These fools have been profiting for years off their poor decisions, and now when it catches up to them and the whole thing collapses, we get to pay for it. Where’s the $1 trillion for improving education, or making sure senior citizens and the disabled don’t fall through the cracks? The idea that we can’t afford to provide health care to every American while we toss these huge amounts at companies that have been profiting by screwing so many people and making stupid decisions is in a word, disgusting.

Where’s our bailout? These people have been getting filthy, stinking rich on being irresponsible and our solution is to toss more taxpayer money their way. And not a word in the latest super-bailout of punishment for these people.

Once again, the taxpayer gets put over a barrel in the interest of making sure the already rich can stay rich.

Yes, I understand that when the top collapses it affects everyone, but when is this country going to stop mortgaging our future on the backs of our kids for a little short-term relief? And when will the collapse of the middle and the bottom under the weight of the failures at top be a consideration to anyone other than those folks trying to make ends meet?

On the plus side I think it is safe to say we shouldn’t have to hear much anymore about the benefits of a free and unregulated market. What a crock.

It’s important that people understand that opening up these areas to production will do little to nothing to reduce our gas prices, and we’re talking several years down the line regardless. The oil companies already have access to acres and acres of drillable land and sea that they aren’t using. Why not force them to produce on those areas if we’re so concerned about drilling “now” and “here.”

We need more effort towards renewable energy. Let’s see the GOP stage a congressional sit-in for that one. I’m sure their buddies at ExxonMobil should have no problem with that. I mean they want to stop the “war on the poor,” right?

More than that, we need leaders who will lead. America has spent too much time being told what it needs to hear and misled down these dangerous paths… How about a little truth in government for a change?

Seriously, every time?

I last put my iPhone on the dock about 8 hours ago, when I went to sleep.

They really need to have a setting or something to do this less often for the applications. Nothing changed on my iPhone applications over night. Not a single thing. Can’t they implement a check for that before beginning the back up process?

Oooooooh! Now we’re moving!

So, basically, I could update my MacBook Pro, but then my UC-33, Axiom 25 and FireWire 1814 could quite possibly be rendered useless. As I have some music I need to work on, I can’t exactly take that risk so I’ll just have the shrink wrapped Leopard box taunting me until M-Audio pulls their head out of their ass. My next gear purchase will certainly be Korg.

Also, I can’t find the totally awesome mask I was going to make my cats wear.

I’m going to go watch a movie or late-night television or something and feed the cats some treats. Then back here to record an angry evil psytrance mix.

Basically, now I can go to an Apple store, and purchase an 8GB iPhone for $100 less than I paid for my 4GB.

Gah!

They also announced some other stuff, including an updated iPod Shuffle in new colors (including a Product (RED) offering), a new iPod nano (affectionately dubbed by some, the “fatty”) which supports video and the WiFi iTunes store you can access from the iPhone soon and from the new iPod touch which is basically an iPhone without the phone. The disk space on all the models got moved around too. Looks like the 8GB nano comes in all the colors now, not just black, and looks like the price came down a bit.

On top of that, they announced a partnership with Starbucks which will allow Starbucks customers to instantly buy songs that are playing in Starbucks locations. Kind of neat, but I wonder what T-Mobile thinks about that. T-Mobile provides the WiFi access inside Starbucks locations, but does not carry the iPhone, which is exclusive to AT&T. So, in a round-about way, T-Mobile has a partnership with a company that does not benefit T-Mobile in the least.

Bacn is a new problem now plaguing our email inboxes. Putting it simply, Bacn is email you receive that isn’t spam… And isn’t personal mail. It’s the middle class of email. It’s notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter. It’s the Google alert for your name and the newsletter from your favorite company.

This is preposterous! Bacon is something I want ALL THE TIME! It is not something that should be used in reference to anything negative.

Netizens! We must unite against this flagrant insult to everyone’s favorite meat product!

THIS. SHALL. NOT. STAND!

It’s nice to know I’m not alone!

The Backstory:

At the beginning of July, I bought an iPhone. I ported my number out from T-Mobile (rather begrudgingly I might add. I was happy there). I still had a contract, apparently. I did not realize this at the time, as I was explicitly told otherwise. At any rate I intended to remain a customer and planned transferring my plan to a hotspot-only account so that I can hop on wi-fi networks at Starbucks. This all seemed very possible to everyone and they were going to do a sim release on my old sim card and enable my account for hotspot only.

