My $42.00 hour at a T-Mobile Hotspot Starbucks

As any sentient being in the United States is aware by now, Starbucks has partnered with T-Mobile to offer wireless “hotspots” in most of the Starbucks throughout the United States.

They offer 3 different plans, all of for which you can sign up on the (hot)spot: $29.95 per month for unlimited access, or one of two “pay as you go” plans – either the $9.95 for a 24 hour “day pass”, or the “.10 cents per minute with a 60 minute minimum” pass.

Be *very* careful! Don’t be lulled into thinking that if you use the .10 cents per minute pass judiciously, such as by loggin in, grabbing email, and logging out, you can keep your usage low, incurring only the minimum $6.00 fee if you are quick and careful.

The 60 minute minimum is *per* log in. If you log in, grab email, and log out, you will have incurred a $6.00 charge. When you check your email again a half hour later, you will incur an additional $6.00 charge, and so on.

Now, perhaps this should have been obvious to me, but it wasn’t – at the time that I signed up, the wording was ambiguous (“per session” was, I believe, what it said). Now (1/2/04) it says “per session per login”, whatever *that* is supposed to mean. Only once you have actually signed up and are logged in can you find language, should you bother to read the rate plans again, which clearly says “$6.00 minimum per *login*”.

I pointed this out to a nice CS rep when I discovered my *$42.00* bill for roughly an hour at a Starbucks, who offered to let me talk to a manager – thinking, I think, that perhaps he would reverse some of those charges which were so clearly racked up due to a misunderstanding..who would log in 7 times in an hour for $42.00 when they could have stayed logged in for that same hour for $6.00? I didn’t even *ask* the manager to reduce my bill – I just pointed out that the language on the sign up page had the potential to confuse, and he instantly started telling me that I had agreed to their terms and conditions, and he was not going to reduce the charges.

THAT just lost them my patronage. Had I asked, and he refused, I’d be annoyed but take it on the chin, but to jump in and tell me up front that they weren’t about to reduce the charges, but that he would pass on the information about the confusing language simply added insult to injury.

Buh bye, T-Mobile Hotspot.

The Toilet that Needed a Colonoscopy

Being homeowners, from time to time we suffer the slings and arrows of home ownership, namely something breaks and needs to be fixed..NOW!

Such was the case with our main sewer line, which, as confirmed by two independent authorities, really needed to be replaced if we wanted the brown, foul-smelling slurry to stop backing up into our shower and bathtub, and onto our floors.

The work completed, and water turned back on, we joyfully put our new plumbing to the test. And the master toilet promptly backed up, venting its spleen and bile, as it were, all over the bathroom floor.

As one might imagine, especially after having spent all that money on a new sewer line, we were less than amused.

We called the plumbing service back in. This time only the toilet was involved – that much we could tell, as everything else was working perfectly, and nothing else had backed up.

We were duly advised that we needed to replace the toilet. “Ok”, we thought, “we’ve trusted these people this far (and they were recommended by a contractor whom we trust a great deal), what’s a toilet between friends?”

The installer came and installed the new toilet.

It promptly backed up the next day, all over the floor, following my husband’s first test run, as it were.

We called the plumbing service back out.

This time we were advised that the problem was not the brand new toilet, but… my husband.

“Your husband, his poo is too big.”

Say what?

“What do you recommend we do?”

“I dunno, maybe you take him to hospital.”

“Really, we should go to the hospital because you think his poo is too large? Is there anything else we might try?”

“You maybe keep two sticks by the toilet, and he smash and crash the poo before flush.”

Really, I couldn’t make this up.

Instead we replaced the toilet with a better brand, with a larger colon. Yes, the tunnel at the back of your toilet through which the waste descends is called the ‘colon’.

And, oh yes, we switched plumbers.

FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers

Check out this news story which I still can’t believe isn’t an Onion headline – and I’ve looked at both the NY Times site (where the story appears), and The Onion site (where it doesn’t), and I still don’t believe it.

Here’s the lead-in:

“FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers”

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: December 29, 2003

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs…”

Full story available here: http://tinyurl.com/29mfw

Sound off time! What do you folks think of this?

Anne

There’s the Beef!

