How Rude! A Follow-up to Why Complain

(c) 2014 Pixar 

It is not too often that I do a companion piece to a previous post.  I have done series and very few follow-ups.  I can recall doing a piece on Abby Lee Miller, the dance instructor on Dance Moms-now turned jail occupant, then months later doing a follow-up piece on how she was fairing since I berated her on her quest of being Queen of Sheba dance teacher.  I am also currently doing an on-going series of lessons I am learning this year.  I have not written a lesson since Eastertime, so, it is time I write a new one (Coming soon).  So, doing a follow-up so soon (practically hours) after writing the original piece is something new and different.

If you have not read the post, Why Complain, a Social Media Epitope, I urge you to read it, especially if you are the type who finds something wrong with the way that social media (especially Facebook) is run.  If you have, may I put another “Monkey Wrench” in that piece?

My second biggest pet-peeve are Trolls.

In case you are not familiar with the term “internet troll”, it is a social media term, which means, “is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.” (Wikipedia)

You could kind of say that this is my biggest pet-peeve from the above reason alone.  The reason I am following up on the last post involving “social media taboos”, as I like to call them, is I was reading on Facebook, and one of my Facebook friends was posting about a dinner that she thinks that her hubby and 12-year-old child would like.  I did not comment, but everyone but one said that they thought the family would love Tilapia.  The one, however, said, “Did you know that Tilapia contains Carbon Monoxide?” could you say that the person was a troll or stating their opinion?  By that definition quoted by Wikipedia, no, but it was rude of the person to mention that in the comments.  I have read worse comments, especially from people commenting on YouTube.

Now, before I can go on, I can say without a doubt that I have had my share of posting rude comments and having some posted to me.  That is what makes it so bad about it when you realized that your comment is going to start arguments, insight people, and so forth.  Here is my list of things I find upsetting:

1.      Words towards a group or race

First, what do you have to do with a culture, lifestyle, or race of people who you know nothing about?  If your only reason for reading a post is to upset that community, you are sadly mistaken.  They are not going to stop doing that act.  The proper phrase is, “Stay in your lane” if you do not have anything nice to say about a group of people.

2.      Using scripture to get your point across

This point is mainly aimed towards those Christians who like to provoke the hand of God on a group of people (The LGTBQ community) would suddenly make them stop.  In fact, it should be anyone’s business on how a person acts, unless it is harming another person, then, by all means, stop them.  Nope, it has not happened yet.  I am a Christian who likes to show people how to be a Christian than to “preach” to a person about their ways.  The way I show them is to not judge.  God is the only judge, and I am not worthy enough to do his job.  It is not my calling. So please, stop quoting Deuteronomy, or any other scripture for trolling purposes.  God does not like ugly.

3.       Calling an individual, a b**ch, and any other word you can think of. 

 Yes, I went there, and it is not nice when I posted it too. I do not curse on my posts, EVER, so this is the first and last time you will hear it from me. This is the worst kind of troll.  I have seen this a lot on YouTube. A person has worked hard on their video, making sure that they meet the basic requirements of YouTube. My requirement from you the viewer is Thumbs up or Thumbs down.  No comment is required.  Hate the video, fine, but no need to show the Youtuber and their followers that hate.  By the way, did you know that the Youtuber now has the control to approve your comment or not?  I should know because I have approved or disapproved some myself.  So, you may be commenting on deaf ears.

I could go on, but it is late. 

Takeaway Moment:  You may think that being a troll is cute or you are exercising your right to be heard.  We hear you loud and clear, trolls, and we read your comments too.  I have answered some troll’s comments too, like the one in Why Complain.  For the rest of us, there is a cute little button called a delete button on your laptop, desktop, or a virtual button on your tablet or phone.  Use it at will when you feel the urge to start an argument. No one likes a rude person in the real or virtual world.  Keep it real and stay in your lane whenever possible.  This is the only way you will get along in life.  For Christians, God has a rude awakening for those who disobey his commandments, don’t be that rude awaken yourself.  Try to make everyone online experience as smooth as possible, as well as your own.

(c) 2016 Dreamworks, Inc.

