Malik (8/3/09)

Things never go smoothly it seems, as of late. I mean I'm torn between heat killing my will to enjoy life, heat causing needed chores to be more needed, ADT wasting my time, and other not-so-fun parts of the real world. It only gets worse when you're a Seattle sports fan and cannot stand to take much more of the crap.

For example, the Sounders FC game started with a goal in the first minute or so of play. A goal against Seattle. A goal scored by Seattle against Seattle. An own goal in the first few moments of the game. I can say that a lot of ways, but it always means the same thing that early in the game; the game will be ugly.

Then you have the Mariners. Win or lose, the M's rarely can do anything to make it feel like the M's deserve a winning record. Maybe Saturday did have a good game with both Lopez and Griffey being a triple away from either hitting the cycle. Plus, Ichiro had his second at bat of the game in the second inning, which is a sure sign of some dominance on offense. Then again, you have the M's blowing leads, giving up good games, and just playing like crap as the offense typically fails to get off the ground, the pitching is nothing short of painful to behold (right now the M's only have one true starting pitcher and four big question marks filling in the rest of the rotation), and it's all up to fielding, which is not what a team can be entirely based around.

Anyway, this post must be short today.  Since problems always come in groups, I now am off to deal with another of life's little surprises.

Malik

Malik (8/5/09)

Well, it's been a crazy time for me. I've had a not-so-nice blend of good news and bad news that's making life interesting. If you're wondering, the nice blend of good and bad would be one with no bad.

Anyway, I was surprised to see the next Final Fantasy 4: The After Years chapters when I turned on my Wii yesterday. For some reason, I was expecting them to be released next Monday. So, I downloaded them...but have yet to play any of them.

While I enjoy having new chapters/tales to play, I cannot find myself nearly as excited for this batch as for previous releases. I mean you have Porom's Tale (white mage centric) and Edward's Tale (the bard). The Lunarian chapter should be awesome, but it will not make up for what I expect to be the two least interesting chapters of the game. At least it should, I hope, be better than Palom's Tale, which was only featuring a black mage and a white mage with low level black magic. I mean that was just an annoying grind-fest that featured too much wasted time on making sure the moon was never set in any attack boosting or black magic weakening states.

I should start, in order with Porom's Tale first, this evening, if all goes smoothly. That's assuming a lot right now since real life responsibilities are trying too hard to pull me away from fun.

I'll also try to get some of the new Spinal Tap songs for Rock Band if I get the chance. At the very least, I want Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight for the GH2 nostalgia...and because it's an awesome song.

However, the bulk of my time seems focused, right now, on dealing with how much ADT is trying to screw me out of my money. I cannot believe that we were required, last night, to pay nearly $30 for a service call that was made to our home...to fix a problem they created. I am sure that money will be coming back to us, as well as the monthly monitoring fees we've paid since our problems started. The question, however, is what will initiate the refund. Will ADT fix the problem after I bitch to constantly higher levels of supervisors? Will ADT be jerks, like they seem to be right now, and not respond until I get the consumer affairs division of the Washington State Attorney General's Office? Will it take me complaining to a consumer watchdog (we have a good local one on our NBC affiliate)? I'm not letting this drop anytime soon, but I just hope this doesn't drag out more than a few more days. It's been either a month and a half or about four months since the problems started (depending on which technician at ADT told us the truth) and we weren't even notified until two weeks ago. With that type of response speed, I'm not expecting a quick resolution...or as much security, as the ADT company seems to promise, for my home.

Malik

Malik (8/6/09)

I started to play Porom's Tale last night, but didn't get far. Between dealing with the bullshit of ADT (now that I've gotten an "explanation" of sorts, I call bullshit on this entire problem) and burning a couple fingers, time and willingness to play games was running quite low. In fact, typing is pretty annoying just from those damned burns. I guess the lesson is an aluminum pan over a grill will get hot quicker than I thought...down one second, moved about thirty seconds later with it taking some fingerprints in the process.

Anyway, the little bit of Porom's Tale I've played is interesting. Unlike the other tales, it covers a hell of a long time span. You start with Palom and Porom as kids still and progress through them growing into their age when the rest of The After Years takes place. It's also interesting to serve as background to Palom's Tale and his quest to become a sage like Tellah.

My only complaint so far is that a lot of early stuff plays like Palom's Tale. That is to say you have a lot of mages and no tanks. The party grows eventually, up to where I'm at now, with Rydia joining...however, that just adds one more mage to the party with a complete fear of the waning moon (and it's attack power increase).

Anyway, to just bring some more closure to things, ADT is now officially on my shit list. After more than a month of no monitoring (at least that's fixed) and two weeks of customer support hell, I could only find a few answers. The main one being to this question; does ADT know what happened? Answer; no! However, instead of being uncertain of if I can trust the company for my needs, I was told I can trust the company that took so much of my money because I "don't have an understanding of how the service works." Strange how that was the answer to anything I brought up to the accounts manager for this region, despite how a problem can easily happen again if the source remains unknown and uncorrected.  It's like saying a house caught fire due to arson and since the person and ignition source are unknown, we can all rest assured that it couldn't happen again.  Or saying that people who eat at a given restaurant are getting sick, but since the cause of illness is unknown, then we can all eat safely since it is indeed unknown.  I cannot buy that line of logic when my safety is involved.

Basically, I'm now trying to get my contract to end so I can be free of their lack of abilities and customer support. I am about a year from my contract ending, and I'll have to go through larger means (like attorney general offices) to get it to be terminated without facing an early termination fee. I just want to be free from the only company I've found that can make Comcast look good when the shit hits the fan. At least Comcast has work hours and phone support beyond the normal hours of a 9-5 work week and will make a house visit on a Saturday, if you schedule far enough in advance.

Anyway, the resolution currently stands at my home getting three months credit, which still doesn't solve anything. If I want out of this hellish situation, then money is far better than some credit that will never become real cash. Also, it doesn't cover the payment for a technician to visit to solve a problem that cannot have been caused by anyone in my home. All it is is some lame sort of skipping the cancelation/retention department by trying to make a crap filled situation look good. Weirdly, I'm of the mind that if whipped cream and chocolate sauce are poured on a lump of crap, I still don't think it's anything more than that same lump of crap. To be less vulgar, I guess you could use that whole "lipstick on a pig" phrase that was flying around about this time last year during the presidential elections.

Lastly for today, I am out of posting for the week. I'm going a bit less technical in my life for the weekend starting tomorrow.

Malik

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