Coffee heat rising

Cox

State of the Chaos

by

A little quieter here today… let’s hope it’s not the calm before the next storm. Let’s see how the various crises are doing:

1. In the department of Funny’s Money: I have no idea. I don’t even want to know, it’s such a chaotic disaster. This month I never got an untrammeled moment when I wasn’t too exhausted to sit down and work on the budget, so I’ve just been spending left and right. Financial manager sent over enough to cover the down payment on the pool rehab, which starts Monday. I reset the checking-to-emergency savings automatic transfer to move less than half of what I originally thought I could manage, so that (at least) will leave a little more basic survival money in checking.

2. Hand cancer: still waiting on the biopsy. But I’m calling the doc’s office on Monday to ask if we can accelerate the process. I want this damn thing OFF. Where they shaved off enough to send to the lab, it’s growing back with élan. Whatever it is, it’s very fast-growing and so presumably aggressive. And at times it really hurts. Hurts and itches. Turns out pain and itching are defining characteristics of squamous cell cancer. Why exactly we have to wait for biopsy results until the cows come home to cut the thing out escapes me.

3. Dog decedence*: No credible sign of croaking over yet! Matter of fact, this dog is getting much better. Just now she remembered the chicken jerky treats that reside in a jar on the kitchen counter and decided to do the Dance of the Manipulated Human, thereby eliciting a chew treat for herself and for Ruby. The cough seemed to come back a little: it had subsided to the point where she coughed only when she slurped up a lot of water (which she’s always done…corgis do that). She had stopped coughing when she barks and stopped coughing when I lifted her off the bed. So I cut back the Benadryl from 1/2 tab in the morning and 1/2 tab in the evening to just 1/2 tab at night. A-n-n-d…the cough started to come back. This morning I gave her a dose at doggy breakfast, and lo! No coughing.

*Yes, yes, I did invent that word. Why do you ask? Etym: Late Modern English, from decedent (a deceased person)

4. Car: It seems to have survived its brush with the flatbed trailer with no very serious damage. The gouged tire is still rolling. It hasn’t blown, at least not so far…and yeah, it has been on a freeway or two. I’m trying to stay off the freeways, because I don’t trust the thing. But to get out to the new dermatologist’s office sometime before the end of my life expectancy, I pretty much have to ride the 101 for a number of miles. So far, so good.

5. Cord-cutting Cox escape: Last night La Maya and La Bethulia invited me over for dinner. In the course of conversation, I remarked that I need to get rid of the fake “land line” (Cox’s new version is really VoIP, and not very good VoIP at that), replace my extensions with cheap clamshells and get an iPhone.

“I have two old iPhones that I’m not using!” says La Bethulia. “Want one?”

Do I want one???? Grab!  Well, she quite reasonably wanted to delete all her data on the thing before I trot it over to the Apple store to get it set up. And they’ve forgotten the password for the thing. But it turns out it’s not hard to reboot the thing all by your little self. So…I may try to do that with my son’s help, or just hire an Apple tech to do it. Paying someone a hundred bucks or so would be a lot cheaper than buying a new iPhone! 🙂

6. MacMail fiasco: Still not fixed. Right now the only way I can get to my email is through the Web interface, which is less than ideal. It does allow me to access incoming mail, but all my carefully designed preferences have been screwed up. Not erased — which would have been far preferable — but all jumbled around. So it’s a mess. And I guess I’m going to end up either having to pay Cox for an email account, the bastards, or start using Gmail, which I really really REALLY do not want to do. This, I will figure out later.

7. Other little dramas: Have yet to decide whether I’m going back to choir. The associate director has kindly put me on the women’s chant choir, which I love.  She urged me to come to choir on Sunday despite having turned on my heel and marched back to my car and gone home after last Wednesday evening’s unpleasant exchange at the door (not with her but with a woman who makes no secret of her dislike of me).

