More 16.5 K Joy

Today the insulation installers came in and were checking out the attic before they were to blow in the insulation from their rental truck. (Yes, rental truck...which I actually think is quite cool.) They came back down from the attic and said, “Did you know your AC’s supply duct is not attached? Oh, and your attic fan doesn’t work.”

Of course I knew neither thing was true, and I just had to see it for myself. So I went up, got a lungful of insulation dust (mmm—MM!), and sure enough, the AC was merrily blowing nice, cool air into the attic—though I’m sure at least some of it was going into the tube that was hanging detached from it, like a skull’s lazy, half-unhinged jaw. The insulation installation dude then directed my attention to the attic fan. It was all corroded and decrepit-looking, appearing nothing like one might expect from the promised new fan. He cranked the thermostat, and sure enough…no joy. I wanted to put my finger into the fan and push the blades to just get it going, but thought better of it: I decided I’ll stick the AC-installer’s finger in there instead!

Oh, and the duct cleaning that they were supposed to call and schedule for today? Still hasn’t been scheduled. Needless to say, the AC installers got a rather polite and very direct phone call from me. Well…relatively direct, for me. Luckily, the contact said that I should have my wife call him to make sure all of her problems were addressed, too. Heh heh. His funeral.

16 and a Half K of Joy

Alright, so I was going to try to not gripe about particular companies and their performance, but this experience has been just too much.

Government and HVAC companies alike promise a ridiculous amount of rebates and other creaminess for upgrading the cardiovascular system of the house. So, why the heck not?

We get quotes from no fewer than three companies, and finally settle on Action Plumbing Heating & Air Conditioning. The salesman was more believable, and his promises were interesting. A hyper-efficient AC and heating unit were too much for me and my wanna-be-"green"ness to resist. 600 Watts of 3-ton-equivalent AC that can be run on two car batteries in serial? Come on! Awesome! 98% efficient heater. Wow. Course we had to throw in a new water heater and water softener. $16,500 later, and the installers finally get it all installed. And wow what a mess.

Cigarette butts in the yard, cigarette stench flowing into the open doors...to say nothing of the smoker's stench reeking off the breath and bodies of the installers. Oh, would that that were the only complaint.

After nearly a week's delay in getting the units installed (we were under a time crunch to get it installed so we could take benefit of an insulation installation rebate) guys are crawling around in our attic space in order to revent the upper floor for the new AC coolness. Holes cut in each room were expected. Even the snowy insulation clumps dropping out of said holes were no surprised. And when the installers walked around with a vacuum, I thought nothing of it. A week later I'm still cleaning up the insulation bits and flakes. Really quite annoying.

Consider, though, that while they were up in the attic, they stepping on a light fixture socket and created a 12-foot crack along the center of the hallway ceiling. I'm sure they did the right thing by patching it up instead of ripping it down and replacing it...and hopefully it's even stronger than ever (apparently the builder of the house fastened the sheetrock sheets with 4 screws--FOUR!--and glued the rest. The slightest tremor, we're going to be swimming in sheetrock goodness.

Stuff finally gets installed, and there's a leak. No big. Painter for the ceiling comes in and paints the ceiling, give the leaky pipe a crank, and leak disappears.

The AC unit which originally was said to be mounted in the attic, invisible to the outside, is a behemoth on the roof thanks to the limited attic space. I've hired a painter to look at it and make it look either less obtrusive, or to stick out like a beautiful...thing. Turns out, it's supposed to be mounted outside. Strange.

Today was a nice, warm day. (I'm still sitting on the couch sweating my clothes wet at midnight.) First opportunity to use the new AC unit! Woohoo! Finally get it turned on (figured out without the promised help of the installers)...and an hour later, discover that my nightstand is soaked with water dripping out of the newly installed vent. Yay. And water is pouring down the ceiling, coming out of a bubbling panel in the side of the monster on the ceiling. Looks like another call to Action Plumbing Heating and Air Conditioning...who've been promising us a return visit to install a new air vent to the ceiling.

Let's not forget the carboard, ladder, and other boxes left throughout the yard and house and garage.

I'm sure hoping they make this right as they've promised they will. I'm annoyed, and my wife's Pee-Eye-ISSED.

IRS == Greedy, Manipulative Bastards

Alright, so the Acronym is a bit off. (IRS != GMB...but close enough!)

