Tag sirius sucks

So I have been getting notices about my free trial of Sirius in the 2016 Tacoma expiring soon.  My plan all along has been to simply migrate my existing plan I had on my stand alone unit to the radio on the truck.  I have been putting off the call for awhile because I normally have a bad experience when dealing with Sirius/XM customer service.  Today I figured I may as well get it over with.

So I called in and was helped by a pleasant woman.  I explained what I needed to do and she said it was no problem.  She said in order to make it work she would need to cancel the subscription I currently have and apply the credit from it’s remaining time to the subscription for the radio in the Tacoma.  She said I would not actually be billed for the Tacoma service until the promo runs out July 21st.  Everything sounded great and I agreed to the terms of the new radio verbally.  I hung up very surprised that the call went so smoothly.

I had another surprise waiting for me when my web streaming session of Sirius, which I normally play at work, stopped about a half hour later. Hmm that’s odd, when I tried to refresh the page it brought me to a sign in screen.  I entered my credentials and they didn’t work.  I then reset my password to see if that would make a difference.  It didn’t.  I reluctantly picked up the phone and called Sirius back.  I knew it couldn’t be simple.

So this time when the phone is picked up instead of being greeted I hear the male phone rep talking to others around him.  Only when I said “Hellllooo” did he acknowledge me.  I told him I had just called in to transfer my service to a new radio but now my internet streaming no longer works.  He took my account information and then told me “just a moment” no less than 6 times, each spaced 10-15 seconds apart.  He said he was waiting for his “screen to come up”  After the last “just a moment” I tried to give him some other details regarding my previous call.  He instantly got aggravated with me and told me “JUST A MOMENT” once again.

Well that turned off my nice switch.  I told him he had no reason to give me attitude as I was trying to give him more information.  He said he needed to wait until his screen came up.  I asked him if he was unable to listen to me while his screen came up?  Of course he didn’t like my attitude either.  Finally his screen came up, some two minutes after he first told me to wait, just a moment. It was just in time as I was seconds away from asking for his supervisor as I grew tired of his bullshit.

So evidently the nice, pleasant woman I spoke to earlier wasn’t very thorough.  Without asking me or telling me, she downgraded my plan during the transfer from “all access” which includes streaming to “select” which does not.  The phone rep asked me in a condescending tone “So you are saying you want to be upgraded to all access?”  I told him no, I want the SAME plan I have had all along at the number I was quoted.  He grumbled something and had me wait a few more “just a moment’s” until he made the change.  He gave me the most snarky and disingenuous “Thank you for being a Sirius customer since 2004” you could imagine before I hung up.  Dipshit.

He assured me streaming should now work but of course it didn’t under my normal credentials.  I had to go into my profile and create a new account name to use for streaming before I could get back online.  My blog is littered with various issues I have had over the years with Sirus ranging from price gouging, to charging for things that were once free, to just good old fashioned bad customer service, so I guess I am not surprised today was just another example.  When I got my customer satisfaction survey I was sure to check the 10+ button in the question , “How many people have you shared your negative experience with?”  In reality the number will be much, much higher…

So I contacted Sirius yesterday regarding my 2nd bill in as many weeks.  I decided to try out the online chat version of their support.  I figured I could avoid the language/accent barrier that often occurs on SiriusXM customer service calls.  It didn’t take long until I was virtually greeted by “Cary”.

I gave her my account info and recapped the situation, explaining I just renewed two weeks ago but for some reason received another bill.  Before I started the chat session I had gone into my account online and compared the radio ID to the ID listed on this latest bill.  They were different ID’s which further reenforced the idea that they were charging me for a radio that was already cancelled.

So Cary asked me what the ID was on the radio I was using.  I told her it was the Xact PnP model, Sirius should already know what the ID is since I have had it in service for years.  Well this started a circle jerk of confusion.  To the rep it looked like the ID number on this second bill was indeed the correct ID for my Xact radio.

I wanted to make sure so I went out to my truck and retrieved the radio.  The ID number was indeed the same number that was on the second bill. So now I was more confused and annoyed.

So if this bill is for my current radio, what exactly did I pay to renew on February 3rd?

The rep said she looked at my account and said that my Xact radio did show it was renewed on 2/3/12 and that I can disregard the second bill.  Hah!  I have been told this several times over the years by Sirius when I received suspect bill notification and every single time when they tell me to ignore a bill I wind up being billed for it anyway and have to waste more time calling them back to correct it.

I looked again at my online account.  The main radio ID that is listed is something different than my Xact radio.  However when I looked at a detailed account summary I saw the transaction that supposedly renewed the Xact unit on 2/3.

I pointed out this discrepancy to the rep and asked for an explanation.  She had none forthcoming and instead again just assured me that I can disregard the bill that was in front of me.

