Short Circuits

My brain is short-circuiting today. Not one full and coherent thought has been produced. So, I’m sorry, but all I’ve got right now are a bunch of disjointed and not terribly important nuggets. Or maybe more like morsels, since I keep thinking about baking.  You know, holidays and all.  Or just Mondays in general.

I’ll stick with food for a minute (well, forever).   You may remember my quest to visit Eataly.  Well, I went and it was fantastically odd. 

Would I do my grocery shopping there?  No, not at $32/bottle for olive oil.  But I’ll gladly return to consume their wine and eat delicious cheese.  In fact, I’m going back next week — after all, it wouldn’t be a fair assessment without hitting the gelato.

Moving on to religion, naturally (shouldn’t it always follow cheese, wine and ice cream?).  My in-laws informed us over the weekend that the church where we were married in Manhattan has been bestowed the distinct and apparently rare-ish honor of Basilica status. What this means will take a better Catholic than me to explain but I do love Old St Patrick’s — lots of history there, both for New York City and for Fordeville. Plus I think our marriage might be more binding now. I told P now he’s really stuck with me. You don’t mess with Basilica vows.

Back on the fury ranch, my commentary on AT&T’s inability to carry a decent signal was apparently not an anomaly.  Today, Consumer Reports came out with the results of their survey on wireless carriers, where AT&T came in dead last.  The PR gal in me felt pretty bad for my flack counterparts in their shop — those are surely not fun questions to field from the press — but not without some Schadenfreude.

OK, we’ve covered food, church and phones — I think we’re good for now.  Sorry you had to be on the receiving end of my randomness. Let’s hope full brain functionality and thought connectivity is restored tomorrow.  Maybe I need a baked good to get me back on track.

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In Search of a Signal

Dear AT&T,

As a long-time customer, I thought I would take this opportunity to point out there is an island in your alleged service area that you might want to look into.  It’s not that big — about 13×2  miles — so I guess I can see how it has been seemingly ignored all this time with virtually no signal for service. 

But there are a lot of people crammed onto this small-ish island.  1.6 million residents, in fact.  Add in commuters and tourists and you’ve got over 2.5 million people on the island during most work days.  Yep, there’s commerce here too — with lots of big shiny buildings.  It’s pretty busy, I’d say.

And you know what?  Many of these people want to use their cell phones, their email and gaming devices of choice.  Every day.  Reliably.

Back when I first became your customer in 1996, with my first cell phone (antenna and all), I didn’t expect much in terms of coverage.  In fact, we only used our cell phones sporadically then.  We weren’t texting and certainly I didn’t have email on my phone.  But that’s when I got my cell phone number that I have retained to this day.

I moved on to a Blackberry when my then-employer told me to do so, circa 2001 or 2002.  How cool was that?  I could talk *and* have my work email on the go (which quickly went from novelty to life-changing curse).  And there was a big wheel on the side of this device to scroll up and down — very cutting-edge at the time.  I had plenty of emails that didn’t go through, attachments I couldn’t open and a ton of dropped calls.  I was used to it, though it became increasingly puzzling, as everyone on the island seemingly had a similar device in their hand.  Hm.

Now I have an iPhone.  I debated this long and hard — I really did — and, in the end, I signed your mandatory two-year service contract in exchange for this device.  Funny, though, when I think about a contract, it implies a two-way agreement to me.  So I’m curious — what’s your obligation under the terms of this alleged contract?  Because my iPhone does all kinds of cool things — as long as I don’t try to talk on it or receive incoming data on a timely basis.   And I’m starting to get a headache from looking at that spinning orb all the time that indicates my wait for data to load.  But it sure is neat otherwise.

I was looking at your coverage map online and it’s odd because this island is color-coded under “Best Coverage.”  And yet this morning I nearly threw my iPhone across the room because I couldn’t get a simple web page to load (again).  But I did hear a crazy rumor recently — or perhaps it was just urban legend — that some people have witnessed a full five bars on their signal icon!  I had no idea it went beyond three.  Is this new?  I guess that’s encouraging progress, for a small island like this.

My frustration is my own fault, really.  I let my loyalty to my cell phone number drive my purchasing decisions over the last 14 or so years.  I held out hope that you’d improve your service because, well, I figured you’d just have to by sheer open marketplace competitive principles.  Apparently, that’s not so.  (Well played on that iPhone monopoly, by the way — at least for the time being.  Verizon — can you hear me now?)

Anyway, you may want to send one of your people over to look into this.  There are plenty of bridges, tunnels, ferries and even heli-pads that allow easy access to our island for a service call.  Just give us a four-hour window and one of us locals will be here to meet you — as long as we can receive your call, text or email.

Signed,

Ready to Hang Up for Good

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Tech Update

I’m sort of back in business on the technical front.  But only at work, which is not a great solution since I have the day job and all. 

At home, the news is not good. 

Trojan Horse Criminal Ring:  1,  Fordeville:  0

Punks. 

P is still working on it but is warming to the idea that we need to bring in some professionals.  Or maybe get a new computer.

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Foiled, For Now

Our home computer has been taken over by some nasty virus.  It is totally and completely blank, empty, out of commission.  Also, my company revoked access to personal email last week.  And now, today, for some reason, I can’t access all of blogland’s glory on WordPress while at work either — they are blocking the site.  I’m feeling very disconnected (as I beg, borrow and steal 5 minutes on P’s work laptop that he brought home).  So, I’m on a blog siesta for a while, I guess, until P outwits the Trojan virus dudes or we (gulp) agree to voluntarily wipe out the contents of the computer and rebuild it.  I’m a digital hoarder — that option kills me.  But I’m also a (mostly) good backer-upper, so it should be (mostly) ok.  I think. 

In the meantime, bear with me and say a little prayer for hacker justice.  Oh and if weird shit starts coming through the blog, you’ll know the virus crooks got my WordPress password and decided to have some fun.  Jerks.

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