New Media from a Journalism Veteran
Breaking point
I head into the coming week realizing that time is neither on my side or under control. My time is no longer my own. It belongs to too many others, controlled by outside forces, dominating every waking moment. The day ends in exhaustion. I collapse into bed or fall onto the couch and sleep, in bits and pieces, until the new day dawns.
Time to cut back, prioritize, focus on the important and discard the minutiae. But how? I’m over-committed, over-scheduled, over-utilized and unable to control time, life or destiny.
Life in the country is anything but restful, easy or bucolic. Every evening this week is booked. Every day is dominated by appointments and meetings. The approaching deadlines must wait until the overdue projects are completed.
There is a breaking point. Or rather there was. I think I passed it a long time ago.
If it ain't broke, break it
My Canon EOS-1D Mark III digital SLR went to the company’s repair facility in Newport News this past week for a photographic version of a factory recall.
Some early models of the Mark III had problems with the automatic focus (a new design on the model) so Canon launched a massive retrofit program that involved replacing the sub mirror assembly in the camera body on all early models. It meant sending my five-month old camera back to the factory service center and being without it for a few days.
"Few days" however, can be subject to interpretation. Canon promises a three day turnaround for working pros so I sent my camera off to Newport News via UPS next day air on their tab. According to UPS tracking, it arrived at the Canon facility at 8:11 a.m. on Friday, January 18. However, it wasn’t logged into Canon’s repair system until the end of the day on Monday, January 21. OK, it was a weekend so no big deal. The same system said the camera repair was completed by Tuesday, January 22 but Canon didn’t ship it until Wednesday and, for some reason, they chose FedEx two-day air to return the camera. That meant the camera goes from Newport News to Memphis and then back to Roanoke for Friday delivery — eight days after I sent it in. UPS ground can get it from Newport News to Roanoke in one day.
The "upgraded" camera arrived at our house Friday afternoon. I was out but Amy signed for it and I got home just in time to unpack it, stick in a freshly-recharged battery, and head back out to shoot the Floyd County High School basketball game and homecoming that night.
At the game, I put a telephoto lens on the camera, focused on the action, pressed the shutter release…and nothing happened. An ominious message flashed in the viewfinder: Error 99.
Error 99 is one of the most dreaded messages that the user of a digital camera can receive. It’s a communications problem somewhere in the digital bowels of the camera. It also means the camera won’t work. I tried the recommended steps to try and correct the problem: turn the camera off and on, remove and reinsert the battery, change memory cards and/or lenses. Nada. Dead in the water.
Fortunately, I carry backup camera bodies so I put the new and improved Mark III away and went back to my trusty EOS-1Ds Mark II and a 40D to shoot the game and homecoming festivities.
When I got home I called the Canon "priority" support line and said, in a relatively calm tone, that "a week ago I sent you a working camera and you upgraded it to one that doesn’t work. Why is that?"
The support tech apologized at least 10 times, got his boss on the line and they emailed me a UPS sticker to ship the camera out this morning via next-day air to the New Jersey repair facility. They promised the problem would be repaired and the camera returned to me no later than Wednesday of next week.
Floyd, unfortunately, does not have Saturday pickup for next day air. So I will pack the camera back into the box that arrived just yesterday and truck over to Christiansburg or Roanoke to make the early deadline for next-day air pickup at one of the UPS stores, which also means cancelling two appointments for today with web site clients.
Ah, the joys of modern technologies.
Why are drunks still allowed to drive?
Virginia’s General Assembly, a group of legislators not known for ground-breaking initiatives, says it wants to do something about the spiraling number of drunk drivers on the Commonwealth’s roads.
One of the more laughable proposals is to issue special license plates for those with DUI convictions.
Reports The Richmond Times Dispatch:
Could Virginia drivers convicted of three drunken-driving offenses be required to use special license plates?
Many legislative observers say the matter is unlikely to make it out of committee, but the measure by Del. Lionell Spruill, D-Chesapeake, is up for discussion today.
Spruill’s measure would require plates saying the driver has had three DUIs — an effort to shame the driver and warn the public.
Which begs the question: Why are people with three DUI convictions still on the road? Why haven’t they lost their licenses for life?
Drunk driving is a personal issue for me. I’m a recovering alcoholic (sober 13 years, six months and 17 days) who lost loved ones to a stoned truck driver with a two DUI arrests. I’m neither objective nor compassionate of those who drink too much and get behind the wheel of a vehicle.
