For years now, I've been telling Vicki that I'll eventually start selling off the comic collection, since it was never my intention to have it be something that she, or Tammy, or whoever would have to deal with after I'm gone. In my 40s, "after I'm gone" looked far enough away that I didn't really do anything more than sell some of my doubles (second copies) on eBay or at comic conventions.
Now that I'm firmly esconced in my 50s, however, I figure it's time to get started on keeping this promise. My plan is to shrink the collection to about 10% of its current size over the next several years, meaning I'd go from around 30,000 to roughly 3000, or 10-ish long boxes in place of the current 100+. Many of the comics I'll be getting rid of will be easy to sell, but most won't be. Therefore I expect to give a lot of them away, hopefully along the lines of what we did with Tammy's comics last year, which was helping to get them into the hands of needy children on Christmas morning.
Of course, if you're a reader of this blog and you have someone in your household who'd appreciate the gift of a pile of comics to enjoy, let me know. I'm sure something can be arranged.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Boyhood Currently Has A 99% Fresh Rating On Rotten Tomatoes!
99%! I can't remember the last time I saw something even close to that level. It's kind of insane how critically acclaimed this film is, and yet most movie-goers will never see it. Whereas drek like Transformers: Age of Extinction, totally devoid of any artistic value at all, continues to rake in millions... Sigh. Sometimes I weep for us as a species.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Another Example Of Comcastic Customer Service
If you haven't already heard about Ryan Block (co-founder of Engadget) and his wife being harangued by a Comcrap service representative when they tried to cancel their service, please do so now! Yes, the cable company has offered up an apology after the exchange went viral last week, but unfortunately for them, it's not nearly as unusual an occurrence as they'd have people believe. And when I read how the annoying agent told Mr and Mrs Block they can always go to a Comcrap retail outlet to cancel their service, I wanted to punch somebody. Too many bad memories of our recent visit to Hell! I hate to admit it, but I'm slowly starting to realize why so many people pirate their shows instead of paying for a cable subscription... at least in the States.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Can't Wait For Boyhood... But May Have To
The good news is that the reviews for Richard Linklater's Boyhood have been overwhelmingly positive and often downright gushing. The bad news is that it doesn't appear to be slated for a wide release when it opens in the next week, meaning that Vicki and I, for example, will have to either travel to Toronto to see it or wait for it to come out on DVD. I'm sure it'll be worth the wait, no matter when we finally get our chance, but dang, something's broken somewhere in the system when a film with this kind of reputation and moderate star power (Ethan Hawke) can't get a foothold in any but the biggest of markets.
Wednesday, July 09, 2014
Comcast: Really Bad Company Or Worst Company Ever?
I used to work for Comcast, so I've long known just how completely dysfunctional and incompetent they are from an internal point-of-view. I ended up retiring early rather than continue dealing with their idiotic decisions back in 2008, so I guess it shouldn't surprise me to discover just how badly they treat their customers. There's recognition like this, where they were voted (for the second time) as the worst company in America, and then there's anecdotal evidence like the experience Vicki and I have had with them over the past month.
We had an American relative pass away in early June, and among the tasks we took on as a result was cancelling the relative's Comcast cable account. I should've known it was going to be a nightmare, but even I was shocked by how crappy their customer service was. First, we tried to cancel the account over the phone. One of the options available to us was for removing services from your account, so I selected that one. I was put into a queue (so far, so good) and then, after several minutes of annoying muzak, I was hung up on! Undeterred, I tried again: same result! Finally, I called in and selected "Add a service" and voila! I was quickly passed on to a live agent! Unfortunately, that agent couldn't actually cancel an account but he was nice enough to transfer me to someone who, theoretically at least, could.
Next, I found out that the relative's account could only be cancelled if we faxed or emailed Comcast the death certificate, which we didn't have yet at that point. I even said, "Look, forget that the person died, just cancel it as you would whenever someone doesn't want the service anymore" but no, they couldn't do that. So we had to wait until we got the death certificate.
A few days later, certificate in hand, Vicki tried her luck. She was also hung up on if she selected "Remove a service" so she, too, had to get in another way, which she did. Eventually, she got to an agent who directed Vicki to email a scan of the death certificate to a particular email address within Comcast, and told her that should do it. Vicki included in the email directions as to where Comcast could pick up the cable box and remote control, and we assumed that was that.
Except, of course, it wasn't. Upon checking back in a week or so later, we found out that Comcast won't pick up hardware, only deliver it. So it was up to us to get the equipment to them. However, the nearest Comcrap retail outlet was approximately 50 miles away from the relative's home, which made it about 150 miles away from here. We fought to get them to pick it up, but all we got for our troubles was a $130 fee being levied against the relative's bank account for not returning the hardware.
That led to us spending the day today driving to Macomb, Michigan, to drop off the equipment Comcrap had been all too happy to deliver previously. That location, it turns out, is one of the levels of Hell. There were 30 customers ahead of us, and we waited nearly an hour for the pleasure of handing back to them the cable box and remote along with a few choice words. Eight agent stations were set aside in the office for servicing customers but only 3 of them actually had agents behind them the entire time we were there. Kids ran around unattended while their parents languished in perpetual agony alongside us and while a TV screen blared children's programming at top volume.
If you think Bell or Rogers are bad to deal with here in Canada, trust me: you ain't seen nothing until you've had to deal with Comcrap 'customer service.' It is, quite simply, the worst I've ever seen, by far.
