February 2004 Archives

Received an e-mail from the National Science Foundation (NSF) today regarding the writer position I had applied for back in December. It was a standard GFY form letter.

Here's my status:

Still nothing from the University of Wyoming or any of the three dozen ESL/TEFL teaching jobs I applied to overseas. That said I've changed my focus to pursuing full-time and contract tech writing gigs again. I've got several leads and have reactivated my network of professional contacts, so I hope it won't be too long before I'm gainfully employed.

As for teaching ESL, well I expect that once I get into a job, find a place to call my own, and then I'll begin volunteering to teach ESL at any one of the local adult education centers. If I don't get too comfortable with the money that comes from writing I'll go abroad after I have a year's experience or, more likely, I'll find a good central/south American volunteer teaching program and put a month in there every summer while using the writing jobs fund my adventures.

Tonight I bought a new wireless phone. It's a flip phone with quite a few new bells and whistles, including a color LCD display and some primitive digital camera features. Yes, I signed a multi-year contract with one of the evil telecom empires. I believe that the terms mention something about providing wireless service and this fancy phone for a minor organ and a percentage of my future income, including any patent and book royalties.

With the new phone also comes a new number as I'm still arguing with my old wireless phone's provider about a number of issues. I can no longer make or receive call from the old phone and have not found out how to retrieve my voicemail messages.

God I love technology! I love the fact that I have a phone that I can use almost anywhere in the U.S. In the same breath, I hate this technology because it has given American business a new channel to maximize profits at the cost of screwing consumers for wanting the new technology. Specifically, I resent the fact that I am held hostage by what seems to be an interminable service contract with my wireless phone provider. I'm pretty pissed off right now and may not be thinking very clearly, but I can't think of another business (other than a few monopolies) where a service provider can require customers to extend a service contract when the equipment used to receive the service breaks. Can you?

I say "hostage" because when my wireless phone took its final gasp this week I called my provider and discovered that because my phone was out of its warranty period and because I hadn't subscribed to their extortion-priced replacement program, I not only have to buy my replacement phone from them, but doing so is classified as an "equipment upgrade," and therefore requires me to extend my contract by one year. Shame on me for not reading the fine print of my contract, but honestly, I am left wondering why mysteriously my local and long-distance providers did not place the same requirements on me when my the cordless phone I used for 10 years in my apartment died? Why should it be any different for the wireless providers? In most cases these are the same high-tech companies who provide the wire-based telephone, Internet, and cable service. What is the difference?!?!

I recently took a road trip to visit friends and family in Pittsburgh and Buffalo. During this trip, much to the dismay of just about everyone who doesn't have one, I filled a few hours of the long car drive by using my wireless phone to catch up on some long overdue phone calls. Don't fret, I regularly use a hands-free headset so I can keep both hands where they belong: one on the radio controls and the other on my beer can. ;)

Anyhow, the inter-state drive from southeastern New Hampshire to southwestern Pennsylvania presented many challenges to my wireless phone's reception. On one such occasion, I was using the phone with it plugged into the car charger. In moving the phone to the farthest reaches of arm's reach in the car's interior to improve reception, I strained the charger cord which in turn yanked the phone from my hand causing it to shoot across the width of the interior, and slam into the bottom of the passenger's door. Go ahead and laugh, I know I had it coming. Thankfully, at that precise moment, I was on one of the many God-foresaken stretches of the Pennsylvania turnpike with no one in front or behind me for miles. I came out of the incident unscathed, though as I would later discover, my phone was not so lucky.

Last night I went over to have dinner with my friends LeAnn & Scott and their children. Here's a few photos I took while visiting:

Clockwise from the top: Gwyneth, Ashlyn, and Liam