Inland Utopia

The BBS was my first introduction to the online world. I have been calling and using BBSs since May of 2005 when I ended up spending 4-5 hours calling Santa Monica chatting with people on a BBS called Earth Spirit, but fortunately a classmate from high school gave me a local BBS number where I was met with the BBS community.

Wab E App had like over 30 door games and message forums about Magic The Gathering, while the Screaming Electron had a UUCP link to the internet with email and newsgroups up the wazoo for people to post to.

The 909 Area code had its own little sub-cultures, bbs’s that used WWIV, which was the dominant bbs software in the western part of the area, or bbs’s that were using Renegade or Wildcat that were connected to Fidonet were also part of the mix.

I tried running my own bbs, but when I was able to have access to an income and more resources the bbs world went down due to the accession of the Internet.  This post by semi-regular commentator the Ontario Emperor made me decide to make a post my retrospective of the 909 scene. continue reading…

I got a nice new AOC 2436VW 24 monitor for my computer by the AOC/Envision company, but to my dismay there was NO manual telling you how to use the various functions it offers. At least the company could of just printed a postcard sized piece of paper telling their customers to download an electronic manual on their website, but NO that was not available.

Also, I tried visiting their website and no manuals were even included there. I like your product, but the lack of a proper instruction/installation manual was a bad first impression. I do not think it would hurt if you had someone take a day or two for each new product you make to provide some documentation for your products.

After my tweets and facebook messages to the company, they never bothered to answer my reply. They may have good products, but I do not have any confidence in them.

My sister bought a real nice Sony television for her room with the earnings from her new job. After paying off the television she decided to treat herself to Sony BDP-S470 Blu-ray Disc Player. However she was blindsided with the low price on the Sony BDP-S470 blu ray player, not realizing that the player did not include wi-fi.

If you want wi-fi instead of having to lay down 30 to 100 feet of Ethernet cable you have to buy Sony’s proprietary device to utilize wi-fi on your blu ray player. The store my sister bought it from has no remorse for not telling the customers the facts about the products they sell.

I strongly recommend that you avoid Electrozone out of Las Vegas, Nevada for their horrible customer service.  At least their competitors warn customers that you need this external device. My sister did contact the company asking them why they did not warn their customers and they said it was not their job.

Not everyone is a maven of technology like Leo Laporte where they know what has one feature over another, and it would spread more customer goodwill if they fully informed their customers.

Due to a collapsing housing market, thousands of houses are in deep disrepair. Pools never drained filled with mosquitoes and disease, foreclosed residents treating their homes like dumps and or letting their lawns grow foot long weeds such as demonstrated by a local resident.

The irony that follows is the distressed homeowner has a house for sale, short sale sign on the front lawn. However the home is a lovely dump and does not scream the words “BUY ME” to the motorists passing along the street.

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I wrote a mother load of poetry from 1995-2005. I also have two books from my great grandmother who also wrote collections of poetry throughout her life. I am thinking of getting in the publishing business and releasing a poetry book of my own with two of the books my great grandmother wrote.

Susan Straight may not believe I could write short stories to save my life in a lower division creative writing class at UC Riverside, but I could indeed write the poetry.

I think the big issue for me is to renew the copyrights for my great grandmother’s work and perhaps sell them on the Nook Store at Barnes and Noble for like 2.49 a book and perhaps release a book where both of them  be printed together on a hardcover book for those who like the printed word on paper.

It sucks when you get a customers jilted about my store’s return policy and you get a stray feral kitten trapped in your car’s motor all in the same day.

My father currently feels bad about the stray cats living around my neighborhood and started to feed them for the last year as a hobby, unfortunately a few litters have happened over the years and some of the kittens get into mischief such as getting in range of my dogs or climbing inside the motor of my sister’s truck.

On my way to work today we heard some odd sounds, my sister thought I was playing tricks on her, she said she’d punch me if I was actually making those sounds. Actually it was not me. It was white kitten, I guess the white kitten had an affinity for white stuff since my sister’s truck is white. My sister once saw it on her truck bed and was scared that it actually wanted to be there, and I guess it made its last and fateful journey up Mountain Avenue to its new journey in the city of Upland. My sister tried to get the kitten out of the truck, but it decided to jump down in the truck’s guts where it would be harder to extricate it.

