Talking To God On The Great White Cell Phone

I have seen the public and private use of telephones and the evolution of telephone technology develop astronomically in my somewhat limited but ever extending lifetime. You see, when I was born (a looooong time ago during the Eisenhower presidency when there were only 49 states,) our little town of Ozark, Alabama still featured a majority of residential party lines and still used four-digit or five digit dialing (in the words of Forrest Gump-I was too young to remember being born.)

By the time I was old enough to actually dial the phone and know someone else who would answer and care to converse with me, our family had not one but TWO phone company owned, wall mounted, rotary dial telephones—one in the kitchen and one in the “family room in the basement. Our new house was PRE-WIRED for a telephone. The phone number was 774-8487 and a three minute, long distance, government regulated, AT&T call to the next county cost $8,000—so no one called long distance back then unless you were rich or someone was dead or dieing.

In spite of our highly developed telephonic sophistication, even my parents didn’t have a phone in their bedroom. You didn’t need one back then, because no one ever dared to call after dark unless someone was dead, dieing, or looking to be one of the above in short order. My father would personally see to it. Of course there were the occasional prank calls featuring questions like “do you have Prince Albert in a can” or “is your refrigerator running”—simple things for simple minds.

There were phone booths everywhere and a local call cost you a whopping ten cents. I dare you to try to find a pay phone today except at the airport (or possibly the police station?). Kids and hobos (ok, ok, ok, urban outdoorsmen) alike routinely played their favorite game--payphone roulette-- by pressing the coin return button hoping for a ten-cent prize to fall out.

I worked at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta part time while I was in college in the late 1970’s and I was amazed that their hotel rooms had telephones in the bathroom adjacent to the toilet. “Who the heck were these people that they couldn’t sit down and have peace and quite in such a personal, private, situation?” How things have changed today…you can’t use a public restroom or pay for a head of lettuce at the grocery store without listening to some moron droning on endlessly about something that could have waited until they got home. These same people call home to say they are turning into the driveway…

The first time I saw a remote phone was on the TV show “Hart to Hart.” You know, the 1970’s weekly show about the wealthy California detective couple that drove around in their Benz convertibles with the black telephone handset attached to a radio-telephone the size of a small file cabinet mounted in the trunk?

I got my first cell phone in 1990. I was a big shot owner of my first Georgia Corporation and the portable 3-watt “bag phone” cost over $600 as I recall. The Bellsouth sales rep actually came to my office, delivered the phone to me, and gave me instructions on how to use it. Local calls were $.60 per minute and $1.00 or more per minute when you were “roaming” out of your home service area (which usually began somewhere down the street a few hundred yards,) in addition to a $3.95 roaming fee. Long distance charges were extra. Good God I spent a lot of money on that phone—I remember making one phone call driving up interstate I-85 when I was working on a project bid that cost $75 for less than an hour.

Cell phones were still a novelty back then and I couldn’t take mine with me into a meeting or a restaurant without someone asking to “look” at it. Complete strangers would actually ask to place a call just to act like a hick and tell so-and-so “guess where I’m calling from?” I must admit that there was a certain amount of ego rush associated with having a cell phone back then, but the novelty soon wore off when the bills came in and it was soon reduced to just another tool of doing business.

I am currently dragging my fourth evolution of cell phone technology around with me and, in spite of the reduction in size and promised improvements in coverage area and performance, fully half of my calls end in the words “IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, I’LL CALL YOU BACK IN A MINUTE.” They aught to have a button that you can press that will utter those words (or some variation thereof) automatically when you loose the signal after having five bars on the signal meter just two seconds earlier.

Then the “airphone” came to Delta airliners back in the mid 1990’s. Suddenly mobile phone technology was “in the air” instead of just “on the air.” The seatback mounted phones allowed you to talk to your bookie, sell some stock, or spend an extra precious half-hour worrying about the voice mail you just retrieved at thirty-five thousand feet. I admit that I wasted a few hundred dollars making unnecessary calls just because I could. “Hey honey, guess where I am….”

Up until recently, commercial airliners have continued to be a sanctuary for all of us weary mobile phoners, giving us a requiem from the mindless blathering of insensitive young cell phone users once the airplane pushed back from the gate. Ahhh, the sound of silence as the self-important chick with the b*tch attitude in the seat behind you is forced to shut up about the “blaa-blaa” merger for 55 minutes between Charlotte and Atlanta.

