thethadd.com

I have a new site, which is www.thethadd.com

It is just like this blog, but makes more sense than ranchpie.com So from now on, please head their to read my rants.

Do not buy from Ebayer OEM Kings

On April 20 I purchased a Motorola V400 on Ebay from a company called “OEM Kings” The phone was $61.00 with free shipping, I paid that day excited about getting my new phone. I wait for the standard 3 days because the phone is coming from Miami, FL. So it finally comes and I go to plug it in and it will not even turn on. I tried removing the battery and letting it sit, I even charged in completley overnight and looked the next day and still nothing. So, I emailed OEM Kings requesting another phone and they stated that I would need to ship back the non working phone, at my expense and they would send me a new phone. Okay fine, so I I sent in the phone with a letter asking that they test the next phone to be sure it is working. “Oh we will, and thank you for contacting us so we can make this right” I wait 6 days on the second phone, I go to plug it in and it TURNS ON.. I am elated. I let it charge for a few hours and then I try to call my wife. I dial, and wait… and wait… and wait…  I see that it is connected, but there is no sound from the earpiece. I call my cell phone from my housephone and yes, the earpiece does not work. So I call Motorola and explain my problem with the phone that I bought from OEM Kings, the guy toold me that as long as the volume was turned all the way up, there was no other way to “mute” the phone.  Fantastic, so OEM Kings has sent me 2 broken phones.

The next day I mailed back this second non-working phone with a letter requesting a full refund. Their site says that they will deduct a 15% restocking fee plus and additional $15.00 because the shipping was free, so they are wanting to screw me out of $23.00. Actually it is $43.00 because I had to pay money out of my own pocket to send back these crappy phones.

The email that I sent to OEM Kings two days ago has not been answered. So I will await a response and see what happens. I would be surprised if I got any of my money bac.

So, the moral of the story is to not buy from OEM Kings.

Hello my friend. We meet again

Hello all.. wow it has been a long time since I have written. A lot has gone on. Well not a lot, just the new job, but wow that has taken a lot of time lately. As you know I left Humana, which next to marrying Melissa was probably the best decision I have ever made. The place is a cancer and I am glad to be away from it. I have been with Sun Chemical now for two months and I am loving it. I am already being given project work to do, which tells me that management likes my work.

I do miss the people I worked with at Humana; Mike, Brendan, Sara and all te others I had grown close to over my 4 years there. Thank god for poker, or I would see none of them. Except for Sara and Leo, but going out as couples is easy to do. Right now I am knee deep in consignment accounts, which I need to finish because I am off tomorrow for Melissa’s graduation. I am so proud of her, she definitly is my driving force to do and be better.

Well I have rambled on enough. Time to get back to work.

GO REDS !!!

Of ASL and JCL

So it is Friday and tonight Melissa is taking Melinda roller skating for her birthday and that means it is just me. However seeing as this is the third Friday of the month it is deaf coffee chat night at Starbucks. Maybe if I go to enough of these things I can keep up my ASL, because Xavier is not offering ASL2 in the fall. Well they are, but not anytime that I could take it. I really want to keep learning and improve, but as far as classes go the only other place I can attend is Cincinnati State, I don’t want to do that because I love Xavier, and I need to finish my bachelors. Maybe after I graduate I can go to c-State for my interpreter certificate, but as of now that is not feasible. In coversations with Richard, taking classes at St. Rit’as would not be helpful because after a year of already taking ASL I am beyond what they teach..well hell… So, my other best option is to do the deaf dinners and coffee chats. Maybe i could look into a tutor, it cant be that expensive.
Other than that I had a big surprise the other day, my best friend from High School, Joel found my email address and sent me a message. He will be in town next month and he wants to get together. It has been about 4 years since I have seen him, so I it should be a good time.

I just had to go find somone because I am not getting emails to come through from my sales rep. which is not making my job any easier. So as I go and find help I bid you adieu.

It boggles the mind.

