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

--

The Son of The Cold from Hell, Part I

--
Prologue About The Blog:
I haven't used this blog in over a year at this point. My thinking has been directed more toward a story series I started at about the same time I skipped out from here. Therefore, I've dropped my personal manifesto to be deep and meaningful here and am simply going to use it as a public journal. I'm not going to be meticulously editing these entries and it will show. The blog will also be more obviously maniacal because I won't be filtering it much for professional quality and I'm maniacal. It's a journal.

The Cold from Hell:
After naming this worst rendition of the common cold at least twenty years ago, I've probably had every new variant for each of those years. However, I haven't had any version of it at this point for nearly three years.

What is a cold? It is an infection of the head/throat/chest/eyes/ears by a virus and only a virus. It is just about always followed by a secondary infection by opportunistic bacteria. Typically the bacteria are already present before the viral infection. They happen to notice the ravaged cells left behind by the virus and have a picnic. Bacteria never start colds. They don't travel around with cold viruses. There is in fact no association with the cold virus except that 'cold' bacteria like to eat what's left over after the virus has ravaged you. Think of them as the ever present clean up crew, ever ready to eat to excess when the opportunity arrives. I'll obsess about our actually quite remarkable symbiosis with bacteria some other time. In the meantime, read the book 'Lives of a Cell' by my hero Lewis Thomas.

It is not an influenza virus. I've had influenza a few times and know. Instead, it is a branch off the Rhinovirus family that has gradually been obtaining the destructive abilities of actual influenza, and then some. I personally have no doubt that with time it will become a new epidemic that will inspire its own yearly inoculation shots. For want of further knowledge about it, I call it a 'pseudo-influenza' virus.

Very much like influenza, the CFH knocks you off your feet with its initial attack. For many years this 'flat out' state lasted for two full days. A few years back, one strain stretched that out by an extra day. The worst aspect of this initial onslaught is the fever. Sleeping each night resulting in me being absolutely soaked in sweat. This is of course accompanied by fairly extreme dizziness and weakness. I also find my appetite drops as well. You know the fever aspect of this cold has ended when the sweats have ended.

What makes it the cold virus 'from Hell' is that it has an extreme and determined backlash after each cycle of infection. In other words, it reinfects healed tissue in repeated onslaughts. Typically the CFH (Cold from Hell) starts in the throat then heads either up or down, to head or chest. The ears and eyes can get walloped any time in-between. There are then brief periods of the victim's recovery, almost as if cured. At that point the virus reverses course, back through the throat to the other end with a full on new onslaught. This back and forth nastiness goes on for several WEEKS. There is no counting the days with the CFH. It goes on for weeks. For years I could tick off five weeks and know it was about to finally die off. In more recent years it had broken the five year barrier to six weeks or beyond.

Again note. This is not influenza. None of the above paragraph fits influenza. Despite the far more vicious and dead attacks of influenza, there are times I almost wish I had influenza instead specifically because the CFH is so damned persistent. And nothing you do stops its persistence. You are forced to wait it out and become beyond exhausted in the process, an prolonged exhaustion that makes influenza seem almost merciful. That's why I call it 'Hell'.

The Son of The Cold from Hell
I first caught what I call 'The Son of' the CFH, on December 5, 2011 while at home in the evening. It occurred when I opened and ate dried mango out of a package from The Philippines. (No, it wasn't Listeria infected mango. Please look elsewhere on the Internet for that subject). I imagine that whoever had handled the bags and/or mango somewhere along the picking, drying and packaging process was profoundly infected with SCFH, The Son of the Cold from Hell. More likely, the initial person infected and infected everyone there en masse, resulting in the dried fruit being heavily dosed with the virus.

Please note that this is a very rugged virus that withstands a lot of outside extremes in temperature and humidity. It takes standard sterilizing techniques to kill it. It doesn't need to ride along with water droplets or land on neutral pH substrates to survive. It lives anywhere people live and breathe, and apparently eat. I didn't breathe this virus. I ate it.

Having discovered my throat as I ate this very nice dried mango, it bit in and started depositing DNA/RNA into my throat cells, turning them into SCFH factories, killing the cells in the process. The cold had begun. I first noticed this the next morning as an achy throat. I did my usual throat clean out routine and the ache dissipated. I subsequently ate more dried mango. The throat ache roared back as worse. I treated it and it receded. I ate more mango. On December 10th, the throat ache was back alongside an entirely new phenomenon in the world of the CFH, a full on attack of everywhere at once. That meant my head, my eyes, my throat and my lungs. All areas were hit together, at the same time, in equal force. Only my ears escaped the effect, thanks mainly to my method of fending off secondary bacterial infection, which is the subject of another article.