I don’t know. I’d pretty well decided to quit — just never go back, that’s how disgusted I am. And besides…

Really, the only thing that keeps me from feeling a great deal more serious about moving out of Crime Central is the choir. I can’t afford any other close-in district — this neighborhood is cheap because Conduit of Blight Blvd, Gangbanger’s Way, the Blightrail, the meth clinic, and the population of bums keep the property values way down. Comparable homes anywhere else are at least a hundred grand higher, and these days more like two hundred grand.

Abandoning the choir and the church would open two housing options: Fountain Hills, wayyy on the east side of the Valley, and Sun City, wayyyy on the west side. Both have the advantages of low crime rates and pretty decent nearby shopping. They’re both quiet and peaceful, and there’s no way any politicians and their greed-driven backers are going to build a boondoggle through the middle of either one. Sun City is a ghetto for old folks, which I really do not like. Fountain Hills is one helluva long way from everything but the Mayo Clinic, a distance that I also do not like. I don’t know anyone in Fountain Hills and, because I don’t make friends easily, this would make me feel isolated and unhappy. But Fountain Hills has pretty scenery and it is close to upscale shopping and to my favorite second-hand store, My Sister’s Closet. Sun City has the advantages that it’s very cheap to live there, and that I do know some people there and so would start with a kernel of a social life. Which would be good. I guess. And the writer’s group I favor meets way on the west side, so it would be easy to cultivate more friends there. I guess.

Well, if I’m going to snab that phone, I need to get up and do it now…La Maya’s relatives are about to descend on the house. And so, away!

…And the Beat Goes On

by

WOW!!! It just does not stop: day after day after day after day filled with conundrum, catastrophe, and freaking disaster.

Yesterday? Yes, the thing on my hand is NOT ringworm; it is indeed cancer. Probably squamous cell cancer, which can be removed…but…but…

a) You thought melanoma was the skin cancer that could metastasize and kill you? Well…yeah. But so can the squamous cell variety. Not as often, though. Fortunately only about 1 percent of them do…but the way my life has been going, my version of the 1 percent figure may mean a 1 percent chance it won’t.
b) Once you’ve had one of these things, you’re probably going to get more of them. You have to go in to the dermatologist every three to six months for a full-body check, now and evermore.
c) Surgery isn’t exactly major (assuming it hasn’t spread), but it doesn’t sound like a helluva lot of fun, either. We’ll find out how much fun we’ll be having after the results of the biopsy come back. Oh, yes, and let’s not forget…
d) They also cut off a tiny, extremely black mole from my sun-battered leg, which came up some months ago and has just been sitting there silently. Not a good thing, especially in these star-crossed times.

Okay. That was yesterday. Now we have fuckin’ TODAY.

Last night my email goes down. I’m on the phone with Apple for an hour. Supposedly fixed it. This morning: it’s down again.

I spent another hour on the phone with another tech this morning. She finally decided the problem has got to be with Cox.

Fortunately(?), I pay extra to get Cox tech support. Got on the phone with one of their guys: because my laptop’s computer has an advanced type of screen, this guy could not view my computer. He says he’ll switch me to another tech. Well, he doesn’t: he just switches me to a regular Cox CSR.

I spend another hour on the phone with her, as she climbs uphill doing battle with Cox’s fine technology. Systems are up and down on HER end, so she’s already having a bitch of a day. Finally she’s able to get the thing to run well enough to tell that the issue is probably my modem…you know, the damn thing they attached to my computer when they ripped out the land lines? All my phones are running on Cox’s answer to VoIP. Which I personally would call plain old VoIP, available for 4 bucks a month from Ooma.

Understand: that’s THREE HOURS of wrangling with techs and technology, and my email still isn’t working right!

Since I had this little fucker installed, over my dead body, last February, it’s only eight months old and it’s ALREADY CRAPPED OUT!

Fortunately, they signed me up to an expensive service contract, so having a guy come out here and fix it will be (heh heh heh) “free.”

