Best Buy Calls 911 On Customer Asking For Refund

Best Buy calls 911 after Consumerist reader RJH asks for a refund on a nonworking Tony Bennet CD.

Sooooo RJH buys the CD and goes to his car to play it. He gets "Disk read error" three times. RJH walks back in with his three minute old album and receipt and asks for a refund.

The clerk tells him there's state and federal laws against refunding money. Our guy calls him a fool.

Manager comes and says the guy can have a substitute disk or leave, or else the manager will have him arrested for trespassing.

Guy laughs.

Manager calls 911...

---

RJH writes:

"I was out shopping with my daughter, Z and her brother yesterday, trying to use those dreaded gift cards, the one of interest was from Best Buy.

While they are looking for music, I see the new Tony Bennett CD, kind of a Duets and I decide to spring for the fifteen bucks.

We get to the car and I pop it in and see "Bad Disk" on my player. I tried unsuccessfully three times to get it to work, but alas, it must have been a bad disk. So I walk back into the store with my three minute old receipt and show it to the door guard who shows me to the return line. Now I have owned this thing for three minutes and I just want to swap it out. It is three days after xmas and I really do not want to go through the entire return process so when I finally get to the front of the line; the customer service trainer is waiting on me. I tell him, forget it, just give me my money back, it is a bad disk.

He tells me there are state and federal laws against them refunding my money at which I literally laugh out loud. I said there are no such laws. He claimed there were and I said, if you believe that you are a fool. Then I asked to see a copy of the law at which point the "manager" showed up. He said that he would show me the law it was right out the front door and If I did not leave, they would have me arrested for trespassing. At this point the manager says I can have another disk or be arrested for trespassing. I asked again to check the CD, it was a bad CD.

I am thinking this is a riot, let's just see where this goes.

Sure enough, he calls 911 for a trespasser in his store.

I am literally laughing out loud. I go back to the car where the kids are and explain that I will be a few more minutes. I get my phone and call my wife and tell her what is going on.

Then I call corporate in MN. I explain what is going on and the "senior customer consultant" tell me to please hold after he agrees that it is an out of control situation. The first question that corporate asked me was if they actually checked the CD to see if it was bad. I told him that they did not check it in spite of my requests.

About this time the manager comes to me and says that it looks like the cops ain't coming so he will give me the money back.

Now the cops show up, (three officers in two cars!) I have the customer service people refunding my money, the three cops looking for me, and me on hold with corporate.

I get my money then approach the cops and explain my side of the story. They just shake their head. I apologize for the store manager wasting their resources. I was kind of hoping that they would arrest me.

I finally get the guy from corporate back on the line and he commits to calling me tomorrow with resolution.

Turns out it wasn't a call from him I got today, the store manager called. I went over the details with her and after what seems like a thirty minute discussion she admitted there is not a federal or state law against a store refunding a customer for a defective product. She then asked what it would take to make it right, I told her to think about it and call me back. She did call back later today and offered me a twenty five dollar gift card. I asked her to donate it to Salvation Army and guess what, they can't do that either."

Pathetic. Kudos to RJH for standing up to these Best Buy mendicants. They didn't count on a customer calling their bluff. Doubt RJH will be purchasing many Tony Bennet CDs from them again.

What this means for your weekend: If you believe a store is wrong, stand up for yourself.

Meet their threats with complete confidence.

Be like Violent Acres, who, on the advice of her Marine father, kicked a bully in the nuts with her Cabbage Patch rollerskates and yelled while standing over his body, "I'LL EAT YOUR EYES! I'LL EAT ALL OF YOUR EYES!"

See you in 2007.

— BEN POPKEN

Introductory DSL Prices on the Rise... because they can

Industry analyst Dave Burstein takes a peek at how consistently high cable broadband prices have allowed the major phone companies to raise their introductory DSL prices of late. As BroadbandReports recently noted, Verizon bumped the price of their $15 768kbps DSL tier to $20, and Burstein claims AT&T's website reflects a recent price-hike as well. "Compare those rates to France, where twice the speed, 60 channels of TV, and free international calls have settled at about 30 euro, or $40," laments Burstein.

That means customers who want reasonably priced service had best get on the stick and order DSL service soon. Otherwise they may find themselves facing price parity between DSL and cable modem service instead of enjoying the steep discounts we have been getting for the past year or so.

