If you've tried to call Tracfone customer service, you know you have to wade through a thicket of menus and spend a good deal of time on hold just to reach a human.
And even then, the service isn't very good.
I recently had to go deep into the scary place that is Tracfone customer service, and one thing they shared with me is their "hotline" telephone number.
It is 866-806-1840. When it asks for a code, enter 013132.
Bonus: The people who answer this phone are sharper than the typical Tracfone minion.
I don't know how long this number/code will last, but it works as of today.
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Friday, February 5, 2016
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Hotel review: Hyundae Resort and Spa
It's one of the saddest hotels I've stayed in.
My family stayed at the Hyundae Resort and Spa in Desert Hot Springs for one night in January 2016, and it was a rather depressing place to be.
The thing is, this hotel looks like at one time it may have been a fun and enjoyable place to stay. But the owners have neglected it to such an extent that today it's just a sad shell of its former self.
 |
| Entrance to Hyundae Resort and Spa |
First, calling this place a "resort" or a "spa" is stretching both terms beyond plausibility. This is a three-story hotel that has a hundred or so rooms arrayed around a central pool and two hot tubs. There's a ping pong table and a billiards table. That's it. There's not even a place to eat. That's a resort? A spa?
Arriving at the hotel, the first thing you'll notice is the faux rock motif that features fake boulders outside and a cave-like setting inside. At one time, I suppose, this might have been fun, but today it just looks old and weird.
The desk clerk barely cracked a smile as we checked in. The elevator only intermittently ran -- the doors might close, or they might not. We asked for additional pillows and the clerk told us that -- in a hotel of over hundred rooms -- they had only one extra pillow. Loud music from pool area blared into our room when we first checked in, but the clerk turned it down when I asked
There were some positives. The hot tub we used was, indeed, hot. Our sheets were clean. The shower provide hot water. That's about it.
The room had cracks and gaps on the walls and ceiling. Wind whistled through an opening at the window's edge. One of the two sinks required you to slam the handle hard to one side to get any water. There were just two bath towels in a room for four people. The blankets were thin.
The TV, while seemingly new-ish, somehow cut off the bottom inch of the picture.
Throughout the hotel were signs of better times. A closed restaurant and tavern had a sign that it had been shut down by the county. The reason: "Never permitted."
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Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Book review: "The Accidental Genius of Weasel High" by Rick Detorie
"The Accidental Genius of Weasel High" falls into the category of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" wannabes. Both books are told from the perspective of an adolescent boy whose life features unusual characters and where many things go wrong. Both books feature comic illustrations throughout.
In all, "Accidental Genius" is, well, just OK. It's not bad, but it just doesn't have as many outright laughs as "Diary of a Wimpy Kid."
Main character Larkin Pace, age 14, is certainly likeable and I can see how boys that age could relate to his issues and problems. In fact, I might say that author Rick Detorie has made "Accidental Genius" maybe a little too realistic. The problems Larkin faces with an annoying sister, troublesome classmates and doing chores for an older lady all sound pretty plausible.
But most young readers aren't looking to see real life repeated in a book; they want something different. Detorie needed to throw in a some truly outrageous events to really grab readers and get us laughing.
In all, "Accidental Genius" is, well, just OK. It's not bad, but it just doesn't have as many outright laughs as "Diary of a Wimpy Kid."
Main character Larkin Pace, age 14, is certainly likeable and I can see how boys that age could relate to his issues and problems. In fact, I might say that author Rick Detorie has made "Accidental Genius" maybe a little too realistic. The problems Larkin faces with an annoying sister, troublesome classmates and doing chores for an older lady all sound pretty plausible.
But most young readers aren't looking to see real life repeated in a book; they want something different. Detorie needed to throw in a some truly outrageous events to really grab readers and get us laughing.
Trying to give money to Los Angeles court is not so easy
I got a citation on the Blue Line train in Los Angeles. Bummer. So I felt I should make things right, pay the ticket promptly and get it over with.
Let me repeat: I wanted to give Los Angeles Superior Court money. You'd think in this day of tight budgets that any government entity would welcome this and make it easy to pay. Think again.
I figured I would soon receive something in the mail telling me the amount of the fine and where to send the money. But more than a month passed without receiving anything. I also checked the court's online system for paying tickets, but mine did not show up. I decided to call the court.
In this case, the particular court is Compton Court, and conveniently, the phone number is right on the citation. I called that number and a woman answered and said, "St. Joseph's Hospital." Had I dialed the number wrong? I started to stammer an apology when the woman said, "Do you want the Compton Court? Yeah, we always get their calls." When your number is printed on thousands of tickets, yep, I bet you get a lot of calls.