We had an American relative pass away in early June, and among the tasks we took on as a result was cancelling the relative's Comcast cable account. I should've known it was going to be a nightmare, but even I was shocked by how crappy their customer service was. First, we tried to cancel the account over the phone. One of the options available to us was for removing services from your account, so I selected that one. I was put into a queue (so far, so good) and then, after several minutes of annoying muzak, I was hung up on! Undeterred, I tried again: same result! Finally, I called in and selected "Add a service" and voila! I was quickly passed on to a live agent! Unfortunately, that agent couldn't actually cancel an account but he was nice enough to transfer me to someone who, theoretically at least, could.
Next, I found out that the relative's account could only be cancelled if we faxed or emailed Comcast the death certificate, which we didn't have yet at that point. I even said, "Look, forget that the person died, just cancel it as you would whenever someone doesn't want the service anymore" but no, they couldn't do that. So we had to wait until we got the death certificate.
A few days later, certificate in hand, Vicki tried her luck. She was also hung up on if she selected "Remove a service" so she, too, had to get in another way, which she did. Eventually, she got to an agent who directed Vicki to email a scan of the death certificate to a particular email address within Comcast, and told her that should do it. Vicki included in the email directions as to where Comcast could pick up the cable box and remote control, and we assumed that was that.
Except, of course, it wasn't. Upon checking back in a week or so later, we found out that Comcast won't pick up hardware, only deliver it. So it was up to us to get the equipment to them. However, the nearest Comcrap retail outlet was approximately 50 miles away from the relative's home, which made it about 150 miles away from here. We fought to get them to pick it up, but all we got for our troubles was a $130 fee being levied against the relative's bank account for not returning the hardware.
That led to us spending the day today driving to Macomb, Michigan, to drop off the equipment Comcrap had been all too happy to deliver previously. That location, it turns out, is one of the levels of Hell. There were 30 customers ahead of us, and we waited nearly an hour for the pleasure of handing back to them the cable box and remote along with a few choice words. Eight agent stations were set aside in the office for servicing customers but only 3 of them actually had agents behind them the entire time we were there. Kids ran around unattended while their parents languished in perpetual agony alongside us and while a TV screen blared children's programming at top volume.
If you think Bell or Rogers are bad to deal with here in Canada, trust me: you ain't seen nothing until you've had to deal with Comcrap 'customer service.' It is, quite simply, the worst I've ever seen, by far.
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
The Overprotective Parent
Wow. This article blew me away, hitting so many nails right on the head with its look at the effect overprotective parenting is having on the current generation of kids. Children nowadays are so closely supervised and 'managed' by their parents that they're simply not developing into independent, fully-formed humans by the time they reach adulthood. I see this all the time, especially when I've been tutoring kids in the past.
There's tons of fascinating stuff in the article, but here are just a couple of examples to encourage you to give it a read:
"But sometimes it seems as if children don’t get the space to grow up at all; they just become adept at mimicking the habits of adulthood. As Hart’s research shows, children used to gradually take on responsibilities, year by year. They crossed the road, went to the store; eventually some of them got small neighborhood jobs. Their pride was wrapped up in competence and independence, which grew as they tried and mastered activities they hadn’t known how to do the previous year. But these days, middle-class children, at least, skip these milestones. They spend a lot of time in the company of adults, so they can talk and think like them, but they never build up the confidence to be truly independent and self-reliant."
and
"It’s hard to absorb how much childhood norms have shifted in just one generation. Actions that would have been considered paranoid in the ’70s—walking third-graders to school, forbidding your kid to play ball in the street, going down the slide with your child in your lap—are now routine. In fact, they are the markers of good, responsible parenting. One very thorough study of “children’s independent mobility,” conducted in urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods in the U.K., shows that in 1971, 80 percent of third-graders walked to school alone. By 1990, that measure had dropped to 9 percent, and now it’s even lower. When you ask parents why they are more protective than their parents were, they might answer that the world is more dangerous than it was when they were growing up. But this isn’t true, or at least not in the way that we think. For example, parents now routinely tell their children never to talk to strangers, even though all available evidence suggests that children have about the same (very slim) chance of being abducted by a stranger as they did a generation ago. Maybe the real question is, how did these fears come to have such a hold over us? And what have our children lost—and gained—as we’ve succumbed to them?"
There's tons of fascinating stuff in the article, but here are just a couple of examples to encourage you to give it a read:
"But sometimes it seems as if children don’t get the space to grow up at all; they just become adept at mimicking the habits of adulthood. As Hart’s research shows, children used to gradually take on responsibilities, year by year. They crossed the road, went to the store; eventually some of them got small neighborhood jobs. Their pride was wrapped up in competence and independence, which grew as they tried and mastered activities they hadn’t known how to do the previous year. But these days, middle-class children, at least, skip these milestones. They spend a lot of time in the company of adults, so they can talk and think like them, but they never build up the confidence to be truly independent and self-reliant."
and
"It’s hard to absorb how much childhood norms have shifted in just one generation. Actions that would have been considered paranoid in the ’70s—walking third-graders to school, forbidding your kid to play ball in the street, going down the slide with your child in your lap—are now routine. In fact, they are the markers of good, responsible parenting. One very thorough study of “children’s independent mobility,” conducted in urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods in the U.K., shows that in 1971, 80 percent of third-graders walked to school alone. By 1990, that measure had dropped to 9 percent, and now it’s even lower. When you ask parents why they are more protective than their parents were, they might answer that the world is more dangerous than it was when they were growing up. But this isn’t true, or at least not in the way that we think. For example, parents now routinely tell their children never to talk to strangers, even though all available evidence suggests that children have about the same (very slim) chance of being abducted by a stranger as they did a generation ago. Maybe the real question is, how did these fears come to have such a hold over us? And what have our children lost—and gained—as we’ve succumbed to them?"
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