The Curmudgeonly Professor

Snowbird Trials and Tribulations Saga Continued

Ever since we got back to Salt Lake, my internet has kept blinking off and on.  And that was after making arrangements ahead of time to have it up and running, and assurances that it was doing so.  Two long phone calls the first week did not resolve the problem.  Then a two hour phone call Monday morning running through a bunch of idiotic "diagnostics" ordered by the techie on the other end of the line.  Finally he gave up and said a tech repair man would be out the next day between 9:30 a.m. and 1:30.  After sitting around all day, the repair guy showed up at 3:00 p.m.  He twiddled with the phone line outside the house a minute, turned on the modem, and presto my internet is back.

Which leads to the question:  Am I really better off with the internet?  Does my status and eternal happiness depend on being tagged in facebook?  Should I continue wasting two or three hours a day posting photos to the Curmudgeonly Professor Blog?  Is it really important to read the latest comments by my sisters?  Or should I find a new hobby?  I do not notice any diminished levels of satisfaction from people who swore off computers after retiring and banished them from their homes.  Perhaps I should stop cold turkey, stop my blogs, stop my attacks on the Tea Party on Twitter, discontinue my learned economic analysis on Twitter, discontinue comments on my grandchildren's posts on facebook, and do what?  I can only listen to talk show bloviators for so long and my ears go numb, my brain is fried, and I long for the good old days of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and FDR.  Then I remember unemployment was 25% then and the only entertainment was listening to the radio and the victrola by the light of a kerosene lamp.  Have a nice day and never, never try to transfer your internet, your telephone, your tv provider, and your mail.  Turn off your TV, turn off your computer.  A daughter of a long-time friend came with her parents to see us the other day.  She has eight kids and they are all reading stuff like the Iliad and the Odyssey and books of like manner.  I asked her how that happened.  She said "because we haven't had a TV in the house for 17 years."  Go figure.  I can see class is about over so I will let you out early today.  There will be an hour essay exam next class period on the stuff I was supposed to cover today but never got around to so be sure you read Chapters 18-35 by tomorrow and be prepared.  Nobody ever pays any attention to me in here anyway.

The WalMart Chronicles Continued: Men, Do Not Accompany Your Wife to WalMart, Especially if she is on a Store Scooter Cart

After already having spent a fortune trying to stock up from zero inventory, we needed a few more things, so we went to WalMart.  My wife is still unable to walk due to sciatic pain, so she got one of the mobile electric carts, or whatever they are called.  Big mistake for me.  While she could whiz around at 50 mph, I could barely stagger up and down the aisles.  I spent about 80% of my time looking for her.  Here is a summary of this latest inspirational experience:\

1. While entering the door that said enter, the entrance was blocked by dumbbells exiting said door.
2. While exiting the door that said exit, the exit was blocked by dumbbells entering said exit door.
3. Part way through our epic shopping experience, a massive hailstorm pounded on the roof so noisily I interpreted this as a stern warning from above:  Never, never accompany your wife to WalMart.
4. I walked at least 200 miles, 2 miles shopping, and 198 miles looking for my wife.
5. When I got home, there were 3 smelly, rotten potatoes in my 10 pound bag of russets
6. The average number of children per mother at WalMart seemed to be between 3 and 8.
7. Cell phone yappers negotiating carts full of babies, Pampers, groceries, etc., and creating hazardous shopping conditions, were in rich abundance.
8. Most people seemed to be going up and down all the aisles not having any idea what in blazes they were doing there, as evidenced by the fact I saw the same people in virtually every aisle I wandered through, no matter how many times I wandered there.  Perhaps people thought WalMart was a form of entertainment and they were reluctant to go home and clean their kitchens and bathrooms.

In WalMart's defense, most of their stuff is cheap, especially boxed groceries like cereal and most canned staples.  The store is clean, well-stocked, and devoid of any human beings who can tell you where stuff is unless you search for them for a half hour.  Unlike some WalMarts, this one at least had several checkout lines open, unlike some stores where they have 200 people lined up behind one checkout counter.

When I checked out, the obviously fatigued checker asked me the obligatory question about how I was.  Instead of giving the obligatory answer "fine", I elaborated that I was totally exhausted, sick of looking for my wife, anxious to get home and spend another hour hauling stuff in the car and stashing it wherever I could find a nook or a cranny.  So I asked her how she was, and she said she was tired, too.  So checkers really are human beings and ought to be treated as such.