Customers can check pricing and availability using Anyion's DSL & Cable Modem Availability website.

5 years later, WTC mail keeps coming

NEW YORK - It's the kind of holiday mail that might have been tossed aside, discarded like any other piece of junk mail: a special offer for a facial at a local spa.

Only the address on the letter no longer exists. And the woman the letter is addressed to died more than five years ago in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Hundreds of pieces of mail destined for the former trade center still arrive every day at a post office facing ground zero — the relics of the unfinished lives of Sept. 11 victims.

Telephone bills, insurance statements, wine club announcements, college alumni newsletters, even government checks populate the bundles of mail. Each bears the ZIP code once reserved exclusively for the twin towers: 10048.

"I guess sooner or later they'll realize the towers aren't back up," said letter carrier Seprina Jones-Sims, who handles the trade center mail. "I don't know when."

Some of the nation's most recognizable companies and organizations, from retailers to research hospitals, are among those sending the mail. Much of it seems to result from businesses not updating their bulk mailing lists, said U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Pat McGovern.

The postal service declined to identify the senders and recipients of the letters according to policy. Several companies formerly housed in the towers also declined comment.

The trade center mail meets varied fates once it arrives at the Church Street station.

A handful of companies pay for a service that forces the post office to hold the mail until a messenger picks it up. The rest of the mail travels various routes. Some will be returned to the sender, some will be forwarded to the company's current address and some will be sent to a Brooklyn recycling firm to be destroyed.

That the Postal Service is even forwarding mail from a nonexistent address five years later is rare. "Normally we'd only forward mail for a year, but we're making an exception here," McGovern said.

The trade center's mail used to travel from the Church Street post office and up through the towers. It would start on the ground tucked in the letter carrier's bag and continue up higher and higher — to the 68th floor, the 89th floor, the 104th floor.

The morning's mail never made it through the flames and smoke on Sept. 11, 2001. It stayed put with the letter carriers, who silently observed the chaos that unfurled outside the post office.

Flying debris blew out most of its windows. After a three-year restoration, its doors officially reopened in August 2004.

Rafael Feliciano delivered mail to floors 78 through 100 of the south tower for three years. He watched the tower collapse on television from a bar several blocks away with a co-worker.

"He turned to me and said, 'You just lost your route,'" Feliciano recalled. When the dust cleared, he spent weeks identifying office workers who came to pick up their mail, searching for familiar faces to see if they had survived.

Mail addressed to people who were killed was marked as deceased right away, he said. But it kept coming.

"It's been five years later. How many people don't know the towers are gone?" he said.

Jones, 39, took over the trade center mail after Feliciano — too shaken to enter tall buildings any longer — left his route to become a driver. She gets to work at 5 a.m. The mail is carefully divided among white plastic trays labeled by company name.

But the Church Street post office — built in 1935 and now on the National Register of Historic Places — is no longer the bustling hub it was when it stood just steps away from the city's tallest buildings.

Between 2001 and 2002, the total weekly volume dropped from 1.2 million pieces to just 485,000. It has risen slightly in the years since.

The neighborhood is slowly awakening, attracting more and more residents and businesses after the exodus that occurred five years ago. The post office's marble floors are newly polished and the building is brimming with employees. When they gaze out the long bay windows overlooking ground zero, they see nothing but blue sky.

"You start flashing back to that day," Feliciano said. "That's why I got off the routes. It's like a movie that plays over and over in your head."

100 million free 411 calls = providers nightmare

Jingle’s free 411 service has announced that users have now placed over 100 million 411 calls.

Jingle isn’t creating a new market - they are destroying an entrenched, $8 billion market with an ad supported, free product. Every call processed by their system is $1 to $1.50 that won't end up in a greedy telephone provider's pocket.

Their profit per call is minimal... but in volume it has potential. And the biggest benefit is it encourages people to continue using their phone (especially cell phones) to get directory assistance. Jingle's call automation techniques make their costs to provide the service much more sustainable than traditional directory assistance models.

Staples shafts customers, loses my business

Yesterday I ordered a Brother MFC-5440CN from Staples in their Monday sale. It was late in the afternoon - well after the crush of Monday morning traffic. The unit was priced at $49.95. A good deal.

Well, today I get a form email from Staples:

Dear Valued Staples Customer:

Item: PRINTER,MFC-5440CN qty 1

Due to high demand for this item, our stock has been depleted. Please note that you were not billed for it. It cannot be backordered or reordered and no substitute is offered.

