Time Warner Cable: Customer Abuse In Our World Of Biznizz Bozos

--
The one thing that defines the USA at this point in time is the rule of what I call The Bad Biznizz Bozos. Time Warner Cable is an excellent example. Bad Biznizz Bozos are fake 'capitalists' who have no concept of how real business is conducted. They are the prime reason that capitalism is increasingly ridiculed around the world. They abuse the game of finance and business services by turning it into an opportunity to gouge and damage others for the sake of the quick and easy buck. It's the same old story of: Short-term Thinking; Long-term Disaster. When companies, such as Time Warner, pull this juvenile, ignorant bullshit, they get what they deserve. In this case, Time Warner Cable deserves this article.

Enough of my analysis and opinion. Let's laugh at and enjoy the facts of my recent adventures with these FAILures of the bad biznizz world: Time Warner Cable.

I) The Case of the Degraded Signal

Early November 2012. The signal on my TV is severely degraded on every channel to the point of unwatchable. The signal on my Internet connection is equally degraded. I call Time Warner Cable to the rescue. They sent out a guy who checks out my TV, the wiring to it, the cabling to the house. But he says he can't check out the cabling inside the house and has no idea if it could be responsible. He also 'says' he has no knowledge or ability to check the Internet signal. I am told to call TWC back again and ask for an Internet tech to come out and check the lines, again.

I call TWC, again, and am told that the technician WAS entirely qualified to check out the wiring in the house AND the Internet signal problems. They asked me why he had not done so! They set up a time for another technician to come out to the house and check out the problem.

The second technician never showed.

By this point I was off to spend a week with the parents celebrating Thanksgiving and helping with chore requests.

When I returned, everything was now working. I received no feedback of any kind from TWC. I dropped the issue.

II) The Case of the Intermittent Signal Dropout

Early December, 2012. Over the course of an hour, the cable signal to my TV was dropping out to a blank screen, on every channel, intermittently. This was occurring often several times a minute. The Internet connection was equally chaotic.

I call TWC. Their technical line is sending a busy signal. This continued for half-an-hour. I call the TWC executive office to complain and ask for someone to please help. They connected me to a man to whom I explained the situation. I pointed out that I had a somewhat similar situation a few weeks previous to this incident and told him that the second technician had never showed up and that I had received no feedback at all about the solution of that problem.

The guy on the phone told me that he had no record of TWC having any appointment to return to my house to repair the signal problem. I pointed out that he was incorrect. He then proceeded to ignore the current problem and instead obsessed over his information regarding the previous issue, making me out to be a liar. I asked him if the point of his obsessing over this second appointment was to pick a fight, as I was getting nowhere with him attempting to get help for the current issue. He said he was going to escalate the issue to a higher technician, to which I replied 'Yes you will'.

Instead of being sent to an actual technician, the rude guy had dumped me at the front line of TWC's call queue in India. He had been told nothing about the situation and I had to start from scratch explaining the problem. This is a sign of very poor customer service, one which I expect we have all experienced. The front line Indian said he would connect me with a technician, but after waiting several minutes for him to connect me, he managed to hang up on me. Again, déja vu much folks?

I then tried for the next hour to get anyone on the line at Time Warner through any number at any office and failed. The tech phone line still sent out a busy signal. The executive office phone line, at 1:20 pm in the afternoon, was foisting a recording that their offices were closed. There was literally no ability to contact Time Warner Cable at all.

Inconceivable? Not with Bad Biznizz Bozos! This is status quo for bad biznizz. But I digress...

I returned to my TV to find the intermittent signal drop out had stopped. I dropped the issue.

III) The Case of the Cheapass Landlord and the New Internet Account Connection

Mid-December 2012. My new cheap-ass landlord had decided to cut off our included-in-the-rent Internet service at the end of the month. I jumped on the situation and made an appointment to have TWC set up my new connection.

