AT&T apparently really does not want to sell you a cell phone without a contact. (See this image if you want to try to figure out what I’m talking about)

The price with a 24-month contract for an HTC Fuze Black phone is $175 after rebates. If you want to buy the phone for your existing account, it’s $510. Activation fee is $36. Early termination fee of a contract is $175. The contact that you have to get with the phone is $60.

So if you go out, purchase a cell phone with a new contract ($175), activate it (175+36=$211), pay for the first month ($212+60=271), then cancel service ($271+175=$447), you still come out ahead of where you would if you just bought the phone without a contact extension. Of course, there are some sales taxes involved, but not $60 I don’t think. Plus you’d get an extra 900 minutes and an extra phone for a month!

I figured that AT&T was just jacking up the retail price to pressure you into signing a contract, but their $510 is actually less than the cost of the same phone on Newegg (except the Newegg phone you can take to another cell phone company). The main reason for that likely being that Newegg’s is unlocked but with AT&Ts you can only use it with AT&T unless you unlock it yourself. Even so, though, it suggests that the AT&T full no-contract price is not wholly unreasonable but that they’re willing to cut it that much if you’re some combination of (a) willing to stick around for two years, (b) don’t know how to unlock a phone, and/or (c) are unable to perform the arithmetic

I’m perfectly happy with my Smartphone, but since B and C don’t apply to me, I know what I’m going to do when I want a Fuze (unless I go with eBay again).

It seems like half of my little corner of Blogland has been falling apart. Bobvis went dark after the New Year, which was definitely a blow. I’ll need to retrieve my posts from there and put them up… somewhere. Maybe here (with closed comments).

Also, Half Sigma has become a shell of its former self. HS has turned on comment moderation. At first I thought that this might not be such a bad thing since my previous problem with going there was the comment section that managed to turn any and every subject into a referendum on Non-Asian Minorities. The result, though, has been that conversation becomes stilted by lag-times of hours or more and subject-drift is as bad as ever.

Case-and-point, in the comment section of a post about the ethics of pirating eBooks, a comment makes an indirect reference to “those ‘poor’ people that live in the city” (being unable to read) gets through. Then, to make sure that we know who exactly he is referring to, he comes back to mention that calculus textbooks are NAM (Non-Asian Minority) repellent, which in his view makes carrying such books “a great idea”. If those are the comments getting through, what kinds of comments is he not letting through?

To anyone that wonders why I restrict subject-matter of comments around here, that’s why.

On the upshot, if I’m not in Half Sigma’s corner of things anymore, maybe I won’t have to worry about his readers causing subject-drift to the inferiority of minorities and can make a clean break*. Anyone have any suggestions of new blogs that I can read?

* – None of this is to suggest that I do not want HS readers here. Bleedover from HS (and from HS by way of Bobvis) has contributed significantly to Hit Coffee. For that I will always be grateful. Especially since those that have come over have, for the most part, respected my wishes.

I finally got around to reading DC Universe Decisions, wherein they spill the beans on the political leanings of various superheroes. The series is pretty bad, to be honest. The story was fine, but I didn’t like the art and the execution was lacking. Oddly enough, it missed its real calling as a comedy. There were some really funny parts in there and had they gone with that angle, it could have been pretty awesome.

Prior to reading it, I wrote some speculation. Oddly, I couldn’t find any single location that listed them out, so I will here as well as some thoughts. The four fictional candidates were: Super-conservative Republican Bob Ridgeway, moderate black Republican Kate McClellan, moderate Hispanic Democrat Martin Suarez, and super-liberal Democratic Davis Brewster.

Green Arrow for Davis Brewster (D) – The only way it could be.

Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) for A Republican (R) – Probably. Hal makes no endorsement, but it is implied that he pretty strongly disagrees with Green Arrow. Of course.