How annoying. I guess the holiday shafting has begun. The annoying part is that before I could order it, I had to put my zip code in so they could "verify item availability". Guess their ERP system sucks major.

There's a new commandment in my operating instructions now. It says "Thou shalt not shop at Staples." Too bad for them... I've only spent $12,000 on office supplies this quarter with them. I'll be sending my Staples Account Rep the URL to this post.

Merry Christmas Cindy! Let fulfillment know that 3 strikes and they're out. Told you that upfront.

Good thing CostCo called yesterday to ask if it would "offend me" if they increased the size our business credit line.

Wilson, NC Residents to Get High(speed) Fiber Diet

'Fiber To The Curb' Is Coming: City Of Wilson To Make Fiber Optic Network Access Available To All

The Wilson, North Carolina, City Council has voted to approve a $26 million, 30-mile fiber to the home network that will serve area residents with the triple play. "If we are to compete in this global society, we’ve got to have the infrastructure that’s necessary to do so," says assistant city manager Alice Freeman. "This fiber is as critical today as electricity was in the late 1800s," she says, adding that "this is economic development pure and simple ... We are just trying to give our citizens and businesses what they need to compete." The existing network is being used in firefighter training.

OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE HAS JUST BEGUN

Like Cornered Rats, GOP Losers More Dangerous Than Ever

NEW YORK--"My fellow Americans," assured incoming president Gerald Ford hours after the Watergate scandals forced Richard Nixon to resign, "our long national nightmare is over."

I'm tempted, in the aftermath of the widest and most stunning electoral repudiation of Republicanism since Watergate, to mark the Democratic recapture of governorships, the House of Representatives (and probably the Senate) as the beginning of the end of Bush's fascism lite, and thus a long overdue vindication of what I've been saying about him since his December 2000 coup d'état.

Back in 2001 and 2002, state-controlled media called me radical. Now, with most Americans seeing things my way, I'm mainstream. Yet I'm more scared now.

"Iraq," I wrote a week before the 2003 invasion, "will probably be Bush's Waterloo." And so it has been: Exit polls found voters more motivated by opposition to the war than any other issue. "There was general revulsion in the country, particularly among Democrats and independents, against the conduct of the war in
Iraq," said pollster John Zogby. "This was, at the grass roots, a referendum against the war and the president. For Republicans, there was significant disappointment about opportunities lost through enormous budget deficits, threats to civil liberties, a failed social agenda, and the war." Although Democrats failed to nationalize the election, Iraq succeeded: a pitiful seven percent of respondents to the latest Gallup survey still want to "stay the course."

A White House controlled by an unpopular, highly partisan lame duck, a rival party majority without enough votes in Congress to override his veto, and the early start of a highly anticipated 2008 presidential campaign add up to one likely result: gridlock. Bush's legislative and military agendas are dead. But our long national nightmare has just begun.

A Frightening New Security State

We'll be cleaning up Bush's mess long after his scheduled abdication on January 20, 2009. But the trillions of dollars in national debt he has run up and his two losing wars will drain our economy for decades to come. We've provoked a new generation of terrorists. Yet even more damaging and nearly impossible to unravel will be the threats to Americans posed by the neofascist national security apparatus the Bushists will leave behind--unless they use it to remain in power.

Shortly after 9/11 Bush began the first of a long series of power grabs that have transformed him from the leader of a country beholden to its people to an authoritarian despot. He signed a secret executive order granting himself the right to declare anyone in the world, including a U.S. citizen, an "enemy combatant"--without proof--and order him assassinated. Violating federal law and privacy rights, Bush authorized the NSA to listen to our phone calls and read our e-mail. FBI, CIA and HomeSec goons "disappeared" thousands of people into a horrible new matrix of concentration camps and secret prisons.

On October 17, 2006 Bush signed the Military Commissions Act. The new law, scarcely mentioned in the media, is breathtaking for the breadth of its attack on basic rights. Under the MCA either the president or the secretary of defense may declare you an "enemy combatant"--as usual, without proof. Under that designation you may be jailed, without the right to an attorney, for the rest of your life. You can even be tortured. Your U.S. citizenship can't protect you. And it's all "legal."

