Seriously though, if I could at all believe in an overarching, long-term strategy to weaken an enemy, this would be a doozy of one. (please note, I do not endorse any arguments about women being a “weaker gender” by the previous statement, I only imply that a potential enemy of the West could)

Romney essentially makes the claim that it is the American worker who is to blame for the current failure of our automotive industry. Those greedy sons of bitches, wanting a five day work week, a livable wage, and healthcare are the reason that American automakers cannot compete with Asian automakers. He’s right in that the American worker’s desires are a big reason our cars are more expensive than foreign automakers but he’s incredibly inhumane and oblivious to the moral issue at hand.

God bless the unions that have allowed the American worker to have the luxuries that only a few dozen years ago was reserved for the rich. In response to this, a push for cross-country markets was made creating the so-called global economy. What is now unethical and wrong for corporate masters to do to the American worker has been off-loaded to those workers in Asia. American consumers should feel shame that our desire for cheap goods causes Chinese factories to push workers seven days a week for hours on end. These people are just as dignified as we are, worthy of the respect due all people. To turn a blind eye to them is wrong.

So how do we fix our problem without ruining things for everyone else? (Unions, I’m talking to you here.) We must start by writing our Congress and demanding that a progressive system of tariffs be created. For countries that protect their workers similarly to how we do, perhaps there is no penalty. For countries that choose to not look after the well-being of their worker with similar laws and protections, a high tariff is imposed. This is the only way to ensure fairness. If such a system is not created and if the unions of this country do not use their influence to ensure this happens, our country will continue to decline as other “emerging markets” consistently produce goods of increasing quality for far cheaper than we can produce ourselves.

Mittens, the issue isn’t the cost of healthcare, it’s the cost of being a good neighbor. We’re overlooking the working classes of other countries to serve our own greedy whims and it’s wrong. I’m all for a global economy, but not at the cost of the American working class.

The ATM reported that there was an error and my transaction could not be completed. “Bummer,” I think and proceed to just get some cash back with a purchase of some much-needed body wash.

Today I’m on my bank’s website and I notice that in the transaction register is the amount I tried to withdraw from the ATM. Sure enough, the Cardtronics ATM in the Normal, IL Target store ripped me off.

I will be writing ING Direct about this as well as Target. This is not cool.

I replied to her offer of unnecessary services that it seemed to me that since Verizon was unable to offer DSL without a phone line and since I only wanted the DSL that Verizon should suck up the cost of the phone line.

They politely declined.

To me, Verizon falsely advertised their services.  On their site they offer a reasonable price for DSL ($29.99/monthly) and don’t mention that you have to purchase an entirely extra (and costly) service to boot.  This reeks of bait-and-switch.

Sadly due to the crazy rules governing ISPs, Verizon can afford to turn away my business.  You see, DSL is a loosely regulated monopoly business, where there can be only one provider for a given region.  If you live in the wrong neighborhood you simply can’t get a certain provider.  Hence, Verizon’s only real competition is Comcast, which I’ve talked enough about at this point.

I wonder if there are any other options …

For most of the day (actually, most of the weekend) I have had to connection to speak of. Comcast has oversold their capacity (or else just can’t keep their ship afloat) and the result is that my VOIP phone is dead, I can’t check email, read the news, etc.

If only they would invest as much in their infrastructure as they do in misleading the FCC. I can only hope that a refreshing of the executive branch will start kicking the asses of these corporations who willfully mislead and fail to deliver the services they advertise. Always-on and unlimited my shiny, metal ass.

On Monday I will be calling the lesser of two evils and setting up a cheaper, yet hopefully more reliable isp.

And, if a rep. from Comcast reads this like the last time please know that the only way you can make me happy involves radically improving your services and corporate culture. You need new management and infrastructure, and I seriously doubt that anything will change any time soon (there’s far too much money to be made).

A chill ran down my spine.

Insight had provided pretty good ‘net access for me these past years. They’ve been really easy to work with from a customer-relations standpoint. They’ve even been good at upgrading their system. At last check, I was getting a speedy (for America) 7-8 Mbps connection down and a 1-2 Mbps connection up.

Enter Comcast.

The very day I got the notice my connection began plodding along. Doing some snooping, I discovered a whopping 40% of my packets have been dropped.

I went from somewhere in the high 90s to the low 60s.

How can you run a business in this manner?

To make matters worse, the connection speed dropped dramatically as well. According to an impartial network diagnostic server (the same server I’ve used to generate the numbers above) I’m now getting a paltry (on average) 800 Kbps up and down. That is truly a huge quality of service drop.

Since I wasn’t a shareholder of Insight I cannot help but question the value of this switch. Thanks to the crappy service of Comcast, I not only hold Comcast in disregard, but Insight Cable as well.

How does consolidating internet access providers in this manner and setting up a cartel of providers help consumers? How is this at all good for capitalism?

Sadly I find no recourse but to approach the (hopefully) lesser or two evils and switch to Verizon’s DSL offering. Sadly there are only two choices if I want any wired connection beyond dial up.

This is surely due to the competition from Amazon’s excellent MP3 store.

Go capitalism! Show those pro-monopolists what for!

My remaining question: will I be able to still switch to iTunes Plus for the cost difference (now $0.00)?
Update: according to Christ Adamson via O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter the cost to upgrade is still the same. Bummer. Oh well, total cost of freedom is worthwhile.

I asked her why I should believe she was who she claimed to be. She assured me she represented VW Credit but could not provide any means to verify that identity. She offered to give me a phone number to call her back (along with her extension #). However that has exactly the same problem as her assurance: she provides no authority by which I can trust her word.

This is a potentially big deal, as I have received several third-party mailers claiming to be affiliated with VW alerting me to important warranty services that I am in desperate need of having. These postcards come from several different companies (that I assume purchased my info. from VW).

Anyhoo, back to the story.

I got the phone number (and the rep.’s extension) and told her I would verify the phone number and call back (if she was indeed call-worthy). I phoned my dealer who put me on hold and eventually gave me a different phone number. Calling that phone number I talked to another representative who I could verify the story of the first rep. (I also complained that rep. 1 had a non-authoritative phone number as well.)

I also informed the representative that there was an issue at hand (that caused this whole mess): VW didn’t process my request to sign up for direct-debit! I signed up in May when I changed my address—they never processed that request either! However they did receive my May payment.

Anyways, here’s the lesson from today’s little interaction: if you represent a company be damn sure you have a good way to verify your identity before asking me for any sensitive information.

I probably seem a bit curmudgeonly here but these things are important: it’s way too easy to defraud people in today’s society. If I can get a bit of information about a person (say from their Facebook profile) and I can telephone them I can probably talk someone into believing I’m of the authority to get sensitive information from them (that was quite the long sentence). People still trust the telephone and there’s little reason to do so.

If someone calls me I’ll damn well sure ask them every time how I can verify their identity and if I cannot I’ll ask them to mail me official documentation to do whatever transaction they want (this is good as it is still a federal offense to defraud people via the postal service).

Keep safe out there!

Good read.