Guy Gardner for Bob Ridgeway (R) – Gardner is the odd case of the superhero that was supposed to be a Republican as a joke. Keith Giffen had Gardner, who up to that point I believe was a rather bland character with no conservative leanings (indeed, he was a special ed teacher… not exactly a conservative career), hit his head and become a reactionary thug. Who, of course, was a big fan of Ronald Reagan. Gardner became a sensation in this persona and they were never entirely able to shake it. So no big surprise that he threw his weight behind the conservative Republican. CORRECTION: I have been informed that I have mixed things up with this summation and that Gardner was a commie-hating conservative prior to Giffen’s contributions. His conservative views were, at least according to Wikipedia, a result of brain damage, but it was something that Giffen exploited rather than invented. Thank you to “Correction” for the correction.

Vixen for Kate McClellan (R) – Black women sticking together, I guess? I don’t really know Vixen very well. Her endorsement was glided over on a 9-panel page of endorsements meant to illustrate that everybody was getting into the act.

Dr Light for Davis Brewster (D) – That a highly-educated, professional Asian immigrant and scientist would back the liberal candidate isn’t much of a surprise.

Power Girl for Bob Ridgeway (R) – This one was a bit of a surprise, though I don’t know much about Power Girl (I thought she had been wiped out of the timeline, actually). I would expect her to either support a Democrat due to feminism or McClellan out of female solidarity. The white male Republican is the one that I would least expect. Again, based on what little I know.

Changeling/Beast Boy for Martin Suarez (D) – They make it apparent that he’s not following things too closely and mostly just wants to be on TV.

Wildcat for Bob Ridgeway (R) – Sounds reasonable. Tough guy supporting the tough guy.

Plastic Man for Kate McClellan (R) – Plastic Man’s reasoning is not entirely intellectual. He supports McClellan on the basis of her good looks.

??? for Davis Brewster (D) – I have no idea who the person on the bottom left of the 9-panel page is, though apparently she’s in Brewster’s camp.

Firestorm for Martin Suarez (D) – I don’t know anything about the new Firestorm.

Hawkman for Bob Ridgeway (R) – Funny that they would go to all of the trouble of saying “Hawkman’s not necessarily conservative!” in Identity Crisis only to have him endorse the most conservative candidate a year or so later.

Batman for Martin Suarez (D) – Well, not exactly. Bruce Wayne and Wonder Woman make their endorsements but it’s set up as though it could be (and probably is) staged so that they can integrate themselves into the campaign.

Wonder Woman for Bob Ridgeway (R) – See above.

Flash (Wally West) for The Mysterious Mad Bomber (I) – Never be sarcastic to a news camera.

Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) for Martin Suarez (R) – Or Brewster, he wasn’t sure. Former Blue Beetle Ted Kord (a reader of The National Review) wouldn’t be pleased, but Reyes is young, Hispanic, and probably idealistic, so it fits.
Blue Devil for … – Blue Devil is apparently strongly against three of the candidates (so presumably voting for the fourth). And he’s apparently not dead anymore.

Flash (Jay Garrick) for Kate McClellan (R) – I’m a bit surprised that they would have any Flash on record either way. Have no strong feelings on the endorsement.

Some Chimpanzee is Not Voting – I have no idea who this is but it doesn’t matter because as he/she/it points out, chimps can’t vote.

Lady Blackhawk for Brewster (D) – I know nothing of this character. I thought she was in World War II or something.

Huntress for Kate McClellan (R) – I’m surprised that I didn’t comment on her in my previous post since she is one of my three favorite comic book characters of all time. The Huntress, as I knew her, would almost have to vote for a Republican (to the extent that she is political, which I would suspect that she isn’t). But then, The Huntress as I knew her wouldn’t vote for any candidate solely because she’s a woman and wouldn’t act like such a ditz. I get that they were trying to be funny, but Huntress should be the straight-man (errr… woman) in any comedy routine.

Superman for … – Yeah, like they’re going to touch that one.

—

Addendum: See above CORRECTION regarding Guy Gardner.

Awake.

On the road.

We’re at the airport, trying to find the parking lot. The only thing we can find is $26 a day and we can’t believe that’s right. That must be the hourly lot and we need to find the long-term parking lot. Honestly, though, I am so anxious that we decide that $26 a day is worth it just to make sure we get on that plane. The problem is that the parking lot is full from near-top to bottom. I say “near top” because the uncovered roof was closed to parking due to the snow. So now we set off to find off-airport parking. There were plenty of lots that we passed and most charged under $26 a day.