The number she gave me was (310) 603-7177. I called that number and I got a long recording that gave the court hours, parking information, and phone numbers for calling the civil and criminal departments, but nothing that could help me.
Digging around on the Internet, I found another number, (310) 603-7777. I dialed this and a woman answered, saying "facilities." In fact, this was the court, and after I explained my issue, she transferred me to a man who didn't seem happy that he had to talk to a member of the public.
I gave him my citation number and, indeed, he couldn't find it in his system either. I asked him if it seemed unusual that after 35 days the ticket wasn't in the computer. No, he said. "They have a year to submit the ticket, and you have to keep checking back." He seemed exasperated that he had to explain it. Because, of course, it's so obvious. I said thank you. He hung up.
A month more passed and I still hadn't received anything in the mail, nor was there anything online. I went to the court. After going through security -- take your jacket off, throw your wallet in the bin -- I got in line. I waited about about 12 minutes before reaching the front of the line.
The woman at the counter said the same thing I'd heard on the phone. My ticket is not in the system. "The officer has not submitted it yet." Isn't that unusual? "No, it isn't." Check back later, she said. "You have to check back for a year."
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Let me repeat: I wanted to give Los Angeles Superior Court money. You'd think in this day of tight budgets that any government entity would welcome this and make it easy to pay. Think again.
I figured I would soon receive something in the mail telling me the amount of the fine and where to send the money. But more than a month passed without receiving anything. I also checked the court's online system for paying tickets, but mine did not show up. I decided to call the court.
In this case, the particular court is Compton Court, and conveniently, the phone number is right on the citation. I called that number and a woman answered and said, "St. Joseph's Hospital." Had I dialed the number wrong? I started to stammer an apology when the woman said, "Do you want the Compton Court? Yeah, we always get their calls." When your number is printed on thousands of tickets, yep, I bet you get a lot of calls.
The number she gave me was (310) 603-7177. I called that number and I got a long recording that gave the court hours, parking information, and phone numbers for calling the civil and criminal departments, but nothing that could help me.
Digging around on the Internet, I found another number, (310) 603-7777. I dialed this and a woman answered, saying "facilities." In fact, this was the court, and after I explained my issue, she transferred me to a man who didn't seem happy that he had to talk to a member of the public.
I gave him my citation number and, indeed, he couldn't find it in his system either. I asked him if it seemed unusual that after 35 days the ticket wasn't in the computer. No, he said. "They have a year to submit the ticket, and you have to keep checking back." He seemed exasperated that he had to explain it. Because, of course, it's so obvious. I said thank you. He hung up.
A month more passed and I still hadn't received anything in the mail, nor was there anything online. I went to the court. After going through security -- take your jacket off, throw your wallet in the bin -- I got in line. I waited about about 12 minutes before reaching the front of the line.
The woman at the counter said the same thing I'd heard on the phone. My ticket is not in the system. "The officer has not submitted it yet." Isn't that unusual? "No, it isn't." Check back later, she said. "You have to check back for a year."
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Wednesday, January 27, 2016
One more way TV is driving away viewers
Traditional television is under attack. Consumers, sick of endless commercials and high cable and satellite prices, are turning elsewhere. Some are signing on to Internet streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, while others are going even further, shunning anything even resembling TV, and getting their entertainment from Instagram, video games and the endless variety of new phone apps.
You would think that, given this environment, the TV industry would be doing everything it could to hold onto viewers. So why are they aggravating so many viewers by not letting them see the whole screen?
An increasing number of programs are cutting off the visible part of the show on each side. Watching sports, I find key parts of the action sometimes happen off-screen to the right or left. Written information, like the team line-ups, are often cut off.
A PBS documentary on Walt Disney cut off the full names and titles of people being interviewed. On some shows, I see only half the face of a speaker. I feel like I'm seeing only three-quarters of each show.
Even commercials -- the lifeblood of TV -- are increasingly framed in a way that you can't even see the full name of the product.
Some say that I need to buy a wide-screen TV, but why is the onus on me just because some television producers have changed their product? My TV works perfectly well, and the screen proportions it uses were perfectly fine for 50 years of television.
Why should I spend hundreds or even thousand of dollars on a new TV to meet their needs? If I run out and buy a new set, and then the Gods of TV decide to change show proportions again -- making them even wider, or taller, or who knows, oval or round -- do we all have to drop everything and go purchase new TVs again?
I'm enjoying TV less and less each time I find a show where parts are missing.
