I Believe Two Things

I gave Sophie a jetBlue Airport Playset for Christmas a few years ago and when she began playing with it again today I joined in. The set includes a catering truck, baggage cart, pushback tug, various cautionary signs and pylons, and of course an airplane — all in jetBlue’s livery.

One can’t help but recall The Phantom Tollbooth, of course:

“THIS PACKAGE CONTAINS THE FOLLOWING ITEMS:
“One (1) genuine turnpike tollbooth to be erected according to directions
“Three (3) precautionary signs to be used in a precautionary fashion
“Assorted coins for use in paying tolls.
“One (1) map, up to date and carefully drawn by master cartographers, depicting natural and man-made features
“One (1) book of rules and traffic regulations, which must not be bent or broken.”

We played for a while in the manner the toy’s creators probably imagined: loading baggage and food at the gate, pushing back, following signs to the runway, and then of course flying around the room.

And then Sophie decided the next time the plane asked for permission to take off she would just say “no”. Even when support vehicles and eventually every toy car in her room lined up waiting to cross the active runway, the “tower” refused to let the plane move. After a while I announced that the passengers had run out of food and the plane had to go back to the gate to get more and the answer still came back enthusiastically “no!”

So I guess the major question we have to ask is: is there something about jetBlue aircraft that encourages controllers (even at age five) to leave them sitting on runways?

1. Crumple a layer of newspaper at the bottom of the fireplace
2. Build a pyramid of logs to allow air to flow on all sides
3. Light the edges of the newspaper with a match in several places

Oh… and one other tiny little thing: open the flu.

With temperatures dipping to record lows over the past few days, I eagerly started a fire to warm our living room for the evening. It only took a few seconds for the room to fill with smoke thick enough to see. (Thankfully not thick enough to set off any smoke detectors which, perhaps by design, aren’t located near our fireplace.)

Halloween has always been a great testament to the flexibility of our capitalist economy.

A Halloween Superstore took over a massive (previously abandoned) retail space at our town’s shopping mall this year — an anchor location that might once have been a Sears or a JCPenney. They converted half the space into an enormous stock room and the other half into display areas for packaged costumes, masks, wigs, makeup, accessories (like “Toto in a Basket” to accompany the quintessential Dorothy costume), and elaborate holiday decorations (like bloodied hands you can place strategically under your garage door to frighten unsuspecting children).

Of course, at dawn on November 1st, the entire operation became a liability. The remaining inventory was immediately reduced to 50% its original prices and sold off to people planning for next year. The store closed a couple days later.

The extra candy stockpiled at grocery stores across the country was also reduced to clearance prices on November 1st, kitschy candy buckets in the shapes of pumpkins and severed heads were thrown away to linger forever in landfills, and trick-or-treaters everywhere stuffed this year’s costumes back into dressers and closets to be forgotten until next year.

It’s capitalism at its finest. An industry emerges overnight and disappears by the next morning, all for the sake of profiting from a few hours of children’s entertainment.

But this doesn’t compare in brilliance to the economic transaction a friend of ours offers her children after every Halloween: “I’ll buy as much candy as you’re willing to sell for 5¢ apiece. Then you can use the money to go buy a toy you can keep forever, instead of candy that will be gone after you eat it.”

The kids get toys to play with and eat less sugar, while the parents get to devour Halloween treats without the guilt of taking candy from their babies.

It may be time to start telling some stories from the trial where I served as a juror last year. Here was one of my favorite moments from one day’s testimony:

Prosecutor: Your honor, the government calls Robert Smith.

(A man walks up to the witness stand, turns to face the courtroom, and raises his right hand.)

Courtroom Manager: Do you swear the testimony you’re about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Witness: I do.

(beat)

Prosecutor: (confused) Umm… your honor?  I don’t think this is our witness.  I mean… that isn’t Robert Smith…

Judge: (to the witness) What’s your name?

Witness: (brightly) Jacob Mitchell!

Judge: You’re excused.

That was the first and last time we ever saw Mr. Mitchell. He hadn’t just entered out of sequence; he was never called as a witness for either side. One might suppose he had walked into the wrong courtroom, but all jurors have to check in with a bailiff to get into the building, and the bailiff that morning had specifically commented that we were the only sitting jury in the courthouse all day.

Perhaps Mr. Mitchell just woke up that morning and thought, “I think I’ll go tell the truth about some stuff today.”

When I moved across the country earlier this year, I bought comprehensive “we’ll replace anything that’s damaged” insurance from Mayflower, but opted for a $250 deductible.