I'm sure this post could likely cause me grief in the future. I mean, it is talking about the single most powerful and single most corrupt system in the country.

So, early 2007, my accountant does my taxes. Everything is groovy. The following year, I receive a document from your friendly federal rapists. "You owe us $1,000. If you disagree, tell us why and we'll get back to you."

The accountant looks through the forms. Yep. They're wrong. He sends proof which the Infernal Raping Service confirms they received on April 23, 2007. (We moved pretty fast on this, since we were stressing about money at the time, and another $1k hit was a bit...disheartening.)

SIX months later they get back to us. "You still owe us $1,000 because we re-did your taxes for you. Oh, and because you still haven't paid, you now owe us an additional $131--because we're required by law to charge it."

Can anyone else see the problem here? They take months and months to finally respond, and charge us more money because they're so bloody slow. And further...they didn't change their tune. ...and their tune is incomprehensible. When I read statements like, "Since we changed your income and tax, we also changed the amount of your credit..." how can I not be suspicious? How is this not confirmation that this organization has entirely too much power?

I find myself drifting into the mindset of the victim of a terrorist. Well, if I pay it, all this will just go away. Then I snap out of it and enter an affronted rage. Terrorist? Never, ever do what a terrorist tells you to do. Promises of the removal of a threat if you comply is a lie; it's the act of a terrorist. Besides, I don't like being manipulated. Who does, really?

So, of course, the accountant is going to get a copy of this notice, since it's written in jargon that only an accountant can understand. (God forbid that anyone writes something that can be understood by the layman. I mean, if they did write it that way, the layman wouldn't be paying an accountant to take care of it, and that accountant wouldn't be giving away his income taxes to this disgusting behemoth.) Clearly, the accountant is going to argue it more. Obviously the IRS is going to be right--even if they're not--and six months later we're going to have to pay more interest because of their lack of alacrity. But really, what incentive do they have for being speedy if they can charge us money for their response time? Sorry, ...if they are "required by law to charge" us money for their response time.

I'll be the first to admit that it's likely not the IRS's fault. After all, they are just enforcing policy as handed down by the government. Perhaps, if they weren't "required by law" to rape us for their missing speed, they would understand that they were slow, and it was their fault that it took so long, so they wouldn't charge us that ridiculous "interest." So, what does that tell us about our policy makers? I mean besides the fact that they are obviously the single most powerful and single most corrupt system in the country. Sorry. My thesis statement was a bit off up there.

Time to simplify the tax code. Enough of the elitist, dictatorial, monarchic caste system that our forefathers ran away from so many years ago. Incomprehensible tax law, favoring the rich, oppressing the poor. Let's hear it for a flat tax! Everyone pays the same amount. It's fair. It's simple. It's quick. The obvious draw back is that it wouldn't legitimize the caste system, thereby making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Dang. Hadn't thought of that....

Black Listed Companies 12/28/2006

onetouchcanopener.com

• I don't know how good the product is just yet, since I'm still in the process of dealing with an order snafu. However, my experience with the company has been absolute misery. Once I finally chose the can opener that seemed the best for me, I was forced to go through a number of other pages asking me if I wanted to add to the order. Granted, there was something I wanted in all those pages, but really, what a pain! I'd think that if they were offering more stuff, that stuff would appear in their online catalog...which, by the way, doesn't exist, except in the form of a number of pages you have to go through to get to the checkout page.
• Summary: shopping experience was like being taken by the scruff of the neck and forced to look at each item in the grocery store by a rather brutish geek.
  
• When I finally got to the checkout page, since I was in a huge hurry to finish the process, I just clicked through everything to get to the order confirmation page. The order confirmation page read, "You've been sent a confirmation email." I have yet to see that email. Which doesn't seem all that annoying...until you read further.
  
• Summary: extremely slow online ordering process.
  
• Christmas comes and goes and I see no delivery. And still no email. So as not to disappoint the receiver of the would-be gift, I ordered again, thinking perhaps I had imagined I'd seen the confirmation page, mixing up the countless other order confirmation pages I'd seen through the weeks. When the next order confirmation page came up, the organization and presentation of the page was exactly like one I'd seen before. So, I knew for sure I'd seen it before. And if I'd seen it before, it's obvious I now had two orders in the works...maybe.
• Summary: sketchy online ordering confirmation process.
  
