Soapbox

The following are things that bug me or really piss me off. They're not necessarily in order of magnitude.

• Spammers. I don't like receiving unsolicited email. I don't like receiving obscene and pornographic email (Don't kids get spammed with this too? Very bad!). I don't like receiving offers for which I would obviously have no use (breast enlargement?). As someone who has had his mail servers hijacked and clogged by spammers and then has had to clean up the mess, all I can say is I wish anyone who sends email in bulk a long, slow horrible death. Preferably soon.

• Pop-up and pop-under ads on Websites. These annoy the s**t out of me and I will not do business with anyone who pops up an ad when I open or close a Web page. Period.

• Citicorp. I dropped Citibank/Citicorp off the new revision of this peeves list, but... they're back! Today I received in a mail an offer that so smacked of unadulterated greed it begged to me to make this addition. CitiMortgage, after decades of not offering it, now has a biweekly mortgage repayment plan. Making bi-weekly mortgage payments is a great way of evening out cash flow and making one's financial life a little smoother on a weekly basis. It can also reduce the term of a mortgage by fitting in an extra month's payment each year (26 biweekely payments instead of 12 monthly payments). However, in its greed, CitiMortgage forces the following terms on its customers if they choose this convenient option (at least these were the terms offered to me):
  • Each biweekly payment is $18 more than half your monthly payment ($36 a month extra).
  • There is a $1 funds transfer fee per payment. Ahem! I have electronic banking and make dozens of transfers a month without paying a thing. Why is this transfer different? GREED.
  • A $379 "start-up charge" What is this? GREED.

  Someone in the State Banking Commission really needs to look into this.

  By the way, according to the offer letter, my "excellent mortgage payment history qualifies [me] for the CitiMortgage Biweekly Plan." Not sure I totally believe this, as the letter was included with my THIRD monthly statement. (It's a new loan.)

• Television. I watch a lot of TV. With a DirecTV receiver and a few hundred channels to choose from, the TV set is always on; usually just in the background. I like "The Practice," and have caught most of the series in syndication. There are a few other series I'd like to follow too, but can't seem to remember what's on when anymore. I've stopped watching most network television after becoming disgusted at what the networks considered entertainment. Garbage with such memorable names as "Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place." I really started getting turned off to network television when the networks started putting the producer's sign-off message before the end credits instead of after, where it belongs. You know, the "Sit, Ubu, Sit" message; traditionally the last part of the program. That just didn't make sense.

  Lately, even Comedy Central, which I used to have droning in the background for hours, disgusts me. The evening I wrote this, I switched away from Comedy Central twice. Once during the vapid "Crank Yankers," when they were discussing crabs (lice) on a woman's private parts and once again during Saturday Night Live, in the middle of a vomit sketch. Comedy Central (formerly the Ben Stein Network, then the Jimmy Kimmel Network, now the SNL Network) has become tasteless and all too repetitious. Their lineup includes such gems as "Insomniac with Dave Attell" (unappealing on so many levels and just not funny), a show on bowling, whose name escapes me, "The Man Show" (absolutely tasteless, sexist and worse, not the least bit funny), "Battle Bots" (what part of fighting robots is comedy?), and the aforementioned "Crank Yankers," which uses puppets (!) to accompany recordings of illegal crank telephone calls, and I am sure encourages at least some people to try making these kind of calls for their own amusement.

  Two last rants on the subject of television: Number one: The FX Network. This "network" has rescheduled "The Practice" and their prime time lineup on so many occasions that it has become impossible to follow any series they show at that time. they have gone from showing back to back episodes of "The Practice" (two hours per night) last November, to one hour each week night, then dropping it on Friday (but still advertising it as being on nightly), to two nights per week to none.) Fortunately, I can catch my favorite lawyers at 11 am, and they are only occasionally preempted at that time by things like Nascar tryouts (Ugh!!!). Yes. FX is truly brain dead when it comes to program scheduling.

  Number two: All stations/channels/networks who use the bottom of the screen for their own nefarious purposes. Cable stations started it with identifying logos in the lower right corner. Broadcast TV eventually adopted that. Then the logos became animated. Then they turned into ads. Now, one horrible little "network," TNN, reserves the full width of the bottom of the screen for its own use, totally blocking whatever part of the program would have appeared there. This is their revised scheme. For a period of time, they just vertically compressed the picture to free up that space at the bottom. Captain Picard and the rest of the poor crew of the Enterprise all appeared a bit shorter and fatter.