TWC, in their endless pursuit of parasitizing money out of their victim customers, had decided to start charging rent for their cruddy old, inefficient Motorola SurfBoard modems. I'd been considering replacing my own old Apple Base Station Extreme and decided to get an all-in-one cable modem and router, top of the line, from Motorola. I verified with TWC, both on the Internet and by phone (the line not sending a busy signal that day) that this was exactly the modem the advised I buy to work with their service. I saved $25 by not getting it from the local Best Buy. Amazon got it to me with its usual expediency. As usual, I RTFM to be understand how it worked and how to set it up. I'm techy that way.

The day of the account installation, I received a call about two hours earlier than the TWC technician's appointment. They were on the road and had time to set up my account at that time, if that was acceptable to me. I said sure! They arrived twenty minutes later. They were an affable couple of guys and I enjoyed their banter while I watched them set up my new cable modem.

However, I found that no one involved with the installation, neither the technicians at my house nor the technicians over at the server side of TWC, knew how to set up the cable modem they had TOLD me to buy. They were ALL entirely unable to perform the job. I listened while the techs at my house attempted to get the techs at TWC to figure it out. This took a full twenty minutes. Throughout this waiting period, the techs at my house kept repeating 'The modem isn't in Y mode' over and over. Apparently that was the mode, detectable from the lights on the front of the modem, that showed the modem was actually connected to the TWC servers and working properly.

Eventually, the floundering ended and I could see from the lights on the modem that there was a signal. The techs at my house then asked if I had a computer to use to test the connection. I grabbed my MacBook and the tech took it from me, attempting to find the modem over Wi-Fi. He had no idea what the default name of the modem would be and guessed his way through the process, FAILing.

At that point he gave up and the other technician asked me to sign the paperwork. They wanted to leave. They wanted to leave me with NO service. Their explanation was that they had never worked with that modem before. They didn't know what to do.

I pointed out to the techs that this was the modem I was TOLD to buy. I pointed out that if they didn't know how to install this modem, then this was when they contacted their boss at TWC and requested training. I pointed out that their tech service to me was not complete until they had me connected to the Internet service at TWC.

At this point the techs became aggressive and loud, lying to me that they did not have to connect my computer to their Internet service as part of their jobs. This was despite the fact that this was precisely what they had been attempting to do before they gave up.

I pointed out that they were being aggressive and loud and that it made no difference to me. I pointed out that they were not leaving and that I was not signing anything until they had completed their job.

Having RTFM, I took my MacBook from the floundering tech and decided to crank up Motorola's 'Wizard' for connecting Macs to their modem. It's a very flaky program, but it cooperated. It found the modem signal. It asked for the ID number of the modem. One of the techs found it on the installation leaflet I handily had with me. He read me the characters. It asked me for the default WPA2 password. The tech read it to me from the leaflet. In the course of two minutes, I had sorted out how to perform the installation they refused to do.

At this point the techs became irate and stormed out of the house. I signed nothing. They managed to leave behind the old modem from my cheapass landlord's TWC account. They were gone.

Support at TWC told me they were also supposed to have handed me a receipt for the modem they had brought with them and took away with them. The follow-up questionnaire robo-call I received also told me they were supposed to have handed me a sheet explaining the service. And they were supposed to have explained the service to me and asked if I had any questions. Needless to say, I gave them a FAILing grade on all the robo-call questions. I then left a recorded comment pointing out that it is 'ridiculous' to have to convince technicians to do their job.

I also called up the executive office at TWC and was handed to a very nice and concerned woman who took down notes about the situation and promised to call the chief technician for cable installations and have him call me back within two business days. She kindly gave me her extension number to call in case there were further concerns. She was terrific.

Unfortunately, two and a half days later, no one from TWC has called me.

Conclusion: 
Time Warner Cable, as a company, doesn't give a rat's ass about their customers. They just want to do minimal work for the maximum buck.

I'll be calling the executive office again next business day. I'll be asking for a free month's service as compensation for all of the above customer abuse. I'll be escalating my call as high as I can go in their management hierarchy with the full expectation that they'll find a way to hang up on me, again.