Oh, I almost forgot.  There were no WalMart greeters.  But WalMart has started having by-by sayers instead who sort of give you a passing glance as you leave to make sure you are a Republican or something, unlike Costco which has a stern person checking your receipt to make sure you haven't stuck in a 42 inch TV on the way out the door.  I asked the last Costco receipt marker lady if she ever thought to herself, "What are they thinking?" as she examined their cart perfunctorily and swiftly, since another 30 people are waiting.  She said, "I just told myself that when someone went out of here with thousands of dollars worth of stuff."  Who said the economic stimulus from Washington isn't working?  But I have digressed, and that is what professors do.  How else do you think they can bore you for an hour and 10 minutes?  Have nice day.

Snowbird Chronicles of Misery Part III

Two weeks after coming back to Salt Lake City, here is a progress report on snowbird miseries:

1. USA Today finally got around to delivering my paper, 10 days after it was supposed to start. I need the crossword puzzle, for heaven's sake.
2. We had a message in our mailbox: "Your mail is circulating back and forth between Salt Lake and St. George.  Please let us know where you want your mail sent."  Well, we had filled out all the forms and even got a confirmation number for the address change before we left St. George.  So I went to the post office and they informed me that my mail was likely in the Salt Lake forwarding station.  Now we are finally getting a few pieces of mail, including credit card adverts, medical bills, fund solicitations, and other valuable items of critical importance.  One line was open at the post office when I went, with a line of people waiting for me to get my problem resolved.  Now the post office wants to close a bunch of "unprofitable" small locations.  Actually, the post office should be considered a public good, which isn't in the business to make money, which it will never do since the only way it knows how to try and solve its financial problems is to charge more for postage, cut down services, and cut out small locations.  And, guess what?  Supply and demand will work once more, and the post office will have even less business.
3. My internet still is going on and off.

Other than those items of misery, things seem to be going reasonably well.  Before we know it, the snow will fly, and we will leave as soon as it does, and we will have to go through all these miseries again. 

The Snowbird Chronicles of Misery Part II: Nobody Ever Does Things Right

Earlier I wrote about the problems and issues of changing residences seasonally and coming back to Salt Lake for awhile.  Here is a progress report:

1. USA Today.  We were assured in St. George that our paper would be started last Monday in Salt Lake.  Today is Friday and still no paper.  I called USA Today and they had no record that we had asked to have our paper switched from St. G. to SLC and the earliest they could start it is next Wednesday.  USA Today has never gotten our subscription changes fixed correctly.  Never.
2. US Mail.  One week after arriving in SLCity, still no US Mail.
3. Internet.  We were assured in St.G. that our internet was up and running and would be ready for us when we arrived in SLCity.  Big joke.  I spent two hours on two successive mornings trying to get it up and running.  The first day, I told the tech person, who kept contradicting his instructions, that he didn't know what he was doing and hung up.  After cooling off for a day, I tried again the next day.  The tech person did know how to retrieve the code I needed to activate, but he kept telling me the wrong place to stick it in.  I figured that out myself, thanked him profusely for his abundantly competent help, and hung up.  My internet still keeps going off and on so I am not home free on that one.
4. TV.  We were assured that our TV was up and running, since we had paid for it for two months previously anyway.  Not so.  I spent a couple of hours getting the TVs in our home activated including one HD and three junkers.  Now we can watch Matlock, which is nap time.

Moral to the story:  Rarely does anyone do what they say they will do, or if they do they get it wrong or don't make sure it's done right.  No wonder the country is so screwed up right now.  About the time we get everything fixed, it will be snowing and we will go back to St. George and go through all of this excruciating pain again.  Have a nice day.

Your Call is Very Important to us, Please Stay on the Line Blah Blah Blah

One of the horrors of being a snowbird is changing phone, internet, newspapers, television cable, etc., every few months.  Thus far, in over a dozen years, no one has ever gotten any of these changes right.  To illustrate: I was on the phone for nearly two hours the other day changing our phone, TV, and cell phone service.  We had placed our Salt Lake phone on suspension which was supposed to leave it so people could call in and out last October.  We discovered that the phone company had totally disconnected the line instead, charging us for nine months for the service that they cheerfully terminated.  After two hours of delightful messages such as:  Your call is very important to us.  Please stay on the line and a customer service representative will be with you shortly.  We appreciate your patience.  We are experiencing a heavy volume of calls now and your waiting time is expected to be less than 15 minutes.