I told “Cary” I was going to be extremely annoyed if I see that Sirius goes ahead and charges me a second time on the date listed on the new bill.  I asked for her full name and some sort of reference number I could refer to if this occurs, which I assured her was very probable.

“Cary” said I could keep a copy of the chat transcript as my record and was unable to provide me a reference number.  Well that sounded idiotic and I let her know as much.  She had no further answers for me and asked if there was anything else she could do for me.

I can almost assure you I will be billed again by Sirius, despite their assurances I will not.

Last night we had our monthly running club meeting.  It was pretty mild and short in comparison to some meetings we have had in the past year.  Typically I am one of the few board members that have regular action items to go over, most of them related to race logistics.

Last night I only had one item.  It had to do with the club starting a new retroactive policy of making what they pay Ali and I to time races, maintain the web site and all other organizational/IT functions we perform, as reported income.

I was a bit blindsided when I found out this was going to be the case for the prior tax year, which inadvertently meant that in 2011 we took more or less a 30% cut to do what we do for the club because of the tax burden.  I wasn’t real happy about that obviously, who would be?

So anyway my proposal was pretty simple, from here on out our fee goes up 30% to basically absorb the tax hit.  The board realized my point without issue although there was some discussion about how to best handle the tax burden reimbursement.

In the end the treasurer and I agreed just doing a flat 30% bump would keep things simple for all parties involved. I could have been more aggressive and pushed to get reimbursed for the tax hit I will be incurring for last year but I decided not to.

I’m glad there was no big fuss raised about the increase.  There are times when the hassle associated with my responsibilities to the club outweighs what I am reimbursed to do so.  The idea of getting a 30% cut to perform those duties would probably been enough to tip the scales the other way. I already have been dealing with coming up on a half decade of stagnant pay at my real job (actually a decrease in net pay this year), I am a bit sensitive in this area as a result.

I started watching the last of my second 4 episode AVI block of Breaking Bad last night.  I was annoyed to see that for some reason this last episode had the audio and video track badly misaligned.  The audio was lagging behind the video by a good 3 or 4 seconds.  Well I didn’t feel like waiting until I re-encoded the DVD to watch the episode so I just dealt with it.  To say it is mildly distracting would be an understatement.

I think this weekend I am going to suggest to Ali that she comes with me to the outlets, I am sure I will have to twist her arm to do so.  I need to get some pants that fit.  The majority of the khaki’s I wear for work are the same ones I wore when I was close to 200 pounds.  They literally look like sacks on me and require a belt to stay on my waist. Plus a bunch of them are just old and worn out, suffering from fraying at the cuff and some of the seams.

You may recall a couple weeks ago I ranted about my SiriusXM renewal that came in the mail.  I called them up and told them I would rather cancel my subscription than pay their bullshit price increase.  Well my cancellation threat triggered an instant 50% discount for my subscription so I decided to renew.

Well imagine my joy when I receive ANOTHER renewal notice in the mail yesterday.  I wish I could say I was surprised but this is par for the course with SiriusXM, if there is any possible way they can f something up, they will.

When I went online to look at my account activity I saw that I was indeed charged for my renewal at the beginning of the month as I agreed to.  When I looked at the new bill I realized Sirius was trying to bill me for the radio I cancelled almost a year ago!  I have no idea how they are so amazingly consistent with their ineptness.

So now I get to waste more of my time calling them up to ensure that they do not try to bill me for an already cancelled radio.  I can hardly wait to hear what the excuse is this time.

Since we did our official Valentine’s Day dinner last Saturday last night we had a less formal celebration yesterday evening.  I gave Ali a card, a movie gift card that I indicated was good for one, gasp, chick flick of her choice, and the small box of chocolates.

I typically would not buy Ali chocolates but the cute puppy that looked exactly like a puppy version of Nicki sealed the deal.

I picked up the Hungry Howie’s pizza as promised.  We enjoyed it while watching episodes of The Office.  I think the one episode we watched last night might have made me laugh more than any others to date.  It featured the Rabies Awareness 5K.

When reviewing last year’s blog post I saw I made mention of how my body weight had hit the 190lb mark at this time last year. I had almost forgotten that I allowed myself to bounce back that high.  I do recall Randall, who at that time was high on the hog for breaking the Mendoza line for the first time in years, jokingly calling me a “fatty”.

Well anyway, that day was the start of me applying more discipline to my diet and exercise routine.  Around that time I was in the middle of doing the long distance run training for the half marathon last year.  I think I probably fell into that classic trap where you think that because you burned 1000 calories on a run it green lights eating  poorly, in many cases consuming even more than you burned.

Since this time last year I am down a full 20 pounds and have stayed that way for quite awhile.

