Unthinkability

It is an unfortunate side effect of modern life in the U.S.; When my wife and I are home with our kids, we spend our time trying to accomplish grown-up tasks and chores, all while deflecting requests and questions from our three kids.

We tell ourselves that we would never get anything done if we stopped to answer every request and demand.  The truth is that  our house is usually still a mess and we are never done with all of our household chores.

We seem to be working so hard, but we actually accomplish more and feel better when we engage with the kids and get them involved with our chores.  We don’t get them done any faster with the kids’ help, but we feel less drained afterwards.

My wife and I enjoy time alone, but we enjoy one-on-one time with each of our kids even more.  We love all of our kids, but we occasionally need to reconnect with each one individually without the distractions injected by the other two. 

So, my wife got some of that one-on-one time today while she was driving around town with our oldest kid.  Here are some of the questions that were posed to mom:

• Does the road ever end?
• What do airbags do?
• Why do you put money in the bank after you go to college?
• Why do people smoke?

Each question is simple, smart, elegant, and complicated… just like each of our kids.

We signed up with Vonage in 2005, and it had been great.  We have since switched to cell phones and no longer needed a landline.  So, I called the Vonage Customer Care Center to cancel our account.

I didn’t record the phone call.  I wish that I had.  I would have posted it to YouTube and gotten a zillion hits and an interview spot on Good morning America, and a Senate hearing…

But no, I did not record it, my 15 minutes in hell.  “Rachel,” the relentless, uncaring and selfish, non-American-based gal who would NOT shut her pie hole about my “other options” after I politely asked her 7 times to simply cancel my account.  I am still steamed.

When I first told “Rachel” that I was calling to cancel my service, she paused while her computer screen prepared the corresponding canned script.  She then gave me the ‘apology script and  asked me what I would do if my cell phones quit working? I was stunned.  She continued to ask why I wouldn’t use Vonage as a backup?  I said “No thank you.  I am not interested in hearing any other options.  Please just cancel my account.“  She asked if I knew that Vonage was portable, and that I could take it with me wherever I went.  “More portable than a cellphone?” I thought.  *sigh*  I knew what she meant; that I could use an Illinois phone number in Montana, but that feature doesn’t matter to me.

Rachel made 7 different attempts to ‘rescue’ my account from cancellation, and she made each attempt with the emotional commitment of a serpent.  It was clear that she didn’t give a crap about me.  After the 5th failed attempt to get her to simply cancel my account, I asked her for her name and operator number.  She happily reeled it off to me (“Rachel, number 28279372983023-blah-blah-blah”) and she continued with her inconceivable spiel.  It was clear that a letter to her manager, the company, the board of directors wouldn’t do squat.  They are desperate, and under orders to “save our ship.”

I must have finally said the correct combination of magic words.  Maybe she just ran out of scripted crap.  In any event, she relented, put me on hold for 3 minutes, and gave me my hard-won cancellation number.

Thank you, Vonage.  Thank you for three years of quality service.  Thank you for demonstrating just how desperate, vile, and ignorant your company’s leadership has become.  I found it very interesting.  It is clear to me that you will be out of business soon.

Those clever spammers have done it again!  Every few years, spammers do something so clever and impressive that I pause to admire the ingenuity of those bastards.

In the past, they have come up with the variable sized non-gaussian speckled image to embed ads for E.D. products, and they have invented English-pattern gibberish generators to fool our language filters.

This time around, they have harnessed the power of CRM and e-mail customization combined with advanced (human-assisted?) screen-scraping to compile and send sophisticated customized e-mail campaigns. 

Here is a screenshot of the e-mail that arrived in my inbox today.  Wow.  That poor Romanian girl with broken Engrish. She obviously just wants to help me.  I’d better reply to her e-mail to answer her question!

This is a classic phish to collect valid e-mail addresses, but with a new, elegant, highly-customized twist.  Just look at the file names, and the use of my name with the second instance missing the capitalization as if Poor Romanian Girl had just mistyped it.  It is a thing of beauty.

If I were a sucker wishing to set the poor Romanian girl straight, I would reply to the e-mail address that she supplied… and my e-mail address would be added to their spam database of ‘verified’ e-mail addresses.  Ka-ching$.  OR, if I were to e-mail the supposed imposter named in the message, my e-mail address would get added to the same database.  Ka-ching$.  Ingenious.

(This e-mail could also be an attempt to form a sympathy relationship to prosecute another more devious scam involving the Russian mafia, but I sure hope not.  Those Russian scams are scary as hell.  They are worse than the South African ‘help me get my money out of the country’ scams.)

Whatever the end-game, they are bastards.  Brilliant craftsmanship, though.  Bastards.

p.s. update: What kind of mind freak would that have been if the pictures were actually of me?!  Maybe that is the next step for them…  *shudder*

For a long time, I have been #3 on Google when you search on my name, “Scott Fletcher.”  The more-relevant dude in the #1 and #2 spot has been the baseball player… until last week.

Last week, while ego surfing to show a friend of mine that he shouldn’t feel bad about not being the top hit for his name, I found that my voiceover page is the first search result returned when I Google for “Scott Fletcher.”  My family’s corp site is #4!  (Click the pic to embiggen to Google screenshot)

I don’t think that Google is customizing the results to make me feel better.  I hope not!  I hope that I am not living a lie!

“So what?” you might ask. “What’s the big deal?“ 

You’re right.  It doesn’t really matter.  Who cares.

*giggle*  (I do.)  *tee-hee*

My wife and I has a small chuckle over this old receipt she found from Target.  (Click to embiggen.)

Apparently, you can get everything that a woman needs at Target department stores.  Makes you wonder if someone else has a receipt that says “WIFE” or “DIVORCE.”  If so, I can guarantee that one of those cost a helluva lot more than a “HUSBAND.”

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