Yes, like a Phoenix he rises again. Actually more like Scottsdale, but here goes...

There comes a time in a young man’s life, or even an old fool’s, for that matter, where he needs to take stock of exactly where he stands in this vast universe. The beginning of year number 2007 proved to be that point for me. Upon taking solid stock, I found the inventory to be falling quite a bit short.

Yes, the beginning of the new year sent me the message. It was finally time. I was ready. I was prepared to join the 20th century. I can work on the 21st a few years down the road if I live long enough. Now I’m going to do it.

I’m getting rid of dial up Internet service.

If you’re going to do something, the only way to go is to do it right. Instead, I followed my own primal instincts.

A fresh start on the Internet can be enhanced with a new computer system. I picked up the highly acclaimed I mac computer, complete with the classic senior citizen twenty inch screen and a printer slash scanner which happen to be in fine working order. That would be the complete opposite of what had been happening previously.

Everyone knows that you need a functioning scanner in this day and age in order to take full advantage of the vast World Wide Web. Like being able to send Lucy pictures of my feet. Thankfully most home computers do not come equipped with smell-o-vision.

Anyway, my constant service provider had been a company known as Compuserve. To my knowledge, the only people on the planet who actually subscribed to Compuserve were the company president, his Uncle Earl, and myself.

Compuserve’s cancellation rules were quite reasonable. Give us a reasonable amount of notice before termination, and if you cancel within three days of a billing date you may be charged for another month.

Nothing unexpected. I thought they would want their own set of my car keys or perhaps my first born male child.

I figured I could call and cancel service, and I would probably be gone by February. Upon making the call to cancel at about 11:30 AM on January 6, I was terminated from cyberspace by about 11:45 AM on January 6.

That’s not so terrible, I thought. In fact, we have a wide range of high speed internet services here in South Jersey, consisting of a company which rhymes with horizon, the Comcast monopoly, and a tin can and a bullhorn. Choose from Column A or Column B.

The Verizon option looked like the best one on the horizon. Quite shockingly, they put the telephone service right through, but they needed until January 19th to turn on a DSL line.
Self-installation equipment is scheduled to arrive about a week before that date, including a disc and a modem.

Bottom line there means two weeks without any internet. I’m not aware of any states which have Tech Rehab Clinics, although it’s an idea whose time has come.

Rumor has it that you can occasionally walk away from your monitor and step outside your door into the outside world. For the uninitiated, this may involve physical activity. By latest reports, physical activity involves more than callouses on the thumbs and pain in the back from leaning over the monitor too much.

But I’ve never been a computer abuser. Step Three in my own twelve step program is denial.

Two weeks offline is somewhat of a challenge, but I had been looking forward to higher speed with a new provider. Compuserve had this little issue of shutting down many more times than I shut down the computer, like about three times per week on average.

And being the technical wizard that I am, I realized with an activation date scheduled for January 19th with the Verizon people, chances of that actually occurring grew slimmer when I hadn’t received the installation equipment by the 17th. It was time to call one of Verizon’s 10, 137 available phone numbers to headquarters to see where I stood.

Out of those 10,137 phone numbers, maybe three allowed you to speak to an actual human. If you were lucky enough to reach them. A recording which tells you to check the status of your order at Verizon’s site on the internet is not helpful when you cannot reach the internet without them providing the service. But screaming at recorded messages after the 35th call turns out to be very therapeutic.

Whatever your stand may be on the immigration issue, I’d be much more pleased with certain ones if the could communicate and understood their job. At least the operators who could speak English were smart enough to disconnect me while they were transferring my call to the billing department.

After trying for about two hours over three days to find out when I would receive service, I was told my phone line could not yet be qualified.

ME: How long of a delay does this mean?

OPERATOR: We don’t know.

ME: Work with me here. Does this mean seven days, seven weeks, or seven months?

OPERATOR: We don’t know.

I was then offered a compromise plan of temporary dial up service until the phone line is qualified. I could cancel in thirty days if I wasn’t satisfied, which I could guarantee.

Another fifteen minutes on hold led to this exchange:

OPERATOR: I’m sorry, but we can’t connect the dial-up service without your account number.

ME(remembering to be polite at all times): (screaming) HOW CAN I GIVE YOU AN ACCOUNT NUMBER WHEN I HAVEN’T BEEN BILLED YET?!!

That’s when I realized that I could offer Verizon a compromise plan. Take all the time you need and I’ll take my business elsewhere. The best way they could provide me with outstanding service, as their recordings say, would be if I cancelled it.