So I took my shower early and was back in the bedroom before 8:30 to pile drive through the remaining episodes of Dexter.  My co-worker warned me this season sort of tails off at the end. I saw exactly what he meant.  There were two major twists in the finale, one is creepy, uncomfortable and unwelcome, the other is interesting.

There are also a few other side plots with unresolved conclusions, only one of them holds any interest for me. Out of the 5 seasons of Dexter I have watched I would probably rank this one above last season but below the other three.  The show definitely has lost some luster.

I, like any other home owner, have certain home maintenance items that need to be attended to on a schedule.  I used to help keep these items in order with my weekend paper to do lists which Ali always used to complain about.  I abandoned the paper lists for the last couple years.  As expected there has been some slacking when it comes to staying on top of some of these items as a result.

Well last night I started entering some of these recurring items into my Outlook calendar, complete with reminders and a recurrence schedule.  With this set up I will be reminded of these items on both my pc and handheld smart devices when they come due.  I will continue to be reminded until I “dismiss” the task, ideally after I have completed it.

Some of the chores which Ali is also involved in I shared with her so she could add them to her calendar as well.  Well Ali rebelled against my idea, refusing to accept my calendar item.  It looks like Ali is an equal opportunity list hater whether they be of the paper or electronic variety, as long as they are created by me that is.

So in the mail yesterday I got my colorful subscription reminder from Sirius.  Inside was a “personal” letter from CEO Mel Karmazin, telling me how much he appreciates me sticking around for all of these years even with Sirius giving me and all of their customers the shaft repeatedly. As a token of his appreciation he also reminded me that Sirius was raising their prices.

I saw a press release when this price increase was announced several months ago where Mel was crowing how Sirius has not raised prices since they have been in business.  The amount of bullshit in that statement was overwhelming.

I must just be unlucky since despite there being “no price increases” what I pay for Sirius has gone up by close to 50% since I have been a customer.

Mel will tell you that the subscription fee has been exactly the same. What he won’t tell you is Sirius has removed items that you used to get included with that subscription and then fed them back to you for additional cost, like online streaming. He also forgets to mention the utter bullshit “music royalty fee” that was tacked on to everybody’s subscription a couple years back.

I find this disregard for customers intelligence insulting.

So anyway my plan is to call Sirius today and tell them I am cancelling my subscription, assuming they will offer me a substantial discount to stay.  If that discount is appreciable I will take my savings and continue being a customer solely to be able to listen to the ever dwindling amount of Stern live content.

If they offer me nothing or very little I am fully prepared to say thanks but no thanks.  I have enough other listening options available that cutting the cord from Sirius would be only mildly painful at best and only for a short time at that.  Like anything else, time makes most situations easier to deal with.

This weekend I have a lot of things I’d like to get done around the house in addition to the normal collection of to do’s.  I have had the parts/tools to clean the IAC valve on the Tacoma for a couple weeks now, I’d like to dive in and get it done.  Three of the vehicles are dirty, the party van to the point where algae is growing on the back corner.

The SSR also could use some attention.  The truck needs a bath after it’s unintentional rain exposure last week and the chrome accessories I bought need to be installed.

I am almost at the point where I am ready to pull the trigger on the radio upgrade for the SSR.  I still have been bumping back and forth as far as if I want to buy all of the stuff online at a discounted price and install it myself or pay an installer several hundred dollars extra to do it professionally.

I recently started considering a third option, buying the stuff at a not so discounted rate from Crutchfield whom will give you top notch installation assistance over the phone  which would offer me middle of the road savings, cutting out the installers labor rate.  I need to figure out which route I want to travel soon.

Since the half marathon I targeted is only a month away I need to get in a long run in tomorrow as well.  I actually have been questioning my desire to do the event the last couple days for some reason.

Homey sent me some info today on one of my most disliked companies, Sirius/XM.  Evidently they announced a few months back that they plan to raise their monthly subscription rates an additional $2 starting in January 2012.

Of course the idea of paying more for a service that gives me less and less of what I want (Stern content) is not going to go over well. But what really sets my blood boiling is this quote from CEO Mel Karmazin. “Sirius has never increased its base price of $12.95 since its service launched about a decade ago”.  That is pure unadulterated BULLSHIT.

To me, the “rate” is what gets deducted from my credit card each month and that amount has gone up over 50 fcking percent since I signed on with these assholes.  Mel conveniently omits the “music royalty surcharge” that was added a couple years ago along with charging subscribers another fee to listen online, something that used to be included with the $12.95 subscription.

I HATE Sirius.  This has all but cemented the fact that when my annual subscription on my one remaining radio expires I am done with these idiots.