It is now December 17th, a week after the onslaught and I am just able to stay on my feet and happily walk around, alert and unencumbered with a cold attack. THAT'S A FULL WEEK of initial onslaught. That's a record for the CFH. It was easily the worst attack ever, the most painful, the most exhausting, the most demoralizing.

IMHO this throws the CFH right out of the rhinovirus family off into a family of its very own. I'm now calling it The Hell Virus. I thought maybe The Hello Virus, sort of sounding like 'Rhino' virus. But that reminded me of cute little Hello Kittie stuff. No way. Remember that sweet little aphorism that goes 'Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger!" That one goes on the funeral pyre alongside all the other aphorisms celebrating simple-minded thinking. The SCFH doesn't kill you, but you wish it had because it makes you so incredibly weak. And then it comes back. Just kill me, please.

Yes, like its predecessor, The SCFH has the lash back effect. It nailed me early this morning with a relentless bout of coughing. There was nothing there to cough up by this point. Therefore, I have to assume the coughing was from the fact that The SCFH was again attacking my lung cells. Therefore, as per The CFH, I jumped back on my cough medicine as well as head medicine to stop the worst of it.

Part II of this posting will cover The Rest Of The SCFH as well as my medicine regime, for which I am extremely grateful.

BTW List:
- I always cover my mouth & nose when I cough or sneeze. I you don't, there's something wrong with you called 'SELFISHNESS'. Change your ways selfish person. I saw you not care! Why are you alive? Seriously! What is your life for if you allow yourself to be just a disease vector? Reevaluate and respect yourself. Respecting others will result.
- I take baths when I get colds, not showers. I enjoy soaking in fairly hot water. It's good for killing off the secondary bacteria and the humidity is blissful.
- I wash my hands and face all day long when I have a cold. This helps prevent myself spreading the virus all over the house. I like that. But I don't like chapped hands or nose or lips. Therefore, I also moisturize! It's a necessity. Get over the cute and feminine factor guys.
--> If you have a cold out in public and you don't wash your hands and face all day long, there's something wrong with you called 'SELFISHNESS'. See above. Get some self-respect.
--> And yes, this fits you lunatics who don't wash your hands after using the bathroom to relieve yourself. I see you just walking out after taking a dump! Selfish selfish selfish! I pity your lost world. So sad for you, so sad...

Stay healthy kids!
:-Derek
--

Conceptual Dimensionality, Desperation Mode & The Marvel Of Sharing

--
My head is an oven. Concepts are recipes I put together, then they cook in my mind until they're done. If I like how they taste then I write them down and put them somewhere, such as here. The more one learns about cooking, continuing my metaphor, the more one realizes that cooking is not about reproducing recipes, but about playing around with the ingredients to come up with a variation on an established theme. As one gets very skilled with a group of ingredients one can create new combinations almost certainly knowing what the outcome will be because of past experience with those ingredients, resulting in a new recipe. The art of food is always evolving. The art of conceptualizing is the same.

But events, such as time limitations and a lack of certain ingredients, get in the way. A lot of what we cook up gets botched or is incomplete or is missing something or other that doesn't let it taste quite right. Shite happens. That's part of being the dirt that got up and looked around. It's a messy thing being alive. I certainly believe a lot of things happen for a reason. But sorry, not everything happens for a reason. There is just sheer chaos out in the world at times, if only due to other people's bad decisions or a slight breeze in the air stirred up by a solar flare that happens to knock a balancing rock off a cliff causing it to land on your house below. Some things happen for a reason, and that is why cooking works! You can count on so many wonderful things to happen in our world. But you can also count on the unexpected and the unexpectable (I just had to teach that word to my spell checker) to happen as well. It's the old 'expect the unexpected', which is a very handy conceptual tool in and of itself.

How wonderful that we humans are so thoughtful. I enjoy making the most of this marvelous gift. But oddly, most people don't use their gift, or don't understand how to use it, or don't know they have it.... Something is wrong with their ability to cook. Even boiling water can seem daunting, despite it being a fundamental human skill, the one that comes right after knowing how to start a fire. What would any of us do without fire, that dangerous essential of civilization?

