On Donkey Balls and Goodness

I'm sure we all have our little things that we like and don't like about our cell phones and the service that makes them useful. I've mentioned before that I like text messaging, among other things. Well, at my old gig, we had service with Verizon Wireless. And it was Good. I got a signal pretty much everywhere I went, and it was marvelous in my apartment. When I switched jobs, I moved to Cingular because that's who the company works with, and they are paying. After a month of unresponsiveness from Cingular and some disturbingly large overage charges incurred by me, a couple of angry phone calls allowed me to bring my number with me, and it was once again Good. Or so I thought. See, Cingular apparently doesn't have that annoying guy asking if his phone can hear him now like Verizon does. Thus, there are places where his phone would not be able to hear him. My apartment is one of those places. Even worse, he would be audible sometimes, but not others. Sometimes, he would stop being audible while standing completely still.

In short, the coverage from Cingular in my apartment is craptastic. It's been quite frustrating for me to see their commercials claiming the fewest dropped calls, as my phone drops calls all the time, and not just in my apartment. But hey, maybe the study that was the basis for those commercials didn't come around here. I can see that. It's probably not worth getting too worked up about. Stress isn't good for me.

BUT, that's not all. On the off-chance that I was handling that situation with aplomb, my phone decided that it would no longer send or receive text messages. Then, the situation got worse, and it started dropping calls more regularly. Sadly, I don't think furiously throwing the little phone around my apartment has proven to be an effective remedy for these problems, but it has provided some stress relief, and stress is not good for me.

BUT WAIT, there's more. Just in case I could handle the dropped calls, poor signal quality, lack of texting capability, and heretofore unmentioned bad sound quality on those occasions that the phone did work, my phone will often not ring when there's an incoming call. People will get routed directly to my voicemail for no apparent reason. I guess I could see that, if someone called during one of those none-too-rare moments of degraded signal quality, the phone wouldn't ring. Even better, when this non-ringing occurs (assuming an event not happening can take place ... but let's not get too philosophical here), my phone gives me no indication that I have received a voicemail. I can't get all worked up about it, though. The damned stress is no good for me. At least the voicemail still gets the call. Except when it doesn't. I have received emails from people asking me to call them after repeated attempts to call my number have given them endless ringing, a busy signal, or some strange error message. That has often inspired me to speak red-faced and in odd tongues, with guttural sounds spewing from me in the form of something like -- please excuse the coarse language -- "gahdameffingshitbagdickhead buttmunchingbastardswhycantyoumakemyphonework thatiswhatyouaresupposedtodoaftearall youcompleteidioticasseaters!" And I meant it, too. And I can't have that, because STRESS IS NOT GOOD FOR ME. Or you for that, matter. It's a Bad Thing.

All in all, I have decided that it's very safe to say that Cingular -- again, please excuse the coarse language -- sucks donkey balls. If it were up to me, they would go out of business and their marketing people (the ones who came up with the fewest dropped calls ad campaign) would have to stop sucking those donkey balls and clean my home for the rest of my life. Or something even worse that I can't think of right now.

However, since those are not likely outcomes, I decided to do what I do, which is try to apply some technology to the problem. I had started using Skype to talk with a guy at the new gig when neither of us were in the office. In case you don't know, Skype is a little program that allows people to have voice conversations from computer to computer over the Internet. Sure, geeks have been doing this sort of thing for years, but Skype has more momentum. Millions of people are using it, and it works really well. It has great sound quality, and it's as reliable as my wireless home network and cable modem connection (which is really pretty good).

BUT that's not all. Skype also has this feature called SkypeOut that lets people use their computers to call landline phones practically anywhere in the world for pennies per minute. About the time my cell phone had finally managed to annoy the ass out of me, Skype up and made all SkypeOut calls to the US and Canada free until the end of the year. So I started making calls from my apartment that way all the time. The Caller ID is messed up, and some people won't take the calls as a result, but it otherwise works great.

BUT THERE'S MORE! I bought an in-bound phone number from them for about $40 for a year, via their SkypeIn service. When I'm at home, I just forward my cell phone to my SkypeIn number, and calls ring on my computer. EVERY TIME. And if someone leaves a voicemail, I know about it, just like I'm supposed to. It's marvelous.

To cap it off, I decided that I didn't like having to sit at my computer any time I wanted to talk on the phone, so I bought an adapter that connects a regular phone to my computer, and I can talk on it as I move about the place. It's like having a landline, but cheaper. Life is good.

To sum up: Skype is a Good Thing, and Cingular -- please excuse my coarse language -- sucks donkey balls.

Manly Advice

I just sat here watching The 40 Year Old Virgin, and it was cracking me up. Predictably, I think Cal's character is hilarious because he's a friggin' caveman. More than anything, though, that movie showed me the dangers of guys giving other guys advice on how to deal with women. Throughout, three dudes are trying to help Andy score, but their advice is all over the map. Sitting in my place by myself, I was guffawing (Yes, I said "guffawing." Deal with it.) at a sequence where Cal tells Andy that scoring (great, now I hear Beavis in my head: "Yeah! heh heh ... Score! We're gonna SCORE!") is analogous to growing plants, specifically pot. After Andy impresses Beth, the bookstore employee/nymphette, by only asking her questions and not actually saying anything, the following exchange takes place:

Cal: That was great! I would have thought you'd been doin' that for years.
Andy: It totally worked! Do you think I should've asked her out?
Cal: No! You wait until the seed grows into a plant. Then you fuck the plant.

Classic. But I'm keeping Cal away from Mom's garden. I can't imagine that's good for the plants.

Battered, But Not Broken

I find myself having a bit of a rough go this morning. My shoulders are all stiff. My left knee has a dull ache that I'm not at all used to. My right ankle is swollen and sore, which I am unfortunately very used to. My right hip is just uncomfortable all the time, and my right hamstring expresses its displeasure with me every time I stand up. Whither all this pain? In a word, softball. Yesterday, after 3 maddening weeks of rain outs, my softball team, Team Darwin, played the conclusion of our league playoffs. We've been playing double headers every week since April, but yesterday took a bit more out of the tank. The tournament is double elimination, and we won our first two games almost a month ago. We lost the first game yesterday, at least partly because we were one player short of a full team. However, we then turned it around, probably at least in part because of our last player showing up, and we won 3 in a row to claim the championship. 4 games in a day is a bit much for my getting-older-and-fatter-every day body. However, I have to say it was worth it, as I can now claim to be part of the Arlington County softball champions. Arlington County, Virginia, I mean. Well, the champs of the Co-Ed league. That is, the Co-Ed C league. The one that plays on Wednesday nights. Seriously, can you imagine a greater feeling than to be part of the Arlington County (Virginia) Co-Ed C Wednesday League Champions? I thought not. Maybe there are some people who might not be impressed, having also played for a championship yesterday. But I had a 0% chance of making a game-saving catch in that one. Besides, no one in our tournament was named the MVP for head-butting someone in the chest. Maybe the voters were afraid they'd get the same treatment if they voted for someone else. Still, congrats to Italy. But let's not forget Team Darwin.