Personally, I rather see this:

All I want is a Hammer, Internet Connection, and a basket order. That’s all I am asking for

Customer service calls, when done right, can be a sweet
thing.  (c) 2017 P.Lynne Designs

Customer service is not what it is cracked to be these days.  I am mean really people, I am tired of the automatic response unit, or ARU for short. I call it, Siri’s evil twin (Or Galaxy’s and Cortana’s, whoever you deal with on your device).  Here are the problems with the ARU and customer service.  Yes, it does help route the call in the direction that it is supposed to go.  That is the purpose, BUT it also does not allow you to talk to a human.  Here is my story (short, sweet, and to the point, I promise):

I have AT&T Uverse, the vain of my existence.  I had Time Warner Cable (Now Spectrum, as I am reminded of constantly from the commercials that play a million times a day), but when they kept on charging me over the amount that I was willing to pay, I called it quits in 2013, and got Uverse.  I have no problems with the cable (TV) nor phone, but I have had problems since month 5.  This has been an off and on problem.  There have been times when I would be connected, and then no connection.  Technicians would come out and say things like, “You have old wiring, let’s fix this”, “you have an old modem, let’s fix that”.  Finally, someone came out a year ago and solved the whole problem by rerouting the whole system.  So, I thought.

The problems came back 5 months ago.  Since at that time, I was a night owl, staying up until 6 or 7 in the morning (being an entrepreneur does that to you sometimes), I noticed that this interruption would go on throughout the night.  It would stop my work, video watching, and my Facebook gaming to a screeching halt, and 5 minutes later, act like it never did that.   Since I have been going to bed and waking up like normal folks for 2 weeks now, I have notice that it is doing it during the day too.  I have talked to customer service like a dozen times, changing passwords, rebooting the computer, and so on.  I use MS Outlook to send and retrieve emails, and now I have gotten to the point where I can send an email, but I cannot retrieve them.

I called an hour ago, and the Uverse ARU has a funny way of saying, “you are not speaking to a rep today. Not on my watch.”  Here how the convo went:

It goes through the normal “Hello, I see you are calling about the account associated with (xxx)xxx-xxxx.  Is that correct?”

Me: Yes

ARU:  How can I Help you?  You can speak to me in complete sentences (You really can’t, but eh).  What seems to be the problem?

Me: Internet Connection (there is no sub-category for cannot retrieve my emails on MS. Outlook 2016)

ARU (after repeating everything I said in its own little special way): I will run some tests to see what the problem is.

ARU: Still processing tests, please wait….

ARU: Still processing, sorry for the inconvenience….

At this point, I do not want to bore you, but this went on for 15 mins.  Finally, it said (and I am not joking) …. Wait for it…. This is getting good …..  “REBOOT YOUR COMPUTER”.  I have made a note on your account, and within 24 hours, and you have the same problems, give us a callback, and we will resume where we left off.  (Phone goes silent).

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  WHAT KIND OF TEXTBOOK CROCK IS THAT?  I could have done that myself without calling.  No transfer to a human, nothing.  I rather do chat online than this mess.

Note to companies everywhere:  get rid of your ARUs.  I know they are a wonderful convenience for your company, and it helps with efficiency and your quotas, but how does it help with mine, when I have not retrieved what I needed in the past two weeks.  I need to be as efficient with my business as you need to be with yours.  If you want to increase efficiency, HIRE MORE PEOPLE WHO ARE WILLING TO WORK.  NOT IN INDIA, BUT THE UNITED STATES.    

Sorry, it turned into a rant, but that is the second problem, not enough people, who have a basic high school diploma are hired to work in these companies.  For some reason, and I do not need to know this fact, but it is an individual problem that people who did not receive their HS diploma or GED are not able to get a decent job, such as a customer service center call.  These companies feel that they need to hire someone in India and buy expensive equipment like ARUs to screen calls than to help people who need it the most.  A person should be able to articulate and understand how to give a solution to a situation, and I am sorry, but half of these people who are hired in these companies have thick accents, which can be hard to understand.

A hammer

I cannot find a hammer to save my SimCity’s mayoring life, and I have 24 hours (actually I have 22 hours) to find one. (I am also on my Ipad)

OK, it is a virtual hammer.  I have the real thing.  I have everything I need for the moment to build a building in SimCity BuildIt, but I really want a stupid hammer.

