Our Dumb Blog

At the Sprint store, Natahlee finally called me over. “Now you’re here to get a new Treo?”

“No, I already got the Treo. We just added me to the account. I need to get a phone. I also need to turn in this phone for $25, for the Treo I already bought.”

Natahlee typed some things into her computer. “Now are you Michele?”

“No, I’m Joanna.” Hadn’t she just called my name?

“Oh, we need the primary account holder to add a phone. Because there’s the contract involved.”

Remember how Mallory promised that I could pick up the phone? That Michele didn’t have to go down to the Sprint store?

My voice started rising, in pitch and volume, uncontrollably as frustration and rage well up inside my body. “We just talked to customer service, and they PROMISED that I could pick it up! We made SURE!”

“Oh,” said Natahlee, “Well, that’s customer service for you.”

I pulled out my Verizon cell phone. “Calling them isn’t going to help,” warned Natahlee, backing up. “Uh, I’m gonna go check with a manager.”

I dialed Michele and told her what Natahlee had said. “WHAT? I made sure you could pick it up!”

“I know!” I replied, “I made sure you made sure!”

Natahlee returned. “Okay, the manager says we can do it this way. Is that the primary on the phone?”

I reluctantly handed Natahlee my phone. There’s something personal about cell phones, kinda like underwear and toothbrushes, things you don’t readily share. And Natahlee was holding MY phone with closely bitten fingernails and speaking into it with stale cigarette breath.

After sorting that out, I got to pick out a phone. “So you want a Treo?” said Natahlee. She just wasn’t getting it. “You want a camera phone?”

“Just show me your cheapest phone,” I said.

She pointed at the updated Samsung that I already have with Verizon. It’s a flip phone, which I love (I don’t like having to hit a special combination to undo the keylock). “How much is that one?”

“$10,” she said. Well, I would get $25 back for Duncan’s phone, and this one was $10. Looked like a no-brainer. I would save $15 by getting a brand, spankin’ new phone.

“I’ll get that one,” I said. “Here’s the old phone for you to credit $25.”

“Okay,” Natahlee tapped at her computer. “Hmm, I’m not finding that phone. It used to be $25. Now we don’t take it.”

“It used to be $25, like two days ago?” I said. “Because customer service told me I could get $25 for trading it in, and TWO DAYS AGO, Rachel told me I could get $25 for it!”

Natahlee shook her head. “It’s not on my list. Do you want to see my list?”

“NO I DON’T WANT TO LOOK AT YOUR LIST. I WANT SOMEONE AT SPRINT TO FOR ONCE SAY SOMETHING THAT’S TRUE!”

“Well, Rachel may have told you that, and you can talk to Rachel about it.”

“Well, is Rachel HERE?”

“No, but you can come back and talk to her.” She didn’t bother to tell me WHEN Rachel would be in.

Steam must have been coming out of my ears. I was furious. I wasn’t on speaking terms with Natahlee at this point, otherwise I might have asked what the heck was the matter. It’s possible that I was making Natahlee nervous by standing there fuming, or it’s possible that I was emitting bad energy, because for the next HALF HOUR, Natahlee moved her trackball and tapped at her keyboard, and her computer just kept crashing.

Finally, she turned to the guy at the computer next to her and said, “I quoted this phone to her at $10, but it’s $20.”

“$10 it is,” said the guy.

So here’s this fellow, in this obvious position of authority, he must have noticed that this woman on the other side of the counter is obviously upset at the service she is not receiving. And yet he does nothing about it? What are managers for, anyway? Just knock $10 off a product because, yet again, their employee can’t get her facts straight?

Thus ended my Sprint adventure. I walked out with both phones. I don’t think I’ll be returning to demand my $25 from Rachel. She lied to me once. She can lie to me again. Besides, Duncan had mentioned something about keeping the old phone around as a spare.

Now, the girl who never wanted to have a cell phone has TWO. “You can put one in each pocket!” my mom says. My father-in-law just sent us his old PDA phone, so I might be using yet another one soon.

At least I only have to deal with Verizon about that one.

Billy Elliot: If you like well-produced movies with English accents and essentially no plot or substance, and you’re female, you’ll like Billy Elliot. I was unimpressed, but it’s not like it was bad– just boring and predictable.

Girl, Interrupted: After hearing a This American Life interview with the author, and on Jonah’s recommendation I thought I’d watch it. Much better than I suspected it would be. Worth watching, but nothing spectacular. It made me think about things that I’m not entirely sure I wanted to think about.

I left work and headed for Sprint to go get my new phone. The Interstate here has big marquee signs that warn you about traffic problems up ahead. Usually, they say something like, “CRASH AT BRIARGATE ALL LANES OPEN,” which explains that the reason you’re sitting in bumper to bumper traffic is because of onlooker lag. This day they said, “FUNERAL PROCESSION EXITS 215 – 257 CLOSED.” Actually, I have no idea which exits it said were closed, because I don’t keep track of exits by their numbers but by their road names. I could see brake lights backing up ahead, so I exited and proceeded to my long-cut that is faster to take than stopping and starting on a clogged I-25.

Except for this day. Unbeknownst to me, the funeral service had taken place at New Life Church (the biggest sanctuary in town, being a mega-church), right where my road went. In the Miata, there’s no way I can see around all the SUV’s and pickups. Too late, I realized that this six lane road had turned into a parking lot. And they put these stupid concrete dividers in the median, so there’s no way to make a U-turn until you get to the next cross street. And no one was getting there because no one could move. I was completely and utterly trapped. I kept watching the light way at the top of the next hill turn green, yellow, red, and green again and no one move.