Nearly every lot we see appears to have signs about it being full. No matter, though, because we have time to take a longer shuttle from a farther-flung parking lot. We stop at a couple lots that don’t have signs about being full only to find out they’re full to.

We manage to get our car stuck in a hotel parking lot trying to turn around. This is just what we need. It takes us a good 10-15 minutes to get out.

We come to the determination that there is literally nowhere that we can park. If we had thought about it sooner, we could have gone all the way out to a Park’n’Ride, but we didn’t know where any were and by the time we got there it would be too late anyway. And so it was that on the day where Clancy consented to the earliest arrival she has ever consented to in her life, we still missed our flight. Devastated, we make our way home

We call the airline and cancel our seats. They say that they can get us out late the next day (Christmas) if we upgrade to first class, but we’re not willing to. I wish I had realized that Clancy’s reluctance was the belief that she could find us something sooner or better priced because I would have disabused her of that notion really quick. I thought we had just given up. Instead, she spent the next three hours trying to arrange something. I am simply exhausted from attempted travel and have ideas that we might just spend a quiet Christmas together. She disabused me of that notion quickly as it became apparent that if we were stuck here over Christmas, she would spend most of it wishing that we were in Delosa. So when she found an extremely expensive flight out the next day, I consented and we decided to spend Christmas day in transport.

This got a lot of laughs this week at work:

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

The southern hick in me really appreciated this:

Country Music Stars Challenge Al-Qaeda With Patriotic New Song â??Bomb New Yorkâ??

With bowl season wrapping up, I want to comment on a complaint that I am extremely tired of hearing: There are too many bowl games.

There are only too many bowl games if you don’t like watching college football. If you don’t like the games, don’t watch them. It’s really a simple concept.

Of course then they respond that the proliferation of bowls makes going to a bowl game less meaningful. I’m not sure that I accept that logic. That there was an Emerald Bowl did not make the Rose Bowl less meaningful. Attention is not being diverted from the Orange Bowl because there’s a St. Petersburg Bowl. Bowl games sort themselves out pretty ruthlessly. A team that made the GMAC Bowl does not think “Hey, we made a bowl game just like Ohio State!” Chances are, they’re upset that they didn’t go to the Motor City Bowl or the Liberty Bowl, which is where the teams would go if they were slightly better. A team in the Liberty Bowl would much rather be in a BCS Bowl. A BCS team would rather be in the National Championship Game.

While fans of the top half-dozen teams or so may not care about the Buffalo Bulls making a trip to the Motor City Bowl, fans of Buffalo are ecstatic at having made their first bowl in the history of the program. University of Texas fans lose nothing but University at Buffalo fans get something. Net gain! Notre Dame, who always wants to go to a big bowl or the national championship, got a 9-game, 15-year slump off its back with a victory in the Hawaii Bowl. Vanderbilt went to their first bowl in 26 years and won their first one in over fifty. These are teams that wouldn’t have gone to a bowl a decade ago (except maybe Buffalo), but the looser format gave them a chance they otherwise wouldn’t have had to vindicate their struggling programs.

And play on national television. A lot of these teams, even pretty good ones, can go the entire season without playing a single game on national television almost regardless of how good they are. This gives them that opportunity. It raises their profile just a little and helps them recruit so that maybe they can field better and better teams.

I will confess that part of me looks at some of these teams and has me saying “Does 6-6 Kentucky really deserve to be there? Do they want to?” Well maybe they don’t. It’s worth pointing out, though, that 6-6 teams (which is the worst record a team can have and still go to a bowl game) went 3-2 this bowl season against teams with better records, so it’s possible that they were more excited to be there than the other team was. I just don’t see the harm.

Well, I guess there is one area of concern. When it comes to some of the lower-level teams, there isn’t a whole lot of reason to make these bonus games take place at a neutral location. It’s possible that more people had gone to the game between NC State and Rutgers if it had been held in North Carolina or New Jersey rather than at the Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham, Alabama.