Where I live, the USA, we've been suffering an anti-renaissance for quite some time. Some call it the inevitable decline and fall of western civilization. We used to chatter about that concept when I was in junior high school back in the late 1960s, back when there was a very good book just out about the decline and fall of the Roman civilization and lots of books trying to comprehend how Germany declined and fell into fascism/naziism, and Italy and Spain and Japan and so on. We were trying to make sense of what had become blatantly obvious at my school via our very good teachers: That there were too many people on the planet and the damage was clearly showing. I'm talking about circa 1968 when books like 'The Population Bomb' were around, written by the brilliant, if imperfect, Paul R. Ehlich.

What's new in the current 'Trivia Era', as I call it, is the emphatic and demanding demolition of intelligent conceptualization within the USA. I'll probably dare dissect the situation in some future essay. For now I'll simply say that it is a complicated and acrid soup of a mindless mutation derived from conservatism mixed with heaping spoonfuls of hypocrisy, greed, short term thinking, long term disaster, hate, abuse, propaganda, FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), herding mentality and a last dire dangerous ingredient I call 'Desperation Mode', or 'a la mode' if you prefer.

I've been personally studying 'Desperation Mode', deliberately or not, since I was 13. Obviously it was a direct result of that previously posted dream I had back then explaining to me what was mankind's worst enemy: Deceptive 'Truth', aka my baby talk phrase 'zunipus stargo', aka unreliable imaginings or conceptualizations, aka thought cooking. It is when we humans become desperate that we have the weakest grasp on what is real versus what is imaginary. It is when we reliably go out of our freaking minds. It is mass insanity. Its ultimate form is war.

Desperation Mode is something we humans also do our best to avoid. No one wants to think about depressing things or events, unless they're a bit mental. Been there, done that, didn't like it. But there it is as a form of disorganized human thought that leads to our ultimate failings, such as what was behind the last door of my 'Hall of Time' dream concept.

There are a variety of ways to detect when desperation is occurring. But I fell over an extremely easy marker recently while I was thinking about mind dimensionality, as an analog for spacial dimensionality. It's a very easy thing to detect in human behavior. One phrase for it is 'Reductive Thinking.' I'm going to toss out this little formula for your consideration:

The more reduced the thinking dimensionality of a group of people, the deeper they are into Desperation Mode.

I've been talking to people about Reductive Thinking for years, warning friends and foes about it being both a critical human skill and a critical human failing. While I was studying science I learned, as you may have, about the "KISS Principle". Thanks to Carl Sagan, many of us know about "Ocham's Razor", another Reductive Thinking concept. Both of these concepts can be used as tools for clearing the mind or for damaging the mind. The damage occurs when one uses these concepts as 'truth' or as 'reliable' when they are not. They are nothing more than tools of thought, much like a chisel, capable of cutting away the unimportant to reveal the essential, or they can be used to crack open someone's skull and bludgeon their brain to mush. As you might guess, in Desperation Mode, such simplification chisels become increasingly used as weapons of destruction rather than tools of revelation. Thus their danger.

I consistently return to my basic concept that:

We never know everything about anything.

An abuse of a simplification tool leads to our assuming that simplification is 'ALWAYS' a good thing when in fact we may be using it as a dire weapon of destruction. Thus the derisive terms 'ignorant' and 'stupid' and 'idiot' and 'retard', etc., where people with simple minds and simple mental systems of conceptualization are looked down upon as anything from humorous to dangerous.

Today in the USA I am surrounded by people who don't see such abuse of simplification tools as anything within the spectrum of humorous to dangerous. They wield simplification as a deadly weapon and call it 'GOOD'. That's desperate. That's insane. That's mankind at its worst. That's self-destruction.

So here is the so-simple concept I fell over that helps me detect desperation in anyone's conceptualization processes:

What are the number of dimensions in which someone is thinking?

In the olden days, like 40 years ago, one of those big burning questions was how many dimensions are there to the physical world. Is it three? Is it four? Is it five? It was in part a matter of semantics. What symbol system are we using? Are we confusing the symbol for the thing itself? (There's a huge concept for discussion some other time! For the moment I'll point you to both Zen Buddhism and what is called 'General Semantics'). The standard version, or thought system for physical dimensions back then was:

0) First you have to have existence. For convenience I call this the 'Zero Dimension'. We-The-Geeks like using zeros as the first in a list of numbers. The Zero Dimension was considered to be 'a point in space' and nothing more.

