A former latin american exile writes about life..

Ok so I gave up a comfy boring life to go live in South America. Lots have suggested that I write about my experiences, so here it finally is.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

from APPROVED to DECLINED - the message loud and clear from the House of Representatives

After today's news out of Washington, I was originally speechless. Then I got mad and started writing. My writing style is rather, well, blunt.

My biggest wonder is about getting paid by my clients. But this is a cyclical wonder that happens every 15 days. Either it continues or it stops, right? I work as hard as I can. I don't have a 401(k), I'm not invested in the market - but this stuff worries me. I have aging family about to retire and the value of their 401(k) may put that off - but they may have no choice but to start traveling that road due to lack of employment.

I'm also not sure if globalization is about to be redefined. To the average joe six pack globalization means "Gee, wow, ya mean there's a TGI Fridays in Buenos Aires? Cool!" To the economist - they start to lose me at "intertwined" - not because I don't understand it but because it's SO OBVIOUS. Intertwined? No fuckin' kidding. And then the first time they say "probable" - well then I've really tuned out now haven't I?

What I'm wondering is more along the lines of - are we finally seeing a scripted-in-English slow motion (but picking up speed) localized for our country version of a Latin American collapse? Argentina in 2002? Brazil's hyperinflation in the 1970's? Will the US dollar drop so much in the coming weeks that the Zimbabwe dollar (currently at trillions of them to buy USD$1) actually gain ground, with no intervention of the Zimbabwe government?

I haven't been this freaked out about the economy since I was ten years old, living in Kenosha, WI. Unemployment peaked in Kenosha at about ... 33% if I recall correctly? It was exactly tied with Flint, Michigan. Kenosha sort of recovered, Flint not so much. That was all about the auto industry. It was an impending sea change in the economy and no one knew what was coming out the other end, or when it would end or in what form.

We found out. It was - would you like fries with that OR would you like to get real tech-savvy real fast? There wasn't much in between. And oh did we get addicted. No, not to drugs or alcohol (well... nevermind). We got addicted to the word APPROVED. Better than a food pellet. Some of the machines still show it in blue LED letters in that speak-and-spell font. Some show it completely drawn in, on a black-on-grey LCD. And you damn right well gave that machine the once-over before you shared your card with it, we wised up about tossing those reciepts willy-nilly so that someone else did not assume our APPROVal.

The bankers figured it out although we have to keep kicking 'em in the balls to protect privacy - but they kept those approvals coming because they knew we were hooked. Nobody cared HOW the approvals happened but oh we wanted more. We were ENTITLED at varying levels due to the magic of a thing called a FICO score. Step right up and get approved! You'll probably get approved even with a low score but just skip over that fine print with the boring "legal" disclosures (they'd usually trail off into some fast hard to catch mumbling at that point) and then perk back up with "BUT JUST SIGN HERE, YOU'RE APPROVED!"

And now it's the money shot. We set ourselves up to have that 110-pound 6'1" naked hooker pop out of the cake - except there was a surprise. She used to weigh 510 pounds and hasn't had the skin removal surgery yet, she hasn't quite figured out not to eat much if any fatty food with her Alli tablets so she came out of the cake leaving an oily $4.50 a gallon trail. (Oh, except in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and parts 'round there... they line up for a tank of that oily $4.50 a gallon trail!) And oh baby - she's got some medical debt. Her FICO score is more fucked up than the skin on her thighs! By god that cost and that risk is going to get spread across all the users of the system - willing and unwilling.

So we come back to - what is globalization? Just maybe it's not that bright shiny future the marketers pitch. What if, just maybe, it bears NO resemblance to a Cisco commercial? And as approvals are slowing down - snowballing even - what's going to happen now? It's like being ten years old all over again and the biggest industry of your small town just evaporated, never to return - except on a national level.

Oh, it'll rebound somehow in some form - but at what level? The standard of living expected in the mid-70's took quite a bit more effort in the mid-80's and even more in the mid-90's. There are only 24 hours in a day. I hear that in some households there are two parents that both make a real good wage - but that's an ever-smaller demographic. Used to be maybe 20% of the pie chart looked like that. But there's just a sliver left. Your chances of getting a taste aren't high.

So what form could globalization take? A lot of empty unkempt buildings all over urban America - just like major urban areas abroad (and in Detroit)? Evidence that there had once been pavement and road maintenance with odd brief perfectly paved stretches near houses with high walls and electric fences? Four generations under one roof as the norm with as many bars on the windows as one can have but still let light in? Armed private security playing a higher role than police. Could be much of urban America in the near future.

And today the news out of Washington was DECLINED. Oh yeah, the president with the 27-ish percent approval rating (no, the other kind of approval - it has nothing to do with his black Amex co-signed by the Saudis) went on TV to back some legislation HE WROTE HIMSELF, to hear him tell it. His own party and its supporters freaked out. The opposition party called bullshit (as well they should) - everytime that slick fucker in the White House goes on TV several months later it comes out that part or all of it was some preposterous lie to benefit his own agenda.