Maybe the solution to all this is semantics. Differentiate between teams that deserve to be in bona fide bowls and teams that deserve a little post-season treat. Change the 6-win requirement to 8-wins for bowls. Let teams with 7 or more wins host “Invitationals” where they can play a home game against any team that has either 6 or 7 wins. That way they get an extra game that would probably be televised, Bowl Games can retain some of their prestige, and you won’t have bowls going belly up cause not enough fans were willing to fly half way across the country to watch their less-than-awesome team play. Win-win-win all-around.

Wake up, walk to the train station.

I get my hopes up that the train line that runs straight to the airport is working this morning. There are no messages either on the intercom or the lightboard about taking alternate routes and shuttles as I had to do yesterday. But when the next train arrived, the conductor said that everybody needed to get on and gave the dirt on the alternate routes and shuttles that I took yesterday. I had the vague feeling that the uncertainty here might come back to bite my rear.

A guy from the local Fox affiliate flags the guy next to me for an interview. It’s apparent from the get-go that he doesn’t particularly care to be on the news. He answers the reporters questions in one or two word responses and when the reporter asks “So what’s your story?” trying to get him to elaborate, he replies “I just told you.” There’s a 50/50 chance that I will be on the local news bobbing up and down to keep warm in the light wind and increasingly heavy snow. It probably would have been better for all involved if he’d interviewed me. I could have said something about having plane tickets, train tickets, and trying to get a flight out of here so that I can catch another flight out of Zaulem. I had the story that the guy next to me did not seem interested in telling.

We’ve been waiting in the wind and snow for two hours waiting for a shuttle bus to get there. Apparently my earlier premonition was correct. The train-plane line should have been running and wasn’t. So they had to scramble to find the shuttle buses to take us to the airport. Everyone waiting is getting irate and every twenty minutes or so a train comes by to drop off more people. It’s becoming apparent that there are too many people to fit on a single bus and there is no telling how much longer it will take the next bus to arrive. The Metro guy is saying that one should be coming by any minute now and that another will come by 20 minutes after. The problem, he explains, is a shortage of buses. Apparently, a dozen or so buses had gotten stuck in the snow, scattered around Shaston. Whatever other hardships I was facing, I was quite glad not to be on one of those buses. The long-awaited bus arrives, but the poor Metro guy is stuck in the position of telling us that even though it’s here and that we need to get to the airport, we’re going to have to wait another thirty minutes for reasons he’s not sure of. I’m wondering if there is about to be a riot.

I am getting increasingly anxious as to whether or not I will get on the bus and whether or not the next bus will be on time for my 7:30 departure. I want to tell everyone when my departure time is so that I can be sure to get on ahead of the people that have later flights. That’s when I find out that there are people with flights at 6:30, 6:45, and 7am waiting as well. At this point I’m not sure if I can even get on the bus with a good conscience. A young woman tries to organize everybody so that those with the earliest flights get on first. I’m game even if it may be to my disadvantage, but it quickly breaks down the second the doors open. Feeling awfully bad about it, I make my way on the bus as I mentally apologize to anyone that might miss their plane on my account.

A guy on the bus has unlimited data service on his cell phone and becomes very popular. He keeps checking on everyone’s flight. One woman talks about how worried she is about making her flight. Then she says something like “I know I’m being paranoid because the flight isn’t until 10:45, but I’m just worried.” 10:45?! I want to scream at her and throttle her. Her flight wasn’t for over four hours and she butted her way on to the dang bus ahead of people that now may miss their flights. If my flight had even been as late as 8:30 I would have waited. I wanted to call her nasty names, but instead I quietly seethed.

We arrive. I check the board and see that my flight is still listed as “On Time”. I’ve got my ticket printed out from the night before so I go straight to the security line. I’m feeling pretty good about my chances of making the flight. Several people from earlier flights ask if they can cut in front of us. We ask to see their ticket and when they show it to us we let them. The line is moving very quickly. I had forgotten what that feels like. A line actually moving. Because of the rush and staffing shortage, there is no pretense that anyone is going to be pulled aside and not a single bag is investigated thoroughly. This is good because I seem to always get caught up in these things.