I never liked this concept. Nice as it is to be geekish and say zero is always the first number, to strictly apply mathematics to dimensionality, the 'Zero Dimension' should be plain old Zero, or nothing, as in NO EXISTENCE AT ALL. That's how it works within my thought system. Nothing is nothing is zero. Thankfully in modern times, this somewhat dim concept of the Zero Dimension has been thrown out the window along with the rest of the dimensions. But for the sake of this essay I'm going to continue to call the 'Zero Dimension' the simple state of existence, the point in space. Bear with me. Being flexible in one's thought conception system is very useful even if it can also be annoying.

BTW: I am not going to give you a link to Wikipedia's 'Zero-dimensional space' page because it will thoroughly freak you out as yet another, different dimensional concept.

1) The First Dimension is: The straight line in space. It may have a beginning and ending or it may just start and end at infinity. There is only the X measurement of dimension.

2) The Second Dimension is: The square, or plain, or the circle, or any other flat shape. It consists of lines, but they don't have to be straight, and there can be as many as you like going in any direction as you like as long as it is somewhere with an X & Y dimensional coordinate system.

3) The Third Dimension is: The cube, the sphere, or any other beyond-flat shape. It consists of lines going in any direction we can, as humans, imagine. It is what we see with our two eyes and hear with our two ears within our perceived 'reality'. There are three dimensional coordinate measurements: X & Y & Z.

Being human, I stop there. I'm done. I personally can't sense any further dimensions.

But someone just had to throw in what I consider to NOT be a dimension at all: TIME. Thus we get this monstrosity:

4) The Fourth Dimension maybe is: Time. Except we can't measure it like X & Y & Z because it is entirely relative to itself AND it only goes in one direction. You can't go backwards. It does not help define anything at all in space. It is a 'Change Factor', as I call it. For now I am going to leave it at that except to toss in this mean little quip:

You can tell a sci-fi writer is desperate when they start writing stories about going back in time.

Why am I so mean? I love watching Doctor Who! It's because let's face it: Going back in time is a physical impossibility. Such stories are not scientifically based in any way. Thus, they are fantasy. Thus the sci-fi writer has broken the rules of his trade and become a fantasy writer. Fantasy can be incredible stuff! I'm a Clive Barker addict! He is the modern genius of fantasy. Never would he call himself a sci-fi writer. I am so mean and cruel about this subject that I would tell anyone, including H. G. Wells himself to his face, that stories about traveling back in time are fantasy! Deal with it! But I digress. I tend to do that.

The only direction Time travels is forward.

Let me end this dimensional concept list by pointing out that thankfully modern science has found evidence for an incredible number of dimensions, all beyond human comprehension, that exist around and as part of us. A lot of this has been theorized thanks to the study of Quantum Mechanics within the field of physics. (When you have a lot of time to blow your brain open, go read an up-to-date book on Quantum Theory. I find it to be incredibly inspiring, so much so that I have two series of stories based upon its concepts: My stories about 'Collocation' and my Steampunk related character 'Colonel L. Afonte', aka Colonel Elephant. I may post a link to some of these stories in 2011).

How I put the Three Dimensions to work for me with regard to Desperation Mode:

Three dimensional thinking is encompasing thinking. It takes in all the information available. With time, science has become very good at applying thought concepts within an X, Y, Z sort of realm where ideas are mapped relative to one another within three chosen coordinates. What's even more super kewl is creating BIGGER coordinate systems with even more dimension measurements. We do this in computer programming all the time! It solves so many problems! But I'll restrain myself and continue.

My favorite three dimensional systems encompass human personalities. It is mind blowing how diverse we humans are with regard to personality. Carl Jung had one great system, well integrated into the Myers-Briggs personality system. I learned a very useful alternative system from Dr. Tony Alessandra while I was working at Kodak. At the time, he called it his 'Beyond Gold' personality system as applied to business organizational behavior. Later he expanded his system and now calls it 'The Platinum Rule'. His personality system is shockingly relevant to how today's businesses either thrive or fail due to human personality interactions and personality cultures within a business. He'll kill me for saying this, but he inspired my concepts of 'Marketing Maven' versus 'Marketing Moron', creative versus destructive marketing. And there are at least five other personality systems I can name, all of which have relevance within particular situations. Put it all together and you have a universe of personalities that can only be mapped within a three or more dimensional symbolic system.