IV) The Return of TWC Metered Internet Price Gouging

A few years back, in 2009, TWC pulled some nasty tricks down in Texas in a community where TWC was the only option for Internet, apart from the usual meagre dial-in services. They perpetrated a system in that community whereby the Internet was metered on everyone's account. Once a customer hit their meter limit, they were charged an additional $1.00 per GB for data download. For someone watching a 4 GB movie over the Internet, this resulting in PRICE DOUBLING as a penalty for watching that movie. For example, they'd pay the Apple iTunes store $3.99 to stream a movie while TWC charged them $4.00 for the bandwidth required to watch that movie.

Meanwhile, it was calculated that each 1 GB for bandwidth actually costs TWC a total of 10¢. Therefore, TWC is perpetrating a bandwidth markup of 10x. IOW: A 1000% markup. That's severe price gouging. That's blatant customer abuse. It's what monopolies pull because their customers have no recourse.

Here's a 2008 article from BusinessInsider.com predicting the FAIL of TWC's scam plan:

Why Time Warner Cable's Pay-Per-Use Internet Experiment Will Fail

Thousands of us on the Internet protested to TWC about this practice. It was stopped in order to end the severely bad press TWC was receiving. But it didn't stop TWC from trying again. Early in 2010 they attempted EXACTLY the same thing in Rochester, New York. Again, we of the Internet cognoscenti protested and embarrassed TWC into relenting.

Now its back, yet again. This time TWC are pulling new sucker trickery by calling this price gouging a service to those customers who only wish to access the Internet for minimal amounts of time, requiring minimal bandwidth. Sucker customers are offered a discount on their monthly bill if they accept an alternative service plan whereby their Internet usage is metered. And, as with the previous two attempts at customer price gouging, once the victim customer goes over their metered limit, they pay $1.00 per used GB of downloaded data. It's the same 1000% mark up. Are you interested in such a plan? It depends upon the bandwidth boundaries set by TWC. So let's see what they are!

Here's an article from BroadbandReports.com covering the new TWC price gouging trickery:

Time Warner Cable Expands Metered Billing Efforts
Dubious Value Option Expands in Texas

After Time Warner Cable took a public relations beating for pushing low caps and high per byte overages on consumers back in 2009, the company has been stepping very carefully in what is quite obviously their relentless desire to charge consumers broadband overages. Early this year their metered billing option returned to a few tiny markets as a voluntary option named "Internet Essentials".

The company promises users a $5 discount off their bill if they sign up for the plan, which features a 5 GB cap and $1 per gigabyte overages. Granted if you actually use your connection for anything more than checking the weather a few times a week, that "discount" evaporates immediately. Seeing the value yet? Yeah, us neither.

. . .

It's Time Warner Cable that wants the shift. Flat rate pricing doesn't fit Time Warner Cable's agenda because the company simply wants to charge more for data. As we've long noted, the goal isn't value or flexibility for consumers, it's to constrict the bandwidth pipe and impose new tolls to offset the inevitable impact Internet video will have on TV revenues. They tried to force it, now they're trying to soft sell it.

Customers remain fortunate that the option is voluntary -- for now.

"For now" this TWC sucker trickery is being pulled in Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Waco, Temple, Killeen, Kerrville and the Golden Triangle, Texas. 

Time Warner Cable's Gordon Harp, Regional Vice President of Operations in Texas in a press statement, adding that the new tier is designed "to meet the needs of consumers who want more price flexibility."

Right. Because TWC cares so much about its customers and their needs. They certainly proved that to me! /sarcasm

Time Warner Cable is a poster child for what I call BAD BIZNIZZ.

:-P

ADDENDUM

Apparently TWC has pulled their page about the Essentials Internet Plans, referenced in the article by BroadbandReports.com. I hope it wasn't something I said. ;-)

Here is the text of TWC's original Essentials Internet Plans page, formerly located at:
http://twcconversations.com/2012/02/essentials-internet-plans/

Essentials Internet Plans
posted by Time Warner Cable on February 27, 2012

Time Warner Cable is always looking for ways to meet the changing needs of consumers. It’s clear that one-size-fits-all pricing is not working for many consumers, particularly in a challenging economy. As we’ve done on the video product with our scaled-down TV Essentials service, we will now be offering a scaled-down Internet service – Essentials – to meet the needs of consumers who want more price flexibility on critical household services, while preserving unlimited plans for customers who want them.

