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Tuesday
Miles: 9,927
Mood:
Confession #89- I didn't want to be a Popsicle when I grew up.

Some of you might be wondering why there is a pig mood on this entry. Well, Christmas is coming. What better way to celebrate Christmas with a big feast featuring ham. After Thanksgiving, you're sick of turkey. Probably because you still have a few gallon tupperwares full of it in the fridge in the middle of December. A fuzzy growth is starting to appear on the meat, and one can only assume the turkey is sprouting feathers again. Seeing as how it had feathers to begin with, I see no problem with wiping off the baby fuzz and sticking it in my sandwich. Lots of mayonnaise helps cover the slimy film on the underside.

So this Christmas we are trying something different by cooking an entire pig. Not just a unidentifiable lump of pre-cooked ham you buy in the grocery store. There will be no doubt this year that we are eating an adorable suckling pig. This event is perfectly planned with the release of Charlotte's Web and is sure to be a smash hit with the little ones when we throw a big apple in Wilbur's mouth and slice him open on the dinner table, and letting the youngest decide whether she wants his snout, leg, tail, or ears to snack on while daddy breaks the spine and saws off the head to use as a prop in the family "Twas the Night Before Christmas" reading later in the evening.

It's going to be great!

As I said, I never wanted to be a Popsicle when I grew up. You might notice that no miles have been put on my bike since Thanksgiving. Last year I was able to ride year round. In 40 degree weather, it was a cinch to cruise downtown on the small roads never breaching 45mph. Now trying to ride into the city from the suburbs on a long open stretch of highway at 75mph in the freezing winter cold well...you've got to be kidding.

So naturally I will have fewer days to ride, however it is estimated that the rest of the week will be sunny and moderately warm with temperatures averaging 70 degrees.

You just can't beat that for perfect riding whether. And besides, I can't resist seeing the faces on the other commuters sitting in their cars with the heat blasting while I slip by enjoying the holiday season.

Wednesday
Miles: 9,951
Mood:
Confession #90- I hate customer service.

For once, the weatherman was right. It was a gorgeous morning. I rode in to work today on the motorcycle, and it couldn't have been more perfect. A crisp but comfortable 55 degrees and not a single car attempted to hit me. The only hitch was that I forgot my glasses. So, you'll have to forgive me if there are any severe misspellings, or if I've accidentally posted this to the Jewish radical Christmas boycott site.

Do you have your 2007 calendars yet? If not, go buy one now! No, buy 3. Use 1 and then put the other 2 in separate, secure locations. Sure, you think I'm mad, but here's a story that will change your mind.

A couple of years ago I decided I needed a calendar. It was around May of 2005, and I wanted a calendar that would go up on my wall so I could mark important dates. So I stroll over to Barnes & Noble and look in their calendar section (which, actually, was quite small...apparently calendars are 'seasonal'). Anyway, I look through the rack...and all they have are calendars for 2006. Not a single 2005 calendar. I thought it odd, but bought a book instead.

Later that week I ended up at the mall and went to a specialty calendar store. They only sell calendars. Again, no 2005 calendars, only 2006. So now I'm quite curious and I go ask the customer service guy at the counter.

"Where are your 2005 calendars?" I ask, and he immediately gets this look like I'm some kind of stupid moron. "Um, sir," he says oh-so politely because he's such a big-shot smart-azz all-knowing calendar guy, "we don't sell any 2005 calendars anymore."

So we talk for a minute about why that is. I'm confused, and he acts like its the most normal thing in the world. So finally I say, "Well, its 2005...I want a calendar, so you have absolutely no calendars that you SELL IN 2005 that actually HAVE DATES IN 2005?!?"

Yes! He says, and shows me an 18 month calendar that started in August 2005 or something, on through December 2006. But everything in 2005 was crammed onto one page with tiny little boxes that I'd need to hire a mouse to write in.

So finally I give up and say, "Look...are you saying that the calendar company is not making calendars that I can buy, go home, and actually use? I can't use any calendar I buy for 5-8 months??"