Like it or not, we humans are extremely multi-dimensional thinkers.

That's not just a 'good thing'. That is part of our amazing diversity as a species that makes us so incomprehensibly creative as well as effective as an overall culture of social sharers. Sharing is our behavior where we pull it all together and put it to work for our benefit as a whole. I'm a sharing fanatic. Screw our stupid monetary symbol systems. Our strength as a species comes down to sharing.

Therefore, as you'd expect, I get very annoyed when people ignore their own human nature and go all Reductive Thinking about anything. That's an instant FAIL from my POV. For me, it's 3-D or FAIL.

But shockingly, even 2-D thinking is beyond the scope of a massive number of people. What I find outrageous is 1-D and even 0-D thinking.

What is One Dimensional Thinking? It's United States politics. Gag me. It's LEFT versus RIGHT. It's Democrat versus Republican. It's Liberal versus Conservative. It is one boring, entirely ineffective and non-representational straight line upon which we are all supposed to fit. It is stupid, idiotic, retarded, ignorant, etc. It is Reductive Thinking blown to destructive proportions. It is incredibly unrelated to actual human thought. It is IMHO worthless garbage, it is so far from representative of anything of importance, usefullness or goodness to mankind. It is what politicians blether on and on about every freaking day of their lives. It is one massive clue that politics really is the lowest of professions, below prostitution. If you ever meet a politician that deliberately thinks 'Off The Line', shower them with praise! They are a rarity.

One Dimensional Thinking is easy to detect within a simple conversation with another human being. When you hear it, beware. It is Destructive Reductive Thinking. What is a shame is that once you get off the topic of politics you often discover these people are as multi-dimensional in their thoughts as any other humans! I love a lot of these people! I work with them regularly, and we all pitch in to do such things as feed the poor and homeless. (I work at a food pantry one day every week). Many of these people are called 'The Salt of The Earth' because they follow some of the most wonderful of Judeo-Christian concepts. That is why I stick with them despite the all-too-frequent and vehement PoliTardiness (as I call it).

One Dimensional Thinking is Desperation Mode thinking. It is used as a Reductive Thinking bludgeon in attempt to deal with mass human behavior. It is a hammer with which to remove the inconvenient for the sake of ignorant simplicity.

But it gets worse. The final descent into insane despair is Zero Dimensional Thinking. Here is a key phrase to trigger your concern:

"You're either with us! Or against us!"

This is your cue to leave the room. Just leave. You're in the midst of the worst of despair. There is no reason to expect anything resembling sanity from someone who is so desperate that they reduce the world to The Zero Dimension. You either exist to these people, because you fit their 'Absolute Truth' point in space, or you don't exist to them at all. You're off the map. You're not on the coordinate system. You're not of their kind. You're gonna get killed. This is war. Get as far away from these freaking loonies as you can. Defend yourself and your loved ones as best you can. If need be, isolate these nut jobs so they can't do anyone any harm.

Want to understand just how badly things are going in the USA, here in our Trivia Era? Read the news and count all the examples of Zero Dimensional Thinking. The deeper the despair, the more you'll find Zero Dimensional Thinking going viral within the population.

Survival Strategy:

Please don't catch the disease. Stay human. Keep your head. Find the positive and push the positive at others if only to let them know that, when the chips are down, when you ain't got a penny, there is more to the world than Destructive Reductive Thinking. There is always sharing, that greatest of human behaviors. Put diversity back to work and make your sharing with others stronger. Help the 1-D people rediscover their 3-D natures. Skip the 0-D people entirely and focus on encompassing the best of mankind during the worst of times. There is magic in sharing.

Let me say it another way: At this point in time, as I continue to cogitate on our future as a species, the best key I've come up with to returning to personal, cultural and species sanity is simply sharing with others. It's the giving and the taking. It's the benefiting others and their benefiting you. It is strength in diversity. It is strength in numbers. It is strength in perspective. It is restored faith in mankind. It is the anchor line of culture. It is what we humans do best to be the best we can be.

♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨

Class dismissed!
Thanks for attending.

