Christian Pop

I am completely unqualified to comment on this topic, but that never stopped me before, so I will continue…

I cannot stand Christian pop music. Sometimes I listen to Christian radio during my commute and the programming sometimes includes Christian popular music. 90% of it is garbage.

“You narrow-minded reactionary art-hater!”

Please save your insults for the end, thank you. Now, as I was saying, this “music” has no place on radio intended for the Christian’s ear and mind. It is obvious to me (as a narrow-minded reactionary art-hater) that the music was created by a process similar to the following:

Christians allow the world to influence them by listening to (and enjoying) its music.
Christian adults feel guilty for listening to this music (or for letting their children do so) and want an alternative.
Christian “artists” imitate the world’s music, but add Christian-ese to make it acceptable.

This is the only way I can explain what I hear. Everything but the words convince me that the throaty voice of that female singer is attempting to seduce her listeners. The pounding rhythmic shouting of the young male “singer” reviles the devil like a gangsta telling off the cops. And certainly those droning indifferent singers weren’t really narcotized as they were singing, were they?

I can only guess at the real lyrics of those songs, and they wouldn’t be appropriate for Christians.

Comments? Insults?

Posted by Jeremy on October 29, 2004. 45 Comments.

The One Time Purchase Myth

There are two types of purchases: “new” and “maintenance”. A new purchase is something that you don’t already have. A maintenance purchase is something that you’re replacing, fixing, or servicing. A new purchase is so much more significant than a maintenance purchase. A new purchase adds to your list of possessions. These are the possessions that you’re going to have to maintain (replace, fix, and service) for the rest of your life. These possessions represent your chosen lifestyle and they dictate your expenses.

I used to believe that I could make one-time purchases. I was told that I should just take $500 out of savings and buy a camcorder. I was missing precious moments of my childrens’ lives and I needed to capture them before it was too late. We didn’t have a “camcorder” budget, but this was just a one-time purchase that was so important. We took the money out of savings.

Now, I don’t regret this decision. I’m glad to have movies of my kids. However, I now realize that this was not a one-time purchase. Eventually this camera will break and I will want to replace it. I’ll need to keep up with the hardware and software requirements for my computer. I need to buy storage for all the movies I record. Over my lifetime, I’ll probably have to spend about $100/year to make “owning a low-end camcorder” part of my lifestyle.

It’s difficult to do, but I think it’s much better to think of expenses in terms of their average cost over your lifetime. A replacement vehicle seems so expensive at $10,000. But really, it’s just a hiccup in the lifetime average cost of about $500/month to own and maintain 2 cars. I’d like to buy a laptop computer, but I deceive myself if I think it will just cost $800. That $800 would represent the first payment in the continuing cost incurred by adding this possession to my standard of living. A $1,000 car repair bill should bother me much less than my inclination to buy the laptop. The former has already been accounted for in my lifestyle. The second is an addition, one which I need to consider whether I can afford long-term.

Posted by Jeremy on October 27, 2004. 4 Comments.

The Great Backup Strategy

I have a confession. I haven’t been backing up my data.

“What!? Do you think hard drives last forever? What about all your financial records? What about all the church financial records? Aren’t all your kids’ pictures on your computer? What were you thinking?”

Well, I was trying to burn a CD periodically. But sometimes I didn’t get around to it. And I couldn’t fit all the digital pictures onto a single CD. I didn’t really have a plan. I finally asked for advice in the Joel on Software forum. And now here’s my Great Backup Strategy:

I found a good deal on a 120gb internal drive. (Bigger than I need, but I can also use it as scratch-space for making home-movies.) I downloaded SyncBack (I can’t believe it’s freeware — I highly recommend it.) My computer now updates the backup copy of my data files every 30 minutes. Cheap & easy!

Ideally, I would also automatically rsync my data to some server, but I have dial-up, so any off-site data storage will have to involve some walking. Besides, I’ve got to do something with all those CD-R discs I got for free after rebate.

Posted by Jeremy on October 26, 2004. 1 Comment.

Comment Spam

I’ve been waiting for this day. I’ve read about comment spam. I see the features in WordPress to help deal with comment spam, but I didn’t enable any of them. Before today, I hadn’t been hit with any.

In case you didn’t know, comment spam is when a program automatically posts comments (of somewhat random text) to various web logs just so that the comment entries will link back to their site. Google believes that sites with many links to them are important and will rate them higher, particularly if you’re searching on the same text someone used to link to the site. So, these programs (called spambots) will post dozens of random quotations as comments on web logs with the name of “free online gambling” and their url. This way, your web log will have links like free online gambling, boosting their Google pagerank. (Except that I changed that url, just out of spite.)

I enjoyed this opportunity to implement the Jeremy Comment Spam Filtering Technique^TM. The problem with wide-spread spam filtering techniques is that spammers know about them and work around them. The best spam filters are the ones that the spammers don’t know about — the ones without wide distribution. Thus, I believe that my home-grown, implemented-in-60-seconds spam-filter will be superior to anything that WordPress can come up with, simply because it’s not good enough for everyone else to use. Ironic, no?