We believe this strategy will make our Internet service more useful and desirable for consumers and will be a key to fueling growth in the competitive ISP marketplace.
Right now, many of our customers actually use very little broadband capacity. Our tiered Internet service plan, called Value Edition, will allow users who don’t need our unlimited plan to opt-in to a plan that more closely meets their needs.

Previous Experience with Usage-based Pricing

Time Warner Cable began testing usage-based pricing in 2009. Although many customers were interested in the plan, many others were not and we decided to not proceed with implementation of the plan. Over the past few years, we consulted with our customers and other interested parties to ensure that community needs are being met and in late 2011 we began testing meters which will calculate Internet usage.

Usage Meter and Customer Dashboard

The new Internet usage meter is a way for customers to monitor their online activity. Customers should log in to their account through Time Warner Cable’s website to view their personal dashboard and Internet usage meter

All Internet customers will have access to the dashboard tools. These tools will summarize a customers Internet connection, Mobile Internet usage and overall monthly Internet usage. 

--

IASSOTS, The Acronym

--
Here's a short and sweet post. It is to unveil to the world an acronym for a long phrase I find myself using constantly with regard to the US Corporate Oligarchy as well as their PoliTard puppets and sucker sheeple.

IASSOTS is the acronym for:

I Am So Sick Of This Shit.

Sorry to break my rule of being kid-friendly. But I am finding myself posting this acronym more often lately and this apparently is the first time a translation has been posted on the net. Imagine that. What an honor. :-Q*****

I hope the US Corporate Oligarchy is proud of inspiring yet another obscene spawn of their disrespect, dirty doings and bozoid behavior. I dedicate this acronym to you RIAA, MPAA, US Chamber of Commerce, ad nauseam. GFY. --No, I won't translate that one! ;-)

:-Derek
--

When the Corporate Oligarchy ATTACKS!

--
This is our Corporate Oligarchy at work.

This is their corruption of our government, laws and courts.

This is corporations abusing their customers.

This is insane:

Judge refuses to set aside $675K fine in music piracy case

by Jaikumar Vijayan, Computerworld   Aug 24, 2012 3:20 pm 

In the latest twist in a saga that has dragged on for seven years, a federal judge refused to set aside a $675,000 fine that a jury imposed on a former Boston University student for illegally downloading 30 songs. . . .

Thank the members of the RIAA. Here's a list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RIAA_member_labels

It's time for a renewed American revolution.
Corporations ≠ people.
Corporations ≠ our overlords.
Neo-Feudalism ≠ acceptable, ever.

I have no sympathy for the ramifications of these corporate acts of self-destruction.

Meanwhile, let's get back to the ART of music. Support your local musicians. I do!
--

Massive Momentum Motion Of Ending

--
My perceived 'seeing' of the end of mankind at 13 (See my 'Hall of Time' post) has been a perceived remarkable gift. It also freaked my head for years, making it seem a curse, making my becoming depressive from knowing while living an inevitability. I lived through a period I was inexplicably dreaming about in the abstract. Then the dreamed sequence ended and I hit the unknown era of my life when I was thrown into the forge of change. Heated events, 'interesting times', is for me the state of flux and transition into new form. It is my time of becoming that me I'd been striving for before I hit the teens. It has also, inexplicably, been the era when I learned to understand exactly how that ending of mankind that I was given would become. I was surprised and disconcerted that I was going to live through that change in mankind itself that leads to its demise. It has been an experience of having tiny events driving that engine of final change thrust at me in each day's events.

Today I read something so definitive in that process of ending that I saw that solving it is no easy task. It is an ambition that is beyond human comprehension. I saw the massive momentum of motion in mankind's behavior that drives our specie's self-destruction. Stopping it now seems beyond my imagination. Here is the story I read today:

Killings of environmentalists appear to be on rise
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20120620/D9VGPCJ80.html

No doubt it will disappear from the Internet. Here are some quotations:

Around the world, sticking up for the environment can be deadly, and it appears to be getting deadlier. 