Homework: Think of something unique to you that you can do for, or contribute to, Earth our miracle planet. What can you share? Think about how to share it. Discover where you can share it. Then take that marvelous last step and . . .

;-Derek
--

My PUR Water Filter Reviews at Amazon

--
Tonight I posted a couple poignant reviews, along with my usual helpful hacks, of the PUR Water Filter systems and PUR Flavor options over at Amazon.com. I'm posting them here for your amusement and (hopeful) benefit. Enjoy!

PART I, PUR Faucet Mounts:

How to work around mean old P&G and enjoy your great filter

Once, long ago, PUR was a great company with great water filtering technology. I still love their filters! Unfortunately, a big bad company named Proctor and Gamble bought them and messed them over in favor of customer abuse. This was accomplished using two methods. The first method is called 'planned obsolescence' whereby their faucet mount apparatus leak and die briefly after the end of the warranty period. (It didn't used to be that way in the good old days). The second method is called 'timed death' whereby their apparatus lock up their enclosed filters at a preset volume of filtered water, whether the filter is actually used up or not.

Planned obsolescence can be overcome by calling up Proctor and Gamble BEFORE your warranty runs out, and letting them know that your PUR apparatus is squirting water all over your kitchen. Ask them to send you a replacement or a replacement certificate. If need be, call repeatedly asking to speak to the President of P&G, never taking 'no' for an answer. Then take your certificate and get another PUR apparatus. This will provide you with a lifetime for the apparatus more representative of the lifetime of original PUR apparatus. You've cheated no one. P&G's cheat on you has been overcome.

The timed death lockout of your filter is extremely easy to overcome. Pull out the filter from the apparatus. This resets the nasty timing device to zero again. Put your filter back in. TADA! You're done. Your filter will work as before. Note, however, that PUR filters do eventually get clogged with stuff. You'll know when to change it.

I hope that helps everyone restore goodness to the universe. I still love PUR filters better than any other brand and wouldn't be without them. It's P&G's customer abuse that's not worth liking. Shame on you P&G.


PART II, PUR Flavor Options:

You don't want to drink propylene glycol

This concoction contains 14% propylene glycol. You don't want to drink it. You don't want your kids drinking it. It's also used in your car's radiator as anti-freeze. Corporate industry has deliberately and consistently prevented any adequate study of how propylene glycol affects the health of humans. Wonder why?

Buy natural flavorings and add them to your PUR filtered water instead.

Read about propylene glycol at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propylene_glycol
--

The Narcissist End Game

--
Let's play The Narcissist End Game.

I've personally watched this occur on two occasions in organizations within which I've worked. The two people who perpetrated it were best friends, which of course is fascinating. I've decided to write about this psychopathic behavior because I'm watching the exact same thing happen at Microsoft with this week's full and final departure of Bill Gates. He has left behind Steve Ballmer to run the show. The result is that Microsoft has begun its death throws. I've been documenting these death throws over at MacDailyNews over the past couple months. Apparently, Windows Phone 7 is yet another one, just in time for Bill's final fare-thee-FAIL.

Here's how The Narcissist End Game works:

The leader of an organization is so insipidly narcissistic and insecure that he (or she) can't bear the thought of leaving behind a system that will soon forge ahead into the future and forget him. Therefore, the narcissist sets up the organization's demise by putting an incompetent in line as his successor. The narcissist then departs and lets the carefully placed gears turn and grind. The end result is the catastrophic failure of his once wonderful organization.

Everyone left behind then sings in unison:

Oh, how we pine for the days when [insert narcissist here] was running the place! Oh how we miss him! When he left, everything fell apart. Only he could hold it together. If only he could return and save the day! Oh Oh Oh!

Get it? Sick stuff. And it is very real. I watched this happen at the Cornell School of Veterinary Medicine's Photography department AND at Eastman Kodak's Scientific Imaging department. In both instances the secretary was put in charge as the successor, with predictable consequences. I expect those two best friends sit around toasting themselves and their final achievement.

Now sit back and watch it happen at Microsoft. I almost feel sorry for them, but not quite. 'Oh for the days of Mr. Bill.'

:-Q*****

--

FEED or FAIL

--
Intro: This essay is going to unfortunately be jumped upon by conspiracy theorists from La La Land. My apologies. By this I mean that mankind is so fundamentally floundering and bumbling that what is more likely than an intricate diabolical plot among people is a mess of intention, mistakes, luck and lots of after-the-fact obfuscation. For example, the US NSA (National 'Security' Agency) may have effectively destroyed the US Constitution's rights to privacy, thank you Bush League. But you can count on them being incapable of effectively dealing with all the private data they've stolen from us. IOW: Count on The Stooopid Factor. This is both a cynical concept and a realist concept.

