Concernity

Howdy.

It's been a while. I know I've neglected you, but I've been busy. Of course, you could always write to me in the comments... that would definitely ensure that I update regularly. You scratch my back, I'll bombard you with thoughts from my head. That's the deal. :)

I'm kidding. I'll post more regularly; I promise. I'm cooking up two, shorter (I hope), stories, so look for those, soon.

Today, though, join me on a crusade. Or, at the very least, a rant.

You know that I live in downtown Cleveland. Well, in the building in which I live, they are wired for DirecTV. Best I can figure, a company wired the whole building so that hundreds of TVs could be run off of just a couple sattelite dishes. The company that does this is called Discernity (ah! Now the title makes sense!). It's a set up that allows the property owner to make money off of TV service, and I'm not really clear past that. What it means to me, is this: I pay two different entities for this service, and I talk to two different entities when there's a problem.

The part of this cluster-fuck that I want to focus on is the support side. One must call Discernity directly when something goes wrong. Only, one doesn't call Discernity. One calls an answering service that attempts to connect the caller to a Discernity technician. First RED FLAG. If the operator can't get a hold of one of the technicians, he or she leaves a message for the tech to call the user (me) back. That's all well and good, but you have better odds winning Russian Roullette than getting a call back from these people. Second RED FLAG.

I'm sure you gathered, by now, that I had a problem that needed to be fixed. My service was interrupted sometime on Friday, June 6, and it wasn't fixed until TUESDAY, June 10. That, isn't neccessarily a problem, but here's the email I sent to their customer service manager, which details the whole thing.

To whom it may concern,

Last Friday, sometime before 6:30PM Eastern, our DirecTV service was lost.

I placed a call to Discernity on Saturday at 11am, and was led to believe that a technician would come out that day to look at it. After four more calls, that day, to Discernity, I finally reached someone who told me that no one would be out until Monday. I was not told this during my initial call.

Once Monday came, I called Discernity, again, to get an estimated time of arrival for the technician. No one was to be home, and I wanted to make sure the staff at the apartment would know when to let the tech into the apartment. After four calls, I received a voicemail stating that the technician wasn't coming in, today, so I was pushed back until Tuesday. There was no reason given for this. For all I know, the technician just didn't feel like coming in.

On Tuesday, I called again to get an ETA for the technician. I was told that he would arrive between 12 and 4PM, so I informed the apartment staff. I also asked Discernity to inform me when the work was completed. I never received that call. When I returned home, I had to reset all of my receivers to discover that it was, in fact fixed. I was never informed by anyone that the work was completed.

I then called Discernity again, to find out what the problem was. No one ever returned my call. I got a hold of a tech on Wednesday, and she told me she would find out what went wrong and tell me, but I have yet to hear back.

I am glad that my service is restored, but I am sorely disappointed with the level of support I received. I understand there were issues in other parts of your coverage area over the weekend, but a call back to let me know this, plus a follow-up later would have gone a long way. Also, if one technician calls off, and your support for an area is crippled because of this, that tells me that you are severely understaffed.

I work in the support field myself. I know that if I treated my users the way I was treated over the past four days, and if my users were rendered incapacitated for that long, I would lose my job. I did not have a problem with your service until this week. I like DirecTV. I'd like to continue to enjoy it. While I know you can't guarantee that service will never be interrupted again, I would like some reassurance that you will be better prepared to address the issue and keep me (and other customers) aprised of your efforts, in the future.

It's all about follow up, folks. If you keep someone informed about the progress of fixing their issue, even if little progress has been made, it goes a long way.

Do you think I was overreacting? Drop a comment and let me know what you think. Also, feel free to share your customer service woes. Every company seems so obssessed with customer service, these days, but things like this make me laugh at that "obsession."

And, finally, just be wary of Discernity. They are in a few other areas in the midwest, at least (their locations are on the website).

This is Cleveland

It was a beautiful day, today, so I went up to the roof of my building to take these photos so I could share them. Click on them. They're big photos.

This is where I live. Tell me this isn't worth trying to save.

I love my city.

You Can't Beat the 23.

Yesterday, in northeast Ohio, chaos struck. Streets were clogged with traffic. People waited in long lines for sustenance. Tempers flared. People were arrested. Kids ran out into traffic. Entire towns were brought to their knees.

What, you ask, could manifest this terrorist's wet dream so easily and completely?

Pizza.