Saturday Ali and I had a lighter than normal chore load.  I was putting off some of the cleaning as well as mowing the grass until Wednesday, the day before we leave so the house is in good shape when mom comes over. (I am only working Mon/Tues this week)  Even with the lighter load we kept busy for the majority of the day, there is never a shortage of things to do, ever.

Saturday afternoon had a brief visit from Randall on his way to a week long vacation in St. Pete.  He cleared out my surplus electronic equipment, picking up two Tivo’s, my repaired 360 and my spare Kinect.  I talked to him a bit but then he mentioned his mom was out in the car waiting which I didn’t realize.  His Explorer was packed to the brim.  Somehow he managed to squeeze the extra equipment in there.  For his part he delivered season 5 of Dexter which I won’t dig into until we get back.  It will give me something to look forward to.

We had plans to do our second dinner/movie combo in as many weeks Saturday night, this time to go see Captain America.  We left early because we had a couple stops.

First we went to Sports Authority.  Ali wanted to go to Sports Authority to try on a couple pair of sneakers.   I have not counted recently but I would estimate she has close to 15 pairs of sneakers. Admittedly, when you are doing a lot of distance running you are going to go through sneakers on a regular schedule but I can assure you, she is ahead of that schedule. 🙂

Anyway, since she has started in with these VERY long training runs, she has been having heel pain.  She has been searching for something make the pain stop.  I made a couple suggestions to her neither of which she liked to hear probably because they were coming from me.

I too have had battles with heel pain, a symptom of planar fascititis, a very common overuse injury for runners.  I would say running 17 miles would be classified as overuse.  I have gotten some relief from heel pain by regularly using a tennis ball and rolling it about on my arch/heel as I am at my desk.  The other prescription is rest which isn’t going to be happening anytime soon for her since the marathon is in October.

Well for some reason rolling a tennis ball on your foot was not received as much of a solution.  Ali really is into buying stuff to support her hobby.  Simple/inexpensive solutions don’t seem to normally be real appealing to her, especially if I am the one to suggest it.

So Ali tried on these two pairs of sneakers while a Sports Authority employee was up her ass.  She was trying to be helpful I guess but she clearly crossed the line over into annoying territory.  Ali said she didn’t feel any major difference in cushioning from the sneakers she already has.  I don’t think anyone runs their first marathon without physical issues as their body becomes acclimated to running for that long.

Our other non-dinner stop involved Ali’s bike conundrum.  Since Ali had her scary bike crash she has been extremely gun shy about training on her tri bike.  Myself and others have encouraged her repeatedly to just get out on the bike and ride.  Unfortunately fear has kept Ali from moving on.

It’s gotten to the point where Ali is actually considering other bike options like maybe opting for a better road bike like I suggested way back early in the bike upgrade discussion.  Of course with all of the discourse that lead up to the tri bike purchase you can imagine my initial reaction when she first mentioned this.  However since then, I have at least been open to the idea, if she is able to trade down without any more cash exchanging hands.

Well Saturday she floated a concept I was NOT agreeable to, buying another bike in addition to the two she already has.  I told her there was no reason to have three bikes, if she bought another bike then one needs to go.  Ali hates when I try to reel her in from plans like this.   She views it as me being not supportive when actually all I am doing is trying to be the voice of reason.

So anyway, we stopped at the Trek store and got some education on their product line.  The guy we spoke to was very knowledgeable and did a nice job of explaining pros and cons of various options.  Ali plans to talk to the owner at the place she bought the bike from to talk about options.  I told her I feel they are partly to blame in this situation since they pushed her hard in the direction of a tri bike despite knowing her riding experience was on the slim side.

For dinner we decided to go to Mel’s Diner in Bonita.  We haven’t been to Mel’s for years and we never had been to the Bonita location. Mel’s is a cool place with a 50’s diner kind of feel.  With us walking in around 5 we were surrounded by almost exclusively old people as expected.

For dinner I opted for “Mel’s Famous Fish Sandwich”, figuring if it is famous it has to be good.  Well out comes this MASSIVE fried filet on a roll that was about half as big as the fish.  Eating the sandwich involved me gnawing off the area that was hanging outside the bread before normal sandwich protocol could be observed.  It didn’t taste bad although eating something that large that was fried did not feel so hot.

By the time we finished up we were starting to get pressed for time so we asked our waiter for our check.  He said he would be back with it.  He did return but he didn’t have a check, instead we got plunged into an awkward exchange.  He asked us what we ordered again and scribbled it down.  Then he said something about if we just paid cash it would be easier.  Huh?

He looked disappointed when we told him we were paying with a credit card.    He said he would be back again.  While he was gone for a considerable time both Ali and I scratched our heads.  Where did or order go?  Why did he want us to pay cash, so he could pocket the money?