What is FEED or FAIL?

It is a limited, 0 dimensional, binary thought concept to deal with both naiveté and psychopathy within our social systems. It also is both cynical and realist. As a 0 dimensional concept you can count on it being as bare bones and incomplete as possible. It takes into account so little about the system it is applied to as to be merely a first blind step in comprehending the system. It is guaranteed to be remarkably wrong in a remarkable number of aspects. Nonetheless, first cuts can be useful. This one is useful if only to make clear the difference between deliberate deceit and detrimental innocence. I find it to be equally frightening on either sides of this metaphorical coin.

A FEEDer is a deliberate liar who plans and perpetrates disinformation to other people. Typically the purpose is manipulation. In any kind of marketing moron system, manipulation is a prime lever, a mental machine for obtaining something surreptitiously from another fellow human being. As the victim, you are FED garbage that is meant to cause you to respond in a predicted way that benefits the FEEDer.

In advertising there are plentiful examples. An ongoing example as of this post is the Toyota FEED that it wasn't their faulty auto acceleration systems that killed over a hundred people. It was the floor mat. As a victim, you are FED that you don't have to have your car's pedal system replaced. You only need to replace your mat. Happy happy, joy joy. Toyota benefits from your ignorant belief in their FEED.

A FAILer is someone who inadvertently tells wrong information to others. The FAILer believes the information to be true. The information is NOT true. They have FAILed to comprehend and communicate facts. The most dangerous of FAILers are those in positions of authority. We're counting on them telling us factual information. They don't. They FAIL. I find the most sad and frightening of FAILers to be those who share new information to others, where the other person has no ability or resource for comparing this wrong information to any correct related information. This literally is the blind leading the blind. Good luck with that system. This is one reason I get upset at people in the technology field who don't do their homework and end up telling ignorant people a set of ignorant information.

A very popular example is when Steve Jobs of Apple put a metaphorical gun to the head of Bill Gates of Microsoft and made him invest $125 Million dollars in non-voting Apple stock. (The 'gun' in this case was a lawsuit that would have cost Microsoft well over $125 Million. It was in regards to Microsoft being caught red-handed stealing Apple QuickTime code. Meanwhile, Apple had $4 Billion in the bank and hardly needed the investment). How was this fact blundered in public? Ignorant FAILers told others that Microsoft had saved Apple from bankruptcy. Of course the ignorant then fed the ignorant, and you got an insane form of the game 'Telephone' or 'Gossip' where not even the original information was valid. Anyone who bothered to do their homework on the subject could discover the facts of the matter on the Internet within one minute. Hyper-FAIL.

I realized the FEED or FAIL concept while I was watching a TV program called "The Spy Factory." It is about, among other things, the demolition of US Constitution guaranteed rights to privacy during the Bush League era. I found myself listening to authoritative people telling me that having these rights stolen from me provided some sort of security from bad guys. The FEED was that it was OK that the NSA were able to intercept and analyze all unencrypted phone calls and Internet data transference WITHIN the USA by US citizens. It was OK because it made the US more secure, which is bullshite. Therefore, I found myself asking whether the speaker was a FEEDer, who wanted me to believe a LIE that benefited others but not me, or was the speaker a FAILer who ignorantly believed the pathological lies he had been fed by some FEEDer? I knew the information I was being told was blatantly wrong. But what sort of person was telling it to me? Naive or evil? Innocent or psychopath?

Another way to look at the FEED or FAIL concept is from the other side of the communication, the side of the receiver. From this perspective, the FEED is of your mind. Think of the FEEDers as sociopathic zombies who want to eat your brain. You believe their lie, they have fed on you. You have lost a part of yourself to their control. Similarly, if a FAILer has messed you over with misinformation, you now also FAIL to comprehend the facts of the matter. It's a FAIL contagion.

Here is a list of some spectacularly 'wrong' people. What are they? FEEDers or FAILers? What if they're BOTH? What if they're NEITHER?!