Sorry folks, but it looks like the FCC is about to let things change when it comes to cell phone usage on commercial flights. As a result, I may just start taking the bus…wait a minute…there might be more cell phones on a Greyhound bus than on a Delta flight. The difference is the bus passengers use prepaid minutes. AHHHHHH!

Let’s face it, many times I wish for the days when I wasn’t supposed to be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I believe that I’ve suffered mentally and physically as a result of the so-called technological improvements that I’ve paid so much for over the years.

I still maintain the organizational skills from that era. I used to do projects in Malaysia and Great Britain and it just required that you to plan your day around calling time zone to time zone. Back before E-mail and Fax machines and pagers and Federal Express, people still got business done and managed their personal lives quite well. You could actually go home and be at home mentally and physically.

My holiday wish for everyone is that we slow down and enjoy our lives.

Get over yourself—if you will.

And take that damn cell phone out of your ear, because if it rings once more while I’m trying to eat dinner and you start yelling some mindless drivel, I might just need to use the pay phone at the police station as a result…

Update: December 12, 2004

My favorite talk show host, Neal Boortz, has proposed a solution to defend yourself when and if they allow the use of cell phones on airliners in flight. Here is what your do.

When your neighbor takes a call in flight and becomes obnoxious, just pick up the "SkyMall" catalogue conviently located in your seatback pocket and begin reading loudly out loud. When he or she hangs up, you stop reading...sounds like a plan to me!

Just In Time For Christmas--Homeless Iraq War Vets

It’s the Christmas season and we are all looking forward to visiting family and friends during the holidays. Many Americans spend a good deal of their time and money in an effort to help the less fortunate citizens of our great nation, especially at this time of the year. As a result, I know I’m walking a fine line with this post, but I’m going to do it anyway and try to not come across as too “insensitive.”

This article in the Washington Times under the headline “Homeless Iraq Vets Showing Up At Shelters” is complete crappolla and just has to be debunked by an expert debunker like myself. The author attempts to hang a liberal dose of guilt on us over the plight of “homeless Iraq war veterans” while at the same time taking a few cheep shots at the military in general and the Iraq war effort specifically. I’m not going to let them get away with it.

“Washington, DC, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.”

First things first. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with professional “advocates” touting the poor condition and impending doom of every pitiful form of humanity from illegal Mexican immigrant fruit pickers to one-armed Polish wallpaper hangers. These “advocates” come to us with pious expressions of compassion, demanding our hard earned tax money or other financial support, all the time attempting to cover the fact that they themselves are making a tidy living on the payroll of one or more “advocacy” organizations that pay for everything from their memberships in private country clubs to the license tag on their new Volvo or Saab.

Like the race warlords Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, these mostly self-proclaimed “advocates” have a vested personal interest in maintaining the continued suffering of their specific repressed demographic of humanity while at the same time lamenting their conditions. According to the “advocates,” the number of their victims is always growing as their conditions are continuing to deteriorate. If everyone were actually successfully relieved of their often self-imposed suffering, these “advocates” would find themselves out of a job and would have to actually go out and work for a living rather than chasing microphones and TV cameras all day.

THEY CERTAINLY CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN!

Now, as to the specifics of this latest “news” item…Buried 25 paragraphs down in the story is this little tidbit of information...

“Interviews and visits to homeless shelters around the Unites States show the number of homeless veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan so far is limited. Of the last 7,500 homeless veterans served by the VA, 50 had served in Iraq.”

Think about these numbers for a minute while I get my calculator…let’s see…50 divided by 7,500, that equals 0.006667. For the non-engineers or non-math majors out there, that’s two thirds of one percent. Hardly an imposing trend! I suspect that if they did another survey next week, the number of homeless Iraq vets could easily rise or fall by 50 percent and still not indicate anything to start a new charity category over.

"When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."

I’ve got news for The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans and Ms. Boone, if you go out and look at 100,000 average people in the US population over a two year period, I suspect that you will find at least 50 people who’s life choices and personal actions result in them being described as “homeless” for a short period of time. Most people who aren’t raging alcoholics, drug addicts, or legally insane also manage to be homeless by the government’s so called “official definition” and still not have to sleep in a doorway or eat out of the McDonald’s dumpster. They do this by sleeping on a friend’s couch, moving back home with Mama, or they go to an existing shelter while they get their act together.

UPI’s star “homeless vet” has to this to say about how he became homeless:

“I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for a while," Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in California run by US Vets, the largest organization in the country dedicated to helping homeless veterans.

"Arellano said he lived out of his truck on and off for three months after returning from Iraq in September 2003. "One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets," he said."