Dateline Yakima Washington, December 23, 2003: The health department has just announced the first U.S. case of “mad cow disease”, the clinical name for which is bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Well, we kind of figured that it had to happen sometime. Makes me all the more glad that I’m a vegetarian, and the rest of our family doesn’t eat beef.

But the part which is stunning (and sickening), even to jaded me, is this – and I quote from the AP story of 12/23/03:

“Veneman said the Holstein, which could not move on its own, was found at a farm in Mabton, Wash., about 40 miles southeast of Yakima, and tested preliminarily positive for the brain-wasting illness on Dec. 9. Parts of the cow that would be infected ? the brain, the spinal cord and the lower part of the small intestine ? were removed before the animal went to a meat processing plant.”

[Full story at http://tinyurl.com/22jjm]

Excuse me???

The cow is *unable to move on it’s own*, is found immobile, and is
*sent for slaughter and sale*??? And then a few weeks later someone says “Hey! That cow was sick!”???

Well…DUH!!!

Beef! It’s what’s for brainholes.

Thoughts on the State of Fathers’ Rights

I’m not dead yet, as they say. Even though my primary practice is no longer focused on fathers’ rights, I still provide referrals, pointers, and information. Perhaps even more importantly, I still teach, and while I now teach spam law, up until last year I taught a family law course, and even now still discuss family law with law students and new attorneys. I’m still keeping my hand in it. You don’t just leave completely behind something about which you feel so strong.

Recently I tripped through some of the fathers’ rights usenet groups (similar to bulletin boards, for the uninitiated). I hadn’t read them in a few years, although I used to post regularly to them, and be something of a known quantity there.

It made me really sad to note that nothing has changed. Men are still being denied access to their children, and women are still bleating the party line about how women do all the work, are always the primary caretakers, men are uninvolved and don’t want access to their children except to control the women, blah blah blah. You know – all men are abusive rapists, and all women are victims (which means that there is no violence in lesbian relationships, and no victims in gay relationships, right? Shyeah, right).

I’m amazed that in this country, in this day and age, women are still so indoctrinated and inculcated, and so unwilling to remove the blinders and see how what they spew is so contrary to the *true* best interests of the children, not to mention reality.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be. Like any group which has been kept down in the past, they have far more to gain by perpetuating the old historical data as current ‘fact’ than by admitting the truth.

And interesting truths they are:

The vast majority of men who are disunited from their families are kept from being involved with their children, by angry controlling women, or women who don’t feel angry but who have swallowed the party line about how it’s “supposed” to be, and by the court system.

In the overwhelming majority of custody cases, despite the feminist dogma, custody goes to the mother, no matter what the facts of the case are, and no matter who has the most money or the most expensive lawyers.

The vast majority of children of divorce are denied a positive relationship with their fathers. Oh sure, women wrap themselves in self-righteousness about how the fathers weren’t involved when they were together so don’t deserve to be involved after the divorce (neglecting that by agreement of the parents, the fathers worked more hours outside the home so that the mother could spend more time with their children, never dreaming that this would be turned against them during divorce to deny them time with the very children they had blindly worked so hard to support). More importantly, neglecting that this isn’t about them, it’s about the childrens’ need to be able to be involved with their fathers.

Very few men going through divorce ever ask for custody; all they want is an ongoing relationship with their children. Women always demand custody. Men go into divorce court expecting fairness, women go in expecting to get it all – and they do. The women get the kids, the men get to pay.

Nothing has changed. Especially the players.

It’s so sad.

Check out Dads Rights.org for more.

No wonder people go postal at the post office!!!

I, like 100s of 1000s of people, have been known to use the services of a Personal Mail Box (PMB) provider, such as MailBoxes Etc..

Recently, the service I used lost their lease, and closed their doors. They very generously lined up another service to take on all of their old customers, at much the same price, and provided us all with the USPS mail forwarding forms.

I dutifully filled out and filed the forms. Days passed, and then nearly 2 weeks, and still my mail was not being forwarded, and was in fact still being sent to the *old* address.

So I called up our USPS station, spoke with the supervisor, who said that he had my forwarding forms in hand, and it would start “right away”.