Concentration Camps

In January 2006 HomeSec awarded a $385 million contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton Co., to build "temporary detention and processing capabilities"--internment camps--"in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

The question, asks Progressive magazine editor Ruth Conniff, "is what is the government planning to do with mass roundups of people?" After all, Bush and other Republican leaders have spent five years calling Democrats and others who disagree with them traitors and terrorists. Following so much hateful rhetoric, you can't blame liberals for wondering whether they too are about to be declared "enemy combatants." They're not paranoid; they're just paying attention.

And Now, Martial Law

About a week ago some left-wing bloggers began circulating rumors that Bush had secretly signed something called the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" that "allows the president to declare a 'public emergency' and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to 'suppress public disorder.'" I couldn't find the text of the law at the time, formerly H.R. 5122, or a reliable media account, so I decided not to report on it.

I can now confirm the bloggers' account. Bush signed the JWDAA hours after the MCA, in a furtive closed-door White House ceremony. There is, buried deep down in Title V, Subtitle B, Part II, Section 525(a) of the JWDAA, a coup. The Bush Administration has quietly stolen the National Guard away from the states.

Here's the relevant section of Public Law 109-364:

"The [military] Secretary [of the Army, Navy or Air Force] concerned may order a member of a reserve component under the Secretary's jurisdiction to active duty...The training or duty ordered to be performed...may include...support of operations or missions undertaken by the member's unit at the request of the President or Secretary of Defense."

The National Guard, used to maintain order during natural disasters and civil disturbances and the sole vehicle available under U.S. law to enforce a declaration of martial law, has previously been controlled by state governors. They have now been stripped of that control. Thanks to the JWDAA, Bush or Rumsfeld can now deploy National Guardsmen in American cities without obtaining permission from state governors.

Section 526 of the Warner Act goes further still. It states that the "Governor of a State...with the consent of the [military] Secretary concerned, may order a member of the National Guard to perform Active Guard and Reserve duty..." The key word is "may." A governor can no longer deploy the Guard in his or her state without first getting Rumsfeld's permission.

Patrick Leahy (D-VT) sounded the alarm during senatorial debate, but U.S. state-controlled media ignored him. The Warner Act, he said, "includes language that subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law...We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the states, when we make it easier for the president to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty."

Only one governor, Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana, made a fuss over the Warner Act. A spokesman for the National Governors Association requested a wimpy "clarification" concerning what circumstances might prompt Bush to impose martial law. As far as I can determine this column marks the first time the JWDAA has been mentioned in the mainstream media.

Now the dark men who engineered America's post-9/11 police state have watched the public reject their policies. The incoming Democratic majority Congress will be able to hold hearings and launch investigations that could lead to their indictments and removal from office. John Dingell, the liberal incoming chairman of the Commerce Committee did nothing to dissuade GOP fears of "a blizzard of subpoenas": "As the Lord High Executioner said in 'The Mikado,'" Dingell recently joked, "I have a little list."

A year of crisis commences.

As ugly secrets surface, Bushists will turn desperate. Democracy has failed their grand schemes; token resignations like Rumsfeld's come too little, too late. Only tyranny can save their skins. Will the beleaguered neocons led by Cheney and Bush, cornered like rats, unleash their brand-new police state on their political opponents? Or will they tough it out and suck up the fines and prison sentences to come? The next year or two could go either way.

The nightmare is not over.

(Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)

Broadband in the Boonies

Look Ma! I made a news. Jackson West over at Web Worker Daily picked up a guide I wrote for Work.com called "Getting Internet to Your Business in the Boonies". Hopefully it will help out some of the rural entrepreneurs who are struggling to make locating in the new or growing businesses outside the major metro areas.

I personally live on one of those rural areas and love the fact that my cost of living is now 1/3 - yes, a 66% decrease - what it cost me to live in cities like Dallas and Atlanta.

Like me, many folks locating in rural areas have to pre-plan what they will be doing for broadband. It's usually not as simple as getting a phone line and ordering DSL or calling up the local cable company for a cable modem. In most cases there is no cable company anywhere near the location. And if the local central office does have DSL, you're too far out to get it. Those are the breaks that come with country living.

Are the trade-offs worth it for a techie? Absolutely! My living costs are dramatically reduced. My commute to the metro airport here is exactly the same as it was to the airport in Dallas or Atlanta. And my internet connection still works the same - it just costs a lot more (which is offset fully in my case by the decreased cost of housing). The only things I miss are nice resturants and quick access to tech toy stores like CompUSA, Best Buy, Fry's Electronics and MicroCenter. But... on the flip side, I'm now on a first name basis with the UPS, FedEx and DHL guys thanks to online shopping.