Papa John's Pizza, specifically.

Yeah, you definitely need the back-story on this one.

During the Cleveland Cavaliers and Washington (D.C.) Wizards NBA Playoff match up, many Wizards were gunning for LeBron James, the oldest-looking 23-year old on the planet -- oh, and he's good at basketball, too. Anyway, apparently one or two people got a little overzealous, and actually struck James. He complained about it to reporters, later, because no foul was called.

This prompted many people to label James a "whiner." Call me crazy, but I think one's voice has to reach a certain pitch or octave before it can be considered whining... and LeBron is incapable of that high a pitch. He's got a really deep voice, is what I'm saying. But, whatever. I'm digressing the hell out of this.


After the "whining," Papa John's, in Washington, D.C., thought it would be funny to print up some T-shirts that said "CRYBABY" on them, with James' number, 23. I actually think that is kind of funny. No one else did. Clevelanders got pissed. They called local stores and threatened boycotts.


Papa John's corporate responded, and as an apology, all Northeast Ohio Papa John's stores would sell large, one-topping pizzas for twenty-three cents on Thursday, May 8.

Think about that for just a minute: A meal for four, for less than a quarter.

No one anticipated what would happen, next.

Not being in the business of selling cold pizza for breakfast, Papa John's stores don't usually open until the afternoon. By 9am, yesterday, people were already in line by the scores. There were over 100 people at one location before 10am, at which point that store decided to open early.

It gets better.

By lunch time, there were over 1,000 people in line at another store. Parking was gone. People had to park three blocks away. Traffic was gridlocked.

By dinner, it got even worse. 1,900 people at one store. The cops had been brought in long before that to direct traffic and keep crowds under control. Those in line quickly accosted anyone who tried to line-jump.

At some point in there, one of those line-jumpers tried to accost back and got arrested for disorderly conduct. Arrested. For pizza.

At 6pm, barricades were put up at a store because too many children were running into the street. What is it about pizza that seems to make children frantically suicidal? Someone should do a study...

Businesses close enough to a Papa John's store felt the impact, too. Apparently the wall of people was so great, that not a soul could enter their establishments to buy something other than pizza, which prompted this salvo:

By 11pm, it was all over. The pizza was gone. The greater Cleveland area slowly recovered from the calamity. We will soldier on, but we will never forget. We will never be the same again.

We will never forget that you can't beat the 23.

(Editor's note: Apparently, you can beat the 23. The Celtics have done it twice in a row, now.)

One Last Trip to Ceres, Part II, the Next Day, the Sequel

Here's Part II of the best story ever written about space since Sunday, April 20, 2008.

Here's a first for Cleveland Rising: an update to a previous story! J.J. Abrams has said some things that leave me with mixed feelings about the new Star Trek movie. The one that makes me feel good is that ILM is doing the VFX. ILM and Star Trek go well together. So, at least it'll look good.

Lastly, here are some things I hope to write about, or have already written and plan to release here:

• The Death of the Music Industry
• The Evolution of Film and Television in the 21st Century (or, The Death of the Visual Entertainment Industry)
• More Cleveland projects, like: the new convention center, the re-location of the Port of Cleveland, and more!
• We know Artificial Intelligence will kill us all and we continue to pursue it.
• More original stories!
• Action Figure Adventures: Special Edition!

Keep visiting...

One Last Trip to Ceres

I have less about an hour before it's not the weekend any more, so to keep my promise to all four of you who read this, you're getting part one of my story, tonight.

Normally, there won't be anything you have to read before reading something I've written, but, see, I wrote this whole page of exposition that didn't really fit in the story. So, rather than delete the whole thing, I wanted to post it. It's a little background on the universe this story takes place in.

One other disclaimer: this story is in its raw form. I did very little re-writing. I wanted it that way because I want to hear your feedback in the comments. Remember what I said in my first post? Well, whether you like it or don't, tell me why. Help me get better.

Here's a little bit of exposition..

Since the completion of the International Space Station in 2010, the governmental space agencies of the world had made great strides in space exploration. Private spaceflight was also booming and proved to be an industry that was quite lucrative for those involved, whether they contracted to government agencies or focused on the private sector. In fact, it was probably more successful than the government programs.

The great success of private spaceflight was accompanied, shortly after, by crime and piracy. While that can be a story in and of itself, needless to say, private and government vessels were soon armed to protect themselves in the depths of interplanetary space.

