Even if it were free, if you tried it, I suspect you wouldn't have all that much use for watching the postage stamp that shows intermittent stills; but I could be all wrong, of course.
Satellite -- DISH or DirecTV. You've got two choices. They compete against cable, but if you are going satellite you've got those two choices. But TV is pretty much TV. There's a basic package, and then you throw everything else on top.
Internet -- Dialup, DSL, or Cable. Other than those 3, you've got business solutions. Again, it's basic services, with other services usually not provided by the company or desired by the average consumer (e.g. static IP, extremely wide bandwidth).
Cell phones -- Multiple vendors selling basically the same product. But heres the difference. There's no "basic" service in cell phones. You pay per minute and it doesn't stay in just one place (like internet (for the most part) and tv). So there are lots of options for consumers and desired by consumers: some only use their phones within a mile of their house, some are business users, some are world travelers, some are teenagers, etc. So it gets difficult for the phone companies to provide everything at a basic cost. If they had a basic service (local calling for $20/month, long distance for $10/month, roaming for $10/month) then it would probably be a lot easier for everyone. But surely not as profitable. Then they could get sued.
I'm not sure about that. I have just as many problems calling the phone company as the cell phone company. Clueless personnel, poor customer service, hours on hold to get to the one guy who almost has half a clue.
Clearly, the reason is that both services sprung full-grown from the head of Satan.
Sprint called the police on my mom, once.
I just joined the late 20th century and purchased a cell phone myself. So far the service has been excellent! But then, I've received one call and made two, so.
It looks like I'm going to become the last of my generation not to own a cellphone.
I get very annoyed when people don't have cell phones.
As for the TV, I did the free trial, and while it's jerky and grainy, in a pinch, if you really had to see something, it would do.
Michael, do tell.
Funny, I was just thinking about getting a cell and replacing my land line, or dropping long distance, or something. (Now that I know it annoys Ogged to be without, I'll scratch that plan.)
Don't give me extra incentive not to buy one, ogged.
People who are worse than people who don't have cell phones are people who have cell phones but never turn them on except when they want to call you.
What's the English word for when you do/don't do something just to annoy someone? Noodgery?
I've been without a land-line for three years now- can't say I can remember a time that it's been a problem... although I've been lucky with living in apartments with good reception.
Noodgery can have a purpose. E.g., "I hate to be a noodge, but did you write that memo to supply asking about the new paperclips?"
Not being able to reach people at a moment's notice annoys me in general.
Damn right, Sam K.
Noodgery can have a purpose
Ok, so that's not the word.
Don't give me an incentive to keep my cell phone off, when I finally buy one, slol.
People who are worse than people who never answer their cell phones are people who have cell phones with voice mail but never check their voice mail.
"Jerking one's chain"? "Talking to Ogged"? Does it have to be one word?
Thanks, Matt. No, I suppose it doesn't have to be one word. In Farsi, there is a word (which tells you all you need to know about the Iranian character).
To 17: Amen!
Has anyone else ever received a notice indicating that a voicemail you left 30 days ago had not been listened to and was being deleted, and wanted to strangle someone at that moment?
Mom was disputing some charges, and had made her 3rd trip or so to the Sprint store, which is a real pain because this particular store at that point in time always seemed to have a line as bad as the DMV. She complained to the store manager, who was claimed to be too busy at that moment to do anything about it. Mom took up a chair and claimed she wasn't leaving until the disputed charges were resolved. The manager called the police to have her removed. We don't use Sprint anymore.
22. Oh yes. My phone routinely pops up with voice mails from, approximately, the Cretaceous era. Which induces apoplexy not only because I missed a message but because it makes me look like one of those people in 17.
Wow Michael, that's serious customer service. At first, I thought you meant something else by "took up a chair."
Actually, now that I think about it, in British English, being annoying just to be annoying is "taking the piss," which is sometimes abbreviated to a single word as "pisstake." But that's a noun i.e., don't take comment 44 personally, it was just a pisstake. Obviously this does not translate at all to American English.
But "taking the piss" is more like "pulling your leg." I'm looking for the word that describes eb and FL's reaction upthread.
...or "jerking around" Still, not quite right.
Tweed, "peeve" is to make someone annoyed, but doesn't specify why. I'm looking for a word that means "to annoy just for the sake of annoying." Or, "to spite, just for the sake of spiting."
Perhaps before eb and FL we didn't have those here.
Depending on the audience: "just messing/fucking with you" or "with your head."
just messing/fucking with you
But is that what Labs and eb would be doing if they didn't get cell phones because of me? It's more like pointless spite, which can incidentally be funny.
We used to have Cellular One and it was fine. Cingular comes along, and immediately begins billing us for four rather than two phones. We call to protest. It takes an hour to even get to a person who appears to understand enough words arranged in sentences to actually deal with the problem. Next bill comes, hey presto! Four phones. This goes on for a while. When we refuse the billing on the two non-existent phones, we get a threatening letter. Took months and endless hours of hassles to solve it. Plus the service itself has been degrading, not improving, since Cingular took over. And the bills (the legit ones) have been ridiculous in a few cases, much higher than our AT&T bills from comparable uses.