  It has come to the point with the quantity and length of commercial breaks, the use of screen space for advertising, the speeding up and compressing of credits and the split-screens with credits and still more ads, that TV networks have lost all respect for viewers and for the material they are broadcasting. It's all just about advertising now. And people are channel surfing more than ever.

• The RIAA. This has to be a top peeve with so many people. Seems the RIAA has put an end to most Internet radio by lobbying to have Webcasters pay ridiculous and exorbitant royalty fees retroactively to 1998, based on the number of listeners the Webcaster has. Conventional radio stations are not taxed this way, why is Internet radio? Really, I can't blame the RIAA for jumping down Napster's throat, but screw the greedy bastards. They get no sympathy from me now, not that they ever got much. Long live file swapping services! Go BearShare! Go Kazaa!

  Errr... Not so fast with BearShare. The last upgrade to the free version of this program warned me it would be installing software that tracked my habits online and would pop up targeted advertisements whenever it wished to. Further, that sofware could not be installed or removed separately from BearShare without disabling BearShare. I aborted the install and did not upgrade.

• Online music pay services. If record companies think they can charge for music downloads then restrict you in the way you use those downloads (preventing your burning that music to CD or listening to it on another device), they really need to get their heads out of their collective asses! People will pay to own music (maybe), not lease it.

• Telephone charges. I make $6 in calls a month (combined local and long distance). My bill is about $55 (for two lines with Caller ID). That's $49 in fees and taxes on a $6 service. Ridiculous! Also... paying a surcharge on my phone bill to support mass transportation. How are these two items related?

• The Public Service Commission. Public Service??? Their job is to review petitions for utility rate increases. Have they ever denied one? And why are utilities for-profit anyway. Shouldn't things like electricity, water, and gas be fixed-price government operated, guaranteed services. I think so!

• Banks. They charge 17% or more on credit cards, and pay you 1.5% on savings. Is this fair? They charge you for keeping your account, for writing checks and for using an ATM. It's your money they're lending out at 17%! And the ATM was developed because it's cheaper than a human doing the same job. So why are you charged for a transaction at a foreign, but electronically linked bank? Because they can!

• Corporate layoffs. They lay off hundreds or thousands to make "Wall Street" happy or marginally improve the bottom line, ruining lives in the process. How come the ones who get laid off are those grunts who do most of the work. How about some retraining and reassignment?

• Bill Gates and Microsoft. Will he not rest until he influences every aspect of our lives? When Microsoft products run the planet, will Gates announce his "Microsoft World" line of software and force a planetary upgrade to the next buggy release? Does the whole planet need scroll bars? I'd just like to add in here that the Setup process for Exchange 2000 Server SUCKED. If you get wacky error messages during install, you're supposed to merge service pack files and try it again. What kind of product is so poorly tested that it won't even install cleanly?!

• The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. Microsoft has near monopolies on a number of fronts and everyone knows they practice trade unfairly, like giving away software to put pressure on or eliminate a competitor, or forcing a computer manufacturer to unconditionally include a Microsoft operating system. Why doesn't the government have the backbone to put an end to this? And why must the government's lawsuit drag on for over four years without any interim change in Microsoft's practices?!

• Corporate Megamergers. Corporate consolidation is almost never good for the consumer, yet the government approves every large merger between like and unlike entities. Banks merging with insurance companies and brokerages, oil companies merging among themselves, etc. None of this is good for the consumer and it usually ends up pretty bad for the shareholder too. Why is this allowed to continue? This isn't free enterprise. It's predatory practice.

• MCI/WorldCom. After trying to collect $125 from me for two years for charges made to a calling card that I never had, they finally went bankrupt. Couldn't happen to a nicer company. After nearly 20 years with MCI they started charging me fees out of the blue and without informing me first. No loyalty to a customer who was one of their first. I switched to another provider real fast!

• Circuit City. I will never forgive Circuit City for trying to foist DiVx (pay per view DVDs with a player that phones home your usage so you can be billed) on the public. I just will not do business with that company.

Hm-m-m ... Rather cathartic. Thank you.