In the years of exploration, trade and turmoil, considered to be the Golden Age of human spaceflight, Earth’s governments recognized the need for ships that could defend themselves and other vessels, continue exploration, and supply its outlying facilities. A substantial fleet was built that could do all of those things. The vanguard of the old Fleet, the Challenger, was the last of its generation. Challenger was one part explorer, one part work horse and one part defender. Those who served aboard her were regarded as world heroes.

Nearly one hundred years since the last piece of the ISS was locked into place, after this age of exploration and excitement, the world’s space programs had stranded themselves on a plateau. Budgets were being cut. Interest was waning. Those stationed on Earth’s outposts in orbit, on the moon and the few facilities even further out in the Solar system, wondered what their fate would be.

It wasn’t as bad as everyone thought. It wasn’t good, either. Most of the “inner core” facilities would be maintained. The cutbacks only really affected Earth’s small fleet of exploration vessels and those outposts in the far reaches of the system.

At this point, the Mars Science Platform was dismantled. Old, large ships of the past were being decommissioned and sold off to make way for smaller, cheaper single-mission vessels. The government was re-tooling its role in space to focus on defense, and leave exploration up to private companies. It seemed to make sense and it was cheaper. All that remained was the evacuation of Ceres Base in the asteroid belt so it could be sold to a private company.

Due to miscommunication in schedules for the decommissioning of old ships and the completion of new ships, Earth endured a period where private ships, contracted by the government, were the lifeline to Ceres.

Because it was the most prestigious vessel, Challenger was saved from sharing the fate of its sister ships. A private foundation raised the money to turn it into a museum, to preserve that age which seemed to be fading away. While the ship had not been turned into a museum, yet, it had been dry-docked for over a year. Some would consider this an honor. A tribute to the past. Others, though, thought it was an insult to an Old Dame who still had a lot left to give.

So, if that interests you, and you wonder what could possibly happen in a universe like that, click here and read the first part of my crappy little story.

Or, click here: One Last Trip to Ceres, Part I

Part II will follow sometime soon.

This One's For the Fanboys(and girls). So Say We All.

I haven't written in over a week.

I'm not apologizing or anything. I'm just stating the obvious. I've been busy. I didn't have anything to say. My story wasn't done yet. It'll happen. :)

On the story front, it's done. I'm going to have the first part posted soon. This weekend, if I have anything to say anything about it. So, that's that.

Today, though, we're going to talk about Battlestar Galactica. Rather, my friend Marc is going to talk about it. BSG's fourth and final season started two weeks ago. Marc has written a five-part essay about the themes of the show, and what that could mean going into this last season. A warning: if you don't watch the show regularly, read the essays at your own risk.

Here they are:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Also, set a side some time to read it. It's brilliant, but it's long. If you watch the show, and enjoy the show, you'll appreciate Marc's analysis. It brought to light some things that I've missed or forgotten over the last five years.

Look for part 1 of MY story (which is, as yet, untitled) this weekend.

I promise.

Really.

(05 01 2008 Update: I fixed the links to Marc's article. They were frakked up. It wasn't my fault. :))

To Boldly Go... Ruin Star Trek

I was going to wait to spring upon you that I like Star Trek, but I guess I kinda did, the other day. Anyway, this is something I have to get off my chest.

Star Trek is not a comedy.

Apparently, J.J. Abrams missed that memo. He must've missed it because he didn't pass it along to his writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, either.

You're probably not familiar with Orci and Kurtzman's work. I mention them together because their resumes are i-fucking-dentical. I was going to try to display that here, but instead go here and here to see their credits on imdb.com. Go ahead. I'll wait.

...

See? Exactly the same. Exactly as stupid. You may notice that they wrote Transformers, which "graced" theater screens, last summer. Now, I don't know how much of what we actually ended up seeing was what they wrote and how much of it was Michael Bay. I'll be the first to blame Bay for Transformers. In fact, look for a future article called "Michael Bay Raped My Childhood." Bay may have trumped Kurtzman and Orci and re-wrote a lot of it, but they never protested. They didn't take their names off the script.

From a financial stand point, I guess that makes sense, but, I can't imagine two credible writers being morally okay with leaving their names on something like Transformers. Given their resumes, though (identical! I still can't get over that. It's creepy!), I argue that not only are they okay with poorly written, juvenile tripe, but that they set out to accomplish that in the first place.