I believe that a person convicted of driving under the influence should lose their license for at least five years. They should go to jail for at least 30 days. If the drunk driving involves a vehicle wreck where people are injured the penalty should be at least a year in jail and a 10-year loss of license. If the accident kills someone, at least 20 years in prison and a lifetime ban on driving.
A second conviction (not involving a wreck) should bring at least five years in jail and a lifetime ban with no second chances. You drive drunk once: You pay the price. You drive drunk twice. You don’t drive again. Period.
Giving a drunk a special license plate after three DUI convictions is a joke. It doesn’t shame the drunk. It shames a state that allows those who habitually drink and drive to remain on the road.
UPS = Unreliable Parcel Service
Ordinarily, UPS is rock solid reliable but this is the Christmas season when package loads increase and the parcel service brings in extra drivers to handle the volume.
One of them, assigned to deliver in Floyd County, got lost Tuesday and went back to Roanoke is many packages undelivered.
One of those packages should have come to Chateau Thompson, where UPS delivers 15-20 packages a month. On Monday, I ordered some urgently needed photo and video supplies from B & H Photo in New York and paid the premium to have them shipped overnight.
By 6 p.m. the package had not arrived so I checked the tracking number on the UPS web site and found this message:
A CORRECT STREET NUMBER IS NEEDED FOR DELIVERY. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION
Obviously, they were trying to contact me via pony express because no phone call came into either home or office or via email. The message was posted at 6:09 p.m. I called at 6:30 and, after several frustrating attempts to get through their voice prompt system, finally reached a live person.
Or so it seemed.
"The driver couldn’t find a street number where you live," he said. "You need to have an identifying number out in front of your house."
Identifying number? We have three of them: The number on the mailbox in front of the house, a sign that points to our number and the number of the only other house on our lane and a lighted number sign at the entrance to the driveway.
Perhaps, I suggested in a lower tone of voice that indicates seething anger, the driver got lost?
"Oh I doubt that sir but I will contact the regional center (in Roanoke) and have them call you within the hour."
Ninety minutes later and still no call back. So I called back. A bored sounding woman said the regional center was now closed and she would have someone call me in the morning.
"Unacceptable," I said. "Let me speak to your supervisor."
She tried four times to say her supervisor was not available and would call me back before she finally understood that I would not accept that brush off and would not hang up until a supervisor came on the line. When the supervisor finally got on the line I explained in an escalating volume that I was sick of being jerked around by UPS and wanted an answer tonight on where the package was and just when they expected to deliver it. She promised to check into it and call me back in thirty minues. In five minutes she was back on the line, having reached someone in Roanoke who admitted that, yes, they had a temporary driver on the Floyd route Tuesday and, yes, he got lost and that, yes, there were a lot of angry customers like me who didn’t get the delivery they expected.
After multiple apologies and a promise of a full refund of my shipping charges, UPS promised to deliver the package first thing Wednesday morning to our studio in Floyd.
Let’s see if they can deliver on their promise this time around.
UPDATE: 3:17 p.m. Package arrived. Not exactly "first thing Wednesday morning" but at least it is finally here.
Back on the grid
Out checking the house and surrounding grounds for damage from the winds when I heard the generator shut down.
Mr first thought: A problem? Nope. AEP restored power to Chateau Thompson at 9:02 a.m. — almost 30 hours to the minute from the time we lost it in the wee hours of Sunday mornings.
Thirty hours of continous running of the Guardian generator means I will need to change the oil and filter. Generac recommends changes after 200 hours total use or 24 hours or more of continuous use.
Once again, installation of an automatic standby generator proved to be the wisest investment we made when purchasing the house in December of 2004. It has kept us warm, toasty and lit through nine power outages in the past three years — including four this year alone.
Our thanks to the men and women who get out in this frigid weather to get grouchy customers like me back online.
And a great big raspberry to the nimwits in the corporate suites at AEP who hurt the hard work of the linemen by putting the greed of stockholders ahead of the needs of customers.
Lies, damn lies and AEP
For nearly 24 hours, we have depended on the web site of Appalachian Power to keep us up-to-date on the status of power outages in Floyd County and other parts of Southwestern Virginia.
According to the Flash-powered update chart, no homes in Floyd were without power by 1 a.m. today — which came as a surprise to us and other homes along Sandy Flats Road SE where houses remained cold and dark and our remained powered by a generator.