So after finally getting connected with a real person, it turned out I had the wrong real person and was given another number.  I call the other number and wait another 20 minutes listening to how important my call is, etc., etc., etc.   Eventually we get the phone business straightened out.  We think.  We hope.  We have never had the change work out correctly yet, so we are uncertain.  Then we went to work on the TV.  Another round of waits, reassurances about how many customers are all trying to call them at once and how they have no idea how to handle a heavy volume of calls except one by one and I should sit and twiddle my thumbs and wait another half hour for the privilege of spending my money on their wonderful service.

Then I need to get my internet modem fixed.  An hour of being on the phone and getting bounced among three numbers and then a tech guy was scheduled to come this morning.  He never showed.  But he did come this afternoon while we were gone.  So I called the number the tech guy left on the door to reschedule.  I was informed that they didn't reschedule at this number and transferred me to another number where they had another heavy volume of calls and a wait, to be informed that they didn't schedule tech stuff either, and to call the other number back again, which I did, and, lo and behold, miraculously, they Could schedule tech support after all.  Whoopee!

So then we tackled the newspapers.  The local newspaper circulation is apparently handled somewhere in Iceland or somewhere and we got the local paper stopped.  USA Today has always been a pain.  They never seem to know how to handle circulation.  We got bounced to a circulation office in Fort Collins, who bounced us back to St. George, where, miraculously, what do you know, they discovered they Could actually handle termination of the St. George delivery and start us in Salt Lake again if we ever get there.  Then, about once a month, we get a phone call from USA Today telling us that their records show we canceled our paper and would we like to start it up again.

Then there is the Post Office.  We have had better luck with the Post Office the past couple of years.  About three years ago, our mail didn't show up for three months after we changed our address and we discovered that the USPS had never thrown away the old card and substituted the new address.

I have this message implanted in my brain:  Your call is absolutely, terribly, incredibly important to us.  We know you won't mind waiting for a half hour listening to raucous commercials and terrible music for the privilege of talking to one of our wonderful representatives where you have a 35% chance of someone getting things right, and you may not have to make more than another half dozen calls to get things straightened out.

The solution:  cancel all newspapers, all television, all U.S. mail, all telephones, all cell phones.  But meanwhile we will see how many errors get made by another round of careless customer representatives who have been so anxious to talk to us.  If only people could be retrained to recheck everything and proofread numbers, addresses, and procedures!  Can this processs really be that hard?  Apparently it is that hard and even more difficult than some percentage of the armies of customer representatives are prepared to handle.  Have a nice day.

 

Two Choices When You Get Ticked: Hold a Grudge and Blow off Steam, or Just Let it Go and Relax

Daily life is full of irritations and stuff that ticks us off, so to speak.  We're talking here about the minor aggravations that get blown into mountains and not the really awful stuff that requires intervention and is beyond our own ability to resolve.  The things we're talking about here are things like rudeness from other drivers, people in grocery store lines, wives, children, husbands, inlaws, neighbors, television bloviators--anything and anyone who does, says, or is thinking about doing something that really, really ticks us off.  Unfortunately, the Curmudgeonly Professor has remained in the "bear a grudge forever" category.  One of my sons, an attorney, whose dress style during the 70s was totally egregious, is successful at ignoring stuff.  In fact, some times he ignores stuff he should probably pay attention to, like sending in the book refusal cards to book clubs.  Which reminds me, I'd better check mine so I don't get a couple more unwanted book shipments soon.

Practice and patience would be great virtues for me so I would stop calling every other driver an idiot, a moron, a moron and idiot combined, or a jerk.  Some people I have known are skilled at turning on the deep freeze and not speaking for interminable lengths of time when offended.  Family feuds have originated by taking offense at others' behavior over stuff that could have more efficiently been ignored.  People say they "hate" each other and don't want anything to do with them.  People disown family members for joining another church.  I thought my dad was going to disown me when I became a democrat, with a small "d."  My dad also thought I should stay home and work in the bank where I had a job after my freshman year of college rather than return to school.  One feud I knew about didn't get settled until my dad's funeral when both brothers, in their 90s, finally shook hands.

I know my own life would be easier if I would just let stuff blow by and pretend it didn't happen.  Unfortunately, I have taught all my grandchildren to call other drivers morons and idiots, and I don't know how to correct that egregious mistake on my part.  The act of forgiveness is something many of us are not very good at.  I may or may not forgive my high school sweetie who ditched me for the senior prom and went with a real loser instead.  I reminded her of her terrible mistake a couple of years ago, a mere 60 years later, and I don't think she felt a bit guilty.  What are we to do?  I think I need to make a better and more sustained effort at turning the TV off, ignoring other drivers and idiots, forgiving others for stuff I don't need to remember, and, in general, learn some patience and better manners.  We'll see how it goes.  You can practice also, if you wish.  Or not.