(PS... If you live in a rural area, Amazon Prime is a steal! I know I've more than gotten by money's worth on the free 2-day shipping and $3.99 overnight shipping. I can't figure out how they don't lose their shirts on it... b/c I keep ordering stuff that ways more than a pound or two and they keep shipping it to me overnight for $3.99.)

}Davoice

60 days til Christmas... What do I want?

Ok, it's that time of year again. People are asking me what I want for Christmas.

I told my parents I wanted a ThermaPen.

Other things that always interest me... let's see:
- Square faced watches. I have tiny wrists and always have to take links out though (so a nice gesture would be including a $20 bill for me to pay the jeweler to do it).
- SD card flash memory.
- Fancy food that doesn't contain dairy or eggs - i.e. no mayonnaise either. (Cheeses are usually ok though.)
- A good peppery olive oil from unexpected Mediteranian countries like Turkey.
- Gift cards to office supply stores.
- Chocolate. Not a big fan of filled chocolates though. Cherry and amaretto filled stuff is a good bet though.

I'm sure something else will strike my fancy but that's a good start.

First Impressions with Presto Preview

Well... it's been a week on the Presto Preview - aka the HP Printing Mailbox powered by Presto. I have good news and bad news.

Bad news first: I don't have any juicy dirt to sling about the product. Darn!

Here are my takes so far concerning the service:

- The product is too hard for their target market to setup. They're targeting Baby Boomers - or anyone in the 60 to 75 year range for that matter. No way could my grandmother have set up the unit by herself without someone helping. She read the setup poster, looked at me with a blank face and said "Do what?" I proceeded to setup the unit without any instructions. It's the same problem we had with VCRs... if it's not intuitive to someone with no technology experience, it won't be used.

- The technology is great and does exactly what was promised. But not enough work has gone into turning the actual equipment into something that doesn't require a big, six way folding, double sided poster to setup. I'm going to lay the blame for the hardware itself not being made "idiot proof" squarely on HP's shoulders. Over the years they have - in my professional opinion - tried to simplify printer setup but have yet to break through the intelligence barrier yet. I'm betting it's because they have too many engineers working in the product teams and not enough normal people.

- Instructions for the unit read like an engineer is trying really hard to explain something to a normal person. They need another level of abstraction so things come out like a normal person is explaining it to another normal person. Most technology companies suffer from this same problem. More time is needed to get the important things up to the surface and the technology related stuff hidden under the surface.

- My generation takes a lot of technology things for granted. Even simple stuff. For example, the instructions said to purchase "printer paper from your local discount store". My grandmother had never heard of "printer paper" or "copy paper" for that matter. I fished around with a few other explanations and the one she finally understood was "typing paper".

- The back-end of the service is still a work in progress. This was experienced firsthand when one day last week I sent an email that got rejected. Later in the day, the Preview support staff sent an acknowledgment that I had emailed during a transition to a new server.

- Along the same lines, a few things are still missing from the back-end. There are only 2 email templates (and 1 for Halloween) to chose from and only 2 "subscriptions" (think of them as electronically delivered newspaper or magazine clippings). According to the documentation, eventually there will be templates for most holidays and special occasions.

- Scheduled checks for new emails work as promised. Although I have had a few occasions where emails I sent near the check time weren't delivered until the following check. I'm not sure how long it takes there servers to process incoming emails into the format the Mailbox uses but in once case I emailed 20 minutes prior to the scheduled check and the email didn't make it on that check.

- Speaking of scheduled checks, there's a glaring feature omission - no button to initiate a check at that specific moment. As a regular email user, I would have expected the equivalent of a Send/Receive button so that a check could be made in case you were expecting something to be sent right then. There is no such button. So you just have to wait for the next scheduled check. If you have all 3 daily checks set up it's not an issue... but if you're using the default single daily check that might be a problem. (Yep, the default is for the unit to check for new messages once a day.)

- The biggest surprise for me was that HTML emails actually retain their formatting and picture placement. I've copied and pasted a few web pages into emails for my grandmother. They come out the other side with formatting and web page images in place as I would expect. That's a welcome feature since it means no one has to print web pages off for her anymore when she sees things on TV.