And, if you’d like to comment on this post, you can see what I came up with!

Posted by Jeremy on October 24, 2004. 11 Comments.

Carl Touchstone

In my state assembly district (the 132nd), Joseph Morelle get’s a free ride this election. He’s the only candidate on the ballot for his position. I’m going to write in Carl Touchstone. It won’t make a difference, but it will make me feel better.

Posted by Jeremy on October 23, 2004. 2 Comments.

I Got Scammed

I’m getting a lot of visitors who were scammed by ChampKicks.com. If you’re one of them, I suggest you check out these links:

Good luck. Let me know if you were successful.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled rant…

On Thursday, July 22nd, I received a call from a telemarketer representing Choice One. She identified herself as “Roma”.

I used to be on the New York State “Do Not Call” registry. But a couple of years ago, I submitted a written request to have my number removed from the list after reading a Discipleship Journal article that described how someone decided to use telemarketer calls as an opportunity for evangelism. Now, when a telemarker calls, I ask “is this a solicitation?” When they say, “yes”, I respond “I’ll give you a few minutes of my time if, when you’re finished, you will give me a few minutes of your time.” After their pitch is over, I ask them about their eternal future and explain the gospel.

Since I want them to listen to my explanation of the good news, I generally feel like I ought to give full consideration to whatever they are selling. Thus, I listened to Roma’s pitch for Choice One’s local telephone service plan.

Roma offered unlimited local calling, 200 minutes of long distance, and all the features (caller ID, voicemail, etc.) they had for $34.95/month. We have dial-up internet access, and I thought it might be nice to avoid the busy signals people get when they call us and we’re online or otherwise on the phone. I pointed out that my bill would actually be considerably larger than $34.95/month since there are all the taxes, fees, and surcharges, like the FCC’s customer access line charge. Roma assured me that the $34.95/month includes the customer access line charge and that my total bill with taxes would be about “$38 or $39″ per month. I was very surprised and asked her to confirm that the FCC charge was included. She did. Furthermore, Roma told me that if I was not satisfied, Choice One would pay to switch me back. I asked her to confirm that Roma mean that Choice One would pay any fees charged by Frontier for me to switch back. She did.

I told Roma that I make it a practice to never sign up for something on the spot. I would be happy to consider the offer and get back to her. She tried to make a hard-sell and asked my objections. I said I wanted time to look over all the details. She faxed the information to me and arranged to call back the next day.

After she was finished, I asked her about her eternal destination and learned that she was hoping to get to heaven because she was a good person. I pointed out some Bible verses that contradicted her assumptions and discussed it for a while. I encouraged her to consider these things as we finished our call.

After I reviewed the information she had faxed, I called Frontier (the local telephone company) and asked if they had any comparable plans. They said that they had a similar plan for $35/month, but it does not include the customer access line charge.

When Roma called back the next day, I noted that the information she had sent did not say that the customer access line charge was included in the price. Roma assured me that it was. I agreed to sign up for the plan. (After I signed up, I followed up on the gospel. She asked me if I was a priest or something. I was able to explain why I, a normal [well, mostly normal] person would be so concerned about spiritual matters.)

It took several weeks for Choice One to take over my telephone. During that time, I found free internet call waiting service. However, after the switch to Choice One, I learned that Choice One does not offer fixed busy call forwarding, required for internet call waiting. I was disappointed. I called Frontier and learned that not only do they offer this service, but they had a plan with all the calling features for $30/month. I don’t know why they didn’t mention it when I had called them before.

I decided to switch back. That’s when I learned that the statements that “we’ll switch you back for free” were false. Choice One was perfectly willing to disconnect me, but they said that they couldn’t switch me back; Frontier had to do that. Frontier was happy to sign me back up, but they charged $33 for their effort. They were not willing to waive that fee.

A few weeks later, I received my Choice One bill. The FCC customer access line charged was listed as a separate item in addition to the $34.95 montly charge. I called customer service and reminded them of their pitch. They said that they didn’t know anything about the telemarketing company that had misrepresented the cost of the service. They couldn’t tell me which telemarketing company had signed me up. I asked if they could tell who received the commission on the sale; they claimed they could not. They did not honor the promise made by this third party.

I know the dates I received the calls (July 22 and 23) and the person who made the promises (Roma), but I don’t have anything in writing and I have no way to trace the company who called me. I thought I was being careful by having Roma carefully confirm each item at issue. I think that did prevent miscommunication, but it didn’t prevent fraud.

Lessons learned:

Telemarketers have no stake in the sale. They can say anything to get the commission and run.
Get it in writing. A verbal assurance in addition to what’s in writing is worthless.
Before signing up with the solicitor, call the actual company to confirm
Find out who’s really calling you. Get the name of the telemarketing company.

Cost of lessons: $33 reconnection fee + $4 unexpected FCC fee. Not too bad a price, if it keeps me from making the same mistakes again.

Now, I wonder if my wife will let me install a recording device on our home phone…