That does it. Whenever I can catch my breath (WHENever????), I am going to buy an iPhone, take the classes to learn to use it, and shut down the damn fake land lines. That’ll save some money…or not: whatever I have to pay at least won’t be going to Cox!

eee-fuckin’-nuff!

Cox Wheedled Down; Phone Solicitors Walloped

by

BlackPhone…for the time being, anyway. Learning that La Maya and La Bethulia, who live less than a block from the Funny Farm, get cable as well as Internet and a land line for the same amount I pay for no cable, I called up Cox and whined until they gave me a nice deal: $30 less a month AND “selective call blocking” AND “anonymous call rejection.” Between you ‘n’ me, I was willing to pay extra for these in hopes foiling at least some of the damned phone solicitors. The best I expected was a wash. So I felt like I came out a winner to get both of those and a cut in the monthly bill.

I get about a half-dozen nuisance calls a day from damned phone solicitors. Don’t answer them — they listen to my interminable voicemail message until their machine hangs up — but still is really an annoying nuisance.

The kind of work I do is abstract, difficult, often very complicated, and it requires me to focus. A jangling phone interrupts my concentration and the aggravation breaks my train of thought. Some of what I do is painfully boring and all I want to do is get THROUGH with it. Any distraction means that much longer it’s going to take to get done with the project.

A half-dozen such distractions is really beyond the pale.

1896_telephoneCox’s call blocking service is limited to 30 numbers. Phone scammers spoof numbers and change them all the time, so you soon run out of space — which is annoying. There is a program — a free one approved by the FCC — called NoMoRobo, but naturally Cox refuses to accept it. Cox claims this is because its system doesn’t support a needed feature called “simultaneous ringing,” which is ridiculous because they provide it for business customers. Probably, like the deservedly defunct Qwest, they sell residential numbers to phone solicitors.

However…as I was chatting with Cox’s exceptionally helpful CSR, she remarked that most phone solicitors, including those that call from 800 numbers and that spoof numbers, use caller ID blocking. One possible solution, she suggested, is to combine “selective call blocking,” which allows you to block up to 30 numbers from specified callers, with “anonymous call rejection,” which blocks calls from phones with caller ID blocking.

So yesterday I signed up for these.

Along about 10:00 this morning, it dawned on me that I hadn’t gotten a nuisance phone call. They usually start around 8 a.m.

From what I see in the various forums habituated by Cox users, selective call blocking and selective call rejection are far from perfect. The perps’ software soon figures out what you’re doing and finds ways to foil you. And with room to block only 30 numbers, they quickly overwhelm this service.

The FCC gave NoMoRobo’s developers an award, and users say it is the most effective way to foil nuisance phone calls. So it’s infuriating that a major telecommunications company like Cox refuses to accommodate it.

Today only one phone solicitor got around the two blocking features. If and when the bastards start getting through again, it looks like the alternative will be to sign up with Ooma, a VoIP system that does provide NoMoRobo. Abigail over at I Pick Up Pennies highly recommends it — last time I talked with her, she said their bill is never over $5 a month. Even Ooma’s business service is only $10 a month, a far cry from Cox’s gouge…and lookit this! They’ll even help promote your business on the freaking Internet!

Anyway, I got one call all day long, from the outfit that calls once a day claiming to represent a breast cancer charity and talks over my voicemail message to ask, “Is the lady of the house there?” They’re now the first number in the selective call blocker. Not a one of the others have managed to get through!

So I guess I’ll give Cox one more chance. If this complicated, nuisancey scheme doesn’t work, then it’s good-bye Cox, hello Ooma.

Images:

Totally retro black phone (can you believe I used to have a phone like this?): By Kornelia und Hartmut Häfele, CC BY-SA 3.0,
1896 phone: By 1906 Kungliga Telegrafverkets apparater (Royal Telegraph Administration apparatus) at Project Runeberg. Public domain.