People who track killings of environmental activists say the numbers have risen dramatically in the last three years. Improved reporting may be one reason, they caution, but they also believe the rising death toll is a consequence of intensifying battles over dwindling supplies of natural resources, particularly in Latin America and Asia.
Killings have occurred in at least 34 countries, from Brazil to Egypt, and in both developing and developed nations, according to an Associated Press review of data and interviews. 

A report released Tuesday by the London-based Global Witness said more than 700 people - more than one a week - died in the decade ending 2011 "defending their human rights or the rights of others related to the environment, specifically land and forests." They were killed, the environmental investigation group says, during protests or investigations into mining, logging, intensive agriculture, hydropower dams, urban development and wildlife poaching 

The death toll reached 96 in 2010 and 106 last year, said the report, which was released as world leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a conference on sustainable development. The report's annual totals for the six prior years range from 37 in 2004 to 64 in 2008.
More than three-quarters of the killings Global Witness tallied were in three South American countries: Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Another 50 deaths occurred in the Philippines. All have bloody land-rights struggles between indigenous groups and powerful industries. . . .

What strikes me, reading this article, is the inevitability. I despise watching this happen. I despise knowing where it's going. I don't want this happening. I don't want to get to watch the details of a species unstoppably bent on self-destruction. Like anyone else, I don't want to read what I'm writing here. I want to go hide. I don't want to know. I don't want to suffer it.

Why do I have to be me and CARE? Yet I love being me. I have to face that blessing amidst all the grinding wheels of catastrophe roaring in my ears and blasting in my eyes every day never ending until that final fatal foolish motion by the hand of man. At least I have me and this something beyond faith that lets me experience and learn and grown and be joyful despite all the Other People horrors. THAT is a kindness, a consolation. I can take this ride through rising fires and know I am fine and well if only as a spirit. Thank you that which I call god.

Still in transition, ever in transition, I see only dimly compared to the full light of events. I can only report this one small thing I perceive, give only my limited insight. I am so much just another foolish human. Sometimes I think I have only the thoughts of some other source to share here. It is strange to think that my worse struggle with faith is that I believe in my own abilities to sense these things. Then I return to the correct balance and again realize that I am, we are, all collaborations. There is my contribution. There is "god's" contribution to make ME. I am a WE of these two, just as my mind is a WE of rational and emotional brain functions/services. I am, we are, a collective that contribute to a whole of US. (I a sooo glad I'm not schizophrenic! This collaborative, cooperative nature of the human being is complicated enough without that lunacy).

There are so many people who GIVE of themselves to help our species. THESE are the best of us. Altruism is the character of the most worthwhile of us all, the most grounded and insightful. It has been another of my blessings to have found such people around me during my crash course of learning lifetime. I am so grateful for them, for us, being here as that part of human diversity that PROTECTS and strives to save our species. We ARE HERE. Reading this, don't doubt that the wonder of mankind is here on our miracle planet. That great accomplishment of life does live. There are those of mankind who ARE GREAT for real. We are the quietest, when we are at our best. We are the humblest, when we are at our best. We are so easily overlooked by those lost in game playing. The most LOST of mankind consider the caretakers the weakest of our species. And yet we are the backbone that strives for us to survive, to surmount and overcome the horror of the massive momentum motion of our self-destruction as a form of life. We are those who suffer most because we SEE the LOST and mourn. We are also those most blessed because we know what is worthwhile in being alive, in being a life form made as part of our miracle planet. Insight hurts and insight ennobles. It is the hardest of paths with the kindest of heart, the most tangible of joys. That is how I perceive that situation for me at this moment.

There is more encouragement of others ahead in my life as I learn even more about how to be the elder brother, the caretaker who engenders the personal growing of others as part of my personality, my fate and karma as a protector. I mourn that role and yet I want nothing less and am so grateful to be me. I accept the meagerness of being one person and the minor efforts I can lend. It is simply so joyful to strive in that role. I love those who give of themselves to others and to be with them in whatever small assistance I can also give.

Back in the physical world: Today I have my very first toothache and have to find a dentist. We are wrapped in the physical world, being alive. I'm not looking forward to what I expect will be a root canal, thanks to a persistent gap between my molars. Another exorcise in putting aside my impatience, being alive.

:-Derek
--

Democratizing China? Or China-izing the World?