"A gunner's mate for 16 years, Arellano said he adjusted after serving in the first Gulf War. But after returning from Iraq, depression drove him to leave his job at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He got divorced.”

Read the entire article and then help me see if I have this situation straight in my mind. After spending 16 years in the Navy, Mr. Arellano is honorably discharged while recovering from a shrapnel wound to his left thumb. He returns home to his civilian life and wife and proceeds to get a divorce, pack his truck, and move away.

I’d like to ask Luis these questions. “Did your wife suddenly start beating you?” “Did she have another man living with her when you returned from serving your country in the war?” “What planning did you make regarding your move, and how could you get all of your “stuff” in your truck unless it was a moving van?”

“One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets…” It looks to me like Luis made a conscious decision to put himself in his current situation. As I have said many times before--you have the God given right in this country to be STUPID, and it is neither my obligation nor that of the government to save you from yourself.

Then there is star homeless veteran number two.

“Lance Cpl. James Claybon Brown Jr., 23, is staying at a shelter run by U.S.VETS in Los Angeles. He fought in Iraq for 6 months with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines and later in Afghanistan with another unit. He said the fighting in Iraq was sometimes intense…Brown acknowledged the mental stress of war, particularly after Marines inadvertently killed civilians at road blocks. He thinks his belief in God helped him come home with a sound mind."

Don't tell the liberals, but here is a young veteran who's religion has kept him from going crazy. Isn' that supposed to be impossible? Aren't you supposed to entrust your sanity to the government and a healthy dose of Prozac?

As usual, the UPI reporter can't resist tossing a few standard stabs at the war and the military. They quote Corporal Brown as saying:

We had a few situations where, I guess, people were trying to get out of the country. They would come right at us and they would not stop," Brown said. "We had to open fire on them. It was really tough. A lot of soldiers, like me, had trouble with that."

"That was the hardest part," Brown said. "Not only were there men, but there were women and children -- really little children. There would be babies with arms blown off. It was something hard to live with."

"Brown said he got an honorable discharge with a good conduct medal from the Marines in July and went home to Dayton, Ohio. But he soon drifted west to California "pretty much to start over," he said.

Brown said his experience with the VA was positive, but he has struggled to find work and is staying with U.S.VETS to save money. He said he might go back to school."

So again I’d like to point out that, contrary to the article’s headline, this guy decided to leave his home in Ohio VOLUNTARILY and move to California. He’s staying in the shelter to save money. Sounds like the first smart decision he has made since he left Dayton. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him or what? Also, he says that his experience with the VA was positive. What's up with that?

“Peter Dougherty, director of Homeless Veterans Programs at the VA, said services for veterans at risk of becoming homeless have improved exponentially since the Vietnam era. Over the past 30 years, the VA has expanded from 170 hospitals, adding 850 clinics and 206 veteran centers with an increasing emphasis on mental health. The VA also supports around 300 homeless veteran centers like the ones run by U.S.VETS, a partially non-profit organization.

"You probably have close to 10 times the access points for service than you did 30 years ago," Dougherty said. "We may be catching a lot of these folks who are coming back with mental illness or substance abuse" before they become homeless in the first place. Dougherty said the VA serves around 100,000 homeless veterans each year.”

So I respectfully ask, which is it?

Is there a crisis with homeless Iraq War veterans or isn’t there. Is it the American people's fault, the Government's, or the individual's?

All I see here is a sensational headline backed up by a bunch of facts and figures that add up to nothing.

Is it just me???

Free At Last, Thank God Almighty (And Mozilla) I'm Free At Last

I finally got frustrated enough with my computer problem to take an extreme, semi-religious measure. I just dumped the Microsoft Internet Explorer off of my computer entirely after installing a free copy of the Mozilla Firefox Web browser. I’ve had a copy running on our other computer for several months and it works wonderfully. No Pop-ups. No, as I like to say, crappola!.

You see, like many individuals (and most governments), I have had a love hate relationship with Bill Gates and Microsoft since it’s inception. My friend Andy’s father bought him one of the original IBM PC’s when he entered graduate school at Georgia Tech back in 1982 and it came in his door with MS Dos 1.2 or something or other on a 5-1/4” floppy disk (there were no hard drives for PC's back then, kids!). From that day forward, he and I set out, at work and at home, on an apparently endless, life long journey of upgrading our computer’s operating systems on a yearly basis.

