October 1, 2004 Archives

I watched the debate. I won't comment on the content or the candidates. This blog is not the place for that¹.

It held my attention. I'm glad of that. I am anxious to see how many Americans watched it. There seemed to be a lot of buzz beforehand. I don't speak to too many people after work at 11:35 PM, so I can't tell now how many actually did watch.

Whether it changes anyone's mind or not, what a tribute to our way of life that this free and open exchange takes place.

I was curious to see how the debate was received by others, so when I got home I turned the TV on and read a little on the Internet. I'm no babe in the woods here, but I am astounded by all the spin... and astounded that networks and websites depend on it.

If Sony just announced a new line of TVs, I wouldn't bring on Sony's sales manager to tell me how they rate. Isn't that exactly what is being done on TV and in print? Where is the value in partisan's slavishly praising their boy?

I'm going to use Robert Novak and Paul Begala as examples. This has nothing to do with who does or doesn't support the president. I just happened to read Novak's blog on CNN's website first.

Novak made comments every few moments as the debate progressed and each and every one of them was critical of Kerry. Again, it's not what Novak is saying that I object to. The question is, where is the benefit in using commentary from someone so intransigent that he only sees one side of the issue?

Didn't Kerry do anything right? Did Bush do anything wrong? Not to Novak.

Novak's counterpart, Paul Begala gave George Bush credit for one small point... and everything else went to Kerry. I suppose his giving Bush any ground is a surprise. Still, Begala could have pretty much written this before the debate began.

Being balanced doesn't mean having two diametrically opposed pundits face off. Balance means using people with open minds who are willing to make observations based on what actually happened, not preconceived positions.

Sometimes your guy is good. sometimes your guy is bad. Hey, that's life!

I want to read what's written from your gut, not your doctrine. We're talking about the presidency. Isn't this too important for politics as usual?

¹ - Earlier this evening, a thoughtful reader of this blog posted a comment with his opinion of the debate. I respectfully removed it. This smacks of censorship, because it is. I think it is incredibly important that this site not contain any partisan politics. That decision, right or wrong, is mine alone to make and I hope the commenter understands.

Last weekend, shooting stills at the UCONN/Army game was a lot of fun. I would have shot more, but I ran out of memory.

As cameras have ramped up the pixel count, the memory storage requirements have gone up too. I have three compact flash cards that together hold about 1 gigabyte.

Today, that's not an incredibly large amount of memory, but I remember when it was - and not that long ago.

I didn't want to get caught short again, so I looked into buying another, larger card. Within the last month, compact flash prices have dropped through the floor. Prices are half what they had been recently and a quarter of where they were last year!

To me, that was a buy signal (though at this rate, I could have waited a little longer until they paid me to take them).

I searched around and found what I wanted on eCost.com. This is an interesting site because there is free shipping - but you pay a handling charge. Exactly what is the difference? And, how can a business, built on handling your order, charge for handling?

The card cost me $84 plus $4.95 for handling. Subtract a $30 rebate¹ for a net of $58.95. That's an excellent price - today. Next week it might look like I was ripped off.

Of course I wanted the card yesterday, but that was not to be. Somehow, UPS put this thing on the scenic tour of Eastern America. It's not that it took so long - it's just the package made more stops than a presidential campaign!

Only UPS understands why it saw three Tennessee cities and drove past my house on the way to Massachusetts... where it turned around and headed back.

The UPS driver walked the package from the curb to my front door. The box was light but substantial at 12"x10"x4.5". Why? The hard plastic wrapped packaging was only 5"x6" and without the wrap, the card is only 1.5"x1.625" .

Not only could this have been packed in a smaller box, it could have been packed in an envelope! It's difficult to believe the box is protecting the flash card much more than its impenetrable plastic packaging.

Bottom line is, it's here. Tomorrow Steffie plays field hockey and I'll attempt to fill it up.

¹ - Rebates are seriously the work of the devil. I am very careful in how I fill them out, reading every word of the instructions. I still feel I get a very low return. These companies have every possible incentive to not pay me.

Remember my long distance problems? My service was broken, then fixed and now... now I'm in a real pickle. How could things deteriorate so quickly, so totally? And yet they have.

I have plenty of time to tell you the story because I am on hold, again, waiting for the next available agent at GTC Telecom. My call is important - though not important enough to hire people to answer all the calls.

Recapping, a few weeks back I lost all in-state long distance service. A call to GTC told me how to fix that by calling my local phone company and whispering the magic letters. It worked OK, just not in the direction I wanted. I lost ALL long distance service, in and out-of-state.

Another call to GTC instructed me what to tell my local phone company to really fix the problem. I had long distance service again. I was a happy camper.

Then, this week came the letter from Sprint welcoming me as a customer! Uh oh. Who signed me up with Sprint?

Sprint, as it turns out, is the underlying carrier for GTC. I don't claim to be a telecom genius but I think GTC buys in bulk and resells to folks like me. My calls go through Sprint but are billed by GTC.

For the past three days I have attempted to get in touch with GTC. The first time I got an announcement telling me not to even bother holding on and got summarily disconnected. The next time I did get connected but ran out of time before I reached a human. I waited until later that night, between newscasts when I'd have some free time. By the time I finally gave up the phone's timer said I'd been waiting 61 minutes.

Right now I am on hold again. The readout shows 19 minutes.

Thankfully, at work I have a speakerphone. This makes the wait nearly acceptable. I can do other things, like write in the blog.

While waiting the last time I looked at GTC's website.

Hold on! That's what they told me to do... and what I did.

The same few songs keep repeating on GTC's hold system. It's some new age psychological torture.

Twenty six minutes now and smoke is pouring from my ears.