Boarding.

Airborne.

Land.

Got my luggage and after a wait at the bus stop, it arrives and I board.

I arrive at the Sounddome, which is the bus stop that happens to be right across the street to the Amtrak station where my car is parked. I wait in the Amtrak line and get my two train tickets canceled. The Amtrak guy was really great about it. Then a woman in the parking lot loaned me her shovel so that I could get my car out of the snow and the parking lot. Things are suddenly going really well and working out. I am not sure what to make of this.

The main roads in Soundview have been shoveled and all that and since I live on a main road that works out great. The back alleyway to our parking area is completely iced over, though, so I park off the street in the front. There is some snow and ice in that area, but I figure I’ll be okay. I figure wrong. I can tell immediately that my car is stuck. I have another flight to Colosse tomorrow, so my first two hours spent after the initial euphoria getting home is spent desperately trying to free up my car so that we can drive it to the airport.

The car is not coming out. I’ve managed to move a lot of ice and snow around, but it appears to be doing almost as much harm as good. More than ice-free, it’s important that everything is even. It’s hard to keep that amount of ice even and no matter what I do I keep getting stuck. My car gets further and further out on the street to the point that it’s impeding traffic, but I can’t get it out. Fortunately, a woman with three very large sons stops and sends her team of kids out to help. They get it out with little difficulty. I take my car and find a side street that’s covered with ice but not much snow and park my car there, hoping that I can get it out in a few hours when I find a way to completely clear my street parking spot.

I go around from neighbor to neighbor asking if anyone has a snow shovel that I can use. I had previously been using an ice scraper because it was all I had, but I realized that I needed a bona fide shovel. Nobody answers or if they do they don’t have a shovel. Then I notice as I knock on my neighbors’ door for the second time that she has a shovel just sitting there on her porch. She is probably the neighbor that I am closest to and I don’t think she would mind if I borrowed it, but I’m not sure. I decide to knock on the door again after work hours. In a stroke of luck, I run into her in the back yard. She has apparently been around all day but is not in the habit of answering her door. I get a snow shovel, which is great because now I can dig out my parking space. Yay. I get to dig out a parking space.

The parking space is cleared. Clancy is home. Now laundry, packing, and a bunch of other stuff so that we can make it out to the airport tomorrow morning. She asks what time we should arrive at the airport and tells me that she is willing to arrive as early as I want. I tell her that I really want to go to the airport tonight and spend the night there. At this point, despite a light uptick in my luck, I don’t want to take any chances. She laughs at the prospect. As early tomorrow as I want. We decide to get up at 6am for our 12:30 flight. Getting Clancy up at 6 is quite the concession.

I need someone’s help. If you’ve already seen all of the TV show NYPD Blue, or alternately you have no interest in ever watching it but want to help me out, I could use your assistance. I need to know what season Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits) leaves the show. The best way to find out is probably on the descriptions in Wikipedia or maybe somewhere in IMDB or tv.com. I would look it up myself, but I’m afraid that even scanning through it to find out would give me too many spoilers.

Extra points if you can tell me what seasons John Clark (Mark Paul Gosselaar) and Danny Sorensen (Rick Shroeder) were on the show.

I only have access to certain seasons of the program and want to know which characters I’m going to get to see coming and going.

I remember the 2001 New Years was spent with Clint and Dave at a local bar in Mayne. The television in the bar was running commercials during the count. We all watched our watches and then a car commercial and then our watches and then a drug commercial and then our watches and then each other, wondering if everybody’s watch was off. When they came back from the commercial break, they were showing some place celebrating the turn of the New Millenium.

Then some guy stood up and said, “This is bull-excrement! Everybody, start counting down with me. And so at about 12:02am on January 1, 2001, we rocked in the new year, new century, new millenium, and all that.