Microsoft has perfected the cottage business of selling you a software product, immediately informing you of its deficiencies, and then attempting to sell you a “new and improved” product to correct the aforementioned problems, only to come back to you in six months if not weeks with another product and another request for some more of your hard earned cash. With the advent of the Internet, our Washington State benefactor expects us to visit their website practically every day to download some “Free” patch that fixes their latest security deficiency “du jour.”

I avoided the Windows operating system like the plague until windows 98 came out, preferring instead to fool around with DOS autoexec.bat and config.sys files and occasionally firing up windows 3.1 if I had some program that wouldn’t run in DOS. When web browsers came along, I liked Netscape navigator, but the “battle of the computer nerds” made Microsoft Internet Explorer easier to use in my old age and less painful in light of my time worn lack of enthusiasm for technical mumbo-jumbo these days.

In the big picture, Internet Explorer is the most popular Web browser. Why? It comes pre-installed on your computer, with Windows. Beyond this attribute…IT SUCKS!

Remember, Mozilla Firefox….it’s good for what ails you (and your computer.)

My Computer Needs A Flu Vaccine

If my access to the Internet had a doorknob, somebody would most definitely have a broken foot due to my door slamming on same with great force…

I’ve smugly bragged many times in the past to friends and strangers alike that in all my 15 years of owning my own personal computer I’ve never had a hard disk crash and that I’ve never had a virus on one of my computers…until now. Well, something evil has descended onto St. Simons Island and, as a result, I’m afraid that my posting may be limited this week because MY COMPUTER HAS BEEN INVADED BY FORCES FROM HELL.

Late last Thursday night or early Friday morning (I don’t remember exactly when) I had an “event” that occurred while I was writing a blog post. I had about a half dozen Internet Explorer windows open at the time and I didn’t think much about it at first, but it seems that I’ve been “spybotted” or “virused” or something and it has one of our two computers acting like a drunken sailor on shore leave. My girlfriend, Pat, left town this morning with the healthy computer in her luggage and now I’m sitting here running virus scans, diagnostics, doing voodoo chants, Indian (sorry… make that Native American) rain dances, and generally patting this old Dell notebook on the back trying to get it regurgitate whatever is ailing it.

I am not inclined to make my blog efforts into commercial sites yet, so any pop-up ads or advertising you see while reading my efforts is probably the result of some of the modern “door-to-door” salesmen (ok, ok, ok, salespersons) out there that refuse to take “go to hell” as an answer and continue to poke their feet into our doors through our computers and inject their products into our online lives. I’ve had about enough of their marketing efforts. The bug in my machine slows everything down as it reads the files I’m looking at and highlights words in the text like they are hyperlinks. Then when you click on the link, it sends you to a “barganbuddy” page with ads on the specific word topic you click on. For the record, I don’t need a date, a mortgage, Viagra, a cheep vacation, or anything else your pop-up ad or other intrusive internet ad may be selling. Actually, I could use something for my bloodpressure about now…AHHHHHHHH!!!!

I’ve scanned and removed and repaired and just when I think things are back to normal, I reboot and it all starts all over again. Whatever happened to me last week, this computer can’t open a browser window and act normally and I have as yet to get the $#%@*& problem fixed.

For the old folks out there, it feels like I’m using an old IBM PC-XT with a 300 baud Hayes acoustic modem (the ones you had to dial manually and lay the telephone handset on top of.)

French Ineptitude Spreads to Canada

I’ve started yelling, and the way I feel right now I just might not stop yelling until New Years, if ever. Somebody help me please.

I was searching the Web this morning, looking into “airport (in)security” and I found this Reuters article about the Canadians “misplacing” nearly one thousand airport security screener uniforms and badges in the first nine months of 2004.

“Federal Transport Minister Jean Lapierre ordered a probe by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority and will receive a report on Monday. Lapierre said Jacques Duchesneau, president of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, will make public the results of the investigation.”

They say that like the US, Canada has invested billions of dollars upgrading their airport security since 9/11. I’d say that, based on this revelation, they need to spend a few billion more. Then there is little closing item:

“Some of the lost items were discovered on eBay, an online auction site.”

So let me get this straight in my mind. An aspiring terrorist can now go to E-Bay and buy a Canadian TSA uniform, a badge, and next week possibly some good vintage French plastic explosives?

I think that my head is going to explode…AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

"Pardonnez-Moi," Have You Seen My Explosives?

We've got some good news, and some bad news from France this morning.

Bad news: The Scottsman reports that as of 6:00 AM the C4 explosives are still missing.