So now we're shopping for a new provider. I did some snooping, and surprise, most of the other providers available around here suck even worse in both customer service and in actual provision of cell services. Finally I decide that Verizon is probably better, plus we can get new phones for free (our current ones are ancient). So this very afternoon I mosey down to the very uncrowded mall to chat with a salesperson. I walk in the store. I tell the nice lady with the clipboard at the front of the store that I'm thinking of moving over, have a few questions, need to know how to keep our phone numbers. There's two salespeople in the store and two other customers. She smiles and says, "I don't know anything about any of that. I'm just hear to take names. If you can come back in about 45 minutes, we can accomodate you then." The mall is uncrowded, mind you. I ask, "Am I way down your list? Maybe you need more salespeople?" "No," she says. "You're next. But if you don't want to see our sales staff when they're available, well..." and smiles snarkily.
Yeah, that's some customer service! Woo! It's a complete set: they all suck. Is there something about this line of business that makes it impossible to run well?
I never check my voice mail.
This is because it's always the same three people leaving the same three messages so I see that they called and, if I feel like it, I call them back.
MY RETURN-VOICE MAIL CONVERSATIONS
'Hey, winn.'
'What did you want?'
'Did you not listen to my message?'
'No.'
Then they shriek at me.
I suppose I am bound to some nethermost hell for this.
Tim, in my experience, if you can do things over the phone and never go into a store, you're better off. It's the worst of the worst in there. (I have heard that Verizon's customer service--over the phone--is usually pretty good.)
Antagonize?
Yeah, that might be just about right.
Except that, insofar as your not getting a cell phone doesn't really thwart me in any way, antagonize seems a strange choice, but not wrong.
I think what they're doing is, "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face." Which I've never quite understood and to my knowledge has no more compact form.
One definition for vexacious is "intends to annoy" but does not specify it as the sole reason.
I check my voicemail whenever I get a new one, but my cell provider frequently doesn't tell me I have a message until several others have arrived. I'll find I've got 3 or 4 waiting, listen to them, and suddenly the last few days will make much more sense.
Since it's come up, I've never owned a cell phone yet, and have yet to have a reason to remotely think of having one. On the other hand, I'd quite like to have cable tv, but it's not in my budget. Boring, to be sure.
I think "rankle" suffers from the same problem as "peeve."
i'm going to be really annoyed at people who don't have cell phones now because my new apartment building has a locked front door and apparently no intercom system, so i'm not quite sure how people are supposed to get in.
seems like poor planning.
Silvana, I'm totally with you on blaming other people for a problem with the building you moved into. Fucking cell-phoneless friends...
hey man, if you had the chance to move into an apartment building within spitting distance of reza's, you wouldn't pass it up either.
The Iranians in the know eat at Noon o Kabab (on Kedzie). Are you near the one on Clark or Orleans?
Of course, FL and eb could be Amish, rather than annoying. But there is a flaw in that urge to generous interpretation....
46, Good for you, Gary. I was hoping to stay on that train as well, but then my girlfriend decided to move to Georgia (the nation) for a year; time zone differences and Georgia's very spotty telephone service convinced me that if I didn't get a cell, I wouldn't be speaking to her very often. I had been enjoying doing that thing to all my friends for which Ogged knows no English word, and I'll miss the Luddite cred, but they are awfully convenient if you get lost.
clark. and i have heard raves about noon o kebab, but if i manage to ever get my ass out to kedzie, i'll probably be eating at one of the three egyptian restaurants that are apparently housed there, and not noon o kebab. so.
To be a true luddite, wouldn't you have to try to mess up the machinery?
Which reminds me, I think those jamming devices are getting cheaper.
my girlfriend decided to move to Georgia (the nation)
You guys are staying together? Damn. I was hoping she'd throw you over, go develop a taste for the Swarthy Man, and come back to the States, looking for that perfect mix of Asian tribalism and American metrosexuality. Best laid plans, you know?
clark.
Ah, very good: there's a great Swedish bakery near there too. (And hasn't Andersonville become something of a gay neighborhood? So there must be other good stuff to eat there.)
They don't do Swarthy in Georgia, see. Just Pale, Hairy, and Drunk. Not so different from what she has at home.
yeah, i hit up the swedish bakery for a friend's surprise birthday party cake a few weeks ago, and it was received to moderate acclaim, as were the eclairs i bought for my roomate. i'm not much for sweets,though - plus, the guy who worked there chastised me for being late to pick up the cake, which i thought was poor form.
according to my sources, andersonville is now something of a gay neighborhood, specifically, lesbians. and yeah, there are a bunch of good restaurants.
that perfect mix of Asian tribalism and American metrosexuality
This is my opening bid for what Ogged is talking about. It's not very good. Surely the distributed mind of the Mineshaft can do better!