--
Tonight I wrote up this little essay up at MacDailyNews, of all places. It was in response to what has to be the single most bizarro event of 2012 so far:

Apple iPhone-branded gas stove pulled from Chinese store shelves

My initial response to this event was this bit of satire:

I nominate this article for The Surreal World Award of 2012.
Can it get more weird in 2012? Well, there is that ‘end of the world’ thing on December 21st. That’s going to be a contender! 

For those interested, the award for 2011 went to Reverend Campling for his two failed predictions of ‘the end of the world,’ in both May and October. No Rapture for you Reverend. 

Then I typed:

Thinking about this further, it struck me that maybe something is happening in the world that we had not expected. Let’s review some history: 

1) Nixon visits China in 1972, shakes hands with Mao. The Slave Wage Labor Movement becomes a glint in they eye of The Corporate Oligarchy. 

2) In 1998 China was given ‘Most Favored Nation’ status by the Clinton Administration. The ball was rolling. The Corporate Oligarchy began to abandon the USA and move their manufacturing to China. The public spin statements explained this situation as an opportunity to transform China into a democracy via capitalism. 

3) Later in 1998, China’s government began the consolidation and employment of what became the Red Hacker Alliance for the purpose of hacking all world government computers, especially those of the USA. China’s motto became “The Rest Of The World Are Suckers.” 

4) In 2007 the effects of The Corporate Oligarchy treating everyone as suckers resulted in The Subprime Mortgage Crisis, erupting worldwide into ‘The Great Recession’ of 2008. Capitalism effectively died, transformed by the Corporate Oligarchy into socialist Corporate Welfare. 

So, here we are today with the attitude of China, not the USA, having transformed the world. China has not moved any closer to democracy. It remains the hub of crime, abuse of human rights and totalitarian dictatorship it has consistently been since ‘The Great Cultural Revolution’ occurred. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has been transformed into China where everyone is abused by their government, the world has increasingly become a totalitarian police state, human rights have been consistently curtailed and removed, and everyone is treated as a sucker begging to be sucked dry by the parasitic party leaders. 

IOW: The tables were turned. Oops. No democracy for China, just mutant bastard communization for the rest of the world. The Chinese win. 

Just a thought! :-D

After I posted this little diatribe, I read through it and wondered if I was just having a bipolar moment. It certainly has my usual sarcastic persona embedded in its expression. But I think I've actually hit on a valid point, albeit a bit clunky in presentation at this point. Because of the USA getting all pals with China, the world really has changed. But it has clearly been in the opposite direction than was stated or expected. The Spirit of the Age is abuse of customers and citizens by 'the powers that be.' Define them as you like. Call them the 1%, The Corporate Oligarchy, RIAA, MPAA, Chamber of Commerce, EvangeLoons, ConservaTards, Neo-Con-Jobs, TardParty, DemoCraps, LibTards, whatever. The abuse against anyone in a perceived weaker position in the world has been consistently ratcheting up year after year. 

I have to wonder if this is the early phase of what I expect to be an era of desperation as we head into what I call 'The Late Dark Age', or 'Last Dark Age'. I see this as an era where all the people who play the finance / money / mammon game are scouring out every last source of opportunistic cash they can find while they watch their end game approaching them. They scoured out the real estate market after everything else had disappeared. Their scour job left real estate in ruins with the recession of property values continuing on into 2012. Now they're cleaning up the crumbs as they can find them, squeezing the 'sucker's ever harder for what real value is left in the world.

Then there's the question of what will be of 'real value' once the financial game has died the death and all the playtime papers, the money bills, the bank and promissory notes  are worthless. Check out what has happened to the price of rare metals and gems over the past 20+ years of sucker exploitation. What is of lasting value when there is no longer a working financial game system and we have to fall back on good old human system of SHARING? 

What of value to you have to share with someone else? What will they share back with you? There's what's left of value when the games have all ended and the fake stuff has been stripped away.

Then the real bottom line question: Knowing that sharing is required for human survival, (it really is!), is what we have to share enough for us, as a social group, culture or species, to survive?

What do we all require to survive?