• I searched around on their site for a way to contact them, thinking there was a real-time way to do so. Nope. Call this number during these hours. Luckily it was during those special hours. I dial the number. I get a busy signal. Busy for 15 minutes. Finally I connect. It's a phone operator with quite a thick Middle-Eastern accent. I ask what the situation is with my order. "Yes, we have your order, it's going to be shipped very soon." Very soon. "Very soon." Ha. (Read on.) I ask him to read the order back to me. He reads the first order I placed. I ask him about the second order. He asks when I placed that order. I said, "About ten minutes ago." He asks me to call back in about two business days because that information is not in his system yet.
• Summary: Hello? Automation? Computers? Instant information pathways? IT?
• Summary II: while I appreciate the hard working spirit and the skills of others learning English as a second language so they can improve themselves and their situations, I abhor having to figure out how I can communicate with such people; picking through obfuscating accents; getting my point--that might not fit their scripts--across!
• Very soon he said. As I recalled the second time through the ordering process (when I wasn't feeling quite as rushed) the shipping details read something like, "Ships from 1 to 4 weeks...unless you pay another $x--then it'll ship in 1 to 2 weeks." One to four weeks!? One to two weeks!? Come ON. Postage isn't that difficult. Unless it's shipping from over seas (and even then!) one to four weeks!?
• Summary: one to four weeks!?
• As I was casting my mind back to the other screens I'd just blown by I realized that for a can opener and 4 flashlights (the forced-impulse buy I fell into) the shipping charges were more than $33.
• Summary: $33 shipping for something that can fit in a box smaller than your office's wastebasket...? I can only guess that this stuff must be coming from overseas and the company is having us pay the bribe money necessary to get the goods off port.
• Three days later (I wanted to give their ridiculously slow system a chance) I call back. I get a fax tone on their 1-800 number. I call back again. Fax tone. I call back again...ah, a nice, friendly "[We want you to believe that] your call is important to us" message and am on perma-hold. 15 minutes later an operator answers my quite obviously important call with that familiar Middle-Eastern accent. "Thank you for calling. Can I help you." I tell him I want to check the status of one order and cancel another. "Thank you for calling. Can I help you?" I repeat myself. Silence. For like 3 minutes...silence. "Thank you for calling. Can I help you?" I repeat myself again...but before I can finish I'm disconnected.
• Summary: customer service systems are very disappointing.
• I call the 1-800 number again. Fax tone. For the next 15 minutes I'm calling that number. Fax tones. I start alternating the 1-800 number and the 508 area code number they offer. Fax tone. "The person is unavailable." Fax tone. "The person is unavailable." Finally I get a nice, friendly, lying computer voice telling me how important my call is to them.
• Summary: customer service systems are exceeding asinine.
• 10 minutes later (hey! better than the previous 15!) I get that familiar Middle Eastern accent, but it's a different guy this time. I tell him I'd like to check the status of my order and cancel the newer order. "Your order will ship very soon." I thank him and tell him I'd like to cancel the newer order. "Your order will ship very soon." (See Summary II in the fourth bullet.) I ask him to tell me which orders he has in the system. "Thank you. Is there something else I can do for you?" I ask him again to tell me how many orders I have in the system. "You have two orders." I tell him I'd like to cancel the most recent order. "The order you made first will ship very soon." I tell him I'd like to cancel the order I made a couple of days ago. "Okay. Can I ask why?" I explain the situation about my thinking that the order hadn't been filled. "Okay. Please hold." I hold. "Okay, your order has been cancelled."
• Summary: good effort. Please, for the love of all that's holy, find someone who speaks English in your customer-facing jobs!!

In short: onetouchcanopeners...while the product might be great (which apparently I won't know for another 1 to 3 weeks), the rest of the experience ensures this company's long-time inclusion in my Black List.

Stop Murdering Our Language!

Enough with changing the language to suit the few who choose to take offense at innocuous things.

Because I use the word "niggardly" and get in trouble for it means only two things: you need to find a dictionary (I use Merriam-Webster's online dictionary), and find something that really matters to complain about.

Because I like to look at beautiful things (a strange thing, I know) does it mean I'm "objectifying" that which I'm admiring?

Because I have a friend from South Africa, does that mean my friend is African-American, despite the fact that he's white? And what about my Egyptian buddy?

