Tag: communications
Black(edout)berry
I’ve been taking a sabbatical from my Blackberry 8700g for the last few weeks… Mostly because of how screwed up things got via ill communication.
That’s not to put down the Blackberry. No sir, it’s more along the lines of the statement I made a few months ago that SMS/TXT messages are the devil. If someone wants to get in touch with me via txt… well, shit, find a better way to do it (one with context). Hell, I have a phone number — leave a voice mail.
The fact is, if people really want to get in touch with me — they’ll do it. Too many ways to do it with better context than stupid txt messages.
Coming up on three weeks… Life without it just reminds me about that feeling someone died.
Wire(d)less
My annual forray to the West Coast is approaching fast. Yep, it’s been a year since I went to Los Angeles last and I’ll be heading back to the City of Night in early October. While the schedule is nothing I haven’t done before (Tampa to Dallas to LA and back again in 4 days, same hotel that I’ve stayed in the last 2 years) there is a bothersome logistics problem I need to solve between now and my departure date.
Basically it’s some form of communications between LA and home.
For the first time since 2001, I need to stay connected with things back home. Certain groups and parties are counting on the ability to get-in-touch with me so I can do some work while away from the Bay area. That’s good, that’s fine. This isn’t a vacation after all. Also I need to stay in touch with family so I don’t show up on a milk carton if no one hears from me in 12 hours or more (yeah, the fam gets frantic if I don’t stay in touch).
So what are my choices?
I’ve looked at older laptop computers being resold on Ebay and by Dell itself as a possible solution — though my hotel doesn’t offer Wireless access, nor are their dataport connections free. I’ve been casually looking at the Danger Sidekick 2 – which would give me both IM and Internet access while on the go — but I’m not so keen on the huge purchase costs as well as a nice large monthly fee to keep the thing usable.
My Ogo is a joke — barely holds a charge, and I canceled the account anyway. Most other IM devices are extra costly…
I’m in a land of wonderment, without much cash to throw around and solve my dilemna.
Bigotry against Hearing Impaired: Performance Computer Group of Tampa
What decade do we live in? The 1950’s or the 2000’s?
I’ve got a laptop computer I basically can’t use not because it’s not in working order but because it doesn’t have the capablity to do what I need it to do and thus it makes the machine expendable. I’ve been looking for a way to move the laptop without losing a ton of money on the deal.
I looked on the Tampa Tribune‘s website and through their classified ads in an effort to look through the Laptop market and see if anyone was trying to purchase laptop computers in Tampa. I found www.tampanotebooks.com which is operated by Performance Computer Group. They’ve got a shop on Dale Maybry and they say that they buy used laptops – working or not.
I figured to call them up and see how much I could get for my machine… A phone call isn’t such a painful thing after all. Even if it is Voice Carry Over through the Florida Telecommunications Relay Service.
So I called up Performance Computer Group of Tampa — three ring slater a man picks up and the text that comes across my TDD phone reads thus:
“Uh, we don’t do any Relay calls. OK, thank you.”
*Click*
Some people don’t get what a Relay call is… It’s when someone deaf is calling you through a carry over service. It is not an excuse for you to treat a caller like a complete piece of shit. I’ve dealt with that from Bright House Customer Service and Capital One customer service as well. Usually I call back and get a representative that isn’t such a moron.
But in this case? The company just lost my business and came off like he was against the Relay system to begin with. “Why bother? Just some deaf clown trying to hassel me.”
Less Defense, more Beauracracy
Beside George Tennet, I wonder how many people see the proposed breakup of the CIA as a step backwards instead of a step forward?
There are already a handful of security and intelligence agencies int eh United States and a handful of Investigative agencies as well. The 9/11 Commission cited lack of communications/cooperations between agencies as part of the reason 9-11 happened.
So why is it that breaking the CIA into three is supposed to be the way to mend the problem? You have more agencies that need to answer to other agencies and more groups that may or may not share data. It’s taking the wrong approach to finding a solution.
Just like the Department of Homeland Security is giving the Defense Department a day off from defending the United States of America so that they can go ahead and be the Offense Department and take War elsewhere, changing the CIA to three different agencies doesn’t rectify the problem – it just adds bureaucracy so that other groups can focus on other things instead of solving the real problem — the glut of agencies and the lack of coordination with them.
I’m not totally opposed to the dismantling of the CIA but then again? I want to see the FBI and ATF factored into this group. I would think one super agency with divisions for national Investigation and law enforcement as well as international intelligence is going to be more beneficial than adding more groups to an already crowded field of agencies that are only loosely connected… And of course, having one person overseeing those agencies is not going to help cooperation and coordination between them…. It’s just going to add to the mess.