"You don't have any choice but to get a wide-screen TV," some people say. But I do have a choice. I can choose to watch the frustration-free shows where they don't cut off the edges ("Jeopardy," for example). Or, I can choose not to watch TV at all -- and increasingly that's what I do.
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You would think that, given this environment, the TV industry would be doing everything it could to hold onto viewers. So why are they aggravating so many viewers by not letting them see the whole screen?
An increasing number of programs are cutting off the visible part of the show on each side. Watching sports, I find key parts of the action sometimes happen off-screen to the right or left. Written information, like the team line-ups, are often cut off.
A PBS documentary on Walt Disney cut off the full names and titles of people being interviewed. On some shows, I see only half the face of a speaker. I feel like I'm seeing only three-quarters of each show.
Even commercials -- the lifeblood of TV -- are increasingly framed in a way that you can't even see the full name of the product.
Some say that I need to buy a wide-screen TV, but why is the onus on me just because some television producers have changed their product? My TV works perfectly well, and the screen proportions it uses were perfectly fine for 50 years of television.
Why should I spend hundreds or even thousand of dollars on a new TV to meet their needs? If I run out and buy a new set, and then the Gods of TV decide to change show proportions again -- making them even wider, or taller, or who knows, oval or round -- do we all have to drop everything and go purchase new TVs again?
I'm enjoying TV less and less each time I find a show where parts are missing.
"You don't have any choice but to get a wide-screen TV," some people say. But I do have a choice. I can choose to watch the frustration-free shows where they don't cut off the edges ("Jeopardy," for example). Or, I can choose not to watch TV at all -- and increasingly that's what I do.
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Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Italians parents blame the mayor for not giving out free food
More and more I feel like I just don't understand how people think. This came up today when I read a New York Times story about an Italian city where many parents have failed to pay their school lunch fees.
In all, the article said, parents in the city of Corsico have run up a tab of over a million euros ($1,090,000) in unpaid school lunch fees. Some families owe as much 6,000 euros ($6,510).
The mayor decided enough was enough. He said simply, if you don't pay your lunch fees your kids don't get school lunches. Pretty straightforward, right?
This is where things get weird. The reactions to the mayor's action were bewildering, if not outright bizarre.
Some called the mayor's action "blackmail" (huh?). Others said it would create "schoolroom apartheid" because some students would eat school lunches and others wouldn't. Besides the fact that the term "apartheid" stems from something far more serious than lunches, is it really so scary that kids would eat different things?
One politician said, "You can't deny food to a child." Well, besides the fact that parents often do deny food to their children ("no snacking right before dinner," for example), in this case no one was stopping kids from eating lunch.
And the article had still more comments from parents and educators attacking the mayor, and saying he's responsible if kids end up going hungry because they don't get a free school lunch.
Let's consider the basics: Who is responsible for making sure a child has a lunch to eat? The child's parents, of course. And these parents in Corsico, like so many others, have two choices: Give their children a homemade lunch, or pay for a school lunch. So who gets blamed if the parents do neither? Well, obviously, it's ... the mayor?
See the article here.
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Thursday, December 24, 2015
Book review: "Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS" by Joby Warrick
Reading the 2015 book "Black Flags" can be painful. As author Joby Warrick details the origins of the terrorist group ISIS, you learn of the many ways that the United States and its allies contributed to the group's growth.
True, it's not fair to say we "created" a monster. But we certainly helped it along.
In attempting to document the rise of the organization that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Warrick has given himself a difficult task. This sort of story could easily splinter into many pieces, losing the reader in a fog of too many players.
But in "Black Flags," Warrick does well, maintaining a tight narrative that mostly follows the career of terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. While Zarqawi didn't live to see the birth of the entity called ISIS – he was killed by Americans in 2006– Warrick makes it clear that he laid the groundwork.
Zarqawi grew up a thug and a drunk. In trying to straighten him out, his family put him into a strict Islamic religion education program. It backfired, giving Zarqawi religious rationales for his anarchist urges.
"It was like he went too straight," said one source quoted by Warrick. "So now you've got the worst of both worlds."
Imprisoned in the 1990s in Jordan, Zarqawi was placed together with some of the most hardened criminals. Locking up the worst criminals in one place might have made sense on paper, but in reality it created a festering pot of Islamist rage that would burst loose when Zarqawi and his compatriots were released from prison in a wide 1999 amnesty by Jordan's new King Abdullah II.
(Abdullah would later say that he never intended to include such prisoners in the amnesty. "Why," he demanded of his staff, "didn't someone check?")
