that makes it a successful year, although if I think too hard, it won't seem that way for long.

Here's the best thing about this year: it's over. That doesn't mean 2013 will be a banner jubilee year with peace and justice and brotherhood and double rainbows and songs of joy, but at least with 365 days to go, it has some potential. Maybe we won't fall off any cliffs, individually or together. Maybe people in our government will keep their promises. Maybe people in our lives will, too. Or maybe we should just lower our expectations. It's probably the best way to ward off disappointment.

At the start of each year, arbitrary though the calendar may be, I make myself the same pledge. I actually make variations of this pledge several times a day, whenever I catch myself in a rut of negative thinking. One version of it is this: I will try to get the most from each moment and make the best of each day, one moment and one day at a time. And I will recognize that I can't change the world, but I can make my little corner of it more habitable.

How do you do that? You do it, I think, but being consciously generous and forgiving. That's a high aspiration, and the petty facts that make up those moments and days and disappointments make it almost impossible to put the plan into effect full time. But you do what you can when you can, and when you can't, you accept that sometimes things are going to be difficult. You give yourself a break.

My wish for the people in my life, and that includes everyone who honors me by reading my words, is that we can all muddle through whatever happens and find something wonderful along the way. When we remember that we're in this together, we can share the joys as well as the burdens. Kindness matters, and not only does it go both ways, but it goes in all directions at once and binds us to each other. There are a lot of things I won't accept on faith, but I have to believe that we are all part of something greater than ourselves.

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Out of the Darkness

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 22:12:00 GMT

Trying to make the most of a day with no power, I got a lot of reading done today. And a lot of sleeping, too. I slept hardly at all during the night, but I took three or four naps of about half an hour during the day. I mean, really, what else was there to do? With no running water, no heat, no television or computer, all I could do was read a chapter or two on the Kindle app on my iPad, then let myself doze off when my eyes started getting heavy.

Somehow, in the midst of all this, it felt like one of my more productive days.

There was still work to be done, natch. I got the payroll started early this morning and was well into it by the time the lights went out at 10:35 am. In fact, by 10:34 I was beginning to think they might have postponed the utility work, although it was hard to see why, since the sun was out. When everything came back on at 4:25 pm, I finished the payroll, and a few other tasks that absolutely had to be completed today.

But the first thing I did was flush the toilet. The place was starting to smell like a bus station, and not in a good way. It was a long day without running water, and once again: thank goodness for hand sanitizer. I just cringe a big when I think of what's growing on the outside of the sanitizer bottle. It might not be a great idea to share hand sanitizer, you know?

The second thing I did was reset all the electronic clocks. I checked our bank web site to see if the big check that was supposed to be direct-deposited had come in (it hadn't). I quickly went through the email that had been accumulating while I was off line. It was, in fact, about half an hour before I could get back to the payroll. I had worked until 7:30 pm Saturday, and again a bit Sunday morning before heading to Suzanne's for her birthday dinner, so I wasn't as far behind as I might have been if I'd been as lazy as I normally am.

The best thing about the power being out? No phones ringing. I did have my cell phone fully charged, and the Boss had my number, but the only time he called me was an accidental redial. It was unbelievably peaceful. Maybe that's why it was so easy to fall asleep. I had to stay bundled up because there was no heat, but it wasn't as cold as it had been for the last few days. In fact, it didn't feel cold at all until the heat came back on and I remembered how it feels to be warm.

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There was at least one more benefit of the electricity being off for six hours. When it came back on, my satellite radio was working again. I guess the tech guy forgot to tell me that I should leave it unplugged for six hours to get it going. I don't know if it's back for good, but it's back for now. It's an old unit that probably needed to be replaced a few years ago. It's been sputtering for a while now, if you want to know the truth. I'm going to wait for the January sales before I think any more about this.

Something Wrong With the Universe

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 22:10:00 GMT

Abi made it clear in tonight's Survivor: Philippines that her strategy, at least now in the end game, is to make herself so unlikable that her opponents will recognize that she should go to the jury with them, because no one will vote for her. She has intensified her campaign recently, going so far as to call Skupin an idiot and a moron at tonight's Tribal Council. Obviously, she thought that was the best way to win his vote. People were saying they wanted to be sitting next to someone they could beat, and she pointedly said, "Choose me."

But really, she's been abrasive and unlikable the whole season. She said she thought people had decided that she was the "crazy Brazilian," but she fully embraced that role, even while chastising the others for characterizing her that way. And finally, this close to the end, everyone seemed to be accepting the idea that she was the one to choose.

Well, except for the reward. When Malcolm won the Reward Challenge and chose Skupin and Lisa to go with him, Abi was devastated, almost as if she really thought she had done something to deserve it. "I guess my vote doesn't mean anything," she said with a sniff. She told Denise she couldn't understand why they didn't realize she was the swing vote. She lamented that she had finally learned that she was at the bottom of the alliance.