Could this be where all that APPROVED led us? We pay our elected officials and their employees untold sums of money in salaries, pensions, entitlements - and the result was DECLINED, in the form of no action?

Both sides pointed fingers. Because there's a new synonym for bipartisanship - it's 'bullshit'. Politics has degenerated to, quite simply, having to be RIGHT. That doesn't mean right-wing or left-wing, it means that we have to vote our position because it's the morally superior groupthink correct thing to do among our peer group (political party). After all, it doesn't matter if they get a goddamn thing done because they still get the big salary and the perks. They just have to do their time.

I predict that these highly paid politicians are going to start leaving Washington as if the session is over. Why the hell not? Most of their constituents would be furious about a big hand-out to these same friendly Wall Street bankers - but wouldn't it be a shame if suddenly - there just wasn't a quorum for doing business? As a slick politician who's more concerned about being RIGHT which are you going to pick?

Meanwhile there's heated activity going on inside the huge remaining banks. Most of the mortgage paper is worth just as much as if it were used as toilet paper. Now lets go after the credit cards. There's a trend picking up steam to look at every member of John Q Public and review his avaible credit vs. his FICO score. The new marching orders are to slow down all those APPROVED's.

I hate that any tax money be spent to bail out these wall-street wonks - but at least it CONTROLs it IF our pompous politicians can get past being morally right and actually do something QUITE FORIEGN to any of them: compromise. Because if we don't, wall street is going to implode in an uncontrolled way that will see a lot of golden-parachute deployments over posh Caribbean islands named Saint-Something-or-Other. It'll leave the American people having to kick the APPROVED "drug" cold-turkey but why should they care? It would be a win for the Wall Street slime who shoveled out the approvals. It will be a win for the politicians who have to be morally right. The "Joe Six-Pack demographic" will perceive "they stuck it to the bastards," - and they will realize too late the bastards stuck it to THEM.

The outcome of today's DECLINED message out of the House of Representatives has already reverbrated once around the world. It's going to keep spiraling downwards with every 24-hour cycle. No one knows how far down that will be.

These overpaid out-of-control elected officials need to hear loud and clear: stay in Washington and pass an acceptable compromise that stops the spiral. The historical precedents are there. It may seem impossible in an election year but the two sides have to put aside their differences.

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Monday, September 29, 2008

Going to Fry's on Black Monday '08 - or re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic

EVERY other experience I have had with Fry's is that you will wait 20 or 30 minutes to find a sales rep who's not tied up - this time it was under FIVE. Perhaps under FOUR! The checkout line took an equal amount of time.

It took more time at the supermarket!

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Bloody Monday

Or maybe it's good news? Nah, it has nothing to do with the stock market, it's much closer to home than that.

I paid no attention to the stock market today or the bailout vote. When your expectations of elected officials are that low, why bother?

Better to stay out of the way of the little parts of the government that *do* function - started the day by getting a smashed-out headlight repaired so now I can drive at night without worry! And of course, use GPS to drive everywhere so I *know* my arrival time - thus no need to risk passing a random speed camera going too fast.

How did the headlight get smashed out? Debris on the freeway. When I pulled over to get insurance information from the guys who dropped it - they drove off FAST! No point calling the cops, hit and run accidents happen statistically more often in Phoenix because of the huge population of people who can't get driver's licenses - i.e. undocumented immigrants.

Speed cameras? Run by a for-profit corporation with a cut to the state - the owners win, the state wins, the insurance companies win - but you can't fight that ticket.

(Well some of 'em can be fought but only those taken at a certain location for a few hours... turned out the camera operator isn't even a cop and the guy got nailed for "extreme DUI" IN THE PHOTO RADAR VAN when he went off shift.)

Oh but I digress.

It turns out that Shaggy is in heat. When I picked her up from the dog groomer she told me, "You know your dog is ... (she was embarrassed to have to, you know, tell me, paused and lowered her voice...) having her period? We sell diapers for it, you know?"

"Do you see how hyper that dog is? I don't see a diaper staying on that animal for longer than five minutes out of my sight! But thanks..." (And I'm thinking... I *am* aware that I own an animal that happens to be female so why on earth should this be embarrassing?)

Ah well, it'll be three weeks of erratic behavior and then back to normal. It was better news than from the TV!

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USA's do-nothing federal government again, does nothing - spectacularly

Proving again that it's safer to be "right" than take any action at all, lawmakers did nothing AGAIN for the US people. We're dropping straight past recession due to do-nothing policies and politics. So much for a "compromise" bill to reward the failures of wall street.

So let's see... I have bread here at home and I'll have to check the TV listings for circuses. Yes, that's it, I'll ignore it all with bread and circuses.