Another week passed – now the old address no longer exists, and, mysteriously, no forwarded mail is showing up at my new address.

So I call back, get the supervisor, and this time I am told… ready for this? “We don’t forward mail from personal mail box services.”.

Excuse me?? Say..what???

That’s right. “We don’t forward mail from personal mail box services. It’s against our policies.”

After coming down from the ceiling (going to have to spackle and paint those nail gouges now), I called the national USPS customer service line, and complained, whined, bleated, and b*tched, all quite loudly. After being put on hold several times while the admittedly sympathetic CS rep checked things out, she came back to tell me, very apologetically “We don’t forward mail from personal mail box services. It’s against our policies.”

Did *you* know that if you use a PMB, and you then change addresses, the post office *will not forward your mail*?????

Now you do.

I see a serious legal issue here, because PMB providers are competition for the USPS in terms of renting mail boxes.

In the meantime, I, and all of those others in my same situation, are essentially threaded. All of my mail to the old
address is simply being returned to sender!!

HOW can it be that this is not common knowledge?

I have also called our local MailBoxes Etc. (now “The UPS
store”), and they not only confirmed this, but also acknowledged that they don’t tell customers about it if they don’t ask!!!
But they do have a service where they will forward your mail for you – of course, for a fee.

Quite a sweet little deal going on both sides: MailBoxes Etc. – you can check out any time you like but you can never really leave. And the USPS: use our competitor, and we simply won’t deliver your mail at all for you.

“We’re the postal service – we do it to you.”

What is WRONG with people???

Geezus!!! What is WRONG with people???

Now, we all know that breastfeeding confers all sorts of health benefits and immunities, right? But it does *not* keep you safe from your mother being a MORON and breastfeeding you WHILE DRIVING THE CAR!!!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3293447.stm

Honest to gawd!!!

It’s people like this bimbo, and I use the term advisedly, who give women/breastfeeders/Christians/drivers/husbands/humans/you-name-it a bad name.

It takes a village idiot.

Anne

Putting the “juice” in Brahmastra juice

We’re all sick here at Chez Devil. That yukky crud kinda sick where your sinuses pound and you cough up a lung an hour. Yuck.

So what to do? Well, I’m going to share a little secret with you.

Back during my ashram days, which were somewhere between my street days and my army days, I learned to make something called “Brahmastra juice”. This is some kicking stuff which will help to clear out your sinuses, and a few others things as well. It’s great when you have a cold. Try it!

Mix the juice of 3 lemons with a thumb of fresh ginger, cut into chunks, 3 cups of water, and a teaspoon (more or less to tolerance) of cayenne pepper. Simmer for about 5 minutes or so, and add a bit of honey to sweeten it just a bit.

Now drink it.

It should make you sweat.

It *will* clear your sinuses.

Make it for your loved ones. They’ll accuse you of trying to poison them, until they realize that it *works*.

The ultimate truth in advertising?

In a new ad campaign which would be worthy of the Onion, if only it weren’t an actual campaign, the fast food chain Wendy’s has a new advertisement out which pictures two sandwiches clearly containing some sort of meat, with a caption which reads, and I kid you not, “Finally understand the phrase “Whoa, Nelly!”

Obviously this is the answer to “Dude, what’s that meat in the sandwich?”

No wonder poor old Clara Peller kept asking “Where’s the beef?”

Christmas in July, Christmas in November, Christmas all year long

I used to laugh at reports of stores pushing Christmas merchandise before Thanksgiving had even rolled around.

Not any more.

This year it hit the Bay area with a vengeance. The day after Halloween many of our local stores seemed to have bypassed turkeys, pumpkin pies, and cranberries, and gone straight to Santa windsocks, illuminated animatronic reindeer, and remote control vehicles the size of a Saint Bernard. And that’s just in the grocery stores!

Remember the days when you went to a grocery store to by your ..um… *groceries*?? And to the sundry store to buy your sundries, and the department store to buy your..well..you get the idea.

“Look Momma”, says our son, “look how early the stores are celebrating Christmas!”

Yes, I suppose, for certain values of “celebrating”.

Certainly not a version which I will support. But that’s ok, I’ve got it all worked out – I’ll just buy my groceries at the drugstore down the street.