Free to terrorize, Zarqawi found what he wanted in Iraq after the U.S. invasion of 2003. The U.S. had kicked out Saddam Hussein but failed to make sure a stable government was put in place. Into the vacuum came Islamist insurgents led by Zarqawi, feeding off the chaos and the growing hatred of U.S. occupiers. Each U.S. mistake, like the abuse of Arab prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison, made the insurgents stronger.
"The combination of American jets and Arab jails was the critical fulcrum around which Al-Qaeda and ISIS could germinate," said a source interviewed by Warrick.
Had it not been for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, would likely have continued a career as a college professor, Warrick wrote. Instead, Baghdadi joined the insurgents, rose to lead ISIS and became "the Islamic State's greatest butcher."
In keeping a neat-and-clean story line, Warrick sometimes simplifies things too much. One Iraqi's comments about U.S. troops is used to symbolize the attitude of the whole country. He praises Jordan's internal police, the Mukhabarat, for rooting out terrorists, while overlooking that fact that its zealousness sometimes results in the harassment and imprisonment of innocent people.
Still, anyone who reads "Black Flags" will gain a better understanding of ISIS and its related Islamist terrorist kin.
So what's the takeaway here? What does "Black Flags" tell us about the future?
First, Islamist terrorist groups will continue to try to kill Americans and western Europeans. This is how they build a following, gain prestige, and get money. And in their twisted world, the more they kill, the more prestige they earn
Second, special operations military forces can disrupt and set back these groups, but they must have reliable intelligence. This is hard, tedious work, and may require "boots on the ground."
Third, we can't afford mistakes. Every time the U.S. or its allies accidentally kills innocent civilians or mistreats Muslims, ISIS gains more followers.
----
(Please support this blog by clicking on an ad.)
True, it's not fair to say we "created" a monster. But we certainly helped it along.
In attempting to document the rise of the organization that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Warrick has given himself a difficult task. This sort of story could easily splinter into many pieces, losing the reader in a fog of too many players.
But in "Black Flags," Warrick does well, maintaining a tight narrative that mostly follows the career of terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. While Zarqawi didn't live to see the birth of the entity called ISIS – he was killed by Americans in 2006– Warrick makes it clear that he laid the groundwork.
Zarqawi grew up a thug and a drunk. In trying to straighten him out, his family put him into a strict Islamic religion education program. It backfired, giving Zarqawi religious rationales for his anarchist urges.
"It was like he went too straight," said one source quoted by Warrick. "So now you've got the worst of both worlds."
Imprisoned in the 1990s in Jordan, Zarqawi was placed together with some of the most hardened criminals. Locking up the worst criminals in one place might have made sense on paper, but in reality it created a festering pot of Islamist rage that would burst loose when Zarqawi and his compatriots were released from prison in a wide 1999 amnesty by Jordan's new King Abdullah II.
(Abdullah would later say that he never intended to include such prisoners in the amnesty. "Why," he demanded of his staff, "didn't someone check?")
Free to terrorize, Zarqawi found what he wanted in Iraq after the U.S. invasion of 2003. The U.S. had kicked out Saddam Hussein but failed to make sure a stable government was put in place. Into the vacuum came Islamist insurgents led by Zarqawi, feeding off the chaos and the growing hatred of U.S. occupiers. Each U.S. mistake, like the abuse of Arab prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison, made the insurgents stronger.
"The combination of American jets and Arab jails was the critical fulcrum around which Al-Qaeda and ISIS could germinate," said a source interviewed by Warrick.
Had it not been for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, would likely have continued a career as a college professor, Warrick wrote. Instead, Baghdadi joined the insurgents, rose to lead ISIS and became "the Islamic State's greatest butcher."
In keeping a neat-and-clean story line, Warrick sometimes simplifies things too much. One Iraqi's comments about U.S. troops is used to symbolize the attitude of the whole country. He praises Jordan's internal police, the Mukhabarat, for rooting out terrorists, while overlooking that fact that its zealousness sometimes results in the harassment and imprisonment of innocent people.
Still, anyone who reads "Black Flags" will gain a better understanding of ISIS and its related Islamist terrorist kin.
So what's the takeaway here? What does "Black Flags" tell us about the future?
First, Islamist terrorist groups will continue to try to kill Americans and western Europeans. This is how they build a following, gain prestige, and get money. And in their twisted world, the more they kill, the more prestige they earn
Second, special operations military forces can disrupt and set back these groups, but they must have reliable intelligence. This is hard, tedious work, and may require "boots on the ground."
Third, we can't afford mistakes. Every time the U.S. or its allies accidentally kills innocent civilians or mistreats Muslims, ISIS gains more followers.
----
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