That was just over a month ago. Last Thursday, my bank account was billed for my last month of service, and a $200 early termination fee. I immediately called and re-explained what I wanted. However at this point, my account had been inactivated, and re-activating it has proven quite difficult.

The Current Issue:

Last Thursday I spent about three hours total on the phone and in a T-Mobile retail location (and on the phone in the T-Mobile retail location) re-enabling my account and purchasing a SIM card. I found the SIM card issue particularly odd, as I didn’t want a cell phone at all. I wanted a hotspot plan with a contract so that my term could continue. During all of this, it was confirmed to me several times that what I wanted was indeed possible. The final decision after cycling through several reps, and repeating everything several times, was that I needed activate a voice plan first, which could then be switched to a hotspot plan. I did so. I decided I would wait a week to let the dust settle before I called to switch everything over.

Last night was one week later, so I called T-Mobile to switch the plan to a hotspot plan. And so begins the adventure. I immediately noticed that they had credited the $200 back to me, which was great. However they credited it to my T-Mobile account. My inactive T-Mobile account. After a couple of transfers around, I found someone who would be able to to an immediate refund to my bank account. She took my information and processed it all. I checked about ten minutes later, and the transaction had hit my bank account… as a debit. Now T-Mobile owed me $400. I explained this to the rep, who stammeringly told me that she couldn’t do a refund, that a form must be submitted. How she was able to do it when she screwed it up the first time, but not able to do it to correct the mistake is beyond me. At this point, I felt as though I had been taking crazy pills, so I asked, “Am I taking crazy pills?” – to which she had no response. I asked to be transferred to a supervisor. She put me on hold, and I was completely disconnected about 2 minutes into the hold.

At this point I was fuming… I took a couple of minutes to regain composure and calmly called back knowing that I was going to get yet another rep, and have to explain everything again. I talked to a very nice lady who saw to it that a refund was put through. However, it isn’t immediate… So my bank account is missing $400 at this point. Finally, she figures out that she can’t switch my account to a hotspot plan, and I would need to cancel the account, have the fees waived, and open a new hotspot plan. This is what I figured out ohh… back in July, but nobody wanted to acknowledge that fact. She transfers me to cancellations.

Of all the folks I’ve spoken with at T-Mobile, I think she was the only one that actually got the problem. She canceled my account and ensured there would be no fees. Somehow I don’t *really* believe that. I think T-Mobile will see that the account was inactivated and then reactivated to avoid an early termination, and will take the money out again (probably before they do the $400 credit, which will bring the total to $600. More than the security deposit I had to put down on the phone to begin with.

The funny thing? After all this I still want a freakin’ hotspot plan – so I can use the wifi access at Starbucks on my laptop and iPhone.

For a long time I have been an Obama fan, and I think it is wonderful that an African-American and a woman are front-runners for the presidency (and hey, it only took 200 years), but to be honest… I’m losing interest in the “mainstream” candidates. I am not a Clinton fan because of the fact that she pushed for universal healthcare and is now in their pocket, and while I admire Obama not taking lobbyist money and being a great speaker and all the other reasons people like him… I don’t think one can stand up and say “I was against the war all along” when he wasn’t even in a position to vote one way or the other and therefore can’t be held to the fire on something he said in a speech. Perhaps when actually voting, his opinion would have been different.

None of the debates sound much like debates at all until Kucinich gets a turn to speak. They sound like a bunch of old rich folks repeating themselves and stroking their own egos and occasionally each-other’s.

I want a real change. We heard nothing but good news for the last mid-term elections. We were told the Democrats were going to shake things up. They were going to bring the troops home from this unnecessary war. We’re still there. They were going to protect our privacy while ensuring our national security. They just gave the Bush administration everything it wanted with regards to wiretapping. At every chance they get, they roll over to the neocon agenda, and frankly I’m disgusted by it.

The tracking number provided gives no results at USPS, and I get no response from FYE other than canned nonsense. I suppose I should attempt to cancel the order completely.