So, if you are not a gamer at all (I am not talking Mortal Combat, which I will never touch, I am talking about cute games here), you do not know what I am talking about, so let me give you a rundown of the game:

You are the mayor of your city.  You build it up, but you also have residents, businesses, things you can find in your “real” city (I named mine “Nope” at first, then recently changed it to “Walt Disney World 2”).  Anyway, I am on level 26, and I need a hammer.  I can buy from other players a hammer if I see one, but no one is selling one right now.  I call it my fun frustration.  I have tasks to fulfill within 24 hours or I have to start the process all over again, which this is my 4^th time.  Oh, by the way, you have to please these people who take up residence, and 53% of the people are pleased with me being mayor at the moment.  

One the things I do not like about this game is it keeps going when you are not running it, and the other thing is if you run out of play money, you can use real money to buy play money and points, but I have not gotten to that point in my life yet.  I need my real money for real things in life, not a stupid virtual hammer.  I did that once with Cityville two years ago, and I still feel guilty for doing it since that time.

LOOK, I FOUND 5 OF THEM.  NOW I CANNOT PUT THEM IN STORAGE.  WAHHHAAAA!!!!

The hunt continues….

I will now return you to your regular reading channel.   Hope you enjoyed the commercial for SimCity BuildIt.

The changing of the guard, Basket style….

On the other hand, customer service can be a good thing.  I liked it when I was working at a call center. I want to give a shout out to one customer call center who has deserved it lately.  It is the Longaberger customer call center. 

Recently, our back office, websites, and other things received an upgrade, and if you have ever serviced customers in any direct selling company, such as Avon, Younique, Tupperware, et al…, you know what it is like to have customers who want their orders, and they want them two seconds after they have placed the order.   Well, the Longaberger system needed updating, but to me, TPTB (the Powers that be), waited to do that at the wrong time to start replacing back office stuff, especially around tax time. (I have put in a request to find my sales reports as we speak, which is the reason why I know the “send” portion of MS Outlook was working).

Anyway, I cannot find sales report (not uploaded), and so on.  I wrote them an email a couple weeks ago about an order I put in, and Customer service was on it.  They gave me the answer I needed without an ARU.  They have one, but another consultant told me about emailing them instead.

So, thank you, Longaberger Customer call center.  You rock. 

Meanwhile, I am still searching for hammers.   I will continue that game later.  Ohhh, Pinterest items.

What is your Technology Pet Peeve?

(Caution: May contain affiliate links)

Excuse the Technology Mess (pet Peeve) (c) 2016
P.Lynne Designs

Hello-

Yesterday was not a break.  I have something up. 

So, today’s topic of conversation (writing prompt) has to do with Technology.  I think of technology like a love/hate relationship (we all had at least one of those). Anyway, there are those things about the computer that we really love, and then there are those things that really get on our nerves to the point where we want to throw these things in the inferno, and never touch them again.  To start off, I have a few of them.

Why do I need a password for that?

OK, for the most part, I love the idea that we password protect stuff, especially personal information.  I do not want anyone to pose as me unless you are willing to do the following:

            Pay my bills!!!

I could not say it loud enough.  You want to be me, take on my bills.  This is what I want every hacker to realize:  We, as law abiding citizens of whatever country we are from or live in, worked too hard to get where we are in life.  We love our family, our friends, Our God (or whoever you worship).  We have enough problems for you to add to that problem.  Some of us are doing OK with what we have.  We are making due with what we have, and actually are doing better than we thought we would do.  So, if you are thinking that we will recover when you steal from us, pay for your habits that we thought were not there, until we put in our social security numbers on our credit reports and find a whole bunch of crap that was not there yesterday, and hack into our computer systems to see if you can find more stuff to get your hands on, think again.  No, my id has not been stolen and let’s keep it that way.  I have, however, had my computer hacked into, and my credit cards stolen, and I have a couple of relatives, whose id has been stolen. 

The most recent hack was back in January. Now, I have this annoying little program called Webroot, but it was necessary.  Because I now keep business records on a cloud accessible through my computer, I need all the protection I can get.