"Why would they sell 2005 calendars?" This guy was serious. He didn't understand why I could possibly want a 2005 calendar in the middle of 2005.

"Well, lets say that someone HAD a 2005 calendar. And they lost it. Or someone stole it. How would they go about replacing it?"

"Um...I don't know, sir."

Bingo. He had no clue, because it wasn't included in the 30 minute training video he watched when he was hired.

I hate customer service.

So this year for Christmas I decide to upgrade my wife's cellphone. The last thing I want to do is deal with a cellphone company, but what can you do? I go online and do the upgrade, everything goes smoothly, it reports that my new phone will be delivered to my house within 5 business days. Woo hoo! Gift accomplished.

Then 1 hour later my wife calls me up and tells me her cellphone just stopped working. Oh for crying out loud, I think to myself. I upgraded her phone, so Cingular deactivated her existing one before we even got the new one in the mail. Good one, guys.

Later that evening I call up Cingular and talk to a rep. Her phone hasn't been working all day, and I explain the situation. She's happy to help, but says there's nothing wrong with the phone and it should be working fine. They didn't do anything, she claims.

So while I have her on the phone I decide to ask her about the $18 "upgrade charge" they are hitting me with. She starts giving me a reason, and I quickly realize that its the same script that was on the online automated help web program at their website. I suspect that she is just entering my questions into their own website and giving me the answers, but I say nothing.

Anyway, she says it's to cover their "activation costs". So I ask her how I activate the new phone.

"You can either put in the a new SIM card we will provide," she says, "or you can use your old SIM card from your old phone."

Right. I know how GSM phones work. If I just swap the cards, my new phone will have all the addresses, etc from the old phone, and it will work just like the old phone.

"So, since I paid for the phone, and the shipping for the phone, and I'm just swapping my SIM card, will you refund my upgrade charge?"

She laughs, "No of course not, sir."

"But you just said the charge is to cover activation. Cingular isn't doing anything, I'm doing all the work, so there's no reason for you to charge me a fee. Technically, I should be charging YOU!"

She laughs again, and reminds me that the $18 is discounted from the $36 they charge new customers.

"Yes, but with a new customer, Cingular actually has to do something to activate the new phone. So since we've established that there's no activation behind your activation fee," I say, "can I have the fee refunded?"

"No," she says, "everyone has to pay the upgrade fee."

AH HA!

We finally got to the root of this fee, and pretty much all other fees associated with anything else (including the telephone company's federal regulatory fee that the government revoked yet phone company's still charge us for)...since most of us don't speak "legalese", I'll translate the answer for you:

"Because we can."

Note to readers: Incidentally, less than 10 minutes after I hang up with Cingular my wife calls and tells me her phone is working again. Something smells fishy. On a side note, I'm terrified to see my next bill. Whenever you 'contact' the phone company, the reps do all kinds of crazy things to your account. Who knows what 'features' they added to my account without asking for them. As with all changes, upgrades, new service, etc, I dread the 2 months of constant calls to the service provider to fix whatever mistakes they made. How do I know? Well when I called to find out why her phone was working, the rep said, "oh, there's some other service they added and I'm removing that now". Right. I selected "my existing plan" in the upgrade and I read word for word the entire agreement and associated documents, and there was no mention of anything being added with the upgrade. But hey, they just do it anyway. Why? Because they can.

Good to hear from you again. I was beginning to think that you ate some funky cranberries at the thanksgiving meal.
I am doing the year round commuter thing here in Philadelphia. Last week it was 16 degrees for the morning ride into work. Neoprene gloves under Olympic winter riding gloves still didn't cut it. My fingertips felt like they were frozen solid. My next experiment will be to try using hand warmers inside the gloves. My quest is to get through the winter season w/o breaking down and buying $140 heated gloves. Raining and 50 degrees today. The experiment will have to wait.

Why no entries in over a month?

It's the earmark of a great writer.... leave those readers hanging and wanting for more...

Now if only those same readers would PAY....