And what are other politicians going to tell you? That dividing and confusing is going to make America safer? That’s hardly a way to protect America… It’s more likely a way to contribute to more trouble – both Political and Geo-political – in the future.
Retrograde
I’ve been in the dumps the last couple of days… I meanh really down and jus tlost what to do and hwo to live. I feel trapped, I feel without a purpose and I can’t exactly find reasons to push myself. Sure, I am doing great with my recovery and I am making headway almost every day…
But it’s that purpose that I am lacking. It’s apersonal connection that I’m lacking. Every time I think I found something, it turns out to be nothing. Every time someone else thinks they have found something in me, I get repelled.
SO I’m really low perosnally… And just trying to make it… And yet I’ve found an excuse for why I feel like this. I’ve been reading my Astrology lately )which I swore off last year because it made me think of other Libras) and I’m taking comfort in knowing a certain Astrological condition is upon us.
Now what is the relevance of this? Things feel like they are goign backwards. Communications are snarled up and things are shitty, at best in terms of startingstuff. I always associate Mercury going Retrograde with something negative as it was outinely painted as so in a biography I read about John Lennon.
Maybe I’m just desperate for an excuse?
Maybe I’m just desperate for an answer?
Maybe I’m just desperate for a clue?
"Screen" Gems
I was hanging around the house yesterday morning when I got a call — which is a rare event because I NEVER get a call. Especially a TDD call. So after the initial freak out and such I finally got my bearings and found out it was Mark from SkyscraperPage. I alluded to some things on here months ago but I never really described them — well, until now.
Mark and me have been friends on the SkyscraperPage forum for a while – we knew each other but we didn’t really KNOW each other until I got real depressed after my operation in August. (one link but a bunch of stories on the subject in the past). I had been real down over a few things going on at the time and had talked about that stuff on SSP. I started finding relief by writing in here and Mark, a fellow writer, had been started chiming in on the forum after I made mention of the writing. We got to talking and I found out he was a screenwriter and a bit more. He was interested in my story after some private communications and we’ve been talking a bit about me and some story ideas since then.
Well, Mark had also told me he’d be in the Bay area in March of 2004 and at the time of the call — Mark was here :smile. We set up a little encounter this afternoon and I just rambled for him some points about myself and what I have gone through. Anecdotes and what not from my life and about who I am. We were doing this over coffee at a new place I discovered not too too far from my house. Looks really cool and I am hoping to be able to hang out with a few of my friends there in the future.
Anyway, back to the story. I told him of a few things – like giving him some details I could remember from the Beatles Lyrics incident, some anecdotes from childhood and growing up, moving down to Clearwater and such. It was fun to ramble like that but sorta awkward too. You couldn’t imagine a story about dear old John appearing in film, could you?
Didn’t think so :wink.
When I am out west next time (not sure when) I need to meet up with him again to keep going over things and just build. He’s got a ton of notes to work with and research if he wants. H also has a ton of work to do as is :tongue. Patience, John, Patience….
RIP Keiko / Willy
Keiko, star of ‘Free Willy’ movies, dies in Norway
Keiko, star of ‘Free Willy’ movies, dies in Norway
Sudden onset of pneumonia kills famous orca
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES
Keiko, the killer whale made famous by the “Free Willy” movies, has died in Norwegian coastal waters where he remained after millions of dollars and a decade of work failed to coax him back to the open sea, his caretakers said early today.
The whale, which was 27, died yesterday afternoon after the sudden onset of pneumonia in the Taknes fjord. He was old for an orca in captivity, although wild adult orcas live an average of 35 years.
David Phillips, executive director of the San Francisco-based Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, said Keiko had been in good health but started showing signs of lethargy and loss of appetite on Thursday.
“This is a long, sad day for us,” Phillips said.
One of his handlers, Dale Richards, said Keiko died quickly. “We checked his respiration rate, and it was a little irregular … he wasn’t doing too well,” Richards told The Associated Press. “Early in the evening, he passed away.”
I was working for Weblink Communications in 1998 when the entire Keiko-to-freedom movement was really coming to a head and he was being moved to not only his new aquarium in the Pacific Northwest but then back to Iceland.
I can remember seeing the streaming video of Keiko (still in the Pacific Northwest) slamming his tail just before being lowered into his new aquarium where he was nursed back to health… There were thousands watching in person – children, Media, others – and they were all ecstatic to see Keiko reacting like this…
I continued following him in Iceland and his escapades there. Then Norway after last summer, when Keiko was “let loose” from his pen in Iceland and swam, on his own, to a fjord in Norway, back into captivity of sorts.
Keiko will always have my imagination and my hope — and though I don’t know when this re-introduction-to-the-wild will be tried again, I hope it does hapen. There are too many animals that live in squalor to entertain us that would be better off free.