So why did I have the subtitle, “Why do I need a password for that?” I recently downloaded an Adobe Illustrator file with brushes on it.  Would you believe that the person who created it, password protected the little booger?  Why even offer the file for download if you are going to do that?  I even read the instructions, and the password is not on the document telling me the password.  

No internet, some internet, what is going on?

My next pet peeve in the world of technology is my internet or lack thereof.   I have good internet from AT&T Uverse when it is not fading in and out.  It is not that I do not have a connection.  It is the kind of connection that is ghetto-like.  Here is the deal:  I have a medium connection.  It is not the lowest, but, it is not the highest either. Either I need to switch services or agree to pay for Max.   I do not love my internet service that well to pay more.  I do not have money like that.

When I first got the service (which is part of a bundle- TV, phone, internet), I was having problems.  I found out last year that the techs who install the internet in the first place installed it on wiring that was 70 years old.  That cannot be right because the building itself was built in 1973.  I was in the third grade in ’73.  My youngest brother was born in 1970.  The point is they had to build a brand new wiring system, which finally got my router and modem off my nightstand, and next to my television.

Now it is to the point where the internet cuts in and out during certain points of the day, and it is really bad when it is between the hours of 1am-4 am.  I know, I am supposed to be sleep, but sometimes it is so quiet during that time.  I am the only one in the house, but the point of quiet means the phone does not ring.  I do not do it all the time.

Interaction time.

So let me know what are you pet peeves in technology?  It does not have to be much.  (there goes my pet peeve of the internet cutting in and out again.  Uggh).  It could be about the way social media is today (I have to create a separate post on that as well).  Anything.  Let me know.

ITS NOT YOURS!!!

(c) 2016 P.Lynne Designs

I often speak about copyrights and ownership on this blog, especially when it comes to images you decide to download and use on your blog or website to make the site prettier, stately, and for drawing traffic.  The correct way of getting to use a particular image on your blog or website is to simply write the person who took the picture in the first place, introduce yourself, and say something like, “Hi, my name is Patricia Logan, and I am a blogger of MAL blog.  I noticed that you have taken a picture of x, I would love to use it in my soon to be released blog post about blogging, which I think your image would go perfectly with it.”  next explain that you always give credit to the person who takes the picture.   If the person says, “sure, thank you for asking”.  No problem.  If the person says, “I charge a small fee for the use of my images.”  Simply ask what that fee is, and determine at that time how valuable is the picture is worth to you. If the person says no, or the price is too high, kindly thank the person, and move on.  It is that simple, right? Not so fast.

A lot of times, people do not think of the time and effort for that photographer takes to find the perfect moment, mood, and angle for that photo session.  I really had to think about it in the past few months, because, I have a few friends who are photographers, and I recently in the past year or so have been dabbling in the art of photography myself.  I do not have all the filters.  In fact, it is just me, my phone or my Ipad, and the subject.  I also have Photoshop and Lightroom on my desktop.  I had a small camera in the past that I absolutely loved, which was an HP point and shot camera.  It is broken from years of use. The last place I took photos was at Disneyland, around San Diego/Los Angeles/San Bernardino/Hollywood, CA, as well as Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, and Indiana.  That was 2007. After that, it was cameras inside of smartphones and tablets.  I really miss the feel of a real camera, and cameras these days’ upload to YouTube just like smartphones and tablets do. If I can find one that is within my budget of $100-$250 but works like it is in the $500-$850 range, I will be happy. 

Anyway, back to copyrights and ownership….

The same thing about copyright and ownership can be said about any posts written, interviews given, videos, or any music download onto Itunes or Spotify music players.  I recently had a reminder of downloaded music with Spotify.  I am a huge Michael Jackson and Prince Fan, I listen to their music all the time, and today, just like I did with Michael and Whitney Houston when they died, I wanted to drown myself into Prince’s music.  I only found a few pieces of his music on Spotify, and on Pandora. 