Hes just biding his time...I think texas got some of that snow stuff that most of the northern hemisphere has to deal with...

heres to more confessions soon!

confession of a snowmobiler perhaps?

Friday
Miles: 10,058
Mood:
Confession #91- I'm wearing diapers.

As all my (3) readers know, I'm not a biker. I'm an eco-commuter. Well, maybe that's not accurate. My bike probably pumps out more carbon emissions than a 1987 Ford F-350, but the thing gets 70mpg. So I may be killing you all with fumes, but at least I'm not wasting gas at the same time.

You can imagine I often think about alternative fuels, and other eco-friendly tree-hugging poo. You'd be right. I finally fired up my bike this morning and rode it in to work. It took a while to get her started. She had just been sitting for so long. But after letting it idle, riding around surging for a minute or so, she was back to her normal self. Good little bike. If only she could cook.

I was thinking about alternative fuels on my commute and remembering an article I had read about yet another sports jock caught taking steroids. It suddenly hit me that the answer to our gas needs is right in front of us. We should just inject gallons of steroids into horses! That way they can run 60mph all day without breaking a sweat. All we need to give them is water and grass. They aren't picky, they can drink whatever we won't drink (because all us Americans now only drink water that comes in expensive plastic disposable bottles, because we like to kill the environment while we're getting ripped off). It's genius! I'll make millions! I needed a new idea anyway. Frankly, my super-efficient warp core prototype doesn't work very well. Probably because it's built from a lego set I found in my neighbors trash.

So you're probably wondering why I'm wearing diapers today. Sure, laugh now, but I'll be laughing when you're all wearing them. I read about an astronaut who "drove across the country, assaulted someone, and has been arrested". That was the last sentence of the article. The first 6 paragraphs described how she was wearing an adult diaper at the time (because Americans will all read the newspaper if it includes an article about someone pooing in their pants).

America is divided on the issue. Some feel sorry for her, some think she should rot in prison. I have to ask, are you all stupid?

Let's look at the facts here. NASA always complains that it never gets any money, the astronauts complain that the media is never interested in the space program anymore. A poll just came out that showed kids think the space program is useless. And it is. What have they done for us lately? In the 60s space was popular, they brought us cool products like Tang and Velcro. 80s? 90s? 2000s? Nuthin'.

You people are blind! This is all a viral marketing campaign by NASA public relations. Are you telling me a genius, who got into the space program, undergoes constant physical and psychological testing, could pull off a crazy stunt like this? And don't you think it's a real coincidence that the other people involved, the woman supposedly 'attacked' and the man she supposedly 'fell in love with' BOTH work for the space program? They're all in on it! NASA figured it needed a new product, so it came up with this media frenzy to advertise its new line of Road-Trip Pants. The pants you can pee in!

Sure, call me crazy. But just wait until you see Paris Hilton wearing adult diapers while driving her Bentley. Then you'll all be buying them. And I'll have the last laugh, because I've got a garage full of cheap Walgreens-brand adult diapers, while you'll be stuck paying premium NASA prices.

Ummmmmmmmmmmm.....................ya.
Good to see you back and at it again.

Wednesday
Miles: 10,058
Mood:
Confession #92- I ride only in my dreams.

So I still haven't found time to pull apart my ignition switch and take it in to a locksmith to have a new key made. I cannot ride yet, despite the beautiful weather.

But I did have a strange dream last night. Riding my motorcycle on an oil-covered road, slipping and sliding, bouncing back and forth trying to keep my balance. It was 3-4 in the morning, and I was worried about getting to work, and I had been drinking which did not help the situation.

Keep in mind I do not drink when I ride, nor do I ride around at 3-4 in the morning. This was a dream, so I can do whatever I want.

I was also quite upset about my wife being there. She insisted on riding home with me, despite that there was a perfectly good car that a friend was driving home as well. She got on, we rode, and suddenly she was inside the other car. Bizarre.

And it was raining.

At least I didn't crash.

Thanks for the laugh. Sometimes you are quite amusing.