Author: Roger

My mother used to “work outside the home”, as it’s now referred to, when we were kids. So we spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s, her mother’s, house. Grandma Williams used to tell us stories about bogeymen and whatnot, and Leslie and I were gullible enough to believe her tales; baby sister Marcia was too savvy to buy into it.

My mother was pretty much unaware of this until we told her when we were adults. This gave her a huge case of the guilts. Was she a good mother? My sisters and I perfected our response, we heard the question so often.

“We’re FINE, Mom! None of us are mass murderers or destitute. We’re happy, reasonably healthy. You were a fine mom, and we love you.” Which worked until she thought of it again.

Recently, Sony has been caught using some pretty underhanded, quite invasive methods to keep people from copying CDs released from certain artists. I’ve not discussed this with everyone until now, because Sony would not release the list of those titles that are affected by this “XCP” copy protection.

There are already at least four ways of using this “XCP” software for nefarious purposes.

Please note, this is about removing some nasty software that makes your PC vulnerable to many different attacks, not about bypassing legitimate software protection (which this is NOT).

Here is the list of CURRENTLY KNOWN artists/titles (more may come out of the woodwork):

Trey Anastasio – Shine
Celine Dion – On ne Change Pas
Neil Diamond – 12 Songs
Our Lady Peace – Healthy in Paranoid Times
Chris Botti – To Love Again
Van Zant – Get Right with the Man
Switchfoot – Nothing is Sound
The Coral – The Invisible Invasion
Acceptance – Phantoms
Susie Suh – Susie Suh
Amerie – Touch
Life of Agony – Broken Valley
Horace Silver Quintet – Silver’s Blue
Gerry Mulligan – Jeru
Dexter Gordon – Manhattan Symphonie
The Bad Plus – Suspicious Activity
The Dead 60s – The Dead 60s
Dion – The Essential Dion
Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten
Ricky Martin – Life

I would suspect ANY SONY or BMG disc released during 2005. Some of you may note that I’m not calling these Audio CD’s or CD’s – they are in fact NOT true Audio CD’s. Many of these non-audio CD titles will cause damage to stereos (car and home) that do not know how to deal with the non-audio portion of the disc.

Anyone out there heard any more on this?

I don’t care. I feel no pity.

When I was a kid, I used to go to O’Leary’s market at the corner and buy cigarettes for my father. (You used to be able to do such things, back in the bad old days.) Winstons, they were.
Some point after the Surgeon General’s warning about the risks of lung disease from cigarettes, my father developed emphysema. He quit, but when the symptoms went away, he went back to smoking. I thought this was the dumbest thing he had ever done, and I (gingerly) made that known to him. Eventually, I started stealing his cigarettes, first a few at a time, and then whole packs. (He bought them by the carton.) I figured if they became expensive enough, he’d have to quit. Packs were already up to 35 or 40 cents. Soon, my father tired of my behavior and said, “Roger, give me back my cigarettes,” and I did.
Eventually, my father quit smoking. He’d argue otherwise, though. He’d say that he never quit, he just stopped for a day, then another day, until it became over 25 years of another day without tobacco.

Back in 1972, I was in an elevator at college when a guy was coming onto the elevator and about to light up. I pleaded with him not to. He said, “Why? Do you have asthma?” I lied, “Yes!” and he didn’t light up. I have a very good nose, and I’ve sussed out a smoker at 30 feet. I don’t know if I’m peculiarly sensitive to smoke, but I do know that physically it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to be around smoking, or heavy smokers, or even where smoking has taken place recently and/or heavily.

I’m not as nice about this issue as I used to be, especially since I’ve had a child. I suppose I can live with people offing themselves, but I draw the line when they’re slowly killing me and those I love. I really suffer when smokers smoke in open air stadia. It may be pouring rain, but I’ll leave a bus kiosk before standing next to smoking.

Tomorrow is the Great American Smoke-Out where people are supposed to try to quit tobacco. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths both among men and among women. One cannot nag someone to quit: see Steve Gerber on August 10. (Mark Evanier had some interesting observations about this back on August 9.) Good luck to those who desire to quit.

Our phone service last year I had ordered from some other carrier, and the bill always seemed terribly high. So Carol contacted Verizon for another package, and it became even higher.

We both have Masters degrees, but for the life of us, we couldn’t figure out why our phone bill ran nearly $100 per month, especially when we made few or no long distance calls. True, we had a second line for our Internet connection, but that was only about $8 before taxes.

One of the things we were promised with the new service was a clear signal. Well, it’s clear enough, except when it isn’t. And it isn’t when it gets close to the computer, for some reason.

Still, there is a clear cost savings.

Now I am inclined to make as many long-distance calls as I can. Give me you number; maybe I’ll call you.

A recent (last two weeks) enhancement puts the phone number of an incoming caller on our TV screen. Obviously, that’s a mixed bag. It’s nice to not have to get up to answer the phone when the screen has posted in the upper left, “Private Name, Private Number”, but if I were to be planning a surprise for Carol, for instance, it could really put the kibosh on the deal. I imagine there’s a way to disable the feature, but I don’t know what it is. I didn’t hear about the feature from Time Warner; I read about it in the paper.

The one thing I don’t like about the phone system, the one thing that nearly killed the deal, is the fact that if the cable goes out, we have no capacity for E-911 service, a point they emphasized repeatedly, including with two mailings. I guess that’s the reason to have cell phones with per call charges.

Naturally, the transition from Verizon did not go smoothly. There was a final bill of $41, which we paid, but then we got a SECOND bill for NEW service, under the telephone number of our second line. It seems that the day the Verizon guy showed up (September 6) to uninstall the Verizon, the computer put it in as a new installation, with all of its attendant fees. I called Verizon, was told that the bill was in error, and that, in fact, we were due nearly $67. (One is usually paying ahead for telephone service.)

Then, LAST month, I get another bill from Verizon for $138, with a threat to disconnect the service that we don’t even have or want. I call the first Verizon help number and get stuck in phone mail hell. I call the second Verizon help number, but I put in my actual current phone number and get stuck again, and hang up. Finally, I call the second Verizon help number, put in our “new” phone number, wade through the voice mail options for five minutes before being given an option to talk to a real, live human being.

This Verizon representative finally cancels the charges on the second number, assures us that the $67 check the representative promised us a month ago is on its way within the next two weeks. I’ll believe it when I cash it.

Just last week, ANOTHER Verizon bill, this time for $87. It is to laugh, lest one cry.