Normally, I wouldn't care. There's a "Scary Movie" or "Epic Movie" or the like every month, practically, and I just shrug it off and keep rolling. Transformers hurt, though. Those of us who were little six-year-old boys during the Transformers hey-day were promised a lot of things by Kurtzorci (that's my name for them, since they're identical) that they did't follow through on.

Okay, I've digressed quite a bit. My point is, they've already got a mountain of crap under their collective belt. They've already proven, to me, that they can't treat a beloved franchise with the respect and dignity it deserves. How can we trust them to handle, properly, a franchise that's even more beloved and venerable (yes, Star Trek is. I'm serious)?

Maybe, hope lies in J.J. Abrams? Lost is pretty good, right (I don't watch it, but I hear it's good...)? Maybe he'll pull a Bay, and re-write a lot of Kurtzorci's work... except in a good way? Maybe he'll save it.

'Fraid not.

Remember: I said Abrams missed the memo that Star Trek is not a comedy. Turns out, three of the six major characters are being played by actors that, as far as I can tell, have only ever had comedic roles in... comedies. John Cho is playing Sulu. He's most well-known as Harold from Harold & Kumar. Comedy. Simon Pegg is playing Scotty. He's best known from Hot Fuzz and Sean of the Dead and most recently starred in Run, Fat Boy, Run. Comedy, comedy, comedy. Anton Yelchin is playing Chekov. He was most recently in Charlie Bartlett. Comedy.

Lastly, there's Karl Urban playing Dr. McCoy. He's not a comedy actor, but he did play "Vaako" in The Chronicles of Riddick, which was inadvertantly hilarious. So, I'm counting him, too. Actually, I'm not, but I think that anyone associated with Riddick shouldn't be allowed to work for at least ten years. It's only been four.

That's not everyone. I don't know anything about the guy playing Kirk or some of the other actors. I like that Zachary Quinto is playing Spock. He plays Sylar on Heroes. He's a good actor. He could do comedy, I'm sure, but he's not known for it.

So, there could be some good things about it. For now I'm suspending my disbelief on continuity and things like that because I don't know anything about the story. I will go see it, but with great reluctance. I just worry that with a producer who, despite his other potentially good work, seems to be ignoring fundemental elements of the franchise, in one hand, and a pair of writers who have, together, undisputedly man-handled another franchise, in the other hand, all we'll be left with, as fans, are two handfulls of mistreated American pop-culture.

At best we'll get something like the Brady Bunch movie. At worst, we'll get Harold and Kumar Save the Galaxy, or better yet: Star Trek Movie (see what I did there?).

Star Trek deserves better.

Find the Contractor: The Game!

So, the story I keep threatening you with is becoming bigger and bigger. I think it's safely moved out of "short story" classification at this point. I'm going to finish it, go through it again and streamline it. I was planning on having all that done by Monday. We'll see. You'll have to forgive me if it's later than that.

The weekend is coming up, and I'm sure some of you will probably go to a bar at some point this week. Here's a game you can play: Find the Contractor.

I don't mean a Blackwater contractor or a Haliburton contractor (though, you can claim bonus points if you actually do find one of them). I'm talking about the re-roof-your-house contractor or the mow-your-lawn contractor or the pour-a-new-patio contractor. Here's what to look for:

• Wearing some sort of worn baseball cap. Possibly backwards. Sometimes with a construction company's logo on it.
• Some sort of facial hair.
• Flannel.
• Some sort of rugged jacket with a hoodie underneath.
• Boots that used to be another color, but are now the color of dried mud.

Now, the level of difficulty for this game depends exclusively on geography. If you're a hipster and you only go to bars that serve twelve dollar martinis, then the odds of finding a contractor are slim... but you get more points if you do find one. If you live in the suburbs, especially if it's a suburb on the edge of civiliazation and rural-ality, then the odds go up and the points go down.

So, this weekend, when you're out and about, try it. It can provide some much needed entertainment when there's a lull in the conversation.

(Brought to you by the makers of "Find the Douschebag.")

It's Called a Web Log

I hate internet shorthand. It drives me crazy. It has to stop.

I got tricked by it when I was young. I discovered the internet back before many of you, I'll wager, even knew what a computer was, and before the rest of you knew how to use one. I got into this shit back when 1200 bits per second was fast (that's 1,200 bits, compared to something like 3 to 10 MILLION bits per second, that today's cable and DSL services can achieve).