}Davoice

Problem w/ IE7 - Windows has detected a significant change in your machine configuration.

File this under capital A for annoying.

I took the plunge last night - after backing up of course - into IE7. I hadn't bothered with any of the betas because I've grown averse to being on the bleeding edge of Microsoft technology. Cutting edge will do for me, thanks.

Well, I got cut. After installing IE7 it wanted to reboot. Which I let it do. Upon reboot, I got the dreaded Windows has detected "a significant change in your machine configuration" message. Whoopie. Now I have 3 days to reactivate.

And oh fun... the internet reactivation declares I have exceeded my permitted number of activations for my license. Of course I have b/c Windows insisted I reactivate every time I added more RAM, upgraded the hard drive or swapped out the DVD burner for a faster one in this machine. So here goes a call to Microsoft's 866-Call-India activation help line. After reading off my series of digits to the gal, she quizzed me on about 10 different things. Finally she gave me an activation code... at the excruciating pace of 3 digits at a time - and she waited for me to acknowledge the receipt of each 3 before giving me any more.

So the question still remains... WHY did IE7 trigger the Windows hardware change reactivation? The world may never know.

Getting ready for Presto Preview

On Tuesday of this coming week, a new test will begin in our family... a test that will mark a new era for a certain grandmother. Thanks to HP, our family will be testing one of the HP Printing Mailbox units for Presto!

For those who haven't heard of what Presto! is about, here are a couple links:
- Presto puts digital photos in the hands of your grandma
- New printer delights the tech inept

The short version is... The Presto! service combines a dedicated HP printer, modem and the Presto! service to make a hands-off unit that someone who is unfamiliar with technology can use to receive emails and photos. The unit looks like a slightly overgrown HP printer and has a place to plug it into a phone line on the back. Just install an ink cartridge, insert some paper and plug it into a phone line. When the little blue light blinks, you've got mail. That's it. Their target market is the Baby Boomer generation... specifically the 50+ year old folks who don't already have an internet connected PC or are timid about getting online with what they already have.

As the account manager, I get to pick and chose who can email the Presto Printing Mailbox. Each Mailbox unit gets a personal email address that can be given to anyone who has regular email. The trick is those folks can only send email to the Mailbox user if the account manager has added them to the allowed senders list or the Mailbox user has called an 800# and had the person added to their list manually.

During the preview, emails will be limited to email/html (the HTML being semi-unknown at the moment b/c I haven't seen how well they render it yet), JPGs and GIFs. That's enough functionality to allow photos to be easily emailed to the Mailbox user as well as family update emails and general cheer type messages.

I'm hoping they will expand the service to support PDF attachments and maybe Word docs. But for me PDFs would be perfect.

If this works well, it will revolutionize the way our family keeps in touch with the grandmother in question. Right now we all share photos and stuff via email with each other but she never gets to see them. This is the grandmother who swore she would never type after leaving a career as a librarian.

One of the coolest features of the service I'm waiting to validate is their auto-sensing of the account and hardware ID based on the caller ID of the phone line into which the Printing Mailbox gets connected. Supposedly, if I have setup the account before the Mailbox is plugged in and connects to the Presto! service the first time, everything will automatically configure itself and email from the Presto! account will just start flowing in w/o any further interaction from me.

Should this little piece of technological mash-up work as promised, I know what I'll be buying a few other 50+ year old family members over the next months.

Listen up AT&T: Protect the BellSouth Engineers!

Most people don't know it... but Bellsouth is home to the most experienced hurricane response team in the world. Bar none. Bellsouth - and pretty much any utility company in the south - has almost yearly experience recovering from some sort of natural disaster. They have successfully recovered from hurricane after hurricane, tornados, flooding, ice, etc.

After Katrina, it’s amazing that Bill Smith, Chief Technology Officer for BellSouth Corporation, and his team have yet to be guaranteed their positions once the SBC(ATT)/BellSouth merger completes. While Bill would be the first to tell you they have procedures that need improvement, the BellSouth response to Katrina and Rita's large scale crisis was professional and (relatively) effective.

Keep in mind that disaster preparedness is not revenue generating! And even in the best cases recovering from a distaster costs the company millions to billions of unbudgeted dollars. So we all need to remind the folks planning ATT/SBC/Bellsouth's 10,000 layoffs how crucial protecting these skills are.