Berck called me on the cell and said that he was trying to leave the Academy, but they blocked the gate and wouldn’t let anyone leave. How can you detain someone against their will like that, especially in a non-emergency?

I found out the next day that it was the funeral for the cop who was gunned down by this crazy guy the week before. Police from all over the country had come to the funeral. Now, I’m all in favor of mourning the dead, especially a protector of the peace in the line of duty. Here’s what I’m not in favor of:

1) Here’s a map of the area. There are only TWO roads that go north-south there: the Interstate and Voyager/Hwy 85. And the police blocked off BOTH of them. At rush hour. RUSH HOUR! There are no roads you can take to the west because the Academy is there, and they won’t let you on most of it. You’ve got to go MILES to the east to find another north-south road. I’ve done that before, and it seriously takes more than twice as long for me to get home.

2) Apparently, they had been telling people they were going to do this in the paper and on TV. I don’t get the paper, and I don’t have a TV. I do listen to the radio; I listen to the local NPR station because they’re the only station in town that plays news at the times I’m going to and coming from work. NO mention of this.

3) If you’re going to have a huge funeral procession, have it somewhere where you can actually drive around it, not the only place in town where there are only two routes, and you’ve blocked off both of them.

4) DON’T HOLD YOUR FUNERAL PROCESSION AT RUSH HOUR!!!

5) Don’t block off the INTERSTATE for a funeral procession! That’s a vital north-south corridor for this country, not just for the city or the Front Range. And it’s a federal road, too. I think it’s a violation of federal statute to block off an Interstate for a funeral procession, anyway.

So anyway, by the time I got to Sprint, my mood was NOT GOOD. The place was full of people. I gave my name and Michele’s phone number to the “host.” They have a cooler of bottled water (none of it cold…they may as well have had it in a box), so I grabbed one and gulped it down. I was very thirsty having had to sit trapped on tarmac for so long.

I looked around at the room. Three workers didn’t appear to be helping anyone or doing anything else useful. Two of them were chatting. I felt my mood get worse.

Finally, someone called my name.

Continued later: Liars don’t go to hell; they go work for Sprint.

Actual Fact: If a funeral procession were approaching and needing to cross in front of it were a police car with it’s lights and siren on, a firetruck with its lights and sirens on, an ambulance with its lights and siren on, and a mail truck, only the mail truck could legally pass in front (being a federal government vehicle).

Jonah and her new car!

Which she bought with this…

Today, three of my students flew 306 flights. Flight 306 is the flight right before their checkride. Which means it’s at the end of the “block”. Which means that for them to pass it, all gradable items must be performed to the syllabus-required level inorder to progress beyond the end of the block. I suspected that two of my students would do well and one would quite possibly still wouldn’t be able to land by the end of the flight. Instead, my two good students did horribly, and the other student did great.

My last student screwed up in all kinds of nearly unimaginable ways. The only thing he was struggling with was no flap landings, but those looked good in the pattern work we did first. Then we set out for the area.

“Okay, so I’m going to head for tank,” he says on the downwind departure.

“What?”

“Depot, Depot!! I’m going to Depot,” he says.

“Okay, and what do we need to do?” I ask. My fondest hope for a 306 flight is to get through without saying anything. For a maneuver to be graded “fair” it needs to be performed safe and unassisted. Asking questions could, of course, be considered assistance.

“We need to contact springs approach?”

“Before that.”

“We need to be at 8,000 feet.”

“Yes, but what do you need to do any time you talk to springs approach?”

A few nonsense answers, but the one I was looking for didn’t happen on time. I punched in our pre-assigned code into the transponder as we came up on Home Depot. He futzed with the radios and made the call.

At this point, I’m trying to decide if the kid is screwed for the flight or not. That was assistance, but one deviation is perhaps okay provided that the rest of the arrival and the departure procedures looked good. Boy was I in for a surprise.

A good mile early, my student squawked 1200 and made a call to eagle traffic. He looked at the wrong power lines. This was his 10th flight. By this point, he’s done the Woodmen departure 3-5 times. He should know where the bloody power lines are. Only it gets worse, because he calls Springs Approach instead of Eagle Traffic.

My Student: Eagle Traffic, Talon 20 woodmen departure for Tango Five.
Springs: Talon 20, transmitting approach.
My Student: Roger that, Talon 20.

(As a side note “Roger That” is some crappy radio phraseology that annoys the crap out of me. “Roger” means “I heard you”. So, “I heard you that,” is nonsense. Furthermore, saying your call sign indicates that you heard them. So what he said, translated, is “I heard you that, I heard you.” What he should have said, if anything (no response was really needed) is, “Talon 20”.)

At this point, I explained his many mistakes. A couple moments later, at the correct place (after fiddling with the radio)….

My Student: Eagle Traffic, Talon 20 woodmen departure for Tango Five.
Springs Approach: Talon 20, Eagle traffic cannot hear you if you’re transmitting on Springs Approach.
My Student: Roger That

He then fiddles with the radios incorrectly, and before I can stop him…

My Student: Eagle Traffic, Talon 20 woodmen departure for Tango Five.
Springs Approach: Talon 20, TO TALK ON ANOTHER FREQUENCY YOU HAVE TO FLIP THE SWITCH.
Me: I’m very sorry, sir, my student is having difficulties.

The whole flight went like that.