I am up at 3:30 am because of a pretty good sized headache that is actually right above my nose. It feels as if Melissa kicked me in the face. So, I get up and the only thing we have is Alka-Seltzer. So I am sitting here watching my big screen television, listening to my Mp3 player which is smaller than a credit card. while typing to you on a wireless laptop. And what is my point? My point is that technology has blown up and we have things now that a generation ago we could have never dreamed of. All of these great advancements in technology, and Alka-Seltzer still tastes as awful as it does. It boggles the mind. How has it been left behind? It is the drug that time forgot. I guess not everything can be as great as we want, but hell man making it *not* taste like ass cant be that hard, can it?

As of now is is 4:30, I have been a little preoccupied watching Star Wars, Episode III. I forgot that this movie has some really great quotes.

“So this is how liberty dies: to thunderous applause,” Senator Amidala says as the Senate votes Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine imperial powers.

Anakin: You are either with me, or you are my enemy.

Obi Wan: Only Sith beleive in absolutes

In other news, Xavier has advanced to the Semi-Finals in the a-10 tournament, and the Reds season is about to begin. The only thing that I worry about is finding someone to go with me to one the games I have a ticket for when Melissa cant or doesn’t want to see a baseball game. I sure want to be at every game, hell if I have to throw in an overpriced warm beer from rusty pipes, than so be it.

Work so far is going really well. I have caught on better than I thought I would have at this point, it is the perfect combination of a challenge, while being easy to assimilate to. I like most of the people that I work with, there seem to be a few negative folks, but thats everywhere I guess. I just want to do well, and for management to know my name, for good reasons only.

I am laughing as I reread over my entry here, and the only thing I can think of is. “This blog entry has been brought to you by the letters A. D and D”

Well still no voice today. Luckilly, I was setup today so that I can process emails and faxes and no phone calls. The bulk of my work “80%” is done by email or fax, but the occasional rogue phone call sqeaks through, and since I sound like dying llama reaching for my last breath, I can in no way be on the telephone.

Ann is coming into town this weekend so she, Chris and melinda are coming over to the house tommorow night. It will be fun getting us all back together again. Melissa keeps bringing Erica up, and telling me we should move on from what happened in the past, SCREW THAT. Until she apologizes to Melissa for treating her like garbabe I have no use for her. I have gone 10 years without her, and I sure as hell dont need her now.

Well my firt break is almost over so I need to get back.
~Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. It is the only thing that every has.~

I have no voice.

Well isnt this just a fine how do you do. I cant talk. I had been feeling pretty crappy the last three days, and woke up this morning with a sore throat. I went on through the day and I could feel it getting worse, at about 3:30 my voice was toast. Hopefully this wont last but a few days, because not only do I need to talk, my throat hurts like hell.  I know exactly where this came from, Dwight Schrute from my new hire class was hacking up a lung for 2 weeks, so thanks to him I am in this perdicerment.

Nothing I am taking is helping, all I can hope is that I return to normal soon

The Bastardization of the English Language

One thing I can absolutely not stand, one thing that makes me so angry that I want to kick a spotted owl in the liver, are people who bastardize the English language while speaking. As I was walking into work today I could hear two girls complaining about god knows what, and the one said ” I know they don’t think, we don’t have no work to be done.” This comment almost stopped me dead on my feet.

First off because I was not quite sure what exactly she meant by the sentence, so as I was walking to where I am now I tried to break it down in my head. 

Okay, so the first part is that she knows something. Check. “They don’t think we don’t have no work to do” Okay so “they” which I am going to go out on a limb here and say is management, “they don’t think” Okay check. So, so far she knows that management does not think something. “We don’t have no work to do”  Now, if I remember back to high school math I recall that two negatives equal a positive, So she is saying that they *do* have work to do. So the whole thing is that she knows that management does not believe that that have work to do. That sure is a whole lot of words to make that point.

Of course the girl who she was talking with got her point instantly, and it took me at least ten seconds to decipher. So maybe next semester instead of Sign Language of should sign up for “Lazy Ass English” it sure seems to be used with some degree of regularity. After all, it is very difficult to properly speak a language that most of us have been hearing since birth. What is my problem?