Then this happened:

Mayflower Fail

I don’t know what happened on the road, but after watching the way my movers were plopping these “Fragile” boxes on the floor, I’m not surprised they’re torn up.

In the end I lost about $250 of assorted belongings, which conveniently means that if I filed a claim I’d get nothing but Mayflower’s sympathies.

My advice: pay slightly more and go without the deductible.

I called T-Mobile to transfer my fiancée’s phone from the family plan it’s on now to a new individual plan. The call, with “Michelle” in India was unimpressive from the start, but really hit bottom when she started asking for identity information.

T-Mobile Customer Service: Let me have you full social security number, please.

Me: I’m sorry, I don’t give out my social security number.

T-Mobile: We’ll need to do a credit check to verify that you are eligible to have an account with us. We’ll need your social security number, driver’s license or passport number, and date of birth.

Me: I see. Well, I won’t give out any of that information, but I’d be happy to pay the contract in full today instead.

T-Mobile: You want to cancel the contract and pay the early termination fee?

Me: (stunned) No, I want to pay you. The remaining cost of the contract should be about $500, and I’d like to pay it in full, right now, to alleviate any concern about my credit history.

T-Mobile: You’ll have to speak to our cancelations department. Just a moment.

First, phone service providers have no truly legitimate reason to solicit identity information. The operating theory must be that people who have purchased the phone at a discount have taken out the difference as “credit,” but in practice that’s quite absurd. Like all other utilities, they may reserve the right to terminate my service if I should fail to pay. That’s sufficient.

But second, is the notion of people paying their bills so entirely alien that customer service representatives mistake it for a cancellation request?

(And for the record, I have excellent credit history; I just don’t like people prying into it.)

Mayflower Moving Truck

A week ago, two movers from Mayflower Transit came to my apartment to load my belongings onto a clearly-branded Mayflower Transit truck (shown at right driving down Commonwealth Avenue).

This afternoon, a driver from United Van Lines called to inform me he’d be dropping off my belongings at our new apartment.

So, at some point between Boston and Colorado, did you two meet up and swap? Did the United driver hijack the Mayflower truck partway here? Or did you just repaint the truck en route?

Through deep and detailed research (i.e., reading one Wikipedia article) I now know that both are owned by the same parent company, but that doesn’t make the initial phone call any less confusing.

In preparation for moving, I needed to cancel my Verizon DSL account.  Naturally, I Googled “cancel Verizon DSL” to get instructions, and the first page of results is filled not with information from Verizon, but with horror stories.  That’s never a good sign.

Sighing, I searched “cancel” in Verizon’s help system and immediately got the 800 number to call — so far, one click.  I called. After a few quick voice prompts, I got transferred to Kelly: an agent working in a United States call center, who already knew the phone number I had given the computer earlier (which isn’t the case in some call centers).

Kelly: How can I help you?

Me: I’m moving, so I need to cancel my service.

Kelly: Do you need to transfer your service to another address?

Me: No.

Kelly: You have a two-year contract, so there’ll be a $99 early termination fee.

Me: Yep; I expected that.

Kelly: Okay.  We’ll turn off your service on Wednesday.  Is there anything else I can help you with?

Me: Nope.  Have a nice day!

Start to finish, the call was under six minutes.

I struggle to see how that could possibly have gone any better.  Either Google lied to me through ranting, or whatever problems Verizon once had are fixed.

The Harvard Pops gave a delightful baseball-themed concert tonight, including Boston’s own baseball favorites like Shipping Up to Boston and Sweet Caroline.  ”Sporchestra” commentators narrated the event, providing (for example) play-by-play analysis of Beethoven’s 5th symphony:

The brass section has the theme… and now the basses have it… and now nobody has the theme!  The audience can’t find the theme!  Wait… what’s this… he’s introduced a new theme!

Mengruo Yang performed a mesmerizing and technically impressive solo on flute in Fantasie Brillante from Carmen (performed here, perhaps even more impressively, by 7 year-old “Emma“).

Megan Savage narrated the poem Casey at the Bat as Adam Lathram brought it to life.  The Boston Pops had included this poem in their own baseball-themed concert last year, but I honestly liked conductor Allen Feinstein’s original music from tonight’s performance better.

My favorite line of the evening came when Adam Lathram was about to start a rigorous training routine for his upcoming bullfight in a montage set to the music of Rocky:

You’d better get a move on.  You only have 163 measures.

All this begs the question: where were you while all this was going on?

Time spent preparing paper tax returns and doing math on five forms: 15 minutes.

Time spent clicking “Next” four thousand times in order to file my already-prepared paper returns online: 90 minutes.

I applaud things being online, but I still don’t understand why people insist online returns are easier or faster.