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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Evening in America

Tonight we saw Bush the Big Liar on TV telling us how "urgent" it was for Congress to bail out wall street.

Um, so sorry - presidents only go on TV during events like the Cuban Missile Crisis or things of that ilk. If he's a republican president and not a "tool" he should be staying at home looking at his investment bank statements and crying in his beer - period. I don't care that some in his party feel the big wall street banks should get a bail-out on the US taxpayers' dime!

Government cash plus bank money = SOCIALISM!

The last time George Jr. was on TV was to tell us how Al Qaeda was linked to 9/11 and how we had to piss away billions in Iraq - and that was all proven many times over to be a BIG FAT LIE.

So he's on TV, (probably) lying his ass off about the "urgency" of the "bailout." Seven tenths of one TRILLION dollars is the amount he's on CNN begging for - excuse me if I'm a little jaded because we haven't seen the equivalent of a Tammy Faye Bakker and an air-conditioned dog house.

Personally, I am only in support of a wall street "gift" from the government (because thats what it will be) if it includes comprehensive birth control provisions for Sarah Palin's kids and federally mandated open records laws applicable to all states - but enforced first in Alaska.

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Saturday, September 13, 2008

Arson, 100 yards away from home

The management office of my apartment complex was gutted by fire last night. Fortunately it's a standalone building with no one living adjacent to the structure.

Unreal. Obviously either someone who applied for a place got denied -or- didn't handle getting evicted very well.

The word on the street is that at 4am somebody broke one of the windows of the office and threw some kind of fuel in there and lit it up. I sleep with an air conditioner next to me so I didn't hear anything. The fire had to have gotten put out pretty quickly.

I've vaguely been considering moving. Now the idea is a bit more appealing. I'll feel a little better when I hear that someone's been arrested for the crime.

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Tuesday, September 09, 2008

the WRONG time to join a gym (but it was a good idea anyway)

Ok, so I need to do lots of cardio each week. The buzz from a good workout lasts into the next day and OH BOY do I need that.

Of course - what's wrong with being at a gym every night - the TV's that face the cardio machines. I.E. it's all politics all the time.

I can't believe how far the right wing's standards have fallen. Ok, we're going to put a woman on the ticket. No matter her fifteen-year-old daughter is knocked-up and her eighteen year old son's scheduled for a shotgun wedding. UNREAL.

McSame's campaign then proceeds to insult the nation's intelligence with that B.S. demand for an apology about a lipstick on a pig metaphor. In reality polls show that most every sighted heterosexual male watching her speech at the convention was thinking "I could hit that."

(For those [few] readers who are still hung up on the lipstick on a pig thing -
(a) just stop reading and
(b) 'hit that' is not about domestic violence - ask a non-home-schooled 15 year old if you've never heard the term)

A friend commented to me that this election has to be extra-confusing for Mormons. From their point of view: On the one side you have a black man (apologies to Seinfeld) - not that there's anything wrong with that (since 1978 that is). On the other side you have a woman with a family who is *away* from her family most of the time and not currently pregnant (although she could be). Incredible. Which to choose?!

On the flip side of it - hell, by default I'll vote for Obama. Hillary Clinton just is too toxic to be on the democrat ticket - just too unpopular. But I'm not thrilled about Joe Biden either - he's been in Washington since 1973.

So both sides have a big dose of "more of the same" and someone really new to the whole scene. Both sides are promising the same bullshit I've heard during every presidential election in my adult life - we're finally going to fix healthcare, we're finally going to fix social security, it goes on and on.

Meanwhile, it's government by and for the corporation. I'll go through the motions and vote but I really don't believe either side will change much of anything. It's not in the best interest of the lobbyists.

For *sure* I'll be making more use of my smartphone and slingbox to avoid the "news" channels until after yet another "no good choice" US presidential election is finally over.

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How to complain effectively about T-mobile call delivery problems

All is not well inside the Magenta Network.

My previous call delivery problem is back with a vengeance - ironically they couldn't deliver a call to me that was coming from the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) convention floor. It wasn't due to local congestion either. They wouldn't even respond with a trouble ticket because I didn't have ALL this information at hand. Their call center did not have access to the previous trouble ticket which was in May.

This SUCKS! I will NOT port my number to the deathstar and trade call delivery problems for billing issues and god-only-knows-what-because-everything-AT&T-touches-turns-to-crap!

