The Curmudgeonly Professor

An Ode to the Futility of the US Postal Service Following Instructions

Every few months, as snow birds we either flee or fly north or flee or fly south.  Every few months, we must change TV, phone, mail, subscriptions, newspapers, internet, etc., etc.  Every few months we assume (mistakenly) that we have neatly taken care of everything and that everything will function smoothly.  The phone will be working, the internet will function smoothly, the TV will come on, and we can sit in our recliner chairs and live the high life.  We made two trips to the post office in St. George to fill out the forms and make sure that, for the first time in twelve years, we hoped, the mail would correctly be forwarded from Point A to Point B.  We even received a printed form from the USPS detailing the correct mail adjustments and forwarding times and address.  

Then we arrive in Salt Lake City.  Go to the mailbox.  No mail.  Remove yellow stop mail card.  Go to mailbox second day.  Remove second stop mail card.  No mail.  By fourth day, we visit the loca l post office.  Ignoring the instruction card and the official post office notices and directions, the local carrier had been very busy continuing to forward all of our mail to St. George.  I hate to criticize the post office.  These people work very hard.  But after twelve years of making mistakes every six months in our mail delivery, they wouldn't have to work half as hard if they would read the forwarding notices and make the changes.  Now the mail that was sent to St. George, forwarded to Salt Lake City, forwarded back to St. George, now being forwarded back once more to Salt Lake City, is starting to dribble in.  Reminds me of the simple days when we had the same rural mail carrier in Penrose Wyoming for nearly three decades.  He never missed a day or a letter, even though we knew the loveable local postmaster in Garland Wyoming carefully studied all of our postcards. 

Further Chronicles of the Curmudgeonly Professor's Law of Modern Technology

You will recall that recently the Curmudgeonly Professor expounded on the evils of modern technology and restated Blood's Law of Modern Technology, viz., (1) nothing ever works, (2) if it quits working no one can fix it, and (3) if someone does fix it, it won't stay fixed very long.\

The Curmudgeonly Professor does not wish to expound on fictitious laws without scientific verification and expert analysis.  Also, the Professor feels compelled to quote from the revised book of Lamentations ch. 42: v. 106:  Woe, woe unto those who have placed their faith in modern technology because yea, verily, your life will be plagued with boils and miseries.  How blessed they were in Biblical times to be limited to plagues of locusts.

Here is a summary of the Professor's week of misery, complaints, and frustrations with modern technology:

1. On Monday, the refigerator freezer's ice maker went kaput, for the zillionth time.  Now this event would not be so dramatic except we had already had four warranty service calls on it, including installation of new parts and, ultimately, the installation of an entirely new ice maker. Not to mention that immediately after we received our wonderful new Whirlpool fridge two years ago, we had to have an entire new freezer door installed.  So on Tuesday the repair guy worked on it awhile and then announced that he would have to order another new freezer door. We have been trying to determine if and when Whirlpool will give us our money back on this lemon so we can get a new fridge and start over again one more time.  After all, our previous Amana fridge had lasted 9 years and the one before that 20 years without a service call. Meanwhile he stuffed a couple of rags in the ice chute and patched up the electronic circuitry with some duct tape so we could freeze ice cubes during the interim period.
2. On Tuesday, my computer printer went bonkers.  So, determining that I actually needed new ink cartridges, the total cost of which exceeded the original cost of the printer which came as an almost-freebie with my new computer, we hied to Office Depot for ink cartridges, receiving a free (yes free!  Hallelujah!) 4G flash drive for spending $75 on ink.  On coming home, I discovered the black cartridge didn't fit, necessitating a trip back to Office Depot, whereupon it was explained to me that HP no longer made the fat black cartridge and I should go back home and stick the skinny one in which I had already tried.  But I did try again and it worked.  I am afraid to turn on my printer, but at least I know it has been endowed with printing authority and should be able to function so I can print off a batch more recipes from AllRecipes et. al.
3. Yesterday the phone quit working, making an extraordinarily loud buzzing noise when trying to talk or listen, plus people on the other end couldn't hear us.  After 30 minutes of automated phone torture, my wife finally talked to a live body who explained that if the phone company had to come out to the house there would be an $85 service charge if the problem was not in the external line.  He did say in a kindly fashion that he would check the lines from his exalted office and call us back in 3 minutes to let us know if he found out anything.  That event was over 3 hours ago during which time I listened to the last 20 minutes of a lousy Matlock episode. As of yet, we have not heard from exalted phone tech guy who obviously does not understand what it means to say he would call back in 3 minutes.  I hope he is enjoying his coffee break, or, if in Utah, Diet Caffeinated Coke break.
4. I messed up Google Chrome while trying to block some porn that crept in and I can't figure out how to unblock it to get to my other blogs.
5. My wife's TV quit working and we had to get a new receiver from Direct TV.
6. Today, the main TV set took an hour and a half before it decided to honor us by coming on so we could watch political rants and accusations to entertain us this afternoon.
7.  My hearing "aids" continue to torture me and blast me into the stratosphere by making loud noises so much louder.
8. Another ceiling light went out in the kitchen.
9. I burnt 4 pieces of French Toast because the food blesser blessed too long.
10. My internet keeps going off and on and off and on, resulting in stuff like "oh my heck" and other Utah sayings.
11. One of the main joys if stuff not working is the automated phone system in which our call is extremely important to them, we should continue to hold and a service representative will be with us in the next 2 hours, and we should continue to have our ears blasted with the most obnoxious "music" available.  Then we get a "tech" from somewhere in Cambodia or Guatematala, and we all know that outsourcing is not politically correct because it deprives able people from getting American jobs so we can at least understand what they are saying and the Gross Domestic Product will be increased, the unemployment rate will go down, domestic spending will rise, and WalMart sales will accelerate if we hire US of A types to confound us on our service calls.

I know this list is incomplete, but it is sufficient, as Matlock and the real lawyers say, to cause a belief in reasonable doubt that anything ever works or that it can ever get fixed, thus justifying my faith in the Law of Modern Technology.  The washing machine is living on borrowed time.  The Food Saver is defunct and won't seal.  Woe unto those who put their faith in modern technology.  Have a nice day.

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.