So he comes back again, still with no official bill in hand but says he can take my credit card.  Although this seemed even weirder, I handed it to him, we had to get going.  Finally he comes back with the real bill and credit card receipt.  Both Ali and I said we would need to watch the CC statement for anything weird.  The whole transaction seemed shady.

We got to the movie theater with about 5 minutes to spare.  I didn’t make the same mistake as the week before, opting to just get a bottle of water for the movie instead of piling on empty and unneeded calories with overpriced, huge boxes of candy.

I was looking forward to Captain America and for the most part it delivered.  The digital manipulation they did to make Steve Rogers a scrawny runt in the beginning is pretty impressive.  Despite a few silly moments both Ali and I found the film good and made us look forward to Avengers which comes out next summer.  There were less than 10 people in the theater that knew to stay till the very end of the credits to see bonus material.  I meant WTF all the Marvel Avenger stuff has had this bonus material (Ironman, Thor), by this time they should know better, nubs.  We got a full Avengers preview as a reward, it looks great.

Sunday morning Ali and I had separate training plans. Ali was running 10 miles with Michelle.  I planned to run the big 10K loop that surrounds the water park.  Ali was starting her run early, at 6:30 and said she would meet me at the park afterward.

When I pulled into the park,  I was taken back by the huge line of cars that were lined up in the right hand lane.  Evidently a local radio station was running some sort of a promo where they were giving stuff away.  Apparently some of the stuff was decent, I heard some people had been waiting since 3AM.

So I headed out on my run.  I had a goal of running the 10K at a good pace, not sure what that would translate to time wise.  I was utilizing my GPS to make sure my pace stayed in the upper 8 minute mile range.  Well about a mile or mile and a half into the run my Garmin started beeping almost constantly.  I glanced down and saw a message indicating the internal memory was full and I needed to clear space.

Well I certainly couldn’t listen to this constant beeping for another 5 miles or so,  I stopped the timer and went through the menus to clear history.  I chose the option to clear all but the last 3 months and confirmed I was ok with doing it.

Well my watch just sat on the confirmation screen.  Ok, well I guess it might take a few seconds to actually clear so I waited around a minute for the timing screen to come back.  Well it didn’t come back.  After 2 or 3 minutes I said F it, and took off, no longer on the clock.  It annoyed me since I had intentions of pushing PR pace.  I figured I would start the timer in a few minutes when the screen finally cleared.  It never did.  In fact it took at least an hour till the watch once again became functional.  It would be swell if Garmin gave that info before you agree to clear the history on a full watch.

So despite being off the clock I tried to keep what felt like a strong pace.  The heat and humidity was starting to get to me.  Despite my breathing never approaching labored status I was just feeling very uncomfortable, my legs were tired and the heat was just plain annoying.

This route really f’s with my head.  The fact that it broke me so badly a couple months ago where I stopped multiple times compounds the issue. Once you stop, stopping in the future becomes easier.  I found myself right on the verge of stopping several times.  The internal dialogue is an argument of sorts.

There is that urge to just stop, noone will know but yourself.  It’s hot, it’s miserable, why are you running?  Then the dominant task master comes in.  He points out that I already stood around for a couple minutes f’ing around with the GPS.  Stopping again would basically invalidate the entire run.  Stop whining and just complete the run, you know you can.

The taskmaster won out and I kept running although my pace definitely declined as I approached the finish.  Of course I have no idea how much since my Garmin was still clearing times.  By the time I reentered the water park I was pretty damn spent.  My shorts were so wet looked like they just came out of the wash.  I found a fire ant free spot of grass and laid down on it for a minute.

I also had to take a leak pretty badly.  Unfortunately all the radio freebie junkies were still lined up so standing by a bush was not an option, too many eyes.  Instead I walked over to the gym and used the bathroom there.  By the time I walked back to the truck and was getting ready to go out on the bike Ali pulled up.

She told me about her 10 mile run which sounded miserable like mine was.  I asked her if she wanted to ride with me but instead she opted to ride around the park with Christy.  I headed out on a slightly shorter than normal ride alone.  I shortened it because first I didn’t have the GPS which was still clearing old times and second I was f’ing tired from the run.  Even though I had no ambition of pushing it, I felt like I kept a pretty decent pace aided by a lack of major wind in either direction.

After the bike we headed inside where I swam 1200 meters, the first 800 of which I did in one shot.  It was a pretty exhausting brick.

Christy came in and swam with us as well and she also joined us for lunch which was a nice treat.  I opted to skip my normal french fries that I have with the pizza, still feeling a bit gross from the big hunk of fried fish the night before. After eating we took a couple leisurely laps around the lazy river before heading out.