I was a free agent in Cyberspace again. My unlimited high speed internet options now consisted of Comcast and Comcast.

These people gave me the installation equipment right away, and promised immediate service. They would even install the cables themselves for a minimal fee, in case they had customers without the technical knowledge to do so. Not that I know of any.

Perhaps this explains the extent of my short sabbatical. The only thing it doesn’t explain is why it can’t be longer, for the good of the community. I can now speed into the 20th Century and provide all of you with vital, important information which you never needed anyway. Soon I hope to have color television and hot and cold running water. But at least I am eligible for Lucy’s next movie.

Bob H

Time Magazine announced that You were the person of the year in 2006, so why can't this work?

 

This is going to be the Year of You.

   This is the year in which you come first, and sometimes also second and third. This is the year you learn to say "Mine!" and "I don't mind if I do" and "Comin' through!" and, after those are mastered, "I'm about to lose control, and I think I like it."

   For the first time in your life you'll learn how to stare at something delicious on a dinner companion's plate and ask, "Are you gonna eat that?" in a tone that makes clear that there is only one acceptable answer. Indeed you will learn to ask the question even as the desired morsel is in transit to your gaping, slobbering maw.

   This year, you'll stop saying "Excuse me," and start saying " Excuse me???"

   You're not going to be the victim anymore. You're going to rise above such petty feelings as "wounded" and "self-pitying" and get serious about actual revenge. Make a list of the people that (1) you're really peeved at, (2) you suspect you're miffed at but can't remember why, and (3) you're feeling slightly disconnected from, possibly because of some unspoken grievance that might be resolved through frank discussion. Now put a big X through all those names. Zero them out.

   You'll need special music for your special year: "My Way," "It's My Party," "I Me Mine" and that Bobby Brown classic, "My Prerogative."

   Requested birthday gifts from everyone you know: mirrors.

   This year, ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you. For starters, take creative tax-return itemization to a new level. That wild night at Cafe Milano with the $775 tab swollen by vintage Barolos -- you spent much of the time talking about whether to move to Italy. Itemize under "Moving Expenses." Your new plasma-screen TV, bought on credit: Someday you'll give it away, so take the charitable deduction now . Go ahead, give yourself the "Tax Benefit of the Doubt."

   This is the year you can't be bothered. When someone tries to ask you to do something you don't want to do, flick your fingers at the noisome individual and say "Shoo," the way you would dismiss a mangy cat. Other phrases to master: "I don't think so," "Not gonna happen," "Nope, nope, nope," "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-no," and the brilliantly subverbal but clearly negatory "Eh."

   Here's a scenario: Your boss asks in a very polite voice if you would please terminate your two-hour coffee break and attend to a minor matter that you are generously paid to deal with. Old paradigm: "Yes, boss, I'll be right on that." New paradigm: "What is it about the phrase 'I'm not finished with my latte' that you don't understand?"

   This is the year that you quit your terrible habits, including some or all of the following: smoking, drinking, stuffing your face, hating yourself, being ridiculous, being generally low and vile, kvetching when you should be kvelling, and, most of all, listening to stupid people and psychos who fail to perceive your profound greatness. In the Year of You, people gotta get with the program, or be shunned.

   People need to grasp the fact that if an observation wasn't brilliant and irrefutably true, you wouldn't have made it to begin with. The proof of the veracity of a statement is its source in your spoken words. Don't say, "I think the moon is much bigger than the sun," because that implies uncertainty. You say so, therefore it is.

   This past year was supposed to be the Year of You, and it wasn't. Why not? Perhaps because you didn't truly believe in yourself. You had doubts. You worried that at some level you were not truly worthy. And you were right, of course, but that's where you made your biggest mistake: You failed to implement a policy of Strategic Narcissism. Self-delusion and an almost monstrous lack of conscience are your aces in the hole.

   If all goes as planned, by the end of this year, you will have become the person you truly are, inside, potentially, conceivably: the real hypothetical you. And then it's not just a question of a single year. The rest of your life will be a kind of Permanent Festival of You, with you as the guest of honor, toastmaster and chairperson of the executive committee. Your inner peace will be supplemented by your sense of absolute dictatorial power.

   But it's possible that an entire Year of You could become tedious, maybe even start to feel a little self-involved. Because when you really think about it, haven't others been the source of your greatest joys and most lasting memories?

   So let's recalibrate, and start with something very doable, which you have definitely earned:

   The Day of You.

 

Bob H