The FCC Commissioners recently introduced a new Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. The new bureau will presumably continue the often complimented job (yeah, it's ok to laugh) of the FCC getting regulations out of the way during Katrina crisis. Regardless, D.C. bureaus and committees are not enough. Real public safety requires the most skilled professionals at the companies involved.

Hopefully part of the merger approval negotiations that are ongoing will include a quiet conversation between the FCC Chairman, Randall and Ed. A simple comment that the commission will continue to watch the staffing and level of investment in disaster preparedness should do the trick. AT&T has plenty of good reasons to take advantage of the BellSouth engineering talent. Let's hope they actually do the right thing.

CircuitCity.com coupon: 10% off $199 or more

Get a jump on Christmas electronics shopping! CircuitCity.com offers dealnews readers 10% off most orders of $199 or more via the link in this post. The discount shows on the page where you enter your credit card information. It matches the best percent-off discount we've seen from CircuitCity.com this year. Excludes all Apple items and iPods, all PCs, and several name brands. Coupon ends October 14.

The true cost of residential fiber deployment

Fios Spending: $9,650 for Each Home?

Light Reading editor Phil Harvey e-mailed BroadbandReports to let them know he's crunched some numbers based on Verizon's Fios statements (discussed in full this morning), and has come to some interesting conclusions. According to Harvey, it's costing Verizon over $9,000 to wire each home (at least at first), with his math worked out as such:

"Verizon also says it will cost only about $650 to connect a "passed" home to its network by 2010. So what does it cost to hook up a neighborhood? These aren't absolute figures, mind you, but let's assume that Verizon passes each home in a 400-home neighborhood, then nabs 10 percent of the homes (40 homes) as customers. Take $950 and multiply it by 400 homes. That's $360,000.

Now let's hook up those 40 homes. That's 40 multiplied by $650. That's $26,000 added back to the cost to pass the homes, which was $360,000. So now we have a figure of $386,000 spent in just one neighborhood. But what has Verizon spent per customer? Take $386,000 and divide it by the 40 homes and you get $9,650."

He notes that Millennium Marketing analyst Kermit Ross came to some similar figures last week. Despite this, Verizon this morning stated they should see profitability by sometime in 2009.

Three month's til Christmas

Yep... Today is September 25th... that means it's offically 3 months til Christmas. Consider this your 90 day warning!

White & Nerdy

Only in California can they be so intolerant in their tolerance

There's a little PBS station in Orange County, California --KOCE. For years it has been run by the Orange Coast Community College District, but the expenses became too great, and the Trustees of the District resolved to sell it. Bids arrived, and a religious broadcaster, Daystar, bid far and away the most money.

The Trustees chose to accept a significantly smaller bid (*millions* smaller), and that one mostly paper, not cash. Daystar was offering all CASH. But the bid that was accepted was Seller Financing for 30 years w/ NO INTEREST! Not surprisingly, the California courts overturned the ridiculous deal - not once, but twice.

So did the Trustees do the right thing and gain the most cash for the district? No, they tromped off to the Sacramento based legislature to get special legislation allowing them to sell the station for far less than it was worth to their pals. Read More.

Now I'm a self-acknowledged rabid Dem... but a charismatic conservative liberal instead of a faithless radical liberal. In this case I thank God that not a single Republican voted for the legislation. It was carried solely by the Democrats.

Can someone PLEASE buy them a clue about religious intolerance? And remind them about the principles of separation of church and state. That principle cuts both ways... the state can't promote a certain religion... it also can't demote/stand against a certain one either! It will come back to bite them in the butt when they need ministers to perform civil union ceremonies! Would they have made the same choice if a Muslim Emon had been the highest bidder?

Rosie was historically accurate

ABC,

Since the American Family Association is being trite with their campaign and apparently didn't study history, let me fill you in on some history. Radical Christianity WAS responsible for more murders than all the non-Christian, Muslim, etc. groups we have today put together. Here are 3 examples:

Remember that thing called the "crusades"? The Christian church from 1095 AD to 1300 AD killed anyone they could get their hands on who didn't bow down the Pope.

Remember that guy named Hitler? He wanted to wipe out anyone who didn't fit his particular mold of radical Christianity called "Positive Christianity" which included a Jesus who was recast as a killer of the Jews.

Remember that guy named Moses? During the trip out of Egypt into the promised land (in Exodus), after the incident with the Golden Calf, he told the men in the group who were Levites "27 Then he said to them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.' " 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Exodus 27-28. 3000 of Moses own brothers and sisters died that day!