I remembered reading that he was heavily against sites like these, because if a person listens to the music without paying to download it (and you don’t if you have Spotify free, I have the premium app), the artist does not get paid the royalties that they deserve.  I think according to Prince, an artist gets maybe $.02 of that money, and he thought artists needed to be paid more money.  This is the reason why more musicians do not allow sites like Spotify to have their music.

Anyway, later on, I was thinking what are his lawyers going to do with any unpublished music, which is now put on the backburner permanently, because of Prince’s death today.  I really did not think the executors and overseers handled Michael Jackson’s estate very well, due to all of the unpublished music Michael had, and they did not allow his family to have a say in it at all.  if that was the case, the family would have decided when that last album would have been released, if at all. To me, it was an unfinished album, and Michael was just a pawn for the producers to get what they wanted.  I do not think any of the album money went towards his mother nor his children.

I wanted to see once again how unfinished that album felt, so I went to the Spotify app on my desktop to pull it up, and they got rid of the music.   I am not protesting, but I think Michael’s family or executors must have threatened to take them to court on the album.  

So the moral of the story is, you do not own a single copy of the music on Spotify, Pandora, or Itunes, none of it.  It is not yours, and it never was yours to begin with, you are just borrowing a copy of that song, and Spotify (or whatever site you are listening to music on) has the right to pull that piece of music whenever the artist or executors of their estate pull out the “Sue” card for illegally playing their music.  

Will I stop using Spotify, Itunes, or Pandora?  No, but I am now more aware that I do not own a copy of the remaining music I listen to.  I am merely borrowing it, and I do not have the right to share it with someone else. 

If you want any type of media, such as music or images, and are very creative, take your own photos (unless noted, most of my photos now have my P. Lynne Designs copyright on it), design it, compose it, or pay someone to do it for you.  If you do the latter, do not forget to give them credit for it.  For $5, you can hire someone from Fiverr to do it for you.   

P.S.... RIP Prince, we will miss you, and thank you for offering your talent to the world

.

Internet GEMS and computing

(c) 2016 Graphic Stock

I am not sure why I am calling this post “Internet Gems and computing”.  Perhaps when I learn them, they are a gem to me.  You have to realize something.  I am not a Millennial.  I was not born into a push button, selfie world.  Computers came into the home when I was a pre-teen/teen, something like that. I learned a language that went a little like this “10 Print Hello”.  I forgot what it was called.  I was learning how to type on a typewriter.  I played games on an Atari and Nintendo 64.  My first computer was a Radio Shack computer.  I saved things on a floppy disk, and the list goes on and on. 

So when I say things like, “I learned how to delete a blog on Blogger, it is like learning how to drive.  I am going over photos that were saved on CDs, determining what photos to keep, because I am getting a 5 TB (that’s Terabyte) external drive, with 1 TB solely dedicated to photos.  When you are a business, you think about things like this.  I already have 4 cloud storages, but I am decluttering, and I need the space.

Sprinkled throughout the “Interwebs”, as a person Awesomely Luvvie coins the internet, are my comments on how much I love learning Photoshop.  Illustrator and InDesign are next on my list, and should be starting soon.  I am learning how to create a website without coding.  How is that possible?  My bestie friend Renae Christine from Rich Mom University is showing me how.   Yes, I could have paid hundreds of dollars for someone to make my website, but I am a hands-on type of person.  It is no fun to hand your precious “baby” over to someone, and when they try to explain to you what they did, the language goes over your head.  No fun at all. This way I know what I want, what I to put on my website/blog, and if something goes wrong, I can fix it, instead of waiting until the next morning.  I do not have time for that, and neither do my customers.

So these are my GEMs.  No acronym.  In case you are wondering which blog I deleted, it was my Disney blog.  I have something better than the sad, pitiful, neglected blog I was posting. The other two (Simply Organized Crafts and P. Lynne Designs) blogs are being reformatted to a self-hosted WordPress (I am working on that), and as soon as I do that, I am merging this blog (still a separate blog) into P. Lynne Designs.  The last blog (Tricia’s Baskets) will be part of Simply Organized Crafts, but again a separate blog.  This will give me the privilege to delete my Blogger account (I think), but overall Google will not have their paws on them.

So you are wondering why I wrote this… That is the big thousand-dollar question.  Stay tuned.