On the way home I grabbed a large iced coffee to help me keep going when we got home.  Ali took a shower and took an almost all afternoon long nap since all the housework was basically done.  I intended to just stay awake and play some WoW.  Well once the coffee wore off I bonked hard, I felt like I HAD to lay down.

I went into the spare bedroom and laid down for about an hour.  I was unable to actually fall asleep though, just laying there with my eyes closed.  It was better than nothing.

Sunday night when Ali was reconciling the credit card statement she noticed a charge from Sirius.  I had just asked her a few days ago if she saw any charges from Sirius since I noticed that the satellite radio that was supposed to be disabled in the Camry was still functional.

Back in April I called Sirius and told them to not renew the subscription when it expired at the end of June.  I followed that up with another call when I received a letter from Sirius, that they told me to disregard, that indicated that 2nd radio was scheduled to be renewed.  They said not to worry, the radio would be cancelled.  Well guess what, it wasn’t.

Now if this was another company other than Sirius or maybe RCI I might be mildly surprised.  However Sirius has done such a fine job of building up a rock solid reputation of customer disservice I was not at all shocked that they did not do as they promised.  It did not prevent me from getting angry though.

Today I called them up and revealed their latest escapade in incompetence.  The woman apologized for the mistake as she confirmed she saw the notes that the radio was indeed supposed to be cancelled.  She asked me if perhaps I reconsidered and would like to keep the 2nd radio active for the super deal of half off the normal rate.  I assured her I was quite interested in cancelling the service without getting into all of the gory details of my years of Sirius complaints.

She cancelled the radio and assured me the credit should show up on my card within 7-10 business days.  Crossing my fingers.

So last night I tackled installing the second panel of super screen.  It went much better for a couple reasons.  Ali was home last night so she was able to assist me in holding the screen in place while I installed the spline.  Speaking of the spline, the 1500 foot roll of super screen spline was MUCH easier to push into place.  I had the top section of spline installed in a minute instead of the 20-25 minutes it took to do the same thing the night before.

Despite being noticeably heavier and thicker than normal screening, you can’t see an appreciable difference when you look at the cage with the two screen types installed side by side.  I am hoping this will be the last time those two panels have to be replaced for quite awhile.  I have more than enough super screen and spline to replace all of the vertical panels of the cage as needed. It was nice to get the screen replacement done during the week instead of having to tie up a large chunk of the weekend doing the repair.

While I was cleaning up the materials from the project Ali put on her bathing suit to try out the swimming tether I bought for her.  One of the bad things about trying to do serious swim training in our pool is you are turning around every 10 seconds.  This tether attaches to your ankles and then connects to a stationary object, in our case, the pool rail.  You then swim in place, instant endless pool.

You would think that being strapped in by your ankles would be somewhat annoying but Ali said it wasn’t bad at all and she was doing just kick board training.  It will be interesting to try doing a full swimming motion.  All of the reviews I read on the product online were positive.

So I turned on Sirius this morning and heard a “best of” show.  At first I was like WTF? Is Howard sick?  I hope nothing bad happened.  Then I remembered a conversation he had last week saying this week he was going to start his 3 day work week bullshit.  He said that every other week he will be working a three day week and then a hideously long FOUR day week.  It annoys me.

Yes, before Stern apologists chime in, three days of the show is better than no show.  But let me add my perspective.  If you are like me, the ONLY reason you are still paying for SiriusXM is because Howard is still there.  Before the new 3 day a week deal his live shows were already off the air more than THIRD of the year.  Now he will start creeping up on only working  50% mark.

If he was on free radio I would feel much less justified in complaining about this, but since I am paying for a service that I basically can’t stand otherwise, I am angry that I get less and less for my money while being charged more and more for it.

There really is a part of me that wished he would have just rode off into the sunset.  Sure going cold turkey would have been painful but I would eventually fill the void and be done with f’ing Sirius as well once and for all.

So after confirming with Ali that keeping Sirius in the Camry wasn’t a very big deal considering she usually is listening to music from her Iphone in the car, I called Sirius to make the change.  I have an absolutely dreadful track record with their customer service people, they are in a word, horrible.  I was not looking forward to having to call them for anything.

So I get some heavy breathing guy named “Randy” on the phone.  He speaks poorly, slowly and sounds as bright as an outhouse.  He asks me my name and address to confirm my identity which I give him.  Then there is an awkward, extended silence where I hear nothing but his annoying heavy breathing.  I say “Are you there?”   Randy says, “Yes, can I have your name and address?”  I say “I just gave that to you!”  “Oh, ok”  I knew this was not going to end well.

So I muddle through trying to explain to Randy what I wanted to do.  I have 2 radios on the account, 1 with a month to month plan, 1 with a yearly plan that expires June 24th.  I want the radio that expires on June 24th (the Camry) to not renew when it expires.  I want the radio with the month to month service to change to an annual subscription which saves me a few bucks.