Take a little time to learn history before you reprimand someone for their comments. Lessons not learned are repeated until comprehension - including the lesson of following the uninformed leader of some right wing conservative group off the face of cliff like a lemming b/c you didn't bother to educate yourself.

Even though I don't like Rosie's personal life choices and her severe liberalism, she IS historically correct in her statement. To complain about it indicates not only historical ignorance but also a lack of American pride. America is a place where we ALL are supposed to be able to express ourselves - whether the person sitting beside you - in your opinion - is right or wrong.

--
Blessings,
DP

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Charles Schwab, the dyslexic who parlayed his discount
brokerage firm into a personal net worth of over
$3 billion, gives this advice to those who share his
disability: "Find out what you can do well, focus on
it and work double hard." Smart words for anyone in
the workplace -- dyslexic or not.

Dyslexia in the Workplace

Get the Tools and Support You Need
by Dan Woog, Monster Contributing Writer

As youngsters, Thomas Edison, Ted Turner and Charles Schwab felt frustrated. They had difficulty deciphering letters and numbers, and were labeled "stupid." Of course, they were bright enough to invent the light bulb, revolutionize television news and found a groundbreaking brokerage firm. Today, we know their problem was dyslexia, not stupidity.

Today's Edisons, Turners and Schwabs are being identified early with the disorder, which includes problems reading and writing, and poor short-term memory for sequences. Specialists provide coping mechanisms, and dyslexics -- whose learning differences vary from slight to severe -- receive support throughout the educational process. But what happens when they move into the workplace?

"For anyone who wants to be successful, dyslexia is definitely an obstacle," says Debra Brooks, a dyslexic who graduated from Columbia University and now works as a consultant on dyslexia in the workplace. "You have to find ways to do what successful people do."

The first step is "accepting that you'll work differently than most people," says Brooks. She recently fielded a call from an engineer who, despite hours of study, had failed a test to advance in his company three times. He wanted to learn how to pass the test, but Brooks told him not to take it the same way again. Instead, she advised him to ask to take it orally or write a paper on the subject. Both accommodations are valid under the Americans with Disabilities Act, she says.

Similarly, the Dyslexic Reader suggests requesting that instructions for tasks be provided orally, either in person, on tape, via voicemail or through a computerized voice synthesizer. Alternatively, because many dyslexics read a computer screen more easily than paper, instructions can be emailed, rather than written down.

Dyslexics often find it difficult to fill out forms. The Reader's answer: Dyslexics can answer questions orally or dictate their responses to a colleague who can fill out the form for them.

Dyslexia-Adults.com offers other suggestions. Dyslexics should break large tasks into small, manageable chunks. The verbal and aural reinforcement of a small tape recorder or dictating machine can help you remember what needs to be done. Additionally, dyslexics should keep a "jobs to-do list" close at hand. They should cross off each task as it's accomplished, and check the list often.

Voice recognition software is improving rapidly. Speaking into a computer is a great boon for dyslexics, whose fear of writing may become paralyzing.

Spell-checkers also help. Programs like Texthelp can help with recalling words that dyslexics frequently misspell and add them to lists for auto-correction. A reading pen (available from dyslexic.com) can be run over a word that's difficult to decipher. The pen "says" the word out loud or through a small earpiece -- it does not speak entire sentences, however.

Low-tech solutions work too. Examples include highlighters for keywords or rulers to separate lines of figures.

Dyslexia-Adults.com suggests tackling paperwork early in the day. Fatigue adversely affects dyslexics' ability to read, spell and work with numbers. Also helpful: Take short breaks throughout the workday to refresh concentration.

From the time of diagnosis, dyslexics should "learn what you can and can't do," says Brooks. "Be honest and upfront with the people you work with. Let them know you work differently -- but you work hard." In fact, she adds, employers and colleagues soon learn that dyslexics are intensely loyal. "We work like dogs."

"These are not ways of hiding behind dyslexia, or making life hard for coworkers," Brooks notes. "The work standards are the same. Dyslexics are just changing the way they meet them."

Schwab, the dyslexic who parlayed his discount brokerage firm into a personal net worth of over $3 billion, gives this advice to those who share his disability: "Find out what you can do well, focus on it and work double hard." Smart words for anyone in the workplace -- dyslexic or not.