Good news: The French Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, told the Gendarmes (doesn’t Gendarmes mean “Keystone Cops” in French?) to cease and desist with the free plastics explosives give-away program.

"The procedures that were used on Friday night will no longer be allowed," said Pierre Bouquin, a spokesman for the Gendarmes, who conducted the training. "We’re going to stop practising this on the bags of travellers," he said.

What I want to know is why that loudmouth socialist French President Jacques Chirac wasn’t the one doing the explaining. He certainly doesn’t mind opening his smug yap when he wants to publically criticize the US and our leaders. But nooooo, instead he puts his boy Raffarin out to do his apologizing…figures.

I'm still waiting for Tom Ridge or John Ashcroft to get off their overpaid bureaucratic butts and light a fire under the French transportation officials. Am I the only one that feels this way? Saying "oops," "sorry bout that old chap," or being embarrassed isn't a solution, it a reaction.

We should demand a solution people!

Par Le Vous Frances?

Par le vous Frances? Well, if you can, would someone please send the French people a message for me? Please tell them that their police force working at Charles de Gaulle airport are making the entire population of France look fairly damn stupid to the rest of the civilized world.

”Police at Paris' top airport lost track of a passenger's bag in which plastic explosives were placed to train bomb-sniffing dogs, police said Saturday. Warned that the bag may have gotten on any of nearly 90 flights from Charles de Gaulle, authorities searched planes upon arrival in Los Angeles and New York.”

Can you believe this? The French airport police last Friday planted several ounces of plastic explosive in an unsuspecting passenger’s bag as an exercise to test the abilities of their bomb sniffing dog(s.)

The dogs caught the bag, but then the French version of the Keystone Cops let the bag get away from them.

Then they let the bag get put in the hold of an airliner.

Then they let the airliner leave Paris.

Then they reported that as of Saturday night, the explosives were still missing.

"Indeed, it's possible that someone will have a surprise when he opens his bag," they say.

I'd say that "a surprise” is a bit of an international grade understatement.

Ok, I have a few questions for the French law enforcement “professionals,” as well as a serious recommendation as to what the US authority’s response should be as a result of this situation.

First question… WHAT THE &%#@*% WERE YOU THINKING!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Next, why did you have to put the stuff in some civilian's bag in the first place? Why couldn’t you just put together your own “loaded” bag and add it to the luggage mix in the airport operations? Then, once you realized the bag was loose, why didn’t you stop everything at de Gaulle and find it. And finally, why did you let it fly?

“ "These dogs must be trained in the most realistic situation possible ... to be the most effective," (Police spokesman Pierre) Bouquin said.”

Sorry Pierre, but if you did feel it was necessary to put the C4 in some unsuspecting passenger’s bag, why didn’t you idiots at least write down the person’s name and travel destination?

We here in the United States close down entire airport terminals and cease all landings and takeoffs for hours at a time if someone so much as burps and it smells funny. Yet, you French Fools put plastic explosive on one of 90 airplanes and then let it leave to some unknown destination—potentially beyond your own borders?

If you can’t stop explosives from being loaded on an airplane when you KNOW that it is in the airport, how can we expect you to prevent Abdul or Mubarik, one of your lovely, peaceful, indigenous Muslim residents from boarding an airplane with hidden, unknown explosives?

The lame excuse for letting the bag fly is that there was no detonator included in the planted package. Well, suppose some real dangerous person finds the C4 and manages to make or buy a detonator for future use. I, personally, appreciate receiving frequent flyer miles and other perks from airlines, but handing out do-it-yourself bomb kits at the airport doesn’t do much to enhance my feeling of security.

This is a serious problem, folks. The traveling American public, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Homeland Security Administration should demand an immediate audit of the entire French Security operation and if we are not satisfied with the results, we should ban all flights originating in France until remedial measures are taken.

The French are going to aid and abet the death of us all before long if we insist on keeping up the politically correct illusion of their being our friends and ally.

Baah Humbug...


UPDATE: Sunday Afternoon 12/05/04

I just got back in from Christmas Tree shopping and the first thing I did was jump on the internet to see where this story was going.

First,the bad news: As of 4:30 PM EST this afternoon the explosive material is still missing.

Now the good news: It seems that the French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has instructed the Gendarmes (that's French for "Keystone Cops") to stop using live explosives placed in innocent citizens' baggage to conduct training exercises.

I have a suggestion...In the future, why don't they run Jacques Chirac through the airport with a load of C4 shoved up into his personal nether regions and let the dogs practice sniffing him out.

I'd call that killing two birds with one stone... so to speak...