Randy said ok and after a few moments says “ok, is there anything else I can do for you?” Now there was no way Randy actually did what I asked in the span of 30 seconds.  I say to him “Is there anything else you can do for me?  We haven’t even talked about what the charge will be to switch the monthly plan to yearly?”

Randy says “What do you mean? That radio has a month to month plan already?”  I knew I was totally wasting my time with this boob.  I asked to talk to his supervisor.  Randy asks what the problem is.  I told him that I have a long track record of receiving poor customer service from Sirius and obviously you have no idea what I am even asking you to do. Let me speak to a supervisor.

Randy says “my supervisor isn’t taking calls right now”  Now it was on.  “Ok well you better find someone else there that I can talk to besides you”  Randy says he will transfer me.  Yea he transferred me alright, he hung up the f’in phone.  That mother f’r.  I was livid.

So I call back, and this time I ask the first human being I talk to for a supervisor immediately.  I am on hold for a brief period of time and then DISCONNECTED again.

So I call a third time, this time I choose the cancellation department as they typically have people with at least basic communication skills manning the lines.  I get a woman and immediately tell her I was just hung up on twice and was very angry.  She apologized. I once again explain what I needed done.

Thankfully this woman understood what I needed and was able to handle it. However I once again found myself annoyed when she mentioned the extra $15 for internet radio for the year.  I told her I would appreciate it if she could just include that since I was just hung up on twice. She met me a little over half way, offering me a $10 credit for the service.

So now I am halfway out of my financial commitment to Sirius, almost halving what I will be paying them per year. I can’t wait till I am done with them completely.  Their company sucks, badly.

I don’t know who/what I am more disgusted with in the Barry Bonds trial.  Barry Bonds is a f’ing asshole that cheated, got caught and refuses to admit it even though the entire world knows he is guilty.  On the other hand you have the ridiculousness of the federal government literally spending millions of dollars to prosecute Bonds for lying about it.

To make matters worse,  despite spending those millions of dollars, it seems that the government prosecutors may have done a piss poor job in the case and Bonds could escape unscathed OJ Simpson style.

It’s equal opportunity aberration no matter how you look at it.

Last night when I got home it was raining.  I had planned to go out and till the new soil into the garden but I certainly didn’t want to do it in the rain.  Luckily the rain stopped 15 minutes later so I decided to venture outside.

I first dumped my 9 bags of compost and garden soil around various spots in the garden.  I then snapped on my new tiller attachment to the weed whacker and got busy.  I tilled in two perpendicular directions to loosen the soil as much as possible.  I followed up with the rake to even out the furrows created by the tiller.  By the time I was done I had two nice planting areas on either side of the garden with a small path down the middle.

By the time I was done sunlight was fading but I decided I wanted to get some stuff in the ground.  I wound up planting almost everything that was edible including onions, lettuce, swiss kale, two varieties of tomatoes, and two varieties of peppers.  By the time I got done it was after 7 and almost pitch black.  Everything I planted only took up one side of the garden, I am not sure what we will plant on the other, possibly one of the fruit shrubs we got. (blueberry, black berry, raspberry)

You may recall in mid-October I changed my one Sirius subscription that was due to expire in the end of November from a yearly plan to a monthly plan.  My thought process is if Stern does not renew with Sirius I will be cancelling their service immediately so I didn’t want to be locked in for another year. The rep that handled my request said that once the year on that radio expired November 24th I would be switched over to month to month billing.

So imagine my delight when I have an envelope from Sirius in the mail yesterday.  I open it up and pull out a bill with an orange flyer that has in big letters YOUR PAYMENT IS PAST DUE IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED!  I was PISSED as I glanced over a bill that showed I owed them $12 dollars and change.

I immediately got on the phone and after a typically annoying 10 minute wait got somebody. I explained that I was not supposed to see a bill until my current year subscription expired. The rep said that when I called in before they switched me immediately to monthly billing. WTF, that was not what was supposed to happen.  The rep apologized and said that she could not fix the problem, I had to be transferred to billing.  I asked her if I would have to wait another 10 minutes to talk to someone in billing because I had stuff to do.  She said no, it should be immediate.  Well after 5 minutes of dead air I hung up and resisted the urge to throw the phone against a hard surface, f’ing idiots.

So first thing today I call back Sirius.  I once again explain the situation to another customer service dude.  In addition to being annoyed about being billed before I should have been I mentioned to the guy that I saw Sirius tries to charge customers an EXTRA $2 if they want a paper invoice sent to them. That wasn’t going to fly either.

So after typing in all of my complaints I am once again told that I have to be transferred to billing.  I told the guy I was put on a dead air hold the night before.  He said he will transfer me directly.