To be heard by T-mobile and even get your ticket escalated to anyone who gives a damn it must meet the following criteria:

* Name of the Local Exchange Carrier (LEC or landline telco) of the person making the call
* The full ten or eleven digit number of the calling party (NOTE: Listing only your desk phone number is not valid, Engineering requires the number of the calling party)
* If the call is being placed from a business phone, does the business use a PBX? If so, has the issue been investigated by the local administrator for the system?
* Name of the Long Distance provider of the person making the call
* Has the other carrier been contacted regarding the issue
* Can the customer be reached from a T-Mobile desk phone
* Is the number from a pooled, ported, or a T-Mobile LERG assigned number range? Use the Mobile Codes Table (internal link deleted) to identify pooled or T-Mobile numbers
* Has the T-Mobile number been transferred in from another carrier? If so, which carrier?
* Rebroadcast the number by calling the Number Transfer Center if the number has been ported in within the last 90 days.
* Can the originating party dial to other similar mobile numbers (If the mobile number of the customer is 1-571-555-1212 can the other party dial a similiar number such as 1-571-555-1210, etc.)

NOTE: If you are unable to resolve the issue and need to forward the trouble ticket, inform the customer that we may need to do further testing up to and including our own test calls to the phone number(s) they provided. Include the following in the notes:

* Did the customer give approval for us to do further testing with the unique examples of parties calling them that they provided?

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Saturday, September 06, 2008

McSame's son tied to a bank failure in the western USA

Silver City Bank, well known in Nevada and less so in other Western states - failed today. Andrew McSame (er, McCain) was a member of the board of directors of both Silver City Bank and Silver City Bancorp.

Reason? The big mortgage implosion that's part in parcel of the non-recession (say McSame supporters) happening in the US economy.

No recession? Not so much. Six months ago when I would go to Costco to get gas during rush hour (5:45-6:45) I'd have to wait 15 minutes or more to get to a pump. Today I can drive right up to a pump and get my membership-priced gas with no wait. No recession, my culo.

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The truth about the schizophrenic socialism in the US Government

The two big quasi-government mortgage banks got put under government control today.

A commenter on a commercial blog (rhymes with *onsumerist, but I won't publicize them because I completely disagree with their heavy-handed one-sided management) put it the best way I ever could (if I thought about it):

Words are attributed to ARP on the gawkermedia.com blog where they'll probably delete his post:

I'm so sick of this neoconservative approach of private profits and public losses. And yet, they talk about the "market" "capitalism" and all the other buzzwords to scare you into thinking that socialism is just around the corner. Socialism has been here for a while, just not in the way they've scared you into thinking. Our version of socialism [is] just for the wealthy and "can't fail" corporations, so regular [people] get zero benefit from it like other countries do (e.g. health care, education, infrastructure, etc). So my opinion is that we either become partially socialist a la Canada, UK, etc. or we become more capitalist and let shitty businesses fail.

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Thursday, September 04, 2008

Rogers GSM - crap service even downtown Toronto

I was trying to carry on a phone conversation with a friend in Toronto tonight. Both of his phones, two different accounts with Rogers, kept dropping the calls. No single call would stay up for more than 2 1/2 minutes!

It's bad enough that Rogers is a GSM monopoly with every monthly bill being an exercise in price-gouging (assuming its accurate) - but to have to redial 20 times in an hour when the guy's got 4 bars of service showing on his phone? Bleah.

We'd have switched to Skype but their cable-modem throughput at this time of night plus traffic shaping makes VOIP unintelligible. Can't win. Rogers sucks.

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more about Sarah Palin you really should know


She DID support the Bridge to Nowhere (before she opposed it). Here's a picture of her with a T-shirt supporting the project. Palin claimed that she said "thanks, but no thanks" to the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. But in 2006, Palin supported the project repeatedly, saying that Alaska should take advantage of earmarks "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."

Palin recently said that the war in Iraq is "God's task." She's even admitted she hasn't thought about the war much—just last year she was quoted saying, "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

Palin has actively sought the support of the fringe Alaska Independence Party. Six months ago, Palin told members of the group—who advocate for a vote on secession from the union—to "keep up the good work" and "wished the party luck on what she called its 'inspiring convention.'"

Palin wants to teach creationism in public schools. She hasn't made clear whether she thinks evolution is a fact.

Palin doesn't believe that humans contribute to global warming. Speaking about climate change, she said, "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being manmade."

Palin has close ties to Big Oil. Her inauguration was even sponsored by BP.

Palin is extremely anti-choice. She doesn't even support abortion in the case of rape or incest.

Palin opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools. She's said she will only support abstinence-only approaches.

As mayor, Palin tried to ban books from the library. Palin asked the library how she might go about banning books because some had inappropriate language in them—shocking the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. According to Time, "news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor."

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Monday, September 01, 2008

RNC convention ruins coverage of hurricane

I'm far more curious about seeing what happened in Louisiana and east Texas as a result of Hurricane Gustav than I am about knowing *anything* about the Republican National Committee convention.

Now that the coverage is combined I'm going to have to wait for newspaper and magazine coverage that separate the two. I wish some bright spark at CNN would figure out that a lot of us don't want to see ANY part of the RNC convention and use one of their channels just for that and the other for coverage of Gustav.

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