Visit to St. Rita

Last Saturday for my ASL Class we went to St. Rita’s School for the deaf and had class there rather than at Xavier. Since I was not 100% certain how to get there I left almost an hour earlier than I really had to, but being early is always better than being late. I got there and had some one on one time with Laura, who love spending time with because unlike Ricchard, the only way to communicate with her is through sign lanhuage, and it gives me great practice. And as I have said before she has an incredible amount of patience with all of us, which I am sure at times has to be frustrating for her. So, we spent about 30 minutes just her and I talking about what was going on in our lives and things in the news. She told me a great story about being pulled over and how the cop was angry at her because she was deaf and he had to find out another way to communicate with her, and gave her a hard time. What an ass. Of course he is a police officer and being an ass comes second nature to some of them.

Everyone else trickled in eventually and we went on with class, which was no different than we would have at Xavier. But the real fun was the tour of the school. 

{From http://www.srsdeaf.org St. Rita was built on 237 acres of fertile land and the dream of a young priest. The dream began when Father Henry J. Waldhaus was challenged by Archbishop Henry Moeller to provide for the deaf in the Diocese of Cincinnati. With the help of the Knights of del’Epee and the Saints Mary and Joseph Society, Father Waldhaus was able to raise the funds necessary to purchase land which would become St. Rita School in 1915. Beginning with only eleven students and a staff of three Sisters of Charity, Father Waldhaus embarked on a mission which would produce the first accredited high school for the deaf in Ohio.

As construction workers were breaking ground for new buildings, Father Waldhaus and the Sisters of Charity were breaking ground in their education of deaf children. They offered an atmosphere of learning and growing which was unique to deaf students in the Cincinnati area. The available technical equipment of the day enabled teachers to communicate with students who existed in a silent world. Religious and social training exposed the children to ways of life essential to functioning in the real world. Academic and vocational training helped the children become productive members of society. The homelike atmosphere offered camaraderie and a chance to grow and share with other deaf children.

Those first graduates of St. Rita took their dreams with them into the world, bolstered by the care and attention they received from Father Waldhaus and his staff. }

So from above you saw that the school is very old, and walking through it you defintley get a sense that the building has a lot of history. We walked through the classrooms and got to see their learning tools, and their books. At first I had a sense of sadness because these poor kids will most likely go through their entire lives and never hear the sound of the wind blowing or the sound of a dog barking, or a baby crying (okay maybe sometimes it would not be that bad) But on the other hand these kids seem happy and enjoy their school and their time there. I would love to go back soon, maybe this year I will volunteer for the Haunted House. I might also take some ASL classes through St. Ritas, I dont want to stop learning.

If they only knew (Part 3)

Okay so where we? Ah yes, I had just left Staci’s office in HR and was heading back to my desk. Well as you can imagine I had my stomach in my throat, and was very paranoid as to what to do next. I sat at my computer and tried to dive back into work, but I may as well have been trying to decipher ancient Egyptian writings. I decided I needed to speak with Michelle (My Manager). I got up and went to her office and asked to speak with her. We sat down and I told her that I understood that this was already over and that both her and Staci had found me guilty, which would be resulting in a “coaching document” but I wanted her to know and look her in the eye and let her know that I did NOT make these comments, and that I do not appreciate being called a liar.

Michelle went over again with me how we all had to be careful with what we said, and that anyone can take anything offensively. *SIGH* so in a sense I was hearing the same old shit as I had heard down in HR.

Michelle did again question me about what I meant by “racially charged work environment” So again I went into how I felt that certain people were favored because of the color of their skin, and that the rest of us were being slited because we were not in the “cool kids club” Of course a big surprise I was looked at as if I had nine heads. She of course was either not getting it, or not caring. So, I left her office and went back to my desk. At this point I knew what I needed to do. I need to leave and I needed to leave yesterday. So, I headed out to careerbuilder and in the first day found my current job with Sun Chemical. Things are going great and I am happy to be out of my old job and my old company.

So, to my old co-workers who were upset that I left with only a weeks notice, but that is all I had time to give them. I did feel a little bad because a few of them brought in food for my last day which I didnt show up for, but thats okay.