I was reminded of our little fake celebration as I watched the turn-over a week or so ago. I was reminded because they showed the ball dropping on Time Square. I knew what it was because I saw the same thing at 11:00 when the Eastern Time Zone actually celebrated the New Year. I have to assume that we celebrated out New Year to the first television re-run of 2009.

The thought occured to me that this is ridiculous. There are approaching 100,000,000 people in the Central Time Zone. We don’t need East Coast leftovers. I have decided that it’s time to Chicago, Memphis, or New Orleans to step up. I pick those three because Chicago is the largest city and because the other two know how to party. However, if San Antonio or St. Louis or Omaha wanted to do it, I wouldn’t object. Then they need to come up with the dropping of a sugar beat or corn stalk or some spectacle like that. We need people in the streets. We need a party. A party big enough that all the CST networks will show it.

Las Vegas apparently does their own thing to great effect. Maybe Los Angeles does, too. To anyone that spent the New Year on the west coast (Spungen? TL? Becky? Brandon?), what were they showing on TV? I really hope it wasn’t NYC reruns. Since Las Vegas’s celebration was getting some airplay in Colosse, I assume not.

Well, the Central Time Zone has got even more people than they do. It’s time for us to stop accepting the media’s assumption that we all worship the Big Apple and that we should be satisfied with their TV leftovers.

As for the Mountain Time Zone… I don’t know what to tell you. Denver? Phoenix? Salt Lake City? I wish you the best of luck coming up with your own thing.

-{Previously Installment}-

“This is a message for {pause} William Truman {pause} from Amtrak Rail. Our records indicate that you have a ticket on the train leaving {pause} Shaston, Shasta {pause} at {pause} Six {pause} fifteen {pause} PM {pause} and arriving at {pause} Soundview, Cascadia {pause} at {pause} Eight {pause} forty-five {pause} PM. {pause} This route has been {pause} cancelled. {pause} Please call our customer service to schedule a new appointment.” -An automated call from Amtrak

I finally get ahold of Amtrak. They don’t have any trains leaving until Wednesday afternoon. The problem is that I need to get back to Soundview by Tuesday night so that Clancy and I can leave by plane on Wednesday morning.

I’m looking at renting a car. The cheapest I can find for a one-way rental is around $200, all included. I don’t think that I have a whole lot of choice.

Clint’s girlfriend finds me a plane ticket for 7pm, which I snap up immediately. I had considered getting a flight out but had decided that if the trains weren’t running then the planes probably weren’t taking off. But it looked like I was wrong because Northern Airways was still taking flights.

Northern Airways has cancelled all flights leaving Shaston. I call NA, but it’s busy.

Attempts to reach Northern Airways fail.

I decide that maybe I need to go back and look into renting a car. The problem is that the authorities are requiring tire chains and I’m not positive if the rental agencies have them. So I call to ask. The national agency says that I need to contact the local location. The local agency’s phone lines are jammed so they refer me back to the national agency. I do some looking into it and not only do rental car agencies not keep tire chains on them but they prohibit you from putting your own on their cars.

Attempts to reach Northern Airways fail.

I reach Northern Airways and am placed on hold.

Clint and his girlfriend are about to go out and eat. I tell them that I can’t go because I need to wait to get a hold of the NA representative. Right before they leave, I get the rep. Much to my surprise, they have me on a flight at 7:30 the next morning. I’m initially excited to have an early flight that would get me back to Soundview in time to hang out with my wife, though I do some time backtracking and realize that I would need to aim to get at the airport at 5:30 in the morning. I have no idea how I’m going to do that.

I start trying to contact cab companies. First one is busy. Second one is busy. Third one has a message saying that they can’t answer right now. Fourth one is busy. Fifth one sends me to an answering machine message. Sixth one sends me to an answering machine message. Seventh one answers. I ask if I can set up an appointment for 4am the next morning. They tell me that they’re not taking appointments and I’ll have to try to just call a couple hours before I need it.

I call the Seventh Cab Company and am told that they’re fully booked for the next couple hours and are not taking reservations beyond that.

-{Next Installment to be posted on Sunday}-