So after a brief hold the phone is answered with an Indian accent.  I thought to myself “They didn’t just transfer to f’ing INDIA for the billing department….” Yep, they did.  I had to try to explain my problem to a robotic, hard to understand, Indian.  He basically tried to reiterate that I saw the charge because it was the result of my request to switch over to monthly billing.  I had ZERO patience at this point.  Being transferred to India to put the issue to bed enraged me.  I cut him off mid-explanation with “Please transfer me to the cancellation department”

Once again I am ported back to the United States.  Evidently if you are ready to cancel you are good enough to talk to someone that speaks English natively, if you need your bill corrected you get marble mouthed Indians.

For a third time I explained the background.  I said I wasn’t going to pay a penny before my year runs out November 24th and there was no way I was going to pay an extra $2 a month for a bill. The woman understood my frustration and did her best to accommodate me.  She waived the charges that were showing on the account and gave me 2 months of the monthly service for free so I shouldn’t see a monthly charge until December.  I gave her my CC info once again so they can bill the card directly to avoid the invoice fee with the understanding that I was not committing any more than one month at a time.

It will be interesting to see if what I was told will actually take place.  I will not be at all surprised if I have to call them ranting and raving in a few weeks.  Sirius just sucks, plain and simple.

I forgot to mention how the latest IX outage panned out.  In total my email was offline from early Friday morning until late Saturday night, a pretty incredible amount of downtime for a huge web host.  I monitored things unraveling on IX’s system status blog. What went down was borderline comical.

In a nutshell IX scheduled to do what they thought was a routine hardware upgrade.  It was so routine that they didn’t even alert their customers it was happening since it should only take a few minutes to complete.  Well evidently things went bad, very bad.

Perhaps because the upgrade was viewed as so mundane that no thought was put into contingency plans if something went wrong.  Well the little upgrade turned into almost two full days of downtime.  As you can imagine, IX customers were not happy.

On the status blog there was a wide variety of methods customers used to voice their displeasure from mild annoyance to all out losing their mind, going ape shit craziness.  For me, I was more on the annoyed but not insane side.  Sure having email offline for me and people I provide email to is a big inconvenience since it is the preferred method of communication for both Ali and myself. However there are people that use IX to provide services for their business customers.  Trying to explain why their services are unavailable for two days is a pretty tough thing to do.

There also was some conflicting information during all of the craziness.  At first we were told all of our emails that came in during the outage should be stored on their Ironport server and delivered eventually.  Well later that story changed and we were told that many people got NDR (non-delivery messages) while attempting to send to the affected servers.

Well knock on wood, everything appears to be back to normal now.  For the inconvenience I was given an extra three months of free service added on to my account which was pretty decent of them.

All I can hope is that a very important lesson was learned by IX’s IT staff.

I forgot to mention Ali got her cold water wet suit delivered on Saturday.  She was still out when it arrived.  I hid the box, thinking I would surprise her with it later that night.  My plans were scuttled when she checked the tracking of the box and saw it was delivered.  She was very excited and wasted little time before she tried it on. Speaking of wet suits, if you want to see Ali swimming a 50 at the water park you can do so here.

Over the weekend I got my letter from Sirius warning me of an upcoming billing cycle for another year of the service.  As I have documented here repeatedly, Sirius has really pissed me off.  If Howard wasn’t on the service I would have dropped it years ago.  Sirius has repeatedly dicked over their customers with bullshit extraneous music royalty fees, online listening fees and outright lies.

Well my year subscription expires in November.  The letter basically said they would be happy to automatically renew me at that time for another year.  Woah.  Sirius has a big problem.  Howard is at the end of his current 5 year contract.  He has mentioned repeatedly on air various issues he has regarding resigning with Sirius. At this point nothing concrete has been put in place to indicate he is going to renew.

Well if Howard leaves I have no reason to keep the service.  So I called up Sirius support and after waiting on hold for 25 f’ing minutes I finally got to speak to someone. Well to be accurate I waited 13 minutes to talk to worthless first level support in India and then another 12 minutes to talk to someone whose first language is English.

I told the guy that I wanted to change my billing to monthly with a paper invoice sent to me.  I wanted the ability to cut the cord immediately if Howard announces he is leaving Sirius.  I told the guy that Sirius is in deep shit if Howard leaves.  He said he had no idea if Howard was going to stay or not but he agreed there will be big problems if he goes.

I almost hope Howard does leave Sirius.  I would much prefer to never give Sirius another penny of my money.

Ali informed me of two more candidates for her “hot” list, Curtis Stone, the celebrity chef guy and Pasha, some ballroom dancer kid from So You think You Can Dance.  The list is getting pretty big.