I was worried the kitten was still in the truck, but hopefully it ran off to be left to its own devices. My father double check to see if the kitten was in the truck and it was most likely not there so that eased some of the worry from the three of us.

Then I have a simple frustration about customers without their receipts. Save your receipts. If the item is a clearance item we reserve the right to deny your return. If you do not have your receipt and its over ten or so bucks, then ask the manager if we could research your receipt if we can. Our electronic journals only go for the last three or four days. If its only three or four dollars, swallow your pride and relax. Going on a crusade will only eat up needless energy. I had an issue with an overcharge with a pizza place and I was tempted to get my credit card to do a chargeback for the two to four dollars in overcharging, and I was tempted to boycott Papa John’s for a long while, but I may not come back as often. However the customer who swore off my store will likely come back after several months.

I just find it annoying that I told my customer that you are going to get a voucher, and he keeps on insisting on me charging it back on his debit card when he lacked his receipt for a five dollar hole puncher. Unfortunately you can not win over all your customers when you strongly want to satisfy them all. It was the fault of myself and my customer to not get a manager on duty to help remedy or reinforce customer policy.

Week in and week out my family gets weekly pleas from Verizon to join the Fios revolution. I would love to have affordable television, internet service and long distance. However you have to get land owner’s permission if you rent the home you reside in. It would be nice to have all three of these services for $115 a month compared to the $150 my family currently pays right now.

I want to do something for the environment since my land lord is not really keen on authorizing the Fios service for the home I live in. Verizon should give us the option to opt-out of the sales pitches.

We are having many contested primaries and I have received robo calls from Meg Whitman, George Runner, Sheriff Hoops and many other candidates this week and it’s becoming a distraction. Now I wonder why a friend such as Wendy Maier was advised not to purchase robo call services in her campaign for State Assembly.

I could understand why candidates purchase robo call services; it helps reach many voters for the most effective cost. However robo calls should be used sparingly, peppering people daily will only turn off potential supporters.

Since I have not done an absentee ballot, I will be pleased to support the candidates who haven’t pestered my household with robo calls this week.

I understand that the Senate has recently passed an amendment to the
financial reform bill that will have a significant impact on how I use my
debit card.  I do not support this legislation, and I would like to
explain why.
I do not believe the federal government should decide how much it should
cost for stores to accept debit cards, especially if it will force banks
to raise the rates on these cards for customers like myself.  I also
disagree with the amendment because it will give retailers the ability to
set minimum and maximum payment amounts, and to discriminate between
cards, charging more for one than another.  I don’t want to be forced to
carry cash, just to avoid being stranded at the register if I can’t use my
card. I don’t want to have to carry several cards, just to avoid paying
more to use one versus another.
Please consider the unintended consequences that this legislation will
have on your constituents, and speak out against this amendment becoming
law before it is too late.  Thank you for considering my views.

Write to your local congress member and senators today!

Make sure retailers treat all cards fairly, for example a local clothing store with their own credit card may say there is no minimums for using their card, but might require a $100 minimum for using American Express if the Durbin Interchange Amendment gets passed.

Visit their website and communicate to your local elected officials.

Listening to the Tim Conway Jr. show last night kind of annoyed me when he was discussing the 12 year old boy and his love for Lady Gaga. Tim was saying where was this boy’s father in raising this child because he was far from the norm for a typical 12 year old boy.

Where was this boy’s love of sports and all the traditional activities for a typical boy he was asking. However, I think it would be healthy for both aspects to be brought forth to the kid. Trying to remove the arts or his love of Lady Gaga would be destructive to him, just as much as removing sports from a young boy and replacing it with watching the musicals of the 1950’s and going to museums. I think a holistic approach would be more healthy so you get someone who has a balanced life no matter what direction a young person may lead.

However the most masculine of boys can end up gay and the most feminine of boys can end up straight so it is not as a reliable indicator of any sort. I know that I am not a trained sociologist, but listening to the segment on his show last night basically annoyed me.