So were tried a more traditional form of communication — telephone.
So sorry, the not-so-sorrowful woman on the other end of the line said. Power won’t be restored to our part of the county until 4 p.m — at least 36 hours after it went out in the wee hours of Sunday morning.
When Amy pointed out that the company’s web site said all power had been restored to Floyd County her comment was a less-than-sympathetic "oh, we haven’t updated that in a while."
So why have the service if they are not going to be honest with it? Why give customers a false sense of security by using the web site to claim something that is not true?
The answer is easy. AEP has a long record of lying to its customers. We’re heard their lies in the all too often during the 100-plus hours of outages suffered so far this year. We’ve heard their pathetic excuses when they tried to raise rates without approval and had to refund those increased charges for erratic electric service and lousy customer relations.
AEP proves the old Mark Twain adage that there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics. AEP uses all three.
UPDATE: At 7 a.m., AEP’s web site claims 778 customers in Floyd County are without power, along with 2,549 in the region. Is that accurate? Your guess is is good as ours.
First the rain, then the pain
Friday’s drenching rain brought much-needed relief to the parched areas of Floyd County…and maximum damage to the driveway of Chateau Thompson.
We weren’t alone. Washed out driveways abound near us on Sandy Flats Road and we noticed a number of gutted ones along Route 8 while en route to Christiansburg late Friday afternoon.
The rain washed out the home opener for Floyd County High School’s varsity football team Friday night. The game will be played tonight. It also means damp conditions for the county’s fair and harvest festival.
If the rain holds off for the next few days I might have time to retreive the DR PowerGrader from the shed and fill in the many ruts and valleys that now mark the entrance to our home.
Then it will be smooth again.
Until the next deluge
AEP = Always Erratic Power
Our Guardian automatic generator is humming away at the rear of the house, providing the electric power that that we lost this morning to the increasingly inefficient and unreliable Appalachian Power Company.
Power blinked on and off a half dozen times Friday night and early Saturday morning before finally going out for good at 11:45 a.m. Thankfully, our generator kicked in automatically and restored power so that I could get into the shower to prepare for a wedding this afternoon.
Tried to report the outage via their web site but kept getting a "processing error." Tried reporting it via their "automated outage reporting system" via phone but it wouldn’t work. Finally, after going through six or seven layers of voice mail menus I got a bored customer service rep who promised to log the report.
AEP is a supremely arrogant mega-nopolopy that preys on its customers while demanding insanely high electric rate increases at the same time the company reports record profits. To make matters worse, power outages are increasing throughout the region and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the outages aren’t planned to bolster the company’s case for rate increases. Virginia forced them to return a major part of an obscene rate hike that they put into place before it was approved — just another glaring example of the company’s arrogance and disregard for its customers.
Like too many public utility monopolies, AEP executives only care about "return to the investor." They never have given a damn about their customers and probably never will.
UPDATE: Power returned at 4:26 p.m. Saturday. No explanation for the four hours of outage, no follow up phone call to customers. When we lived in Northern Virginia, Dominion Power always followed up with phone calls to customers to explain outages. Same for Union Electric when we lived in the St. Louis metro area. It’s called customer service — a concept that appears beyond the grasp of AEP.
God, homophobia and the GOP
Many things keep me from ever wanting to cast a vote for a Republican candidate for office but the most disgusting are the party’s unrelenting, unabashed homophobia and its inflexible belief that Christianity is the world’s only religion.
And this disgust comes from someone who, during a foray to the dark side of politics, worked for three GOP members of Congress and helped elect several more.
The party’s absolute intolerance towards gays surfaced in Floyd this week when the party of the elephant brought their slate of candidates for delegate and state senator to town and joined local candidates on the lawn of the county courthouse.
After rain chased the dog and pony show into the dryness of the circuit courtroom (and as a county resident I have to question the use of the courtroom for a political gathering), the candidates finished their spiel and then took questions. There was only one: asking each candidate to take a stand on gay marriage and prayer at public meetings.
Recovery
You know you’re in trouble when the doctor ends every sentence with "for your age."
The broken left foot, suffered on the opening day of FloydFest and ignored because I thought I was walking around on a sprain, is taking longer than I would like to heal but the doc says it’s healing on a schedule "that’s expected for someone of your age."
Which means slowly.