Uh, Abi? What alliance? You haven't been in an alliance since Pete was voted out. Your vote means nothing to anybody, unless you can turn the other castaways against each other. And all you've done is unite them against you.

So despite the protestations, it was not much of a surprise that Abi was voted out 4-1 tonight. There was some discussion of getting rid of Denise while they had the chance, because with Malcolm holding both individual immunity and the hidden Idol, he was untouchable for one more Tribal Council. And I'm sure Malcolm vs. Denise will be a big part of the finale, since they are both strong in every way that matters in the game.

But Lisa made a convincing point. (Wait a minute. Lisa? Who ever said Lisa was a weak player? Oh, right. Lisa said it.) When Skupin approached her about siding with Abi and voting out Denise, Lisa made the convincing point that they might have a better chance in the final four if they kept Denise, because Abi would be no help in defeating Malcolm in any challenge. Good point, Lisa. (Better point: Who wants to spend three more days with Abi?)

Seriously, though, Lisa has shown the fire and cutting edge strategy that she didn't know she had. In fact, through most of the season, she has denied that she had it. The game, she repeatedly told us, was bigger than she was. And now she has a one in four chance to win, against veteran Skupin, who has shown himself to be a real survivor, and the power team of Malcolm and Denise. For once, no matter which way it goes in the finale, it looks as if someone worthy is going to win the game.

Disgruntled Customer

buntsign@gmail.com (buntsign) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:31:00 GMT

Dear Not Particularly Helpful Satellite Radio Technical Support Person,

(You know who you are, or so I assume. Your name might or might not be Shawn, as you told me it was in our online chat this afternoon. I don't think I would use my real name if I had your job, especially if I were as uninterested in actually helping my customers as you seem to have been.)

When I signed on to the support web site, I didn't know what to expect. I have never participated in a support chat before, and I was a bit uneasy about it. But it was better than making a phone call, or so I thought. If you knew me better, you would know that that's how I feel in most situations. Anything is preferable to making a phone call, until the circumstance becomes the most dire.

When you asked me to describe my problem, hope swelled in my heart. I was ready to describe the problem and have you give me the solution, and then we would part as friends, in whatever sense that is possible in our situation. I told you that I had turned on my radio (the one inside the house, not the one in the car, which is in the garage; that radio works perfectly well, or did the last time I drove anywhere, which was two days ago), and it had come on as usual.

Then, a while later, I tried to change to a different station. I use one station (The Loft) for listening to music, and another (Spa) for music that I don't have to listen to. That is the kind of music I prefer as background for reading. But I could not change the station. In fact, I could no longer control the radio at all, either with the controls on the radio itself or with the remote control. I couldn't even turn it off. It just kept playing The Loft, although the display screen showed the song that had apparently been playing when it stopped working, and not the song that was playing at the current time.

For some reason, you couldn't get it through your head that I had no control over the radio. You told me that the signal needed to be refreshed, and asked me to change it to channel 1. I reminded you that I couldn't change the channel. If I could change the channel, I wouldn't have had to contact you.

You asked me if the screen now displayed my radio ID number, and I reminded you that the screen showed what it has showed all afternoon, "Shake Some Action," by the Flamin' Groovies. If you know what time that song was playing on The Loft today, you will be able to determine what time my radio stopped working.

Then you asked me to be sure that there was nothing blocking the signal from the satellite, and I reminded you that I was still getting a perfectly good signal, and that nothing had changed about the position of the radio or the antenna. If something was blocking the signal, I wouldn't be hearing The Loft. I like The Loft. It's my favorite station. But I'm paying a yearly fee to get a hundred or more stations, and it didn't seem right that I could only listen to the one, favorite or not.

So you told me you were sending a "refresh" signal to my radio, and that in five or ten minutes it would start working properly again. (You told me to be sure not to turn the radio off in the next five or ten minutes, but this time I didn't remind you that I couldn't turn it on or off, whether I wanted to or not.) I said that I would wait ten minutes and then make the dreaded phone call if it didn't work by then. You said there would be no reason to call, because it would work. I was already skeptical, and now I was also a little put off by your certainty, since you obviously hadn't been paying attention to my description of the problem from the first moment we began chatting.

Needless to say, it didn't work. Fortunately for both of us, I also get your service on my iPhone, so when I want to listen to a satellite station other than The Loft (Spa, for example), I can connect the phone to my stereo system. If not for that option, I would have made the dreaded phone call. Eventually, I probably will do so. It will probably be at about the time my yearly renewal is due. In fact, I expect someone from your company to call me at that time, since the credit card I used for the last renewal, nearly a year ago, has expired in the meantime.

Please, for the sake of other customers in future exchanges of this nature, try to listen to what they're saying, instead of merely reading from a script, as I assume you did with me. Either a script or a flowchart, anyway, or some combination thereof. I have found in dealing with the public that the best way to keep customers from being disgruntled is to solve their problems, especially when they're being quite clear about what those problems are.

Regards,

Disgruntled Customer (but only moderately so, and not enough to make a big deal out of this)