The Wacky World of Chris Knight
Life is an adventure. A good life is worth selling the movie rights. These are my story notes.
Sometimes I see, read, hear or think about something that sets me off. If it gets me worked up to the point where I need to write about it this is where I’ll file it.
YouTube – Olbermann on the Murder of Habeus Corpus
Risky gamble, or odd coincidence? Despite Republican protests that the Foley scandal was a Democrat’s election surprise, all the major news outlets claim their sources were Republicans. Did they really throw one of their own to the wolves, and risk losing the upcoming elections, just to mask this law being passed? I don’t know, but it scares me that it even seems possible.
New Zealand is looking good… Real good…
-Chris
As a 15 year cell phone user, I am rarely surprised to hear the various ways that cellular companies will try to screw their customers. I left Sprint for T-Mobile when Sprint changed their policy to force users into a two-year contract extension for any account change, as that seemed like extortion that flew in the face of market competition. In most cases companies try to be competitive in the market place in regards to their offerings. It seemed to me that Sprint knew they were losing market share and rather than be competitive they chose the route of trying to lock customers in with unreasonable contract extensions for minor service changes.
As wireless internet access has ballooned in popularity lots of companies have wanted a piece of the pie. Cell phone carriers such as Sprint and T-Mobile have jumped in; and at least one carrier seems to have brought its poor attitude with it.
I was at the Oakland airport recently and they have a Sprint WiFi network. Apparently it doesn’t have a peering agreement with T-Mobile, so my regular account won’t work. They do offer a 24 hour ‘day pass’ for $9.95. I’ve got three hours to kill, and no book to read, so I sign up and agree to pay for my day pass. Lucky for me that I did, because an issue arose at the office that I was able to deal with just before my boarding group was called.
Off I fly to Chicago where I land at the Midway Airport. Midway also has WiFi, so I decide to login and check my email in case that last minute issue I handled has blossomed into a disaster. Midway doesn’t use T-Mobile either, though there was a pseudo peering agreement in place. I could use my T-Mobile, but an additional charge would be billed to my account. My T-Mobile account belongs to a client who lets me use it so I can provide them with roaming support, and I don’t want to add an unexpected charge to their bill. A ‘day pass’ is $6.95 and I’m about to pay it when I realize that they have a peering agreement with Sprint. Well, it’s still the same day, so I check to see if my Sprint day pass is still working. I log in without any problems and check my email before leaving the airport.
Around midnight that same night I’m checking email in my hotel room and I get a billing summary from Sprint. I was charged for two day passes. I called Sprint to verify, and yes, a day pass is only good for the location that your purchase it. Logging into the second location automatically charged me for a second day pass, even though Sprint was charging $3 more than I would have paid had I just signed up with the provider at Midway.
I am sure that the monkeys at Sprint thought they were quite clever coming up with a policy that geographically locked a day pass, and would cause some customers to pay multiple times in the same day. Clever they were for that additional $9.95 they got me to pay. There is a fine line between clever and stupid though, and while I was talking to the Sprint customer service drone I had him delete my account. I will never again spend a dime with Sprint; not on cell phones, wifi access, or whatever they think to offer next. Take that Sprint, and shove it up your clever marketing ass. Was it worth $9.95 to lose a customer forever?
-Chris
Video: O’Reilly asks if judge who ruled against NSA wants Americans to die
One test of a logical argument is whether or not you can turn it around and have it still be true. Bill O’Reilly never turns his questions back upon his own beliefs. For example, he has never once asked whether President Bush wants American soldiers to die. By O’Reilly’s logic, President Bush must want American soldiers to die because he sent them to Iraq. In this example argument, both Bill O’Reilly and President Bush would say that they don’t want American soldiers to die, but that Freedom is a goal worth fighting, and dying, to defend.
So, Bill O’Reilly thinks that it is a bad thing that a judge upholds constitutional freedom and that it could result in the death of American Citizens; but that it is a good thing that President Bush sends the troops off to fight in Iraq, where they can die to impose our ideas of Freedom on another country? Has Bill O’Reilly forgotten that our soldiers are American citizens too? Or does he feel, like Bush seems to feel, that soldiers are cannon fodder to be spent as needed?
The preservation of Freedom is the responsibility of all American citizens. Freedom begins at home, and with defending our constitution at home. It’s obvious that Bill O’Reilly doesn’t intend to enlist and take a tour of night patrols in Iraq, so the least he can do is shut the hell up when a judge rules in favor of the constitution rather than the current transient majority political party.
So, Bill, my question to you is: Why do you want the Unitied States to become a totalitarian government with an ignored Bill of Rights where everyone is under constant surveilance?
-Chris
I use Amazon affiliate links in some of my posts. I think it is fair to say my writing is not influenced by the $0.40 I earned in 2022.