That question is beyond the scope of my little blog. There are books on the subject to check out.

Meanwhile, I suggest learning about desperation behavior. Learn about fear and its resulting effects upon our physiology and thinking. Learn how to be, what I call 'Offensively Positive' despite the inflicted garbage. I've been working on this concept and behavior for a few years now and will hopefully be writing a bit about it with time. But I can tell you that when I use it, it's transcendental to both me and those upon whom I use it. I love it as a concept and a practice. It lets me SEE the worthless FUD in the world (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) that people use to manipulate one another and that they throw out in to the world as an expression of panic as well as of course desperation. It lets me LAUGH at all the human foolishness that consistently abounds within human behavior. It lets me APPRECIATE those kind and caring people who are always there, quietly behind the scenes, doing that wonderful do gooder stuff that keeps the world going around in spite of the negative anarchists, the berzerkers, the psychopathic and the lost. They are the heart and soul of the brilliant aspects of mankind. They are the sharers of what is 'god' in all of us. I love them and they love me. (Well usually. I can be a mean and snarky old snot head when I get lost). No wonder I love the Friends (aka Quakers)!

Enough of that manic expressive rant. 

May you live with an offensively positive spirit during interesting times!

;-Derek

--

The Son of The Cold from Hell, Part II

--

Following up on Part I:

My regiment of aspirin, Triaminic (yeah, the 'child' antihistamine) and Robitussin DM (or whatever they call it now) got me through. If you can get your hands on the yellow Triaminic with expectorant, that's the best! I continually took 1 aspirin about every 4 hours to keep my blood chemistry acidic. That is the principle. This kills off the opportunistic bacteria. Undoubtedly, there are other methods to obtain the same result. This may well include drinking lots of citrus or citric acid, etc. (I love limeade!) But aspirin works for me. The danger here is that aspirin can have other effects on people that may not be good for them. Aspirin thins the blood in that it causes blood clotting to occur more slowly. This can be good or it can be bad. Always consult with your doctor about all medications before you take them. That's the safe thing to say and do.

One variation from the above proved to be very useful. Usually I have Hall's cough drops handy for sore throat and coughing. But this time I used the much harsher and numbing Chloroseptic throat lozenges and was grateful for them. they were particularly effective during the five days of ultimate hell cold attack. I will get them again should I ever again have to deal with the CFH. However, for regular old colds, I still like my cherry Halls cough drops. Yummy num.

As with previous recent versions of The Cold from Hell, this one took longer than the usual five weeks. I no longer sensed any symptoms by the end of six weeks. What was very unusual about this version was, as stated previously, its general lack of mobility up and down the nose, throat, chest pathway. Instead it consistently attacked all three all the time, like old colds used to do. Another unusual aspect was that there was never a prickling feeling at any time in my throat or nasal passages. All previous CFH I have had were prickly. Despite the fact that this version knocked me out for five full days, it was kind of a relief to have the worst of it over within that time. What followed was, as usual, annoying. But because it was not doing the up and down traveling routine, it was in effect more subdued and actually less of an overall annoyance.

There were the usual periods when I was fooled that it had abated, then it swept right back. However, my many years of training had me ever at the ready for these events and I always had aspirin with me to bomb the cold back into submission. I love aspirin. I also love willow trees. That they are essentially one in the same is no surprise to me. Thank you willow trees!

Anyway, the stupid cold ended and I was happy.

Just recently I caught a good old fashioned cold, by the books, that took all of five days and died. My regiment worked well usual, keeping the little bastard from giving me any bacterial infection of major distress.

I wrote this two part diatribe in hopes it will help others. Note the medications I used and note that using them requires a strict regiment. If you mess up, the cold will notice and get you good. Therefore, the key word for survival is vigilance. Hopefully, with time, we will learn how to actually control the cold viruses themselves. But for now, we at least have the means to curtail the opportunistic accompanying bacterial infections, a great leap forward from when I was a little kid, thank goodness. And surprise, you don't have to take anything weird or expensive or dependent upon some parasitic drug company.

Willow,

Oh willow,

You sooth my mind and ailments,

Ever my friend and companion,

In good times and ill.

;-Derek

--