So, I've been internetting for a while. Okay. I was young back then. I thought "lol" and the like (didn't see much "omg" back then) were cool. I was known to use a "brb" or a "bbl" or something more often than not. I could write all kinds of jacked up emoticons (making :) look 19th-centuryish). But then, something amazing happened.

I grew up.

If one is older than twelve years old, one should not be mistreating the English language in such a way. Lots of our ancestors went to a lot of trouble to shape our language into something useful. While it was left open to adapt and evolve, I'm pretty sure no one had "wtf" or "n00b" in mind.

I've heard of being young at heart, but for Christ's sake. If you're not twelve, write with a little dignity, please. Some people have said to me, "It's the internet. We don't have to try. We can be lazy here."

WRONG.

It's the English language, whether it's in a book, on the TV, a street sign, a store sign, or the internet. Treat it with respect. It's the only language you've got (this does not apply to those talented over-achievers out there who can speak two or more languages).

That brings me to the two worst culprits of this bastardization of the English language: "podcast," "blog" and all the derivatives therein.

PODCAST
Our first perp, "podcast," is a pretentious offender. It is derived from the ubiquitous iPod that Apple has successfully shoved down our collective throats over the past seven years. The very nature of "podcast" suggests that there are no other mp3 players that have existed or will exist.

That's all a "podcast" is. It's an mp3. You can play it on your computer, you can play it on the thousands of brands of mp3 players (gasp, yes, they do exist) other than Apple's iPod. Some lucky folks out there can even play them in their car without the use of an iPod or any other mp3 player.

I'll spare you how several brands of players out there are actually better than an iPod and how iTunes is the devil. That's another topic for another day. "Podcast" is an arrogant, assumptive title for a piece of media that can be played on many different devices. It's like calling "software" a "computer program" because you can only run it on a computer...

...oh, wait.

BLOG
"Blog" is often seen wreaking havoc in the streets of the English Language, hand-in-hand with "podcast." It's even worse than "podcast," though, because at least "podcast" is a genuine compound word ("pod" and "cast" - both real words). "Blog" is something totally different. A mutated, reject of a word.

No one but the likes of Dr. Frankenstein could take one letter from a real word (weB) and the whole word from, er, another word (log) and create an unholy amalgam of letters that flips off the English language anytime anyone utters it. It's a wonder the villagers haven't hunted it down, yet.

Oh, that's because everyone and their mother writes a blog -- I'm sorry web_log -- these days. Like "podcast," it distracts the general populace from it's blatant raping of English with the cool concept to which it's attached.

The creation of "blog" reminds me of an episode of Star Trek called "The Omega Glory." The people on the planet the Enterprise was visiting had a copy of the Declaration of Independence, but they didn't understand how the letters were grouped together, so they were pronouncing it differently. They came up with "blog." Kirk set 'em straight, though, and I'm going to set you straight, now.

"But, Ipsy," you might say. "You have a blog, you idiot." No, I have a web_log. But, I am an idiot. You might go on to add, "Ipsy, your web_log is hosted by Blogger. You're a hypocrite!" All right, well, you have me there. But, I'd argue that I never have had a problem with the concept of an online journal. Clearly I don't; I'm using one. I went with this site because the few other web_logs I visit seem to be hosted here, too. It was a matter of convenience. Sue me.

What it all boils down to is this: on the Internet, until very recently (thanks, YouTube), all we've had to express our thoughts was the written word. I, for one, like to be taken seriously when expressing my thoughts, unless I distinctly point out otherwise (and I will, a lot; don't worry).

I guess I'm old-fashioned, but I think twelve year old girls should sound like twelve year old girls. Adults should write and express themselves like adults.

Not like twelve year old girls.

THANK You...

Stop Making Movies About My Books

On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide, In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside, Gleamed another adapting of...

The Onion sums up what I thought the first time I saw a commercial for Horton. I was wrong, though: Dr. Seuss isn't spinning in his grave; he's about to burst out of the ground and hunt down those who have forsaken him.

I don't feel right leaving you with just that; it's not enough. Here are some other fun places to go:

Excelsior News - I hang out here, with some nice people, to talk about all forms of entertainment.

Fully Ramblomatic - All you need to know is that it's funny.

X-Entertainment - Websites come and go, but this one has been around for what equates to an eternity on the Interweb Tubes. It has inspired me on several occasions.

Okay. I feel better now.

Enjoy.