An odd day

It was kind of an odd day today, no productivity at all. I accomplished another 1000 words yesterday by setting an alarm. This bought me some time before my daughter awoke, and I had to call my parents.

The first technology complaint was the ten minute power outage during Game of Thrones last night. But wait, there’s more! It took another fifteen minutes for the entire television system to reboot. We got to see the Mormont girl with the giant, but prior to that is a loss. Probably didn’t miss much, because it was a black screen for most of the episode anyway.

One of my daughter’s tasks yesterday was to get her own telephone account. This kind of started the ball rolling on today’s topic. She was at the Verizon store for hours. This stuff is becoming as bad as buying a car. It just seems absurd to me that someone can’t just walk in and do business in a reasonable time.

To finish her project, after her number was fully transferred we had to remove her from our account. My wife had to call ATT three times today. The call kept getting dropped, then one person put her on hold for 30 minutes so she could look up our account.

It shouldn’t take half an hour to look up an account. This is what they are paid to do, and they have a computer at their desk. I think it’s kind of telling that our ATT service to the ATT billing desk kept dropping too. Great product and service there.

After that was sorted out, my wife started surfing for television providers. DirecTV is getting too damned expensive.

We opened a HULU account for the free month. They advertised one month free. Within a week they charged our card for the full amount. Idaho’s Attorney General takes bait and switch advertising very seriously, but my wife doesn’t want to to bring it to their attention. We cancelled immediately. Two weeks later we got an email about an update to our account, so she called them again. Everything went smoothly, but can you trust what they said?

Dish Network is a service we’ve had before. They were always fine, so she surfed their site. HBO isn’t listed as one of their options, so she called them. The question was a simple “yes or no” question.

She was on the phone with them for over an hour. They transferred her to different departments a couple of times. Jesus Christ, do you have HBO or not??? Even the janitor at Dish ought to know that off the top of his head.

They eventually confessed they do not offer HBO, but told her about an app she could download that would provide this service. They spent twenty minutes telling her how it was actually better. Yeah, right.

It seems like everyone out there today is a sleazy salesman. Never let them go without a purchase of some kind is an old sales tactic. I hate all of them, and it’s a miracle anyone does business with any of them. How about a simple answer to a simple question???

When my daughter wants to know what the bottom line is, why can’t they just tell her? They know their inventory, specials, and pricing. Why so God Damned cryptic? Why make her drive back to Sun Valley in the dark? She wants to give you her money!!!

I had my own issues today. My number one goal was to mark up a few chapters for a partner. My apps kept crashing. This is likely a CableOne issue. I marked up three chapters only to have it delete everything I’d done… twice. I finally gave it a few hours, and it worked just fine. Who knew Monday morning was a high traffic time for CableOne?

My issues were the minor ones. The bigger one is pervasive in our whole society. A customer wants to do business with a company, so the company treats them like dirt to try extracting every possible cent from their account. They’re only happy if you have to skip meals to pay their bill every month.

It seems sales staff doesn’t celebrate new accounts, they mourn the possibility those new accounts could have been bigger.

It’s a shame someone can’t form a think-tank of upper executives from the fast food industry to tackle this issue. Ask me if I want fries with that, no problem. They get me down the road in a matter of minutes, and they post menus with their prices so I don’t even have to ask a salesman. They even bundle things into popular meals.

Think about it, a menu at the cell phone store. Phone + cover + internet = $$$. Push the button and walk to the counter. Sign the contract and out the door.

Television service should be the same way. Open the website, add on your premium stuff with a running balance in clear view. Take stuff off it goes down, add it on the price goes up. Enter your account number and make the change instantly. New account, proceed to the next page to enter your data and schedule your service appointment.

I don’t get it. I’m almost looking forward to going to work tomorrow.

Breaking for a moment…

I really threw myself into writing today. It’s fun when you can see the end in sight, and know everything is coming together. I woke up fairly early, and managed 4600 words before lunchtime. Then I took a break.

I’m at 5450 on the day right now, and decided I needed another break. I’m going to see if my game is televised in about an hour, and if it is, I’m likely done. If not, I’ll probably keep going. I don’t get this kind of opportunity every weekend.

Serang and her master broke off from the caravan. They avoided a conflict with a huge baboon troop over the water hole, by riding around them. Have you seen the teeth on those guys, and the muscles. A few flintlock muskets wouldn’t be enough to stave off an entire troop of them. Since it’s fantasy, I can ramp up their abilities a little without concern.

They spent an extra day at the next waterhole, but the caravan is long gone now. Finally they went looking for an ancient trail that her master said was used by “wild men.” He’s referring to ancient people before civilization took hold.

They found bits and pieces of it, and something I never planned for happened. This is called an inukshuk.

The trail may be long gone, but the ancient markers are mostly still there. It gave the desert crossing a bit of a treasure hunt feel, and I really like it. I even played with shadows and light to reveal some of them and it turned out cool.

I saw inukshuk when I was in arctic Canada many years ago. The Inuit told me people made them because they were lonely, and that way they had a friend. Sounds like BS to me, but that’s what they said. The Basque sheepherders made rock monuments to mark the path they moved the sheep on every summer where I grew up. Eh, I stole a little from both of them.

I kept my monuments pretty primitive, and used desert sandstone to make them instead of glacial rubble.

Just before this post, they finally spotted the Temple of Wind in the distance. I’m excited for this part too, and don’t have any real plans for what happens as they pass through. I’m excited to see what happens myself. As a storyboarder, my index cards only hit the high points. The Temple of Wind is on an index card, but how I deal with this will be revealed as I write.

I should probably keep going, but if the game is on, I’m watching it. We’re dropping the Extra Innings package this year. I watched nearly every game last year, but it’s too damned expensive to keep up with. I’ll catch what few games I can, and check scores in the morning. We’re even talking about going with Hulu and getting rid of the whole satellite system entirely.

Maybe there’s something more to the statement about being a starving artist. Sometimes the only entertainment you can afford is your art. I’ve dedicated a lot of time to mine this weekend, and intend to spend more.

Hope you’re all having a great weekend whatever you’re doing.