Because a guy points at and laughs at a tiny, winged sprite, calling her a silly fairy, does that make him bigot?

Because I push someone aside because they're in the way or in my face, is it a hate crime because they wear a turban?

Because someone dresses like a group of people who are well-known to act in violent and aggressive ways, does it make me prejudiced if I choose to stay away from them or be on guard for something unpleasant from them?

Because I believe in the fundamentals of something, does that make me a fundamentalist? And as such, am I worthy of demonization or marginalization? And if so, is that not a hate crime? Or at least bigotry?

Take a deep breath and repeat to yourself, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, not everyone is out to get me!" Then take another deep breath and repeat to yourself, "...and if everyone was out to get me, I'd still stand for who I am...without being a complete ass about it--unless of course I'm required to in order to change the situation to something less threatening."

What I'm saying here is...relax, people! It's not all about you! It's not even all about the special causes you've decided to attach yourselves to so you can feel important and like you're making a difference.

It's about life, living, loving, and believing like you like, and allowing others to do the same--as strange as the concept of "others" might be.

"'They' Don't Want You To Know About Natural Cures!"

Based on the contents of the book that this Blog is about, I believe the title of this entry to be closer to what the book actually communicates than its original title "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You To Know About," which implies something very different.

Anyone who's read the book knows what I'm talking about when I vent my complaints about the ridiculousness--and undeniable skill--of the author.

I'll be the first to admit that while most of his claims are interesting, the book could have just as easily gotten across its point--or two--in about 100 pages less.

Let me sum up: "I've uncovered a vast consipiracy, and because of this, people and organizations are picking on me. These people and organizations are all about making money, and couldn't care less about public health--except in its decline through addiction and profiteering. Oh, and to make you happy, here is a tiny list of things you can do to maybe make you healthier and protect yourself against this conspiracy. By the way, please, please, please visit my website because then you can join up by sacrificing ridiculous amounts of money to get these 'secret' cures--which I really can't tell you about. I can certainly let you peek under my overcoat at the glittering cures, but that's all I can legally let you do. So...give me your money and look for these natural cures on your own. Oh, and these organizations are really picking on me because I'm seeing through their lies and consipiracies. Did I mention that I'm being picked on? Because I'm so cool? And give me your money. Because they're only in it for the money. But benevolent, picked on me...I'm fighting for you. And only for you. Give me your money."

The Perpetual Victim
All throughout the pages of the book, and all throughout the pages of his newsletter is constant griping about the oppression he's experiencing because of his rabid hunt for truth. While it's interesting, and if it's all true (and I have no reason to disbelieve him), it gets boring after about the fortieth time the reader is assaulted with still more "proof" about how he's being attacked for revealing truth. Again, if it's all true, it sucks to be him, but enough already! Make with the information! Leave the whining and complaining and pertpetual victim mentality alone for half a second! Give us something useful! We all know that drug companies are in it for profit. We all know that they don't want anyone messing with their money. We all know that government agencies are corrupt and messed up and they don't like such things discussed or uncovered. We all know that the crap we eat in fast food restaurants, the drugs we ingest from pharmacies are killing us, and our suppliers don't care. Thank you! Can we move on now?

It IS All About The Money
In all fairness, this guy is a genious. He has some pretty good ideas about health. More impressive, though, are his genious ideas on how to "make the money of the uninformed" his own. My disgust is unbounded, however, at his repeated complaints about the conspirators' sole focus on getting the money of the uninformed. Yet every possible piece of information that comes from him seems to be rather lacking...unless you pay a little (or a lot)...and then you might get some useful information. Especially if, after having paid that little (or a lot) you pay a little more, having been drawn into the conspiracy theories and the no-brainer "I want to be healthy" obsession. They're in it for the money. What's this guy in it for? Altruism? Warm Fuzzies? Ah. Got it. Evangelical satisfaction. Yeah, right. It's a clear example of pots and kettles and the name-calling that goes on amongst them.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a fanatical supporter of alternative healing. I even enjoy indulging in quite a few conspiracy theories. But one gets rather tired of getting one's head beaten in by conspiracy theories and incessant victimish whining.

In all, with a lot of patience, his book is worth reading. But despite how often I agree with what he says (and it is quite often) I for one am very done with it. Time to move on, to find some (more) information that's true, that's edgy, and doesn't smack of whining and hypocrisy.