It looks like I'm going to become the last of my generation not to own a cellphone.
I bet I'll hold out longer than you.
Wait a second, ac, nevermind that I'm not going to wait for you if you don't have a cell phone, but aren't you social? Don't you have friends? How can you not have a cell phone?
What's the timespan of a generation? I'm a bit younger than you, ac.
Was going to say I'm not exactly your generation, eb, but would have been less pithy.
I'm extremely social. I'm also very hard to get hold of. Not sure how I manage it.
What's the timespan of a generation
Oy. Cue the rapturologists. People not trying to count the days till the end usually use a figure like twenty or twenty-five years, or the time from birth to peak child-bearing years. E.g., the baby-boom generation is usually said to be those born 1946-1964 or so.
Maybe this guy? The word is that both fur and black will be in this winter.
But is everyone born between 1970 and 1979, inclusive, of the same generation? I guess it's not just the timespan, but the periodization too.
Which reminds me, I think those jamming devices are getting cheaper.
Their legality is holding steady, though.
Well, you know, pace the insightful commentary of demographers like P. Townshend and G. Sumner, the concept of a generation is bunk. Like history!
slol, have you ever come across the Eugen Weber essay on Ford mentioned in this column? I've looked all over the place and can't find it. I'm guessing it's in an edited collection somewhere, and not in the article databases I have access to.
Generations, I think, sped up in the last quarter of the century as mass media and technology sped up. My sister, 5 years my senior, was a member of Gen X. By the time I graduated from high school, Gen X was long gone. Since I've graduated (5 years), I think another generation or so has passed. Back in the day, they'd say, I remember when we didn't have TV. I remember when we didn't have CDs. I remember when we didn't have PCs in every house. I remember when ipods didn't exist in everyones pocket. So I think a lot of it has to do with technology, at least in the present.
Surely the distributed mind of the Mineshaft can do better!
I think the word you were looking for was "spite". "Just to spite Ogged and his kind, Ben refused to get a cell phone for years, and even when he got one, he kept it turned off most of the time for the same reason."
Certainly not, dear Fontana. I'm just more interested in prying into ac's social life.
For what it's worth, my mom thinks I'm very charming.
As does your mom, oddly enough.
Mom reports that not only are you charming Labs, you're also far funnier than I had guessed.
I'd wonder along the same lines as FL's 80 except:
1. I have no reason to believe ogged wants to know about my social life.
2. There's been at least one month during the last year in which my phone bill has shown zero outgoing calls.
There's been at least one month during the last year in which my phone bill has shown zero outgoing calls.
That's amazing. Or people are constantly calling you. Or you've found a clever way to place calls without being charged. Still, amazing.
A combination of incoming calls and local outgoing calls (and setting plans by e-mail). The plan I had only logged calls outside of the service area.
Re 53, you probably even have a driver's license. Never needed one of those, either.
Oh, and Ogged? Re 89, people can actually go for whole decades without using their phone for more than take-out and similar utilities. Honest. It's the sort of thing that can make them wonder why they'd want to pay to walk around and not call and be-called on top of not using their home phone (save for computer dial-up non-stop), and not wanting a car.
They don't even have to be Amish. They just have to be just sort of wondering why people would pay money to do such extravagant and unnecessary things. (One certainly doesn't wonder why people in various jobs have them, nor why social butterflies do.)
If you are inaccessible to people, 90% of the time that's a good thing.
So, reading group...
Through page 48, of course. It's transitional, and not too tough. I'll see if NickS can do the precis this week.
I can't decide. I'm tempted to say by Friday, since it's short and relatively easy, but I don't want the three of you to mutiny.
I'm just a section away from caught up now. But I can't help out with any writing for a week or so.
I would be ok with picking up the pace, even.
We'll do that soon, I think. Plan on Friday, I'll email NickS.
Yes, I agree that you guys should pick up the pace, you're really holding me back.
Oh, wait.
I dropped into cell phone hell when I switched from one plan to another, all within the same company.
Like Timothy in 36 the switch went fine until the first bill, which still included the base charge (something under $10) for the first plan.
I called the suggested number and was told within 10 minutes they would take care of it.
Next bill the old charge was still on plus they added a new month to the billing for the canceled old plan. That time I spent at least an hour on the phone, probably more, getting ponged around until eventually I got some manager who assured me she would personally take care of it.
Next month I am still getting billed for the old plan, plus now there are late charges. My wife wanted me to simply pay the amount but by that time I was completely dug in.
I wrote a letter telling them how I had officially ended the plan three months ago, I wasn't going to pay for service that had been cancelled, and future billing would be viewed as harrassment. I also pretended to copy my attorney.
Somehow that seemed to do the trick but why should a modern company have so much trouble with accurate billing?
Because someone, somewhere, wighed the benefits of overcharging and being impenetrable for the bottom line versus actually ahving good customer service and saw that the company would make more money by being evil?