_______________________FEED__________FAIL

George W. Bush ________[ ]___________[ ]
Paris Hilton __________[ ]___________[ ]
Phyllis Schafly _______[ ]___________[ ]
Johnnie Cochran _______[ ]___________[ ]
Dr. Timothy Leary _____[ ]___________[ ]
Adolf Hitler __________[ ]___________[ ]
Filippo Marinetti _____[ ]___________[ ]
Karl Marx _____________[ ]___________[ ]
Pat Robertson _________[ ]___________[ ]
William Kristol _______[ ]___________[ ]
L. Ron Hubbard ________[ ]___________[ ]
Sun Myung Moon ________[ ]___________[ ]
Kim Jong-il ___________[ ]___________[ ]
Rush Limbaugh _________[ ]___________[ ]
Clarence Thomas _______[ ]___________[ ]
Fidel Castro __________[ ]___________[ ]
Bill Gates ____________[ ]___________[ ]

Please note that I am not interested in comments about my selections for this list. That's not the point. Thoughtful comments about the concepts are welcome.
--

Thank You To Loving People

--
Today I have some thank you posts. These are people without whom I would not be me and would not be here. I know this is boring stuff to general people. It's the part of awards programs that drives us insane. But to those I love...

Thank you 'god' for the synchronicity classroom. It's more remarkable than I could imagine.

Thank you Gordon and Jan for putting up with me and always loving and supporting me.

Thank you Graeme, Iain and Colin for being a remarkably kewl diversity of brothers. I'm grateful we have each other.

Thank you Peter Perlso and Jesper Ørsted for the greatest friendship possible from afar. [Folks, these two guys got me my Mac laptop amidst my personal poverty and have directly allowed me to keep up with tech and write about it on the net. I've never even met Jesper! What an incredible friend he is]. We are three brothers from different mothers.

Thank you to my other brothers: Michael Mehnert, my spirit brother, how could I be more grateful to know you. Jim Richards, another spirit brother, your patience with me has been boundless, your generosity infinite. Mark Grube, may we ever support one another. Blake Sampson, you're a brother from afar I wish I could know better; you have been such loving support. Thank you Mark Sager for being the kind and giving spirit who kept me sane during my early years; you gave me optimistic amidst cynicism.

Thank you to sister Lorraine Downes Sinclaire. I could not have grown up and out without you there as my companion and guide. Sister Jeanne Bottomley, we went through probably too much together; thank you so much for years of joy and wonders.

Thank you to Michael Peres and Margaret Holtman, the greatest professors I've ever had, transcending into kind friendship.

Thank you Jeannette Angeloro for kind patience and shared wisdom, my catalyst of wise mindfulness. Thank you Naraya Reddy for fulfilling your loving self and going beyond the barriers to care for my well being, helping me find my medical survival.

Thank you Kay Silver and Leonard Silver for such remarkably loving friendship, given to a bedraggled stranger at your doorstep. I will ever love your spirits and keep your lessons of kindness in my heart.

Thank you cousins Brock and Louise, two secreted miracles of my family who have been so inspirational in my recent life.

Thank you to all my Hawley-Green neighbors who are the greatest collection of remarkable spirits within four city blocks I could ever imagine. I love you all and thank you for your patience with me and faith in me during tough times. Mitch, Michael, Nick, Phyllis, Nancy, Peter, Frank, Brian, John, Joan, Jeffery, Karen, Chris, Meagan, Mike, Debby, Scott, John, Glenn, Mary, Mary Ellen, Ben.... What a wonderful place for me to land, recover and thrive all these years.

Joan Allen, thank you for sharing your spirit of giving and being such a great companion in sharing that spirit with others.

The entire Friends Meeting of Syracuse, what a wonderful company of spirits with whom to share and grow.

Robert Newman and Katherine Hughes, fellow brave hearts, thank you for such loving support and wisdom.

Dick Newman and Kristen Carpenter, what a strange journey we have all had, and what great people with whom to share it. Thank you so much for your faith in me and your sharing spirits.

There are so many more kind people along the way, like Paul, Jan and the entire Central New York PC User's Group, the entire Apple CIDER group of Rochester, my mentors at RIT and Kodak, Frank and Arturo, my teachers in Pittsford, USF, UF, Allegheny, UR, YMCA, the Mac Advocacy newsgroup...
**MUSIC BLASTING**
**HOOK DRAGGING ME OFF STAGE**
THANK YOU EVERYONE!
. . .