Next to Suspenders, Sock Boogers are Worst Plague

Regular readers are aware that one of our most popular posts is the one that asks "Should I wear suspenders and look like Larry King?"  Men from Bangkok to Argentina have clicked on that one, signifying that men throughout the world are cursed with the difficult choice of dragging their pants on the ground and wearing them out quickly, or harnessing up in unwieldly suspenders.  However, here's the sad thing:  No matter how many pair of suspenders we owned, we could not look like Larry King because he owns tens of thousands of color-coordinated suspenders.  Besides, do we really think we are as good looking as Larry King?

But coming right up behind the suspenders issue is an issue we have blogged (or pontificated, take your choice) about prior hereto, viz., sock boogers.  I paid a small fortune to have our carpets cleaned the other day.  After I took off my dark brown socks, exactly 2,748 pieces of lint fell from the socks all over my nice clean carpet.  I said something like, "Alas, I believe the sock boogers have attacked me again.  Mercy, what shall I do?" or something similar to that.  I have hypothesized before that workers in sock factories are paid to stuff socks with lint off the floor of the sock making factory floor so they don't have to get rid of this lint themselves.  Some sock booger stuffers may feel they are actually getting even with the American imperialists who buy their socks. 

Sock booger sufferers, unite!  We must end this horrible travesty!  And why is it that light socks are nearly always totally devoid of sock boogers?  Someone tell me that?  All my life I have been consumed with estimating marginal costs and marginal revenues and drawing supply and demand curves to send freshman econ students into a stupor of thought, when I should have been lecturing on the plague of sock boogers.  Should I write to President Obama?

The Curmudgeonly Professor Visits the Dentist Once More

Six months ago I was informed that I needed two fillings plus a three-quarter crown to save another tooth.  I was also informed I should take care of this matter as soon as possible or risk further damage to my mouth and teeth.  Finally, my wife made an  appointment and forced me to go get things taken care of.  I live in mortal fear of the dentist ever since the epic 7 hour root canal I had a few years ago, during which it seemed that the dentist, not the one I just went to see, hit a nerve and sent me through the ceiling.

Actually, this visit was fairly benign and painless.  I was numbed sufficiently so I could not tell if my head was on my shoulders.  What was most incredible is that pictures were taken in my mouth and sent to a computer which put together the three-quarter porcelain crown in the office.  No more sticky impressions, waiting 10 days for the crown to come back from the lab, having a temp that would fall off two or three times and require extra trips to the dentist, going for a fitting, then coming back once more if it didn't work.  Before I knew it, this crown was on my tooth, the fillings were done, and I was out of there.

What was most impressive was my dentist telling me that he had just had his own first extraction.  He said he stopped by his office before going to the orgal surgeon because he was afraid the oral surgeon wouldn't numb his mouth and he was afraid it was going to hurt.  Really, I said.  Do you mean to tell me, I said, that you, a dentist who stands and tortures people all day every day is a big coward?  He said, I'm a wuss.  I can't stand the thought of pain.  There you have True Confessions.  A dentist who is a wuss and can't stand having his own teeth worked on.  That is why I became an economist.  I delivered mortal pain and anguish to thousands of undeserving students, but the pain I administered was more mental than physical torture.

The dental assistant, a wonderful and thoroughly competent person, explained to me her methods of discipline for her three kids.  "Paper and pencil," she said, "that's all it takes."  "Explain," I said.  She explained that whenever a problem comes up, her children know they will be writing something 100 times, at least.  And if she doesn't like their penmanship, or if they goofed off, they write it again.  "Works like a charm," she said.  Adding, "especially since paddling sort of went by the wayside.  You have to have something to stay in control."

So now I must go see the oral surgeon for an extraction.  Then I must have two more implants, making a total of four.  Whatever.  How ever much the implants cost, I'm thankful I don't have to think about dentures.  Oh, I did listen to a brief discussion among the women in the office on my way out about how none of them trusted their husbands with the family finances.  I think men take a lot of guff.  But then I've never paid a bill for 50 years and would have no idea about how to do it.  Paying bills takes too much work for me.  It takes no effort whatsoever for my wife and she may even enjoy doing it.  Have a nice day.  The Curmudgeonly Professor must now meditate to come up with his next topic for the blog.